4/21: Conclusions

Attachment theory

informs/underscores importance of warm and predictable emotionally supported relationships b/w children and their caregivers

- studied by Bowlby an Ainsworth

- when a child has a warm and predctibale, stable relationship → better development (learn, grow, development healthy social emotinal skills)

Self-determination theory

all people have psychological needs , feelings of autonomy, agency, competency, and relatedness → when these 3 needs are met, they flourish (have more motivation for work, learn more)

CLASS: classroom assessments scoring system

measure quality of interactions b/w children and teachers in a classroom

looking for high quality interactions: warm, supportive, helping children feel safe and comfortable

What are the 3 domains CLASS focuses on

emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support

VQB5

By law, any early childhood center or school throughout Virginia that accepts any publicly funded dollars has to participate in the Virginia quality birth to five rating system --> scores are then averaged across all classrooms and data is publicized

Nature or nurture theme

False dichotomy --> NOT nature vs nurture, they work together to shape development, also during prenatal development

Nature elicits nurture through early biological drives and infant temperament

individual find babies cute: big heads and eyes, squishy, etc → elicits caregiving behavior

if an infant cries (nature oriented response to biological hunger cues) → elicits nurture through caregiving behavior

if an infant is smiling and laughing → elicit funny faces and playful interactions from caregiver

In nature and nurture, timing matters

Timing matters esp in early development

sensitive and critical periods: wired to expect certain input

We are biologically set up to learn language for intance, but if we don't receive care or nurture in sensitive/critical periods, we are stunted in language development

Nature may reveal itself slowly, until later in development

Hereditary patterned baldness, active child, epigenetics

Hereditary patterned baldness

rate at which our hair thins and goes away in adulthood is influenced by genetics shared with us from biological parents

Active child

children can influence their own development, including through eliciting particular kinds of caregiving from other pple/other kinds of reactions in social environments

Epigenetics

process of how nurture/experiences get under the skin and influence gene expression; experience can amplify or silence gene expression

Different relationships/patterns of heredity based on experiences

relationship b/w nature or genetics and intelligence is diff for high and low income families

high: see more of a genetic contribution; low: environment matters even more

Continuous or discontinuous

stage theories: development is occurring in qualitative shifts, often associated with age and each stage includes competencies gained in prior stages, build upon another and occur in the same order (don't skip around from chrysalis to caterpillar to butterfly, everyone goes in same order, broadly applicable to everyone

Time scale matters for continuous or discontinuous

big qualitative changes might look continuous, from day to day, however there might be more dramatic qualitative shifts year to year

Where do you see big jumps?

see big jump in infants' depth perception abilities around 3 months old

see big vocab explosion around 2 y/o

Children are active in their own development

Self-regulation

Choosing social environments

Active interpretation of experiences

Self-regulation

children are actively involved in their own self-regulation with self soothing behaviors that are physical and directed at their own body

later, they engage in more cognitive strategies to regulate emotions, predicted later behavior and outcomes

Choosing social environments

playmates children choose, activities that they get involved with continue to reinforce some behaviors (have more sporty friends, becomes more interested in sports)

Active interpretation of experiences

social cognition theories: children don't just passively see info but actively respond accordingly

Hostile attributional bias

Which of these statements accurately expresses a key understanding regarding the continuity and discontinuity of development?

The apparent continuity or discontinuity of a given developmental trait depends on the timescale on which it is considered.

Timing of exposure to _____ greatly influences their effects on prenatal development.

teratogens

Babies who grow up in cultures that strongly encourage infants' motor development tend to walk and reach other motor milestones earlier than do infants in the united states. This is an example of the effect of ______ on development.

the sociocultural context

Which of these is NOT one of the four shared assumption of stage theories of development?

Children often regress to a previous stage before moving on.

Which of these is an example of a principle that will improve the life of a child?

pick a good partner

know which decisions are likely to have a long-term impact

form a secure attachment

Fetal learning

The experience of hearing the mother's voice while in the womb leads a newborn to prefer her voice to that of other women.

The influence of prenatal experience can be long-lasting; for example, prenatal exposure to garlic-flavored food influences liking of such flavors among 8- and 9-year-olds. Thus, preferences that are often thought of as being determined purely by nature reflect nurture as well.

Looking preferences

From the day they are born, infants display looking preferences that guide their attention to the most informative aspects of the environment that their processing abilities can handle --> look at objects rather than blank fields, look at moving objects rather than stationary ones, looking at faces

What theories divide childhood and adolescence into a small number of discrete stages?

Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Freud's theory of psychosexual development, Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, and Kohlberg's theory of moral development

Key assumptions of stage theories

development progresses through a series of qualitatively distinct stages; (2) when children are in a given stage, a fairly broad range of their thinking and behavior exhibits the features characteristic of that stage; (3) the stages occur in the same order for all children; and (4) transitions between stages occur quickly.

Development may not always follow stage approaches

characteristics described in stages can overlap, rarely is a sudden change evident across a broad range of tasks

Biological change mechanisms → underlie both specific and broad changes

neurogenesis → cell migration → differentiation → synaptogenesis → pruning

The brain includes a number of areas that are specialized for specific functions. This specialization makes possible rapid and universal development of these functions and thus enhances learning of the relevant type of information. Some of the functions are closely linked to sensory and motor systems.

Piaget's theory: mechanisms of developmental change

change occurs through the interaction of assimilation and accommodation. Through assimilation, children interpret new experiences in terms of their existing mental structures; through accommodation, they revise their existing mental structures in accordance with the new experiences.

Habituation

occur before fetuses leave the womb: as reflected in a fetus's heart rate initially slowing down (a sign of interest) when a bell is rung next to the mother's belly and then the heart rate returning toward the typical rate as the bell is rung repeatedly; motivates babies to seek new stimulation when they have already learned from an experience and thus helps them learn more

Instrumental conditioning

behaviors that are rewarded become more frequent, and behaviors that do not lead to rewards become less frequent

Statistical learning

allows infants to acquire information rapidly

From birth onward, infants quickly learn the likelihood that one sight or sound will follow another

Rational learning

integrating the learner's prior beliefs and biases with what actually occurs in the environment.

Social learning

Children (and adults) learn a great deal from observing and interacting with other people through imitation, social referencing, language, and guided participation

Imitation

infants imitate novel behaviors that they never make spontaneously

When children of this age see a model unsuccessfully try to do something, they imitate what the model was trying to do rather than what the model actually did and use alternative means to reach what they see as the intended goal.

Social sccafolding

a more knowledgeable person may provide the learner with an overview of a given task, demonstrate how to do the most difficult parts, provide help with the most difficult parts, and offer suggestions on how to proceed; allows a beginner to do more than they could do without help; As the learner becomes adept at the basics of the task, the more expert person transfers more and more responsibility to the learner until the learner is doing the entire task.

What are the four types of information-processing mechanisms

basic processes, strategies, metacognition, content knowledge

Basic processes

simplest, most broadly applicable, and earliest-developing information-processing mechanisms; associating events with each other, recognizing objects as familiar, recalling facts and procedures, encoding key features of events, and generalizing from one instance to another; provide a foundation that allows infants to learn about the world from their very first days.

Strategies

Children acquire multiple strategies for solving a single kind of problem: Toddlers generate strategies for achieving goals such as obtaining a toy that is out of reach or descending a steep ramp

Preschoolers form strategies for counting and solving arithmetic problems

School-age children form strategies for playing games and getting along with others; and so on

metacognition

increasing use of memory strategies: adaptive choice among alternative strategies, cognitive control involved in executive functioning, content knowledge

Adaptive choice among alternative strategies

whether to reread a paragraph for better understanding or just continue reading, whether to count or state a retrieved answer to solve an arithmetic problem, and whether to write an outline before beginning an essay or begin writing without an outline

cognitive control involved in executive functioning

inhibiting tempting but counterproductive actions, being cognitively flexible, and considering other people's perspectives

content knowledge

The more children know about any topic — whether it be chess, soccer, dinosaurs, or language — the better able they are to learn and remember new information about it.

Sociocultural context

Children develop within a personal context of other people: families, friends, neighbors, teachers, and classmates. They also develop within an impersonal context of historical, economic, technological, and political forces, as well as societal beliefs, attitudes, and values

What are the three variables that are crucial in determining the importance of any dimension of individual differences

breadth of related characteristics, stability over time, and predictive value

What are the important dimensions/characteristics of individual differences

a child's status at a given time is associated with their status at that time on other important dimensions; a child's status on the dimension predicts outcomes on other important characteristics in the future

Stability over time

Many individual differences show moderate stability over time

Determinants of individual differences

genetics, experience