Psych Paper 2 Review 

Developing as a Learner -

Piaget - children’s development progresses through a series of cognitive stages

Stage 1:  Sensorimotor intelligence (age 0–2 years)

1. Baillergoen - wanted to test Piaget's claim that children do not demonstrate object permanence until around 6 - 8 months.

   1. 40 healthy, full-term infants

   2. The infants watched as the screen was raised to show them that there was nothing behind it

      1. Condition 1: When the screen was raised, a box had been placed behind the screen but not on the ramp. This was the "possible event."

      2. Condition 2: In this condition, the box stood on top of the ramp, blocking the car's path.  This was the "impossible event."

   3. The infants looked longer at the impossible event, suggesting that they were surprised to see the car on the other side when the box was blocking the car's path. 

   4. By 6 months of age, infants understand object permanence

   5. well-controlled, high internal validity, cross-sectional design, repeated measures design, study of infants is difficult because they are not able to communicate verbally with us what they are thinking.

Stage 2. Pre-operational thought (age 2–7 years) - egocentrism

1. Piaget and Inhelder - three-mountain task

   1. Children asked to choose a picture that showed the scene they had observed. In the next part, a child was asked to look at the model of three mountains. The researcher then placed a doll in various positions in the model. The child was shown different pictures and asked to choose the one that showed what the doll would see.

   2. 4-year-olds were asked to select a picture showing what a doll sitting across the table would have observed when looking at the mountain, they chose the image that reflected their viewpoint

   3. Lose egocentrism at age 7

2. Hughes - argued that the Three Mountain Task did not make sense to children, policemen task

   1. showed children a model comprising two intersecting walls and placed a policeman doll at one of the points on the "X." The children were asked to place another doll somewhere in the walls so that the policeman couldn't see him

   2. 4 year olds could do it

   3. Introduced a second policeman doll and placed both dolls at the ends of two walls. Once again hide the boy doll from the policemen.

   4. 4 year olds could do it

   5. By 4 years old children have lost their egocentric thinking 

   6. Piaget overestimated how long it took for this skill to develop

3. Li 

Vygotsky - it is not possible to describe the process by which children cognitively develop without taking into account the child’s social environment or culture. 

Sociocultural theory - a child’s cognitive development is based on interaction with other people in order to develop cultural tools to understand the world.

1. Nichols - find out if children working in groups would learn more effectively than if they were working alone.

   1. American high school students were randomly allocated to one of three groups for one semester.

      1. half-semester of collaborative group learning and then a half-semester of traditional lectures

      2. a half-semester of lectures and then a half-semester of collaborative group learning.

      3. third group had a full semester of traditional instruction.

   2. Groups 1 and 2 showed significantly higher levels of achievement and motivation was highest

Vygotsky argued that younger children think aloud while solving problems until their speech has internalized 

2. Prior and Welling - wanted to test this idea by seeing if children at the preoperational stage of development who read a text aloud would understand it better

   1.  Canadian children aged 5 to 8 years old.

      1. children were asked to read a text quietly to themselves

      2. asked to read it aloud

   2.  tested on their understanding of the passage

   3. younger children showed no difference in comprehension

   4. older children performed best when they read aloud

Brain Development (Developing as a learner too)

Maturation Theory (Bio)

1. Chugani - used PET scans to determine areas of brain activity, by measuring glucose metabolism in different brain region, independent samples

   1. the baby's brain develops neuronal connections (white matter) from the back to the front, with the frontal cortex that is responsible for higher-level processing developing last.

   2. by 3 years, and until about 10 years old, the glucose metabolism, and therefore the activity and neuronal growth, is more than twice the level of that in adults. 

2. Giedd - MRI scans on healthy male and female children in longitudinal and repeated measures design

   1. Scans were conducted ~ every 2 years on children between 6 years and 20 years

   2. 95% of the brain structure is formed when the child is around 5 or 6 years old

   3. Areas in the prefrontal cortex start growing again in adolescence

Developing an Identity-

Attachment Theory (Bowlby and Ainsworth): a close relationship between the child and the mother is a basic biological need - an innate pattern of behavior that has helped infants to survive. Caregiver= safe haven, secure base, separation distress, and proximity maintenance (kid wants to be near caregiver)

1. Harry Harlow - challenged cupboard theory (Freud)

   1. Baby monkeys are separated from mothers from birth. Given ‘cloth mom’ and ‘wire mom’. In some conditions, cloth mom gave food or wire mom gave food.

   2. Found that even when wire mom gave food, most of time was spent w/ cloth mom for comfort.

   3. Before this study, people believed that attachment with mother was due to feeding (Freud), but Harlow argued that love is part of this attachment

2. Ainsworth - measure the child’s attachment behavior, based on how the child reacts when the mother leaves and subsequently returns.

   1. Strange Situation Assessment- Parent and kid in room with toys and chairs, parent leaves and see how baby reacts

      1. Baby cries, mom comes back, baby reaches for mom and wants to be comforted, is calmed down by her presence: Secure attachment

      2. Baby shows indifference when mom leaves room and avoids contact when she returns: Insecure Avoidant

         1. Mom seems to be unresponsive/uninterested when child cries/plays

      3. Baby stays close to mom and not eager to explore, distressed by separation, clingy, and resistant to being soothed: Insecure Ambivalent

         1. Mom seems to be inconsistent with child, unpredictable w/ it

   
   

Gender Identity and social roles

Psychosexual Differentiation (Bio): argues that testosterone is key in the development of the body and mind. Prenatal exposure to testosterone establishes ‘male’ brain circuitry and stops the development of female brain circuits. Social aspects aren’t as important as biology.

1. Money

   1. Case study on David Reimer

2. Imperato-McGinley

   1. Case study on Batista family, 4 kids with same genetic mutation that led to testosterone deficiency were born with what seemed to be female genitalia and were raised as girls, but biologically developed as boys in puberty.

   2. As adults, they demonstrated masculine gender roles and heterosexual behavior. Interviews showed that those who changed from female to male  recalled ‘never being happy doing girl things’

Gender Schema Theory (Cog): Argues that once kids can categorize boys and girls and recognize which group they belong to, they will actively seek out info to build up schema

1. Martin and Halverson

   1. Children and gender schema picture study

   2. Children 5-6 years old, presented with 16 pictures one at a time, were not told to remember the images

   3. 1 week later asked about recalling the images and then some (8 extra they did not see), asked if they saw the picture and asked who was doing it in the picture (girl, boy, man, woman, don’t know) and told to rate their confidence on a 4-point scale

   4.  Children had distorted memories of pictures that were not consistent with gender role schemas, children were more confident and demonstrated less distortion of memory when the stories were consistent with gender schema

2. Kohlberg

   1. Argued that there are three stages of gender identity development

      1. Gender labeling - where a child identifies gender based on physical appearance

      2. Gender stability - see that one’s behavior is what identifies someone as a boy or girl

      3. Gender constancy - child recognizes that gender is constant across time and regardless of the situation

   2. Carried out series of interviews with children

      1. Asked, “Who goes to work?” (these kinds of questions) with forced choice so there was no “both go to work” or “don’t know”

      2. Not too much about kohlberg on crane, would not suggest using other than theory

3.