EXAM psyc 101

EF Learning and Memory

• Executive Function/ Executive Control

  • Involves processes that allow for goal-directed action

    • Regulation & control over cognitive processes

  • Involves mental flexibility

  • Ex: air traffic control in mind

    • Focus, switch between tasks, follow directions

    • Manage emotions, etc

  • Babies are bad at this, socialized to be better

  • Allow to constantly monitor/ flexibly adjust to environment

  • Solace complex problems - mental flexibility

• Assessment

  • Two of the most common ways

1. Children’s ability to inhibit automatized or distractors

   1. Ex: day/ night

      1. Picture of a sun… told to say night

         1. Moon… told to say day

      2. Inhibits the response that would come automatically

      3. Head/ toes

         1. Told to touch one things means to touch the other

2. Flexibly switch between rules

   1. Ex: dimensional card sorting test

      1. Shape game ship vs. rabbit

      2. Color game red vs blue

         1. Three year old mind doesn’t know what they know

   2. Phil Salazo

      1. If there is a break - habit interrupted they do better 

• Executive Function predicts

  • Academic performance (more predictive than IQ)

  • Not surprising because school success requires children to focus attention on relevant material

  • Resist immediate gratification of momentary needs

  • Solve problems in a flexible/ creative manner

• People with attention deficit disorder have

  • Trouble with- disorder of executive function

• Many attempts to teach general executive function

  • Most fail, do not replicate/ generalize

  • Training in one context has little effect in other context

  • Claims that bilingualism, pretend play & martial arts have a positive effect are disputed

• Executive function may need to be learned

  • In a domain specific way

• May depend on whether learning concrete & meaningful

  • Classic study on children in Brazil 6-15 year old

  • Candy sellers in streets very poor

  • Sexe 1988

    • Good at high level math processes (EF)

    • Very limited formal education

    • Managed inventory/ sales

    • Proportional reasoning: adjust quantity 

      • Profit

• Sometimes children have the required executive function capabilities for a task but don’t value control

  • Can do it but don’t want to

• Need motivation to do  X , know its important

  • Positive outcome for them/ others

  • Ex: foot race as quickly as possible

    • Engage control early/ prepare

    • Do what their knowledge says will help

• Interventions need to support knowledge, values, & beliefs

  • Talk to them about this

  • Need to address factors that make it harder for children to exert EF when they want to

    • Lack of sleep, poor nutrition

  • Need: capacity & desire 

• Learning Strategies

  • Requires good executive function & deep engagement with material

  • Engagement: doing something

  • Learned material → activities mental models

  • New material → mental representation in head

  • Engagement along a continum

    • Least engagement: passive learning

      • Receiving information without overtly doing anything else related to learning 

    • More engaged: active learning - a little bit better -

      • Some form of action is taken (highlighting/ copying solution)

  • Constructive: learners generate something new like a concept map/ explaining what the info means to them

  • Interactive: both partners’ utterances are constructive & taking turns

    • Ex: dialogue between 2 people using constructive processing, inferences needed, argument/ justification

• Why does level of engagement matter?

  • Passive: new knowledge is encoded in a way that is disconnected from other knowledge

  • Can only be retrieved in a similar fashion isolated from other knowledge

    •  Can’t be generalized/ inferred

  • Ex: operating ATM; can be ok to be isolated info 

• Active: manipulating info activates relevant prior knowledge

  • Ex: writing down/ highlighting

  • Connected in some way to what you already know 

  • See gaps in knowledge… begin to fill in 

• Constructive: generate inferences lead to better connections with other knowledge/ what you know

  • Fundamental to deep learning

  • Revising mental models

  • Transfer across different contexts

• Interactive: partner inferences build on each other to generate new knowledge

  • Deepen learning

• Typical design: students spend the same amount of time in activities that require different levels of engagement & assessing learning

  • Across assessments 

  • Ex: study: highlighting while reading (active) vs practice testing (constructive)

  • Finding: constructive is better for application/ generalization

  • Ex: tutoring session… more/ less interactive

  • Constructive activities

  • Generating inferences - asking people to explain things

  • Ask students to fill in missing steps 

  • Actively generating new information - more turn taking vs tutor talking most of the time

  • Findings more interactions - more student learning

  • Misconceptions: interactions is good with peers

    • Activity to work w/ peers to solve missing key components

      • Bouncing of each other

      • Arguing with ideas

• Promote better learning

  • Use & help others make learning more constructive and interactive 

  • Rather than show completed answer show problem with step missing & have student figure it out

    • More generative

    • Have to infer

  • Explanation (including self-explanation)

    • Children explain thinking

    • Build off each other in a dialogue reading textbook by self is still powerful

  • Apply information to a new context

    • Make inferences about information making it fit into new contexts

  • Write a mini lecture

    • Teaching is good learning can be interactive - category high quality learning

• Strategies promote learning even when students get the answers wrong and are confused

• Even activities that are constructive can be more constructive

  • Building models is more constructive than comparing models

  • Ex: compare 2 models of molecules

• Teaching strategies can promote deep engagement but do not determine engagement

  • Can listen to lecture with no activities in a constructive way

  • Ex: listen & thinking of inferences connecting to previous knowledge

• Intuitions are often wrong about what works

  • Claims: learn more from rereading vs. practice tests

  • Proof: practice tests are constructive; better for learning 

  • Quizzing other students

• When taking tests you might not feel like you’re learning

  • Taking test → super effective way to learn

  • Important to know: so don’t go by intuition go by science

• Other factors affecting learning:

  • Productive struggle

  • When you let them struggle they’ll get more out of help when they receive it than making no obvious struggle

  • Struggling → mental engagement

  • Too much struggle → bad thing

  • Timing matters - long term retention

    • Benefits of spacing out practice 

    • Benefits of intermixing types of problem types

    • Benefits of cumulative review

    • If you want to retain info… space out studying

      • Same type of problems mixed up is better

      • Ex: mix artist & painting to match 

        • Mix in what you already learned with new material

• Even with good study strategies, we forget most of the details of what we learn

  • Ex: AP Bio & Kreb Cycle

    • Helpful to learn even if forgotten

    • As long as you remember (kinda) it helps build mental models

  • Ex: 6-9 year old 7 minutes video on how engine works

    • Engine expert detection task

    • Real expert vs fake expert 

    • Process of learning lets you think of stuff in new way

Development of Representation

• Symbol systems: one thing stands for another 

  • Ex: language, numbers + operation signs icon maps 

  • Models calendars road signs emoji

• One challenge: seeing artifacts both as things and as what they represent

  • Calendar: physical object also represents time 

• Scale model

  • Object-representation

  • Judy Deloache 1987

    • One room represents another room

    • Dollhouse sofa in both models

    • Tiny toy hidden in the model

    • Retrieval task

      • Hide mini toy in scale model

  • Understand relation between the model & the room 

    • 2 year old doesn’t understand the representation

    • 3 year olds are good at it

      • They begging to understand representation

    • Confounds: memory: maybe forgot where it was

    • Hide it themselves see if they understand explore room more

    • Maybe need experience

  • Deloache:

    • Logic of what was done

    • If they convince kids that the room shrank

      • They are really good at task

  • Dual representation hypothesis

    • One room represents another room 

    • Ex: dollhouse sofa in the model

    • Retrieval task: hide in mini, retrieve from scale model room

    •  Understand relation between the model & the room

      • 2 year olds don’t understand

      • 3 year olds are good at it

        • They begin to understand representation

    • Confounds: Memory

      • Maybe forgot where it was, if they hid it themselves they might better understand relation, explore room more prior, might need experience 

    • Convince kids that the room shrunk

      • Kids get really good at the task

      • → 2 year olds see it is a real thing then the relation makes sense

      • Effective to add music for children 7 years & younger

• Pretend play

  • 12-24 months first seen

  • 4-6 years peaks

  • Can promote conceptual development

    • Help children figure out new concepts

    • Practicing & experimenting w/ prior learning

      • EX: 4 & 5 year old’s emotional development on understanding what a stroke is - dialogue about why a stroke occurs and what is happening

    • Can help with emotion

      • Ex: fear of dark

        • Self persuasion: children trying to persuade others often persuade themselves 

          • Need a good guy & bad guy to have scenario work 

    • Experimenting with social roles

      • Coordinating with others 

    • Misconceptions:

      • If children do something disturbing in pretend play, they were abused

      • Children are learning through play what it feels like to hurt someone else

• Understanding Mental life

  • Study beliefs, emotions, desires

  • How to figure out what is going on even if it’s not visible based on observable behavior trying to come up with a hypothesis

    • Fundamental to development

    • People with autism struggle to make inferences

• By age 2: Understanding Different Desires

  • Theory of mind

  • Different people have different desires

  • Children are told that others like things very different them them

  • GOPNIK Children younger than 18 months thought that we would like the same thing (goldfish vs broccoli)

    •  Evidence: in that by age 2 know that giving broccoli is better 

  • Standard theory of mind: False Belief Problems

    • Understanding that people can act on false beliefs

  • Gold Standard: someone can believe something that’s not true

• Unexpected transfer test

  • 42 month old failing

  • Big difference 

  • 3 year olds do poorly - don’t understand what the question is asking

  • 5 year olds do well - playing a trick on themselves better results 

  • Young children are more successful if the task involves helping trick someone

  • The reality is so powerful & difficult to deal with

    • Crayon box with animal crackers inside

Symbols, Theory of Mind, Language (Word Gap)

• Phonology: how sounds are used in language

• Phoneme: elementary unit of meaningful sound

  • Smallest units of sound in language that can distinguish meaning

  • Bat - Cat : can change a single phoneme [ fan - van ]

• About 30 in each language, variation across languages

  • Children have to know how to reproduce sounds

  • Which are allowed

  • No Ts sound at the beginning of words in English (ever)

• Morphology: study of form & structure of words

  • Morpheme: smallest unit of language that has meaning

    • Has one or more phonemes

  • Free morpheme can stand alone (tree, jump)

  • Bound Morphemes

    • Cannot stand alone, includes prefixes & suffixes

    • Functions:

      • Can change meaning (un - in UNclear)

      • Can change part of speech (-ness in happiNESS)

      • Indicate tense (-ed in hopED)

      • Can indicate plural (-s in carS)

  • Examples:

    • Tree: 1 free morphine

    • Dogs: 2 1 free (dog) & 1 bound (S)

    • Unhappiness: 3 - 1 free (happi) & 2 bound (un-, -ness)

    • Unhappily: 3 - 1 free (happi) & 2 bound (un-, -ly)

• Semantics

  • Semantics : study of meaning in words and sentences 

  • Semantically illegal sentences

    • Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

  • Linked to some form of humor

    • What has 8 wheels and flies? - garbage truck

  • Context

    • Bank (Money or River)

• Syntax

  • Syntac: the structure of sentences

  • How words are arranged to form sentences

  • Subject Verb Order

    • My dog ate my homework

  • Words rearranged can have different meaning

    • Maurice wants to only paint the kitchen

    • Only Maurice wants to paint the kitchen

  • Includes how parts of a sentence fit together

    • Ex: subject & verb must agree

      • “The dog barks” instead of “The dog bark”

    • Ex: how pronouns match up with what they refer to

      • Can’t say “The brother went to the pool, but he got sick and couldn’t swim.”

• Pragmatics     (closely linked to theory of mind)

  • Pragmatics: using language in social contexts

  • Coordinating with other minds 

    • Finding common ground: shared knowledge

    • Belief, assumption that 2 or more people interacting people

    • Joint attention in infancy: eye contact, turn-taking, pointing

  • Cultural variation

    • manners/ statements/ known answer questions

  • Pragmatics: understanding speech acts

    • How things go beyond literal meaning of words and focus on what speaker intend to achieve with their language

      • Implicit requests for action “can you reach that?”

• Puzzle: learning the referent for each word

  • Some principles - 

    • whole object (probably refers to a whole object rather than part of an object) 

    • mutual exclusivity: new name means new object

      • Bilinguals might not use mutual exclusivity 

  • Even with basic idea of word might be difficult to pin down meaning

    • Ex: big bug vs little car

• Phoneme perception

  • Newborns hear all possible phonemic distinction

    • Rake vs lake 

  • 10 months old can only distinguish relevant language(s) vs newborns hear ALL

    • Related to the specific Lemur face recognition

  • Study:     (example)

    • 6 months old - baby wants to see bunny dance can hear the difference between Ba & Da → turns head in anticipation

    • 10 months old - baby stops hearing distinct sounds → doesn’t turn head in anticipation

  • Reversal of lost skill?

    • 9 month olds in the US are exposed to native Mandarin Chinese speakers & same speakers on t.v.

    • Reverse in phonemic perception ONLY in live speaker

      • Watch same thing on tv → will not have advantage

      • Will learn more in joint attention (watching & commenting)

      • Interactive tv (Blues clues)

        • Asks children to do things

        • Very interactive: facilitates learning & development

        • Talking about things you don’t understand prepares your mind to pick it up later

• Babies speaking

  • Cooing → babbling → one-word

    • Cooing: first language sounds, vowel sounds

    • Babbling: sounds more like language, consonants & vowels, mama, dada, papa (universal choco- chocolate)

  • Around 12 months: one-word utterances (1 first word - 1st birthday)

    • Early words - 

      • familiar objects/ people - [daddy, ball]

      • Social words - [bye-bye, uh-oh]

  • 18 to 24 months old: two word utterances

    • Rapid increase in word learning

    • Telegraphic speech

      • Most obvious & essential part of ideas are conveyed

      • “Ride car”

  • Children’s word learning mistakes

    • Overextension: overly general word use

      • “Kitty” for any small animal

    • Underextension: overly specific word use

      • “Dog” only for golden retrievers 

      • Less caught

    • Overregularization

      • -ed to make verbs past tense

      • -er to make comparison

      • ‘S to form possessive

      • Generate without being explicitly told

      • Applying them in new ways

      • Sometimes in same sentence sort out language

    • Gesture —--------------------- skip —-----------------------------------

      • People often gesture when they communicate

        • Conveys info not in speech

        • Seen in all cultures (varies)

      • Still seen in people born blind

      • Children learn less from instructors if can’t see their gesture

      • Children can learn more when told to gesture: gesture seems to free up memory for other things

        • Math problems

        • Taking multiple perspectives on moral issues

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• Language Development: Word Gap

  • Documented by Betty Heart & Todd Risley in 1980s

  • Researchers recorded words used by parents

  • Found difference in word exposure - based on socioeconomic status

    • Went into homes and recorded all words used

    • 32 million more words for higher income children than for lower income children by age 4

    • Making inferences based on little evidence

      • Possible experimenter effects

      • Different parent behavior

      • Low word count - might be shy

      • High word count - might be showing off

      • Switch to digital recording devices to record speech

    • Difference in exposure based on SES is clear by 18 months

    • Difference observed in speed of language processing

  • Program developments

    • Home visitors encouraged parents & child care providers to have more & better interaction

      • Feedback on how much they talk from recording devices

        • Goal set for enriching language environment

        • Told to use causal moments (laundry) to have conversations with children

          • More talking, reading, singing

      • Problematic: parent blaming → shift to helping children

    • Talking about shapes helps build math foundation (interactional)

      • Evidence that language skills in kindergarten predicts language, math, reading, and social abilities in 5th grade

Emotional Development

• Understanding & managing emotions in a social context

  • Reasoning about emotion (ours & others)

    • Tied to theory of mind (think of what is in people’s heads)

    • Responsible for explaining behavior (hard for autistic behavior)

  • Ex: predicting what will make someone happy or sad

    • Seems trivial but can be complex

    • Affective Forecasting: affect (emotion) predict own emotion in future emotions much less affected by +/- emotions

    • Immediate emotions have powerful impact on what we think of the future

  • If someone wants something they must like it (not always the case)

    • Complicated to predict

    • Ex: wanting job for a long time then getting it → stressful/ fear of failure

      • Not simple straightforward emotions

• Experiencing Emotion

  • An event might cause different emotions for different people

    • Ex: total car & missed final exam

  • Social media

    • End up in bad social comparison cycle

    • Mostly post things that make them look good

    • Others feel envy/ inferiority → they post better pictures

  • People around you affect the emotional experience

    • During the great depression boys got an orange & was very happy

    • Death during childhood used to be very common, less now

      • Positive effect of social media to bring people together

• Managing & Expressing Emotions

  • Not always clear which are adaptive

  • What makes coping with negative emotions good/ bad

    • Processing negative (good) vs ignoring (bad) vs dwelling (bad!)

  • Rumination Effect  - get stuck in a loop

    • Think of the bag things and what if - something else

    • Co-Rumination 

      • Do with other people → go into a depression

  • Positive thinking:

    • therapy/ emotional support group: break free of negative thinking

    • Destructive: negative 

    • Journal: write down experiences has a positive effect

    • Outlet: good thing or turns into obsession (numbing effect)

• When to Share Emotions

  • Successful sharing, failure sharing, mad sharing

  • Emotional rules of world aren’t easy mostly complicated

  • Decisions can be influence by family, culture norms, gender norms

  • Ex: Japanese cultural context outside don’t see inside problems

    • Girls more likely to be discouraged from expressing anger than boys

  • Discussion of emotions varies by culture

    • European Americans talk more to children about emotions than Chinese storybooks

    • European Americans show more intense positive emotions

• Aspects of emotional development with behavioral problems 

  • Difficulty in regulating negative emotions

  • Low level of positive affect

  • Poor frustration tolerance (can’t have what you specifically want)

  • Lack of empathy

  • Misperception of other’s emotions (not being able to judge other people)

• 7 weeks of age  (smiling happens before this but not in coordinated response to someone)

  • Social smiling 

  • Smiles directed at people

  • Positive response from people elicit more smiling

• 7 months

  • Selective smiling (attachment vs random)

• 1st birthday

  • Pleasure from many unexpected events (someone wearing a silly hat)

• Negative Emotion

  • 4 months: frustration  - when goal of reaching an object is blocked

  • 8 months: separation anxiety - peaks at around 14 months old 

    • Distress from separation w/ caregiver 

  • 12 months: social referencing

    • Using other for close about how to feel & act in uncertain situations

    • Wariness when caregiver acts afraid

    • Study - cliff drop off & mother’s face expressions

      • Neutral: same as smiling response

      • Tells us fear is driving reaction rather than the smiling face

      • Baby sees fear face less often → survival thing (bad is more powerful than good)

    • Events that elicit social referencing:

      • Birthday parties (candles, singing)

      • Strangers (looks anxious → makes children more anxious)

      • Minor injuries (children don’t know how hurt they are)

      • Insects (see spider interest vs fear - threat?)

  • 18 months: concern with standards & mirror self recognition, self-conscious emotions

    • Notice flaws & want to do things by self (terrible 2s) 

    • Emotions affected by how we see ourselves & how we think others perceive us

      • Pride: association with self confident feeling or close other

      • Embarrassment: afraid others will feel negatively about you, not sure how to respond/ All eyes on you feeling

      • Guilt: focus more on other people, neg. done wrong-deserving blame, desire to undo behavior

      • Shame: neg. General feelings about self hide, drop through the floor

• Cultural Influence

  • Collectivist Cultures

    • Pride is discouraged for individual achievement (related to strong modesty norms)

    • Ex: China discourage children from saying prideful things using bad emotions → fulfill expectations of people

    • Parents promote shame & guilt for not fulfilling social obligations

    • Shame is used as an opportunity to teach moral lessons

• Temperament: 

  • Temperament: Biologically based individual differences

  • Fearful inhibition: how much approach/ avoidance you have of things (general tendency) 

  • Irritable distress: general negative emotions, blocked goal… feeling?

  • Attention Span & Persistence: babies have easier time focusing on things

  • Activity Level: prenatally predicts how much they move

  • Positive Affect/ Approach: positive emotions, smiling babies

  • Rhythmicity: easily to get on relative schedule

  • Findings

    • Pus from nature behavior genetics

      • Monozygotic twins more similarity than dizygotic twins

    • Temperament can predict behavior problems

      • High levels of fearful inhibition & anxiety

      • Lack of fearful inhibition & conduct disorders

        • Internalizing problems (anxiety)

        • Risks (externalizing) conduct disorders

          • Temperament can be amplified over experience

      • Can affect parenting → harder/ frustrating

        • Cascading effects

          • Child’s behavior makes being in public difficult → parent’s social isolation & lack of social support

        • Different parenting

          • People incorrectly assume that temperament differences are primarily influenced by parenting effects

      • Cultural expectations

        • Emotional restraint vs expressiveness

      • School outcome

        • Attention span & persistence 

        • Children who manage their emotions are more likely to perform well academically

• Manage Emotions

  • Coping with negative emotions some strategies 

    • Self soothing

    • Distraction: upsetting → looking away, tiktok

    • Seek out support

    • Rethink meaning of events 

  • Ability to hide emotions by 3

    • Children given disappointing gifts→ some can mask disappointment (varies)

    • Even in adulthood maybe don’t hide feelings

  • Effective ways to help children manage negative emotions

    • Emotion coaching

    • Acknowledge children’s negative feelings

    • Model talking about own negative feelings

      • Talk through coping with frustration

      • Generally bad to teach denial or avoidance

      • Ex: never drink because parents are alcoholics & cope differently 

• Emotion

  • Coordinating between long term & short term goals

  • Marshmallow test now or 15 minute wait 

    • Predictive of long term outcomes of health

    • How to help kids to develop self discipline 

    • Predicts long term academic success

    • Children can be taught strategies for delaying gratification

      • Pretend marshmallow is just a picture

    • Children won’t delay gratification without trust

    • Children wait longer if told teacher will find out

      • Will not wait as long if no one finds out

  • Theirs:  children who wait are good at self denial 

  • Heyman’s thought: children care about inferring social sophisticated outcome social aspects are very critical to how long to wait

• Attachment

  • Infant form emotional connections with specific people

  • Bowlby: inborn attachment system helps motivate child to stay close

    • By aligning psychological status with adults - Infants are forming deeper & more positive social relationships with them

  • Ainsworth:

    • Individual differences in attachment

    • Attachment early in life has lifelong implications - used strange situation methodology

    • Assesses baby - caregiver separation & reunions

    • Basically the way you’re raised is the inference of other relationships in the world 

• Classifications 

  • Secure: exploration of room when caregiver present

    • Contact seeking & want to be with parent 

  • Insecure Attachment:

    • Insecure/ Resistant

      • Little exploration, not comforted when parent returns, “come here/ go away pattern”, act uninterested, also studied in adulthood

    • Insecure/ Avoidant

      • May ignore parent or treat him/her like stranger

    • Secure attachment at 12 to 18 months predicts positive outcomes

      • More positive emotion & less anxiety

      • Better peer relations in childhood

    • Absence of any attachment: most problematic!

      • Brain development depends on having relationship

      • Better to have insecure attachment than nothing

  • Contingent Responsiveness

    • May promote attachment

    • Physical contact: in tune to child’s needs & specific cues, physical closeness, promote special feelings

    • Finding:

      • Higher secure attachment by babies worn by mothers

      • Ethical issues in trying to replicate study

        • Doesn’t want to randomly assign condition if it will be harmful

      • May be third factor causal relations 

• Social Dance/ Contingent Responsiveness

  • When baby has expectations in social interaction & don’t respond according to cues → emotional distress

  • Stimulates what can happen when parents are depressed

    • Postpartum depression

    • Babies don’t need constant interaction

    • Need responses when they are trying to interact with others 

  • Many criticisms

    • Measurement can be hard to interpret 

    • Cultural variation

      • Baby can be freaked out or used to being around other

      • Measuring just one time the baby can have a bad day

      • Custody cases: evidence can try to be used, no random assignment

      • Have to see what happens later on in the study

      • Third factor, causal relationship - babies with temperament 

Social Coordination and Peer Relations

• Success of humans as a species relied on being ultra-collaborative

  • Individuals must coordinate, communicate and learn from one another 

    • Rests on skills for aligning psychological states with others

    • Sharing experiences strengthens relationships

      • Ex: watching a film together (compared to other individual close by and not watching together)

    • Allows children to use shared activities to form more positive social relationships

    • Children just learning from videos they learn very well 

  • Active Coordinating 

    • Shared activities → positive social relationships

• Infancy - shared experiences

  • Point to things to share emotion/ attitude

  • Earliest ways point to things they notice/ call attention to, do something for them or sharing experience for sake of sharing experience [ sun! Or airplane! ]

    • Leads to happiness in the child

    • Adults & children make same face to share connection/ might share narrative 

  • Around 1st birthday - smart imitation emerges

    • 14 month old watch 1 or 2 situations 

    • Turn on light bulb with head [ hands on table or not] 

    • Results

      • 14 month old imitate & turns on with head

      • Conclusion: hands free → purpose to turning on with head

  • 2nd year of life

    • Imitating intentional actions more than failed attempts

    • Overimitation: reproduction of extra action even when it was causally irrelevant

    • Ex: copying someone tapping a box w/ a stick before opening it

    • Chimpanzee won’t do the same thing - maybe social reasoning

  • Flexibility in helping behaviors

    • Can’t engage in high cost helping with everyone

    • Children who have tendency to help → reward → less likely to help

      • Rewards made children less likely to help

    • Children are able to infer in novel situations to help others

      • If children can infer if they should help

      • Costly helping: give up playing w/ toys to help

        • Might be undermined by getting a reward for helping

    • High cost helping: takes effort

      • Constantly helping → can’t do own tasks

    • Do-gooder derogation: helping a lot evaluated negatively

  • Children might receive mixed messages

    • cooperation/ kindness

    • Cool kids are more aggressive

  • Dividing results of collaborative effects

    • People disagree on what’s fair (need equity, merit, loyalty)

  • Age 5: link between reputation & partner choice

    • First engage in reputation management to show they’re good partners, share more when others are watching, act more fair when watched

    • Follow rules more when told they have a reputation for being nice

    • Track & evaluate the reputation of others

      • Blame people who take credit for other people’s good ideas (not cool) 

    • Understand reputation develops over time

    • Trouble recognizing bragging backfires

    • View public generosity nicer than private generosity 

  • Social coordination & group cohesion works is by following norm

    • Conforming to practices or values of group

      • 3 years of age they’re very interested in norms

        • “This is how it is done” in games

      • Allows for social coordination as older 

    • Navigating peer relations 

      • Bidirectional social influence

  • Sociometrics: position an individual holds within a group/social network

    • Ex: 2nd grade list of names of peers & ask to rate playing enjoyment

    • Children rejected by peers are at risk for a lot of things

      • Popular: liked by many: disliked by few if any

        • Good emotional self regulation, don’t burst into tears 

      • Rejected: actively disliked

        • Most stable & problematic category - [Rejected Withdrawn & Rejected Aggression]

          • Rejected Withdrawn

            • Isolated & anxious

            • Little confidence in social skills

            • Blame themselves for their social failures

            • Positive feedback loop: rejection leads to anxiety, leads to rejection

              • One reason why problems managing anxiety

              • Often results in adult dependent strategies/ unassertive strategies

              • Bullying: withdrawn/ passive behavior 

          • Aggressive- rejected

            • Prone to aggression & bullying

            • Overestimate their social competence

            • Show hostile attribution bias

              • Interpret ambiguous social stimuli as hostile/ threatening

            • At risk for externalizing problems including delinquency & substance abuse

            • Interact with peers who reinforce delinquent acts through their positive responses to deviant behavior

      • Neglected: ignored

        • Less disruptive than average, few long term problems

      • Controversial: liked by many, disliked by many

        • Disruptive & sociable, often seen as snobbish

  • Victims of Bullying

    • Repeated abuse between people from same age group imbalance of power makes it difficult for victims to defend themselves 

    • Victims are sometimes but not always rejected 

    • 13% of 11 year old reported being victims of bullying - half still bullied 3 years later

    • Face-to-face, relational, physical actions, cyber bullying

    • Common immediate response: sleep problems, irritability, loss of motivation, self-harm, & suicidal ideation

    • Predictive of long term health problems

    • Often blame themselves for problems

      • Effects worse for children if few others are bullied

      • Ex: Middle School Attribution

    • Improving peer relations

      • Debate over changing child or structural factors

      • Social skills training direct at children → initiate friendships by starting conversations & strategies for handling being teased 

        • Loses effectiveness as the kids get older 

        • Tattle telling is difficult to deal with

(Word Gap Children talked to more to get them to have bigger vocabulary 

Adolescent Intervention - fix the child or society?)

• Adolescence

  • Time of learning & exploration

  • Risk for behavioral & emotional problems 

    • Depression symptoms increase big gender difference - increased risk for girls 

      • Big risk time

      • Drop in school engagement 

• During adolescence many programs don’t work well

  • prevention/ intervention

  • Status & respect are key   (may fail/ backfire)

  • Can’t use intuition to make programs have to use psychology

  • Status: 

    • Relative rank in social hierarchy

    • Where someone ranks

    • Bump developmentally

  • Respect treated with the respect expected right

    • Promoted by treating people as competent & valuable

  • Time of heightened social threat

    • Caring a lot about what other people think of you

    • Self conscious emotion at 18 months 

      • Lots of intense emotions - thinking everyone is looking at you

      • Feel like you can’t make a mistake 

      • Autonomy, slowly independence

      • Take away from autonomy → disrespectful 

  • Need to understand causal mechanisms of problems to solve them aka

    • BULLYING:

      • Teens are likely to bully to gain status

      • Interventions to teach social skills can backfire (help bully)

      • Heavy-handed messages backfire

        • Teens don’t like being told what to do

        • Don’t like hearing the same message repeated

    • Example: Word Gap

      • Researchers telling parents what to do

      • Intervention feels heavy handed

      • Being told what to do → disrespectful/ low status 

      • Compliance on one level & rebellion on another 

  • Improving interventions

    • Harness desire for respect & status

    • Make interactions with adults more respectful & less threatening to status

      • Make people think what they say matters

    • Example:

      • Goal: reduce junk food snacking among 8th graders

      • Solution: emphasize themes of autonomy or respect 

        • Anti-tobacco campaigns 

        • Scientist make junk food addictive and don’t eat the food they create (disrespect manipulation) food industry doesn’t want public to know the truth

    • Got quotes from popular people

      • Football players 

    • Asked students to write a letter to future students to change ideas on x thing

      • Help persuade others → persuades self in process

  • Test effectiveness

    • 8th grade students randomly assigned treatment, no treatment, traditional control 

    • Outcome: principal asked students to pick snack pack

    • Healthy option: fruits, nuts, water

    • Unhealthy option: hot cheetos, oreos, coca-cola

    • Healthy option chosen more in treatment group than other groups 

  • Discipline Infractions

    • Students break rules

    • Zero tolerance: few benefits, often backfire, question authority increased racial disparities

    • Alternative approach: make environment more respectful

      • Because many infractions result from feeling disrespected  

      • Can help student want to follow the rules more

  • Empathy Training for teachers

    • Teachers feel taken advantage of → have to be mean/strict

    • Listen to stories/ generate new ways to succeed, teacher voice matter - respect to both people 

  • People care about a sense of purpose

    • Listen to student stories

    • Students worry about mistreatment from teachers

    • Motivating to want to listen to students

      • Mental model of what’s going on is all wrong

  • Teachers told they want to share insight with new teachers

    • Random assignment: treatment group     (control group)

    • Use of technology in classroom

    • Behavior & suspension rates

      • Probably still suspending but making them seen

no class meeting; instead watch the Achievement Motivation lecture from the Assigned Video Lectures playlist

• Group Home

  • Severe emotional problems

  • In charge of tutoring 

    • People working with her didn’t help with her reading ability 

    • Others afraid of facing the fact that knowing she couldn’t read would be cruel, didn’t let her improve over time, didn’t solve anything 

• Achievement motivation literature 

  • Attributions*

    • Involve why questions

    • When things are unexpected/ bad 

    • Try to answer why to make sense of it

  • Don’t do well in school bc of skill → negative impact on behavior 

• Freshman Orientation session

  • Compare random assignment to different session

  • 20 min component added, upperclassmen described difficulties when they first started college

    • All true stories of struggle and adjustment

    • Seeing short video additionally —> positive performance of freshmen

    • significant difference/ life outcomes 

• Other peoples emotion towards us can make attributions

  • Teacher expressing anger vs sympathy when you fail something

    • Anger: implication that they think you can do better 

    • Sympathy: it’s ok don’t worry about it, don’t expect much of you 

• Self- worth theory

  • Negative attributions are a threat to self-worth

    • Need to make them sting less

  • Procrastination

    • Do poorly on the paper don’t have to think it’s because you’re dumb but it's because of lack of time 

    • Don’t have to feel bad about abilities 

    • Do well on a paper you can feel super smart 

    • Can be a way to get more positive attribution

    • Alternate reason: future rewards are uncertain for this work, not connected to future self, not interested in what you’re supposed to be working on 

  • Lying about effort

    • To improve the way others judge their abilities 

    • Tell people you hardly worked → do poorly → didn’t work hard but could’ve done better with more effort

    • Tell people you hardly worked → do really good → they’re geniuses

    • China: people lie about effort to disarm their competition → try to get them to work less hard 

  • Preparing for failure before it happens

    • Maintain unrealistic expectations to lower anxiety 

    • Prepare for the worst and they’ll be less impacted by it

• Concepts of ability matter too (Dweck)

  • It's about how you attribute it to ability & how you think of the nature of ability

  • Fixed mindset: Agree with statements can’t really change how smart you are 

    • Promoted by an emphasis on performance goals

      • Ex: grades, compare to others, who win prizes, external comparative outcomes

    • Associated with helpless motivational style

      • fail/ face challenges you feel bad, give up, avoid challenges

      • Forget previous success, takes over and that’s all you can think about

    • Mistakes are indicator you don’t have what it takes to succeed

  • Growth mindset: can change how smart you are

    • You can always get better

    • New strategies are needed

    • Put in more time/ effort

    • Promoted by an emphasis on learning goals

      • How to improve over time, process, engagement while working

    • Associated with mastery oriented style

      • How you respond when you face difficulties and challenges

      • Persistence in the face of obstacles, seeking out challenges, absence of feeling dumb for making mistakes 

  • Main difference

    • Is belief and permanence of ability

    • Little room to change vs changeable & lots of opportunities for improvement 

    • People think helpless motivation style comes from low ability/ low confidence

      • History of thinking they can’t do it happen

      • Can have lots of success (threatening to their self image)

  • Different mindsets for different abilities at different times

    • Psychology vs math

    • Idiosyncratic ideas for what beliefs are places where

• Global Praise

  • Broad praise

    • “So smart” - “you’re such a good kid”

    • Teach of every success/ failure as their true capacity

      • Constantly wonder how performance maps on general traits

  • Doubt of abilities → when other question their abilities

  • Praise → cause motivational problems

  • Can lead children to think other can easily judge what they are capable of

    • Focus on avoiding failure → maladaptive disorders - need to be able to make mistakes 

  • Can foster performance pressure

    • Think about being judged for performance

• Video

  • Attributions

    • Dependent variable 

  • Effort 

    • Independent variable 

• Examples

  • If a teacher makes fun of one student it makes other students not want to risk looking dumb

  • Not influential enough in college math classes 

  • Curves: promotes a fixed mindset instead of focusing on the material

  • Growth mindset - misconception - denying individual differences thinking everyone is the same 

    • Truth: Understand some people are at higher levels of achievement than others

    • Point: whatever level you’re at you can improve 

    • Comparing to someone who is much better than you isn’t helpful for the learning process

• Impeding success: lack of internalized motivation or interest 

  • People sometimes fail to avoid pressure to go toward goals that don’t appeal to them

    • If they fail they don’t have to do unwanted thing

    • Worry people will expect more of them

  • Efforts to motivate with rewards often backfire

    • Overjustification effect - extrinsic rewards (prizes/ money) can decrease intrinsic motivation (how much you want to do it bc value is important to you)

      • Like drawing then offered prize for drawing

      • Prize taken away for drawing and now they draw less

    • Reasoning for this

      • Drawing for fun 

      • Drawing is now for another reason, why bother if no reward

    • Children don’t like the idea of people bossing them around/ pushing them in a particular direction - ends up backfiring

  • Example: to read more - what prize can relate to read

    • Pizza Hut reward: food reward - doesn’t work bc it is not a reward linked to reading and promoting that behavior

    • Related prize: can give them books, activities which is related to book

  • Concerns about belongingness

    • Much more motivated, engaged in learning

    • Teacher/ peers care about you as an individual

    • Instructor - student, student-student

    • Big effect on how you do

    • Threat to belonging - Stereotype Threat

      • Question if they belong

      • Knowledge of women stereotypes, might feel the need to prove yourself - defy the stereotype

      • Mental capacity is taxed

      • Same effects with gender & ethnicity

• Promote better achievement motivation

  • Focus on process rather than evaluations or outcomes

  • Avoid outcomes with how people compare to each other

  • Competing against each other doesn’t foster a collaborative learning environment/ sense of belonging, learning culture

  • Keep focus on process

    • Avoid global praise for being smart 

    • Highlight the effectiveness of effort 

      • Skills we get better at don’t feel like we’re getting better because it happens slowly

      • Ex: growing as a child, not seen because it happens slowly

    • Highlight why content is relevant 

      • Ex: not just going physics problems but also doing other things

    • Encourage process-oriented questions 

      • definition: think about the active process fo what they are currently doing rather than the outcome

      • Think about what else you can try to overcome what is stopping you

  • Modeling effective ways to make mistakes

    • Instead of kicking yourself, ask what you can learn from the mistake

    • Mistakes → sources of learning

  • Teaching children growth mindset: the mind, like a muscle, gets stronger with use

    • Get around the problem of feeling like you’re not getting anywhere

    • Building neural connections

    • Building brain 

    • Productive struggle *

      • Don’t attribute it to not being smart

      • Keep going and want to problem solve

      • Don’t give up on something because you failed when you first started trying it out

    • Link any rewards to the task *

      • How rewards can cause overjustification effect 

      • Want to give rewards → is there a reward that will not affect it

      • Thing itself is a valuable thing

    • Keep expectations high while offering lots of support

      • Problems with low expectations and high expectation without support

      • Policy decision - high standards or low standards

      • Best answer: keep expectations high and offer lots of support

Moral Development Research + Closing Comment

• Insights from studying moral development

  • Honesty: highly emphasized in socialization 

• Children exposed to confusing messages

  • Explicit messages conflict with implicit messages

    • Lying is bad

    • Most parents lie to their children

  • Dishonesty as a cognitive challenge

    • To lie effectively, people think about what others are thinking & don’t reveal truth 

    • 36 months: emergence of deception

    • Ex: research hiding game every day for 10 days - child can only win through deception - theory of mind & executive function

      • Results: children who were more cognitively sophisticated learned how to lie more quickly

  • Honesty conflicts with kindness & modesty

    • Lying to be kind - bad photo

    • Ex: study has three conditions, 

      • Accidental: rouge on nose during sneeze

      • Non-accidental: rouge on nose continuously; confederate looks in mirror, expresses no emotion

      • Baseline: no information provided about how the mark got there 

  • By age 3

    • Children are capable of selectively hiding the truth about sensitive topics

      • Lie unless clear evidence that the truth will be helpful to recipient 

  • Lying to be modest

    • Unlike many forms of lies, strong cross-cultural differences in values

    • Ex: study children in China and Canada given opportunities to communicate their good deeds

      • Chinese children lied more often; increased with age

      • Decisions about honesty can be affected by reputation management concerns

  • Temptation resistance paradigm

    • Guessing game

    • Experimenter leaves, remind child not to peek

      • Card version

        • Card behind barrier

        • Guess whether the number is greater than 8 

      • Children told they have a reputation for being good cheat less

      • Children told they have a reputation for being smart cheat more

        • Cheat more if they hear another child described as smart 

  • Cognitive skills & cultural values can influence the trajectory of lying behavior

  • Children’s decisions about honesty are affected by concerns with consequences for themselves and others