development 2

• How do we know that 6-month-olds can interpret other people's intentions (Woodward study) and how does reaching experience (sticky mittons with 3-month-olds) help drive intention understanding)

- 6-month-olds who see a human arm repeatedly reach for an object in the same location assume that the action is directed toward the object, not the place - They looked longer when the hand went to the new object in the old place - Mechanical claw doesn't elicit same effect - Intention reading dependent on reaching experience (3 month old sticky mitten study

• Describe the habituation technique, what it's supposed to reflect, and how it predicts later cognitive development

- A decrease in responsiveness to repeated stimulation reveals that learning has occurred. - Habituation speed (and novelty preference) is believed to reflect the efficiency of the infant's processing of information. - There is continuity to cognitive ability (higher IQ) later in life (18 years)

• What is infant-directed talk and why is it potentially helpful for language learning? Is it universal? Do infants prefer it

- Also called "motherese" (or "parentese")! -Characteristics include a warm and affectionate tone, high pitch, extreme intonation, and slower speech accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions! -Common throughout world (even in signed languages), but not universal! -Infants prefer IDT to speech directed to adults, but there is no clear evidence that IDT helps language development

• What is instrumental conditioning and how was it demonstrated in Rovee-Collier's mobile studies? Know how it shows increasing capacity for memory in infant (3 months- same mobile for 1 week; 6 months - any mobile for 2 weeks)?.

- Also called operant conditioning - Positive reinforcement, in which a reward reliably follows a behavior and increases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated - There is a contingency relation between the infant's behavior and the reward. - Used to study memory (3 month olds = 1 week with same mobile & 6 month olds = 2 weeks with any mobile)

• How is crying, cooing, and babbling impacted by changes in cortical development? (know area of brain and general timing)

- Anatomical Impacts Cortical development: - Crying/vegetative sounds & brain stem - Cooing & Limbic system - Babbling & Motor Cortex

• What is silent babbling and how is it different from formal sign language and baby signs/gestures (and how is it similar to vocal babbling)? How can baby signs help with language development?

- Babies who are exposed to the sign language of their deaf parents engage in "silent babbling" -Silent Babbling Hand movements produced are slower in rhythm corresponding to the rhythmic patterning of adult sign - Some theorists argue that speech evolved from gesture

• Object knowledge regarding understanding of object permanence (Baillargeon study)

- Baillargeon used this technique to establish that infants as young as 31⁄2 months of age look longer at an "impossible" event than at a possible event.

• When do infants begin to babble? How does it match their language and how might it help language development?

- Between 6-10 months, infants begin to babble by repeating strings of consonant-vowel sounds (BA-CA-DA) - As infants' babbling becomes more varied, it conforms more to the sounds, rhythm, and intonation patterns of the language they hear daily

• Can children with autism pass the theory of mind task? What other deficits might explain their lack of theory of mind (joint attention, social interactions, language skills)?

- Children with autism continue to find false-belief tasks very difficult to solve even when they are teenagers. -Trouble with joint attention -Show less distress when others seem distressed -Poor language skills -The understanding that beliefs affect behavior eludes them, even in comparison to children with mental retardation and to deaf children who acquire sign language late in development. -This pattern of findings suggests that children with autism have impaired "mind reading mechanisms," and that this deficit interferes with many aspects of their social functioning.

• Explain interactive routines infants engage in before speech production (turn-taking, joint attention, pointing)

- Even before infants start speaking, they develop interactive routines similar to those required in the use of language for communication. Turn taking: apparent in games like "Give-and-Take" Intersubjectivity: the sharing of a common focus of attention by two or more people Joint attention: established when the baby and the parent are looking at and reacting to the same thing in the world around them Pointing helps establish joint attention among infants older than 9 months, and by 12 months, children use pointing to deliberately direct the attention of another person

• What is the violation-of-expectancy procedure and what have studies using this procedure revealed about various aspects of infant cognition

- Evidence comes from the violation of expectancy procedure - Baillargeon used this technique to establish that infants as young as 31⁄2 months of age look longer at an "impossible" event than at a possible event. - Object permanence is now believed to be developed much earlier than Piaget originally thought.

• How can self-locomotion (i.e., crawling) affect other areas of development (social, emotional, cognitive)?

- Exploring the environment initiates more contact with other people and the ways in which they respond. -Crawling infants receive more prohibitions from parents, and protest those prohibitions more readily (Chen, 2005). -Crawling infants also smile and vocalize more at people in a laboratory setting. -Onset of locomotion affects how babies understand their perceptual world; perceptual feedback affects postural adjustments (Adolph video).

• What makes infants give inanimate objects "intentions" (interactivity)?

- Infants would follow gaze of the "blob" but only if the blobs' initial movements seemed contingent on the infants' or experiments' actions - In one study, 12- & 15-month-olds were introduced to a faceless, eyeless blob that "vocalized" and moved in response to what the infant or experimenter did, thus simulating a normal human interaction.

• How is language a species-specific and a species-universal behavior, and how does this support the nativist viewpoint of language development?

- Language is a species-specific behavior: Only humans acquire a communication system with the complexity, structure, and generativity of language. -Language is also species-universal: Virtually all humans develop language if they get minimal exposure to the language during infancy/childhood

• Is language processing localized in the brain (left hemisphere) and is such localization present in newborns; how does the degree of localization/specialization of language processing develop over time?

- Language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization on the left side of the brain - The left hemisphere shows some specialization for language in infancy, although amount of specialization for language increases with age - Newborns and 3-month olds show more activity in left hemisphere when exposed to normal speech compared to reversed speech or silence (Bortfeld et al., 2009) -Right hemisphere = non-speech sounds /detecting pitch! Left hemisphere = speech sounds / detecting timing over time- increased activity in right side to equal activity in left side

• What are scale errors and when are they made generally (toddlerhood ~2-4 years)

- Occur when toddlers try to do something with a miniature replica object that is much too small for the action to be completed.

• What is Quine's dilemma (a.k.a. the problem of reference)? How do infants address the problem of reference through the following techniques (particularly know and define): fast mapping, mutual exclusivity, whole object assumption, pragmatic cues, shape context, and linguistic context (grammatical category- "sibbing" and syntactic bootstrapping- "duck and bunny kradding")

- Quine's (1960) Dilemma: Rabbit runs by, and a native in the land says "gavagai." To what does this refer? - Once infants can recognize recurrent units from the speech they hear, they must address the problem of reference, the associating of words and meaning -Fast mapping: Rapidly learning a new word simply from the contrastive use of a familiar & unfamiliar word. A number of assumptions (also called constraints or biases) guide children's acquisitions of word meanings - Mutual exclusivity assumption: a given entity will have only one name. novel word refers to a whole object, not a part - Children use pragmatic cues, aspects of the social context used for word learning - These include the adult's focus of attention and intentionality, as well as their emotional expressions - grammatical category- grammatical form of a novel word influences children's interpretation of it. --- "Some sib, sibbing, a sib" shape bias- The numbers show that the children most often extend a label to objects of the same shape, even if the surface texture or size is different syntactic bootstrapping- Children in Naigles's (1990) study heard "The duck is kradding the rabbit," or "The rabbit and the duck are kradding"! ---Different meaning depending on sentence structure used (syntax!)

***Explain how Dynamic Systems Theorist Esther Thelen's study on newborn stepping reflexes challenged the prior "maturational viewpoint" used to explain why this reflex disappeared. In your answer, (1) make sure to note how Thelen's findings were discovered, i.e., what did she do and what was revealed to explain the disappearing reflex and (2) include what the maturational viewpoint emphasized.

- Research by Esther Thelen examined the stepping reflex - The reflex was thought to disappear at about 2 months of age because of cortical maturation. Stepping reflex could be prolonged or elicited long after it was scheduled to disappear - Reflex disappeared because of increased fat on legs compared to weak muscles -tested by submerging legs in water

• Know what happens when there is damage in Broca's area (production) and Wernike's area (comprehension); be able to identify symptoms of Broca's versus Wernike's aphasia

- Studies of individuals with brain damage resulting in aphasia provide evidence of specialization for language within the left hemisphere - Damage to Broca's area (near motor cortex) related to difficulties in producing speech (comprehension preserved) ^stuttering - Damage to Wernicke's area (near auditory cortex) related to difficulties with meaning (production preserved) ^can speak well but dont understand the meaning/comprehension

• How do caregivers contribute to language learning (specifically word learning vs. grammar)?

- The rate of vocabulary development is influenced by the amount of talk that they hear - Caregivers help word learning by placing stress on new words, by labeling objects that are already in the child's attention, and by playing naming games

***(1) List one advantage and one disadvantage of bilingualism. (2) Discuss how bilinguals process language differently if that second language is acquired within the first 3 years versus in the early teenage years. (3) What single factor influences how well they acquire the second language and (4) how does that finding support the notion that language has a critical period?

- To learn language, children must also be exposed to other people using language—spoken or signed. -Between age 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult and ultimately less successful. - Feral children- problems acquiring language in adolescence. -Effects of brain damage suffered at different ages on language. -Language capabilities of bilingual adults who acquired their second language at different ages. single factor- age at which they learn second language -Knowledge of English grammar related to the age at which individuals were exposed to English, but not to the total length of their exposure to the language.

• What do we know about categorical speech perception in adults and infants (define and explain findings of Eimas study with ba/pa)?

- adults- -When adults listen to a tape of artificial speech sounds that gradually change from one sound to another, such as /ba/ to /pa/ or vice versa, they suddenly switch from perceiving one sound to perceiving the other -while sound itself can be gradually tweaked (VOT), our perception of that sound is categorical (either/or) infants- -Findings suggest that infants also perceive speech categorically -Infants' ability to discriminate between speech sounds not in their native language declines between 6 and 12 months (perceptual narrowing of speech!) - helps with efficient processing of own language. -6-month-old Infants good at speech perception tasks have better vocabulary/grammar scores at 13-24 months

• What are the advantage(s) in children being bilingual? Are there any disadvantages? How is language processed differently in the brain if you learned your second language early versus later in life?

- advantages- -greater cognitive flexibility and executive control (mental flexibility/task switching/attention/inhibition) -bilingual children preform better on a variety of cognitive tests than do monolingual children -Advantages of bilingualism outweigh minor disadvantages disadvantages- They may initially lag behind monolingual children, although the course and rate of development for children learning one and two languages are similar hemispheric processing- -Adults who learned a second language at 1 to 3 years of age show the normal pattern of greater left-hemisphere activity in a test of grammatical knowledge (darker colors indicate greater activation). -Those who learned the language later show increased right-hemisphere activity

• Know the difference between language comprehension and language production (and which comes first)

- comprehension comes first - Language comprehension: understanding what others say (or sign or write) - Language production: actually speaking (or signing or writing) to others

• Be able to identify the leading theories of language development: nativism (language entirely innate with minimal exposure to speech; universal grammar, modularity hypothesis) and interactionism (communicative functions drive language learning). Describe what evidence is used to support each theory and what the leading criticisms of each theory are (e.g., research on syntax supports nativist view, but leading criticism is that nativists ignore importance of other aspects of language acquisition on the value of social interactions)?

- nativists views- -Language requires a universal grammar, innate & common to all languages -Modularity hypothesis: the human brain contains an innate, self-contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning. -Evidence: universal and species-specific nature of language, and by observations of invented sign language among groups of deaf children that imposes grammatical structure onto simple signs. -The approach is criticized for focusing almost exclusively on syntax and ignoring the communicative role of language. Interactionists views- -Virtually everything about language development is influenced by its communicative function -The main purpose to which infants and young children apply their steadily increasing language skills is communicating with other people -Ability of infants and young children to use pragmatic cues to interpret utterances; Role of motherese -Interactionist views are criticized for their limited attention to syntactic development

• Be able to identify key areas of language development: phonological (sounds), semantic (word meaning), syntactic (word order) and pragmatic (social/cultural cues); define phonemes & morphemes.

- phonetic- knowledge of sound system in a particular language. Phonemes: smallest units of sound that distinguish meaning (Bat versus Cat- one phoneme difference) -semantic- expressing meaning (word learning) (i.e., cat, I, class, dog) -morphemes: the smallest unit of meaning unknowable = 3 morphemes = un - know - able! dog = 1 morpheme dogs = 2 morphemes = dog + s -syntactic- = WORD ORDER ! syntax: rules that specify how words can be combined! "Sarah ate the sushi" vs. "The sushi ate Sarah"! Syntax rules differ by language! -pragmatic- how language is used, includes conversational conventions, gesures, intonation, etc. Context matters "The Fall was bad."

• In what order do infants learn their first words? (i.e., recognize, comprehend, and then produce). How is it beneficial to hear other words in a same sentence with your name?

- recognize, comprehend, and then produce - hearing their own name in combination with a new word helped them learn the new word.

• What are category hierarchies (basic, subordinate, and superordinate) and which level do children learn first (basic level)? Be able to identify/present examples of the superordinate, subordinate, and basic levels.

- superordinate ~ mammals basic ~ dog/cat subordinate ~ Labrador retriever, Siberian husky/Siamese, maine coon Basic level category learned first -objects at this level share many common characteristics -objects are easy to discriminate from each other !!! they learn from parents/interactive influences

• Understand the importance of generativity in our language system

- the idea that using the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas

• Know the major findings of the Hamlin et al. study (infants preferred the helper characters and showed surprise when the climber approached the hinderer).

-By the end of their first year, infants have learned a great deal about how people's behavior is related to their goals and intentions. -10-month-old Infants indicated surprise when the "climbers" approached the "hinderers" compared to the "helpers"

• What "perceptual narrowing" is seen in infant speech perception during the first year of life (sensitivity to phonemic contrasts in non-native versus native languages)? Understand how the conditioned head turn procedure was used in this study (what does it show).

- what it is- Perceptual narrowing is a developmental process during which the brain uses environmental experiences to shape perceptual abilities. This process improves the perception of things that people experience often and causes them to experience a decline in the ability to perceive some things to which they are not often exposed neural pathways that are more consistently used are strengthened, making them more efficient, while those pathways that are unused become less efficient. -Infants' ability to discriminate between speech sounds not in their native language declines between 6 and 12 months when it happens- between 6 and 12 months why helpful- -allows infants to specialize -helps with efficient processing of own language.

• Be able to identify Newport's "less is more" hypothesis.

-"Less is more hypothesis": perceptual and memory limitations help young children learn language more efficiently (because they extract and store smaller chunks of the language than adults).

• How do newborn infants categorize objects (perceptual categorization- think of the cat study) and how are these objects usually categorized (color, size, movement, part of object).

--infants form categories of objects in the first months of life, as early as 3-4 months for more specific concepts and know general concepts by 6 months -Perceptual categorization is used to form concepts based on how they appear (color, size, movement) -Often categorizations based on parts of objects rather than on whole object -As children turn 2, they increasingly categorize objects on the basis of overall shape. -At the same time, they also form categories on the basis of function, and use their knowledge of categories to determine which actions go with which type of objects

• When is the critical period for language development and what does it mean? What evidence has supported critical periods for language development (feral children, brain damage cases, learning second languages)?

--to learn language, children must also be exposed to other people using language—spoken or signed. -Between age 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult and ultimately less successful -Feral children- problems acquiring language in adolescence. -Effects of brain damage suffered at different ages on language. -Language capabilities of bilingual adults who acquired their second language at different ages -Performance on a test of English grammar by adults originally from Korea and China was directly related to the age at which they came to the United States and were exposed to English. -The scores of adults who emigrated before the age of 7 are indistinguishable from those of native English speakers

• How do young (2-4 months) vs. older (8+ months) infants use movement and knowledge of gravity to inform them about object segregation (hint: "rods" study; which rods will they look longer at if there is or is not movement?)

-4-month-old infants who see the display perceive it as two separate objects, a rod moving behind a block. -After habituating to the display, they look longer at two rod segments than at a single rod, indicating that they find the single rod familiar but the two segments novel. -If they first see a display with no movement, they look equally long at the two test displays -Two-month-old infants use common movement to perceive object segregation. -Older infants (8 months+) and adults, use additional sources of information for object segregation, including their general knowledge about the world. (ie. gravity) -Which object is more "natural"

• Describe the perceptual narrowing (what it is/what is the timing) seen in infant face processing (monkey/human faces) and know what prevents the narrowing process. What is the probable advantage of perceptual narrowing

-Face processing becomes more selective over time. This phenomenon is called perceptual narrowing; what you can perceive narrows as you get older). -6-month-olds can easily discriminate both human and monkey faces. -9-month-olds and adults have a difficult time with the monkey faces. Unless they have constant exposure to monkey faces Thought to enhance processing of more relevant stimuli prevents- constant exposure

• What is a concept and why is it important?

-General ideas that organize objects, events, qualities, or relations on the basis of some similarity (e.g., shape, material, size, taste, color, or function, etc.). -Crucial for helping people make sense of the world and know how to interact with new situations/objects -Helps with word learning!

***Provide 2 examples of cultural effects on motor development (as discussed in class), making sure to explain how motor development was affected in each case. Then elaborate on why such findings change how we view motor development

-Mothers in Mali believe it is important to exercise their infants to promote their motor development. -Infants discouraged from early locomotion in modern urban China -Ache (nomadic tribe) in Paraguay, infants are carried around 0-3 yrs -Kipsigis (rural Kenya) dig holes for babies to sit in -interesting because: shows motor development is not entirely maturation driven but also experience driven

• Be familiar with the differing ways cultures might influence motor development and why that is interesting to study (shows motor development is not entirely maturation driven but also experience driven).

-Mothers in Mali believe it is important to exercise their infants to promote their motor development. -Infants discouraged from early locomotion in modern urban China -Ache (nomadic tribe) in Paraguay, infants are carried around 0-3 yrs -Kipsigis (rural Kenya) dig holes for babies to sit in -interesting because: shows motor development is not entirely maturation driven but also experience driven

• What are reflexes (generally) and why are they important to measure in newborns (reflects CNS health; know how that's the case- unusually strong/weak reflexes = brain damage)? Do some reflexes have any "adaptive value"? You don't need to know about the details of the specific reflexes.

-Newborns demonstrate reflexes - involuntary, consistent response to a discrete external stimulus -Strong reflexes reflect good CNS health -Some reflexes have clear adaptive value while others are unknown

• Describe the preferential-looking and habituation techniques which are used to study infants

-Preferential-looking technique: infants are shown 2 patterns or 2 objects at the same time to see if they have a preference for one over the other -Habituation: repeatedly present an infant with a given stimulus until the response declines

• How does infant reaching change over the first year and what motor milestone helps reaching skills stabilize?

-Prereaching movements - clumsy swiping movements by young infants toward the general vicinity of objects they see. - Successful reaching appears around 3 to 4 months of age and stable reaching around 7 months (sitting upright). - ~8 months of age, infants become capable of self-locomotion (crawling). ~11-12 months, walking!

• Describe the differences between 1- and 2-month-olds in how infants scan faces (what do they focus on?). When are infants not able/able to smoothly track moving objects? What is the difference between scanning objects/faces and smoothly tracking objects (why is tracking much more difficult than scanning)?

-Scanning (looking at static images): -One-month-olds scan the perimeters of shapes -Two-month-olds scan both the perimeters and the interiors of shapes -Tracking (following moving objects):Although attracted to moving objects, infants cannot track even slowly moving objects smoothly until 2 to 3 months of age

• Describe the "other race effect", including the timing/trajectory of it and how experiences can affect it

-The "Other Race Effect" is well established in adults and is said to emerge in infancy. -No preference for own race faces over other race faces for newborns -Own race preferences established in 3-month-olds -By 9 months, infants have more problems discriminating between other-race faces than between own-race faces -Race preference due to experience (e.g., biracial infants)

• What is intermodal perception, how is it measured, and in what ways do young infants demonstrate this (one month olds with the pacifier, 4-month-olds with the sound of "peekaboo" vs drum beating; 5 months with emotional voice and face)?

-The combining of information from 2 or more senses is present from very early in life, linking sight and sound, oral and visual input, visual and tactile input -When 2 videos are presented simultaneously, 4-month-olds prefer to watch video that correspond to sounds they hear. -By 5 months, infants associate facial expressions with emotion in voices

• Know about the newborn face preferences (top-heavy bias, female preference, mom preference, attractiveness bias as demonstrated in Langlois study).

-Top-heavy Face Bias -Infants recognize and prefer their own mother's face after about only 12 cumulative hours of exposure. -Typically prefer female over male faces -Attractiveness Bias: determined by looking Time Preferences; More positive and involved play and less withdrawal with attractive masks (Langlois et al., 1990 study)

• What do newborns prefer to look at (high visual contrast) and why do they have poor contrast sensitivity (has to do with development of the cones; what is contrast sensitivity)? How do infants' visual acuity and color vision change over development (when does it get to "normal adult levels?)?

-Young infants prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast because they have poor contrast sensitivity. -Infant's visual "sharpness" approaches that of adults by 8 months and reaches full adult acuity by 6 years -Development of cones -Newborns' color vision limited at first, but similar to adults' by 2-3 months of age

• What is statistical learning and how is it proposed to help infants learn about language

-infants pick up information from the environment, forming associations among stimuli that occur in a statistically predictable pattern - Infants are sensitive to the regularity with which one stimulus follows another.

• Be able to explain the two differing explanations (maturational view vs. dynamic systems view) for the stepping reflex "disappearing" at 2 months?

-maturational- The reflex was thought to disappear at about 2 months of age because of cortical maturation -dynamic systems view- Reflex disappeared because of increased fat on legs compared to weak muscles

• What about language can non-human primates learn easily (word signs) and what aspects of language do non-human primates fail to acquire (syntax, generativity of language)?

-non humans can replicate word signs but they fail to acquire syntax and gererativity of language

• What does "theory of mind" research specifically explore and how is it generally tested for in children? Detail the false-belief problem and how that supports the idea that children have a theory of mind (and at what age do children fail versus pass the task). What do 2- versus 3-year olds and 5-year-olds understand about people's desires and beliefs?

1. A theory of mind is a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior 2. 3. 4. 2-year-olds: understand the relationship between people's desires and their actions (jenna likes dolls so she will play with dolls), but they have difficulty understanding people's beliefs influence their actions (Billy will look for bananas in the fridge because that's where he thinks they are). 3-year-olds: Know that both desires and beliefs affect behavior, but have difficulty with false- belief problems (resolved by 5-years)

• What are the reasons/benefits for children having "imaginary friends"? What are the differences in their personality and intelligence of children who have imaginary friends compared to children who don't have "imaginary friends"?

1. More likely to be firstborn or only children; watch relatively little television; be verbally skillful; and have advanced theories of mind. ^^allows experience in working with/taking on other's feelings/perspectives -Imaginary companions are also used to deflect blame, vent anger, or say things the child is afraid to directly communicate 2. Children with imaginary companions do not differ from those who do not have such fantasy companions with regard to personality or intelligence

• What are the 3 theories on how theory of mind develops in children (the innate theory of mind module in the brain, social interactions, general information processing skills)?

1.There is a theory-of-mind module (TOMM), a hypothesized brain region devoted to understanding others (neuroimaging studies) 2.Interactions with other people are crucial for developing theory of mind (children with siblings > only children on false belief tasks; ASD children lack social experiences) 3.General information-processing skills are necessary for children to understand people's minds (evidence: children under 4 and ASD children poor at false belief tasks).

*** (1) Describe how a 3-year-old versus a 5-year-old would perform in a "false-belief" task (using the smarties box or crayon box example). (2) In addition to explaining how they perform, make sure to include discussion of how the 3-year-old's and the 5-year-old's performance tells us about their current "theory of mind" (i.e., what does their performance show about their theory of mind?). (3) Discuss 1 of the 3 theories regarding how theory of mind develops.

2-year-olds: understand the relationship between people's desires and their actions (jenna likes dolls so she will play with dolls), but they have difficulty understanding people's beliefs influence their actions (Billy will look for bananas in the fridge because that's where he thinks they are). 3-year-olds: Know that both desires and beliefs affect behavior, but have difficulty with false- belief problems (resolved by 5-years)

***(1) Discuss how language development is "atypical" in at least 2 of these special populations (Autism, Williams, or Down Syndrome), touching upon 2 distinctive symptoms for each population (2) What do these findings for each special population reveal/suggest about the process of language development?

ASD: Infants later diagnosed with ASD use less eye contact in social interactions, tend to not orient towards speech sounds, and show deficits in joint attention tasks - Pronoun reversal problems, but relatively intact grammar -Impaired pragmatic language use -Undirected speech, Echolailia, uses language only to request something they want, difficulty changing topics, atypical speech prosody WS: WS children excel at dyadic eye contact and show sensitivity to nonverbal cues, but have difficulty in joint attention tasks - WS children have large vocabularies and use complex syntax (due to strong phonological working memory?) -WS individuals have problems with language comprehension, verb-tense agreement and pronoun use -Problems in language pragmatics: Stereotyped conversation, and inappropriate initiation of conversation Down Syndrome: DS children have delayed onset in language production, typically have lower vocabularies and produce simple sentences. - DS children have better receptive language skills than expressive language skills -In-tact pragmatic use of language- early use of gestures may contribute to conversational skills and is associated with better language outcomes (Yoder & Warren, 2004)

• Describe the problems of language development in the following populations: Autism, Williams Syndrome, and Down Syndrome. What do these findings tell you about the process of language development?

ASD: Infants later diagnosed with ASD use less eye contact in social interactions, tend to not orient towards speech sounds, and show deficits in joint attention tasks - Pronoun reversal problems, but relatively intact grammar -Impaired pragmatic language use -Undirected speech, Echolailia, uses language only to request something they want, difficulty changing topics, atypical speech prosody WS: WS children excel at dyadic eye contact and show sensitivity to nonverbal cues, but have difficulty in joint attention tasks - WS children have large vocabularies and use complex syntax (due to strong phonological working memory?) -WS individuals have problems with language comprehension, verb-tense agreement and pronoun use -Problems in language pragmatics: Stereotyped conversation, and inappropriate initiation of conversation Down Syndrome: DS children have delayed onset in language production, typically have lower vocabularies and produce simple sentences. - DS children have better receptive language skills than expressive language skills -In-tact pragmatic use of language- early use of gestures may contribute to conversational skills and is associated with better language outcomes (Yoder & Warren, 2004)

• When children turn 2 years, how do they categorize objects (shape, function)?

As children turn 2, they increasingly categorize objects on the basis of overall shape

• What is involved in pretend play (object substitution), and why is it important for development? What is sociodramatic play?

Pretend play (~18 mths): Make- believe activities in which children create new symbolic relations -object substitution, a form of pretense in which an object is used as something other than itself. -Sociodramatic play (~30 mths): Activities in which children enact minidramas with other children or adults

• Explain findings from the visual cliff (Gibson and Walk; Campos studies) and risky slopes (Karen Adolph) studies, particularly with how crawling/walking experience affects whether/how they cross the cliffs/slopes. How did the Campos study indicate that it was not depth perception development that explained whether infants would cross? How does the emotion of the parent (social-referencing) and infant (fear and experience) influence both situations? Do infants "transfer" what they know about traversing risky slopes from sitting to crawling to walking? In other words, will an infant who safely and successful goes down a slope as a experienced crawler also be safe and successful as a new walker?

Visual Cliff: - Using the visual cliff, Gibson and Walk found that 6- to 14-month-old infants perceived and understood the significance of depth cues - Campos showed that young (2-5 months old) infants could perceive the difference in depth but showed no fear of the deep side by measuring heart rate - Experience moving in the environment plays a very important role in babies' developing understanding of the significance of differences in the height of surfaces. Slope: - Social referencing appears to be important in infants' development of wariness of heights - Development in one domain (social) influences development in other domains (motor). - Karen Adolph found that infants do not transfer what they learned about crawling down slopes to walking down them

• What physical cues do infants rely on to assess probability of an object being supported by another throughout the first year (contact, spatial orientation, amount, weight)?

contact, spatial orientation, amount, weight

*** (1) List 3 ways in which children who have "imaginary companions" are different from children without imaginary companions. (2) List 1 way in which children with imaginary friends are the same as children with no imaginary friends.

different be verbally skillful; and have advanced theories of mind. ^^allows experience in working with/taking on other's feelings/perspectives same no difference in IQ and/or personality

• Identify overextension (cat for all 4-legged animals), holophrastic period ("Juice!"), telegraphic speech (2-word utterances, "more juice!"), and overregularization (i.e., "goed"). Know that most early words are nouns for U.S. babies

overextension- using a given word in a broader context than is appropriate, represents an effort to communicate despite a limited vocabulary holophrastic period- The period of one-word utterances telegraphic speech- Children's first sentences are two-word utterances that have been described as telegraphic speech because nonessential elements are missing overregularization- speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular. "I GOED to the store" "the flower growed fast" "I see three mouses"!

***phenomenon of perceptual narrowing for speech perception, including (1) what actually happens, (2) when it occurs (before and after), (3) how experience/environment can prevent narrowing from occurring, and (4) why psychologists think it is helpful for development.

what it is- Perceptual narrowing is a developmental process during which the brain uses environmental experiences to shape perceptual abilities. This process improves the perception of things that people experience often and causes them to experience a decline in the ability to perceive some things to which they are not often exposed neural pathways that are more consistently used are strengthened, making them more efficient, while those pathways that are unused become less efficient. -Infants' ability to discriminate between speech sounds not in their native language declines between 6 and 12 months when it happens- between 6 and 12 months why helpful- -allows infants to specialize -helps with efficient processing of own language.

• What is the McGurk Effect?

what you see is what you think you hear

• What is observational learning, how does it unfold, and what do we know about infants' imitation of people vs. nonliving objects (mechanical claw).

~more inmteractivity then appearance -Newborns can imitate simple actions. - By 6-9 months, infants imitate some of the novel actions they have witnessed -By 18 months, infants understand intentions even if the adult fails in their action (dumbell study). Infants do not imitate mechanical devices that would try to pull apart dumbbell. -By 15 months, TV influences!