EXAM I

secular trend

marked changes in physical development that have occurred over generations • E.g. adults are several inches taller than their same-sex great-grandparents were; girls beginning to menstruate a few years earlier than their ancestors did over the past few centuries

play

refers to activities that are pursued for their own sake, with no motivation other than the enjoyment they bring • Earliest play occurs in the 1st year and includes behavior like banging spoons on high chair and throwing food on the floor

basic features of piaget's theory: children as active learners

• "Little scientists" • Learn lessons independently • Intrinsically motivated - motivated about something inside of themselves to make sense of the world around them

infant limitations in vision -> getting image

• "getting" image - have trouble with getting the image on their foveas 1. Lack of convergence between their 2 eyes -> Infants cannot always get their eyes to converge on the same things like adults 2. When eyes are able to converge -> They have a focusing response that is *slow and imprecise* → results in blurred images

intermodal perception - do infants know what sensations *go together*? - sight and touch

-> matching sight and touch Meltzoff & borton: 1 month olds • Mouth with seeing: -> Nibbed vs. smooth pacifier - gave infants a few minutes to suck on one or the other pacifier • Then SEE: -> Showed infants nibbed vs. smooth pacifier -> Infants were more likely to look at the pacifier that they had sucked on before (e.g. sucked on nibbed pacifier → more likely to look at the nibbed pacifier) • Doesn't require much experience

what are the 3 phases of the role of the process of internalizing speech

1. Children's behavior is controlled by other people's statement (E.g. sadie's mother telling her how to assemble the toy) 2. *Private speech* - the 2nd phase of vygotsky's internalization-of-thought process, in which children develop self-regulation and problem-solving abilities by telling themselves aloud what to do much as their parents did in the first stage --> Most prevalent b/w ages 4 and 6 years... even though older children and adults also use it on challenging tasks such as assembling furniture or operating unfamiliar devices 3. TRANSITION b/w stage 2 + 3: involves whisper or silent lip movements; speech goes underground and become thought 4. Behavior is controlled by internalized private speech (thought) in which they silently tell themselves what to do

experimental procedure of lack of conservation

1. Conservation of liquid quantity, solid quantity and of number → children shown 2 objects (e.g. 2 glasses of orange drink, 2 clay siasages) that are identical in quantity or 2 sets of objects (e.g. 2 rows of pennies) that are identical in number, one children agree that the dimension of interest (e.g. amount of orange drink or # of pennies) is equal in the 2 objects or sets 2. they observe a second phase in which the experimenter transforms 1 object/set in a way that makes it look different but does not change the dimension of interest (e.g. orange drink might be poured into narrower glass, short sausage clay might be molded into long, thin sausage or rows of pennies might spread out) 3. Third phase → children are asked whether the dimension of interest they had said was equal for the 2 objects or sets of objects, remains equal 4. Majority of 4-5 years say no (think narrower glass has more orange drink, long thin sausage has more than the short thick one)

how do infants understand the intentions of others?

1. E.g. 12 months and faceless blob that vocalized and moved in response to what the experimenter did, simulating a normal human interaction → when blob turned toward 1 of 2 target objects, the infants treated the blob's behavior as goal-directed... seem to be following the blob's gaze, just as they would with a human partner -> Didn't behave this way when the blob's initial behavior was not contingently related to the experimenter's behavior 2. When observing other humans, infants use cues such as eye gaze and infant-directed speech to determine whether or not to follow the actor's gaze.. If actor doesn't use these cues, infants are less likely to treat them as agents worthy of their attention or to learn from them

how does prior content knowledge improve memory for new information?

1. Encoding (child chess expert remembers far more than adult novices; greater knowledge of chess leads to the child encoding higher level chunks of info) 2. Useful associations -> E.g. child knowledgeable about birds knows what type of beak and type of diet are associated so remembering either one increases for the other 3. Indicates what is and what is not possible and therefore guides memory in useful directions ->E.g. people familiar with baseball are asked to recall a particular inning of a game that they watched and they can remember only 2 outs in that inning and recognize that there must have been a third out and search memories for it; people who lack baseball knowledge don't know this

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory: how change occurs

1. guided participation • More knowledgeable people are organizing things in ways that help children learn • Organize activities in ways that help children learn • Doing a task and the child is apart of it • E.g. dr.kim's children likes to be apart when she is cookie 2. intersubjectivity: mutual understanding; we share this mutual understanding when we are communicating; both really focused on what we are doing • joint attention 3. social scaffolding

social preferences for infants (US and french infants)

1. Experiment: US and french 10 mo. olds saw alt. Video projections of 2 individuals speaking to them, one in english and the other in french • Saw another life-sized video of the same 2 individuals standing side by side behind a table with an identical plush toy • Silently smiled at toy and then at infant, then toy, then infant and leaned forward holding the toy out to give to the infant • Moment toys disappeared from their view on the screen, they appeared on a table in front of the infant, creating the impression that they had come directly from the individuals in the video 2. Results: • English learning infants chose the toy offered by the english speaker whereas french learning infants chose the toy offered by french speaker • * toy offered in silence bc these social preferences were attribute to the individual who shared the infants language, not the language itself

physical knowledge of infants: 1. experiment: ball on a slope 2. solids and liquids

1. Experiment: ball on a slope -> 7 month olds (not 5 mo. olds) looked longer when the ball moved up on the slope than when it moved down, indicating that they had expected the ball to go down --> Also looked longer when at an object that traveled more slowly as it rolled down a slope than at one that picked up speed 2. Solids and liquids -> 5 month olds are surprised when a liquid behaves like a solid when its poured and vice versa

intermodal perception - do infants know what sensations *go together*? - sight & sound pt 2. (mouth movements)

1. Infants tend to orient toward the corresponding video (ah ah ah vs. e e ) 2. Synchrony (spelke) - 4 months old • Show infants 2 videos simultaneously • 1 video is an animal/donkey jumping really slowly vs. the other animal is hopping really fast • At the same time, infants hear one of the soundtracks (fast or slow) • Which do the infants pay attention to? --> Infants look to the corresponding video (e.g. when they hear slow video, look at slow moving video)

Weaknesses of Piaget's Theory

1. It depicts children's thinking as more consistent than it really is (E.g. most children succeed on conservation of # by age 6, whereas most do not succeed on conservation of solid quantity until age 8) 2. It underestimate the competence of children and infants (E.g. object permanence required children to reach for the hidden object after a delay; piaget claimed that children don't do this until 8 mos of age; alternative tests indicate at 3 mos of age, infants at least suspect that objects continue to exist because infants look immediately after the object disappeared from view) 3. It underestimates the effects of the social world to cognitive development (e.g. children live in environment of adults, older children and cultural institutions and values that shape their cognitive development in countless ways) 4. It is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children's thinking and the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth

tools of the mind study

1. Kindergartners in 29 schools serving low-income populations were randomly assigned to either classrooms using a curriculum "tools of the mind" designed to improve executive functioning, or to a control group 2. Curriculum involved instructing teachers in strategies - including stating and implementing clear rules, rewarding positive behaviors, and redirecting negative behaviors in positive directions - that would help children inhibit impulses to disrupt classroom activities and help them sustain attention to the task at hand 3. When tested immediately after the program ended and one year after that... the behavior and executive functioning of children who were presented Tools of the mind showed substantial improvement → were superior to peers in the control group in maintaining attention in the face of distractions, keeping information in working memory and solving novel problems

issues with egocentric task modified experiments

1. Modified 3 mountain task (Burke, 1975) • 4 year olds • Farm scene - more familiar scene (barn toy with other kids toys: fence, house, building) - Uses something that is more familiar - Children can see all the parts • Describe what "grover" sees - Drive grover around in the car and asks what does grover see - Simplification of question being asked • Results: 4 years old do very well with this! 2. Cat-dog experiment • 3-4 year olds • Double-faced car -> One side: dog; other side: cat • Hold up a card, and children were aware they were double-sided, and ask what do you see? They say dog and they said, what do I see? They say cat • Adjusting speech - When toddlers or older kids talk to infants, they adjust their speech like how adults talk to babies

children are generally...

1. More competent than piaget believed, but.... 2. Their performance depends on task construction and their own experience with tasks

is development parallel across areas?

1. Not all kids pass the conservation tasks 2. Some tasks like number conservation can be easy for 5 year olds and tasks like liquid conservation may be hard for them and they pass it later on 3. Children do not pass a series of conservation tasks all at once

what are the 3 phases of equilibrium? give an example.

1. People are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomenon - *state of equilibrium* bc people don't see any discrepancies between their observations and their understanding of phenomenon 2. New information leads them to perceive that their understanding is inadequate - *state of disequilibrium*; recognize shortcomings in their understanding of the phenomenon, but they cannot generate a superior alternative [THEY ARE CONFUSED] 3. They develop a more sophisticated understanding that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one, *creating a more advanced equilibrium* with which broader range of observations can be understood ex) children believe animals are the only living things → find out that plants also move in ways to promote their survival (bending towards sunlight).. New info is difficult for them to assimilate to their prior thinking; disparity between previous understanding of living things and their knowledge about plants creates a state of disequilibrium [confused] → thinking accommodates the new information about plants: they realize that plants move in adaptive ways and that is important for living things so plants are alive like animals

is saying the answer in the classic false belief task too difficult? experiments that assess theory of mind

1. Perner et al. experiment: E: what do you think is in this tube? C: smarties! E: no, look its pencil. E: what will the next kid think is in the tube 3 yr: Pencils! 4 yr: Smarties! 2. Gopnik & Astington "What did you say was in the box, when you first came in?" 3 yr: pencils! 4 yr: smarties! When they say their own belief, they gave the wrong answer

is development discontinuous?

1. Probably not.... It is hard to characterize development as going through these huge transformation from one stage to the next 2. Even through stages, there is a lot of variability 3. *More continuous and gradual*

rolling cart study -> violation of expectation method

1. Shown a habituation event - shown over and over again till they get bored -> Screen raises and then lowers and little cart comes down ramp and goes through (shown this over and over again) 2. Possible event: -> Beginning is the same, but when the screen raises, there is a box behind the screen 3. Impossible event -> Start as the same, block is sitting in the spot of the cart and then the screen lifts and cart goes by Results: 4. Both 8 and 6.5 month olds look longer at *impossible* event -> Infants have some knowledge of object permanence at 6.5 months!

why are newborns far worse at determining the spatial location of a sound than are older infants?

1. Their heads are small so the differences in timing and loudness in information arriving at each ear are smaller for infants than for toddlers and children with larger heads 2. Development of an auditory spatial map required multimodal experiences, through which infants become able to integrate information from what they hear with information from what they see and touch

preoperational stage: lack of conservaton

1. Volume -> Start out with 2 containers of liquid (same size, ask child to verify that they are the same amount of the liquid) -> Then take one of the cups of liquid and pour it into wide container -> Question: which one has more... or are they the same? -> Preoperational child: A has more because it is taller (focus on the height of the liquid) 2. Matter (e.g. clay) -> Focus on the length of the clay, whichever one is longer 3. Number (e.g pennies) -> Stretch out the child's row of pennies -> Preoperational child says their pennies is more because the line is longer

what are the 3 types of executive functions?

1. inhibiting inadvisable actions (E.g. resisting the temptation to play with one's phone when an important test is tomorrow) • Preschoolers have great difficulty inhibiting the impulse to quickly respond to commands that are not preceded by the critical phrase in such games, whereas elementary school children are much better inhibiting the impulse to act immediately • E.g. resisting temptation to procrastinate, keeping quiet while the teacher is talking, inhibiting tempting but disrespectful retorts to parents/teachers are difficult for many adolescents 2. enhancing working memory (e.g. selectively attending to the most important information) 3. Increasing cognitive flexibility during preschool and early elementary school years • Increased cognitive flexibility in shifting goals -> E.g. task of sorting toys by color, then asked to sort the same toys by shape, then to sort them by color again and so on; most 3 year olds have difficulty switching goals, but 5 year olds easily do so

experiments/examples that display difficulty young children have with dual representations and symbol

1. manipulatives in math:blocks/beads used to measure magnitude so the child helps understand the relationship among quantities and operations --> BUT... often overlook that manipulatives are symbols and vulnerable to issues of dual representation; they are objects in their own right and also serve to represent something else 2. Detail dolls to interview young children in case of suspected sexual abuse -> Children younger than 5 failed to make any connection between themselves and even the doll, so the use of a doll does not improve their memory and makes them less reliable 3. Cross cultural studies -> Reveal that in cultures where pictures are everywhere (North America), younger children are more likely to understand that pictures can serve a symbolic function than in cultures where children are rarely exposed to pictures (India, Peru)

stage views dont do a very good job of:

1. predicting how children will respond 2. accounting for variability in performance

Strategies for memory

1. rehearsal- the process of repeating information multiple times to aid memory of it 2. selective attention - the process of intentionally focusing on information that is most relevant to the current goal • E.g. 7-8 year olds shown objects from 2 different categories (toy animals vs. tools) and are told that they will later need to remember objects in one category (animals), they focus their attention on objects in that category and remember more of them • E.g. 4 year olds pay roughly equal attention to the objects in both categories which reduces their memory for the objects they need to remember

what are the 4 stages of piaget's theory?

1. sensorimotor 2. preoperational 3. concrete operational 4. formal operational

two characteristics of information-processing theories

1. specification of processes • models focus on task analysis- specifically state what are the goals needed to perform this. What are obstacles that might get in the way? The role of prior knowledge? What are the strategies that can be used? - VERY SPECIFICALLY LAYING OUT THE PROCESS THAT IS NEEDED • Allows us to make really specific hypothesis • Can help us predict behavior; can do this in context of computer simulations 2. process over time • has a time element embedded within it

intermodal perception - do infants know what sensations *go together*? - sight & sound

1. spelke & owsley: 3.5 months and older • Infant would sit in the middle of 2 video screens and there's a speaker with sound coming out • Researchers are playing 2 competing videos; babies will orient to where they see the sounds that are coming from (one video is mom and other is dad) • Do they look to corresponding video? Yes. if you play mom's voice, they look at mom's video and if you play dad's voice, they look at dad's video

Children as Teachers and Learners

2 unique characteristics that are crucial to our ability to create complex, rapidly changing cultures: • Inclination to teach others of the species • Inclination to attend to and learn from such teaching • * inclination emerges early (e.g. 1 years old point to name objects to call other people's attention to what they find themselves find interesting

when do children understand that desires lead to action?

2 years! • Believe characters in story will act accordingly with their own desires, when when those desires differ from the child's preferences (e.g. 2 year likes to play w/ trucks over dolls, but character in a story would rather play with dolls than with trucks, they predict that the character in the story will choose in accordance with the character's own preference, rather than the child's preference)

what experiment shows the importance of encoding for learning, memory and problem solving?

BALANCE-SOLVE PROBLEMS • 5 year olds have issues learning more advanced approaches to solving balance scale problems that take into account distance as well as weight, because they do not encode information about distance of the weights from the fulcrum → 5 year olds generally reproduce the correct # of weights on each side but rarely put them the correct distance from the fulcrum → teaching a randomly chose group of 5 year olds to encode distance by telling them that both weight and distance are important enables them to learn more advanced balance-scales that peers who were not taught to encode distance failed to learn

non-verbal false belief task(assess theory of mind)

By Onishi & Baillargeon • 15 mo. old • Violation-of-expectation method • Familiarization -> Actor puts object in green box -> Then... She see either sees it move (true belief) •Test event - Old-box event - New-box event - What makes sense in true belief and false belief? 1. True belief: actor was present so you would expect them to look in the new box 2. False belief: actor was no present so you would expect them to look in the old box • Results: 1. True belief: 15 mos. Looked longer at the old-box event 2. False belief: look longer at new-box event

the classic false belief task (assesses theory of mind)

By baron-cohen et al; wimmer & Perner 1. Test 3 & 4 year olds 2. Here's sally & anne, and a basket and a box 3. Sally has some chocolate and puts it in the basket to keep for later 4. Then sally leaves 5. When sally is gone, anne takes the chocolate out of the basket and puts it in the box 6. Where will sally look for her chocolate? -> Adults say basket because that's where she left it -> 3 yr old: where it is now is -> 4 yr: where sally put it 7. But! Where do children look? -> 3 yr: look toward she put it

can infants predict action from gaze and emotional expression? ... reasoning about other's goals

By phillips et al. (2002) • 8 & 12 month olds • Habituation -> Woman look down and smile at 1 of 2 toy kittens on stage • Then infants watch -> Consistent test event: what she looked at and smiled at is consistent what she is holding -> Inconsistent test event: the kitten she is holding isn't consistent with what she was smiling • Results: -> 8 mos. Old - infants looked equally long at the inconsistent and consistent test event -> 12 mo old - tend to look longer at the inconsistent and consistent test event • Able to use gaze and emotional and emotional expression

do infants interpret action as goal directed? ... reasoning about other's goals

By woodward (1998) • 9 and 6 mo. olds • Violation of expectancy method • Shown an habituation event: they are shown a stage with 2 objects, one with a ball and one with a bear → hand keeps grasping for the bear continuously until child gets bored • Test event 1. New path event: ball is where the bear was and bear is where the ball is; hand reaches in and grasps the bear in the new location 2. New toy event: ball is where the bear was and bear is where the ball is; hand reaches in and grasps the toy in the same location [ball] • During habituation, what did infants infer about this? 1. Infer a goal of getting the *bear* [they just want the bear] 2. Reach for whatever is on the side was on the bear • Results: 1. Infants expected the actor to reach for the same object: *Interpreted the original reaching as object directed* 2. Infants looked longer at the new toy event than the new path eent; surprised the actor was reaching for something else besides the bear 3. Both ages → look longer at new-toy event than new path event

how does intermodal perception develop when 1 sense is absent early in life

Experience is necessary in order to help previously blind learners discover links between modalities

why do children make these errors?

False belief task is hard! -> Children cannot articulate false belief

Why do some people but not others become overweight, and why is there an epidemic of obesity?

GENETIC • Weight of adopted children is more strongly correlated with that of their biological parents than with that of their adoptive parents • Indicated twins reared apart are more similar in weight than fraternal twins are • Influence an individual's temperament, which relates to self-regulation and impulse control --> Childhood impulsivity is linked to overweight and obesity and in fact, young children with difficult temperaments tend to gain weight faster and have higher BMIs and choose obesogenic diets (foods that lead to obesity) ENVIRONMENT • no physical activity - at school - they frequently have no physical education programs or recess activities and often purchase lunches consisting of high-fat food - more hrs in front of screens and screen time is more highly predictive of obesity • sleep duration: associated with weight gain, children who get less sleep are more prone to obesity as are children with tv in their rooms • unhealthy foods are often less expensive and more readily available than healthier foods

more evidence for studies of imitation: imitation of intention of person

Gergely • 14 mo. old • Adult demonstrates a novel action (turns on light with their head) 1. Researcher says its cold and adult has blanket around them 2. 2 conditions • Hands occupied in the blanket -> Intention is to turn on the light • Hands free -> Intention is to actually use the head • Question: did infants imitate head action or just use their hands? -> Results: Imitate head action more if researcher hands free than hands were occupies

other ways to test vision for infants?

Habituation - procedure that involves repeatedly presenting an infant with a particular stimulus until the infant's response to it habituates/declines, then a new stimulus is presented... if the infant dishabituated (increase in response) in response to the new stimulus, the researcher can infer that the baby can discriminate between the old and new stimuli

can infants predict action in new content?

Hamlin et al. • 6 and 10 month olds • Habituation event 1. Circle: climber 2. Triangle: helper 3. Square: hinderer • Test event 1. Climber approaches the helper 2. Climber approaches the hinderer • Results 1. 10 mo. olds: looked longer at approach hinderer -> Attributed general disposition to agents to predict action in new context 2. 6 mo. old: looked equally at the 2 events

study for interpreting reasons behind actions

Interpreting reasons behind actions Csibra et. all • 9 & 12 month olds • Violation of expectancy method 1. Habituation method -> Red ball goes over the barrier to the yellow ball and its jumping because there is a barrier 2. Now the barrier is gone -> Same path (unexpected) - taking same path even when barrier is gone (jumping) -> Straight path (expected) • Results: 1. Both ages looked longer at A 2. Young infants interpret reasons behind actions

issues with number conservation task alternative expriment

Modified number conservation tasks • Modified conservation of number task: unit vs. group labels (Markman) • 4~5 year olds - 2 conditions 1. Standard: unit labels (soldiers) -> What's more? My soldiers or your soldiers? 2. Modified: group labels *(army)* • Refers to the set as a whole • What's more your army or my army? Or are they both the same? 3. Results: • Standard (unit label = soldiers): do poorly like piaget observed • Modified (group label = army): kids tend to do better • A small wording change made a difference?

when do reflexes go away?

Most of these reflexes go away in the first 6 months...

Piaget vs. Vygotsky

PIAGET • children's efforts to understand the world on their own • viewed children as intent on mastering physical, mathematical and logical concepts that are the same in all tims + places • Abrupt qualitative changes in children's thinking •Language and thought are largely independent VYGOTSKY • children are social learners, intertwined with other people who eagerly help them gain skills and understanding • viewed children as intent on participating in activities that are prevalent in the specific time and place in which they live • Gradual changes • Believed language and thought are integrally related → believed thought is internalized speech and that thought originates in large part in statements that parents and other adults make to children

what is necessary for theory of mind?

The child must be able to think about... 1. Others' *beliefs* as different from ours... including *false beliefs* 2. Others' *goals* are independent of ours

what non-search test of object permanence gives an alternative explanation for object permanence?

Violation of expectation method - we show infants 2 types of events: • Possible event - an event that could occur in real life, consistent with object permanence • Impossible event - cannot happen in real life, violates object permanence • If infants have object permanence, they should look longer at the impossible event than possible event

studies of imitation: imitation of intention of machine

What if machine demonstrates action rather than a person? • 3 conditions 1. Successful action - machine successfully removes it 2. Failed action - machine fails to remove it 3. Control - machine manipulates the action • Results: 1. Successful action → yes, imitated 2. Control → no imitation Failed action → no imitation! • Interpretation: 1. 18 mo. olds did not infer intended action when the actor was a machine

failure to thrive

a condition in which infants become malnourished and fail to grow or gain weight for no obvious medical behavior

theory of mind module (TOMM)

a hypothesized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other human beings • Among typical children exposed to a typical environment, the TOMM matures over the first 5 years which produce an increasingly sophisticated understanding of people's mind

preferential-looking technique

a method for studying visual attention in infants that involves showing infants two patterns or two objects at a time to see if the infants have a preference for one over the other ((if the infant looks at one longer, research can infer that the baby can discriminate between them and that the infant has a preference for one over the other)

sociodramatic play

activities in which children enact miniature dramas with other children or adults (e.g. mother comforting baby or doctor helping sick child)

Variability in motor milestones

age of onset • Different ways infants may crawl on the way to walking - Some kids will roll to get to places • Onset of locomotion leads to... -Changes in spatial cognition -Changes in visual attention → they can see more

children as products of their culture - analogical problem solving

analogical problem solving: a process in which experience with previously encounter problem is applied to new one 1. Students attending universities in the us and china were asked to solve 2 problems 2. 1st problem - solution analogous to the strategy of leaving a trail of white pebbles home to follow home in "hansel and gretel" (Americans students were far more successful at solving that problem) 3. 2nd problem - required solution analogous to that in a fairy tale well known to the students in china but not those in the US → college students in china were more superior in solving that problem

pre-reaching movements

clumsy swiping movements by young infants toward the general vicinity of objects they see • 3-4 months of age -> begin successfully reaching for objects, although their movements are initially somewhat jerky and poorly controlled and their grabs fail more than not • 7 months → infants gain ability to sit independently, their reaching becomes quite stable and the trajectory of their reaches is consistently smooth and straight to target

visual cliff experiment

created by E.J. Gibson, used to determine when infants can perceive depth • Deep side vs. shallow side • Caregiver stationed at the side of the deep cliff with an attractive toy or beckon the child • does crawling experience matter? 1. Beginning crawlers (7 months) → they go right over the edge on the transparent side - All cross the shallow side - Most cross to the deep side 2. Experienced crawlers (9 months) → they are tending to be warying of the edge and do not cross - All cross the shallow side - None cross to the deep side

perceptual narrowing

developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system e.g. Experiences leads the young learner to begin to "lose" the ability to make distinctions that he or she could make at earlier points in development

social preferences in food-choice paradigm

infants more likely to choose a food offered by a speaker of their language than by a speaker of another language

auditory localization

perception of the location in space of a sound source • E.g. when newborns hear a sound, they tend to turn toward it • Newborns + young infants are far worse at determining the spatial location of a sound than are older infants and toddlers

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development? • implications for how the child sees themselves

psychological consequences - early vs. late maturers • males: Late maturers → When they get their physical maturation, they appear late and then they stand out from their peers • Females: Early maturers get menstruation and may make them feel out of place

false belief problems

tasks that test a child's understanding that other people will act in accord with their own beliefs even when the child knows that those beliefs are incorrect

contract sensitivity - what do infants have of this? Why?

the ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in visual pattern • Infants have poor contrast sensitivity • Why? 1. Cone - the light-sensitive neurons that are highly concentrated in the fovea (the central region of the retina) - infants have immature cone cells -> The light sensitive neurons that are highly concentrated in the fovea are involved in seeing fine detail and color 2. For the first month or so, cannot appear to perceive differences between white & color - by 2 months, they have similar color vision to us -> Infants prefer colors that are unique hues like blues over combination of hues like blue-green

self-locomotion

the ability to move oneself around in the environment • When infants first start walking (11-12 mos), they keep their feet relatively wide apart, increase their base of support and flex slightly at the hip and knee... they keep their hands in the air to facilitate balance -> When they got stronger and gain experience, their steps are longer, straighter and more consistent • Infants adjust their mode of locomotion according to their perception of properties of the surface (e.g. infant who had promptly walked across a rigid plywood walkway would prudently revert to crawling in order to get across a waterbed)

intermodal perception

the combining of information from two or more sensory systems -> Very young infants link their oral and visual experiences -> E.g. infants can visually recognize an object they experienced only through oral exploration

perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events

sensation

the processing of basic information from the external world by the sensory receptors in the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) and brain

visual acuity

the sharpness of visual discrimination e.g. Infants prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast - such as a black & white checkerboard

basic processes

the simplest and most frequently used mental activities •Associating events with one another •Recognizing objects as familiar •Recalling facts and procedure •Generalizing from 1 instance to another

piaget's theory

the theory of swiss psychologists Jean Piaget, which posits that cognitive development involves a sequence of four stages - the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages - that are constructed through the processes of assimilation and accommodation and equilibration

zone of proximal development

zone in which the child is ready to learn • Social scaffolding can only be effective in this • The zone in which instruction can really help • Much learning occurs when they will really benefit from the instruction but not too hard for them to accomplish

experiment that shows infants can draw knowledge inferences about other people's knowledge states

• 15 mo old can make inferences about what a person will do based on their knowledge of what a person know 1. Object is moved to a new location while a infant witnesses the move not the adult 2. Infant expects the adult to subsequently search for the object in its original location 3. Infants expects the adult to search where he/she should believe the toy to be, rather than in the location where the infant knows it actually is • Results: 1. Infants looked longer when the adult searched the object's current location than they did when the adult searched its original location

studies of imitation: imitation of intention of person

• 18 mo. olds • 3 conditions - watching actor 1. Successful action: actor successfully pulls the end 2. Failed action: actor cannot pull of the end; hand just slips off 3. Control: action manipulates the object • Intended action: to pull it off • Results: do they imitate the intended action? 1. Successful action → yes, imitated 2. Control → no imitation 3. Failed action: person did not engage in the successful action, and yes they imitated the intended action of the imitator • Interpretation: 18 mos inferred the actors intended action

preoperational stage

• 2-7 years • the period (2 to 7 years) within Piaget's theory in which children become able to *represent their experiences in language, mental imagery, and symbolic thought*; allows them to remember the experiences for longer periods and to form more sophisticated concepts • Inability to perform mental operations such as considering multiple dimensions simultaneously (e.g. pouring water from a short, wide glass into narrower glass doesn't change the total amount of water - they don't recognize this)

aguilar and baillargeon minnie mouse study -> violation of expectation method

• 3 & 3.5 month olds 1. Habituation event - a little minnie move from behind a screen to the other side 2. Possible event - still a screen present; minnie is able to pass behind without being seen -> High window event = possible event 3. Impossible event - location of the window at the bottom; minnie doesn't appear at the window and comes out the other side -> Low window event = impossible event -> This unexpected if infants have object permanence

results and conclusion of the minnie mouse study

• 3 month olds looked longer at the impossible event • 3 month olds have object permanence too! • Additional infant knowledge • But... 3.5 month olds -> Look equally - not surprised. • Why?? - They know the trick! - they figured that there was 2 Minnies - to rule this out, they just raised the screens and showed them there was only one minnie • Conclusion: 1. Even young babies have lots of knowledge 2. Different methods lead to different conclusions

children as products of their culture - experiences and culture

• 4-8 year olds from china and the US were asked to describe their earliest memories and descriptions differed in ways that show their cultural attitude + value • Chinese culture → interdependence among people esp. In your inner circle (children reference other people) • European american culture → prizes and promotes the independence of individuals (children talk more about their own feelings and reactions)

sensorimotor: A-not-B error

• A-not-B error - the tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found rather than in the new location where it was hidden • E.g. 8-12 month old have reached for and found an hidden object several times in one place (location A), they tend to reach there again when they see the object hidden at a different place (location B) are prevented from immediately reaching for it • Not until 1 year of age do infants consistently search first at the object's current location class notes: • Once children start to search for these hidden objects, they make this error • Two different covers, toy is hidden under over 1 cover (do this in the same place like twice), then place it under a different location or place, they will still search in the first location it was hidden in • Around 1 year age, they start the succeed in this stage

how do core-knowledge theorists view children nature?

• ACTIVE LEARNERS - active in acquiring things and learning ((e.g. 3 year olds understand deception much better when they are actively involved in perpetrating the deceit than whey they merely witness the same deception being perpetrated by others) • domain-specific: information about a particular content area -> development in these areas can be uneven; can be learning things more rapidly in one area and learning quickly in other areas • physical knowledge - support events: how do infants understand how much support an object needs to be suspended

growth and maturation in boys and girls

• Adolescent boys experience their growth spurt about 2 years after the girls, permanently passing them in both height and weight • Full height is achieved on average by around the age for 15.5 for girls and 17.5 for boys

preoperational stage: animistic reasoning

• Animistic reasoning - describe inanimate objects as having life-like qualities (e.g. why does the sun set? Child says, "sun is sleepy", why does it rain → "the sky is sad")

newborn reflexes (blinking, withdrawal)

• Blinking, withdrawal → adaptive for avoiding injury/danger • Blinking - bright link appears in their eyes, infants will blink reflexively • Withdrawal - touch something hot/cold, they will pull back

preoperational stage: lack of hierarchical classification

• Cannot organize classes and subclasses • Cannot focus on the whole AND parts at the same time • E.g. different colors of flowers, ask children if there are more red flowers than there are flowers, they say more red flowers (cannot think that red is part of the bigger category of flowers) • E.g. different color of buttons -> Are there more blue buttons or buttons? Preoperational children will say that there are more buttons

preoperational stage: - perception bound

• Cannot think of appearance and reality simultaneously Can only Focus on only one or the other • focus on appearance and ignoring reality - flavell et al. 1. Take a regular white egg, ask kids what it is and what color is it → kids say it is white 2. Then they take the egg and put it behind a *blue* transparent filter and egg looks blue, and ask kids what color does it look like? They say *blue*, and then you ask them what color is the egg? They say *blue* - thus focusing on *appearance* and ignoring reality • Focus on reality and ignoring appearance - flavell et al. 1. Rock sponge - looks just like a rock, but it is actually a sponge 2. Ask children what it does it look like, they say a rock 3. Then you ask them what does it feel like, they say a sponge 4. Then ask what does it look like, they say a sponge

cultural differences in object segregation

• Caucasian infants growing up in the UK were more likely to focus on faces while east asian infants growing up in japan were more likely to focus on the eyes 1. Scene perception • Caucasian adults fixate on the focal objects in a scene and east asian adults tend to fixate on the actions and background contexts of the scene • Caucasian americans infants pay more attention to objects and chinese infants pay attention to actions

preoperational stage: centration

• Centration - limitation of preschooler's thinking; the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event (e.g. balance scale, 5-6 year olds ignore the distance of weights and say whichever side has more weight will go down) • conservation concept - the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not necessarily change the objects' other key properties

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory: view of developing

• Children as social learners - we learn from those around us • Development in context --> Cultural context - processes were similar across cultures but how it was different • Continuous -> Build up of gradual changes over time

what does long term memory include?

• Factual knowledge (e.g. capitals of countries, teams that won the super bowl) • Conceptual knowledge (e.g. concepts of justice, mercy and equality) • Procedural knowledge (e.g. knowing how to shoot a basketball or play an xbox game) • Attitudes (e.g. likes/dislikes regarding political parties or foods) • Reasoning strategies (e.g. knowing how to take an argument to its logical extreme to question it)

how does piaget view children's nature?

• Constructivists - depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences --> E.g. Piaget's approach to understanding cognitive development • 3 of the most important of children's constructive processes are: 1. Generating hypotheses, performing experiments and drawing conclusions their observations 2. Child is the scientist → children learn many important lessons on their own, rather than depending on instruction from others → children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from other people to do so

view of development for information-processing theorists

• Continuous: Build up of small changes over time • child as a... 1. Limited-capacity processing system (like a computer... have memory capacity; speed of their thought processing; limited knowledge and strategies) -> expanding the amounts of info they can process at 1 time -> increasing their processing speed -> Acquire new knowledge and strategies over time 2. active problem solvers... Problem solver -> Adapting new strategies to over time as they get older -> This helps them attain their goals over time

what are some modern views of motor development

• Current theorists emphasize that early motor development results from a confluence of numerous factors that include developing neural mechanisms, increases in infant's strength, posture control, balance and perceptual skills as well as changes in body proportions • Vital role of motivation → motivated to walk even though its easier for them to crawl around

overlapping waves theory experiment (textbook)

• E.g. 5 years old reasoning on repeated trials of the conservation of # problem reveals that most children use at least 3 different strategies; same child who on trial 1 incorrectly reasons that the longer row must have more objects will on other trials correctly reason that just spreading a row does not change the number of objects • Children discover new strategies that are more effective than their previous ones, they learn to execute both new and old strategies more efficiently and they chose strategies that are more appropriate to the particular problem • During kindergarten and the first few years of elementary school, children's knowledge of these problems improve greatly... why? -> Children discover new strategies such as counting on (2+9... 9, 10, 11) -> Faster + more accurate execution of all strategies that children know (E.g. retrieval of answers from memory, counting from one and counting on) -> Children choose among strategies increasingly adaptively (counting on isn't good with a large different between the added, but good for problems like 2+)

core domains of thought of core-knowledge theories

• E.g. physical, numerical, linguistic, psychological, biological •We come into the world ready to learn in these areas

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development? • screen tools

• Early growth and motor development used as a screening tool -> Variations from the norm may indicate a problem *BUT* only a rough indicator

preoperational stage: egocentrism

• Egocentrism - limitation of children's thinking; the tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view • Inability to take other's perspective - absorbed in his own thoughts and feelings; cannot see things from another person's point of view -> E.g. preschooler's conversation • Piaget's 3 mountain problem- table with 3 mountains, varying in size w/ different markers at the top - Have the child on one side and describe what they see and they go to the other side and ask what they see - Then you ask... What does the *doll see*? -> Prior to 6 years. Pick picture that shows what *they* see currently • E.g. preschoolers have difficult in taking other people's spatial perspectives --> 4 year old sit at a table in front of a model of 3 mountains of different sizes; children asked to identify which of several photographers depicted what a doll would see if it were sitting on the chairs at various locations around the table → most 4 year olds could not recognize that their own perspective was not the only one possible and to imagine what view would be from another location • Communication → preschoolers often talk right past each other, focused only on what they themselves are saying and seemingly oblivious to other people's comments

imitation

• Even newborn imitate simple actions (puckering lips, sticking out tongue, opening mouth) • Use imitation to study interpretation of others action

why are the 7 month olds crawling to the deep side? why don't the experienced crawlers tend to cross? what further study explained this?

• Experience with falling • Social referencing - idea of checking with others (e.g. caregiver) in ambiguous situations to get emotional information [infants look to caregiver to decide whether the situation is safe] 1. Certainty conditions • 4 inches - infants know they will be okay • Results: joy- cross; fear-cross • 40 inches - infants know they will not be okay • Results: fear - don't cross; joy - don't cross 2. Uncertainty condition • 12 inches • Caregiver poses different expressions (e.g. fear, joy) • Fear - don't cross • Joy - cross • Results: look to mom's face if they should cross --> They are interested in how infants respond in the different conditions

children as products of their culture

• Many of the processes that produce development (e.g. guided participation)= same in all societies • BUT the content that children learn (symbols, artifacts, skills, values) vary greatly from culture to culture

depth perception binocular cues

• Focusing on how the images that our 2 eyes receive provide information about depth • Closer the object, the greater disparity in what our 2 eyes are seeing (e.g. finger test with one eye); father away, less disparity • Binocular disparity • Stereopsis - process of combining these 2 neural signals of the images we are able to see see to be able to see depth/3D -> Emerges suddenly at 4 months of age

touch for infants

• For the first few months, oral exploration (infants suck their own fingers and toes and virtually any object they come into contact with) • From around the age of 4 months, infants gain greater control over their hand and arm movements --> Infants actively rub, finger, probe and bang objects and their actions become increasingly specific to the properties of the object (e.g. rub textured objects and bang rigid ones)

newborn reflexes (grasping, stepping)

• Grasping, stepping → adaptive for safety; being able to move; precursors to walking • Grasping - place your finger in their hand, they will grasp back or hold you back • Stepping - hold infant upright over a surface, just their feet touch; see them rhythmically stepping

risk for obesity for children and adolescents

• Health problems - heart disease and diabetes • Suffer negative stereotypes and discrimination in a variety of areas --> Children who are obese are more likely to be withdrawn and depressed (treated poorly by peers, teasing, rejection, struggle with friendships)

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development? • complex systems

• Humans are complex systems • Growth and motor development interact with other aspects of the system

if information is not encoded... what happens?

• If information is not encoded, it is not remembered later • E.g. american flag - you have seen it many times, but you most likely have not encoded how the stars are arranged or how many red/white bars it contains • E.g. child saying "mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of the mall?"

what are various (cultural) differences in the course of motor development?

• In countries where infants tend to sit independently earlier, they also tend to be placed in location that offer less postural support such as on the ground (Kenya) and on adult furniture (cameroon) • Infants in countries where sitting tends to emerge later, such as italy and the US spend more time in child furniture (infant carriers, swings or being held) → bc their posture is supported more of the time, infants have less opportunity to learn how to cope with gravity in order to keep from toppling over • Motor skills are actively discouraged in early locomotion ex) Modern urban china → infants are discouraged from crawling due to hygienic concerns; makes it difficult for infants to develop muscle strength • Motor skills actively encouraged infants motor development Motor exercises including massage, limb manipulation and other forms of motor stimulation are a widespread parenting practice in culture in subsaharan african - accompanied by singing, rhythmic bouncing and high positive affect from the caregiver

Development of food preferences

• Infants display some of the same reflexive facial expressions that older children and adults display in response to basic tastes: sweet, umami (savory), bitter, sour , and salty • First 2 flavors (sweet, umami/savory) → produce positive responses: hint of a smile, lip smacking, sucking -> Will drink larger quantities of sweetened water than plain water • Bitter flavors → negative responses: frowning and nose wrinkling -> Evolutionary origin → poisonous substances are often bitter or sour but almost never sweet

cross cultural studies of infants interpreting acton as goal directed

• Infants growing up in china are more likely to predict goal-direction acts when an actor uses chopsticks rather than a western style spoon... WHILE infants growing up in sweden make the opposite prediction, expecting food to be delivered to the mouth by spoon and not by chopsticks

music perception for infants

• Infants will listen twice as long to singing as to speaking before becoming distressed • Infants pay attention to a consonant version of a piece of music, whether a folk song or a minuet than to a dissonant one • Infants are also more "sensitive to aspects of musical rhythm than are adults (e.g. balkan 12 mo olds were able to detect changes in complex rhythms, but the adults failed to do so)

object knowledge in infants

• Infants will reach for objects in the dark; they reach for objects they cannot see -> When young infants shown an attractive object and the room is then plunged to darkness, causing the object to disappear, most babies reach to where they last saw the object... showing that they still expect it to b there • Young infants seem to be able to think about some characteristics of invisible objects -> Darkness, sound → sounds like small object = reach with one hand; sounds like large object = reach with both hands

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development? • shape others perceptions of the child

• Influences others perceptions of the individual • Size and motor ability influence others' perceptions ---> Tall/motorically advanced child • Adults might view the child as older and expects more from them because they appear older --->small/motorically delayed • Might treat them as younger; expectations may not be high as for younger children

what are characteristics of naive psychology?

• Invisible mental states (e.g. jimmy rings on billy's doorbell be he desires to see billy) • Linked to another in cause-effect relations (e.g. jimmy might become angry if billy isn't home because he want to a different friends house, which could cause jimmy to be mean to his little brother) • Develop surprisingly early in life

why is this scale model task hard for the 2.5 years old?

• Language that is used • It requires them to represent the scale model as a real thing and at the same, it also represents the big room • Dual representation view - Scale model task is hard because it require dual representation - How did they test this? 1. They talk them they have a shrinking machine and they are going to shrink the room 2. Results when using the shrink: 2.5 years Much more successful in finding terry the troll

preoperational stage: transductive reasoning

• Link events that are close in time • May link 2 things even though they don't have anything to do with each other • Piaget called this precausal thinking - often attributing physical things to nonphysical causes

how to prevent obesity?

• Many schools have been serving more nutritious, less caloric foods including those available in vending machines • Promising intervention programs are currently underway, including interventions delivered during pediatrician visits and via home visits • Homestyles - 18 month including family meals, sleep duration, physical activity, screen time and dealing with picking easter; nudges parents every few days to motivate them to work with their child toward positive health behaviors

what are the aspects of physical growth? • secular trend

• Marked changes in physical development that have occurred generations -> On average, we tend to be taller than our grandparents -> We tend to see these kids are achieving motor milestones, it is at an earlier age -> Age of first menstruation tends to be earlier across generations -> Average age = around 13

depth perception pictorial cues

• Monocular • Use to portray depth in cues • Interposition - objects that are closer to us are going to preclude objects farther from us --> E.g. im looking at kyle because he is blocking my view of linda • Relative size - things that are farther away from us will be smaller in size (e.g. car picture)

depth perception adults: 3 classes of cues

• Monocular: kinetic cues (kinetic - involves movement • Binocular cues (you need both eyes; information is presented to both eyes and eyes work together as a coordinated team) • Monocular static or pictorial cues (pictorial - involves pictures)

overlapping waves theory experiment (classroom)

• Multiplication: 7-8 year olds come into the lab once a week for 8 weeks to solve multiplication problems and ask to explain to the researchers how they solved it → researchers took the strategies and coded them into different strategies) [in order of unsophisticated to sophisticated) • Strategies -> Incorrect (7 x 3 = 7) -> Counting - anytime finger counting was used or made a drawing and individually counted the items -> Repeated addition - changing the multiplication problem into an addition problem -> Derived facts - using a short come to solve the problem in which you can do shorter steps (e.g. 9 * 3, but you do 10 *3 and just subtract 3) -> Retrieval - retrieving that answer from long-term memory • Results: -> Using these more sophisticated strategies increasingly

why is the primary source of nourishment for infants, breast milk? what are the advantages? what have experimental evidence shown?

• Naturally free of bacteria • Strengthens the infant's immune system • Contains the mother's antibodies against infectious agents the baby is likely to encounter after birth • Good for the mother's health (lower risk of breast cancer and type 2 diabetes) • Fatty acids in breast milk have a positive effect on cognitive development • Good for promoting positive health outcomes in countries with unsafe drinking water and fewer public resources • Experiment: --> Prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding in infancy lead to increased IQ scores at 6.5 years of age • many infants in the US around the world are exclusively or predominantly formula-fed

taste and small for newborns

• Newborns prefer sweet flavors • Newborns prefer the smell of breast milk

visual scanning why is visual scanning for infants so important?

• Not until 4 months of age are infants able to track moving objects smoothly, and then they are able to do so only if an object is moving slowly why is important? • One of the few ways infants have active control over what they observe and learn • By observing faces, infants have the opportunity to begin to draw connections between motor actions and sounds that will be the basis for their eventual native language -> 4 mos - infants focus on the eyes of the speaker -> When they begin babbling - they fixate on the mouth of the speaker

sensorimotor stage: object permanence

• Object permanence - the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view - Infants lack this through 8 months of age - For infants younger than months, "out of sight, out of mind" is true - By end of the first year, infants search for hidden objects so they know the object continues in existence • Based this observation off his own children -> Attractive toy covered by cloth and failed to search for the toy • Piaget: infants do not *search* for hidden objects until about 8 months • Conclusion: *no object permanence*

issues with piaget's sensorimotor stage

• Objects continue to exist when out of view • Piaget: infants do not search for hidden objects until 8 months --> Conclusion: no object permanence?? • alternative explanation: Infants has object permanence, but does not know how to search • need non-search test of object permanence

scale model tasks: symbols tasks

• PROCEDURE 1. 2.5-3.5 year olds: shown a big room and a scale model of that room 2. Take a toy and hide that little toy in the scale model of that room 3. Ask children to find the big toy in the big room and the big toy is hiding in the same place as the little toy • RESULTS 1. 3 year old succeed 2. 2.5 year olds fail

what are the aspects of physical growth? • rates of growth

• Periods of the most rapid growth -> From birth to 2 - period of most rapid postnatal growth -> Prior to puberty growth rates are similar for boys and girls -> Onset of puberty is ~2 years earlier for girls than boys • sex differences in growth: Pubertal growth spurt (changes in height/weight) -> boys and girls roughly at the same right (equal in height/weight)... then girls experience their adolescent growth spurt, at the end of which they are somewhat taller than boys -> Girls • Average onset: age 9 • Range of onset: 8 to 13 • Peak growth rate occurs at: 11 to 14 or 15 • Growth ends: age 19 -> Boys • Average onset: age 11 • Range of onset: 9-5-13.5 • Peak growth rate occurs at: 13 to 17 • Growth ends: age 21

nature and nurture piaget

• Piaget believed that nature includes not just the nurturing provided by parents and other caregivers but every experience children encounter • Nature includes: -> Children's maturing brain + body -> Their ability to perceive, act and learn from experience -> Their tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent acknowledge

children and planning

• Problem solving is more successful if people plan before acting • Children benefit from planning the fastest route to friend's house, how to get away from their parents and how to break bad news to others in ways that are least likely to trigger angry reactions

what are the 3 characteristics of growth and motor development?

• Proximal → distal progression --> Things toward the center.. But as time goes on moving outward • Cephalocaudal progression --> Things develop from the head first and then develop downward; children's legs are one of the last things to develop • Increased differentiation --> Things becoming more specialized during development (E.g. infants reaching)

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

• Published papers before graduating high school • Received his Phd in natural science • Studied the reasoning processes of children at various ages

infant limitations in vision -> reading image

• Reading" image - have trouble processing info that the fovea receives 1. Adult fovea: contains 50k comb cells; tiny spot, daylight vision, fine detail, color; cells are really concentrated in the center; catches about 65% of light that comes to the fovea 2. Infant fovea: twice as wide; cones are immature; only catches about 2% of light that comes to the fovea -> Results in *poor acuity* -> How do we measure infants' acuity? - Show infants 2 images (e.g. solid gray box + black/white stripes) → can infants discriminate these lines? - If they can, they will prefer to look at the stripes than the stripes 3. Birth: -> Stripes have to be 30x widers than adults -> 8 months: 4 times widers -> 6 years: adult level 4. Development of color vision -> By 3-4 months, color vision is basically adult-like

Yet.. children often fail to plan situations in which it would help their problem solving. WHY?

• Requires inhibiting the desire to solve the problem immediately in favor of first trying to choose the best strategy (e.g. starting to work on an assigned paper without planning what will be written in the paper is one familiar example) • Tend to be overly optimistic about their abilities and believe they can solve problems without planning... overoptimism sometimes leads young children to ask rashly

sour & salty flavors and food preferences for infants

• Sour flavors elicit varied responses: some infants respond negatively, some respond positively • Salty flavors → do not elicit much of a reaction after 4 months of age when a salt preference emerges

newborn reflexes (swallowing, sucking, rooting)

• Swallowing, sucking, rooting → adaptive for eating; helps infant prepare to nurse; increases the baby's chance of getting nourishment and ultimately surviving • Swallowing - place liquid on infants lips, they will swallow • Sucking - place something in infants mouth like a bottle, they will rhythmically suck • Rooting - gently stroke infants side of mouth, infant will turn toward that side (E.g. when cheek comes into contact with mother's breast, they turn toward the breast, opening their mouth as they do)

preoperational stage: symbolic representation

• Symbolic representation - the use of one object to stand for another (e.g. preschooler use two sticks to represent a gun or a playing card to represent iphone) -> Children's drawing b/w age 3-5 make increasing use of symbolic conventions such as representing the leaves of flowers as V's • Symbolic representation - big strength that they didn't have before (qualitative change); the capacity to understand that one thing stands for something else -> E.g. use objects to stand for something else; using a banana as phone or a stick for a sword; drawings → hearts for flowers or v for birds; rapid/big gains for words/language

information-processing theories

• a class of theories that focus on the structure of the cognitive system and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems • see cognitive development as occurring *continuously, in small increments that happen at different ages on different tasks*

naive psychology

• a commonsense level of understanding of other people and one self • 3 concepts naive psychology uses to understand human behavior → Desire, beliefs, actions

eating as a social act for infants

• Toddlers are more likely to accept novel foods from a caregiver than a stranger • they prefer foods modeled... - by individuals with positive expressions over those with negative expressions - By peers over adults - By same-gender peers over those modeled by opposite-gender peers - Modeled by people who speak their native language - .... Basically young children are more likely to choose foods endorsed by others who are similar to them along key social dimensions

newborn reflexes (babinski, moro)

• Tonic neck → fencer's posture; can be related to defensive posture or keeping that hand in view; when an infant's head turns or is turned to one side, the arm on that side of the body extends, while the arm and knee on the other side flex • Babinski → Stroke soul of the babies foot from toe to heel... infants toes will fan out and curl in • Moro → if you hold an infant horizontally and you lower them a bit quickly, they will throw out their arms and bring it back, kind of an embracing motion → adaptive as a way to cling for safety

Undernutrition

• Undernutrition and malnutrition are virtually always associated with poverty and myriad related factors, ranging from limited access to health care • Affects all aspects of development (brain and physical growth)

visual and motor development in reaching

• Vision is not necessary for accurate reaching: infants in a completely dark room can successfully nab an invisible object that is making a sound • When reaching for objects they can see, they rarely reach for ones that are too distant → they know how long their arms are

what accounts for the longevity of this theory?

• Vividly conveys the texture of children's thinking at different ages • Exceptional breadth of theory (extends from infancy through adolescence and examines topics as diverse as conceptualization of time, space, distance, number.. etc) • Offers intuitively plausible depiction of the interaction of nature and nurture in cognitive development as well as of the continuities

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development? • expectations

• What is reasonable to expect of a child of a particular age? -> What is typical (and not typical) of children of a particular age • Variability - there's a lot of variability across individuals -> Variability among children of the same age

content knowledge in children and adults

• When children know more than adults about a topic, they often remember more new info about the topic than adults do • E.g. children and adults are provided new info about children's tv programs and books and the children generally remember more of the new information that do the adults • E.g. children who know a lot about soccer learn more from reading new soccer stories than children who are older and have higher IQs but who know less about soccer

drawing and writing in children

• When young children first start making marks on paper, their focus is almost exclusively on the activity per se, with no attempt to produce recognizable images • At about 3 or 4 years → most children begin trying to draw pictures of something; they start to draw pictures of something, they try to produce representational art --> Cross cultural study → found that children from homes with pictorial images produce images earlier and more often that children from homes with few images • Most common human drawing → human figure (simple, crude shapes, tadpole people) -> Houses → rectangle with a door and a roofline • By age 4, children understand a key difference between writing and drawing

more characteristics of scaffolding

• Zone of proximal development •Children are able to work at a higher level than without such help • At first, higher-level functioning requires extensive support, then it requires less and less support and eventually becomes possible w/o any support • The higher quality of scaffolding = the more that instructional efforts are directed at the upper end of the child's capabilities

violation of expectancy

• a procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest if it violates something the infant knows or assumes to be true • E.g. possible event: screen rotated upwarded, occluding the box and stopped when it contacted the box; impossible event: screen continued to rotate a full 180 degrees, appearing to pass through the space occupied by the box -> Results: infants as young as 3.5 months of age looked longer at the impossible event than the possible event • Height of the job -> Infants expect the screen to stop sooner for a taller object than a shorter one

social scaffolding

• a process in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children's thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own • Idea that when a child is learning something new, need to provide a lot of support (Scaffolding) when they are learning • As they are able to do the task on their own, slowly remove the supports (scaffolding) • More explicit instruction in how to do something • The goal is to get them to do the task and accomplish it on their own • Involves more explanation

guided participation

• a process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to learn • E.g. sadies mother holding one part of the toy so sadie can screw the other part together... sadie wouldn't be able to screw the 2 parts together on her own and therefore could not improve her assembly skills

joint attention

• a process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment • We are together focusing on a common thing • Ex: look at the dog and we both look at the dog • Seen early on in the 1st year with gaze information: what are the kinds of things people are looking at: -> Important because it allows us to express things about the individual: • Can tell a little bit about the person • Sharing the experience • Safety thing • Draw attention to help label things and learn new words • E.g. infants look toward objects that are targets of their social partner's gaze, even if the partner is not acting on the objects(do this around 1 year) • E.g. infants begin to actively direct a partner's attention toward objects that they themselves find interesting (around 1 year)

origins of symbolic reasonings

• a symbol is anything that stands for something else

theory of mind

• ability to understand that others have and desires that are different from one's own • an organized understanding of how mental processes such as intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions and emotions influence behavior -> Other people have different goals than we have -> Use this when predicting other people's behavior • adults and other children: -> belief-desire theory of mind - our behavior depends both on our beliefs and desires or goals

overlapping waves theory

• an information processing approach that emphasizes the variability of children's thinking •over time, as children are developing their ability to solve problem, they are developing new and more effective strategies over time such that you are going to see older, less effective strategies fading away as new effective strategies emerge

sociocultural theories

• approaches that emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children's development • E.g. sadie learning to assemble the toy in an interpersonal context • Believe much of cognitive development takes place through direct interactions b/w children and other people - parents, siblings, teachers and playmates - who want to help children acquire the skills, knowledge, beliefs and attitudes valued by their culture

core-knowledge theories

• approaches that view children as having some innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance and domain-specific learning mechanisms for rapidly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in those domains

basic features of piaget's theory: sources of continuity

• assimilation • accommodation • equilibration • these processes help propel development forward

reflexes

• automatic, stereotyped response to a particular stimuli (occuring in response to a particular type of stimulation) • innate, fixed patterns of action that occur in response to a particular stimulation

infants binocular and pictorial

• binocular: 4 months • pictorial: 7 months -> 2 groups: 5 & 7 month olds 1. Baseline condition: • REAL window - Infants tend to reach for the closer side of the window • TEST condition - Flat, trapezoidal window - Have infants wear an eye patch for no binocular cues • Results: - 7 month old reach for *larger side* - 5 month olds reach for either side - So only the 7 month olds can use pictorial cues

sensorimotor stage

• birth-2 years: infants are eager to learn more about their world • the period (birth to 2 years) within Piaget's theory in which intelligence is expressed through sensory and motor abilities; infants live in the here and now... intelligence is bound to their immediate perceptions and actions -->E.g. learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like • reflexes • lack of object permanence • A-not-B error • deferred imitation

why might this secular trend occur? why do we see these secular trends?

• changes in diet: more nutrition and better nutrition than past generations - improvements in nutrition and general health • onset of puberty in boys + girLs -> increased rates of childhood obesity in the US • environment -> children raised in institutions have a higher risk of growth impairment, likely due to the combination of social stressors and poor nutrition - failure to thrive • better healthcare • hormones and food

basic features of piaget's theory?

• children as active learners • sources of continuity • development moves through a series of stages

what are the limitations of children's thinking in the preoperational stage?

• children's thinking is rigid • no "operations" • lack of reversibility: If i do a series of steps, if i wanna undo that series of step.. I just need to reverse those steps back.. Kids at this age couldn't do that or return to the starting point

piaget's stage theory

• development moves through a series of STAGES 1. *discontinuous* - each stage is *qualitatively* different than the stage before (e.g. understanding at one stage is qualitatively different from understanding at another stage) e.g. butterfly, cocoon stages • E.g. children in the early stages of cognitive development conceive morality in terms of consequences of a person's behavior whereas children in later stages conceive it in terms of the person's intent • E.g. a 5 year old would judge someone who accidently broke a jar of cookies as naughtier than someone who deliberately stole a cookie; an 8 year old would reach the opposite conclusion - this difference shows qualitative change bc the 2 children are basing their moral judgments on different criteria 2. invariant - went through these stages in a fixed order; everyone progresses through the stages in the same order without skipping any of them -> Child precedes to one stage to the next in a fixed order; earlier stage is essential for the later stages 3. parallel same rate -> Developing at the same rate across different cognitive areas (e.g. if your at the preoperational stage of number, you're gonna be at the preoperational stage of time, volume, etc.)

why is it important to learn about child development/motor development?

• expectations • screen tools • shape others perceptions of the child • implications for how the child sees themselves • implications for the individual • complex systems

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory

• focus on nature/nurture, mechanisms of change, sociocultural context; thoughts that adults and older people play a role in shaping the environment for children

what are the aspects of physical growth? • changes in proportion

• for infants, head dominates -> cephalocaudal development: 1. head region is initially relatively large - fully 50% of body length at 2 months of age 2. By adulthood, the head is only about 10% of body length -> head is pretty large in proportion to the rest of the body • during growth spurt, extremities catch up -> Facial proportion change as well -> Nose projects more, jaw becomes more defined • body composition changes with age -> Proportion of the body fat is highest in infancy, gradually declining thereafter until around 6 to 8 years of age ->In adolescence, it decreases in boys but increases in girls and that increase helps trigger the onset of maturation -> Proportion of muscle grows slowly until adolescence, when it increases dramatically, especially in boys

Elizabeth Spelke

• hypothesized that infants begin life with 4 core-knowledge systems each which includes understanding of a particularly important domain: 1. Inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions 2. Represents the minds of people and other animals capable of goal-directed actions 3. Represents numbers such as numbers of objects and events 4.spatial layouts and geometric relations

cross cultural study of classic false belief task results

• in no country did 3 year olds answer more than 25% of problems correctly, and in no country did 5 year olds answer less than 72% correctly

associative learning and infant food

• influences children's food choices • Food marketed to young children are often branded with popular cartoon characters (e.g. dora or trix bunny) → this makes branding strategy make a difference: children are more likely to select, and rate more highly, foods that are branded with familiar characters • Childrens positive associations with these images lead them to associate positive feelings with the foods that the characters label • Associative learning via branding can also encourage healthy dining choices ex) E.g. vegetable characters on banner at the salad bar → more students choosing vegetables doubled

long-term memory

• information retained on an enduring basis • Can retain an unlimited amount of info for unlimited periods of time -> E.g. people who studied spanish or algebra in high school often retain a substantial amount of what they learned in the subject 50 years later

problem solving

• the process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle • A description of a younger child's problem solving reveals the same combination of goal, obstacle, and strategy -> E.g. george wants to throw rocks out the kitchen window and dad says george cannot throw rocks because it will break the lawnmower but george gets green peaches and says these won't break the lawnmower

infants and kinetic cues

• kinetic: present at birth --> Kinetic cues: looming 1. Optical expansion - gets bigger in all sizes when the circle is coming towards us; gets smaller in all sizes when the circle 2. Infants will blink defensively when the object gets bigger and sees it coming closer but not when it retreats

characteristics of working memory

• limited in both its capacity (amount of info that it can actively attend to at one time) and in the length of time for which it can maintain information in an active state without updating activities - e.g. child might be able to remember a sequence of 5 digits but not 6, and might be able to remember them for 10 seconds w/o repeating them but not for a longer time - The exact capacity and duration vary with age, the task and the type on info being processed - Basic organization of working memory subsystems seems to be constant from early in childhood.... However, the capacity and speed of working memory increase greatly during infancy, childhood and adolescence • external environment influences attention - E.g. kindergarten classroom in the US have colorful posters, photos, artworks and other decorations to make the classroom an appealing environment for learning - Kindergartners in the highly decorated room spent more time off task (looking at decorations) and the more time spent doing so, the less material from the science lessons they learned

pretend play

• make-believe activities in which children create new symbolic relations, acting as if they were in a situation different from their actual one • Emerges at around 18 mo.s • *Object substitution* - a form of pretense in which an object is used as something other than itself (e.g. a broom represents a horse)

autobiographical memories

• memories of one's own experiences, including one's thoughts and emotions • Some mothers encourage them to provide many details about past events and often expand on the children's statement • Parents use social scaffolding in helping children form this • E.g. toddler says, "bird fly away" → mother says, "yes, the bird flew away because you got close to it and scared it" [this help children remember their experiences by improving their encoding of key information] • Children whose mother use the more elaborative style remember more events than do children whose mother rarely elaborate

working memory

• memory system that involves actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing, and processing information • E.g. right after reading a story about birds.. Child were asked a question about it, the child would, through working memory bring together relevant information from the story, inferences made from that information and prior knowledge about birds → then attend to and maintain that info in memory long enough to process it and construct a reasonable answer

depth perception kinetic cues

• monocular - only need 1 eye • deal with direction + speed of apparent motions • motion parallax - objects that are closer to us move by faster than objects that are distant

vision for newborns - eye anatomy

• newborns dont see as clearly as adults do, their vision improves extremely rapidly in their first months • Retina - a thin layer of cells at the back of the eyeball • Macula - a spot near the center of the retina (allows us to see detail) • Fovea - a tiny spot located near the center of the macula; contains the largest concentration

sensorimotor stage: reflexes

• part of learning about their world (e.g. turning toward nosies, sucking) • Visually track objects that move in front of their eyes • When objects placed in their mouth, they suck them • When objects come into contact with their hands, they grasp them • When they hear noises, they turn toward them

what are the aspects of physical growth?

• rates of growth • changes in proportion • changes in strength • secular trend

uses of reflexes?

• serves as a window into the developing nervous system • can be used as a screening tool -> When you bring their infant in for their first checkup, doctor will check these reflexes to make sure the reflexes are present in both sides of the body; they will also pay attention to reflexes that particularly drop out... do they re-emerge?

violation of expectations • physical knowledge

• showing them possible and impossible event • 3.5 months: infants are surprised if a box that is released in midair remains suspended, rather than falling -> Initial - needs to have contact -> contact/no contact • 4.5 months: relevance of type of contact involved in support (They know the box will be stable only if it released on top of the platform) -> Does the type of contact matter? -> They detect this violation • 6.5 months (recognize importance of the amount of contact; Look longer when the box stays put with only a small portion of its bottom surface on the platform) -> Amount of contact it has with the surface matter • 12.5 months ( take into account the shape of the object and hence are surprised if an asymmetrical figure remains stable) -> Pays attention to the shape of the object

features of the preoperational stage

• symbolic representation • limitations of preoperational thinking - rigid thinking - centration - perception bound - egocentrism - animistic reasoning - transductive reasoning

encoding

• the process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important • E.g. children execute basic processes more efficiently, enhancing their memory and learning for all kinds of materials • memory is selective -> people encode information that draws their attention or that they consider relevant, but they fail to encode a great deal of other information

scale errors

• the attempt by a young child to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the large discrepancy in the relative sizes of the child and the object (e.g. toddlers will attempt to seriously sit in a tiny dollhouse sized chair or get into a small toy car) • Child fails to take into account the relation between his or her own body and the size of the target object

object segregation

• the identification of separate objects in a visual array • E.g. 4 months old shown with a rod moving at the end of each block of wood or as a single rod moving back and forth behind the block → infants looked longer at the broken rod because that display would be new for them

cultural tools

• the innumerable products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking • E.g. without the symbol systems of printed diagrams and spoken language, sadie and her mother would find the task of assembling the toy's pieces difficult if not impossible; without techniques for manufacturing artifacts such as toys, there would be no pieces to fasten; without skills such as sadie's mother holding 1 part of the toy so that sadie could screw the other, sadie could have assembled the toy

intersubjectivity

• the mutual understanding that people share during communication • Effective communication requires participants to focus on the same topic, as well as on each other's reaction to whatever is being communication • This is crucial for effective teaching and learning • By 6 months, infants can learn novel behaviors by observing another person's behavior which requires attending to the actions of the other person • Intersubjectivity continues to develop well beyond infancy = children become increasingly able to take the perspectives of others --> E.g. older preschoolers and elementary school age children are more likely than younger ones to reach agreement with peers on the rules of game they are about to play and the roles each child will have

perceptual constancy

• the perception of objects as being of constant size, shape, color, etc., in spite of physical differences in the retinal image of the object • Nativists view is supported by evidence of perceptual constancy in newborns and very young infants (e.g. big cube, little cube experiment → infants looked longer at the second cube showing that they knew it was different in size)

monocular depth cues (or pictorial cues)

• the perceptual cues of depth (such as relative size and interposition) that can be perceived by one eye alone E.g. with a patch over one eye, infants will reach toward whichever object is closer

formal operational

• the period (12 years and beyond) within Piaget's theory in which people become able to think about abstractions and hypothetical situations (e.g. can perform systematic scientific experiments and draw appropriate conclusions from them, even when the conclusions differ from prior beliefs); allow them to understand politics, ethics and science fiction, as well to engage in scientific reasoning 1. Abstract and scientific reasoning (e.g. being able to systematically test different options to come to a conclusion) 2. More Internal reflection (alternative views of the world, views on morality, justice and truth)

the concrete operational stage

• the period (7 to 12 years) within Piaget's theory in which children become able to *reason logically* about concrete objects and events (e.g. understand that pouring water from the short, wide glass into narrower glass doesn't change the total amount of water) 1. More logical, flexible, organized cognition/thinking -> Organized around concrete features of the world 2. Mastery of spatial operations (e.g. distance, directions, maps) 3. Difficulties with abstract reasoning (e.g. difficulty thinking of hypothetical questions/situations beyond the concrete here and now) 4. Have difficulty with systematically test (e.g. pendulum problem)

equilibration

• the process by which children (or other people) balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding Reaching this state of understanding that fits with what we are seeing in the world

accommodation

• the process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences • E.g. cat is furry and has tail and says "meow" → eliminates dog and squirrel as an idea of a cat • E.g. clown incident → father explains to son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair looked like a clown, he wasn't wearing a funny costume and not doing silly things to make people laugh → with this new info, child was able to accomodate his clown concept to the standard one

Assimilation

• the process by which people translate incoming information into a form that fits concepts they already understand • taking things we see in the world and fitting them to our current understanding of the world • E.g. furry and has a tail = cat; everytime we see something that fits that description, we will include it everything.. Dog will be a cat, squirrel will be a cat as well •E.g. 2 year old child saw a man who was bald on top of his head and long frizzy hair on the sides and said "clown, clown"... man looked enough like a clown to assimilate him to his own clown concept • This process of assimilation can only go on so long... a change has to occur

stereopsis

• the process by which the visual cortex combines the differing neural signals caused by binocular disparity, resulting in the perception of depth • Both eyes working together to compute depth cues and other aspects of the visual sense... is a natural outcome of brain maturation • If infants are deprived of normal visual input during early postnatal, they may fail to develop normal binocular vision and will have difficulty making use of steroposi and other binocular cues

sensorimotor stage: deferred imitation

• the repetition of other people's behavior a substantial time after it originally occurred (e.g. child sees someone else throw a tantrum and they throw a tantrum later in the day) • They are able to imitate behavior they saw earlier at a different point in time (e.g. at the mall and see another child say, "dummy" and hit them → they do the same thing when they get home)

task analysis

• the research technique of identifying goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential processing strategies for a problem • *computer simulation* - a type of mathematical model that expresses ideas about mental processes in precise ways (task analysis allows researchers to formulate this) --> E.g. have been used to model many other aspects of development as well as including object permanence, word learning, categorization, phonology, working memory, reading and problem solving

constructivism

• the theory that infants build increasingly advanced understanding by combining rudimentary innate knowledge with subsequent experiences -> They hypothesize that children form naive theories of physics (knowledge of objects), psychology (knowledge of people) and biology (knowledge of plants and animals) -> Emphasize initial simple theories grow considerably with age and experience • E.g. 3-4 year olds realize people and animals, but not manufactured objects can health themselves • E.g. not until 7 years do children believe that plants are also living things

Nativism

• the theory that infants have substantial innate knowledge of evolutionary important domains -> believe infants have the ability to quickly and easily acquire knowledge in these domains

newborn sensory systems

• touch, taste, smell, hearing - fairly well developed at birth, adult-like • vision: poor at birth, but improves in few months

motor milestones

• typical sequence of motor development • variability • Sits with slight support (~2.5 months, can occur between 1 and 5 months) • Sits alone momentarily (5.5 months ; can occur 4-8 months) • Reaching for objects (~5.5 months; can occur between 4-8mos.) • Standing alone (~11 months; can occur 9-16 months) •Walking alone (~12 months; can occur 9-17 months) other: • Prone, lifts head - 0-1 mo • Prone, chest up - 2-4 mo • Rolls over - 2-4.5 mo • Sits without support- 4.5-8mo • Stands alone easily - 9.5-14 mo

food neophobia -> ways to overcome

• unwillingness to eat unfamiliar foods • Avoidance of unknown foods likely evolved as an adaptive response during a period of vulnerability in early childhood, helping to keep children safe • Ways to overcome: - Repeatedly introduce new foods, ideally between 6 and 15 times - Don't bribe or pressure them because it will be likely to backfire

experiment that shows dual representation

•E.g. experiment where miniature toy is hidden in a scale model of regular sized room next door → child is then asked to find a larger version of the toy that the child is told, "is hiding in the same place in the big room" -> Typically 3 year olds readily use their knowledge of the location of the miniature toy in the model to figure out where the large toy is in the next room -> Most 2.5 year old children fail to find the large toy; them seem to have no idea that the model tells them anything about the full size room • Shrinking machine -> Explained that the machine could make things get little -> Children watched as a troll doll was hidden in a movable tent like room and the shrinking machine was turned → then the child and experimenter waited in another room while the shrinking machine did tits job, when asked when to find the troll, children succeeded --> Why should the idea of a shrinking machine enable these 2.5 year olds to perform the task - If the child believes experimenter's claims about the shrinking machine, then in the child's mind the model simply is the room... hence, there is no symbolic relation b/w 2 spaces and no need for dual representation

what are the aspects of physical growth? • changes in strength and endurance

•Prior to puberty, no real difference between boys and girls •Between age 5 and 16 -> Boys muscle grow 14x large as that time -> Girls muscle grow 10x large as that time • At the end of puberty -> Boys on average are able to exercise longer on average and exert more strength/force than girls

binocular disparity

•the difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signals being sent to the brain •The closer the object we are looking at, the greater the disparity between the 2 images • The farther away the object, the less disparity

dual representation

•the idea that a symbolic artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same time - both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself -> Very young children have substantial difficulty with dual representation, limiting their ability to use new information from symbolic artifacts