PSYC318

Disambiguation of homographs

"Bow" has two pronunciations, disambiguated by the context. Children with autism will choose the most frequent pronunciation. Struggle when the sentence as a whole must be considered

Recent NZ Criminal Re-Education Strategy

"Integrated Offender Management" (IOM) system - all offenders are classified on reception into security and treatment categories, a sentence plan is developed Cost = $ 40 million/year However, stable re-offending rates suggest the strategy is ineffective

Family size

% of families with one child under 18 - number is growing - Benefit from increased parental attention gives boost to IQ

Can child psychopaths identify fear and sadness?

(In reference to VIM) Children given Psychopathy Screening Device and asked to identify dominant emotion displayed on faces Fearful and sad face gave the most negative PSD scores: children with psychopathic tendencies are less likely to recognise fearful and sad expression (only these) - Age, sex, IQ had no influence -Also deficient in recognising vocal tones of fear and sadness (both children and adult psychopaths) - Supports prediction of VIM

2011 poll of rates of physical punishment

- 12% of parents think the law change has made a difference to the level of child abuse in NZ - Half the parents said the law change had caused a decline in discipline. 12% unsure - 81% of parents said they would not report another parent who they saw smacking a child on their backside or hand - 56% of parents said they have smacked their child since the law change (44%- 2010) Mothers and younger parents are more likely to have smacked - 66% of parents said they would smack their child in future. 28% said they wouldn't - Only 29% of parents said the law should stay as it is

When is nursery particularly beneficial? - when a child is in stress (e.g depressed mother) and/or poverty

- Any high-quality, secure relationship buffers children from negative effects of stress or poverty (assumes care is high quality) - Children who are insecurely attached to mother but securely attached to nursery worker are more competent with peers than children insecurely attached to parent and nursery worker (Howes et al., 1998) - Benefits even for 3-moth-olds Children in poverty: if go to university nursery, outscore home-reared children on IQ tests at 18 months and 36 months of age quality of care also positively correlated with children's social competence

Predispositions for attachment

- Behaviours handed down through evolution which enhance survival: if babies didn't show separation anxiety, could've easily resulted in death Adults respond to cries with focused attention and more rapid heartbeat even when they haven't cared for a baby. Respond to infants' smiles and laughs with physiological arousal

Why is it that children primed for learning? (glucose)

- Great synaptic density allows for rapid learning - At 5 weeks, glucose (fuel for the brain) utilisation is highest in the sensorimotor cortex, thalamus, brainstem, and cerebellum - Rate of glucose utilisation is very low is cerebral cortex - Pattern of glucose utilisation beginning to resemble an adult is seen as early as 8 months and typically by 1 year

Perry Preschool Program benefits

- More education - Greater earning power - Greater family stability - Fewer social services needs: only 7% arrested for drug-dealing by age 27 vs. 25% in controls

Savant abilities

1 in 10 autistics, typically in music, calculation, drawing Islets of ability: excel on some IQ tasks e.g Block Design, but fail at others, e.g putting pictures in sequential order

Vision Development: Colour Perception

1 month - red and green cones in place 2 months - colour discrimination 4 months - categorical colour perception

The PSD (child questionnaire)

1) Callous/ Unemotional factor (C/UN) 2) Impulsivity/conduct factor (I/CP) --> Behavioural similarities between child and adult psychopaths. Factor 1 especially related to long-term problems BUT: not diagnostic; no objective threshold. Used to indicate tendencies

Development of VIM in non-psychopathic children: the emotional aspect of morality

1) children distinguish between moral and conventional rules as having different emotional quality - understanding of conventional rules shown around 39 months Delinquents don't make this distinction 2) Moral emotions such as guilt are shown from around 2-3 years and understood from around 6 years - Children who are bad at attributing moral emotions to story characters are more likely to cheat

Physical ability

1-3 months: arms move in direction of object, hand closes before the object is reached; baby swipes at objects 3-4 months: arm moves towards and grasps objects 7-8 months: crawling 1 year: walking

Possible causal mechanisms

1. family composition (parental absence) 2. Socio-economic disadvantage (usually kids will go with mothers, who are paid less) 3. Parental distress (parents' response to stress; ability to cope) 4. Disrupted family process (conflict, control and discipline, parenting style) Is it the divorce or the associated conflict that is bad for children?

Theories of Effects of Media Violence on Children

1. imitation 2. desensitisation 3. increase in hostile feelings 4. seeing the world as a violent place

Maternal Post-Natal Depression

10-15% of mothers develop it - detached feelings, sleep problems etc. - More likely if baby is fussy, has problems feeding, or has colic or reflux Women are 23% more likely to be admitted to a psychiatric unit in the 18 months after giving birth than at any other time in their lives

Results of CHAT

12 out of 16,000 failed all 3 markers 10 of 12 diagnosed with autism at 3.5 years, other two not normal 22 failed either pretend play and/or pointing, 15 of which diagnosed with language delay but none with autism Follow-up 7 years later: 19 children diagnosed by CHAT at 18 months, 50 diagnosed at 7 years. CHAT identified 38% of cases

Domestication of dogs

14,000 to 135,000 years ago Bred for certain characteristics - loyalty, affection, social insight Imprinting Anxiety in strange situation Object permanence

Taumoepeau and Ruffman (2008)

15 months 1. Mothers talk more about children than themselves or others 2. Mothers talk more about desires than thoughts and knowledge (cognitions) 3. Mothers who talk a lot about the child's desires at 15 mos have children with a better ToM at 24 mos 24 months 1. Mothers talk increasingly about themselves/others rather than the child (scaffolding) 2. Mothers talk increasingly about cognitions 3. Mothers who talk a lot about own/others' cognitions at 24 mos have children with a better ToM at 33 mos. Talk may be improving kids' knowledge may be changing the way the mother talks

Harsh corporal punishment in childhood

15% - 19% reduction in gray matter volume in frontal areas at 18 to 25 years. Decline in IQ scores

23. Chimps and Music

17 to 23 week old chimp will pull string significantly more often after hearing concordant music relative to discordant Bird and cotton-top tamarins don't show this preference

Evidence for scaffolding

18-to 30 - month-olds spontaneously try to help parents or stranger in household chores 82% of toddler's interactions at home were initiated by toddler (adults fit assistance into children's interests)

Synaptic developments

2 years: number of synapses reaches adult levels 3 years: child's brain has twice as many synapses as an adult. This number holds steady throughout the first decade (with regular additions and deletions) There are fewer changes in more 'hard-wired' areas of the brain, such as the brainstem Most dramatic changes are in the cerebral cortex

__% of the time 16-33 month year old babies will react to a peer in distress by looking at them or consoling them

20%

New Zealand Psychopathy research

200 paroled offender released before 1995 - 87% violent offences (33% murder, next largest was rapists) Distribution of PCL:SV total score skewed towards high scores 34% scored 18 or over 43% reimprisoned over 13 years PCL:SV very good predictor; 16 was the best cut-off score Serious violent offenders most commonly reimprisoned

New Zealand rates of physical punishment

2004 - half of NZers smacked their children at least once a week 2009 - antismacking bill

Adult Attachment Interview

3 classes of parents 1. Secure: describe childhood experiences objectively, value impact of parents 2. Dismissive - deny value of childhood experiences or recall them precisely, yet idealise parents 3. Preoccupied: describe childhood experiences emotionally, anger and confusion Many studies show relation between parents' secure attachment representations and a) sensitive caregiving and b) secure attachment in their infants Insecure attachment is more likely when caregiver is rigid (expects baby to adjust to caregiver) Babies with difficult temperaments are difficult to console and more prone to insecure attachment Bowlby: secure attachment status will be stable into adulthood unless there are negative life events

Can child psychopaths experience fear and sadness?

3 groups of children 1. High PSD (with Emotional Behavioural Disorder) 2. Low PSD (with EBD) 3. Normal control 3 sets of pictures: distress, threat, neutral plus anger Measured skin conductance (arousal) Results: High PSD significantly less responsive than Low PSD and normal to both distress and threat (but not neutral or anger) Not due to a genral emotion/face difficulty Accounts for lack of empathy

Understanding emotions: ages of acquisition

3-6 months: babies look away from a depressed mother and toward a happy one. Babies of depressed mothers look less at a non-depressed female (novel) 6 months: babies will get annoyed if Mum's facial expression and voice tone are different 18-24 months: will pass broccoli task. Most insight comes when children develop language and mothers talk about feelings

Non-maternal care

30 years ago, most children stayed home until 6. Most now experience some regular out of home care due to maternal work US study: 72% of infants in non-maternal care in 1st year - 3/4 of these in case prior to 4 months - Average of 28 hours/week - US, 1997: 8% of under 3s in nurseries -US, 1994: 24% of under 3s in nurseries

New Zealand wellbeing

30% of 55-64 year olds and 42% of 65-74 year olds were classified as 'awesome' (cringe) Nearly 2/3 of young people show signs of depressed mood NZ wellbeing poor compared to that of European nations

Bischof-Kohler study of empathy

36 toddlers aged 16 to 24 months Teddy's arm falls off and experimenter cries Empathy correlated with self-recognition (passing the mirror task)

Measuring shyness (Kagan & Snidman (1991)

4 months: exposed to novel toys, mobiles, sounds (new experiences). Rated as high or low in both motor-activity and crying 23% high - high 37% low - low 40% high - low or low - high 9 & 14 months: exposed to stranger or unusual tastes Of 14 toddlers who had the lowest fear scores, one had been high-high at 4 months Of 5 toddlers who had highest fear scores, none had been low-low at 4 months SO: no complete reversals of temperament

Temperament at 2-3 months

40% of babies are easy 10% difficult 50% other (mixed)

Violent video games: Kirsh (1998)

52 boys and girls aged 8-11 played either NBA or Mortal Kombat Then read five stories where a same-sex peer caused a negative event to happen The intent of the peer was always ambiguous The children were then asked questions about retaliation, punishment and harm-doer's emotional state Results offer support for short-term hostile attribution bias - Violent game players were more likely to attribute bad motives and negative feelings to the perpetrator - Also more likely to indicate that they would retaliate if in that same situation Playing violent video game led to increased hostility and children were more likely to view others negatively

Who ends up in care?

52% of Maori under 20, 6% Islanders, 39% european - taken into care after abuse (so Maori highest) Why? - systematic racism - application of white standards and values to indigenous communities - poverty

Object permanence and age

6 months: can locate object when partially,, but not fully, occluded 8 Months: fully occluded, but fail 'A not B' 12 months: Pass 'A not b', fail invisible displacement 18-24 months: Pass invisible displacement

Gaze Following/seeing in human infants

6 to 12 months: follow adult's gaze (head and eyes) to side, though stop on first object in sight and don't follow gaze behind self 12 to 18 months: Focus on thing adult is looking at, use eyes alone and follow gaze behind

Do nurseries affect cognitive development?

7 year longitudinal study in Sweden (Broberg et al, 1997) - Assessed quality of "out of home" child care and children's cognitive (verbal and maths) ability - Results taken at 8 years - months in day care were predictive of good test scores (in Sweden, where care is good) - talking to other children, surrounded by more people

DeCasper and Spence (1986): hearing

7.5 - 9 months pregnant mothers read 1 of 3 stories twice a day. 16 infants tested at 56 hours. 1/2 rewarded (given familiar story) when increased IBI (interburst interval, sucking) 1/2 rewarded when decreased IBI. Infants who experienced story in the womb produced more reliable sucking (making it more reinforcing) for the familiar passage than the novel one, while controls showed no preference. Infants can hear prior to birth.

19. Autism statistics

75% below normal IQ 50% no language Older figures stated 2-4 per 10,000, newer ones say 2-6 per 1,000 No ethnic or socioeconomic differences

Concordance of attachment

77% concordance rate of security between 1 year and 17 years - stable when not looking at specific factors No clear evidence for genetic basis for attachment status - Same sex pairs more likely to be concordant (68%) - Concordance rate higher if maternal sensitivity increases or remains stable for second child - Maternal sensitivity generally decreases for second child -No genetic basis to attachment, monozygotic and dizygotic twins do not show enough difference

Agreement and peers (Nelson & Aboud, 1985)

8 to 9 year olds: "what is the thing to do if a boy (or girl) much smaller than you starts to fight with you?" Discussion with friend or non-friend and then subsequent answering Change in opinion most profound for friends; a non-friend disagreeing leads to less change than if a friend disagrees

Prosocial modelling (Grusec & Skubiski 1970)

8-10 year olds asked to donate some of their marbles to a picture of a child in rags. Children who had been exposed to an adult donating a lot gave an average of 4 marbles, while those without a rolemodel gave fewer than 1

Early enrichment and mental health (Raine et al., 2003)

83 children entered into enrichment program Started age 3, lasted for 2 years. Focused on nutrition education and physical exercise. 1 teacher for every 5.5 children Staff trained in physical health (nutrition, hygiene, anatomy, and physiology, childhood disorders), physical activities and education. Malnourished enrichment subjects scored significantly lower on measures of conduct disorder, motor excess, and cognitive disorganisation than the malnourished controls, and no change was seen for non-malnourished enrichment or controls. Same for schizotypal personality. Enrichment made a difference for malnourished

TV studies

85% of 199 evaluated programs show females with light hair and more curls 245: 240 had curls or pigtails, 241 had longer than chin-length hair 305 males: 300 straight hair, 303 with shorter than chin Light/dark distinctions with gendered animals

Jaffee et al. 2011 non-maternal care study

9,185 US children Non-maternal care in first 3 years vs. no maternal care Children who had been in non-maternal care did slightly better on cognitive tasks at 11-13 years and had slightly lower levels of ADHD No differences when comparing children within the same family So, non-maternal care leads to small differences (slight advantages) or no differences (when comparing within families)

17. Theory of Mind

Ability to attribute beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions to the self and others in order to explain and predict behavior

Generalisation

Ability to generalise solution to other problems when applicable

What is an example of increasing WM efficiency and what mechanism is associated with it?

According to Case: if a child is presented with the same type of information on frequent occasions, attention required to process it is gradually reduced, until minimum operating space is needed and processing becomes automatised. Total processing space is constant, how its used is changed.

Parenting style can be predicted before a child is born

Accounts for 40-45% of the variance Predicted by how parents feel about themselves, quality of their relationship with own parents and their roles in their own family Also affected by poverty, divorce, and unemployment

Strengths of ToM account of autism

Accounts for the triad of impairments (social interaction, communication, imagination)

Social relationships deficits

Act as if unaware of the coming and going of others Physically attack and injure others without provocation Inaccessible, as if in a shell

Prosocial behaviour

Actions that benefit another person Children who show signs of sympathy are more likely to offer help - Children shown videotape of other children in need - If response includes facial or physiological markers of sympathy it will lead to actual helping towards those in need - If response includes signs of distress it may lead to less helping behaviour, can be overwhelmed

Temperament (Personality) Differences in the first days and months

Activity level, rhythmicity (eating, sleeping), approach-withdrawl (fear or embrace new), adaptability, intensity of reaction, responsiveness threshold, quality of mood, distractibility, attention span

Glucose and age

Adult rates are more evident by 2 years of age, but the glucose metabolic rate continues to increase until age 9, when it begins to decline Reaches adult values in the latter part of the second decade of life Decrease in glucose metabolic rate might reflect a "pruning of excessive neuronal connectivity

Psychopaths on attributing moral emotions and the moral/conventional distinction

Adults: Age and IQ matched psychopaths and non-psychopaths Asked if stories tapping moral and conventional rule breaking were ok and to attribute emotions to characters Psychopaths significantly worse than controls on moral/convention. Didn't attribute guilt, other emotions okay Children: 2 groups all with Emotional Behavioural Difficulties (EBD), with either high or low PSD Given similar stories as adults Results: weaker findings than adults, although did have less moral/conventional distinction, less likely to refer to other's welfare, and less attribution of guilt and sadness, with higher PSD --> argues for continuum of VIM deficits

Cognitive style leads to...

Advantages in some situations, deficits in others (General Processing)

Weak central coherence advantages/disadvantages

Advantages in tasks where processing of parts is required as against wholes Disadvantages when the subject needs to consider the whole (and not the parts)

Corporal punishment

Affective outcomes: psychological damage, low self-esteem, fear, low empathy, narcissism, distress, depression, anxiety Cognitive outcomes: academic impairment Behavioural outcomes: fighting, disobedience, aggression, alcohol abuse, assault etc. Increase in all three, especially affective and behavioural

Linguistic evaluative devices used in excess by WMS compared to normal development

Affective states Character speech Sound effects Audience hookers BUT NOT emphatic markers

Personality differences

Aggression and nurturing. Testosterone is related to aggression. Research is unclear on an estrogen-nurturing link

Theory 1: imitiation

Aggressive attitudes and behaviours are learned by imitating observed models Preschool and young children are more likely to imitate TV violence because they have difficulty distinguishing fiction form reality Children are also more likely to imitate TV violence if there was no punishment for the act

Primate studies of gender differences (toys)

Alexander and Hines 2002: Showed interest in stereotypical toys (females preferred cooking utensils despite no concept of kitchens) and male preference for rough and tumble. Has been shown that they are not simply imitating parents

Explaining Ahmed and Ruffam: Partial Knowledge - Graded Representations

All knowledge acquisition is gradual Can't say infant "understands" X at any one point in time Partial understanding at 8 to 12 months Knowledge could be eqially explicit at two time points, but differs in terms of how partial vs. full it is

Explaining Ahmed and Ruffam: Partial Knowledge - Implicit vs. Explicit Memory

All knowledge acquisition is gradual, some memory remains Different or more stable trace for reaching - Implicit memory permits correct looking - Reaching requires more explicit commitment to where the object is

ToM increases which real world behaviours?

All social interaction: social competency, communication, pretend play, morality, teaching ability (with peers)

Personality characteristics of parents and siblings

Aloof, shy, few friendships, odd conversation, over- or under-informative - especially males

Summary: Older adults are worse at recognising auditory and bodily expression of anger and sadness. What brain regions are responsible for this?

Amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex

Summary: Older adults are impaired in recognising threat in faces but not situations. What brain regions are associated with this?

Amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex

Summary: Older adults are worse at recognising facial expression of anger, sadness, and fear (but not happiness, surprise, or disgust). What brain regions are responsible for this phenomenon?

Amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, cingulate cortex

Summary: Older adults do not look longer at eyes than mouths, as young adults do. What brain regions are responsible for this?

Amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus

Brain areas that code eye gaze info

Amygdala, superior temporal sulcus, orbitofrontal cortex - deterioration may affect older adults' ability to extract info from eyes

Wellbeing study

Analysed leukocute basal gene expression profiles in 80 healthy adults who were assessed for hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing Eudaimonic wellbeing more highly correlated with a favourable genetic expression profile The immune cells showed high levels of antiviral response and low levels of the inflammatory response Both types of happiness were experienced as positive, but the corresponding genetic expression profiles were different (happiness alone not enough to increase longevity)

Orbitofrontal cortex regulates what emotions?

Anger Particularly strong volume reduction - first and most rapid to decline

Cingulate Cortex regulates what emotions?

Anger and sadness Consistent declines in volume and metabolic reduction

Video Games and NZ

Approximately 95% of boys (7-20) play video games, half play violent ones

ToM and deafness

As family are often not proficient signers, deaf children have limited interactions to learn about ToM. Might miss a critical period, protracting development % passing false belief Youngest: 17% Middle: 10% Oldest: 60% - slow to develop. Cochlear usually implanted after 1 year, may have missed critical period

Verbosity and emotion recognition - are adults verbose because they can't detect emotion cues from others?

Ask a question, measure time spent off-topic, extremity of off-topicness, time talking Older males highest on all measures Correlated with them also having the worst performance on emotion recognition task: Emotion recognition and overall verbosity r = -.46 Emotion recognition and verbosity not related in other conditions (young male, female, old female)

Rearing effects on rat brain

Assigned to either a stimulus-rich environment, social condition (toyless cage in pairs) or isolation. Rat in enriched environment have higher synpatic density in the visual cortex than rats that are brought up individually with little stimulation The enriched rats also show better performance on spatial-navigation tasks

Human Social Genomics: Social Isolation

Associated with increased risk for mortality Chronically socially isolated people show enhanced expression of proinflammatory immune response genes and a reciprocal downregulation of antiviral immune response genes Immune response genes are highly sensitive to social-environmental conditions

Detecting a faux pas

Associated with orbitofrontal cortex 8 faux pas and 8 non- faux pas clips Younger differentiated between conditions better than older - rated faux pas as slightly more appropriate, and non and slightly less

Brain development

At birth, a chimp's brain is 40% of adult chimp weight Chimps reach 70% of adult weight in one year At birth, the human brain is 28% of adult weight Children take 3 years to reach 70% of adult weight Child brain is 90% of adult brain weight by 6 years

Central coherence theory of autism

Attempt to explain the non-triad features Imbalance in integrating information at different levels Goes against the normal tendency to draw information together to construct higher-level meaning

Four categories of parenting

Authoritative: high warmth, high control (positive consequences) Authoritarian: low warmth, high control Permissive: high warmth, low control Uninvolved: low warmth, low control

Eye tracking studies

Autism = look more at mouths in social situations Normal = look more at eyes In autism: Greater mouth looking = better social adjustment Greater object looking = worse social adjustment Greater eye looking is not related

Communication deficits

Avoid eye contact Seem deaf Start developing language then abruptly stop talking altogether

Relationships and scaffolding

Azmitia & Hessier (1993): 7-year-old + 9-year-old sibling + 9-year-old peer (all same sex) - unstructured phase: older kids not explicitly told to help younger one build car - structured phase: one older kid leaves, other one told to help the younger one In the unstructured, younger one looks to sibling for questions, help, imitation etc. Sibling more likely to spontaneously teach. Same findings in the structured phase - more help from sibling than peer Post-test: build a windmill Ss taught by sibs: 54% correct Ss taught by peers: 45% correct Vygotsky: effective guidance requires teacher to gradually relinquish control. Relinquishing not spontaneous, younger child had to prompt (more likely to prompt a sibling than a peer)

Prosocial development in children

Babies have some sense of morality. Without prodding, infants start sharing after they're six months old Children as young as two show a variety of prosocial behaviours such as helping and comforting other 3, 6, and 12 month old understand and like when others are helping, dislike when mean

DeCasper and Fifer (1980): hearing

Babies less than 3 days old sucking dummy while mother or another woman reads. Overwhelmingly showed a preference for mothers voice and would both reduce or increase IBI in order to hear it over the stanger's voice

Anecdotes and their issues with intepretation

Baboon chased by another stopped and looked in the distance - do they understand the chaser's belief or just their behavioural reaction? Monkeys travelled in such a way as to keep an occluder between themselves and human observer - do they understand human's mental state of seeing or just trying to block their own vision of the human Human raised and captive chimpanzees and bonobos follow gaze of humans to objects - mental state of seeing or just know there will be something interesting

How experience affects brain development: phoneme perception

Baby sounds are the same for 6-month-olds regardless of the language the baby is learning After this, they take on a different form depending on the learning

False belief and culture

Baka tribe: passed false belief at age 5 Japanese children pass a little later Wellman, Cross, & Watson: meta-analysis of all False Belief studies to date, confirmed understanding occurs at 4

Violent Video Games: Reward and Punishment Behaviour

Ballard & Lineberger (1999) found that playing violent video games influenced an individual's reward and punishment behaviour - Participants were 119 male college students - Played either a NBA or one of three levels of Mortal Kombat - Then took part in teacher/learner paradigm with either a male or female confederate - Participants always the teacher, and had to punish the confederate for wrong answers and reward for correct ones - Females were punished more as the violence of the videogame increased. Male confederates were not punished differently across the conditions - Males were rewarded less under violent game conditions. Females were rewarded similarly across conditions Conclusions: video game violence may decrease reward behaviour towards others, particularly males, and increase punitive behaviour, especially towards females

Emotion recognition areas

Basal ganglia and the limbic system - amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex (reward)

Time line

Before 1 year: Children learn to differentiate female from male (voices and faces by 6 months) Between 1-2 years: Children start to show same gender preferences (imitation, looking, toy preferences) Between 2-3 years (sufficient language): label others and self by gender Children who label consistently prefer same-sex playmates more than children who do not label gender consistently Between 4-7 years: Focus on appearance. Later learn about typical behaviours and traits Children often go through a period where they are exceptionally rigid about gender roles, although girls tend to be more flexible in their gender roles (probably due to society)

Concern 1: Advertisements

Below age 8: children don't understand persuasive intent of adverts Below 4 to 5: don't discriminate adverts from TV adverts Reinforce social stereotypes Minority children are supporting cast not leads

Possible causes of autism

Biological dysfunction: genetic, environmental? Social: "refrigerator" mother? - This isn't the case, as they show attachment behaviour but are more insecure if have learning difficulties Causal direction? Bad parenting does impair ToM but does not mean autism

Theory 3: Increase in Hostile Feelings

Black & Bevan (1992) showed how watching media violence leads to an increase in hostility 129 completed a hostility measure upon entering or leaving a violent or non-violent movie Prior to viewing movie: people attending an action movie already scored higher on hostility than those attending a dram (predisposition) Following viewing: individuals leaving action movie had even higher levels than when entering Drama still low A predisposition and an increase

Primates and sharing

Bonobos (but not chimps) choose to share food rather than dine alone

History of attachment

Bowlby (1951): "Mother love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and protein for physical health" Ainsworth (1973): "an affectional tie that one person or animal forms with another" Shown through infant trying to stay close and tested with "Strange Situation" around 12-18 months

Biological origins of sex differences

Boys weigh 5% more than girls at birth, take longer to be born (100 minute average for 1st) and are slightly more active and irritable NO DIFFERENCES: perception, motor milestones e.g walking Most pronounced differences: play behaviours, toy choice, playmate preference, rough and tumble

Siblings

Boys with older brothers and girls older sisters were more sex-typed than singletons Least sex-typed were children with other-sex siblings

Full occlusion: violation of expectation

Bridge stopped by box, with a possible and impossible event. Infants 3.5 -4.5 months look longer when drawbridge stops at 112 degrees with nothing behind it or when it keeps going with the box there Ramp task Carrot TaskR\

Kellman & Spelke (1983): Partial Occlusion

Broken rod vs intact rod, two halves moving together or separately whilst partially occluded by block. Babies as young as 4 months looked longer at the broken rod on the first trial. They can fill in part of an object, which disputes Piaget

Participating in violent video game play is more harmful than just watching violence

Calvert & Tan (1994) Participants: 36 college students Baseline hostility and physiological measures taken and also after Randomly assigned to either play a virtual reality game or observe participants playing. Controls performed the same motions that are used when playing the game Participants heart rates increased in virtual reality game but not in control Aggressive thoughts increased more for those who played than those who watched Men reported a greater increase in hostile feelings than women after playing

Strengths at the behavioural level

Can do tasks that do not require social understanding quickly and correctly

Primates and social knowledge

Can predict behaviour of conspecifics based on past experience or emotional displays Develop social strategies to influence others (e.g grooming)

Concern 4: Violence

Cartoon violence = 25 times/hour Prime time Tv = 5 to 6 time/hour Desensitised to effects, will be more passive in real life as victims and bystanders

Knowledge

Cause development instead of being the result of it. Encoding, strategies, etc

William's Syndrome

Caused by absence of one copy of about 20 genes on chromosome 7 Results in moderate mental retardation, poor spatial skills, but relatively good at language production and processing of faces Behavioural problems, incredibly sociable and empathetic Hypersocial, no fear of strangers

Vygotsky

Central focus on social influence, especially more a more advanced partner Zone of proximal development: Distance between independent problem solving ability and ability to solve problems with help of other. Only interactions that occur within this zone will lead to cognitive change Children participate in activity slightly beyond their current competence and are assisted by more skilled peers and adults

Brain areas thought to be involved in autism

Cerebellum, limbic system, amygdala, hippocampus(at least 100 genes thought to be involved)

Violation of expectation paradigm

Challenges Piaget Compares amount of looking at a possible event to an impossible event (longer looking suggesting surprise/violation of expectation)

CHAT and diagnosis

Checklist for Autism in Toddlers Three key markers of social understanding - Protodeclarative pointing - Pretend play - Gaze monitoring Supposedly, all three are needed for a full diagnosis, although failing one or two will lead to a dysfunction on the spectrum

Hostile aggression

Child intends to harm another person Overt: verbal (direct insults) physical (violence) Increases over the school years

Instrumental aggression

Child wants object, privilege, or space Pushes, shouts at, or attacks a person who is in the way Aggression as a way to directly remove obstacles and reach goals Declines as children learn to control their behaviour (usually until about 12)

Evidence for VIM in normal development

Children aged 4 years and 7 months Changed their behaviour when faced with other child's sad expression Terminated demands for object if original possessor displayed a sad facial expression when trying to defend Supports VIM being important for moral behaviour

Case's theory of Cognitive Development

Children are unable to attend to and process all the relevant information for a task due to limits in working memory = limits in processing capacity Working memory includes operating space and storage space

Recent additions to Vygotsky

Children as apprentices, emphasis on children being active in efforts to learn by observing and participating with peers and more skilled others. notable interest in older children Guided participation: what happens in zone of p.d. Help within the ZPD now known as "scaffolding"

Smacking (Taylor et al., 2010)

Children assessed ages 3-5 - Spanking (more than twice in a month at 3 years) = child more aggressive at age 5 after controlling for child's aggression at age 3, maternal child physical maltreatment, neglect, depression etc. - After controlling for these, mothers who smacked children more than 2 times a month were 1.49 times as likely to have a child with higher aggression at age 5

Theory 4: the World as a Violent Place

Children exposed to violent media - See the world as more frightening - Are less trusting of others - More likely to interpret others' actions as hostile - More likely to retaliate with aggression - More likely to carry a weapon as they fear being a victim

Consequences of authoritarian parenting

Children have poorer self-reliance and self-esteem, may be anxious, withdrawn, angry and defiant. They lack moral explanation for why they shouldn't do something

Authoritarian parenting

Children more likely to - Be unhealthy eaters - Be obese (high pressure to eat good food has opposite effect) - Be insecurely attached - Be overtly aggressive - Engage in relational aggression - Have worse coping, smoke, and greater anxiety in adolescence

Romanian orphanages

Children neglected and abused after communist leader banned contraception and abortion. PET scans showed a lack of synapses and useful connections at age 9.5 years, especially in frontal cortex and some medial and lateral aspects of parietal/temporal lobe. Early experiences influence the architecture of the brain and extent of adult capacities

Consequences of uninvolved parenting

Children perform poorly at school, greater deviance, poor social competence and self-esteem

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC)

Children should be protected "from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation" The NZ Government undertook a review of section 59 in December 2005 2007: Green party sponsored a new bill which made it illegal to smack children

Downside to developed ToM

Children who pass False Belief earlier are more sensitive to teacher criticism Can also be "sophisticated" bullies

Concern 2: Wasted time

Children who watch lots of TV tend to be lower achievers as it competes with homework Less social communication Less creative play (which leads to cognitive gain) Obesity

The Autism Spectrum: old system of classification

Children with autism can be more or less capable A lot of diversity at the end of the spectrum, harder to diagnose (high functioning)

Meta-analysis of attachment studies (Schneider et al., 2001)

Children with secure attachments tend to have better relations with peers, higher quality friendships at later age - secure attachment promotes trust and confidence, perhaps because mother responds predictably and appropriately

Gender segregation

Children's gender segregated play during preschool and primary school (3-11 years) Jacklin and Maccoby (1978): 46 pairs of unacquainted children, 33 months old Dressed gender neutral Twice as much social behaviour toward same-sex partners as toward other-sex partners --> even before 3 they will show same-sex preference Even 1 year olds look more at same-sex peers. By 1 they can also identify that girls and boys walk differently (other visual cues besides appearance)

Prevalence rates of physically punishing children

Chile: 57-80% of parents use physical punishment Egypt: over 33% discipline by beating India: 86-91% Korea: 97% Romania: 84% UK: 75% of parents with children under 1 year; 26-35% of parents admit using physical punishment at least weekly USA: 74-89% estimate; 94% of parents of 3-to-4 year olds

Who passes the mirror test?

Chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, elephants Maybe magpies

Civic engagement

Closely related to wellbeing About 50% of young people intend to vote, about 40% intend to volunteer

Ahmed and Ruffman (1998): A not B

Compared looking time vs reaching - Search: correct or incorrect (error) - Non-search: possible (object retrieved from B) or impossible (object retrieved from A) In the nonsearch tasks, a toy was hidden in A, moved to B, and retrieved after a delay from either A (impossible) or B (possible). Results showed significantly longer looking times at impossible events, indicating some memory for where the object was hidden and an expectation of where it should be found. This effect occurred at delays at which infants made the A not B error when searching, and at a longer delay of 15 s. The results showed clearly that infants have some memory for the object's location, even at delays at which they search at the incorrect location. At 6 seconds delay, 16 infants failed search task but passed non-search task (non-search is easier)

What were the findings of the Dunedin Iodine Supplement Enrichment study?

Compared to controls, when children were given iodine supplements and test scores were compared from a baseline to 28 weeks later, the enrichment group improved significantly on picture concepts and matrix reasoning

Adoption studies

Comparing children adopted in first year to those spending 3 or 4 years in an orphanage Deficits in IQ, language, social skills and mental health By age 8 differences are gone, except for emotional and behaviour problems 'Enrichment' may be overcome these problems, except in extreme circumstances (Romanian orphanages)

Adolescent brain

Continues to develop until 22-25 years of age Areas of greatest development are the prefrontal cortex, corpus callosum, cerebellum Fewer but faster neural connections

Meaningless sounds

Controls = recalled patterned sounds better than random Autism = no difference No benefit from patterns because they do not see the whole

Ruffman et al (2005): Is searching is an A-not-B task based on beliefs about object location? Expt 2.

Could the diligent searching be caused by inhibition/attention rather than a belief? AAB-on-top trial has the ball on top of A twice, then hidden in B AAB-inside trial has ball inside A twice, then inside B

Parent training can have long-term effects

Cowan and Cowan (2001): 16-week discussion group on effective parenting (of 5 y/o). Positive effects in 6-year follow-up (school adjustment and academic achievement)

Synaptic density

Curvilinear trend. More synapses at age 6 than at age 14 due to pruning. Connections elaborate themselves through interaction with the world.

Autism spectrum: DSM-IV

DSM-IV: range from mild to severe Autism Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS): Child displays a certain number and severity of autistic traits, but examiner doesn't know where to place child or wishes to avoid stigma Asperger Syndrome: high functioning, high IQ, good language, lacks social skills

DSM-V classification

DSM-V (2013) Autism Spectrum Disorder - Share the triad of symptoms: qualitative impairments in 1. social interaction 2. communication and 3. imagination

Vision Development: Depth Perception

Different cues used to perceive depth Infants use most cues by 6 to 7 months Hearing, taste, smell well developed at birth, vision develops more slowly

Neisser (1967)

Different types of sensory memory - Iconic = visual - Echoic = auditory - Haptic = tactile

Piaget's theory of development

Discontinuous, with 4 discrete stages

Basal ganglia regulates what emotions?

Disgust Relatively spared with age

Wealth in NZ

Disposable income has increased over the years Wealth in NZ has accumulated at a slower rate than other countries -slightly below the OECD average Disposable income is higher for males than females, and peaks around 50-60 y/o House pricing index steadily increasing - disposable income insufficient. NZ very high house price: income ratio

Arguments against a theory of mind in primates

Do not point to objects to share attention Do not hold up objects for others to see and share Do not actively give up or offer objects to other individuals Do not teach one another Engage in simple cooperation that doesn't require deeper understanding of others

Problems of ToM account of autism

Doesn't cope well with non-triad features (from islets of ability onwards - restricted interests and desire for sameness may be explained) 20% do still pass false belief However, will fail harder (second-order) ToM tasks May also be simply "solving" the problems through mental arithmetic - learn how to respond, not why

What are the implications of processing speed declining as age increases (through adolescence)?

Domain specific theory suggests that strategies and knowledge develop at different rates in different domains, and changes in processing speed should not be consistent across domains. The alternative is global (across-domain, or domain general) change in processing speed

Illusions

Don't succumb to Titchener in 2D as they can automatically disembed central circles and process the middle circle without referencing the others This is eliminated in 3D condition Also very good on the embedded figures test and better at block designs that were not pre-segmented = already see the pictures in constituent parts

Early signs of ToM in children: 1 1/2 to 3 years

Early desire: Pass broccoli task around 18 months Desire-happiness link: if someone gets what they wanted, or vice versa how do they feel? Older two-year-olds recognise desire-emotion link Desire-action link: Older two-year olds recognise how desire shapes action

Dogs and gesturing to food

Easy (pass even on first 15 trials) = pointing, bowing, nodding Medium = head turning Hard = glancing

Murderers vs laypersons

Elderly particularly bad on faces, judge high danger faces to be less so

Matching task

Emotion to face, or non-emotion to action Elderly perform worse on emotion matching, no difference in non-emotion

Seigler

Emphasies the importance of strategies; how children acquire new ones and how existing ones change Cognitive development = increasingly sophisticated problem solving strategies and more knowledge, improved encoding of relevant info

Information processing theories of Cognitive Development

Encompasses many different theories, development is continuous

Trickle-Down Politics

Enforced by Robert Muldoon in 1975- 1984 When Labour in power, they implement social assistance/ welfare programs. National tends to cut welfare benefits John Key: - Cut welfare benefits and reduce income tax for the rich so they'll sped more money

Father and grandfather occupation

Engineers most highly correlated with diagnosis No influence maternally

DTI studies of autistic brains

Evidence of white matter compromise across virtually all major fibre tracts of the brain Wired differently - lack consensus on how

Maternal sensitivity (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al., 2003)

Examined 70 parent intervention studies providing access to community services, information (how to touch baby etc.) - Interventions enhanced a) sensitive parenting and b) attachment security - interventions that enhanced parental sensitivity most, also enhanced infant security most. This suggests that parent sensitivity is one of the causes of more secure attachment

How experience affects brain development: Strabismus

Example 1: Correction for strabismus (crossed eyes) must occur before age 6, so that synapses linking the less-favoured eye to the brain will remain. It is caused by an initial overproduction of synapses, the pruning of which through experience results in an efficient brain

Chi (1978): knowledge

Experienced child chess players vs. inexperienced adults Tested digit span and memory for chess positions --> Children performed better on the chess task despite being worse on the words (STM). Knowledge allows them to group chess pieces into larger chunks

Stability of aggression

Fairly stable from middle-childhood onward Those high in aggression are more likely to remain high in aggression later in life Those turning to aggression and delinquency later in childhood are less likely to continue after adolescence (compared to those beginning much earlier) 0.8 correlation between childhood aggression and criminal convictions for men. 0.45 for females

"Fallon's own brain"

Fallon has the "warrior gene" (MAO-O), a low activity variant of the monamise oxidase A resulting in reduced neurotransmitters such as serotonin Linked to increased violence Interacts with environment, can result in psychopathy in terrible conditions

Genetic link

Fathers of autistic children faster in block design and embedded figure, less susceptible to illusions No difference for mothers, further evidence of paternal link = there is a broader phenotype of autism amongst relatives of individuals with autism including behaviours and cognitive style

ToM deficit in psychopaths: difficulty identifying...

Fear and sadness (but NOT other emotions) Moral emotions such as guilt and sympathy Moral versus conventional distinctions for adults and children (developmental disorder)

Gender in the media

Female characters: emotional, passive, tender, supporting roles Males: aggressive competitive, argumentative Of 132 characters across 82 stories, 54% were male, 46% were female

Parents interaction with children

Fiese and Skillman (2000): Parents tell their 4-year-olds a story about the parent growing up - Fathers told more stories with autonomy themes (individual acting alone) than mothers - Sons heard more stories with autonomy themes than daughters - Traditional parents told more achievement themes to sons - Non-traditional parents told stories with achievement themes to daughters

Universality of attachment

Findings are very similar for security across countries and cultures: about 2/3 of attachment bonds are secure across the board There is more variation within the cultures than between them Relatively minor cultural differences e.g Japanese infants are never left alone, so find the Strange Situation very distressing

Goats and gaze following

Followed in 60% of trials

Development of Frontal Lobes

Forntal lobes integrate information, has a limited capacity system, and rich reciprocal connections with lower brain and cortex (creating capacity for consciousness) Development... - is protracted - its the last to mature and first to deteriorate - Spurt between birth and 2 years - Smaller spurt 4 to 7 years - Slow growth til adulthood

Gershoff (2002) meta-analysis of operationalisations of corporal punishment

Found that corporal punishment caused a significant increase or decrease on factors such as aggression, antisocial behaviour, mental health, quality of parent-child relationship etc. Only things that were not significant were immediate compliance and criminal/antisocial behaviour Wholly detrimental to the individual. Many more bad than good effects

Non-Triad features

Frequently presented BUT not diagnostic - Restricted interests - Desire for sameness - Islets of ability (uneven IQ) - Idiot savant abilities - Excellent rote memory - Preoccupation with parts

Damage to frontal lobes: working memory

Full impact may take years to reveal little info on how age of onset, locus of damage affect outcome. Can't conclude frontal lobe issues based on memory deficits at a very young age. By adulthood, you can

Perceptual representations

Fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex

Effects of trickle-down politics

GINI coefficient maps inequality between rich and poor Income gap has increased over time. NZ has experienced the most deleterious force of income gap: depressed economy

ToM account supported by...

General (non-verbal) deficits: Tend not to look to others' faces to share attention Tend not to follow gaze Tend not to engage in proto-declarative pointing Look less at people and more at objects Lack of social referencing

Executive functions

General abilities which underlie performance on all cognitive tasks, including abilities which develop with age such as planning, monitoring one's progress, working memory and speed of processing, the ability to delay (inhibit) responding and to initiate behaviour, and shift between activities flexibly Assessed through neuropsychological assessment Mediated by the frontal lobes (40% of adult human brain)

The role of Biology: Testosterone

Geschwind & Galaburda (1985): fetal testosterone compromises development of left hemisphere and facilitates the right (maths, music, spatial). Leads to more left-handedness Fetal testes produce large amounts of testosterone from week 8 in utero Male foetuses typically produce more than 2.5 the levels of testosterone of females. The mother can also pass androgens whilst in the womb e.g if under stress Testosterone exposure when the womb affects 2D:4D ratio (fingers) - more testosterone decreases the ratio

Do domestic goats follow human gaze

Gesturing to food bucker Touching = 2/3 above chance Pointing = 1/3 above chance No effect for gazing Picking up on human cues to an extent

Are there gender differences in sociability?

Girls more socially-oriented and boys more oriented to physical systems? Evidence 1: 1 day old boys look more at a mobile while girls look at experimenter Problems: experimenter a women, most infants don't fit the pattern Evidence 2: 12 month old girls make more eye contact with experimenter than boys Problem: by 12 months, they have been differentially rewarded for social interest

Biological evidence

Girls with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), resulting in high prenatal androgen levels and greater masculinisation Boys with CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity) who have ambiguous external genitalia Daughters of mothers with high levels of testosterone during pregnancy - Most significant differnce is the masculinity of play between control and CAH females

ToM in children: 4 year olds

Go from desire reasoning to belief-desire reasoning (that people can act according to their beliefs) Acquire a representational understanding of mind - If the mind represents the world, it can be wrong This shift in understanding is shown by false belief task

Summary of dogs

Good at picking up on human gestures Show signs of empathy (emotional contagion)! But there are limits: may not clearly distinguish self vs. other So: might be wired up to respond to an infants cries, yet not understand the infants state of sadness as distinct from their own state (e.g. baby sad, me not sad) Without language, these distinctions might never be clear

White vs Grey matter

Grey: reductions from 20s in linear fashion White: increases until 40s or 50s, then decreases - Declines in fear recognition between 20s and 40s correlated with medial frontal grey matter loss - Grey matter loss alone may lead to worse emotion recognition Hypothesis: aging --> brain volume loss --> less activation --> worse emotion recognition

Bobo doll study

Group 1: watches the aggressive adult video Group 2: watches this, then another adult call aggressor a bully Group 2 are subsequently more passive Boys particularly likely to imitate aggressive models, but girls will imitate when model is a girl, or when the model is rewarded

Disrupted family processes

H1 - intact homes with high conflict are worse than homes of divorced families H2 - improvement over time as conflict diminishes H3 - outcomes should be related to level of post-divorce conflict H4 - parenting style changes as a function of divorce

Economic disadvantage: the evidence

H1 - partial support: controlling for income reduces negative effects H2 - mixed support: some children show worse signs after custodial parent remarries; some support for boys. Depends on quality of the new marriage H3: some support, but may be indicative of a particularly keen father or maternal issues

Family composition: the evidence

H1: not supported. Intact > Death > Divorce H2: not supported. Outcome of divorce is not different than step families H3: mixed support. 6 studies say it does predict outcomes, 6 show no difference, and 3 show that its worse - If the child is getting sufficient support from one parent, it isn't essential to have contact with the other

Disrupted family processes: other evidence

H2 - is there improvement with time, as conflict diminishes? Yes, 2 years post-divorce, outcomes are more positive H3 - are outcomes related to level of post-divorce conflict? Yes, divorce isn't bad, conflict is H4 - parenting styles change as a consequence of divorce - Evidence that parents are less likely to monitor kids, less authoritative, and display inconsistent parenting (but not relative to conflicted intact family)

Subordinate and dominant experiments - subordinate released slightly before dominant

Half-way to location before dominant enters - committing itself based on what dominant can see Committed to a location 77% of trials, 73% of these were for the hidden location Dominant strategy - visible then hidden at leisure

Humans ascribing ToM

Hard to not ascribe because we have our own ToM Have to set aside our own ToM to come up with another explanation

Why do Psychopaths re-offend: Less fear of punishment?

Hare (1965): Group 1: High score on Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale of the MMPI Group 2: low score Galvanic skin response (GSR) measurements on right hand as measurement of fear Shock electrodes on left Shown numbers 1-12, told shock given at number 8 5 presentations of series Results: groups equal on mean resting skin conductance and intensity of shocks GSR increase greater for the low Pd group Pd score indicative of arousal GSR indicative of fear arousal Psychopathic individuals react later and to a lesser degree to impending punishment than non-psychopaths

Ancillary deficits

Have full understanding of OP, other things interfere Example: means-end reasoning - infant knows the object is still there but has to remove occluder to get at hidden object --> information processing limitations mean they cannot work out how to remove the occluder to get the object

Poverty (2013)

Having < 60% of the median income after housing costs 1 in 4 children (doubled from 1984 to 2014) 1 in 6 living without basic necessities (missing meals, no bed, doctor) Hospital admissions increasing for children in poverty: infectious diseases, respiratory infection from damp conditions

Types of wellbeing

Hedonic wellbeing: happiness that comes from experiencing lots of positive emotions Eudaimonic wellbeing: our sense of purpose and direction, involvement with something bigger than ourselves

Subordinate and dominant experiments - subordinates strategic behaviour in all trials

Hidden location, hesitate until dominants back is turned Or rush over and greet dominant to delay them from exploring then wait until back is turned

Morrison and Coiro (1999): conflict

High conflict: remaining married leads to slightly worse child outcomes Low conflict: getting divorced leads to slightly worse child outcomes Conflict is the predictor

World bank study (2002)

Higher inequality correlated to higher robbery, murder rates

Potential environmental causes

Higher levels of toxic metals (lead, tin, thallium, tungsten, cadmium, mercury) in red blood cells of children with autism --> these impair brain function

Relatives of autistics

Higher rates of social and communication deficits and stereotyped behaviours found in relatives of children with autism compared to those with Down Syndrome Among families with an autistic child, 64% have a first degree relative with major depressive disorder, 39% with social phobia --> in most cases, disorders present before birth of child with autism Control families (other disabilities): 19% depression, 5% social phobia

Studies of primate understanding of gaze - begging

Hold out hand to one of two adults - one has their eyes covered by either a blindfold, a bucket, or hands, or has their back turned Should beg to the one that can see Only back turned produced success above chance

Blair (1995): Violence Inhibition Mechanism (VIM)

Human distress cues involve displays of fear and sadness (and pain) in response to aggression Distress cues activate VIM Cues lead to arousal, which leads to withdrawal/inhibition of behaviour and is cognitively interpreted as guilt Negative effect of witnessing our victim's resulting fear acts as an aversive stimulus

Moliter & Hirsch (1994): desensitisation

Hypothesised that viewing violence would lead to a greater tolerance of violence Used 42 9- and 10- year-old-children, who watched either Olympics or Karate Kid Then asked to help research assistant by watching some younger children while they stepped out and told to get researcher if anything happened Pre-recorded children appear to engage in conflict to the point of physical violence, timed how long participant takes to seek help Those who watched violent show took longer

Blindness IQ and overlap with autism

IQ more than 70 = some overlap with children with autism in clinical features IQ less than 70 = substantial overlap in clinical features

Psychopathy and brain differences

Impairments in psychopathic subjects may reflect early dysfunction in the amygdala (temporal lobe) where emotional expression of fear and sadness are processed Psychopathic killers' brains experience less activity in OFC

ToM: Prior to 4

Implicit insight: as young as 2 years and 11 months, in false belief task, will often look at the "correct" location (e.g the right answer), but will verbally give an incorrect response

Dogs and food instructions

In - Forbid: Owner says "Dont take it", stays and watches In - Take: Owner says "Take it", stays and watches Out - Forbid: Owner says "Dont take it", leaves Out - Take: Owner says "Take it", leaves If forbidden, will only take if owner leaves. Sensitive to what the owner can see

Based on Case's Theory of Cognitive Development, how is WM made more efficient?

In order to be more efficient the proportion taken up by operating space must be reduced. e.g. If Total Processing Space = 100 Operating space = 60 Storage = 40 A more efficient WM would look like: Operating space = 40 Storage = 60

Imitation

In western cultures, parents teach directly. In developing cultures, parents model and kids imitate

Synaptic pruning

Incredible rate during the second decade of life, estimated 33 synapses eliminated every second in cerebral cortex

Deficits at the behavioural level

Indifference Echolalic - copying words (in a parrot-like fashion) No eye contact Lack of creative/pretend play No play with others Incessant talk

Model of high aggression

Individual differences (e.g cognitive, temperament) - often is difficult temperament from early on, intense negative emotions, attention-demanding, lack of control, high activity level Family processes (e.g conflict, discipline) - lax, inconsistent, or coercive discipline Social-cognitive deficits and distortions: interpret world through an aggressive lens, perceiving aggression in others Commitment to a deviant peer group

What sort of parenting helps kids?

Induction methods that include explanation and child involvement in setting goals and consequences Time out, removal of reinforcers Ignoring negative behaviours Taking responsibility for actions Reasonable expectations

"Reach in the Dark" task

Infant views object, looks away when the light goes out. Then reaches to the object's previous location in the dark. - Some 5-month-olds searched longer at the correct location (5/13 showed correct pattern) - 6-7 months nailed it Infants fail standard reaching task due to ancillary deficits from means-end demand: must remove container to get object. This is removed in the reach in the dark task --> Means-end overwhelms infants' fragile working memory/reasoning/executive functions

Explaining Ahmed and Ruffman: Ancillary deficit - inhibition

Infants know they are searching incorrectly but can't stop search Reach requires inhibition of previous action, looking time does not However, inhibition cannot explain other results and therefore is not a generally correct explanation (e.g Horobin and Acredelo distant vs near containers)

Expt 1. results

Infants who perseverated at A on the B trial of AAB continued to search diligently at A, to the same extent as on an AAA trial. Note that not all children searched at A on the AAB trial, but those who did did not spend much time at B. = If the child makes the A-not-B error on AAB trial they will continue to search at A If they search correctly in B, they will continue to search diligently at B A-not-B errors based on belief that object is in B

Early signs of ToM in Children : Newborns

Innate basis for learning about mind, look more at a complete face on stimuli and more at open than closed eyes Emotional contagion: babies cry when others cry, they "catch" the emotion. Very basic empathy

Types of aggression (two main)

Instrumental Hostile: overt/direct (verbal, physical) or relational

Older adult (60+) test performance

Intact crystallised IQ: verbal ability Lower fluid IQ (e.g Ravens progressive matrices)

Why does an infant not pass invisible displacement task?

Invisible displacement involves two skills a) object permanence b) inferential ability and/or understanding of pastness Object is not in hand --> must think where the object had been in the past (in hand under cloth) and make the inference that its still there This differs from the typical OP task, where they only have to consider where the object is now

Scaffolding

Involves building bridges from current level of understanding to new level through structuring children's participation in activities and providing children with more responsibility for task with time Example of early predisposition and parental sensitivity: social referencing (visual cliff). Look to mother for whether safe to cross a bridge

Early signs of ToM in children: 12 to 18 months

Joint attention: children may start to engage with the attention of others. Are they understanding the mental state of attention or just following gaze?

Psychopathy in children

Juvenile delinquents show early signs of psychopathy (lying, bullying, cruelty to animals etc.) Callous, unempathetic behaviours most salient, continue across the lifespan --> delinquency is an indirect measure of psychopathy Now have PSD (Psychopathy Screening Device)

Marital conflict and child outcomes

Kelly 2000. Parental conflict leads to conduct disorder, conflict with authority figures,, depression, academic struggles, anxiety, insecure attachment, reduction in parental acceptance These are the same outcomes as for divorce; these outcomes are present prior to divorce

Encoding

Knowing what features of a task are important, or knowing what part of experimental instructions are crucial when completing a task

Autistic brain

LBW babies who have enlarged ventricles (indicative of reduced white matter, detected through ultrasound) are at risk --> subsequent rapid growth of white and grey matter in first two years, leading to higher levels of grey and white matter in autism in 2- to 4-year-olds --> subsequent period of lower growth in white matter between 2 and 12 (autism = 10% growth, typical = 59% growth) Impaired neural communication - connectivity of anterior portion of corpus callosum Autistic children interact less with the world, a key facilitator of brain growth

Short-term memory

Lasts 15-30 seconds (can be increased through rehearsal) 3 to 7 units (chunks), giving a bottleneck Rapid retrieval Improves with age (children perform more poorly on digit span) Measure: digit span recall

Consequences of permissive parenting

Less expectation so poorer school performance, greater deviance and difficulties with impulse control (school is best for developing executive functioning). Good social competence, self-confidence

Emotional contagion in Dog and Human

Listen to crying, babbling or white noise, take cortisol at baseline and post-stimulus Cortisol linked not only to stress, but also empathy White noise aversive, but crying has the highest cortisol due to empathy. In both humans and dogs, the only significant difference between baseline and post-stimulus cortisol was crying

Williams syndrome explaining scenes

Longer and more complex narratives with more expressive detail, as well as more vocal affective prosody and evaluative devices than Down's Syndrome

Selective TV viewing

Longitudinal study of low/moderate income children - TV viewing history collected from diaries - Tested annually on reading, math, vocab & school readiness Viewing informative programs = better on all measres Viewing of general audience programs decreased performance Bidirectional relation: Children with better abilities choose better programs later

Autism and social situations

Look to mouths more than eyes Differences in amygdala activation and volume

Lemish (1997): imitation

Looked at children's modeling of WWF wrestling Over half the principals who responded reported that WWF-type fighting had created problems in their schools Children had recreated specific wrestling matches that had aired Almost half reported that it had caused injuries - 1/4 broken bones, loss of consciousness and concussion Kids lack understanding of false nature of WWF

Partial Knowledge: Implicit vs explicit

Looking may suggest implicit knowledge, whilst reaching is an explicit, conscious awareness

Explaining Ahmed and Ruffam: Ancillary Deficit - Integration of Information

Looking time = where the object is Reaching = where and what the object is - is it desirable? - Infant will only reach if desirable - A problem with processing information?

Importance of Environment for Adolescent Development

MRI and fMRI studies have shown that exposure to harsh and unpredictable childhood conditions e.g neglect is associated with greater volume and reactivity of the amygdala, a portion of the brain that is responsible for vigilance and emotional responsiveness to threat Mackey et al revealed that young adults enrolled in Law School Admissions Test course showed strengthening networks in networks of the brain implicated in high-level reasoning

Score on all emotion items - TIL HERE

Majority (71%) of elderly score in the same category as the lower quartile of young adults

Horobin and Acredelo (1986): distant vs. near containers

Make a lot of A not B errors when the two containers are close together or make mistake at intervening locations if there are extra containers clustered in close. Make fewer mistakes when A and B are physically far apart. This negates the argument the problem being inhibition

Babies from Romanian Orphanages

Many were severely delayed, some couldn't sit up by age 2, some silent because cries were never responded to. Delay on every indicator including electrical brain measurements - Had been adopted into Canadian families for 10 years, made rapid gains in a short time Percentage with clinical or subclinical ADHD: Romanian orphans spending 8 months to 4 years in orphanage: 43% Canadian unadopted children: 5% Romanian orphans spending less than 4 months in orphanage: 16% Length of time in orphanage predictive of problems. Younger the adoption, the better Their IQ score at age 6 shows that the consequences are still present. Difficulties mostly recovered by age 10

Who lives in poverty?

Maori: 33% Pacific islanders: 25% European: 17%

Marital satisfaction (Shapiro et al., 2000)

Marital satisfaction declines in 67% of wives after the first child Without children, decline in 51% of wives Most importantly, the drop is drastic with children: average decline is -10.63 with children, vs decline of -1.12 with no children Doss et al., 2009: sudden deterioration in relationship after first child still present 8 years later. More gradual in childless couples

Maternal sensitivity (Braungart-Rieker et al., 2001)

Maternal sensitivity predicted secure attachment at 1 year But also, infant affect regulation (e.g crying) at 4 months was related to mother sensitivity at 4 months So maternal sensitivity and subsequent child attachment status were only partially due to infant temperament

Automatisation (Case's theory)

Means additional information can be processed ⇒ improves with experience and practise. Frees working memory space for other operations Therefore, development = a decrease in operating space, increase in functional storage space

Social learning theory

Mechanisms: Observation & imitation, reinforcement Agents: parents, teacher, other children, media

Norway Study: 1967 - 1976

Men in Norwegian armed forces IQ of younger children increased when older siblings died, as a function of each sibling's death (e.g bigger effect for 2 deaths than 1) Not simply birth order but also social order has an impact

Psychopathic sex offenders in treatment

Men who scored higher on psychopathy and did better in treatment were 3x as likely to re-offend, and 5x as likely to subsequently commit serious offences than non-psychopathic sex offenders ----> adult intervention is somewhat useless. Treatment is geared towards general criminals

Stroop Task

Mental vitality and flexibility Discordance between two cues --> must suppress automatic tendency to read the word Difficult for frontal lobe patients Measures inhibition - you have to inhibit or stop one response and say or do something else

Adolescent brain changes

Molecular, cellular, anatomical, functional Brain structure and function changes especially in regions associated with response inhibition, risk and reward,and emotion regulation. Increase in activity of neural circuits that use dopamine (reward) Changes in volume to the amygdala Changes to pre-frontal cortex Synaptic pruning of grey matter is significant Believed to foster the development of moral reasoning and altruistic tendencies

Genetic and environmental component

More common in males (3 or 4:1 ratio) 50 times more common in siblings (genetic implication) Incidence higher in monozygotic twins --> even when MZ twin doesn't have autism, tends to have persistent language and social impairments --> Autistic twin when discordant had more difficult birth 90% heritability: highest of all multi-factorial psychiatric disorders

Dogs and food instructions - not looking but still present

More likely to take when owner not looking, particularly when back is turned

Nature vs nurture?

Most European American 4-month-olds cry loudly within 5 sec. of injection Only half Japanese babies cry Less than half of European infants soothed 3/4 of Japanese and Chinese infants soothed - no longer crying after 90 secs

Causes of temperament

Most aspects of temperament are moderately stable, and most have a genetic component E.g activity level: Identical twins have concordance rate of .72, fraternal only .38 Negative affect is more influenced by heredity than other dimensions Temperament in childhood more influenced by heredity than temperament in infancy

Parental distress

Most severe in the first 2 years post-divorce Can influence the resources a parent, but it is also true of a parent who stays in an unsatisfactory relationship - not a good alternative

Aggression on Television

Most violent acts on TV go unpunished Victims are rarely shown experiencing any serious physical harm, often humorous Cartoons, intended for children, amongst the most violent Highest proportion of violence is shown on Saturday mornings, late afternoons and early evenings when most children watch TV

"Strange Situation" test

Mother and baby initially alone in room. Strange then enters an sits, talks with mum, plays with baby. Mother leaves, strangers sits in seat. Mother returns, stranger leaves - is the baby comforted by this? Mother leaves (baby alone), stranger returns. Mother returns, stranger leaves. Interested in what they find comforting and how distressed they are when mum leaves

Relation between parenting skills and non-maternal care

Mother sensitivity: the more hours children spent in non-maternal care, the less sensitive, engaged, and affectionate were mothers. What causes what? Maternal contacts may improve maternal psychological functioning and parenting skills Mothers who live in poverty, and who have infants in full-time care, interact more positively with children than mothers raising children at home or using lower quality nurseries

Importance of control questions in ToM

Must ensure failure is due to deficit in mental state understanding, not language or memory deficits

How do brains become bigger?

NOT because more neurons are made. Neurons grow larger and increase their connections (synaptogenesis = the growth of axonal and dendritic fibres) Glial cells: form myelin, outnumber neurons 9:1 (50:1) in adult brain

Child abuse prevalence

NZ has 3rd highest child death rate from childhood maltreatment of 26 OECD countries of children to age 14 UNICEF: NZ one of 5 countries to have exceptionally high levels of child poverty Maori children over-represented in poverty statistics and twice as likely as non-Maori to be abused or neglected

OECD maternal employment rate compared to female employment rates

NZ slightly less than OECD average looked at rates for <3 year olds, 3-5, and 6-14 years

TV

Nearly all homes have at least one TV set Typically on for about 7 per day Average child watches 24 hours a week

Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis

Neurogenesis: the manufacture of new neurons within the brain Neuroplasticity: changes in neural pathways due to changes in behaviour, environment, emotions, etc. Takes place into old age When a particular part of the brain is injured, it can be replaced - e.g stroke recovery

Subordinate and dominant experiments - is subordinates choice of hidden location due to thinking food is closer or more accessible?

No - 50/50 when no competition Having competitor present determines going to the hidden location

Danger task: faces and situations

No difference between young and elderly at discerning danger of situations Young adults better at discerning between low and high danger faces

Long-term memory

No limits on how much information can be stored or for how long

Pascual-Leone (1970): alternative view on capacity increase

Number of slots in working memory increases with age (total processing space gets larger with age)

Object Permanence: Nativism

OP is innate and selected for through evolution Task failure is due to ancillary deficits (developing executive functions) - Working memory -Inhibition - Attention

Damage to frontal lobes: social inappropriateness

Often most noticeable deficit People with extensive damage to frontal lobes develop a characteristic syndrome: disinhibition of behaviour, impulsive Does not consider social correctness or future consequences of actions Still, unlikely to engage serious crime, e.g premeditated murder, as they are impaired in making and carrying out long-term plans Punishment and reward acts less efficiently to change behaviour with frontal lobe damage

Full face vs. Eyes vs. Mouth

Old worse than young only on eyes and full faces, not mouths Young adults: forced to look at mouth resulted in worse recognition of anger, sadness, and fear, while eyes were better on all Older adults: Eyes did not improve their ability

Self-rating scales about negative feelings

Older adults and young HIV victims both more likely to suppress negative feelings

Recognition of emotion in videos and still photos - PAUSE IN FLASHCARDS

Older adults just slightly worse across both stimuli

Proportion correctly labelled in Mather & Knight Pop-Out study

Older adults performed worse when asked to actually label the emotion of the different face. Dissociation between their implicit and explicit abilities.

Age and emotion preferences: happy, neutral, or negative

Older adults spent longer looking at happy faces than neutral or negative, whereas younger gave equal attention to happy and negative

Detecting a cue of boredom vs interest

Older adults tend to be more verbose, which is correlated with decreased competence in life and greater loneliness. Linked to worsening inhibition

Meta-Analysis: Voices

Older adults worse at recognising happy, sad, and angry vocal expressions

Meta-Analysis: Faces

Older significantly worse at anger, sadness, fear, and (a to lesser extent) surprise, happiness But NOT disgust

Meta-Analysis: Bodies

Older worse on angry, sad and fearful body expressions

House family size and risk

On measures of economic, housing, health and social indicatros related to poor child outcomes, sole parents are over-represented in high risk group The bigger the household, the bigger the representation also

Expt. 2 results

On top: 33% search at A on B trial Inside: 65% search at A on B trial More likely to mess up the inside task, which is consistent with holding a belief. In the on-top task, baby never forms a belief that the object is inside A when it is not visible, as this is the first time it is invisible. In the inside task, hidden means it can be found in A. They also search diligently at their initial search location

ToM impairment: Do children with autism understand that seeing leads to knowing?

One doll lifts the box, the other actually looks in 9/12 Low IQ passed all trials 4/12 Autism passed Autism are NOT worse on ALL ToM tasks relative to low IQ children (e.g understanding desire-emotion), but they are worse on many

Shyness

One of the most durable and consistent traits. Shy men tend to date less and marry late, while shy women tend to stay home rather than work Extroverts obtain more highly paid management positions White American children: 25% consistently outgoing 10% consistently shy

Partial Occlusion

Only works if object moves, and both parts in the same direction Findings are contrary to Piaget's time scale, as 4 month olds don't look under cloth, yet can do this task Subsequent research has shown that newborns look more at the connected rod, therefore do not perceive as connected. This opposes the nativist position

Neurotransmitters

Optimal functioning follows Yerkes-Dodson law (inverted U) Serotonin, noradrenalin, and dopamine distributed throughout the brain including the emotion areas - decline with age

Gender and aggression

Overt aggression - Similar up to preschool - Verbal aggression similar in school years - By school, boys overt physical aggression is higher than that of girls - Girls relational aggression is higher - Boys more likely to display both types

Face looking - dog v 7mo human infant

Pairs of faces - happy, sad, angry Both look towards happy and angry faces , and away from sad faces

Conflict (Krischnakumar and Buehler, 2000)

Parent conflict leads to harsh discipline and reduction in parental acceptance of children Median effect size of -.62 (substantial) Similar effects for cross-sectional studies (single time point) and longitudinal studies, questionnaires and observations of conflict Effects stronger in married families than divorced ones (better off divorced in this instance)

Child characteristics also Influence parenting style

Parenting of identical twins is more similar than parenting of fraternal twins Children at genetic risk for antisocial behaviour elicit more negative parenting than those not at risk (adoption study)

Reconciling Searching and Looking

Partial knowledge: OP is developing, search tasks reveal a "fuller" understanding - Piaget would say fuller, whereas more recent theorists say it is "stronger"

Mather & Knight: Pop-Out Effect with anger

Participant shown either all the same faces, or with one different For both young and old, angry faces were process as "different" more quickly than sad or happy faces (although old slower on all measures, still showed this difference)

Dogs and food: Direct vs. indirect approach

Percentage indirect approaches: Eyes open > distracted > eyes closed > back turned

NZ attitudes towards physical punishment

Percentage who thought it was okay to discipline certain age groups: peaks at 6-10 years By ethnicity: highest for European, especially for younger children. 15-17 year olds highest for Pacific islanders Smacking most accepted (80%)

Biological influences in adolescence

Physical changes are controlled by the hypothalamus. Puberty dependent of heredity, gender (girls reach first), and nutrition. Age of menarche has decreased

Effect sizes of sex differences

Play is by far the highest difference between the two (along with height). Small differences on math, verbal, perceptual speed, 3d rotations

What if there are subsidies for the poor? NICHD study, 1997

Poor children - care received in home was poorer than other children - care received in child-care centres was equal quality to other children (benefit from non-maternal care, better quality than home) Children just above poverty line - received worse care in child-care centres than poor children did: no subsidies so nurseries poorer

Damage to frontal lobes: self-regulation

Poor monitoring of self and incoming info, little use of meta-memory strategies, goal setting, planning, self-initiating, self-correcting, inhibition of behaviour

Cognitive deficit leads to..

Poorer performance in all situations (ToM)

Intergenerational component to aggression

Power assertion techniques by parents are associated with low levels of considerate behaviour: highly coercive, harsh parenting Punitive parenting - Physically abused toddlers rarely show concern over other children's distress - They respond with fear, anger, and physical attacks If parents emphasised caring, individuals more likely to become a rescuer in WW2

Kail and Park processing study

Practice (3000+ trials) on a mental rotation task eliminated the difference between 11 years olds' and adults response time (consistent with Case: automatisation) Concluded that initial performance uses domain general mechanisms, while later performance uses task-specific mechanisms (stored response, greater automaticity)

Automisation

Practise makes the strategy automatic and thus more effective - the amount of attention required to do something (e.g leaning to drive)

Vision: Acuity

Preferential-looking technique shows that newborns focus best when objects are 20cm away. Acuity is adult-like by 6-8 months

What of less privileged children?

Preschool years are considered critical for later cognitive development Project headstart (1965): 20,000 children (3-5 y/o) from poor areas - averaged IQ gain of 5 points over year - IQ advantage fades - are "sleeper effects" - Primary school = higher achievers, more positive reports - 12 years = less likely to repeat a year/ be in special ed - adolescence = higher aspirations, achievement - adulthood = more in college, less likely to have criminal record or child - only antipoverty measure to survive funding cuts in 1980s America

Summary of primates

Primate social world is complex ⇒ deceive each other, have clear dominance hierarchies, have complicated and shifting alliances as means of maintaining or gaining in dominance hierarchy, are sensitive to recent interactions (whether positive or negative)! Act in ways to facilitate alliances or gain favour (e.g. meat) At the least, have a good understanding of others behaviour

Psychopathy in adults

Psychopathic tendencies can be assessed using the PCL-R. Risk-taking and need for new experience a common theme - Score of 30+ qualifies - Correlation between factors .5 - Need both behavioural and affective components ~ 25-40% of prison population ~ 1% of total population ~ identified in all cultures

Re-offending

Psychopaths 3x more likely to re-offend and 4x more likely to violently re-offend

Empirical support for lack of fear of punishment

Psychopaths don't learn laboratory maze task with punishment, yet learn easily when rewarded (~prison, a punishment, does not control behaviour)

When is nursery not good - when it is poor quality

Quality is determined by group size, caregiver/child ratio and caregiver qualifications Under poor quality care, children's cortisol levels are elevated (a marker of stress) There is a linear relationship between quality of care and income of parents: poor at most risk of poor nonmaternal care but they need good care the most

Brain weight across the lifespan

Reaches peak around 10 years old. Females tend to have a higher brain weight to body weight ratio

Memory strategies to overcome working memory limitations

Rehearsal: mental repetition. few 5 year olds but most 10 years olds will rehearse Elaboration: making associations between items to aid recall. Again better in older children

Exploration of environment deficits

Remain fixated on a single item or activity Practice strange actions like rocking or hand-flapping Sniff or lick toys Show no sensitivity to burns or bruises; engage in self-mutilation

Leaning in a mouse brain

Response to 1 hour of whisker tickling - Looked at neurons as well as AMPA receptors/dendrites which receive glutamate and speed processing - Lead to thicker neurons and new dendrites

Theory 2: desensitisation

Results in reduced arousal and emotional disturbance when witnessing violence May reduce guilt associated with behaving aggressively

Working memory limitations

Retrieval problems: may retrieve the wrong strategy for problem strategy even if it is known to them Storage limitations: whilst attending one part of the problem, may forget the other part

Amygdala regulates what emotions?

Sadness and fear Linear decline in volume, less activation to "negative" emotions with age

Occupation of family members

Science - more likely to have relatives with autism Arts - more likely to have major depressive disorder

ToM: after age 4

Second Order False Belief: "Where does Mary think that John thinks the ice-cream van is?" - Mary's belief about John's belief Eyes task: Ability to assess emotion based on eyes. This and strange stories task used on older children and adults ToM still linked with social competence in pre-adolescence

Long-term prognosis for attachment

Securely attached at 1 year: - Less negative and more positive emotion at 2 and 3 years - Better curiosity, cognitive, social skills at 3 years Insecurely attached at 1 year: - Boys aggressive at 4 years - Girls overly dependent (clingy) Differences still evident later

Early signs of ToM in children: around 18 months

Self recognition: By 16 to 24 months children begin to understand they are separate, develop self-concept. Essential for understanding of mental states Empathy: by 18 to 24 months children begin to actively assist others who are upset - if child only felt sad, could simply me emotional contagion - if child only tried to stop crying, could be learned response - Both suggests fuller understanding

Timing of myelination

Sensory --> motor --> frontal cortex. Myelination is not complete until late adolescence/early adulthood

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)

Sensory memory: lasts fraction of a second, rapid decay, 5-year-olds sensory memory as good as adults

Problem with Pascual-Leone

Short-term memory of adults with unfamiliar material is similar to children's. May be evidence for Case's theory. Familiar material means less operating space is needed and more storage space is available Unfamiliar material means more operating space is needed and less storage space is available

Autism deficits

Show regression, start developing a skill (fairly normal development until age 2) then stop - Communication - Social relationships - Exploration of Environment

Knowledge about gender roles develops early

Shown either a boy or a girl on monitor then two toy options. By 18 months, children will look at the stereotypically feminine or masculine toy after presentation of the respective genders

"Strange situation" test results

Shows 4 types of children: 1. Secure. Infant attempts to be close, leaves lap to play but looks back. Distressed but not traumatised when mum leaves 2. Insecure resistant: won't leave mother even when she's in room. Cry loudly when she leaves and not comforted when she returns 3. Insecure avoidant: little interaction with mother, no distress when leaves or attempt to re-establish contact when returns (cat) 4. Insecure disoriented: inconsistent Most babies will give the same response at 18 months as they did at 12 months. The majority are securely attached

Conclusions about shyness

Shyness has a genetic component (twin studies) Social shyness is one aspect of a more general shyness towards new experiences Environmental component: - Shyness more likely if have dominating older sibling - An extremely shy toddler has 50/50 chance of not being shy at age 7. Family encouragement of play with other children reduces shyness to an extent - Cultural impact: behavioural inhibition (shyness) is more accepted in Chinese than American Very few shy toddlers become extroverts at 7 years

ToM and blindness

Sight enables us to see and comprehend emotions, see and connect verbal and non-verbal attention to objects and ability to differentiate others' outwardly focused attitudes from one's own - all occur at then end of first year of life in normal infants (social referencing) - Missing these forms of communication may critically impair ToM understanding

School shooting fatalities and corporal punishment

Significantly more school shooting deaths in U.S states that allowed corporal punishment compared with those that did not (effect size of .44 - medium magnitude)

Chimpanzees and eye gaze

Similar to 18 month old humans Selected for --> detection of predators Direct eye gaze important in chimp society. Friendly social relations as well as aggression

Womens' Role: Education

Since 1970, now more women than men with bachelors degree. Since 1980, more women with MA degrees. Increasing doctoral and professional degrees - slightly more with PhD than men now.

World Happiness Report Results

Six key variables: real GDP per capita, life expectancy, perceived freedom, generosity, freedom from corruption, having someone to count on Highest countries: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden

Albert Bandura

Social Learning Theorist: personality is formed through what is learned socially, through observation and imitation

Machiavellian Hypothesis

Social exploitation determines success in primate societies Tap expertise, scrounge resources, learn from others Leads to primary advances in primate cognition (as against physical problem-solving, foraging, tool making etc)

Early signs of ToM in children: around 1 year

Social referencing (emotion understanding): using emotional signals of others to guide action, e.g visual cliff N.B: Can't determine if infant is attributing a mental state of fear to mother or just interpreting the mother's behaviour (facial expression) Pointing and gaze following (attention) Protoimperative: pointing to get mother to pick something up Protodeclarative: pointing with no apparent desire for an object - child is manipulating the attention of others and has some understanding that people can attend different things Alternative: child is manipulating behaviour of others

18. Psychopathy

Sociopath: a person whose antisocial tendencies are due primarily to poor socialisation Psychopath: antisocial behaviour results from a defect within themselves which makes them harder to socialise - Failure to develop conscience and empathic feelings - Indifferent to punishment

Cognitive differences

Spatial abilities - favours males (only across a few types) Language abilities - favours females, especially early in development

Myelination

Speeds transmission of information in the brain. Multiple sclerosis is the breakdown of myelin and causes blindness, paralysis, memory and speech impairments etc.

Enrichment: protein supplements

Stein et al. (2008). Birth - 2 years: children in Guatemala given "atole" (protein-rich) or "fresco" (sugar-sweetened beverage) Age 32: protein score higher on reading comprehension and tests of fluid IQ, independent of other factors such as years of schooling

Stranger and Seperation Anxiety

Stranger Anxiety: begins at 6 months, peaks at 10-14 months Separation anxiety: begins at 8 months, peaks at 14 months Social referencing: beginning 9 to 12 months - Infant won't play with toy robot if mother shows disgust (look to her for cues)

How experience affects brain development: emotional closeness (severely depressed mothers)

Stress elevates cortisol, which interferes with neural development Children who receive sensitive and nurturing care in their first year are less likely than other children to respond to minor stresses by producing cortisol (provides protection) A close parental bond protects children from rising cortisol, which can interfere with brain development

Economic disadvantage

Stress, reduced patience Changes in residence and schools (to poorer ones) Greater crimes H1 - effects should decrease when income is taken into account H2 - enhanced well-being if custodial mothers remarry H3 - children should be better off with dads

Adolescent Health Research Group

Students reported: 92% feeling okay, satisfied, or very happy with their life 76% have good emotional well-being 16% of young women reported clinically significant depressive symptoms 9% of young men reported clinically significant depressive symptoms 38% of young women and 23% of young men "depressed most of day for at least two weeks in a row in last 12 months" 85% trusted people in their neighbourhoods 54% felt safe in their neighbourhoods 40% did chores for their families 24% looked axer young siblings 45% were involved in a sports team 23% belonged to a church group 28% of students helped others in their community in the last 12 months.

Research of ToM in psychopaths

Subjects had to explain why story protagonist said what he did. Performed just as well, if not better, than controls Consistent with Autism research - Autistics show ToM deficits and physiological arousal to distress Psychopaths do not show this arousal

Subordinate and dominant experiments - released at same time

Subordinate gets more food in Inside-top and behind-outside conditions than when visible to both Could be using motion cues

Damage to frontal lobes: cognitive inflexibility

Synonymous with perseveration Includes impairments in reactive flexibility (cannot change "cognitive set" such as in the WCST) and spontaneous flexibility (number of responses that can be produced to a single question) - how many animals beginning with D can you name? - How many words can you think of that begin with F?

TV field studies (Eron and Colleagues)

Take measures of children's tv preference and rating of violence and cross-lag it to compare over time Being aggressive at age 9 does not cause viewing of TV violence at age 19, whereas TV violence at age 9 does potentially cause aggression at age 19 (0.31) Must control for a wide range of variables - 9% of aggression is accounted for by viewing habits at age 9 Therefore 91% is not accounted for by TV

Object Permanence: Piaget

Task failure is due to developing the ability for representation, which gradually develops through perceiving and acting on the environment Knowledge of world (gained from perceiving and acting on the world) is gradually internalised until it is free of perception (i.e re-presented --> representation) Errors (failure) in searching for a hidden object reveals deficits (limitations) in representing (object) --> OP learned

Domain General vs Domain Specific changes in processing speed (Kail)

Tasks: Choice reaction time, letter matching, mental rotation. Great consistency between adults' and childrens' response times over many tasks, which Kail saw as indicative of domain general changes in processing speed

Testing whether their understanding is real

Taught how to pass false belief tasks and examined whether this understanding had any positive effects on communication with others (conversational ability and use of mental state terms in speech) Results: even when taught how to reason about mental states they did not use it in their everyday interactions

The Pop-Out Effect

Testing whether people process a different face more quickly

Wisconsin Sorting Task

The ability to shift thinking in response to changing environment Errors: typical frontal lobe dysfunction performance - perseveration Extreme case of disconnection between intention and action

Physiology of the Frontal Lobes

The anterior (front) portion of the frontal lobe is called the prefrontal cortex. It is very important for the "higher cognitive functions" and the determination of personality: important for EF. The posterior (back) of the frontal lobe consists of the premotor and motor areas. Nerve cells that produce movement are located in the motor areas. The premotor areas serve to modify movements

Cognitive theories

The development of gender roles leads to emphasis on cognition (the extent to which one accepts gender "schemas" i.e roles) and knowledge (of schemas about gender)

How does the normativeness of physical discipline affect children's anxiety?

The effect of high use of physical discipline compared to low use of physical discipline on CBC anxiety (child behaviour checklist) is greater for low child (or mother) - reported normativeness than high reported normativeness. However, child aggression and anxiety is still high in countries where physical abuse is common

The theories differ in what way?

The emphasis placed on different mechanisms that undergo change with development: encoding, strategy formation, generalisation, automisation

All theories agree on?

The idea that the child has limitations to overcome. For example, young children fail to encode the appropriate information about a problem. Could encode a multiplication sign incorrectly, and add numbers instead, or lack appropriate strategies to solve.

How/why does processing speed increase?

The rate of propagation between neurons increases (due to amount of neurotransmitters, number of connections, strength of connections, myelination etc.)

Kail (information processing speed)

The time required to execute mental operations declines steadily during childhood and adolescence Due to more efficient strategies (seigler) and more elaborate knowledge, so stronger neural connections (Chi)

EF related to children's...

Theory of mind, ADHD, behaviour in school, anti-social behaviour, math ability, academic achievement, coordination, communication deficits, language, obesity Anterior PFC particularly important in problem solving tasks

Structure of the Information Processing System

Three memory stores: Sensory, short-term, and long-term memory

Conclusion of causes of autism

ToM hypothesis accounts well for triad of impairments Central coherence accounts for non-triad and spiky IQ profile/ islets of ability

Subordinate and dominant experiments - did the subordinate think the dominant wouldn't go to the hidden location because food is harder to get?

Tried transparent barriers No preferences for object behind barrier Same delay preference was significant for visible location

Ruffman et al (2005): Is searching is an A-not-B task based on beliefs about object location? Expt 1.

Two trials of object hidden in A, then it is either hidden in A again (AAA) or in B (AAB) in the third trial Object is hidden in a false bottom on the third trial, infant does not find it despite seeing which well the experimenter put it in. AAA condition should think that the object is really in A, as it always has been, and search diligently AAB condition - do infants search as diligently when the err on initial B trial search (search in A) as when correct on this (search in B) Diligent searching suggests a belief that the object is in that location.

Relational aggression

Type of hostile Social exclusion, rumour spreading, manipulating social relationships

Diagnosis of autism

Typically diagnosed between 2 and 5, sometimes older Language delay or lack of appropriate social development may cause parents or teachers to seek an evaluation Some children may have a period of normal development before the onset of symptoms and may even lose some earlier acquired skills, such as early words or social smiling

Causes of Pop-Out effect discontinuities in older adults

Unconscious route for anger detection = amygdala activated through superior colliculus and pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus Conscious route for anger detection = amygdala activated through the visual cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex Response time has a greater implicit component, while labelling has greater explicit, which is less spared with aging

Family composition

Under the assumption that anything other than 2 biological parents is sub-optimal and with a focus on father absence: H1: similar effects for divorce and parental death (which both result in only one parent) H2: fewer problems in step-parent families (two parents) H3: frequency and quality of contact with absent parent predicts outcomes

Object Permanence

Understanding that an object continues to exist in time and space when no longer perceiving it

ToM Impairment: do children with autism understand false belief?

Unexpected transfer task Autism: 20% pass Down's: 86% Normal: 85% BUT performed well on memory task. Problem is attributing belief to another person

Strategy formation

Using the encoded information and relevant previous knowledge to construct a strategy for dealing with the problem

False Belief Task

Very few 3 year olds understand, usually pass by 5 Having younger siblings doesn't improve performance, but having older siblings does

Tasks

Video, facial emotions, bodies (point light), bodies (context only), vocal expressions, matching task

Task demands in different paradigms

Violation of expectation (2.5 months): Low attention, partial knowledge, low means-end Reach in the dark (6 to 7 months): High attention, fuller knowledge, low means-end Search under occluder (8 months): High attention, fuller knowledge, higher means- end (must remove occluders)

Meta-Analyses of violent video games: Anderson and Bushman (2001)

Violent video games a) increase physiological arousal and aggression-related thoughts and feelings b) increase aggressive behaviour in children and young adults (true for both experimental and nonexperimental studies, and for male and females) c) decrease pro-social behaviour

Timing of cortex development

Visual cortex reaches peak synaptic density before the prefrontal cortex does. In the first year, there is major development in the motor and visual cortex, as well as the hippocampus. Brain development is non-linear (critical periods).

Blindness and false belief understanding for self and others

Visually impaired performed worse on self and other conditions than sighted

22. What happens to the brain as we age?

Volume reductions, particularly frontal (last to develop, first to deteriorate) and temporal areas Grey matter reduction begin in 20s (shrinkages of larger neurons) White matter reductions begin in 40s-50s Age 70 --> more white than grey matter loss

Spirit of Adventure

Voyage participants experienced significant increases in resilience from T1 to T2, while controls did not (some limitations with this) In study 2, resilience increased over the course of the voyage and maintained for 5 months following it - Resilience predicted by elevated social effectiveness, self-efficacy and less positive perceptions of weather - Model explained 37% of variance in increased resilience

WMS and parent separation task

WMS experience less negative affect than normal controls (frequency and intensity)

WMS and interactions

WMS look at adults to disambiguate actions, where autistic kids don't. Typical children more interested in toy WMS rate unknown faces as more approachable Rated as more sociable themselves than Down's or Autistic

Two dimensions of parenting style

Warmth: parent takes time to explain why, provides encouragement, involved in child's life Control: sets limits, monitors child's whereabouts

Human Social Genomics

We are realtively stable biological entities, we inherit DNA from our parents and it remains largely unchanged over our lifetimes HOWEVER -our molecular selves are not fixed. Gene expression can change as a function of physical and social environment For the genetic blueprint to affect us, genes must be expressed in the form of RNA Transcription of DNA to RNA is fundamentally regulated by intracellular proteins known as transcription factors Transcription factors can be controlled from within the cell, others in response to signals from outside

Neurotransmitters and emotion recognition

When older males are given oxytocin, their ability to recognise emotion improves

Explaining Ahmed and Ruffam: Ancillary Deficit - Attention

With reach, child must spontaneously attend to B With looking time, child's attention is drawn to B Attentional demands are less with looking time Attention also explains Horobin and Acredolo's findings

Amato and Keith (1991) Meta-analysis of children of divorce

Worse on all factors, including school achievement, conduct, social adjustment etc. Intact families: 10% at risk Divorced families: 20 to 25% at risk

Meta-Analysis: Matching Voices to Faces

Worse on all matching of expressions

Neurotransmitter agonist and antagonist

Young adults use drugs (e.g alcohol) that act as antagonists (reducing neurotransmitter levels) impair recognition of facial expressions of anger, fear, and sadness Propranolol (antagonist) also reduces activation in amygdala Hypothesis: Aging --> reduced neurotransmitters --> less activation --> worse emotion recognition

Physiological experience of emotion

Young and old presented with positive (humorous) and negative (sad) emotion film clips Young had higher heart rate for humorous than sad clips (termed as a high IBI during sad clips) Old showed no difference

Concern 3: Understanding TV

Young children find it hard to judge the reality of TV material Before age 4, children do not understand that human actors are real and cartoons are not By age 7, they understand that fictional characters don't retain their identity in real life Have difficulty with "flashbacks" and misordered sequences

Dwell time at eyes and mouth

Younger look to eyes more than to mouth, while older don't. Look more at mouth for every emotion, especially males

Positive youth development

Youth strengths + developmental assets = PYD Competence, confidence, character, connection, caring --> contribution

What constitutes good care?

a) High teacher:child ratio b) Trained staff c) Curriculum geared toward cognitive development rather than behavioural control organisation d) organisation of space that allows creative constructive play (which facilitates language development and social understanding)

Older siblings as facilitators of false belied understanding

a) assistance b) pretence C) talk (siblings tell children about their own internal states)

Evidence for social learning

a) females and males behave differently b) they are treated differently c) they receive encouragement to behave in gender-consistent manner and discouragement of the opposite Mums cuddle girls more, talk to them more, expect them to be sociable an emotional. This accentuates brain differences.

Share of national income going to richest one percent

around 10% in NZ. Some governments accentuate the differences in inequalities, which increases the need for early intervention programs. Unfortunately, a government that facilitates inequalities tend to cut funding for such programs.

When is nursery not good - frequent nursery changes

e.g constant new people working in the nursery - more likely to be insecurely attached to parent - less competent peer interactions as toddlers - more withdrawn and aggressive in preschool - worse school adjustment in second year of school Why? - children become attached to nursery workers -Children direct more attachment behaviours to long-term staff than staff present for < 3 months - Long-term staff more able to soothe children

Neural effects of meditative expertise

fMRI of expert and novice meditation practitioners whilst meditating. Presented with negative, positive, or neutral sounds Hypothesis; experts would have enhanced affective processing - Greater detection of all emotional sounds during meditation and resting state - Better activation for both groups if it was a good session - Mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuitries previously linked to empathy and ToM in response to emotional stimuli

Benefits of playing computer/video games

health: increases heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption. Dance Dance Revolution Functioning in older people: Nursing home women who played super tetris showed faster reaction times and a greater sense of emotion well-being Benefits to children with ADHD by using biofeedback (when child produces beta brain waves, they have better control of the characters; when child produces theta waves, the game slows down) Benefits for autistic children for their language, social interaction and maths skills

What four effects of violent video games did a second meta analyses by Anderson et al. (2010) find?

• Similar increase for Aggressive Cognition • Similar increase for Aggressive Affect • Decrease for Prosocial Behaviour • Decrease for Empathy/Desensitisation No evidence of publication bias, same results for males and females, same in western and Japanese countries Longitudinal effect around .15 to .20 (2.3 to 4% of variance) - not a great deal of variance accounted for