Psych 130

Questions about Normative development

how do people on average change with age (how most people are alike) ex. At what age do most children start to walk?

John Locke

like Aristotle, saw the child as a tabula rasa and advocated first instilling discipline, then gradually increasing the child's freedom -nurture

Questions about Individual differences

looking at individual variations in development (how people differ from each other) ex. If your mother carried you a lot, will your walking be delayed?

William Greenough's rats: Enriched vs. "control" environments

^ learning on future tasks ^synapse formation ^dendritic spines (surface area) ^neural growth Enriched: particularly positive environment, mirrors, wheels, playground, toys Control: standard cage, food dispenser, shavings Limitations: 1. Done on adult rats so don't now effects on younger rats 2. Some people question whether we are looking at enriched vs. control or deprivation vs. control (is the control environment actually a deprivation environment)

emotion textbook definition

"rapid appraisal of the personal significance of the situation which prepares you for action" rapid - emotions are relatively quickly personal- must have relevance to feel emotional appraisal- emotions aren't ground true, interpretation of events

number systems

(1) a nonverbal system capable of representing approximate numerosity, present from infancy through adulthood and shared with many nonhuman animals, and (2) a verbal system capable of representing exact numerosity, unique to humans and acquired around the age of 3 in the form of counting.

Synapse

, essential that neurons interact with ach other form memories, build patterns, communication is more than brute # of neurons Synapse made up of 2 main parts axon and dendrites, impulse is sent down axon insulated by myelin sheath, across synapse onto the dendrite of another cell Neurons sending most signals across synapse get hardwired together

Separation anxiety

- developmentally normative, naturally dissapates over course of development, serves adaptive function at some points of life, debilitating if it persists

HPA access

- engaged in a stress response, production of cortisol, shows connection between brain and rest of the body -Hypothalamus starts producing cortisol, stimulating the pituitary gland which produces ACTH which stimulates adrenal cortex which produces glucocorticoids goes to hippocampus turns of hypothalamus, -Works well under acute stress, however under chronic stress it is tunred on all the time and loses ability to regulate itself

What creates temperament?

- look at twin studies -For both identical and fraternal twins temperament is correlated -Fraternal twins have same environemnts -Researcher ratings for fraternal twins - on avg they think its more alike then unalike -Parent ratings for fraternal twins - yellow bar pointing down, more differences between the twins -Two fraternal twins may be similar initially, but when parents imagine or see differences they exaggerate and influence the differences of them over time

Longitudinal

- take a gorup of kids at a certain age bring back kids at different ages and observe differences between ages Pros: comparing ourselves to own baseline gets rid of extraneous variables Cons: history going on outside ( the whole group might have experienced something together that might have affected it - extraneous variable) might not get everyone back each time either, must over recruit takes a long time to wait Cohort Effect = non-developmental effects caused by differences in group-experiences

Stability of temperament

- temperament can show fair stability throughout lifetime -Temperament=(relatively) stable differences in reactivity and regulation -Temperament can be influenced by one's environment -Older you test temperament, the more likely it is to remain stable - Kagan researched.. -Behavioral Inhibition: Tendency to withdraw from unfamiliar/novel people or situations -said it was the most important part of temperament -studied the extremes ( super inhibited or uninhibited) -found extremes showed the most stability over time

What is Intelligence? (Piaget)

--piaget did not emphasize innate abilities -Comes in the form of schemes or organized patterns of thought -Organized ways of making sense of experience -Change with age -Action-based (motor patterns) at first -Later move to a mental (thinking) level -Behavioral Scheme = pattern of behavior used to represent an experience, babies are boring because they are repetitive, blues clues, they built this show where they repeat the same episode to days on end because toddlers love repetitiveness, babies like to pick up food and drop it over and over again, they are learning, trying to learn about the world, understand gravity -Symbolic Scheme = internal mental symbols used to represent an experience -Operational Scheme = internal mental activity performed on objects of thought, I know that when I drop a penny on the table it won't go through the table, principal of physics of what happens to solid objects, be able to perform simulations and different objects of how this will turn out -Intelligence is A match between thought processes & one's environment: -Cognitive Equilibrium What if there is a mismatch?

Normative early aggression trajectory

-1 year-olds can be aggressive to get toys -Around 2-3, start to physically retaliate against peers Instrumental: you don't want them to take your toy again so you retaliate to teach them a lesson -3-5, physical aggression declines and is replaced by verbal aggression (name calling, tattling, often instrumental)

Divorce

-1960s: 90% American children lived with two biological parents -1999: 40% American children live with two biological parents -Divorce and separation accounts for much of this difference -Children of divorce are at greater risk for short- and long-term psychological, behavior, academic, and relationship problems than are those who live with both biological parents -Nonetheless, most children whose parents divorce do not suffer significant, enduring problems as a consequence

Study on overt and relational aggression

-3-6th graders asked to identify the overtly & relationally aggressive children in school -Girls were more relationally aggressive and more boys that were overtly aggressive -Rates are relatively low 16% are being categorized -Gender disparity in 2 forms of aggression -Boys and girls don't really differ in amount of aggression but in type of aggression they display -3-6th graders have had a lot of social sculpting, might be differences in hormones, family environment, had a lot of time for learning that transpire, but also a lot of individual differences

Mean-world beliefs

-Another effects of violent TV -Tendency to view world as a violent place inhabited by people who typically rely on violence as a solution to interpersonal problems -7-9 yr olds with strongest preference for violent TV believe that violent shows are accurate portrayal of everyday life

Fetal Learning

-At 32 weeks' gestation, the fetus decreases responses to repeated or continued stimulation, a simple form of learning called habituation -Newborn infants have been shown to recognize rhymes and stories presented before birth -Newborns also prefer smells, tastes, and sound patterns that are familiar because of prenatal exposure

Caregiver Sensitivity

-Awareness of potential meaning in infant behavior ex. Parents hear child crying "maybe she's tired" vs "she's doing this for attention" potential meaning in infant behiavior -Accurate interpretation of infant's current behavior: knowing that when they are fussy, getting overwhelmed they don't need more stimuli -Formulation of appropriate responses: when a baby needs more, less, something else, -Contingent and timely responses

Reflexes

-Babinski: fanning out toes when sole of food is stroked from heel to toe : perhaps a remnant of evolution -Blink: eyes close in response to bright light or loud noise: protects the eyes -Moro: baby throws it arms out and then inward in response to loud noise or when head falls: help baby cling to mother -Palmar: baby grasps object placed in palm : precursor to voluntary grasping -Rooting: when baby's cheek is stroked, it turns its head: Helps baby find nipple -Stepping: baby held upright will start rhythmically: precursor to voluntary walking -Sucking: A baby sucks when object is placed in mouth: Permits feeding -Withdrawal: baby withdraws foot when sole is pricked: protects baby from unpleasant stimuli

3-D completion

-By 7-months old, most infants show 3-D completion BUT, where does this knowledge come from? 1. Rotate wedge partially 2. Then show them 2 different test stimulis -These rotate all the way around to see whether they are hollow or solid -7 months stare longer at the hollow wedge look at 5-6 months -sitting, reaching, manual exploration -) if you sit with both hands free you can pick up a toy and look at it and turn it around and around and start to understand often objects can look 2D but are actually 3D, kids who can use both hands develop this ability sooner -Have baby come into lab and see what they did naturally when they put toys in front of them Coded how often they dropped it, rotated it, touching it with fingers, transferring between hands, how often they looked at the toy -When you look at degree in which infants rotated toys independent (babies who could sit upright) rotated toys around more often manipulated with hands more and transferred them from hand to hand, more skilled in percievin 3 dimensionality

Sex Differences in reaction to divorce: Males

-Can be particularly difficult for male children -Boys experience more familial stress than girls --Likely to be involved with conflict, Fight more with parents Get in fights --Less likely to be sheltered or supported in times of stress --Less likely to seek social support than girls -"Coercive circles" with mothers Mothers were less affectionate, inconsistent in discipline, and angry, Negative circles of nagging arguing, escalating, and not resolving it --Maybe because reminds of ex or not needing as much social support --Often mothers are primary care giver and children leave with them after divorce

One kind of nuclear family

-Child behavior &development influece's parent's relationship -Parents relationship influnece the way they parent --Supportive relationship evokes one type of parenting -Parenting style influences child behavior & development -Parent's relationship influences child's development --Observe how parents talk about problems -Child development influences parenting -Parenting influences parents' relationship

Families are social systems

-Complex (and constantly evolving) network of relationships, interactions, and patterns of influence that characterize a family -Kids grow up have kids of their own, parents turn into grandparents

The Developmental Trajectory of Speech

-Comprehension precedes production -Despite the problem of "reference", 10 month-olds often know up to 200 words -Holophrastic Period: Infants utter one word that is meant to represent an entire sentence -Telegraphic Speech: Sentences that omit less meaningful parts of speech (18-24 months) -Word learning: Toddlers will experience a "naming explosion." Language grows because of object naming

Cultural Tools (Sociocultural Theorists)

-Culture transforms these processes via tools of intellectual adaptation = allow one to use basic mental processes more efficiently -These tools teach children how to think -These tools allow us to use basic mental proesses more efficientl -What they learn depends on what time in history they are growing up in (when the printing press was invented, parents didn't have internet, parents had to memorize a lot of thing, today we don't necessarily just memorize, we work on how we access information)

Teratogen

-Def: anything that can harm the fetus (virus, chemicals, drugs, radiation) -Most effective during time of a given structure's rapid growth (sensitive period) -Dependent on genetic diathesis -The greater the dose, the more the harm -No one knows how much is "ok" -Can be transmitted through father -Radiation -Lead -Pesticides influence sperm

Esther Thelen

-Development as a Dynamic System -Development is self-organizing and hierarchical -Need to consider the entire baby as a system -Changes as simple as physical growth could affect phenotype -Motor skills are active reorganization (construction) of previously mastered capabilities that are undertaken to find more effective ways of exploring the environment or satisfying other objectives Hierarchical: -Genetic influences (reflexes) necessary for setting the stage (building blocks). Each skill sits on top of previously established skills -Environment is necessary to provide motivation & purposes to move -Reflex goes away and more complex movements emerge Stepping reflex present at birth Disappears after a few weeks Why? Primitive reflex that is suppressed by maturation of inhibitory input from cortex? Lost because of disuse, need practice to regain ability Experiment Examined -# steps -body size Manipulations -no manipulation (longitudinal) -added weight -removed weight (in water) Results -During rapid weight gain, less # steps -Heavier infants stepped less -With artificial weights, stepped less -With weight loss (in H2O), stepped more Discussion -Rate of stepping is limited by muscle strength -Expression (phenotype) of behavioral capability was limited by external factors

Effects from family members

-Direct Effects = Instances where any family members affects another family member -Indirect Effects = Instances where the relationship between two family members is influenced by the behavior or attitudes of a 3rd family member --Ex. One family member goes off to college and the rest have not gone to college, might influence how they interact w/ parents, might influence the way the younger sibling develops --Ex. Parents arguing go silent when child comes into room --Multidirectional, complex ways people interact within a family -Every person will affect relationship and dynamics of whole family -The family is a system that is more than just a sum of the parts

Visitations (divorce)

-Divorced fathers have less involvement than non-divorced fathers -Immediately after divorce, can be good buffer for children --Totally confounded with pre-divorce relationship -Seems to be related to positive outcomes of boys (whom are often visited more than girls) Strong relationship or weak relationship will effect whether seeing parent during visitation is helpful or not Fathers visit sons more than daughters It is important for daughters to have relationship with their fathers as well though -Can be very difficult -Mothers are gate-keepers of children= they have to negotiate with nonprimary care giver of when you can see the kids -Mother's must absorb "bumps" = visitations don't go as planned, visitations cancelled, primary caregiver has to smooth that over -Play little instrumental or traditional parenting role Parents who are nonprimary caregiver play little parenting role -Adolescence: Children become busy; fathers follow their children's lead; feel rejected

Perceptual Narrowing Hypothesis

-Early in postnatal life, we undergo a process of narrowing our expertise to a set of stimuli at the cost of perception for non-needed (non-present stimuli) -This seems to support the language data, what about face processing?

Components of emotion

-Emotional Reactivity: quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor action, automatic response -Emotional Regulation: strategies that modify that activity -Temperament: Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and regulation

Harry Harlow

-Experimental work with monkeys who were deprived of all early social interactions strongly supported the view that healthy social and emotional development is rooted in children's early social interactions with adults -they give tiny infant monkeys option between to cling a soft terry cloth mother or to a cold wire mother that had bottle or food; infant monkey clung to soft terry cloth mother; wanting source of comfort not only physical needs

Why TV Violence affects Behavior

-Exposes children to violent models -May persuade children that aggression is socially acceptable or condoned -Shows aggression as a frequently-used solution to interpersonal problems and as a way of getting what a person wants -Aggressive children tend to believe televised aggression is an accurate portrayal of everyday life -May desensitize children to violence so they become less emotionally upset by violent acts and less likely to intervene and act altruistically

Sociocultural Approaches

-Focus on the contribution of other people and the surrounding culture to children's development -Emphasize guided participation, a process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher level than they could manage on their own -Present interactions as occurring in a broader sociocultural context that includes cultural tools, the innumerable products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking

Phenylketonuria (PKU)

-Genetic disease -Cannot metabolize phenylalanine -Can lead to intellectual disability -GENETIC disease! -BUT - ENVIRONMENT can alter the fate of these individuals -Answer: Don't feed these children phenylalanine -Then, no intellectual disability

Postnatal Effects (Bowlby)

-John Bowlby proposed attachment theory, which is influenced by ethological theory (evolutionary theory) and posits that children are predisposed to develop attachments with caregivers as a means of increasing the chances of their own survival -Born into helpless state, don't want to be far from caregiver, need attachment to caregiver; need to be able to taken care of because you cannot function by yourself Attachment is not about feeling good, it's about life and death; infants would starve to death -Two-way street infant attaches to caregiver, caregiver attaches to infant -Psychoanalyst turned Ethologist -Evolutionary theory --Born with tendencies that promote --survival of the species --Attachment behaviors are adaptive because they help protect infant --Two-way street! There are behaviors of caregivers as well as of the infant (shaped to look at infants and drawn to their features) --Genetic readiness for attachment to occur, but learning (each other's signals) must account for the rest --. sucking, grasping, rooting reflexes Flexibility about who an how we attach to --Tendency to want to attach to someone, the experiences we have shape how we learn how to attach, experience expected; how we attach based on experiences

Object Permanence

-Knowing that objects continue to exist even when you cannot see them Experiment: The A not B error 1. Two wells (A & B) 2. Hide toy in A, infant looks in A 3. Hide toy in A, infant looks in A 4. Hide toy in B, infant looks in A Note: infant can see where the toys are hidden Explanation: Piagetian Infant 8-12 months old cannot hold image of object in mind Searches in location where she found it last Does not understand that the object has permanence beyond her experience Think about maternal separation Other possibility? -its not that they lack object permanence, they can't show what they know Renee Baillergeon (1987) Young infants know more than we give them credit for Used habituation paradigms to show that young infants have object permanence Use of "impossible events" -infant is watching stick back and forth, -you put a box in front of the stick, the stick will hit the box in reality -put a screen up , make it look as if the stick is penetrating the box by virtue of where the screen is blocking part of their view -infant stares more -object suddenly disappears in middle, it is an impossible event -it should be very surprising that Minnie disappears in the middle -look at how long the infant stares at the stage of where minnie disappeared -found that infants are staring longer at impossible events -they have a better sense that objects shouldn't disappear than what we thought before Even 3.5 month olds have a sense of object permanence Why do we get A not B errors? Because of difficulty with inhibiting a response (why?) + shallow representation can be disrupted very easily

Thomas & Chess

-Longitudinal Study about temperament - Studied infant and children's responses to novel stimuli and people -Classified children as: - Easy (40%): Even-tempered, positive mood, open & adaptable to novelty. Habits are regular & predictable -Difficult(10%): Active, irritable, irregular habits. React vigorously to novelty, slow to adapt to new people or enivornments -Slow-to-warm-up(15%): Inactive, moody, slow to adapt to new people or environments, respond to novelty in mildly negative ways -Uncategorized (35%)

Content Knowledge:

-Memory span affected by prior knowledge -The more you know, the more you know... Compared 10 yr old chess experts and adults on how many chess pieces and numbers they could remember -10 yr olds recalled more chess pieces, adults recalled more numbers -If children had smaller short-term stores, adults should outperform on both tasks Another example: 2nd or 3rd language learning

Long term consequences of Attachment relationships

-Most attachment classifications remain stable and can affect variety of life outcomes (e.g., romantic relationships) -Why? What is the mechanism? --Early attachments result in internal working models = cognitive representations of self, others, and relationships that infants construct from their interactions with CG Children CAN have different attachments but for many children they have one dominating you to their primary care giver Primary CG holds a lot of weight in the future relationships of their baby, fuel child's sense of what it means to be in a relationship We are more likely to seek out relationships that are familiar to us Insecure attachment with parent doesn't mean you'll have insecure relationship with romantic partner, can still have secure relationship in future Internal working models - sense of self, other people, applied to a lot of things

morphology

-Specifies how words are formed from sounds -Walk has a different meaning from walked -If you have more than one cat, you have some cats -We learn tense and how to quantify at a young age

Why is this type of cooperative learning ideal?

-Motivation -it's more fun, engaging, social pressure if learning in a group, care more that we are all trying to learn something -Requires explanation and working through conflicts -More likely to use high level processing when working as a group In context of adolescent development: peers care a lot about what peers think about them, peers learn well from other peers, move towards model where they teach one another, customize social input you are getting Tools of the Mind Curriculum -used in primarily preschool children in lower economic backgrounds, teach executive function skills and social engagement -Executive function - ability to plan, control impulses -Can only move on when both people in pairs understand it -kids are more relaxed and happy -Teach them how to use private speech

Developmental cognitive neuroscience

-Neuroimaging=Examining phenomena at a different level of analysis -Before, only had non-human animals or children receiving medical treatment

Developmental changes in Altruism

-One-year-olds will offer toys to companions -Toddlers may try to comfort another who is distressed -Spontaneous acts (w/o adult nearby) are very rare at young ages *Adults may need to reinforce good behavior*

Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)

-Parent of the sociocultural approach to child development His theory presents children as social beings, intertwined with other people who are eager to help them gain skills and understanding -Because knowledge is socially-transmitted, cognitive development varies widely by culture -The environment in which humans grow up will determine how they think and what they think about -It sees development as continuous, with change as quantitative rather than qualitative -Humans are seen as unique because of their inclination to teach each other and to learn from each other Like Piaget, Vygotsky was interested in how children acquire knowledge Children acquire their culture's values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society Vygotsky: Cognitive development stems from social interactions (guided learning through zone of proximal development)

Parenting Styles

-Parenting behaviors and attitudes set the emotional climate of parent-child interactions -Two particularly important dimensions of parenting style: --The degree of parental warmth, support, and acceptance versus parental rejection and nonresponsiveness --The degree of parental control and demandingness -Diana Baumrind identified four styles of parenting related to these dimensions of support and control

Parenting Styles and Ethnicity

-Particular parenting styles and practices may have different meanings and different effects in different cultures -For example, authoritarian child-rearing practices seem to be associated with less negative consequences in Chinese and first-generation Chinese-American families than in Euro-American families -Different patterns of harsh discipline and acceptance are found between English-speaking Mexican-American families and acculturated Spanish-speaking Mexican-American families -- If your family came from Mexico to the US, they may have assimilated to US or hold on to culture-> have different effects

Peer acceptance & popularity

-Peer acceptance = Measure of person's likability in the eyes of peers -Acceptance and popularity: not necessarily the way we think of them in normal life -Measure with SOCIOMETRIC TECHNIQUES -Ask children who they like and dislike in their class; with whom they want to be friends -Correlate well w/ teacher ratings of popularity -Results in 5 categories of peer acceptance

The "Wug" Test

-Performed by Professor Jean Berko-Gleason of Boston University -The "Wug Test" was designed to test if children learn grammatical rules that they apply to novel words they have never heard -In this clip, a boy reveals that he knows the rules in English for forming plurals of singular nouns (one "Wug," but two "Wugs") and for changing verbs from the present to the past tense -Shows that children do not just imitate grammatical forms that they hear others say; rather, they learn rules that can be used to generate totally novel utterances

Synaptogenesis (Huttenlocher)

-Period of overproduction -Followed by Synapse pruning/elimination why? Plasticity - Neural Darwinism use it or lose it phenomenon Is this process uniform throughout the brain? Yes and no, in each part of the brain we see overproduction and pruning, but at different rates Do we see behavior changing that corresponds to these brain parts? When pruning is occurring in given brain region, that region becomes very adult-like (when babies are young they see weird until they are pruned at the end of infancy)

Heterotypic continuity of temperament

-Phenotypes in infancy >> Different phenotypes in Adulthood -Behaviorally inhibited temperament in infancy >> greater risk for anxiety in childhood/adolescence -heterotypic continuity: looks different at different ages but still continious

Delay of Gratification Task

-Present with one small marshmallow now, or wait until later for large marshmallow -E leaves the room -Monitor behavior of child -Results: preschoolers do very poorly. -By 6, children do much better

Sources of Learning and Memory Development

-Process speed -Mental strategies -Content knowledge

Bowlby and Ainsworth

-Secure base is Bowlby's term for an attachment figure's presence that provides an infant or toddler with a sense of security that makes it possible for the infant to explore the environment -Mary Ainsworth, Bowlby's student, extended and tested his ideas -Secure base - we can only become more explorative, risk-taking, if we have some attachment figure we can cling to -Knowledge that secure base is there that allows for exploring environment

Developmental Trajectory of Peer Sociability

-Sociability = One's willingness to engage with others in social interaction and to seek their attention and approval, changes a lot with age -Infants and toddlers are not that social -Infancy & toddlerhood -Starting at 6 mos, a bit of interaction with peers -Babbling, toy offering, gestures -Starting at 1 yr, turn-taking & action-reaction episodes, pokes the other one, the other one giggles, not engaging in complex way -By 18 mos, coordinated interactions (e.g., imitation), wants to do the things older siblings do -Starting at 2 yrs, complementary roles ,playing "it" in a game of tag, 2 different jobs in a game (throwing a ball and catching it)

Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Judgment

-Strongly influenced by Piaget (stages) -Assessed moral judgment by presenting children with hypothetical moral dilemmas and then questioning them about the issues involved in their moral judgments -Interested in the thought structures, not the answers Moral reasoning proceeds through the following steps in an invariant sequence... Proposed three major levels of moral judgment: -Preconventional: Moral reasoning is self-centered, focusing on getting rewards and avoiding punishment (pretty much all preschoolers, many elementary schoolers)(self-serving, what is right is what can be gotten away with; rules are externalized; conforms to rules) (children) -Conventional: Moral reasoning is centered on social relationships (some older elementary schoolers, many high schoolers)(concern with approval of others & being considered good) (adolescents & adults) Often the developmental stop point for adults -Postconventional: Moral reasoning is involved with ideals, focusing on moral principles (rare even in adults)(concern with broad principles of justice; could conflict with written laws). Morally right and legally proper are not always the same thing -Argued that people all over the world go though these stages in the same order, although they differ with regard to the final stage they attain -Also contended that levels of cognitive development, especially individuals' skills in perspective taking, determined their progress through the stages

How do amygdala-prefrontal connections change across development? Age predicts better self-regulation

-The amygdala and prefrontal cortex interact dynamically to explain temperament and emotion regulation -Prefrontal cortex exhibits protracted development (long time) greater Negative connectivity with age (Regulation > reactivity for negative stimuli) In adults when they turn on prefrontal cortex the amygdala turns off Reason why regulation improves with age is improved communication between amygdala and prefrontal cortex When we look at adults - big difference in when they react naturally and when they are regulating (show big drop) Only tiny drops in younger age groups Reactivity is not changing in age We are seeing differences in regulation

The Family as a System

-The family systems approach emphasizes the RECIPROCAL influence family members have on each other. For example: -Parents influence children -Children influence the behavior and child rearing strategies of their parents -Children influence parent interactions -Marital relationship influences children -Parent 1 influences Parent 2's interactions with child Whether a parent is sensitive to a children's needs If you are an independent child that will influence how your parents interact with you Changes in marriage after the first year of having a child Divorce, fighting, get along well One parent takes on a fun role, other one sets up doctor, dentist appointents

Altruistic Prosocial Behavior

-The origins of altruistic prosocial behavior are rooted in the capacity to feel empathy -Empathy is an emotional reaction to another's emotional state or condition that is similar to that person's state or condition

Inhelder and Piaget's Pendulum

-The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth -Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions -Interested in how you approach it Adolescents realize only string length makes a difference

Language

-Unique to humans -Animals can communicate with each other -Calls and gestures -Humans communicate in many ways also ex. Facial expressions ex. Crying -Language is just one of those ways -Prepared -Deaf babies "babble" with their hands -Language is flexible -Generative: can create new combinations of words to make new sentences (sets language apart) -Inventive: Infants aren't just parroting back to us things that they've heard

Neurobiology of Face Processing

-Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex -Using fMRI and PET, saw humans show the tendency for faces, some cortex that goes crazy for faces - "Fusiform Face Area" -Showed people pictures of faces and pictures of objects and compared what areas lit up -Subtraction method in fMRI and PET -Between people it's located in slightly different places -Data like this seems to support modular view of face processing -FFA responds to other objects: Birds & Cars Found that scanning people who are experts at cars and birds found robust activation of FFA in faces vs objects as well as their specialized object that was part of their expertise Greebles Have to recognize on an individual level Train adults to expertise levels Greeble experts & novices Configurational basis ^ FFA activity for Greeble experts

Attachment

-a close emotional relationship between 2 persons, characterized by mutual affection and a desire to maintain proximity -enduring across space and time (even if you hate your parents or move far away, the relationship is sustained) -not love -unique to humans Must be able to remember, hold the concept of another human in your mind for this to work -Many investigators believe that children's early relationships with parents influence the nature of their interactions with others from infancy into adulthood -May also influence feelings about their own worth

Operant conditioning

-conditioning behavior by reinforcement or punishment -Reinforcement = increases the probability that event will occur again, strengthen response -Punishment = decreases the probability that event will occur again, weaken response -Positive = presentation of something -Negative = removal of something

emotional development

-learning about safety and danger in the environment, through observation, speech, or experience -learning how to regulate our emotions to achieve our goals, adaptively deal with our emotions (regulation) -we learn about emotions through social experiences

why are emotions important?

-emotions are essential for survival - emotions help us navigate the world - emotions provide us with a great field of information and utility - Gut instincts -emotions are functional - they help us navigate through and learn about the environment -Provide us with info of how to make decisions -improve behavior

Amygdala and temperament

-examined using fMRI -does a super reactive amygdala = behaviorally inhibited individual? Tested people who were categorized as uninhibited or inhibited as infants Familiarization: Showed faces to create control Novel vs. familiar: alternate familiar and new face, amygdala reacts to novel faces -may be link between behavioral phenotype of temperament and amygdala reactivity -inhibited children's amygdala activity goes up during novel images and is higher on average compared to uninhibited children in both conditions -uninhibited children have low amygdala activity that doesn't change between novel and familiar condition -Phenotypes in infancy >> Different phenotypes in Adulthood -Amygdala identified as long term mediator of this continuity -Behaviorally inhibited infants show greater amygdala reactivity to novelty in adulthood

Functional MRI

-neuroimaging Functional Methods -faster by comparison fMRI = non-invasively measure brain activity with large magnet; ***spatial resolution is great, temporal is poor*** expensive sensitive to movement -Subtraction method

Electroencephalogram (EEG)/Event-related potentials (ERP)

-neuroimaging Functional Methods -non-invasively measure brain activity from scalp; electrodes; -***temporal resolution (how fast is the response) is great, spatial (what part of the brain) is bad*** -relatively cheap -sensitive to movement

PET

-neuroimaging Functional Methods you must ingest something and how you metabolize certain things -Subtraction method

MRI

-neuroimaging structural method - tells us about volume, size of different parts of the brain

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)

-neuroimaging structural method - tells us quality of white matter tracks (how the brain is communicating within)

Classical conditioning

-pairing 2 items (rat + noise) (bell + meat) something you always have reaction to (unconditioned stimulus) with stimulus you didn't have a reaction to (conditioned stimulus) but now do when paired with unconditioned stimulus

Synaptogenesis and Synaptic Pruning measured between children and adults (cross-sectional)

-visual cortex peaks sooner than prefrontal cortex synaptic density count -PreFronalCortex: inflection points in transition from toddlerhood to childhood and from childhood to adolescence, You don't see pruning occor until much later on for the prefrontal cortex -Where do you see inflection points? Greater increasing of density vs. less increasing of density

Domain general view (faces)

-what we see developing in face processing is similar to how language develops and how other things develop -Maybe keeping options open to what faces we see -We are born with ability to see wide variety of faces but end up being specialized in the faces we see all the time How do we get face experience? From the minute we're born we are bathed by faces, babies are having lots of exposure to faces Eventually leads us to develop expertise

Go-Nogo task + fMRI

1. Press button whenever you see letter 2. Don't press for X Children have a hard time doing this Increased False Alarm rate

Theories for Poor Outcomes of Divorce

1. Absence theory: Children suffer from divorce because they often live with one, rather than two parents 2. Economic Disadvantage theory: The lowered well-being of children of divorce is due to the economic hardships post-divorce, divorce is expensive, 3. Conflict Theory: The adversity children experience in divorce is the household hostility, which exists prior to and during the divorce process -Remember, divorce is not a single event -Received the most corroboration -Predicts that things will get better once parents are separated -"No father is better than a bad father" - Mavis Hetherington, 1999

Characteristic Development of Attachment Behavior

1. Asocial Phase (0-6 wks): No particular preference for social stimuli -New born babies are not born attached, no strong preference for who is taking care of them; 2. Indiscriminate Attachments (6 wks - 6 mos): Enjoy all people -: Babies love all humans; evolutionarily you need to keep your options open so you see who is going to be your caregiver and form attachments 3. Specific Attachment (7-9 mos): Only want one person. Wary of strangers. -stranger danger, doesn't have to be biological mother but is the most common candidate 4. Multiple attachments (soon after specific attachment phase): Attach to multiple familiar people, e.g., father, grandparents, siblings, babysitter

Three dimensions of developmental theories

1. Nature vs. Nurture -Nature refers to our genetic endowment, especially the genes we receive from our parents -Nurture refers to the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that influence our development 2. Activity vs. Passivity -Children contribute to their own development from early in life, and their contributions increase as they grow older 3. Continuity vs. Discontinuity (quantitative vs. qualitative) -Continuous development: Age-related changes occur gradually (ex. pine tree) -Discontinuous development: Age-related changes include occasional large shifts so that children of different ages seem qualitatively different (ex. butterfly) -Stage theories propose that development occurs in a progression of age-related, qualitative shifts Depending on how it is viewed, changes in height can be viewed as either continuous or discontinuous -Examining a boy's height at yearly intervals from birth to 18 years makes the growth look gradual and continuous -Examining changes in the same boy's height from one year to the next makes growth seem discontinuous

Foundations of development

1. Physical development 2. Perceptual development 3. Cognitive development 4. Emotional development 5. Social development

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

1. Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years): Coordination of sensory input and motor responses; development of object permanence -Circular reactions (adapting first schemes)> Intentional behaviors>Problem Solving -getting to know environment -reflexive creatures -> problem solvers -primary goal: internalizing external behavioral schemes 2. Preoperational Peiod (2-7 years): Development of symbolic thought marked by irreversibility, decentration, and egocentrism -Symbolic thought available, Not able to perform operations, Loss of magical thinking -know numbers but limited ability for mental math, children are able to represent ideas, thoughts, objects with language, use words for substitute as concept Thinking on a symbolic level, but not yet using cognitive operations (like conservation and reversibility) Symbolic thinking: -why 3-year-old has more in common with 21-year-old, than with 12-month-old -language -play (pretend) -drawing A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations -A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviors possible -A major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view, Egocentric Conversations -A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event (such as height of water, # of weights) -Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not change their key properties 3. Concrete operational (7-11 years): Mental operations applied to concrete events: mastery of conservation, hierarchical classification -Become logical, flexible, organized (with concrete information) -able to use cognitive operations -use logic, not misleading appearances, to reach conclusions (cup and balance weighte x) -but, these operations are only applicable to objects or phenomenon that are real or imaginable -cannot do algebra because the ability to think of something that you know nothing about is hard for young children to work with -concrete= only applicable to objects or phenomenon that are real or imaginable 4. Formal Operational (11-adulthood): Mental operations applied to abstract ideas: logical, systematic thinking -Switch from operations on reality, to operations on operations (abstract thinking) - can imagine worlds that are not the worlds in front of them, can think about things like politics, truth, etc. Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically Perhaps can explain -Increase in self-consciousness and self-focusing in adolescence -Increase in idealism, justice Individuals can imagine alternative worlds and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation -adolescents tend to be passionate, -increase in reading fantasy novels or science fictions' Children and adults can apply these operations to hypothetical and abstract phenomena ex. Algebra "Hypothetical-deductive reasoning"-systematic & logical Can generate hypotheses - what is possible - and systematically test them Think more like a scientist ex. Pendulum problem

Periods of plasticity

1. Sensory 2. Motor/Language 3. Higher Cognition

How do we get language?

2 perspectives -Learning (empiricist) (nurture) -Language is acquired through children imitating adult language and through adult reinforcement of correct language usage For: Children may be reinforced for using language correctly Imitation is important to the development of phonology and semantics We talk like our parents Extreme neglect case studies Against: Little evidence of differential reinforcement of grammatically correct and incorrect utterances -Nativist (Nature) -Humans are genetically programmed to have language -Noam Chomsky: "Language Acquisition Device" (LAD) -LAD allows any child to develop an implicit understanding and infer the rules governing others' speech and to use these rules to produce language For: Only humans can learn syntax without formal training Some evidence for sensitive periods for language development -Brain injury before and after puberty -Learning a second language -Remarkable universals across children -Spontaneous creolization of pidgin language by second generation -Pidgin = simple communication system that arises when people who share no common language come into constant contact (e.g., China, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Native Hawaiian) -Creole = language created from Pidgin that is transformed into grammatically complex "true" language Against: Sensitive period data is shaky e.g., people can learn a second language after puberty Some non-human primates are sensitive to some aspects of language Creolization may simply reflect a human sensitivity to rules and an ability to learn codes, rather than reflect innate knowledge Neither empiricist nor nativist perspective fully explains language development Therefore, most people subscribe to an interactionist perspective

DNA

23 pairs of (46 total) chromosomes in each cell (except ova & sperm) GTCCCCCTTTTAAAA= one gene ex. eye color allele (type of gene) ex. Brown eye color genotype does not equal phenotype WHy? Getting an allele from two parents, may be a dominant allele

Heinz's Moral Dilemma

6-10: focus on reward and punishment -Heinz should not have stolen drug -Desire to obey rules or social norms Middle Childhood -Can see why he would steal the drug, but -don't think it's right

Controversial Peer Status

A category of sociometric status that refers to children or adolescents who are liked by quite a few peers and are disliked by quite a few others -Tend to have characteristics of both popular and rejected children -Some peers view such children as arrogant and snobbish -they're a little bit withdrawn, shy, interesting, or people see them as snobs -Or abrasive, entertaining or annoying

Assessing Attachment Status: Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation

A series of separation and reunion episodes to which infants are exposed in order to determine the quality of their attachments Increasingly stressful situations -infants can attach to multiple people Attachment style : can be different between people Focusing on quality, not strength, the nature of the relationship, is it secure, ambivalent? 1. E introduces dyad( parent and child) to room & leaves 2. Parent sits while baby plays [P as secure base] 3. Stranger enters, sits, & talks to P [Stranger Anxiety] 4. P leaves, S offers comfort if baby is upset. [Separation Anxiety] 5. P returns, greets baby, comforts if needed. S leaves [Reunion] 6. P leaves [Separation Anxiety] 7. S enters & comforts if needed. [Stranger Anxiety] 8. P returns, greets baby, comforts if needed, tries to interest baby in toys [Reunion] How much do they react when the parent leaves? Do they accept the parent when they come back? What is coded by observers 1. Active play/exploration 2. Enthusiastic greetings when not stressed 3. Effectiveness of contact when stressed 4. Absence of anger upon soothing Secure attachment Will actively play with mother Baby not continiously angry when mother comes back

How would you extend information processing to face processing?

Adults are better than children at face processing. Are they using different strategies? Configural processing vs. parts processing Parts processing: Processing each part individually Configural processing: Processing all parts at once (the whole is larger than the sum of the parts) <---experts engage in more configural processing

Peers vs Adults

Adults often represent authority, power, and expertise of a society, -adults are experts of the environments that kids grow up on, Power skew when interacting with adults Peer = One that is of equal standing with another; social equals; operating at similar levels of behavioral complexity can be different ages, don't have to be same ages as you,Interactions we have with peers are fundamentally different than interactions with adults Peers are important source of EQUAL STATUS interactions which can provide -Feedback and practice in role taking skills -Growth promoting conflicts of viewpoint -Practice in compromise -Emotional security -Training for later romantic relationships

Factors that influence Altruism

Affective explanations from caregiver -Forces child to see relationship between his/her acts and consequences, Try to get young kids to imagine consequences of their behavior and how someone else is experiencing the world Role-taking ability (empathic responses) Prosocial Moral reasoning -Thinking that is done when deciding whether to help when these actions could be costly to self

The Embryo

After implantation, the inner cell mass becomes the embryo and the rest of the cells develop into its support system Nature of growth cephalocaudal (head to toe) proximodistal (midline to outward) The neural tube is a U-shaped groove formed from the top layer of differentiated cells in the embryo It eventually becomes the brain and the spinal cord

Agression: Stability over time

Aggression is a fairly stable trait 8 year-old aggression predicts aggression at 30: Part of your reputation and how you see yourself that's your identity Very difficult to change -More likely to batter spouse -More likely to engage in criminal behaviors -Stability is not surprising (evocative)

Dodge's Social-Cognitive Model(reactive aggressor) HOSTILE ATTRIBUTION BIAS

Aggressive Child holds expectation that others are hostile -> Expectation results in biased scanning of social cues -> Infers that accidents have hostile intentions -> Retaliates against other -> Results in hostile counter attacks & consequent rejection of child -> Expectation that others are hostile is confirmed (& cycle repeats) self-fulfilling prophecy

Internalization

All psychological processes are originally social processes. Changes through process of internalization. Internalization = Internalizing the voice of the more knowledgeable members of society

Critique of Piaget's Theory

Although Piaget's theory remains highly influential, some weaknesses are now apparent -The stage model depicts children's thinking as being more consistent than it is, , not a strictly linear path -Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized -Piaget's theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development, your exploring but not completely on your own you learn what they know and add that to what you are learning -Piaget's theory is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children's thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth -Piaget is good at describing what the output is at each stage, not necessarily what they are doing differently, why are they doing at this stage but not that stage

Charles Darwin

Evolution Natural Selection 1877: Diary of son's development Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny? Ontogeny (development within your own lifespan) Phylogeny (development across generation and species)

Peer time (playing) in homes & neighborhoods

Amount of time we spend with peers change when we grow older Amount of time you spend with adults don't change THAT much Amount of time you spend with peers increases As we grow older you spend more and more times with peers and a little less time with adults Big influence on how we think and act

Neurobiology of emotion & temperament

Amygdala: detects salient or relevant cues -triggers relevant bodily behavioral responses -subcortical structure, evolutionarily old, across many species, medial temporal lobe, greek word for almond, one of the regions most important for emotion -Amygdala is present at birth -Amygdala change in size and shape happens early on in life, not much change later

Prematurity

Any infant born before 36 weeks gestation (38 weeks is full-term) Risks -Small -Immature Organs (e.g., respiration) -Immature CNS (e.g., visual) -Less physical contact

Numerosity

Approximate Numerosity -Numerosity: A core "number sense" -Infants can discriminate between 1 vs. 2 and 2 vs. 3 -Can also do basic subtraction and addition with those numbers -Unlike animals, infants can discriminate 2 v. 3 dots but not 4 v. 6 -Spelke argument: This is not approximate numerosity, but keeping track of objects (i.e., that, and that, and that) -Habituate to one quantity, one doll over and over again, then you switch it to 2 dolls and they're attention is back -You show baby one doll, put a screen, act like you are putting another doll, take away screen and theyre is only one doll, they will stare because it doesn't make sense -Not counting persay, just labeling and keeping track of items in front of them Spelke tested 6-month old infants on larger quantities to avoid keeping track at the object level Exp 1. 8 v. 16 dots (1:2 ratio) Equated average size, brightness, contour length -½ ratio - they are looking more at new number than old number argument- - tjere is no real limit of objects infants can keep tarck off You can keep track of objetcs, controlled for more variables than different studies Exp 2. 8 v. 12 dots (2:3 ratio) -can't discriminate this Implication: Infants can only discriminate very large ratios, numerosity has limits

Aggressive-Rejected Children

Are especially prone to hostile and threatening behavior, physical aggression, disruptive behavior, and delinquency -About 40% to 50% of rejected children tend to be aggressive Aggressive behavior often underlies rejection by peers -However, not all aggressive peers are rejected; some develop a network of aggressive friends

Withdrawn-Rejected Children

Are socially withdrawn, wary, and often timid -Make up about between 10-25% of the rejected category Not all socially withdrawn children are rejected or socially excluded -Rather, it appears that withdrawn behavior combined with negative actions or emotions is correlated with rejection -Fewer children in withdrawn rejected than aggressive rejected -Loner types -If you don't respond when people try to become friends with you you are more likely to fall under this category

Stranger Anxiety

At around 6 or 7 months of age, many infants develop a fear or wariness of unfamiliar people, which tends to intensify over the next several months. There are, however, substantial individual differences in the degree to which infants react fearfully to strangers, and the nature of the unfamiliar person's behavior also affects how infants react to them.

How to ask infants questions

Babies can't fill out forms Habituation -Decrease in response to stimuli (boredom) -Look for what causes dishabitiuation -can ask questions about memory or language developmen

Highly aggressive child

Believe that aggression: -will yield tangible rewards (if proactive) -will terminate others' noxious behavior (if reactive) positive punishment from aggressors mindset, punch someone for being annoying -will enhance self-esteem -will not cause permanent harm -is ubiquitous: every does it, it's normal, a part fo life Proactive: not just reacting reflexively, instigating aggression - child believes aggression is an adaptive strategy for getting what they want -Maybe someone in aggressive environment is aggressive because everyone else around them is aggressive

Critical Period for Ocular Dominance Column Plasticity (Monocular Deprivation Plasticity)

Binocular Vision --> Ocular Dominance Columns in Visual Cortex Human Condition: Strabismus/Amblyopia patch over one eye, lazy eye when young cover up strong eye so other eye gets stronger, if you try to intervene with this at an older age it is ineffective Kitten study: monocular deprivation, at birth ocular dominance columns are jumbled together, course of development they start segregate, adult you can see separate input, develop distinction of what is coming from right eye and left eye For Adult cats, sewing the left eye up will not cause this, once you've gotten experience of input you should be able to turn it off and still be ok but since kittens are in a critical period, they will be more effected

Memory biases for events as a function of internal working models

Bring children into lab, know what their attachment style is based on strange situation task when they were younger Securely attached children recall more positive events, while insecurely attached children recall more negative events Walk around the world, cognitively biases you to pay attention to certain events over others We don't see the world exactly as it is; what shapes what we pay attention to and what we remember might be the attachment styles we had as a young child

Television as a peer

By age 10, average child is watching 4 hours/day By age 18, spent more time watching TV than any single activity, except sleep Think about interventions! Can be positive Can be negative

Franklin Watson & Crick discovery

CENTRAL DOGMA: DNA > (transcription) > mRNA > (translation) > protein Who helps us sequence DNA? Franklin, Watson & crick Franklin- double helix of DNA was exposed to radiation What kickstarts the DNA? A chemical environment produced by some given environment (social, nutritional, etc) Cannot consider genetic or environmental influences in isolation.

Attachment classification

CG: caregiver Secure: Bond where child welcomes contact with CG & uses CG as secure base from which to explore the world 65% North American children Explores (environment & S) while CG is present. When CG is absent, becomes highly upset. Warmly greets CG upon reunion & is soothed by CG. Anxious/Resistant: Insecure bond, characterized by separation protest & tendency for child to remain near CG (not explore) yet resist contact from CG 10% North American children Resist contact especially upon reunion, not soothed by CG Anxious/Avoidant: Insecure bond, characterized by little protest & child largely ignores CG 20% North American children Can be sociable with other adults not as interested in CG as other children are, extend in other relationships In the future, don't do well with intancy Disorganized: Insecure bond characterized by confused approach to CG 5-10% North American children New category Approach CG then abruptly avoid CG Highly represented in abused populations inconsistent patterns from inconsistent parents, Predict relationship social behiavior, self-esteem but not mentail illnesor stuf

Psychological Correlates of Physical Development

Campos/Adolph -Baby is part of a dynamic system -Motor Development driving perceptual development -Moving through the world teaches you things about depth Development is holistic = consider how everything works together to result in new psychological phenomenon -Testing of wills -Social interaction -Attachment behaviors -Boldness and agency

Newborn Children and operant conditiong

Can be done, but requires a lot of trials Ex. Newborns require around 200 trials BUT, it can be done Remember Rovee-Collier study (mobile experiment) Good thing we have reflexes

Eye-tracking

Can explore attention, Works by calculating angle between the pupil and iris, Changes in angle give an index of the location of point of gaze Can use in infants->adults which is a pro Advantages -requires no explicit response from subject -Same dependent variable across different ages and populations Disadvantages -Difficult to achieve --Susceptible to motion --Calibration per subject What dimensions of visual stimuli are most salient to infants? -movement -edges

Piaget's Legacy

Careful observation Baby diaries Large age range described He is the father of cognitive development first to do this in a careful, systematic way

Cognitive Development

Changes in knowledge that are age-related

Plasticity

Changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, emotions, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury

Mental Strategies

Changes in strategies are another major source of learning and memory development A number of strategies emerge between ages 5-8 -Rehearsal: The process of repeating information over and over to aid memory -Selective attention: The process of intentionally focusing on information that is most relevant to the current goal -Chunking: String of random numbers General memory capacity: 7 +- 2 Can you remember 15 numbers? If you can chunk the numbers... ex. 135 246 357 468 579 Initial attempts at using strategies do not improve memory as much as more experienced use, a phenomenon known as utilization deficiency

Problem-Solving

Children are active problem solvers According to overlapping-waves theory, children use a variety of approaches to solve problems -At any given time, children possess several different strategies for solving a given problem -With age and experience, the strategies that produce more successful performance become more prevalent -Overlapping-waves theories also hypothesize that children benefit from this strategic variability , Similar to pruning and synaptogenesis

A Constructivist Approach

Children are seen as -Active -Learning many important lessons on their own -Intrinsically motivated to learn Jean Piaget's theory remains the standard against which all other theories are judged -Often labeled constructivist because it depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves -Infants have basic building blocks...from here, they can build a whole lot of knowledge -he was very detailed, observed children for hours and hours, collected lots of data in methodical manner

Long-Term Effects of attachment

Children who were securely attached as infants seem to have closer, more harmonious relationships with peers than do insecurely attached children Secure attachment in infancy also predicts positive peer and romantic relationships and emotional health in adolescence Securely attached children also earn higher grades and are more involved in school than insecurely attached children It is unclear, however, whether security of attachment in infancy has a direct effect on later development, or whether early security of attachment predicts children's functioning because "good" parents remain "good" parents It is likely that children's development can be better predicted from the combination of both their early attachment status and the quality of subsequent parenting than from either factor alone If you are securely attached, it might mean you have sensitive parents as a young child, or parents continue to be sensitive throughout development and has helped you along the way - Attachment is not pathology not predicting mental illness, but behaviors we care about

Continuous Cognitive Change: Information Processing perspective

Children's brains are not qualitatively different from adults Information-processing theorists view children as undergoing continuous cognitive change The term continuous applies in two senses: -Important changes are viewed as constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between stages -Cognitive growth is viewed as typically occurring in small increments rather than abruptly

Liben & Downs, 1993

Cognitive maps- how children form mental representation of space Build cognitive map of how things work, can be more flexible with how you navigate your space Flexible permuation needs to be able to see thigs from different viewpoints -start to build cognitive maps -how do children differ in holding maps in their minds? -1. sat a child down at a table with ablack and grey circle, lines referencing different degrees, move camera to different angles, what is the camera seeing? Higher number = higher number of kids who got it correct (the pie that is sticking out is the right answer), on the y axis Kindergarten, 1st grader, 2nd grader,5/6 grader There are differences in ability to form and use mental map in a certain age And a marked increase when you get older

Piaget

Cognitive-Developmental Viewpoint Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development -Active explorers who create schemas (activity) -When they encounter disequilibrium, they assimilate or accommodate knowledge -Follows an invariant sequence -(nurturist)? -stage theorist (discontinuous) -Invariant Developmental Sequence: Must occur in the same order because each step is a prerequisite for the following -Interested in how children gain knowledge (as opposed to Core Knowledge Theories) -child is "constructivist" = gain knowledge by acting on object to understand its properties -universal changes in intellectual growth Intelligence: -a basic life function -enables an organism to adapt to its environment

Comparison of Faces v Houses Across Age

Compare faces v. object and see recruitment of FFA What you see across childhood, 12-14 yrs, you see recruitment of FFA At younger ages you don't see this Why? The FFA at younger ages are responding to both faces and objects The FFA is localizing with age (FFA responds to a lot of stuff at first than specializes later on in life to faces) FFA grows over time in specificity FFA will eventually prefer faces and not prefer different stimuli

Example of systematic thinking What would be all the logical possibilities of the 4 colors (white, red, blue, & yellow)? Concrete vs. Formal

Concrete: W + R W + B R + B W + Y R + Y B + Y "That's all!" Formal: Concrete and... W + R + B W + R + Y W + B + Y R + B + Y W + R + B + Y etc

Motor Experience influences Risk Taking

Example of how parents and other environment influences effect behavior He's capable of going across the cliff but will only express phenotype under certain conditions -Familiar position of sitting (sit) -Reaching position unfamilar (crawl) How often will child reach across the gap? Risk taking behavior? if crawling position, reach more, sitting reach less Does experience in one position influence how far you'll reach? Posture influences how you percieve the world

Effects of Peer Rejection

Contributes to later adjustment and behavior problems via 1. Alliance w/ deviant peer groups that -promote antisocial, delinquent conduct -discourage academic pursuits 2. Elevated stress (dominance hierarchy) -more often targets of aggression -less likely to have social approaches rewarded (increased loneliness) -increased HPA activity, not as happy of a person, create a negative reputation for themselves, bully who tries to change behavior - often doesn't work - Lack of social support from peers or teachers Lack of opportunities to develop effective social skills Low self esteem -leads to internalization of feedback confirming their negative self-image and rejection of any positive feedback -expectancy of peer rejection influences how child presents to new peers; may set up for failure -Can be a self-fulfilling prophecy

Television: The Bad

Correlational surveys -Viewing televised aggression is linked to aggressive behavior; the link is probably bidirectional -Causality is impossible to determine Lab and Field Studies -Demonstrate an instigating effect of violent TV that is: -Observed in both boys and girls -Strongest when violence appears justified and realistic Exp: Bobo doll (research by Albert Bandura) - child modeling aggression after model beats up bobo doll

Caregiving and Stress

Cortisol can easily pass the blood-brain barrier Presence of caregiver moderates the effects of stress hormones What are the biological consequences of attachment? Low fearful: cortisol levels were low regardless secure or insecure High fearful: insecure attached infants shoed big rise in cortisol when scared , more reactive to slightly fear inducing stimuli,for securely attached infants, presence of caregiver moderates effects of stress hormone cortisol If you stress a kid out if they are securely attached they won't show a cortisol response' parents were there; this is showing their internal working model

How does evolutionary change occur?

Darwin's theory of evolution provides a useful framework for thinking about the mechanisms that produce change in children's development -Variation refers to differences in thought and behavior within and among individuals -Selection describes the more frequent survival and reproduction of organisms that are well adapted to their environment In an analogous way, variation and selection produce changes within an individual lifetime For example: learning to retrieve a toy, to add numbers, to communicate

The Initial Phase: Year 1 (Divorce)

Data based on heterosexual couples -84% live with mother -Very rough year -Academic -Antisocial behaviors- acting out, getting into fights, defying authority, Toddler you might see biting, adolescent =cutting class Externalizing -Internalizing behaviors (depression) -Caveat: Unclear whether these things existed prior to divorce

Puberty

Def: process of reaching sexual maturity Includes not only physical changes, but psychological changes as well. -Puberty starts in adrenal glands, takes years to show external characteristics of puberty "Renaissance of the brain" (sensitive period) -Hormone cascade -> body changes: secondary sex characteristics and brain changes What makes hormones impactful is what they target in the brain (specifically changes in brain development as a result of puberty) Organizing effects, activating effects Hormones changing brain and body Brain circuitry changes

Development psychology

Development is not studying children Human development - the multidisciplinary study of how people change systematically over time Hierarchical & self-organizing change = each change is dependent on the preceding series of changes

3 Types of Development (Synapse Formation)

Gene-Driven: development of organs Experience-Expectant: we are born with the ability to make vitamin D but we need sunlight, we can, language development Experience-Dependent: The ability to read

Baumrind's Parenting Styles

Disengaged parenting - parent who is out to lunch, no rules but not very supportive -Relationship is rejecting or neglecting; uninvolved -Unsupportive: Parent is rejecting and parent-centered -Undemanding: Parent expects little of child Permissive parent- overindulgent, don't provide structure, control, no expectations, "cool mom" from mean girls, Relationship is indulgent; low in control attempts -Undemanding: Parent expects little of child -Supportive: Parent is accepting and child-centered Authoritative parenting- expect a lot but tend to be very supportive, democratic parent, will give a decree but willing to hear children's perspective, Relationship is reciprocal, responsive; high in bidirectional communication *best outcome*, Competent High Self Reg Well-liked Academic competence however best match in specific environment : western environment, other cultural context can show that authoritarian is a better approach -Demanding: Parent expects much of child -Supportive: Parent is accepting and child-centered Authoritarian - strict, have rules, disciplinarian, Relationship is controlling, power-assertive; high in unidirectional communication -Demanding: Parent expects much of child -Unsupportive: Parent is rejecting and parent-centered

Testing infant memory

Do infants have memory? Carolyn Rovee-Collier Mobile conjugate reinforcement (operant conditioning) -Assess baseline kicking -Tie mobile to 2-3-month-old's ankle -Takes awhile for infant to realize that kicking does something -Test to see if infant remembers kicking consequences 2 sessions in home crib 24 hrs apart, each with 9 min reinforcement phase (where infant controls mobile) Measure retention or savings in subsequent test Results: 2-month olds: remember up to 3 days 3-month olds: remember for more than one week

Urie Bronfenbrenner

Ecological and systems approach Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model -Close analysis of environmental influences -Environmental influences on child development are series of concentric circles -Microsystem (child) -Mesosystem (Family, neighborhood, school, organized activities) -Exosystem (workplace, media, extended family) -Macrosystem (government, culture) -Dynamic transactions between ever-changing individual in an ever-changing environment

Research-Based Approach

Emerged in the nineteenth century (Industrial Revolution), in part as a result of two converging forces -Social reform movements established a legacy of research conducted for the benefit of children and provided some of the earliest descriptions of the adverse effects that harsh environments can have on child development -Charles Darwin's theory of evolution inspired research in child development in order to gain insights into the nature of the human species

Mary Schneider, The long term effects of prenatal stress

Experiment 1 Six pregnant rhesus monkeys (mid -late gestation) Exposed to unpredictable noise 5X/ week 1 sec noise (115 db, 1300 Hz, 1 m away) for 10 seconds Six pregnant monkeys as controls Juvenile monkeys in 1 of 5 possible conditions Baseline Move (moved to similar cage with peers) Move/noise blast Separation (peer group removed) Separation/noise Recorded behavior Control monkey show more activity, more exploratory Stress monkeys show rocking back and forth more (stereotypies) Control monkeys- show more partial contact reach out to peers more ( like when you're scared at movie theater and you reach out to someone) Sress monkeys- show lots of clinging behavior when under stress Experiment 2 Instead of noise administration, administer ACTH Crosses placental barrier Examined stress-related behaviors in offspring Results See same pattern of results (increase stress reactive behaviors and inappropriate reactions)

Peer (Social) Play

FUNCTION of social play -Learn communication -Develop relationships -Practice compromising Parten (1932) -Trends in social play type -Parallel play (decrease w/ age) -child plays independently at the same activity as other child(ren) -Associative play (increase w/ age) -Both playing house but playing different roles Doing own thing but sharing Building sand castles, lending pale to each other -Child still focused on a separate activity but good amount of -Sharing/lending -Helping -Taking turns -Attending to the activities of peers -Cooperative play (increase w/ age) -Children organize their play and/or activity cooperatively w/ a common goal -Differentiate and assign roles -Organized sports -More complicated type of play Middle Childhood - Social play becomes formalized (board games, sports), Keep track of complex rules, teams

What was learned about how Faces become a special class of objects

Face processing skills increase with age/experience Faces are recognized as special objects Environment plays a major role in shaping brain development Developmental changes present a challenge for a modular view support for distributed/experiential model Vast experience with faces driving development

One possible influence of aggression: Coercive families

Family members annoy each other and use aggressive/antisocial tactics as a method of coping with these aversive experiences -Caregivers inadvertently reinforce children's difficult behaviors, which in turn elicits caregiver negativity, and so on, until the interaction is discontinued when one of the participants "wins." -These cycles may begin when the child reacts with anger or resistance to a caregiver's directive or request, evoking anger and hostility from the caregiver, which is often intensified as the coercive cycle escalates -Children learn a pattern of relating within the family that then carries over into interactions with others outside the family

Attaching Meaning to Words

Fast Mapping: Attaching meaning to a word after hearing it it applied to its referent only a few times (even at 13-months) -Harder to do this as an adult Errors Overextention: Tendency to use specific words to refer to broad class of objects (e.g., car = all moving vehicles) Underextention: Tendency to use a general word to refer to smaller set of items (e.g., candy = only one type of candy) Overregularization: Tendency to overuse grammatical rules when they don't apply (1 mouse, 2 mouses)

Psychological Correlates of Puberty

Generally, people aren't thrilled about entering puberty Generally, it is less appreciated by females Boys Late maturers tend: -to be more anxious, eager, attention seeking -to feel more socially inadequate -to have lower academic aspirations Why? (evocative processes) -Bigger (athletics) -Given more responsibilities -Parents have higher aspirations Girls Early maturers tend: -to be more anxious & depressed -to be less outgoing & popular Why? -Since girls develop earlier, they are not so appealing to their underdeveloped male counterparts -Tend to attract older boys who may draw them away from schoolwork -May be drawn to activities that they are not cognitively ready to handle

Goodness of fit

Goodness of fit - no good or bad temperament to have, whether temperament fits environment Different 4th graders in different points in history Overtime in china there has been a cultural shift to seeing shyness as a positive trait to seeing shyness as a more negative less positive trait In the 1990s - shyness was seen as positive, were rated more positively Over time when shyness is seen as more a negative trait, rated more negatively

Parietal lobe

Governs spatial processing and integrates sensory input with information in memory see things from different perspective, important for math

Second Language Learning

Grammar score as a function of age of arrival (around 20 very hard to learn second language)

Aggression

Hostile: Aggressive acts for which the perpetrator's major goal is to harm or injure a victim, aggression for aggression sake Instrumental: Aggressive acts for which the perpetrator's major goal is gain access to objects, space or privileges, different purpose for aggression

Sequential design

Hybrid of longitudinal and cross sectional You can do cross sectional analysis right away and overtime also look at longitudinal affects within groups across time and can also look at cohort comparisons by comparing the change of one group with the change of the other group

Television: The Good

In 1968, US government and private foundations created CTW (children's television workshop) to foster intellectual development for children via interesting TV -Sesame Street was first attempt -Targeted to 3-5 year olds (andsometimes adults!) -Focus was to prep low SES (socioeconomic) children in math-related problems, letters, simple problem solving

Maternal Employment

In 2015, 70% of mothers with children under 18 worked outside the home Over the past two decades, extensive research attention has been devoted to the impact of maternal employment on child development In general, the findings have been reassuring Big increase from the 50s 60s Majority of children are growing up in a world where mother is in workplace, not raising them all day long -The effects of maternal employment status depend in part on how the mother is affected by her employment --In general, outcomes are likely to be better for both mothers and children if the mother's employment status is consistent with her desire to be either employed or a full-time homemaker -Be consistent with parent's goals and what they want Huge stressor - figuring out how to have good affordable child-care, important people have options -Child-care arrangements are also an important factor in the effects of maternal employment

Experience in language

In learning our native language, two things happen: -Acquired Distinctiveness: We become better at perceiving stimulus properties that are critical for distinguishing native language sounds -We become experts at hearing b p r l (in english) -Acquired Similarity: We become worse at perceiving properties that are not (Lieberman et al., 1957) -if I'm learning more r p l then you're losing some mandarin phenomes?

Emotions & Psychopathology

In many disorders, one or more components of emotional processing are impaired in some respect, thus interfering with the goal achievement (crippling anxiety

Development of self-reuglation

In the first months of life, parents help infants regulate their emotional arousal by controlling their exposure to stimulating events (scaffolding) (visual Cliff paradigm scared vs happy face) By 6 months, infants can reduce their distress by averting their gaze and sometimes by self-soothing, which is engaging in stylized or repetitive rubbing or stroking of their bodies or clothing Between ages 1 and 2, infants increasingly turn their attention to non-distressing objects or people to distract themselves from sources of distress (crying for mom or dad) (marshmellow task tell kids to think about something fun to distract self) With increasing age comes an increasing ability to regulate one's own emotions

Group function of peer aggression (bullying)?

Individual motives for the bully: -Sense of control and power -Bullying entails more than aggression: It captures a dynamic interaction between the perpetrator and the victim It's a reciprocal process of sorts, lash out and want a certain response from person they are bullying Group motives for the bully: -To signal what is not tolerated: if someone doesn't show me respect, I will bully him to show everyone else to not do that -To foster compliance-> cohesiveness:Want to make everyone play by their own rules, standard of conduct ->Rejection should cause emotional pain -->(reinforcement) Punishment for non-conformity: they want the world to look a certain way, follow a certain set of rules, don't want people in school that are nerds, different in a certain way -Reinforcement in a way that when you adhere to bully's rules you won't be punished -If you don't adhere to rules you'll be punished

Information processing

Information Processing Theories:"Mind as computer" -Continuous Cognitive Change -Hardware = nervous system, physical aspects of the brain -Software = rules, strategies, mental programs Popular theoretical framework Our brain processes the information that comes in through our senses Applicable across life span What does it mean to process? -Something comes in, we do something to it, and it is converted to output

Neglected Peer Status

Infrequently mentioned as liked or disliked Display relatively few behaviors that differ greatly from those of many other children Appear to be neglected primarily because they are not noticed Much better chance than rejected kids in moving to different categories when they grow up

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)

Input from world -> Sensory Memory -> Working Memory: holds info on-line <--> long-term memory Working Memory -> Output Executive control 1. Regulate attention 2. Select strategies 3. Monitor quality of output -> Sensory memory -> Working Memory: holds info on-line -> long-term memory

Temporal lobe

Involved in memory, visual recognition, and the processing of emotion and auditory information

Cognition

Knowing and the process of acquiring knowledge Includes: -attention -perception -learning -thinking -memory

Psychosexual stages

Largely shaped by parent-child interactions (fixation) 1. Oral stage (0-1 year) Needs are gratified orally (by sucking), fostering attachment to the mother 2. Anal stage (1-3 years) Toddlers are told to control bladder and bowels, creating a conflict between biological urges and sociocultural demands 3. Phallic (3-6 years) Psychosexual energy from the genitals prompts desires for the opposite-sex parent. Fear of retaliation from the same-sex parent causes children to identify with that parent and vicariously satisfy attraction to the opposite-sex parent 4. Latency (6-12 years) A "quiet time" in which psychosexual energy is channeled into socially acceptable activities such as schoolwork and play with same-sex partners 5. Genital (12 years and older) A period of sexual maturation in which psychosexual needs are directed toward heterosexual relationships

John Watson

Learning -first half of 1900s -behaviorism -environmental determinism (nurture, passivity, continuous) -influenced by Pavlov's work on classical conditioning Behavioral theory Conclusions about human behavior should be based on observable behaviors 1. Classical conditioning (Watson) No inborn tendencies, all paired associations (Little Albert) Conditioned Stimulus (cute rat) + unconditioned stimulus (loud noise) = conditioned response (fear) 2. Operant conditioning (Skinner) Avoid unfavorable outcomes and promote favorable ones Reinforcement & Punishment

Phineas Gage

Lesion patient, suffered an injury,, was a railroad worker, rod went into eye, survived even though it went through his brain, he could talk, walk, see, his personality was not intact before: mild-mannered, polite after: foul-mouth, inappropriate, Told us about the significance about the prefrontal cortex, if you wipe out the part just above the eyes you have trouble with inhibiting impulses, lost inhibitory control Patients can report on what the "right thing to do" is but when they engage they will do innappropriate things

Rejected Peer Status

Liked by few peers and disliked by many peers -Look at social interactions different than popular kids, see world in slightly more negative way in social interactions, more limited reprotaire of social strategies -Engage in hostile attribution bias A majority of rejected children tend to fall into two categories: -Aggressive-rejected -Withrdrawn-rejected Rejected children, particularly those who are aggressive, tend to differ from more popular children in their social motives and their processing of information in social situations -More likely to attribute hostile motives to others in negative social situations and to have more difficulty than other children in finding constructive solutions to difficult social situations

Cerebral Cortex

Lobes are major areas of the cortex that are associated with different categories of behavior -Doesn't all develop at once, follows systematic pattern of development Parallel of phylogeny and ontology occipital lobe->frontal lobe

Motor Experience leads to many changes

Lots of psychological changes that co-occur with motoric change Locomotor babies vs. Prelocomotor babies show more -New/intense forms of affectin -increased attention to distal objects/ people -increased checking back in preiviously prohibited contexts -increased engagement in interactive play

Evolution of the Brain

Mammalian brain = cortex (control behavior) Last to develop phylogenetically and ontogenentically C-shaped development Frontal cortex- last to develop phyogneetically and ontognetically Things that develop early are seen across species C-shape development- starting in the back and moving to the front (occipital->frontal)

How culture affects cognition Could culture affect development of math skills?

Math English: "Teens" are not linguistically represented on a base-10 system -11-12, 13, & 15 must be memorized -Digit part is represented first -fourteen, rather than ten-four Chinese: System is base-10 -Language may help to test ability to learn math Tested (English-speaking) children in US and (Mandarin-speaking) China -3, 4, and 5 years -"How high can you count?" -No differences at 3 years, increasing benefit for Chinese at 4 and 5 years -Specifically, the difference was in the teens -May explain why Chinese students may learn math better than English students

Secular Trends of Puberty

Menarche (first period) is happening earlier and earlier at a time Age of Onset of Puberty is dropping (secular trend) -nutrition, stress, weight gain, etc. Emotional centers of brain are early developing: amygdala is active and developed at young ages Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) continues to develop until late adolescence -immature impulse control "An engine without a skilled driver" -Having a mature emotional center with immature prefrontal cortex

Module: Domain Specific View (Faces)

Module - controlled separte centers highly specialized for a certain purpose Fodor (1983) -Domain specificity: Chunk of brain's only dedicated to reading faces -Innateness: born with modules -Informational encapsulation:What goes on in auditory module doesn't impact other modules -Fast processing -Neural specificity -Automaticity : Born with it, fast, specialized

Why do Humans develop slowly

Must be advantageous to caregiver and child brain development? plasticity high for longer period of time by prolonging development adaptive to environment Learning occurs in waves

Sesame Street experiment

N = 950 4 groups -Rarely watched, watch 2-3 times/ week, watch 4-5 times/week, watch more than 5 times/week Pre- and post-test -Letters, numbers, and geometric shapes Results -Watching at least 4 times/wk boosted alphabet and name writing -Boosts in vocab and pre-reading skills -The more you watch it, the better prepared for school you are

Motor Development

Nature -Unfolding of genetically programmed sequence of events. -Cephalocaudal, proximodistal (muscles/skeleton & behaviors) lift head > plays patty cake > kicks ball Nurture -Opportunities to exercise and practice motor skills are critical in developing these skills

What do babies look at?

Newborns (< 2 months old) Moderately complex, high contrast patterns (moving) Remember, acuity is very poor depth takes practice

Patterson model for the development of chronic antisocial behavior

coercive household -> Conduct Disorders; hostile attributional bias; lack of self-restraint -> rejection by normal peers & academic failure -> Commitment to a deviant group -> delinquency

Kuhl et al. 1992 Learning influences phonetic perception

Newborns recognize all phonemes; adults do not When is the sensitive period? -Used to think it was @ 1 year -Understanding language helps w/ phonetic development Looking for magnet effect -Categorizing sounds -everything roughly "peachy" are categorized as "peach" -Adults show magnet effect for their own language -Experiment: Bunny - initilally wanted to test, stimulus baby wants to look at (operant conditioning) use this tendency to determine whether baby can distinguish between 2 sounds If he starts to learn over time when the sound changes, the bunny will appear, he will turn his head in anticipation of it Classical conditioning - pairing sound and toy When he hears the change of one hindi da to another, he turns the head to look at the bunny Conclusion - he can hear the 2 different da sounds 6 month old American (English) & Swedish Turn head when new sound plays to get reward 32 variants for each sound Looking to see where categorical distinctions are English-speaking /i/ treated as prototype (stronger magnet effect) /y/ treated as non-prototype Results: 6 months is the turning point for flexibility of what phonemes respond to A little beyond this point they begin to not distinguish different phonemes

Frontal lobe

Organizes behavior and is responsible for planning makes us uniquelly human, planning, controls impulse, language

Stability of Sociometric Status

Over relatively short time periods such as weeks or months, children who are popular or rejected tend to remain so, whereas those who are neglected or controversial tend to change their status Over time, sociometric stability for rejected children is generally higher than for popular, neglected, or controversial children, and may increase with the age of the child Hard to move in and out of popular rejected group Popular, rejected are the extremes and the other groups are in the middle Rejected children are most likely to stay in this group

The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration

Paridigm: put different weights on different pegs -must track how much weight is put on an individual peg And how far out the peg is put relitive to the middle -kids in preoperational stage can't do it -This video shows three levels of understanding of the balance scale problem studied by Robert Siegler (1976). The first clip shows a 6-year-old consistently and confidently predicting that whichever side has more weight will go down. The second clip shows a 9-year-old making similar predictions but showing considerable doubt about them. The third clip shows a 14-year-old generally—but not always—predicting correctly, including predictions that the side with less weight but greater distance of the weight from the fulcrum will go down.

The Other-Species Effect

Pascalis & Bachevalier (1998) report that both non-human primates and humans are better at recognizing faces of their own species -Monkeys look longer at novel monkey faces but not human faces and humans look longer at novel human faces but not monkey faces. Pascalis, de Haan & Nelson (2002) directly tested theory of perceptual narrowing using the Visual Paired Comparison procedure in 6 and 9 month old infants and adults. Pascalis, de Haan & Nelson (2002) tested for perceptual narrowing using the Visual Paired Comparison procedure in 6 and 9 month old infants and adults Adults and 9 month olds looked longer at novel human faces, but looked equally long at novel and familiar monkey faces 6-month-olds showed novelty preferences in both the human and the monkey conditions All faces are initially discriminated equally well, perceptual narrowing occurs with experience (accounts for why 6 month olds are "better" at discriminating monkey faces than are 9 month olds and adults) Same results are found for other-race effect -Speaks against modular view of face processing

Sigmund Freud

Psychoanalytic -early 1900s-30s -intrinsic drives and motives -qualitative stages (discontinuous) -psychosexual in nature (nature and nurture) -irrational and unconscious -resolution of earlier stages affects later self -Drove field to recognize that unconscious motives can shape thoughts and behavior -Early experiences matter

Characteristics Associated with Status

Peer status: sociometric group is affected by the child's: -Attractiveness -Athletic ability (and for boys-early maturation) -Social behavior -Personality -Cognitions about self and others -self esteem -savy of knowing what other people are feeling -Goals when interacting with peers (want to be liked or not) Status of the child's friends -If you hang with someone likeable you will be more likeable and vice versa Cognitive skills -good role taking ability -higher IQ -Cognitions about self and others Interpersonal behavior & temperament -popular children are more calm, outgoing, cooperative, supportive -less impulsive & irritable -less behaviorally inhibited or slow to warm up->temperament (in western societies) -more skilled at initiating interaction Parenting -Authoritative parenting increases "liked" votes -Authoritarian parenting increased "disliked" votes -Parenting styles that make you a better fit in your cultural environment will also make you a better fit in your social environment

Piagetian Learning

Piaget believed cognitive development was propelled forward by 2 natural tendencies: Adaptation: The tendency to respond to the demands of the environment to meet one's goals Organization: The tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge Three processes work together from birth to propel development forward Assimilation: The process by which people translate incoming information into a form they can understand, integrating reality into one's own view Accommodation: The process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences, changing one's view to better accomadate reality Equilibration: The process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

Formal operations and education

Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operations stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal Requires experience with formal education

Piaget's Implications for Education

Piaget's view of children's cognitive development suggests that children's distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how best to teach them In addition, because children learn by mentally and physically interacting with the environment, relevant physical activities, accompanied by questions that call attention to the lessons of the activities, are important in educational practice Curriculum development- b/c of piaget's ideas a lot of schools have science fair projects not just lessons, math may benefit more and more by giving children opportunities to explore mathematical concepts in a hands off way, act out shakespeare play gives them more control over what they are learning

The Valence of Plasticity

Plasticity: The ability of the brain to change in response to the environment Negative: neglect Kitten's eyes (can be very susceptible to the environment you can grow up ) Positive: Violinists' left hand resilience, ability to adapt to changing circumstances

Visual Cliff: Depth Perception Visual Cliff: Face perception

Plexiglass over visual cliff (Gibson) See if babies will crawl over plexiglass Recently mobile infant on checkerboard tiles What factors will make an infant crawl (infants will only have a fear for something after they've interacted with it) Interacts with reading social cues from parent ("social referencing") Manipulate mother's expression on opposite side of cliff Happy: 12-month olds will be more likely to cross Fear & Anger: 12-month olds will be less likely to cross the cliff

Common Sociometric Categories

Popular: Children who receive many positive nominations and few negative nominations. Rejected: Children who receive many negative nominations and few positive nominations.may be misfits, or that these kids are really unique, not necessarily Neglected: Children who are low in social impact (i.e., they receive few positive or negative nominations). These children are not especially liked or disliked by peers; they simply go unnoticed. Average: Children are designated as average if they receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations. Controversial: Children who receive many positive and many negative nominations. They are noticed by peers and are liked by a quite a few children and disliked by quite a few others. percieved as aloof or snobby as some or shy/nice by others, OR kids who are really funny but also abrasive

Occipital lobe

Primarily associated with processing visual information

Pragmatics

Principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts -highest level of language using devices such as irony For example: -When to use polite forms -How to take conversational turns -How to adjust speech to listener -When and how to ask questions -Monitoring one's speech and comprehension

Stages of Neural Development

Proliferation - overproduction of neurons Migration - following chemical paths to its final destination Aggregation - adhering to similar cells Differentiation - specialization Synapse formation (aka Synaptogenesis) - development of axons and dendrites, Overproduction, hightened plasticity, Apoptosis -Selective cell death and synapse elimination (pruning) specialization Myelination - Myelin covers neurons (speed)

Developmental Trends of Sociometric status

Researchers have noted three patterns of findings: -The major predictors of popularity do not seem to change substantially with age (e.g., children who are selected as popular are viewed as helpful, friendly, and considerate across age levels) -Although aggression is a frequent predictor of rejection in childhood, overt aggression appears to play a less important role in peer rejection in adolescence -Withdrawn behavior seems to become a more important predictor of peer rejection with increasing age in childhood in Western society

Sensory Memory Experiment

SENSORY MEMORY IS VERY SHORT -A 3 x 4 array of letters flashes on a screen for 1⁄20 of a second, after which the screen is blank. -Then the participants hear a tone; a high tone indicates that they should report the letters in the top row, a medium tone those in the middle row, and a low tone those in the bottom row. If the tone sounds immediately after the display of the letters, participants accurately report the large majority of letters; if the tone sounds even 1 second later, participants accurately report only about 1/3 of the letters. The findings indicate that people briefly maintain information in visual sensory memory but the information is rapidly lost.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is when a more skilled other provides a temporary framework that supports children's thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own -Sensitive to (careful tailoring to) child's developmental level -Challenging, but not too hard 1. Nature of the interaction between the learner and the expert -Should be collaborative for it to be effective -Intersubjectivity (shared understanding) 2. Learning should take place in the zone of proximal development 3. The scaffolding is gradually removed as the learner becomes more proficient Stretching: Children can perform one step above their assessed competence when under the guiding hand of the more experienced partner

altruism

Selfless concern for the welfare of others that is expressed through prosocial acts

Core Knowledge Theories

Some knowledge is innate -Idea that children are born with certain cognitive abilities that are more advanced than once thought Core domains of thought -Permits a ready grasp of new related information Each domain has evolutionary roots -Associated with survival value -Domain Specific Knowledge -Physical (objects/effects) -Numerosity -Language -Face Processing -Psychological Knowledge (e.g., morality)

What can neonates do?

Sensation/Perception Proximodistal development -The sensory structures are present relatively early in prenatal development and play a vital role in fetal development and learning -The fetus experiences tactile stimulation as a result of its own activity, and tastes and smells the amniotic fluid, If you tap on tummy they can perceive different vibration -It responds to sounds from at least the 6th month of gestation -Prenatal visual experience, however, is negligible Skin modality -Touch (primary means of interacting with environment) -Temperature -Pain (circumcision) Cortisol increases relative to BL Chemosensation (Taste & Smell) -Have taste preferences (can be influenced by prenatal environment) -Breast-fed babies (1- to 2-week olds) recognize mother by odor Audition Relatively well developed -amplitude, duration, direction, frequency Recognition of voices -Mother's voice -Particular story (Cat in the Hat) Vision Last sense to develop Acuity (small objects and fine detail) -Very bad initially (20/600) -By 6 months, acuity is 20/100 -By 12 months, almost at adult levels Accommodation (changing lens for focus) -Very bad -Requiring sharper visual contrasts

Memory System Components: Information Processing perspective

Sensory memory: Refers to sights, sounds, and other sensations that are just entering the cognitive system and are briefly held in raw form until they are identified -can hold a moderate amount of information for a fraction of a second. Its capacity is relatively constant over much of development. Working memory: A workspace in which information from the environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to, and actively processed -, short-term memory storage -quite limited in both capacity and duration. Its capacity and speed of operation increases greatly over childhood and into adolescence. -Visual , spatial, verbal -Can increase because you have that tool that you can use to rehearse Long-term memory: Refers to information retained on an enduring basis -can retain an unlimited amount of information indefinitely, and the contents of long-term memory increase enormously over development.

Studying self-regulation

Show people different pictures, negative (someone holding a knife to another's throat), neutral (group of people walking down the street) Look at reactivity vs regulation Train participates to react to picture or use a strategy to regulate (think like news reporter) Tell them to react or regulate Show picture Then ask how bad do you feel 1-5 Regulation in adults -Prefrontal cortex activated (cognitive control) -Turns down activity in amygdala (emotion generation)

Similar volume of right fusiform gyrus in children & adults

Size does not change with age that much with this sample -Fus - size does not change of time Amount of FFA being occupied by face processing stimuli is increasing -Percentage of Fus devoted to Face processing changes with age -It increases as we get older -Specificity for faces are going up in age -Temporal cortex - we start to make associatations of what you're seeing, is this someone I know?

Fostering Children's Peer Acceptance

Social skills training is a common approach for assisting rejected children Intervene early on will give them a better chance of recovering from rejected category Based on the assumption that rejected children lack social skills that promote positive interaction with peers These deficits are viewed as occurring at three levels: -Lack of social knowledge: not knowing what is going to offend people, make people laugh, -Performance problems: they know the rules, but can't execute them, drawing a blank -Lack of appropriate monitoring and self-evaluation: making a bad impression on someone no matter how hard you try, think you're doing good but you're not, can't monitor themselves in moment to see if they're doing a good job, Some social skills training programs teach children -To pay attention to what is going on in a group of peers -To rehearse skills related to participating with peers -To cooperate -To communicate in positive ways For aggressive-rejected children, some training programs focus on changing faulty social perceptions: Many high aggressive children interpret neutral situations as someone trying to start something with them

Developmental Processes by Sociocultural Theorists

Sociocultural theorists believe that many of the processes that produce development, such as guided participation, are the same in all societies However, the content that children learn varies greatly from culture to culture and these differences shape children's thinking accordingly ex. Experience dependent, experience expectant, there is something we all learn (language) but which one we learn will depend on experience (chinese vs. english vs. etc) Young infants have basic functions -Attention, sensation, perception, and memory Need culture to transform them into higher mental functions

Behavioral Studies - Newborns (Face processing)

Some studies showed that newborns would have a visual preference for face-like stimuli vs. non faces (Johnson, Slater) Can't be based on visual experience BUT, what are infants really preferring (i.e., is it "facedness" per se or something else)? Simion, Macchi-Cassia and colleagues (2002, 2003): a stimulus with an oval perimeter and internal features situated in the upper half of the oval are preferred over the same oval with features situated in the lower half; moreover, these features do not need to resemble faces, they can also simply be dot patterns. -Newborns prefer geometrical, non-facelike stimuli with more elements in the upper part over stimuli in which more elements are in the lower part. -Prefer anything that is more top heavy -Suggests against modular view of face processing

Subtraction method

Subtract brain activation for Task B (Control Condition) from Task A (Experimental Condition) to see activation of interest -Must be really thoughtful about what your control condition is (Baselines for children and adults may be different)

TV literacy

TV literacy=Understanding of TV content, Can people suss out real news to fake news Can you watch a tv show and get what they are tryng to convey Before 8 or 9, not very literate. Process piecemeal fashion -Captivated by zooms, cuts, -Fast-paced action -Direct attention elsewhere during adult (male) voices -Therefore, hard to create coherent story line from beginning to end Younger than 7 - do not fully grasp fictional nature of TV After 8, still believing accuracy of portrayals -Takes a while to make sense of, undertand what's happening on tv and categorizing what you are watching as ficitonal or not

Prolonged development of face recognition memory

Takes a while for kids to develop memory of faces Accuracy improving across childhood into eraly adolescent Small dip occuring around puberty Starting to mature, a mature strategy (utilization deficiency) needs to take time to develop maybe last a year?

Sex Differences in reaction to divorce: Females

Tend to fare better than male children -Do not have the above mentioned characteristics -Often seen as a friend that can console (relationship strengthened) Daughters are seen as friend that can console the mother, challenging because she is being more than a grownup than she is supposed to be -Increased responsibility around the house Girls become more androgynous -Androgynous = take on social roles of both males and females, can't afford to fit in narrow niche, fewer ppl in house, do different things around the house

Internal Working Model of Attachment

The child develops a mental representation of the self, of attachment figures, and of relationships in general This working model guides children's interactions with caregivers and other people in infancy and at older ages

semantics

The expressed meaning of words and sentences Family pet is a "dog" A dog is an "animal" "John hit Suzie" vs. "John hugged Suzie" -The way in which we string together different words effect meanings -Basic units of meaning -How do these words start to come together

Things to consider when thinking about the role of the family

The family is the first social context a child encounters Role of mothers & fathers (or lack of them) Role of siblings (or lack of them) - All familial relationships are intertwined; existing as a bigger unit Role of extended families --Not only nuclear family --Grandparents, aunt, uncles, cousins, etc. "Non-traditional" families divorce adoption gay/lesbian parents How changing situations affect family functioning --What happens when someone moves, dies, becomes sick and has to be taken care of, divorce

The Placenta

The placenta serves as a biological barrier preventing the fetus from experiencing toxins, stress, and disease but doesn't protect against everything!

What can a fetus do? Sensation

The sensory structures are present relatively early in prenatal development and play a vital role in fetal development and learning -The fetus experiences tactile stimulation as a result of its own activity, and tastes and smells the amniotic fluid -It responds to sounds from at least the 6th month of gestation -Prenatal visual experience, however, is negligible

Phonology

The sound system of a language and the rules for combining these sounds to produce meaningful units of speech -r, l = Phonemes -Rip vs. Lip signals a different meaning in English -smallest parts we can divide language into, meaningful units of sound Distinct from letters -We are all born with the capacity to hear all phonemes -Babies can hear more phonemes than adults can -Discard ability to hear other phonemes not in language -In japanese l and r don't need to occupy different space as in for english -So it's hard for Japanese people to distinguish b/w l and r -In english we have l and r in japanese they overlap Categorical perception -The sounds of phonemes can vary quantitatively, but we make categorical perception -4/13 peach is being lumped into peach almost 100% of the time -Only when it is really distorted around 50% mark we get confused Speech acoustics can be varied along a continuum -bill <---> pill

Processing Speed

The speed with which children execute basic processes increases greatly over the course of childhood Biological maturation and experience contribute to increased processing speed -Two biological processes that contribute to faster processing are myelination and increased connectivity among brain regions

Syntax

The structure of a language The rules specifying how words and grammatical markers are to be combined to produce meaningful sentences =Cat dog bit. -Dog bit cat. -Cat bit dog.

Psycholinguistics

The study of structure and development of language -Phonology -Morphology -Semantics -Syntax -Pragmatics

Empathy promotes altruism

Victim Distress leads to -> No reax or self-focused distress -> Ignoring victim, little help unless victim specifically requests Victim Distress leads to -> Empathic distress or sympathy ->Reflection on altruistic principles -> Responsibility to help ->Prosocial Behavior Victim Distress leads to -> Empathic distress or sympathy ->Reflection on altruistic principles -> Responsibility to help ->BUT IF Responsibility ignored ->observer feels guilty ->WHICH COULD TRIGGER prosocial behavior

Relational Aggression

Traditionally, males seen as more aggressive and females having more relational goals -Relational aggression is sneakier, harder to label, pinpoint, observe Crick & Grotpeter (1995) thought that girls' aggression would be consistent with their social goals (i.e., undermine another's social standing) -Weapon to assault others and others' relationships. Use lies, secrets, and betrayals to destroy or damage the relationships and social standing of others in the group. -The victim may not know the abuser is lying or gossiping about the victim, and the abuser may pretend to befriend the victim. -Can be direct or subversive -Younger children are more likely to use direct forms of relational aggression, e.g., "You can't come to my birthday party." In contrast, older children are more likely to use more covert methods of harm, e.g., by spreading demeaning stories -As you get more skilled at holding other people's perspective in your mind as you're older, it's a double edged sword, more possibility to hurt one another, and more self-conscious

Bullying in School: The Power of Bullies and the Plight of Victims

Trajectory and "Function" in Adolescence -Definitions of bullying: Physical, verbal, relational, electronic -Bullying behaviors across adolescence -Peaks during early adolescence, then dissipates -More likely during transition periods (e.g., 6th grade) changing dramatically homeroom in elementary school to a lot more kids in middle school where you're more concerned where you stand among peers -Pre-6th grade, low correlation between perceived "coolness" and bullying 6th grade, positive correlation emerges -Bullying greatest in schools with low heterogeneity -No one clear majority: less bullying Students Involved in Bullying -Targets of bullying: Rarely random -Non-normative behaviors and social misfits -Personal vulnerabilities -Costs of being bullied: Psychosocial, health, education, more stress, anxiety, depression -Having even 1 close friends is good for resiliance against bullying -Being in a school where bullying isn't condoned can help too -Aggressors -Seeking power, status, and "coolness" -Maybe because of their home environment, same motivation but why they have that motivation is different -Inflated self-worth -Intervention: Bystanders: Make the bully feel like the jerk they are Change it so entire environment is not responding to bullying appraoches

Non-normative aggression in children

Two types Proactive aggressor -Find aggressive acts easy to perform -Rely on aggression to achieve goals Reactive aggressor -Are hostile b/c they over-attribute hostile intent to others:Interpret ambiguous situations as hostile -Can't control anger long enough to figure out better solutions

Metaphor for information-processing: Computation System

Underlying many information-processing theories is the metaphor of the child as a computation system Cognitive development arises from children gradually surmounting their processing limitations by: 1. Increasing efficient execution of basic processes 2. Expanding content knowledge 3. Acquiring new strategies

How does this change in perceptual completion occur? What is the agent of change?

Use eye tracking where are they looking at the image to make sense of it Can do this at 4 months of age they can "complete objects" ~2-3 months: some have developed some make mistakes gets it: stare more where rods sticking out to get the right cues, horizontal scans doesn't get it: stares all over the place, vertical scans Therefore, visual attention is the necessary agent for the development of perceptual completion

Popular Peer Status

Viewed positively by many peers and are viewed negatively by few peers These individuals... -Tend to be skilled at initiating interactions with peers and at maintaining positive relationships -Tend to be cooperative, friendly, sociable, and sensitive to others -Are not prone to intense negative emotions and regulate themselves well -Tend to be less aggressive than average children Important to differentiate between children who are popular in terms of sociometric measures and those who are perceived as being popular with others -Individuals with high status in the peer group are often labeled "popular" by peers, but tend to be above average in aggression and use it to obtain their goals -The relationship between perceived popularity and aggression is especially high in adolescence, particularly among high-status girls

Private Speech

Vygotsky saw it as "private speech" -Speech to self increased during tough tasks -Tool used by preschoolers and young grade school children to plan and regulate their problem-solving activities -Language drives cognitive development Piaget saw it as "egocentric speech" -Nonsocial speech that reflected children's egocentric perspective -Cognitive development drives language -Kids had to do very difficult task: if they had to count outloud, disrupting their private speech to help the task, it was harder for them to do it

How do we learn from more knowledgeable others?

We learn within the Zone of Proximal Development -Range of tasks we can accomplish with guidance from a more skilled other

Maybe Strange Situation is simply measuring differences in temperament (Kagan)?

Why? Classifications correspond with temperament numbers Maybe kids with easy temperament are securely attached, two names for the same thing But the answer is -No -Infants can develop different types of attachments with different people -Caregivers of difficult babies can be trained to be more sensitive, babies develop secure relationships Sensitive caregiving - give and take, when baby wants stimulation you pick up on those cues and when they don't want stimulation you leave them alone more When this is done correctly it fuels secure attachment

Memory Example (Sociocultural)

Young infants have a basic memory system And because... -We exist in a literate society -We will most likely have contact with people who teach us how to write To enhance our memory, we might write things down Another culture might tie a string in a knot

Cross-sectional Research

take a group of 6, 8, and 10 year olds and compare each other. Cohort Effect = non-developmental effects caused by differences in group-experiences