Psych exam 2
Piaget's sensorimotor stage
0-2 years greatest and most rapid development intelligence expressed through sensory and motor abilities (integration of the two) substages: modification of reflexes (0-1 month) organize separate reflexes into larger behaviors- centered on own body, repetitive (1-4 months) environment included in reactions; infants lack object permanence (4-8 months) intentional, coordinated behavior; cause & effect; A not B error (tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found, rather than the new location of where it was last hidden); fragile object permanence (8-12 months) actively explore how objects can be used; trial and error experimentation occurs (12-18 months) Mental representations and combinations; deferred imitation (18-24 months)
Piaget's formal operational
12+ years able to think abstractly and hypothetically able to reason systematically about all possible outcomes ex. mixing different liquids to obtain blue liquid (start with mixing one color with all others- take out if doesn't work; go through mentally at first) stage not attained universally
Piaget's preoperational stage
2-7 years Major advances: symbolic representation- using one object to stand for another (pretend play, language etc.) conservation concept (conservation of liquid quantity, solid quantity, and number) Major weaknesses: egocentrism- difficulty seeing world from other's point of view; failure to understand that their own perspective may be misleading; Three mountain task (child sees mountain on table and doll on opposite side- asked to identify picture of how doll sees it) centration- narrowly focused thought; focus on a single feature of an object; ex. conservation- amount of liquid in glass then changing shape of container focus on static states, ignore transformations
naïve psychology in the development of the concept of objects
2nd-3rd year commonsense understanding of others behaviors desires, beliefs, actions
equilibration example with plants
4-7 year olds will think that animals are the only living things stems from assumption that only animals can move in ways that allow them to survive soon realize plants are alive creates state of disequilibrium because it is hard to assimilate later accommodates new info about plants as they realize that animals and plants move in adaptive ways equilibrium
Piaget's concrete operational
7-12 years egocentrism declines Major advances: logical reasoning ability to attend to multiple dimensions solve conservation problems Major weaknesses: limited to concrete situations, not abstract or hypothetical ones
Autism and development
Autism impact people differently (some will have high IQs and some will have low) impairments in social communication and social interaction restrictive, repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, or activities no test for autism, can only be diagnosed Most don't work or will be in a longterm/sharing relationship question as to whether they have theory of mind most won't pass the sally anne test but when the test is changed to include motivation to getting the answer right then most will pass shows they can see perspectives when using a strength-based assessment of intelligence most fall in normal range, as compared to Wechsler test when pattern matching is involved, they will perform better have better vision acuity can detect irrelevant stimuli overt behavior may or may not be related to one's competence show atypical joint attention have excellent covert attention perform well on intentionality test
Behaviorism theory of development
BF Skinner imitation and reinforcement/punishment
Requirements to be able to learn a language
Human brain: language is a species specific behavior in that only humans can acquire language in the normal course of development and is species-universal in that language learning is achieved by typically developing infants across the globe; animals don't have complexity or generativity more activities in brains of newborns and 3 months when exposed to speech over silence or reversed speech Environment: children must be exposed to people using language; infants identify speech as something important very early IDS is not universal
Nativism theory of development (and their view on behaviorism)
Noam Chomsky against behaviorism: - poverty of stimulus: children receive limited data generativity- we can understand and produce sentences we have never hear before can understand structure of what makes a sentence and apply structure to knew words (wented) - poverty of reinforcement: children are simply not reinforced to trained to use language parents correct untruthful statements but not those with wrong grammar humans are born with a universal grammar- hardwired set of principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages underlying structure in all languages is fundamentally similar invariant sequence of language development spontaneous grammar in sign language learners
triarchic theory of intelligence
analytical- linguistic, mathematical, spatial creative- theorize, innovation, flexibility practical- street smarts, adaptation, reasoning intelligence is revealed in pursuit of goals
Theory of successful intelligence
based on view that intelligence is the ability to achieve success in life
First words as a stage of language acquisition
by 10-12 months infants understand what others say but don't yet produce speech comprehension preceding production around 12-15 months most infants utter first words- "productive vocabulary" first words are similar across languages often simplified versions of words (nana for banana) typically nouns holophrastic: a child expresses a whole phrase or idea with a single word overextension: using a given word in a broader context than is important
development of desire understanding
by 12-14 months understand the connection between positive desires and actions but don't understand connection between negative desires (like disgust) and actions by 18 months more understanding of other's desires understand that people will desire what they like and should be given that even if their desires are different from the child by 2 years understand that desires and actions have influence on one another; understand when desires are met through action then changing action understand emotions are impacted by actions taken towards desires
putting words together in language acquisition
by 18-24 months two word sentences based on simple formulas (actor + action) (possessor + possession) telegraphic speech: non-essential elements left out (Genie) 3-5 years: more complex sentences add grammatical endings over-regularization: speech errors of applying rules to words that are exceptions to the rule (also shows generativity) seen in wug test
development of intention understanding
by 6 months understand others' behavior is goal directed look longer when reaching for new goal rather than new movement by 11 months, can predict the goal of a hand (but not claw) goal understanding is linked to own goal directed actions infants attrivute intentions to objects that behave like humans; expect rational actions 14 months show rational imitation
evaluation of infant findings
challenges: looking more at event/object is not functional (how is this adaptive) problematic to rely on perceptual paradigm to make inferences about cognition- can only say that they discriminate but not why
basic assumptions of piaget's theory
child actively constructs knowledge child learns on own, not just from others child is intrinsically motivated to learn (can be harmed by outside forces)
basic processes in Piaget's theory
child understands the world with schemas (structures that organize information into categories and change constantly) Assimilation- taking in info compatible with what is already known; incorporating into existing schema Accommodation- changing existing knowledge based on new knowledge; modifying schemas based on experience (children mostly use assimilation over accommodation but there is an imbalance while they are learning) equilibration- balancing assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding, reorganizing schemas to achieve balance (happens rarely- major qualitative changes)
IQ scores
child who performs exactly at mean for ages receives 100 how individual child performed compared with average IQ score for child's age scores are normally distributed
constructivist approach to cognitive development
children constructing knowledge themselves in response to experiences
Perceiving speech in language acquisition
children speak their first words around 12-14 months, and many hundreds to follow fetuses develop preference for mother's language and voice- based on prosody 1 month olds can distinguish phonemes (basic speech sounds that can join to create words) syntax- rules in a language that specify how words from different categories can be combined categorical perception: perceive phonemes as belonging to distinct categories (like adults) perceptual narrowing: newborns distinguish phonemes used in all languages (lose this around 1 year)- adaptive identifying words- must identify recurring patterns of sounds; attend to stress patterns; statistical learning- notice syllables that often appear together
environment and intelligence
children tend to have higher IQs when family environment is intellectually stimulating testing situation familiarity with test materials and such society: IQ scores consistently risen over last decades
naïve psychology
commonsense understanding of other people and oneself; explaining world in terms of psychology
development of concept of experiences
concepts of causality: - by 6 months perceive causal connections among events (look longer at events without causal link) -during 2nd year causal understanding improves; "blicket detector" study- can infer causal impact of one variable based on indirectly relevant info about another concept of number: - by 6 months discriminate small # of events (puppet jumping twice, dishabituation to puppet jumping 1 or 3 times) - simple arithmetic only works for 3 or fewer objects/events; subatizing- can immediately form mental images and compare; controversial claim - by 3 years can count larger than 3 concept of space: - children show impressive understanding of concepts like left/right and above/below - geometric info is important - code location of objects in relation to their own bodies - egocentric spatial representations: coding of spatial info relative to own body with no regard to surroundings; not absolute (can find object even if they change their position) - hard time forming spatial representation with movement and without distinctive landmarks concept of time: - understanding of the order in which events occur - can discriminate between longer and shorter durations - confuse past and future
development fo belief understanding
considered most important theory of mind concept because beliefs are mental representation of the world by 3 years- some understanding of beliefs; basic understanding that beliefs drive actions and that perception produces beliefs about it true test of theory of mind is understanding that someone can have a false belief test of false belief understanding in which a person's belief leads him to search in incorrect locations (false belief test- Sally-Anne test) 3 year olds fail 4 year olds pass false contents test- candy box with crayons in it when asked what they originally though was in it 3 year olds will fail and say crayons 4 year olds pass and say candy Robust findings around 4 year olds but 3 year olds can sometimes pass if they are involved in the deception toddlers show implicit false belief understanding (in their looking rather than talking) How to explain early implicit understanding? - infants and toddlers understand false beliefs, tasks for older children are too demanding - they have picked up on patterns of how things usually go, but do not understand underlying mental states - they understand underlying mental states but only implicitly, can't reflect on or talk about
Flynn effect
consistent rise of average IQ scores that has occurred over the past 80 years in many countries
Hierarchial theory of intelligence
consolidates different views top= g mid level= moderately general ability (s, fluid/crystalized) bottom= many specific processes and skills level above impacts level below
Piaget (general info)
created theory from observations of his children used clinical interviews found that children think, see, interpret, and have different cognitions than adults provided precursors to many methods today details of his theory are not exactly correct but gives a sense of how children progress believed that nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development fundamental question: What makes a human intellect?
dynamic systems theory to cognitive development
development doesn't progress in stable stages development is dynamic- thought and actions constantly changing in response to environment, abilities, history etc. child is a complex system: composed of many individual elements that are integrated in more or less stable ways ex. crawling to walking: as a crawler integrates perception, has to relearn with walking actions shape cognition (own movement critical for perceiving and understanding) suggest many factors other than conceptual understanding are present in such things as the A not B error - variation: use of different behaviors to pursue same goal - selection: increasingly frequent choice of behaviors effective in meeting goals, decrease the less effective
sociocultural theory to cognitive development
development is an apprenticeship children are social learners concepts: - zone of proximal development: difference between what children can do with assistance vs alone; learning first happens with others then through zone - social scaffolding: more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children's thinking at a higher level than children could manage alone - Guided participation: process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to learn - Cultural tools: innumerable products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking - private speech: children develop self-regulation and problem solving abilities by telling themselves out-loud what to do, like a parent would believes processes of learning are all the same but content is different depending on the society - intersubjectivity: mutual understanding that people share during communication - joint attention: process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment
cognitive development
development of mental processes related to information gathering and understanding
Stages of Piaget's cognitive development (general characteristics and the names)
discontinuous (qualitative change: children at different ages think in qualitatively different ways); brief transitional periods where children will fluctuate between characteristics of previous and new stage; universal; hierarchical; domain-general (broad applicability- affects everything in child development); invariant sequence sensorimotor preoperational concrete operational formal operational
development of the concept of objects
divide objects into 3 categories: - inanimate objects (theory of physics) - people (theory of psychology) - other animals (theory of biology)- plants confusing rely on perceptual categorization: grouping by appearances ex. knowing a cat is a cat 3-6 months by 2nd year: categorizing by shape beyond infancy children form category hierarchies - categories organized in set-subset relations ex. animal-dog-labrador superordinate (super general) basic level (level we talk at) subordinate (very specific)
information processing theory of cognitive development
emphasize precise characterization of the processes underlying thinking and development growth occurs continuously in small increments focus on: structure of cognitive systems; mental operations that underlie our behavior and lead to cognitive growth children are active problem solvers compares human thinking to computer processing: - mental hardware: mental and neural structures that allow mind to operate (memory) - mental software: programs that are basis for performing tasks skills: attention- mental process that determines which information an individual processes further; orienting response- when individual views a strong or unfamiliar stimulus, she orients to it (habituation) memory- how information is encoded, stored, and retrieved; working (short term) memory- involved in actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing, processing info; long term memory- retained over long period (also procedural); autobiographical memory- coherent set of memories about one's own life executive functioning- control of cognition; inhibiting tempting actions that are counterproductive; enhancing working memory through strategies; being cognitively flexible strategies: rehearsal selective attention planning is difficult because children want to jump in and are overconfident
exposure to language in the acquiring of a language
exposure to language is spoken (can be verbal or signed) occurs naturally and adequately in daily routines infants identify and prefer speech sounds Infant directed speech (IDS): -exaggerated slower, higher pitched, more sing song - focus on naming nouns and concrete objects - diminutives (dog-doggy) - repetition - exaggerated facial expressions - prosody (pitch patterns) communicate important information (approval vs. disapproval) (rely on up to 15 months, after 18 months rely on words) - stay a step ahead of the child aids language development by drawing infants attention infants prefer IDS even in unfamiliar language learn and recognize words better when presented in IDS
Evaluation and weaknesses of Piaget's theory
extremely influential excellent overview of child's thinking weaknesses: depicts children's thinking as more consistent than it is doesn't account for variability in children's performance other factors playing a role underestimates cognitive competence of infants and young children undervalues influence of sociocultural environment vague about cognitive processes and mechanisms (hard to test)
two types of intelligence theory
fluid- ability to think on the spot, draw inferences crystallized- factual knowledge about the world can be partly independent
two factor theory of intelligence
g is important also several specific factors (s): visual-spatial perceptual speed numerical ability etc. a person can be good at rhyming but not math
social psychology
how we think about and understand the social world
Infant's naïve theories
in regards to object permanence a new test is used Methods used by infants: habituation violation of expectation- present infants with realistic vs. unrealistic and the infants look longer at the unrealistic, indicating that the infant wasn't expecting it look at novel neither requires talk, movement etc. object permanence: (Baillargeon) present infants with realist and unrealistic event using barrier to block object movement look longer when object is moved beyond a barrier by 3 1/2 months look longer at impossible events yet don't look for hidden object object properties: objects are solid, can't pass through each other objects that aren't supported will fall things that move together are connected these theories are incomplete
Single trait (g) of intelligence
intelligent behaviors have a common underlying factor: general intelligence (g) represents broad reasoning and problem solving abilities ex. g underlies verbal and quantitative parts of SAT
Most agree that intelligence:
is a child's underlying competence or learning ability provides cognitive basis for academic achievement distinct from achievement (knowledge and skills gained by experience and effort made possible by one's abilities)
Sensitive period in acquiring language
language learning occurs most successfully during a sensitive period ends 5 years to puberty plasticity facilitates language learning evidence: -children learned in isolation (Genie) learned words but lack grammar brain didn't develop ability to learn language -recovery from brain injuries in children vs. adults; children show plasticity and recover better - learning a second language before vs. after puberty; most proficient if beginning before age of 7; gradual decrease in ability; different neural mechanisms used if second language learned after puberty
theory of multiple intelligence
logical, spatial, verbal, intra/inter personal, naturalist, musical, existentialist, bodily-kinesthetic ex roger Federer's ability to play tennis is just as intelligent
Genotype and environment interactions (passive effects, evocative effects, active effects)
passive effects- when children are raised by biological parents; occur because of overlap between parents' and child's genes ex. children predisposed to enjoy reading are likely to be raised in homes with plenty of books because parents also like to read evocative effects- children's eliciting of influencing other people's behavior ex. parents who don't read will read more bedtime stories to a child that likes stories vs one who doesn't active effects- child's choosing environments that they enjoy ex. older children that like to read will seek out books regardless of whether they were read to
Stages of language acquisition (list them)
perceiving speech preparing for production first words word learning putting words together communicating with others
communicating with others as a stage in language acquisition
preschoolers not always effective communicators talk at same time say things irrelevant to what partner said don't listen to partner) improves at preschool age and school age take turns speaking effectively: taking into account what listener knows, providing information as needed listening well: figuring out when speaker's message is ambiguous and asking for clarification
violation of expectancy
procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest if it violates what infant knows or assumes to be true
theory of mind
supposition that others have mental states that drive their actions
heredity and intelligence
test scores are more similar among identical twins than fraternal adopted children's IQ scores are more similar to biological parents genetic influences increases with age some genetic processes don't exert themselves until later in development with age children seek out their own environments more accounts for 40-60% of individual differences in IQ
Do intelligence test work? What are the drawbacks?
they are powerful predictors of school outcomes, occupational success, and longevity but IQ is not only predictor (motivation and self-discipline) biased against some minorities or lower social economic classes bias due to familiarity with test contents, test taking skills, stereotype threat
Naïve physics in the development of the concept of objects
understanding inanimate objects object permanence; objects are solid objects that are not supported will fall objects that move together are connected infant physics not complete create reasonably accurate theories of basic object properties naïve because no one is teaching them
naïve biology in the development of the concept of objects
understanding living things beginning of infancy: - distinguish animals from inanimate objects; use motion to identify animals- know animate objects are self-propelled; look longer at inanimate objects that move (robot); distinguish people from other animals during preschool: expand to include specific properties of living things; growth- animals get bigger and more complex, inanimate objects won't; internal parts- insides of animate objects differ from inanimate; inheritance- only living things have offspring that resemble their parents (will make the mistake of thinking adoptive children will look like adoptive parents); healing- animate things heal by regrowth, inanimate must be fixed incomplete- don't know where plants fit in; know that they grow, heal, and die but they don't move essentialism- believe that living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are (viewed as inherited, difficult to understand)
word learning as a stage f language acquisition
why so rapid? symbolic understanding- understand words as symbols and use symbols in other domains fast mapping- rapidly learning new word; so rapid that child doesn't consider all possible meanings; expect mutual exclusivity and that any object has one name; word references object as a whole use pragmatic cues: aspects of social context, observe intentionality use sentence cues adults help through joint attention and child directed speech grammatical form of a novel word influences interpretation of it cross situation word learning: if dax is always said with a group of objects that always varies except for one, then that one must be dax syntactic bootstrapping- strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning connectionism: type of information processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units dual representation- idea that a symbolic artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same itme as a real object and as a symbol
Stanford Binet intelligence scale (SBIS)
yields IQ series of questions presented in order of difficulty (measure of how long until consecutively wrong) can be used for 2+ year olds
Wechler scale
yields IQ score contextualization of intelligence didn't agree with idea of single score consistent with hierarchical theory groups test questions into subtests; each measures a different intellectual test yields overall IQ and 4 specific scores most widely used for school age children
Preparing for production in Language acquisition
young infants make many non language sounds 6-8 weeks: cooing (drawn out vowel sounds) entertain themselves; engage in dialogues of reciprocal cooing; imitate partners 6-10 months: babbling speech like sounds that have no meaning take on features of native language advance babbling sounds like speech more use of consonance like "bah" deaf infants can coo but won't babble - babble in sign language increasingly aware that infants vocalizations elicit responses from others communicative competence: turn taking
