development in infancy MT 2
Daycare has different effects on different infants. What do some of these effects depend upon?
-Age of entry -How much time is spent there -Temperament -Other infant characteristics (ie reactive vs. relaxed/ outgoing) -gender (more negative effect for boys than girls) -parents' feelings about daycare -Quality of care -Quality of home environment
How did Bergelson et al. (2019) study the speech heard by infants in their real-life environments? What were their main findings?
-Used naturalistic, day-long recordings using audio recorders -found that infants heard way more speech from females than males -Found that children in higher maternal education homes heard more child-directed speech than those in lower-maternal education homes. -Found that the proportion of child-directed speech (speech directed toward the infant) in the input increases with age, due to a decrease in adult-directed speech with age
List three behavioral dimensions most often used to assess infant temperament. Explain why it is that even theorists who see temperament as inborn (innate) do not see it as immutable (i.e., unchangeable).
1) activity level: ie moving vs cuddliness 2) sociability: ie some need more, some need less 3) emotionality: ie how likely they are to cry- triggered arousal/ reactivity Idea of nature and nurture -Monkey video example: when naturally nervous/shy monkey is taken away from shy/nervous mother (taken out of environment) and put with an outgoing mother, then the baby monkey is more outgoing -Therefore, temperament is a combo of nature and nurture
What 3 kinds of cues do bilingual infants use to distinguish between (differentiate) their two languages?
1) auditory cues: rhythmic class - newborns can discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes -monolingual 4 month olds: can discriminate own language from another in same rhythmic class -bilingual 4 month olds: can discriminate their own 2 languages even when both are in different rhythmic class 2) visual cues: facial/ mouth movements -example of perceptual narrowing: young monolingual and bilingual infants can discriminate bn french and english visually, by 8 months only bilingual infants do 3) social cues: pragmatic differentiation -bilingual toddlers speak appropriate language to monolingual parent and stranger
List the two most salient characteristics of infant-directed speech. What seems to be the main effect of these characteristics?Why can we not claim that infant-directed speech is necessary for language development?
1) high pitch 2) exaggerated prosody: intonation patterns; more melodic than flat ADS main effect: -attracts and maintains attention -prosody conveys different communicative intentions -facilitates word segmentation -facilitates word learning (ma et al) IDS is not universal, thus it cannot be necessary bc babies in places without IDS still learn to talk
What are 3 factors that are considered when trying to classify an infant as bilingual?
1) onset of exposure: when did the exposure begin? -simultaneous bilingualism (crib bilinguals) vs. sequential bilingualism 2) amount of exposure: how much relative exposure to each language? -balanced vs. dominant 3) contexts of exposure: who uses the languages and how? -one parent, one language vs. code-switching >1 parent, 1 lang: neither necessary nor sufficient to become bilingual (want to speak more in minority language bc not as much exposure and less supported by the society) >code-switching does not equal linguistic confusion
When does the "social smile" usually first appear?
2 months Smile more directed towards people than objects (may be because they can now see faces better) (originally as newborns : smile when full, asleep, and in response to gentle stimulation)
What is meant by "joint attention"? Why is it important?
2 people or more are attending to the same thing at the same time When an adult and an infant are paying attention to the same object or event. Important for interactions between adults and infants. -Adult follows child's focus and labels -Adult leads child's focus and labels -Child determines adult's focus
Describe the procedure Kagan uses to identify infants who are likely to be shy/inhibited as toddlers. What 2 behaviors does he measure? Describe 2 aspects of the behavior of infants who are likely to become shy.
94 WEIRD infants assessed longitudinally for motor activity and crying at 4 months (in response to novel objects) and 9 & 14 months (in response to novel events). high motor + high cry = more likely to become shy- highest reactivity low motor + low cry = more likely to become outgoing- lowest reactivity
What 4 factors do the effects of TV/video viewing depend on?
AGE -AAP recommends no screen time for infants under 18 months Quantity -How much is being watched quality/content of content -What is being watched context -how it's being watched (ie co-viewing or not)
What myth about young infants do Adolph et al. (2015) challenge?
According to Adolph infant performance in the visual cliff does not suggest a fear of heights, as previously thought Instead, this study proposes that infants perceive affordances for locomotion -They are aware of their limitations and only do what they can. -This is evidenced because infants have elevated heart rate: from new experience and they do not look fearful at the cliff: they smile and still attempt to cross but cautiously (ie scoot backwards) -they're right up at the edge and don't attempt to back away from "edge"
How do parents view the use of video-chat with infants (McClure et al., 2015)?
As an exception to AAP's guidelines -Allows for communication and creating/maintaining relationships with family members who are geographically far away
Define assimilation and accommodation and give examples of each.
Assimilation is interpreting experience based on what we know ie: when a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. Accommodation is creating new schemes to explain new experiences. ie: people around them will say no that's not a dog, it's a cat. The schema for dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals and a new schema for cats is created
Describe Ainsworth's four attachment classifications.
Attachment: an enduring emotional bond between individuals (primary caregiver provides a secure base for infants to explore their environment) Secure: Distress in separation, joy upon return -Routinely checks in with mom, upset when leaves, comforted upon return Insecure-avoidant: Neither distressed nor joyous during procedure -Not as upset (not crying) when mom leaves, less likely to greet on return Insecure-Resistant: Distress in separation that isn't resolved in reunion -Very stressed, very upset when mom leaves, angry upon reunion (may turn away or hit) Disorganized: Frozen, unresponsive -confused/display disorganized or odd behavior -Mix of avoidant and resistant -May freeze or rock (self-soothe) -May be victims of abuse
What would you tell parents who want to raise their infant bilingually but are worried the baby will be confused by the two languages? (Byers-Heinlein & Lew-Williams, 2013)
Bilingualism does not confuse children Infants readily distinguish their two languages
What was DeLoache et al.'s (2010) main finding?
Children who watched a DVD for a month learned the same number of words as a control group (no video) The highest level of learning occurred in a no-video condition in which parents tried to teach their children the same target words during everyday activities. Another important result was that parents who liked the DVD tended to overestimate how much their children had learned from it. infants learn relatively little from infant media and their parents sometimes overestimate what they do learn.
Coffey et al. (2015) article examined links between infant positive affect and later life satisfaction. What were their main findings?
Coffey showed that infants happiness predicted their adult workplace optimism/ hope
Distinguish between foreground and background TV. What effects does background TV have on infant play behaviors?
Foreground: what children watch Background: beyond child's comprehension and less overt attention is paid to it Background tv can disrupt infant play (schmidt, 2008) -Shorter play episodes and less focused attention during play when TV is on (even though little overt attention is paid to the TV)
How did Frick and Wang (2014) demonstrate the importance of active-hand-on experience in infants' ability to perform mental spatial rotations?
Frick and wang found that 14 month old infants ability to mentally track the orientation of an object improved after hands on experience Just like self-initiated movement enables infants to switch from egocentric to allocentric thinking; the hands on spinning of the table allowed the infants to consider spatial relations between objects in a more objective way
Describe Hammond et al.'s (2017) main findings.
Hammond showed that some infants begin engaging in some types of prosocial/ helping behavior in the first- year of life Earliest pro- social helping behaviors were usually in a self-care context
How does childcare have both negative and positive effects on the development of social skills (Phillips et al., 2011)?
In general infants temperament/emotionality (stress reactivity) may play a role in their adaptation to daycare. -Individual differences Ie: interactions bn home quality and daycare quality- high quality day care can be protective if kid comes from low quality home environment Quality of child care can be a positive aspect to social skills and adjustment but the high amounts (quantity) can contribute to increased externalizing behavior (aggression, risk taking, noncompliance
What is the "video deficit"? In what 3 domains has it been demonstrated? What factors have been shown to mitigate this deficit?
Infants learn better from a live interaction than from a televised one -Have trouble translating what's on the screen into real life (bc told that stuff on screen is imaginary) Domains: Imitation: infants are more likely to imitate something demonstrated live than viewed on video -harder from video because of perceptual impoverishment, dual representation, joint attention -Mitigation: doubling exposure, parental involvement (labeling) and voice-overs can reduce the video deficit object retrieval: 24 month olds can find a hidden object when told directly where the object is, but not when the exact same info is given to them by someone on video -Mitigation: if given a 5-minute contingent interaction via closed-circuit TV before hiding task, they succeed (no video deficit) language learning: {SOUND} 9 month old American infants exposed to 4 mandarin speakers for 12 sessions: audio only, audiovisual, live speakers (Kuhl et al) -discriminated only in live interaction condition language learning: {WORDS} several experimental studies have shown infants and toddlers learn words better from live interactions than videos/DVDs
Puig et al. (2013) found that insecure attachment in infancy predicted what in adulthood?
Inflammation-based illness
Describe the bilingual advantage studied by Fecher & Johnson (2018).
found that English-French infants were able to match the face and voice with Spanish-speaking cartoon characters; monolinguals did not succeed at this task May be certain benefits to bilingualism: cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control; delay in perceptual narrowing that allows them to succeed in this task
What are some infant characteristics and stranger characteristics that influence whether or not a given infant will express anxiety when faced with a stranger?
infant: -temperament/ reactivity -past experience with strangers -current state (tired? hungry?- may already be upset) stranger: -gender (prefer women) -age (child vs adult): scared of height, someone towering over them thus prefer children or short people (little person or someone bending down to their level) -behavior (intrusive vs. contingent*) situation: -familiarity -maternal proximity
Waismeyer & Meltzoff (2017)examined infant's causal learning through observation. What were their main findings?
infants can learn about causality through observation in deterministic and probabilistic situations
What predicts infants' cortisol levels in daycare centers (Albers et al., 2016)?
infants cortisol levels are generally higher in daycare than at home these levels are related to maternal care/ behavior/ quality/ responsiveness and infant temperament/emotionality/reactivity (higher maternal qualities = higher cortisol levels)
How do young toddlers' early gestures seem to facilitate language learning? (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2007)
infants tell their mothers with their hands what they want to hear -mothers tend to translate their young toddler's gestures into words -these infants were first to produce 2 word utterances -they get more relevant input from adults and thus have more motivation to communicate more
List and describe two universal characteristics of human language that all researchers agree upon.
language: a rule-governed code (has structure) for communication (function-infant's main goal; emerges before structure) 1) arbitrary symbols- connection between words and their referents (what object words refer to) is arbitrarily based on convention 2) productivity- creative use of language based on underlying knowledge of grammatical rules -WUG test of productivity: this is a wug, now there is another one. There are 2. Now there are 2 WUGS -possible bc you know the plural rule of adding an "-s"
What is the major accomplishment achieved by the end of the sensorimotor period(according to Piaget)? What are 5 behaviors that indicate that infants have reached this developmental milestone?
mental representations 1) internal problem solving 2) ability to track invisible displacements (stage 6) 3) using words to talk about absent objects and events 4) pretend play 5) deferred imitation (imitating something they saw in the past- based on their memory/ representation of the event (not right there in front of them) -ie Meltzoff study: babies can imitate behavior even after 4 months
How did Myruski et al. (2017) modify the still-face paradigm? What were their findings?
myruski modified Still Face paradigm to examine infants responses to mothers' use of a Mobile Device More frequent reported mobile device use was associated with less room exploration and positive affect during SF, and less recovery (i.e., engagement with mother, room exploration positive affect) during RU, even when controlling for individual differences in temperament.
What is the Stage 4 error? What is another name for this error?
occurs during object permanence task (knowledge that objects have a permanent existence that is independent of our perception of them) -can be assessed using visual search (tracking) or manual search task (using hands) -FINDS OBJECT IN FIRST LOCATION IT IS HIDDEN: UNDERSTAND OBJECTS BASED ON THEIR ACTIONS -children associate an object with area A because that is where it has been hidden in previous trials even though they saw it get hidden in area B aka A not B error
Define "primary emotions" vs. "secondary emotions" and give examples of each.
primary: basic; can be inferred directly from facial expressions -ie: happiness, sadness, anger disgust secondary: emotions depend on cognitive development and self awareness -ie: embarrassment, pride, shame, guilt
List three benefits associated with high-quality (as opposed to low-quality) care.
securely attached to caregivers competent with peers and adults have better cognitive and linguistic skills
What are Troseth & Strouse's (2017) recommendations re: learning from digital books?
social scaffolding: Experiences that clarify the relation between screen and reality, repetition of content encouraging para-social relationships contingent responsiveness from individuals on the screen attention-directing audio and video features
What were the three categories of temperament Thomas and Chess came up with based on their longitudinal interview studies?
temperament: "constitutionally" based individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation; how one is disposed to react emotionally, motorically, and attentionally to stimuli 1) easy (40%)- predictable schedules of eating, sleeping; adaptable to new situations; happy/ easy-going 2) difficult (10%)- more difficult to predict; cry in new situations 3) slow to warm up (15%)- don't get as upset as "difficult" but take longer to warm up than "easy"
What is the "naming explosion" (vocabulary spurt)? When does it usually occur?
the sudden increase in vocab (esp. object labels) that occurs around 18 months
Why do symbolic gestures appear before words?
these are non-verbal signs used to symbolically represent an object, event, action, or attribute occur earlier because they are easier to learn -easier to see muscles involved -easier to produce bc use larger muscles (gross motor movements occur before fine motor movements [as in speech])
What is social referencing? Provide an example.
using another person's interpretation of a situation to form his/her own interpretation (Feinman, 1992) ie: visual cliff- ambiguous situation in which the baby looks to the caregiver for cues -if mother smiles/positive: child is much more likely to cross over "cliff" to get to toy -if mother displays scared face/ negative: child is much more likely to halt and not cross
Explain the concept of "goodness of fit".
Temperament influences parenting style and vice versa. Matters how you interact with different temperaments and different babies require different caregiving strategies Ie: slow to warm up: don't throw them into a large group, maybe start with 1:1 interaction and work up to more people (otherwise will be stressed and lose trust in you) Contingency of responsiveness: need to fit caregiving to individual infants for optimum outcome
Describe one cross-cultural study of attachment. What conclusions can you draw from this study?
Tronick et al: Efe foragers in Zaire use multiple caretakers of infants, spent more than 50% of waking time with someone other than mother, nursed by other women Conclusions: WEIRD has underlying assumptions that the development of relationships is hierarchical and sequential -this study demonstrates that infants in other cultures simultaneously develop multiple relationships (siblings, parents, etc.)
How did Zieber et al. (2014) assess young infants perception of emotion?
Zieber examined infants perception of emotion from body movement Found that infants marched happy and angry videos to corresponding vocalizations when the videos were upright (not inverted) young infants are sensitive to emotions conveyed by bodies and match them to affective vocalizations, indicating sophisticated emotion processing capabilities early in life. -This is done from body movement, even in the absence of facial expression
Describe what Piaget meant by a sensorimotor scheme.
a scheme is initial cognitive structures of infants sensorimotor is 0-2 years -starts with reflexes: 0-1 months -ends with mental representations: 18-24 months the culmination of this stage is the development of mental representations
What were two of Piaget's major contributions to the study of infant cognitive development? What are two criticisms of his work with infants?
contributions -focus on active role played by child -discovered many new things about infant behavior through combination of naturalistic observation and informal experiments (utilizing small, intimate samples) criticisms -underestimated young infants' abilities -too much emphasis on motor behavior (methodologically and theoretically) -not enough emphasis on role of perceptual learning
What are three kinds of cues to what emotion an infant is feeling?
facial expressions vocalizations body movements (postures)
What was the main conclusion of the Needham et al. (2017) "sticky mittens" study?
-4 month old infants with active training with sticky mittens showed more object exploration than those with passive training -They also found that auditory feedback played a role in this effect
List and describe 4 characteristics of high-quality childcare centers. What is the most important indicator of high quality?
*High caregiver/ low child ratio* -Ideal- 1:3 -Should be stable, not a high turnover of caregivers (hard to get cause not paid enough) licensing/accreditation (by state and/or nationally) positive/contingent interactions between adult and infants caregiver training in development, first aid Good relationships with parents (good communication- provide daily report for parent) Daily activity is loosely structured (routines are good for kids, but also needs to be flexible enough to accommodate individual differences) Physical setting: clean, well-ventilated, well-lit, shouldn't feel crowded, outside area with a fence Age-appropriate toys and equipment (different across cultures)
What is "maternal mirroring" (Bigelow et al., 2018)?
A mother's non-verbal attunement behavior in which the mother directly imitates her infant's expressions Maternal mirroring allows infants to readily notice the relation between their own behaviors and those of their mothers, which may enhance infants' early understanding that they can be active agents in instigating social interactions, as demonstrated by social bidding. 5 month olds whose mothers engaged in more mirroring during free play were more likely to produce non distress vocalizations later when their mothers were ignoring them (more social bids- because more used to mothers' reciprocal interactions)
What are the 3 main reasons parents give for why they allow their infants and toddlers to watch TV/DVDs?
Education Entertainment babysitting
What did Ma et al. (2011) find was a benefit for young infants listening to infant-directed speech?
Ma et al compared toddlers word learning from infant directed and adult directed speech They found that the 21 month olds only learned in the IDS condition They learned new novel words faster
When bilingual toddlers mix their two languages, does it mean they cannot tell the languages apart?
NO, even newborns can distinguish between their 2 languages -this is code-switching
Zosh et al. (2015) examined parental use of spatial language in two contexts. What were their main findings?
Parents were more likely to use spatial language when playing with their infants with a traditional vs electronic shape sorter
Discuss the possibility that infants' performance on manual search tasks may not be the best way to measure their understanding of object permanence. How does Baillargeon's research demonstrate an earlier understanding of objects and their properties?
Piaget put too great of an emphasis on motor learning; infants don't have very developed motor skills, so visual tracking may be more accurate and telling of infants' actual mental representations Baillargeon uses visual habituation to get at younger infants' object knowledge impossible vs possible events-> if infant looks longer at impossible event, concludes that they were surprised by it because they have the same beliefs about objects as adults (violation of expectation paradigm) -shows that infants have mental representations earlier than piaget thought
What is the still-face procedure? What does it demonstrate?
The actual procedure is: a mother faces her baby, and is asked to hold a 'still face', in which she does not react to the baby's behaviors It demonstrates: very young infants already have basic building blocks of social cognition in place -A sense of the relationship between facial expression and emotion -Infants' attempt to re-engage with caregiver suggest that they are able to plan and execute simple goal-directed behaviors Infants have expectations of contingency from caregiver -More positive affect (smiling, vocalizing) in contingent interactions -More negative interactions (fussing, crying) in non-contingent interactions Allows researchers to examine ways in which infants spontaneously initiate social exchanges and the way they modulate their affect and attention in order to have reciprocal interactions.
Describe the "Strange Situation". How is it used to study attachment?
Used to assess security of attachment at about twelve months by observing response to separation from parent, interaction with stranger and reunion with parent Results in 4 attachment classifications
Vallotton (2012) found that sign training led to what changes in mothers?
Vallotton showed that teaching infant signs to low income families led to more attention/responsiveness to kids distress and to less parental stress
What is language dominance?
When a child is exposed to one of their languages disproportionately more than the other
Distinguish between proto-declarative and proto-imperative points.
declarative: -using an object to obtain adult attention -often accompanied by relaxed posture -informative point >ie if you drop something and can't find it, infant will point to where it is (see you have a need and help) imperative: -using an adult to obtain an object -often accomplished by leaning forward and grunting/whining