Developmental Psychology
How does ones genomes influence behavior?
"This might seem impossible, given that each person's DNA is constant throughout life. However, the genome includes not only DNA but also proteins that regulate gene expression by turning gene activity on and off. These proteins change in response to experience and, without structurally altering DNA, can produce enduring changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior."
How did Aristotle view children
"viewed the child as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, whose development largely reflects the nurture provided by the child's parents and the broader society." The most important goal of child rearing is the growth of character and is done by parents setting a good example of honesty, stability, and gentleness. - human knowledge comes from experience (emphasized nurture)
five relations that are fundamental in the development of every child:
(1) parents' genetic contribution to children's genotypes; (2) the contribution of children's genotypes to their own phenotypes; (3) the contribution of children's environments to their phenotypes; (4) the influence of children's phenotypes on their environments; and (5) the influence of children's environments on their genotypes.
Sight (fetus behavior)
- Although it is not totally dark inside the womb, the visual experience of the fetus is minimal. Despite minimal stimulation, fetuses can process visual information by the third trimester of pregnancy, and, much like newborn infants, fetuses have visual preferences. - Fetuses preferred light displays that are top-heavy (resembling correctly oriented faces) over those that are bottom heavy (resembling inverted faces).
Why are Piaget's, frued's and Erikson's theories not utilized as much today other than being recognized as highly influential.
"Although such stage theories have been highly influential, in the past 20 years, many researchers have concluded that most developmental changes are gradual rather than sudden, and that development occurs skill by skill rather than in a broadly unified way. This view of development is less dramatic than that of stage theories, but a great deal of evidence supports it. One such piece of evidence is the fact that a child often will behave in accord with one proposed stage on some tasks but in accord with a different proposed stage on other tasks. This variable level of reasoning makes it difficult to view the child as being "in" either stage."
How Do Nature and Nurture Together Shape Development?
"As these examples illustrate, developmental outcomes emerge from the constant bidirectional interaction of nature and nurture. To say that one is more important than the other, or even that the two are equally important, drastically oversimplifies the developmental process."
a code of ethical conduct for investigators to follow for research on child development
- Be sure that the research does not harm children physically or psychologically. - Obtain informed consent for participating in the research, preferably in writing, from parents or other responsible adults and also from children if they are old enough that the research can be explained to them. The experimenter should inform children and relevant adults of all aspects of the research that might influence their willingness to participate and should explain that refusing to participate will not result in any adverse consequences to them. - Preserve individual participants' anonymity, and do not use information for purposes other than that for which permission was given. - Discuss with parents or guardians any information yielded by the investigation that is important for the child's welfare. - Try to counteract any unforeseen negative consequences that arise during the research. - Correct any inaccurate impressions that the child may develop in the course of the study. When the research has been completed, explain the main findings to participants at a level they can understand.
Movement (Fetal Behavior)
- From 5 or 6 weeks after conception, the fetus moves spontaneously. One of the earliest distinct patterns of movement to emerge (at around 7 weeks) is hiccups. - Swallowing is another important reflex that helps to prepare the fetus for survival outside the womb. Fetuses swallow amniotic fluid, most of which is excreted back out into the amniotic sac. The tongue movements associated with swallowing promote the normal development of the palate. In addition, the passage of amniotic fluid through the body helps the digestive system mature properly. - Another form of fetal movement anticipates breathing after birth. For breathing to occur, the respiratory system must be mature and functional. Beginning as early as 10 weeks after conception, the fetus promotes its respiratory readiness by exercising its lungs through "fetal breathing," moving its chest wall in and out. No air is taken in, rather, small amounts of amniotic fluid are pulled into the lungs and then expelled.
Environmental pollutants
- In terms of pregnancy risk, there is a dose-response relationship: higher lead levels in the mother increase the risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, and low birth rate - For instance, mothers whose diet was high in Lake Michigan fish, which contain high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), had newborns with smaller heads. Air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is associated with low birth weight and neurotoxicity and disproportionately affects low-income populations, both in North America and around the world
If correlation does not imply causation, why do researchers often use correlational designs?
- One major reason is that the influence of many variables of interest—age, sex, race, and social class among them—cannot be studied experimentally (see the next section) because researchers cannot manipulate them; that is, they cannot assign participants to one sex or another, to one SES or another, and so on. So these variables can be studied only through correlational methods. - Correlational designs are also valuable when the goal is to describe relations among variables rather than to identify cause-effect relations among them.
Ethical Issues in Child-Development Research
- Researchers have a vital responsibility to anticipate potential risks that children in their studies may encounter, to minimize such risks, and to ensure that the benefits of the research outweigh any potential harm.
Taste (fetal behavior)
- The amniotic fluid contains a variety of flavors, and fetuses like some better than others. Indeed, the fetus has a sweet tooth.
Do girls outnumber boys?
- The apparent frailty of male fetuses, paired with the fact that males outnumber females at birth, would seem to imply that male embryos must significantly outnumber female embryos. In fact, conception is equally likely to result in male and female embryos. Researchers took advantage of the increased use of reproductive technologies and prenatal genetic tests to determine the sex of nearly 140,000 3- to 6-day-old fetuses, and they found an almost exact 50-50 split between males and females. It appears that female fetuses are actually less likely than male fetuses to survive early gestation, resulting in the slight male bias at birth. - during labor and delivery, males are more likely to experience fetal distress than females, even controlling for the males' larger size and head circumference. Indeed, for decades, and across many cultural contexts, infant mortality rates have been higher for boys than for girls. Male fetuses are more sensitive than females are to teratogens (harmful external agents), including opioids and alcohol, which affects their viability and ability to thrive after birth.
What are the two reasons why correlation does not mean causation?
- The direction-of-causation problem: a correlation does not indicate which variable is the cause and which variable is the effect. - third-variable problem: the correlation between two variables may actually be the result of some third, unspecified variable.
Touch (Fetal behavior)
- The fetus experiences tactile stimulation as a result of its own activity. Fetuses have been observed not only grasping their umbilical cords but also rubbing their face and sucking their thumbs. Indeed, the majority of fetal arm movements during the second half of pregnancy result in contact between their hand and mouth - as the fetus grows larger, it bumps against the walls of the uterus increasingly often. By full term, fetal heart rate responds to maternal movements, suggesting that their vestibular systems—the sensory apparatus in the inner ear that provides information about movement and balance—is also functioning before birth
Motion
- The importance of motion as a cue indicating the boundaries between objects - common movement, that is, the fact that the two segments always moved together in the same direction and at the same speed. - common motion is a powerful cue, however, infants must learn to exploit it.
stereopsis
- The process by which the visual cortex combines the differing neural signals caused by binocular disparity, resulting in the perception of depth. - This form of depth perception emerges at around 4 months of age and is generally complete within a few weeks
Longitudinal study example
- The study at the beginning of this chapter on the development of children in Kauai from before birth to age 40 is one example of a longitudinal study. - Brendgen and colleagues' (2001) examination of children's popularity with classmates. Each child's popularity was examined each year from the time they were 7-year-olds to the time they were 12-year-olds. The popularity of most children proved to be quite stable over this period; many were popular in the large majority of years, and many others were unpopular throughout.
how do microgenetic designs differ from longitudinal studies?
- They differ in that microgenetic studies typically include a greater number of sessions presented over a shorter time than in a longitudinal study. - unlike standard longitudinal methods, microgenetic designs do not yield information about stability and change over long periods. - microgenetic are typically used when the basic pattern of age-related change has already been established and the goal becomes to understand how the changes occur.
what sensory function works very well at birth.
- Touch, smell, and taste function very well at birth -Hearing and vision are less well developed in newborns and need time outside of the mother's womb to reach their fullest potential.
Themes in child development in relation to perception, action and learning
- active child theme, vividly embodied by infants' eager exploration of their environment. - Continuity/discontinuity arises repeatedly in research that addresses the relation between behavior in infancy and subsequent development. - The mechanisms of change theme is also prominent, especially as we consider learning and memory. We will examine contributions made by the sociocultural context, most prominently in the area of motor development. - Finally, the theme of nature and nurture has motivated an enormous amount of infancy research. Infants have less experience than older children and adults, suggesting the possibility of teasing apart the roles of experience-independent and experience-dependent factors.
Smell (Fetus behavior)
- amniotic fluid takes on odors from what the mother has eaten. Obstetricians have long reported that during birth they can smell scents like curry and coffee in the amniotic fluid of women who had recently consumed them. Smells can be transmitted through liquid, and amniotic fluid comes into contact with the fetus's odor receptors through fetal breathing, providing fetuses with the opportunity for olfactory experience. - Prenatal scent learning plays an important role in many species' early developmental processes, demonstrating the principle of phylogenetic continuity
criticism for the heritability measures
- criticism stems from ways that the term "heritability" is often misinterpreted or misused by the public. The concept of heritability is commonly (and mistakenly) applied to individuals, despite the fact that, as we have emphasized, heritability applies only to populations. The heritability of intelligence, for example, is generally considered to be approximately 50%. This means that, for the population studied, roughly 50% of the variation in IQ scores is due to genetic differences among the members of the population. It does not mean that 50% of your IQ score is due to your genetic makeup and 50% is due to your experience. - heritability estimates can change as a function of developmental factors. Sometimes these patterns are counterintuitive. For instance, as twins get older, the degree of variance in intelligence accounted for by their genetic similarity actually increases. These results are consistent with the idea that people actively construct their own environment: the phenotype-environment correlation (Relation 4) discussed earlier. Younger children have little or no choice about their educational setting and opportunities; older children, teens, and young adults have increasingly greater choices with regard to their educational experiences (choosing more or less challenging courses of study, more or less academically oriented peer groups, and so on). Thus, older children have more opportunities than younger children to follow their own (genetically mediated) preferences for academic pursuits. - high heritability does not imply immutability. The fact that a trait is highly heritable does not mean that there is little point in trying to improve the course of development related to that trait. - Finally, studies of heritability to date primarily include samples of WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) participants. This sampling bias limits generalizability and is a major issue across most areas of psychological science. Lack of diversity in a subfield that is explicitly oriented around discovering genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences is particularly problematic, given that the generalizations being drawn are intended to account for the heritability of human traits irrespective of culture.
which is a symptom of fetal alcohol syndrome?
- facial deformities - intellectual disability - attention problems
Hearing (fetus behavior)
- fetuses float in a soundscape dominated by their mother's heartbeat, blood flow, and breathing. From the fetuses' vantage point, digestive sounds occur roughly 5 times per second! The noise level in the uterus ranges from about 70-95 decibels (roughly the noise level of a vacuum to a lawnmower). The mother's voice is particularly prominent. We know that the fetus hears its mother because its heart rate changes when the mother starts speaking. - During the last trimester, external noises elicit changes in fetal movements and heart rate as well, suggesting that the fetus also perceives sounds outside the mother's body. For instance, fetal heart rate increases when recordings of the mother's or father's voices are played near the pregnant mother's abdomen - Similarly, changes in heart-rate patterns suggest that fetuses can distinguish between music and speech played near the mother's abdomen
Maternal Emotional State
- for measures of child anxiety, the results suggest that postnatal maternal stress, not prenatal maternal stress, was the strongest predictor of later outcomes. - In wealthy countries like the United States, pregnant women from minority ethnic groups report greater rates of prenatal stress than do women in majority ethnic groups. - Pregnant women in less wealthy countries report even greater levels of stress. Their anxiety may relate to scarcity of resources, as in cases of high food insecurity, or to war or domestic violence. Women in developing countries may also have increased fears about the outcomes of their pregnancies due to high rates of infant and maternal mortality where they live
challenges in integrating perceptual information with motor behavior
- grasp errors, in which the child tries to pick up an object from a 2-D representation (like a photograph, as discussed earlier in this chapter). - media errors, in which a child using interactive technology tries to pass or receive an object through a screen - scale error is the attempt by a young child to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the large discrepancy in the relative sizes of the child and the object.
how is early development related to later development?
- how are your characteristics at one point in time-related to your characteristics at a later point in time - is development gradual and continuous or does it progress in stages -
Parents' Genotype-Child's Genotype
- human heredity: Humans have a total of 46 chromosomes, divided into 23 pairs, in the nucleus. Each chromosome pair carries, usually at corresponding locations, genes of the same type—that is, sequences of DNA that are relevant to the same traits. every individual has two copies of each gene, one on the chromosome inherited from the father and one on the chromosome from the mother. - genetic diversity and individual differences: Genes guarantee that humans will be similar to one another in certain ways, both at the species level (e.g., humans are bipedal and have opposable thumbs) and at the individual level (i.e., family resemblances). Genes also guarantee differences at both levels. ne mechanism that promotes variability among individuals is the random assortment of chromosomes in the formation of egg and sperm. - During gamete division, the 23 pairs of chromosomes are shuffled randomly, with chance determining which member of each pair goes into each new egg or sperm. When a sperm and an egg unite, the odds are essentially zero that any two individuals—even members of the same family—will have the same genotype - A second mechanism that enhances variability is a mutation, a change in a section of DNA. Those that occur in gametes (germ cells) can be passed on to offspring Sex determination - Because a female has only X chromosomes, the division of her germ cells results in all her eggs having an X. However, because a male is XY, half his sperm contain an X chromosome and half contain a Y. - For this reason, the genetically male parent always determines the genetic sex of offspring. If an X-bearing sperm fertilizes an egg, a female (XX) zygote results; if a Y-bearing sperm fertilizes an egg, a male (XY) zygote results. A gene on the Y chromosome encodes the protein that triggers the prenatal formation of testes by activating genes on other chromosomes, triggering the production of the hormone testosteronerelationship betwee
Disease (Maternal Factors)
- if contracted early in pregnancy, rubella (also called the 3-day measles) can have devastating developmental effects, including major malformations, deafness, blindness, and intellectual disabilities. - Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are also quite hazardous to the fetus. Cytomegalovirus (CMV), a type of herpes virus that is present in 50% to 70% of women of reproductive age in the United States, is the most common cause of congenital infection. CMV can damage the fetus's central nervous system and cause a variety of other serious defects, including hearing loss. Genital herpes can also be very dangerous: if the infant comes into contact with active herpes lesions in the birth canal, blindness or even death can result. - While Zika itself is mild and often goes undetected, it can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, a condition in which the baby's head is much smaller than expected. Depending on the severity of the problem, issues can range from hearing and vision loss to seizures and intellectual disability.
touch
- infants learn about their environment through active touch. Oral exploration dominates for the first few months. Through this babies presumably learn about their own bodies, as well as about the texture, taste, and other properties of the objects they encounter. - From around the age of 4 months, as infants gain greater control over their hand and arm movements, manual exploration increases and gradually takes precedence over oral exploration. Infants actively rub, probe, and bang objects, and their actions become increasingly specific to the properties of the objects.
studies suggest that the squeezing that a fetus experiences during delivery serves several important functions. What are some of the factors?
- it temporarily reduces the size of the infants head, allowing it to pass safely through the pelvic bones - it stimulates the production of hormones that help the fetus withstand mild oxygen deprivation - it forces amniotic fluid out of the lungs, in preparation for the baby's first breathe.
fetuses learn from the tastes and smells they encounter in the womb
- newborn humans remember the scent of amniotic fluid. They orient to their own amniotic scent and prefer scents reflecting flavors that their mother ate while she was pregnant, like anise (licorice) or garlic. Long-lasting taste preferences have also been observed. - These flavor preferences suggest a persistent effect of prenatal learning that may shed light on the origins and strength of cultural food preferences. A child whose mother ate a lot of chili peppers, ginger, and cumin during pregnancy, for example, might be more favorably disposed to Indian food than would a child whose mother's diet lacked those flavors.
some of the ways that motor development affects infants' experience of the world.
- pre-reaching movements: clumsy swiping movements by young infants toward objects they see. - reaching: The development of reaching sets off a minirevolution in the infant's life as they no longer have to wait for the world to come to them - Reaching behavior interacts with infants' growing understanding of the world around them. For example, 8-month-olds are more likely to reach toward a distant object when an adult is present than when they are alone. These data suggest that reaching behavior has a social component; infants perceive adults as able to help them accomplish goals when they can't manage on their own.
Fetal behavior and their relationship to themes of development
- prenatal experiences shape the developing fetus (nature and nurture). - The fetus participates in, and contributes to, its own development: the formation of organs and muscles depends on fetal activity, and the fetus rehearses the behavioral repertoire it will need at birth (the active child). - There is also evidence for both continuity and discontinuity. To give just one striking example, 32-week-old fetuses whose heart rates were generally slower and who moved less were more behaviorally inhibited at 10 years of age. - Despite their very different environments (discontinuity), fetuses and children show surprising similarities (continuity).
how does the culture within which infants develop—another form of experience- influences their attention to the visual world.
- research in cultural psychology has documented different patterns of visual attention in different cultures. For example, when processing facial expressions, White Western adults are more likely to attend to the mouth, whereas East Asian adults are more likely to attend to the eyes (Jack et al., 2012). - These cultural differences, which must be learned, influence face perception in the latter half of an infant's first year. - In an eye-tracking study, researchers found that 7-month-old White infants growing up in the United Kingdom were more likely to focus on mouths, whereas East Asian infants growing up in Japan were more likely to focus on eyes
Taste and Smell
- sensitivity to taste and smell develops before birth. Infants vary in the types of tastes they are exposed to early in life as a function of maternal diet (if they are breast-fed) and choice of formula (if they are formula fed). Some of those early experiences have long-lasting consequences. Early exposure to bitter flavors—before the age of 6 months—increases the likelihood of a later preference for those flavors - Smell plays a powerful role in how a variety of infant mammals learn to recognize their mothers. studies in which infants chose between the scent of their own mother and that of another woman. a pad that an infant's mother had worn next to her armpit was placed on one side of the infant's head and a pad worn by a different woman was placed on the other side. Two-day-old infants spent almost twice as long oriented to the pad infused with their mother's unique scent - Smell and taste are an important component of the nutritional behaviors. One such behavior is food neophobia, wherein children avoid unfamiliar foods. toddlers' degree of reactivity to food odors, but not food tastes, predicted their degree of food neophobia.
why are their similarities between the brains of different people?
- some experiences are shared by virtually all members of a species (eg. all humans have relationships with caregivers and all humans learn and are exposed to language)
the process of reproduction
- starts with the launching of an egg from one of the woman's ovaries into the adjoining fallopian tube. As the egg moves through the tube toward the uterus, it emits a chemical substance that acts as a sort of beacon that attracts sperm toward it. - If an act of sexual intercourse takes place near the time the egg is released, conception, the union of sperm and egg, is possible. In every ejaculation, as many as 500 million sperm are pumped into the woman's vagina. - Each sperm, a streamlined vehicle for delivering the man's genes to the woman's egg, consists of little more than a pointed head packed full of genetic material (the 23 chromosomes) and a long tail that whips around to propel the sperm through the woman's reproductive system.
scale error
- the attempt by a young child to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the large discrepancy in the relative sizes of the child and the object. - For instance, toddlers will attempt to sit in a tiny, dollhouse-sized chair or to get into a small toy car. In committing a scale error, the child momentarily, and sometimes repeatedly, fails to take into account the mismatch between body size and object size.
What have comparisons of the genomes of various species have revealed
- the current estimate of roughly 20,000 to 21,000 protein-coding genes is far fewer than previous estimates, which ranged from 35,000 to more than 100,000 genes. - A second surprise was that most of those genes are possessed by all living things. Most human genes are devoted, in decreasing order, to making us animals, vertebrates, mammals, primates, and—finally—humans. - A third surprise is that genes themselves make up only about 1% of the human genome. Much of the rest of our genome is made up of non-coding DNA—once thought to be "junk" DNA—that plays a crucial role in regulating the activity of protein-coding genes.
Fetal learning
- the fetus learns from its experiences in the last 3 months of pregnancy, after the central nervous system is adequately developed to support learning. - Fetuses as young as 30 weeks gestation show habituation to both visual and auditory stimuli, indicating that their central nervous systems are sufficiently developed for learning and short-term memory to occur - Fetuses also learn from their extensive experience with their mother's voice. Kisilevsky tested term fetuses in one of two conditions. Half of the fetuses listened to a recording of their mother reading a poem, while the other half listened to recordings of the same poem read by another woman. - Fetal heart rate increased in response to the mother's voice but decreased in response to the other woman's voice. These findings suggest that the fetuses recognized (and were aroused by) the sound of their own mother's voice relative to a stranger's voice. For this to be the case, fetuses must be learning and remembering the sound of their mother's voice.
How do the Bengs prenatal beliefs influence their parenting practices
- the frequent application of an herbal mixture to the newborn's umbilical stump to hasten its drying out and dropping off. - In addition, there is the constant danger that the infant will become homesick for its life in wrugbe and decide to leave its earthly existence. To prevent this, parents try to make their babies comfortable and happy so they will want to stay in this life. Among the many recommended procedures is elaborately decorating the infant's face and body to elicit positive attention from others. - Sometimes diviners are consulted, especially if the baby seems to be unhappy; a common diagnosis for prolonged crying is that the baby wants a different name—the one from its previous life in wrugbe.
What criteria determines whether a measure is a good one.
- the measure must be directly relevant to the hypothesis. - must possess are reliability - and validity.
which of the following influences the severity of the effect of the teratogen on a developing fetus?
- timing of exposure - quantity of exposure - duration of exposure
continuous development (prenatal)
1) genes are their from conception until birth 2) continuity in behavior as fetuses exhibit behavior from early in development that they continue to exhibit throughout their prenatal period and beyond. examples include swallowing, kicking, breathing. Although these behaviors are not exactly the same throughout development (eg. fetus breathes amniotic fluid and later oxygen)
resilient children are more likely than have what three characteristics:
1) positive personal qualities, such as high intelligence, an easygoing personality, and an optimistic outlook on the future; 2) a close relationship with at least one parent; and 3) a close relationship with at least one adult other than their parents, such as a grandparent, teacher, coach, or family friend
3 distinct stages of prenatal development
1) zygote (or germinal stage): first weeks after conception, where cell divide into multiple cells and differentiate and becomes implanted in the uterine wall. 2) embryonic stage: the embryo begins forming the brain, heart, face, arms and legs and other internal organs. This stage is five to six weeks long and the basic structures of the body are established, although they have just begin to develop. 3) fetal stage: all the body systems and organs that were established continue to develop and become refined. This is thirty weeks of development, and the fetuses organs grow and become able to function. The fetus moves and swallows, and puts on fat so that it can survive outside the mothers body and is born.
JOVE video experiment explanation
1. 6 month old infants are exposed to different shaped stimulus in two phases. Experiment is a within-subjects design to compare whether habituation to one shape persists and dishabituation occurs when presented with a new stimulus. - dependent variable is the time the infant spends looking at the the stimulus. - infant spends more time looking at the stimulus during the first three trails. the habituation phase is continued until the infants time looking at the stimulus is 50% or less than the baseline. - once habituation is reached, the test phase is started and two trails are presented in a counterbalanced manner. infants are shown the attention getter to start after which half will see the familiar blue circle shown during the habituation phase while the other half will start with the novel new square. - when babies are presented with the familiar shape they are predicted to remain habituated, and their looking time will remain unchanged. However during the presentation of the novel stimulus, babies are expected to dishabituate and reengage their attention. -application: testing other sensory modalities (eg. pacifier experiment) or social perception
genetic testing
1. Carrier genetic testing is frequently used prior to pregnancy to determine whether prospective parents are carriers of a specific disorder. 2. Prenatal testing involves genetic testing during pregnancy to assess risk for a range of genetic disorders, and it is especially encouraged for pregnancies with an elevated risk of a genetic disorder (e.g., fetuses with older parents) - Prenatal screening tests analyze maternal blood for information about the degree of risk. 3. Newborn screening: newborns receive a tiny pinprick to their heel to get a blood sample, which is then tested for 30 to 50 different genetic and non-genetic disease biomarkers, including PKU (as discussed earlier). As the cost of gene sequencing technology continues to decrease, it may be possible to provide parents with more extensive information about their newborn infant's predisposition for particular diseases.
The scientific methods four basic steps:
1. Choosing a question to be answered 2. Formulating a hypothesis regarding the question 3. Developing a method for testing the hypothesis 4. Using the resulting data to draw a conclusion regarding the hypothesis
What factors did Scarr indicate can lead children to turn out very differently from one another.
1. Genetic differences 2. Differences in treatment by parents and others 3. Differences in reactions to similar experiences 4. Different choices of environments - Thus, children's genes, their treatment by other people, their subjective reactions to their experiences, and their choice of environments interact in ways that make each child unique.
Age (Maternal factors)
A pregnant woman's age is related to the outcome of her pregnancy. Infants born to girls 15 years or younger are 3 to 4 times more likely to die before their 1st birthday than are those born to mothers who are between 23 and 29 - In recent decades, many women in industrialized countries wait until their 30s or 40s to have children. Techniques to treat infertility have continued to improve, increasing the likelihood of conception for older parents. Like many other risk factors, there is a dose-response relationship, with risk of negative outcomes for both mother and fetus increasing with maternal age. For example, children born to older mothers and/or older fathers are at heightened risk for developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder.
representative sample
A small research group with characteristics that resemble those of the larger population from which it is drawn.
random sample
A study sample that is selected using the random assignment method that insures that all members of a group or population have the same chance of being selected.
What is an advantage and disadvantage that structured observation offers over naturalistic observations?
ADVANTAGE: it ensures that all the children being studied encounter identical situations. It allows direct comparisons of different children's behavior in a given situation and, as in the research just discussed, also makes it possible to establish the generality of each child's behavior across different situations. DISADVANTAGE: structured observation does not provide as extensive information about individual children's subjective experience as do interviews, nor can it provide the open-ended, everyday kind of data that naturalistic observation can yield.
Advantages and disadvantages of interviews
ADVANTAGE: they can yield a great deal of data quickly and provide in-depth information about individual children and allows controlled comparison of children's behavior in different situations. - Structured interviews are inexpensive means for collecting in-depth data about individuals. - clinical interviews allow flexibility for following up on unexpected comments. DISADVANTAGE: answers to interview questions often are biased. Children (like adults) often avoid disclosing facts that show them in a bad light, misremember the way that events happened, and fail to understand their own motivations (Wilson & Dunn, 2004). - Memories of interviewees are often inaccurate and incomplete. - Prediction of future behaviors often is inaccurate. These limitations have led many researchers to use observational methods that allow them to witness the behavior of interest for themselves.
advantage and disadvantage of cross-sectional design
ADVANTAGES - Cross-sectional designs are useful for revealing similarities and differences between older and younger children. - Quick and easy to administer. DISADVANTAGES - they do not yield information about the stability of behavior over time or about the patterns of change shown by individual children. - This is where longitudinal approaches are especially valuable.
Advantages and disadvantages of correlation studies
ADVANTAGES - Only way to compare many groups of interest (boys-girls, rich-poor, etc.). - Only way to establish relations among many variables of interest (IQ and achievement, popularity and happiness, etc.). DISADVANTAGES - Direction-of-causation problem. - Third-variable problem.
Advantages and disadvantages of Structured interviews
ADVANTAGES - Ensures that all children's behaviors are observed in same context. - Allows controlled comparison of children's behavior in different situations. DISADVANTAGES - Context is less natural than in naturalistic observation. - Reveals less about subjective experience than interviews.
advantages and disadvantages of microgentic designs?
ADVANTAGES - Intensive observation of changes while they are occurring can clarify the process of change. - Reveals individual change patterns over short periods in considerable detail. DISADVANTAGES - Does not provide information about typical patterns of change over long periods. - Does not yield data regarding change patterns over long periods.
Advantages and Disadvantages of naturalistic observations?
ADVANTAGES - Useful for describing behavior in everyday settings. - Helps illuminate social interaction processes. DISADVANTAGES - One is that naturally occurring contexts vary on many dimensions, so it is often hard to know which ones influenced the behavior of interest. - many behaviors of interest occur only occasionally in the everyday environment, which reduces researchers' opportunities to observe them (limited value for studying infrequent behaviors). A means for overcoming both limitations is the method known as structured observation.
Why are cross-sectional designs are far more common. Advantages vs disadvantages
ADVANTAGES - they are mainly practical. - indicates the degree of stability of individual differences over long periods. - Reveals individual children's patterns of change over long periods. DISADVANTAGES - Studying the same children over long periods involves the difficult task of locating the children for each re-examination. Inevitably, some children move away or stop participating for other reasons. Such loss of participants may call into question the validity of the findings because the children who do not continue may differ from those who participate throughout. - Another threat to the validity of longitudinal designs is the possible effects of repeated testing. For example, repeatedly taking IQ tests could familiarize children with the type of items on the tests, thus improving the children's scores for reasons other than changes to their intelligence. - Therefore, longitudinal designs are used primarily when the main issues are stability and change in individual children over time—issues that can only be studied longitudinally. (When the central developmental issue involves age-related changes in typical performance, cross-sectional studies are more commonly used).
Drugs
ANTIDEPRESSANTS Antidepressant medications raise particularly challenging issues for women contemplating pregnancy. - Evidence regarding whether or not these medications are harmful to the fetus is inconclusive. - One potential solution to this issue is the use of non-pharmaceutical treatments for depression, which many pregnant women say they would prefer. Behavioral interventions, including cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, hold promise as ways to treat perinatal depression without the use of medication OPIOIDS - Because they are designed to mimic the effects of neurotransmitters, they have the potential to wreak havoc on the developing brain. Prescribed for pain management or used illegally, opioids can be highly damaging to fetuses, who can become addicted themselves. Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a form of drug withdrawal seen when fetuses exposed to opioids in the womb are born. - Common effects of NAS include low birth weight, problems with breathing and feeding, and seizures. MARIJUANA Data on the effects of marijuana on fetal development are inconclusive because many users of marijuana also smoke cigarettes and/or use alcohol, and the effects of each drug are difficult to tease apart; some studies suggest that the combination of marijuana and tobacco is particularly problematic. - Prenatal exposure to marijuana is also associated with a range of problems involving attention, impulsivity, learning, and memory in older children. SMOKING When a pregnant woman smokes a cigarette, both she and her fetus get less oxygen. Indeed, the fetus makes fewer breathing movements while its mother is smoking, and the fetuses of smokers metabolize some of the cancer-causing agents contained in tobacco. - The main developmental consequences of maternal smoking are slowed fetal growth and low birth weight, both of which compromise the health of the newborn. In addition, smoking is linked to an increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and a variety of other problems, including lower IQ, hearing deficits, ADHD, and cancer. - nicotine in any form is a risk factor for fetal development and can affect fetal cardiac, respiratory, and nervous systems. ALCOHOL - Maternal alcohol use is the leading cause of fetal brain injury and is generally considered to be the most preventable cause. - fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD): Babies born to alcoholic women often exhibit extreme negative outcomes, known as fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). The most obvious symptoms of FAS are characteristic facial structures, like the eyes, nose, and lips
How to test infants vision?
Although newborns do not see as clearly as adults do, their vision improves extremely rapidly in their first months. - preferential-looking technique: a method for studying visual attention in infants that involves showing infants two images simultaneously to see if the infants prefer one over the other (indexed by longer looking). - Two different visual stimuli are displayed side by side. If an infant looks longer at one of the two stimuli, the researcher can infer that (a) the baby can discriminate between them, and (b) the infant prefers one over the other. Fantz established that newborns, just like everyone else, would rather look at something than at nothing. When a pattern of any sort—black and white stripes, a bull's-eye, a face—was paired with a plain surface, the infants looked longer at the pattern. - Another method used to study sensory and perceptual development is habituation. The procedure involves repeatedly presenting an infant with a particular stimulus until the infant habituates, that is, until their response declines. At this point, a novel stimulus is presented. If the infant dishabituates (i.e., the response increases) in response to the novel stimulus, the researcher infers that the baby can discriminate between the old and new stimuli.
Child's Environment-Child's Genotype
Although the structure of the genetic code remains "fixed" during one's lifetime, the expression of the genetic code is altered. - Epigenetic mechanisms, mediated by the environment, can alter the functioning of genes and create stable changes in their expression—and some of these changes can be passed on to the next generation.
What is an example of an early childhood behavior that is attributable to poor hemisphere coordination?
Any activity that demands greater coordination, balance, or speed demonstrates the immaturity of the corpus callosum and resulting lack of hemisphere coordination in children between ages 2 and 6. These activities, among others, may include: standing on one leg, hopping and skipping, running or sprinting, or performing gymnastics.
Which of the following statements is true about the newborn infants' experience of different tastes or flavors?
At birth, newborn infants prefer sweet tastes and reject bitter tastes.
Campos, J. J., et al., Early experience and emotional development: The emergence of wariness of heights.
EXPERIMENT 1: HR RESPONSES OF PRELOCOMOTOR AND LOCOMOTOR INFANTS - a total of 92 infants, half locomoting for an average of 5 weeks, were tested at 7.3 months of age. Telemetered HR, facial expressions (taped from a camera under the deep side of the cliff), and the visual placing response were recorded. Each infant was lowered to each side of the cliff by a female experimenter, with the mother in another room. RESULTS - locomotor infants showed evidence of wariness of heights, and prelocomotor infants did not. Only on deep trials did the HR of locomotor infants accelerate significantly and differ significantly from the HR responses of prelocomotor infants. The HR responses of prelocomotor infants did not differ from base levels on either the deep or shallow sides. Surprisingly, facial expressions did not differentiate testing conditions, perhaps because the descent minimized the opportunity to target these expressions. - all infants showed evidence for depth perception on the deep side, but only locomotor infants showed evidence of fear-related cardiac acceleration in response to heights. EXPERIMENT 2: ACCELERATION OF LOCOMOTOR EXPERIENCE - the development of locomotion and the emergence of wariness of heights may be jointly determined by a third factor that brings about both changes. Disambiguation of this possibility required a means of pro- viding "artificial" locomotor experience to infants who were not yet able to crawl. This manipulation was achieved by providing wheeled walkers to infants and testing them after their mothers had reported at least 32 hr of voluntary forward movement in the device. - Infants who received walkers were divided into two groups: prelocomotor walkers and locomotor walkers. The performance of infants in these two groups was compared with the performance of age-matched subjects, also divided into two groups: prelocomotor controls and locomotor controls. The average duration of crawling experience was only 5 days in the locomotor walker and the locomotor control groups. All infants were tested using the same procedure as in the prior study. RESULTS - The three groups of infants with any type of loco- motor experience showed evidence of cardiac acceleration, whereas the prelocomotor control infants did not. Planned comparisons revealed significant differences between (1) all walker infants and all controls, (2) all spontaneously locomoting infants and prelocomotor controls, and (3) preloco- motor walkers and prelocomotor controls. These findings show that the pro- vision of "artificial" locomotor experience may facilitate or induce wariness of heights, even for infants who otherwise have little or no crawling experience. Locomotor experience thus appears to be an antecedent of the emergence of wariness. EXPERIMENT 3: DEPRIVATION OF LOCOMOTOR EXPERIENCE - To determine whether the delayed acquisition of crawling precedes the delayed emergence of wariness of heights, we longitudinally tested an infant with a peripheral handicap to locomotion. This infant was neurologically normal but was born with two congenitally dislocated hips. After an early operation, he was placed in a full body cast. The infant was tested on the visual cliff monthly between 6 and 10 months of age using the procedures de- scribed above. While the infant was in the cast, he showed no evidence of crawling. At 8.5 months of age (i.e., 1.5 months after the normative age of onset of locomotion), the cast was removed, and the infant began crawling soon afterward. RESULTS - This infant showed no evidence of differential cardiac responsiveness on the deep versus shallow side of the cliff until 10 months of age, at which time his HR accelerated markedly on the deep side, and decelerated on the shallow. Although we cannot generalize, these data provide further support for the role of self-produced locomotion as a facilitator or inducer of wariness of heights. EXPERIMENT 4: AGE OF ONSET OF LOCOMOTION VERSUS LOCOMOTOR EXPERIENCE - so far, HR was used as an imperfect index of wariness. However, we felt that a study using behavioral avoidance was needed to confirm the link between locomotor experience and wariness of heights. We thus used the locomotor crossing test on the visual cliff, in which the infant is placed on the center of the cliff, and the mother is instructed to encourage the infant to cross to her over either the deep or the shallow side. In this study, we also assessed separately the effects of age of onset of crawling and of duration of locomotor experience, as well as their interaction, using a longitudinal design. RESULTS The results of this study demonstrated a clear effect of locomotor experience independent of the age when self- produced locomotion first appeared. This effect of experience was evident with both nominal data (the proportion of infants who avoided descending onto the deep side of the cliff on the first test trial) and interval data. At whatever age the infant had begun to crawl, only 30% to 50% of infants avoided the deep side after minimal crawling. However, after 41 days of locomotor experience, avoidance increased to 60% to 80% of infants. - The latency data revealed a significant interaction of side of cliff with locomotor experience, but not a main effect of age, nor of the interaction of age with experience. The results of this study further suggest that locomotor experience paces the onset of wariness of heights ----------- The pattern of findings demonstrates a consistent relation between locomotor experience and wariness of height - interpretation of findings: We believe that crawling initially is a goal in itself, with effect solely linked to the success or failure of implementing the act of moving. Locomotion is initially not context-dependent, and infants show no wariness of heights because the goal of moving is not coordinated with other goals, including the avoidance of threats. - However, as a result of locomotor experience, infants acquire a sense of both the efficacy and the limitations of their own actions. Locomotion begins to be goal corrected and coordinated with the environmental surround. As a result, infants begin to show wariness of heights once locomotion becomes context-dependent. This may result from caregivers' responses to near-falling as well.
2-3 week old fetus
Embryo forms three layers, which will become the nervous system and skin; muscles, bones, and circulatory system; and digestive system, lungs, and glands; neural tube also develops.
example of cross-sectional study
Evans, Xu, and Lee (2011) examined the development of dishonesty in Chinese 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. The children played a game in which winning a prize required guessing the type of object hidden under an upside-down paper cup. the experimenter would leave the room and ask the child not to peek. The cup was so packed with candies that if the child peeked, some would spill out; putting them all back under the cup was almost impossible. - At all ages, many children peeked and then denied doing so. However, 5-year-olds lied more often, and their lies were more ingenious, than those of the younger children. - Cross-sectional designs are useful for revealing similarities and differences between older and younger children.
relationship between phenotype and genotype
Gene Expression - From conception to death, genes influence an individual's development and behavior only if they are switched on and off in the right place, at the right time, and for the right length of time. - genes never function in isolation. Rather, they belong to extensive networks in which the expression of one gene is a precondition for the expression of another, and so on. - The fact that regulator genes can repeatedly switch other genes on and off in different patterns means that a given gene can function multiple times in multiple places during development. This on-again, off-again functioning of individual genes results in enormous diversity in genetic expression. Gene Expression: dominance pattern - the alleles of a given gene influence the same trait or characteristic (e.g., eye color), but they contribute to different developmental outcomes (e.g., brown, blue, hazel, gray eyes). - dominant-recessive pattern. Some genes have only two alleles, one of which is dominant and the other recessive. In this pattern, there are two possibilities: (1) a person can inherit two of the same allele—two dominant or two recessive—and thus be homozygous for the trait in question; or (2) the person can inherit two different alleles—one dominant and the other recessive—and thus be heterozygous for the trait. When an individual is homozygous, the corresponding trait will be expressed. - when a genetic female inherits a recessive allele on the X chromosome from her mother, she is likely to have a dominant allele on the chromosome from her father to suppress it, so she will not express the trait in question. In contrast, when a genetic male inherits the same recessive allele on the X chromosome from his mother, he likely will not have a dominant allele from his father to override it, so he will express the trait. Genetic males are thus more likely than females to suffer a variety of sex-linked inherited disorders caused by recessive alleles on their X chromosome Child's Environment-Child's Phenotype - Because of the continuous interaction of genotype and environment, a given genotype may develop differently in different environments. - Individuals who inherit the phenylketonuria (PKU) gene from both parents cannot metabolize phenylalanine, an amino acid, and in aspartame, an artificial sweetener. If they eat a normal diet, phenylalanine accumulates in the bloodstream, causing impaired brain development and intellectual disabilities. However, if infants with the PKU gene are identified shortly after birth and kept on a stringent diet free of phenylalanine, intellectual impairment can be avoided. Thus, a given genotype results in very different phenotypes—intellectual disability or relatively normal intelligence—depending on environmental circumstances.
5 months old kenji is lying in his crib. his mother hides out of you, then pops out above him and yells "boo!" Kenji feels with the light, but after his mother repeats her actions a few times, his excitement dissipates and his attention wanders to the mobile hanging over. Kenji''s response is an example of ___.
Habituation
How do we measure fetal learning?
Habituation main ways that we can tell that organisms that do not yet have language are learning. See how that behavior changes as the stimulus is repeated (eg. present a sound to the fetus by way of the mothers abdomen, and see if the baby responds the first time the baby listens to the sound. See if there is a lot of movement or increased heart rate. By the time you present the sound again the reaction should be less (eg. less rapid heart rate). If you present the fetus with a new stimulus (eg. new sound) and see if the response comes back (dishabituation). Behavior after Birth Prenatal experience can influence later taste preferences Pregnant women were put in one of three groups and they asked women to drink carrot juice either during the last trimester, or when they were first breastfeeding their baby. The last group was a control (only water). It was shown that babies who had carrot juice during the last trimester and during breastfeeding had a higher intake and more positive response than the control group. This tells us that the fetus during the last weeks of pregnancy's ;earned the olfactory sense of the carrot juice and showed evidence of some memory of the flavor. The brain systems related to memory was formed during the prenatal period. It did not matter whether the the exposure was during the last weeks of pregnancy's or during breastfeeding, learning was the same. This showed continuity Auditory prenatal experience Pregnant mothers read books out loud so the fetus could hear her voice saying the story every day. More about the rhythms of the words and rhyming. The researchers than put a pacifier on the baby and recorded the baseline sucking of the baby. Then when infants increased their sucking rate or decreased this rate a story would play. One would play their mothers voice reading the story and another was a different woman reading a different story. The other babies were read a different book from their mother than the one heard in the womb and another story read by a stranger. - The infants produced the sucking rate that resulted in hearing the familiar story. - The babies changed the way they suck to hear their mothers voice reading the story they heard during prenatal development. Babies prefer their own mothers voice to others. These are adaptive qualities.
The following research question would be most likely to be addressed with the longitudinal design?
Identifying stability and patterns of math abilities between 8 and 10 years of age
How Do Children Shape Their Own Development?
Infants shape their own development through selective attention. - they decide what to pay attention to (eg. either their mother's face or a strangers or a toy that makes noise vs. a toy car).
motor milestones
Infants who undergo massage and exercise regimes are more advanced in their motor-skill development than those who don't undergo these regimes, such as most North American infants. Infants whose movements are particularly restricted may be less advanced. In one striking example, some families in Northern China use sandbags instead of cloth diapers due to water scarcity. - Even the use of diapers—a relatively recent cultural invention—has an impact on walking behavior. The same group of infants was tested both naked and diapered and exhibited more mature walking behavior when tested naked, despite the fact that these infants—all residents of New York City—were accustomed to wearing diapers.
The tendency if an infant to look longer at a smiling face that is paired with a happy voice is an indication of that infant's ___
Intermodal perception
is development fundamentally continuous or fundamentally discontinuous?
It depends on how you look at it and how often you look.
Statement expresses a disadvantage of a micro genetic study?
It does not provide information about typical patterns of change over long periods
Children age, they took the speak fewer hours. This relationship is an example of a ___ correlation.
Negative
4 week old fetus
Neural tube continues to develop into the brain and spinal cord; primitive heart is visible, as are leg and arm buds.
Key properties of behavioral measures
Relevance to hypotheses Do the hypotheses predict in a straightforward way what should happen on these measures? Interrater reliability Do different raters who observe the same behavior classify or score it the same way? Test-retest reliability Do children who score higher on a measure at one time also score higher on the measure at other times? Internal validity Can effects within the experiment be attributed to the variables that the researcher intentionally manipulated? External validity How widely can the findings be generalized to different children in different places at different times?
What is necessary for internal validity?
Reliability
Jennifer is interested in studying infants' perception of woman's faces. She plans to use habituation to test their perception. Which of the following is most likely how she does this?
She shows infants a picture of one face on multiple trials, until infants look about half of what they looked on the first trials.
Example of a study that uses microgentic design
Siegler and Jenkins (1989) studied how young children discover the counting-on strategy for adding two small numbers. - For example, when asked the answer to 3 + 5, a child who was counting-on would start from the addend 5 and say or think "6, 7, 8" before answering "8." - the researchers selected 4- and 5-year-olds who did not yet use counting-on but who knew how to add by counting from 1. Over an 11-week period, these children received many addition problems several times per week - each child's behavior on every problem was video-recorded. This approach allowed the researchers to identify exactly when each child discovered the counting-on strategy. - children often discovered the counting-on strategy while solving easy problems that they previously solved correctly by counting from 1.
example of microgenetic change
The basic idea of this approach is to recruit children who are thought to be on the verge of an important developmental change, heighten their exposure to the type of experience that is believed to produce the change, and then intensively study the change as it is occurring.
28-week-old fetus
The brain and lungs are sufficiently developed that it would have a chance of surviving on its own, without medical intervention. - The eyes can open, and they move, especially during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The auditory system is functioning, and the fetus reacts to a variety of sounds.
In your own words, summarize the major brain development from birth to age two.
The brain develops rapidly. By age two, the brain has reached 75 percent of its adult weight, and there are far more neural connections than will be present later on—leaving much room for "remolding" of the brain's neural pathways in the years to come. During this time, many areas of the brain will have matured through myelination.
What is Piaget's conservation-of-liquid-quantity problem and its relation to the discontinuous theory of development.
The child first sees equal amounts of liquid in similarly shaped glasses and an empty, differently shaped glass. Then, the child sees the liquid from one glass poured into the differently shaped glass. Finally, the child is asked whether the amount of liquid remains the same or whether one glass has more. Young children, like this girl, are unshakable in their belief that the glass with the taller liquid column has more liquid. A year or two later, they are equally unshakable in their belief that the amount of liquid in each glass is the same.
Historically, scientists have argued about the relative rules of "nature" and " nurture" in development. Which of the following is an example of " nature"?
The child's genes, information contained in the DNA, the parents gene contribution at conception
germinal period
The earliest stage of prenatal development that begins with conception and lasts until implantation in the uterus at anywhere from 6 to 12 days after fertilization. Often the germinal period is used to refer to the first 2 weeks after fertilization.
Mennella and her colleagues had some pregnant mothers drink carrot juice and other pregnant mothers drink water. What did they find when these women's infants started eating food at 4 to 6 months?
The infants of mothers who drank carrot juice preferred cereal flavored with carrot juice.
The embedded ball of cells then starts to differentiate into what systems?
The inner cell mass becomes the embryo, and the rest of the cells become an elaborate support system—including the amniotic sac and placenta—that enables the embryo to develop. The inner cell mass is initially a single layer thick, but during the 2nd week, it folds itself into three layers, each with a different developmental destiny. - The top layer becomes the nervous system, the nails, teeth, inner ear, lens of the eyes, and the outer surface of the skin. - The middle layer becomes muscles, bones, the circulatory system, the inner layers of the skin, and other internal organs. - The bottom layer develops into the digestive system, lungs, urinary tract, and glands.
factors that affect how a teratogen does or does not interfere with the fetus's growth.
The introduction of a teratogen or teratogens certainly increases the risk of developmental problems for the fetus, but the presence of a teratogen or teratogens does not guarantee that there will be any problems. While the effects of teratogens on the fetus vary tremendously, there are some principles that hold true about the influence of teratogens on fetal development. - Genetic vulnerability: Certain women and certain fetuses may be more or less vulnerable to particular teratogenic agents because of their genetic inheritance, or genotype. - Timing of exposure: The age of the developing fetus is critical in determining a teratogen's effect. Some teratogens only affect development during a highly precise and/or narrow range of time (e.g., thalidomide) while other teratogens can harm the fetus at any point or across a broader range of time (e.g., alcohol). - Amount of exposure: The greater the dose of or duration of exposure to a teratogen or to multiple teratogens, the likelihood of a fetal response or reaction increases. - Specific effects: Each teratogen acts in a distinct manner on specific cells of a developing organism to cause a potentially debilitating pattern of abnormal development. For example, the drug thalidomide generally only causes deformity in the arms and legs. - Maternal condition: The mother's age, nutrition, and physical and emotional condition all affect how a teratogen might impact a fetus. - Whether the mother is affected: Some teratogens that have minimal to no risk to the mother may pose a great threat to the developing fetus. In some cases of rubella (German measles), the pregnant mother may only mildly affected and may not even be aware that she is infected while her fetus is at serious risk.
Which of the following statements about the neonate's ability to see at birth is TRUE?
The neonate has poor visual acuity. The neonate is nearsighted. The neonate is attracted to face-like stimuli.
What the results of infant sensory experiments tells us
The sensory systems begin to function during prenatal development. The fetus can learn and form memories. At some level, what is learned during the prenatal period is remembered after birth
What is a basic principle of child development
The timing of experiences influences their effects.
What is the relationship between behavior and the well-documented increase in hormones during adolescence?
There is a modest or weak relationship between teenage hormones and behavior, Recent research has shown that the relationship between adolescent hormonal change and behavior is modest at best.
example of independent and dependent variable
Thus, if a researcher hypothesized that showing schoolchildren an anti-bullying video would reduce school bullying, the researcher might randomly assign some children in a school to view the video and other children in the same school to view an equally interesting video about a different topic. - the anti-bullying video would be the INDEPENDENT VARIABLE, - DEPENDENT VARIABLE = the amount of bullying after the children watched it. - If the independent variable had the predicted effect, children who saw the anti-bullying video would show less bullying after watching it than would children who saw the other video.
newborn's vision
Vision seems to be one of the least developed sensory systems in newborn babies. Newborns have very little color vision at birth. They probably can only distinguish among high contrast, bright colors, such as black and white. By 3 or 4 months of age, an infant can distinguish more colors and different shades of the same colors. - By their first birthday, infants may likely see as clearly as adults. - Newborns are very nearsighted.
How does the process of myelination affect the developing prenatal brain?
With the development of the myelin sheath, the axons become insulated, which enables neural impulses to travel faster among neurons because the impulse can now jump from one gap in the insulation of a neuron to the next. my answer: during myelination, the synapses become insulated and this can send neural signals much faster. The insulation reduces the space between the gaps in the neurons.
in your own words, explain the organization of the genes inside of the zygote. Write your response in the space below.
You should explain that the genes are composed of the chemical DNA. Thousands of genes reside on each chromosome. The male parent and the female parent each contribute 23 chromosomes yielding 23 pairs total. The 23 pairs of chromosomes are present inside of the zygote.
Briefly describe the brain changes that occur in adolescence.
Your answer should include: (a) shifts in activity from the limbic system to the prefrontal cortex, (b) an increase in myelination of the frontal cortex, (c) remodeling (pruning) of synaptic connection, and (d) an overall decrease in metabolism. Your answer may also mention hormonal changes.
According to the instruction manual analogy, how many new volumes would each new cell contain whenever a cell splits?
Your response should be 46 volumes, or 23 pairs of volumes. Each new daughter cell will have the same, complete set of instructions as did the parent cell has.
What do you think are the most important themes of development during the fetal period? Be sure to support your thoughts with specific details in the space below.
Your response should mention at least two of these three main themes: - dramatic growth in body size as the fetus is approximately one inch long at week nine and approximately 20 inches at birth; - shift in proportions as the lower portion of the body begins to catch up with the early and rapid development of the head that occurred during the embryonic period; - functional development of the various organ systems as each system gradually begins working and then becomes more efficient in preparation for birth.
What do the developmentalists mean when they say that the embryonic period is the most critical period of prenatal development?
Your response should mention that: - the support systems for the future baby are formed during the embryonic period; - all of the basic organs of the body take shape during the embryonic period; - all of the body systems begin working during the embryonic period; - development after the eighth week, which marks the end of the embryonic period, will be primarily growth and refinement of the features that are formed during the embryonic period.
zygote
a fertilized egg cell.
Experimental designs
a group of approaches that allow inferences about causes and effects to be drawn.
meta-analysis
a method for combining the results from independent studies to reach conclusions based on all of them.
microgenetic designs
a method of study in which the same participants are studied repeatedly over a short period. - are specifically designed to provide an in-depth depiction of the processes that produce change
longitudinal approach
a method of study in which the same participants are studied twice or more over a substantial length of time.
Questionnaires
a method that allows researchers to gather information from a large number of participants simultaneously by presenting them a uniform set of printed questions. - Both oral interviews and printed questionnaires provide a quick and straightforward way for researchers to learn about children's feelings, beliefs, and behaviors.
Structured observation
a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each participant and recording the participant's behavior. - researchers design a situation that will elicit behavior that is relevant to a hypothesis and then observe how different children behave in that situation. The researchers then relate the behaviors to characteristics of the child, such as age, sex, or personality, and to the child's behavior in other situations that are also observed.
limbic area
a part of the brain that plays a large role in emotional reactions
Random assignment
a procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each group within an experiment.
Clinical Interview
a procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers the interviewee provides. - especially useful for obtaining in-depth information about an individual child. In this approach, the interviewer begins with a set of prepared questions, but if the child says something intriguing, the interviewer can depart from the script to follow up on the child's lead.
dose-response relation
a relation in which the effect of exposure to an element increases with the extent of exposure (prenatally, the more exposure a fetus has to a potential teratogen, the more severe its effect is likely to be).
cross-sectional study
a research method in which participants of different ages are compared on a given behavior or characteristic over a short period. - this method compares children of different ages on a given behavior, ability, or characteristic by studying them at roughly the same time—for example, within the same week or month.
Structured interviews
a research procedure in which all participants are asked to answer the same questions. - especially useful when the goal is to collect self-reports on the same topics from everyone being studied.
heritability
a statistical estimate of the proportion of the measured variance on a trait among individuals in a given population that is attributable to genetic differences among those individuals
placenta
a support organ for the fetus; it keeps the circulatory systems of the fetus and mother separate, but a semipermeable membrane permits the exchange of some materials between them (oxygen and nutrients from mother to fetus, and carbon dioxide and waste products from fetus to mother). - the placenta is semipermeable: it permits the exchange of materials carried in the bloodstreams of the fetus and its mother, but it prevents the blood of the mother and fetus from mixing. Oxygen, nutrients, minerals, and some antibodies—all of which are just as vital to the fetus as they are to you—are transported to the placenta by the mother's circulating blood.
hypotheses
as testable predictions of the presence or absence of phenomena or relations rather than as truth. If a hypothesis is tested, and the evidence repeatedly does not support it, the hypothesis must be abandoned no matter how reasonable it seems.
Behavior genetics perspective
aspects of a person ability or personalities or traits are examined and researchers ask how their traits are similar of different form other people in their family. if that ability or trait is due to genetics or nature than people who have any of the same genes will be more similar to one another.
How did Rousseau view children
believed that parents and society should give children maximum freedom from the beginning. Rousseau claimed that children learn primarily from their own spontaneous interactions with objects and other people, rather than through instruction by parents or teachers. - believed children did not need nurture or instruction from others to become good people. he thought children would develop optimally on their own without interference from nurture.
how in the deserted island example in the film did we evaluate the effect of nature on development?
by completely controlling all aspects of the environment
how do behavior geneticists try to tease apart genetic and environmental contributions
by taking advantage of the differences observed among a population. Two premises underlie this endeavor: (1) To the extent that genetic factors are important for a given trait or behavior, individuals who are genotypically similar should be phenotypically similar; and (2) to the extent that shared environmental factors are important, individuals who were reared together should be more similar than people who were reared apart.
Urie Bronfenbrenner's (1979) bioecological model
depicted that children's most important components to sociocultural context are the people they interact with: parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, and friends. Institutions can still influence children's lives (such as educational systems, religious institutions, sports leagues, social organizations) but are less tangible, buts still important - another important set of influences are the general characteristics of the child's society: its economic and technological advancement; its values, attitudes, beliefs, and traditions; its laws and political structure; etc.
Gibson and Walk's created an apparatus called the "visual cliff". This procedure was first used to examine infants'
depth perception
according to developmentalists what is true about nature and nurture?
development is influenced by the joint workings of nature and nurture.
Discountinous development
development occurs in qualitatively different stages (eg. stages of a caterpillar to butterfly as the butterfly is not simply a bigger caterpillar) - different structures and behavior suggest discontinuous development - has qualitatively different structures and behavior that was not present before (eg. wings, and flying) - in humans, this can be seen in behaviors such as talking. Before the child utters her first word, she is pre-linguistic or without language. - Also seen in children before they know how to read. before knowing how to read she is preliterate, but she soon learns how to read - the formation of limbs - when development is discontinuous, different structures and behavior are present at different points in development. - we start at conception with only one cell in our body and end up with millions of cells when we are born. This shows a discontinuity in development as there are new structures that were not evident during conception.
perceptual narrowing
developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system. - experience plays a key role in supporting the development of musical abilities and suggest potential relationships between early musical experience and the development of language and literacy
Genome
each person's complete set of hereditary information
Naturalistic observation
examination of ongoing behavior in an environment not controlled by the researcher. (eg. school, home and playgrounds)
Samin starts taking violin lessons when she is 5 years old, and she plays violin until she is a teenager. Her brother Karim starts taking Spanish classes when he is 6 years old, and becomes fluent in Spanish as well as English. As a result, Samin and Karim's brains develop differently, and example of ________________ development.
experience-dependent
differences in experiences creates different brains
experience-dependent developments: process through which lasting differences in individual experiences create and reorganize neural connections - a child who plays the violin will have developed a different part of the brain compared to a person who played video games. - both children will have the same basic specialization and organization but there may be variation in how many connections and or how big different regions are. - experience dependent plasticity can happen at any time and development, although the effects are probably largest in children - experience is responsible for how similar and different our brains are to each other.
During each infants' first year, they form a bond with a caregiver, with the exception of infants who do not have a caregiver (such as the infants raised in Romanian orphanages). Typically, all infants have a caregiver. This is an example of _______ development.
experience-expectant
Virtually all children are exposed to language, and children learn the language they hear. This is an example of ____________________ plasticity
experience-expectant
A correlation between variables normally indicates that one variable causes the other.
false
DNA is a chromosome in the form of a long double-stranded gene.
false, A chromosome is made of DNA, a long double-stranded molecule.
Myelin reduces transmission of neural signals and prevents neighboring cells from short-circuiting each other's activity.
false, Myelin speeds up transmission of neural signals and prevents neighboring cells from short-circuiting each other's activity.
At birth, the newborn's brain is fully developed.
false, the newborn's brain is quite immature at birth, and this is reflected in a newborn's short waking periods, poor eyesight, and limited control of posture and movement.
The growth of the brain during adolescence is caused by a rapid increase in the total number of neurons.
false, the total number of neurons does not change much throughout adolescence. Much of the increase in the weight of the brain during adolescence is due to an overall increase in connecting dendrites of the neurons.
What was Aristotle view on when prenatal life starts?
he believed that the many parts of the human body develop in succession (epigenesis) - he studied this by opening chicken eggs to observe organs in various stages of development.
How did Plato view children
he thought that children are actually born knowing things like what an animal is. This innate knowledge helps children recognize what things in their environment are. - For Plato what we know is a function of nature.
When do we use naturalistic observations?
if the primary research goal is to describe how children behave in their usual environments—homes, schools, playgrounds, and so on. - observers station themselves unobtrusively in the background of the chosen setting, allowing them to see the relevant behaviors while minimizing the chances that their presence will influence those behaviors.
The embryonic period begins with ____ and lasts until the _____ week.
implantation, eighth
The end of the germinal period is marked by the _____ of the _____ in the wall of the uterus.
implantation; blastocyst
The beginning of research based- based theories on child development.
in the early 20th century John Watson studied child development from a behaviorist perspective. Watson believed that all of development comes from forming association from rewards and punishments. - Little Albert study where he conditioned a child to be afraid of white furry animals.
the experience that children in an experimental group receive and - which children in a control group do not receive- is referred to as the
independent variable
researchers designed an experiment in which 8 to 10 year old infants are placed in a high chair with a string attached to one of their arms. When they lift their arms, stream tips a small cup that spilled cereal on to the table in front of them. A few weeks later, the same infants are placed in a different shape but outfitted with a similar string and cut mechanism. The fact that these infants will remember that listing their arms will result and cereal being dispensed is an example of ____
instrumental conditioning
Researchers strive for what two types of validity?
internal and external.
What are the three ways in which researchers obtain data about children?
interviews, naturalistic observation, and structured observation.
How parents introduce complementary foods may have an important effect on children's later taste preferences. Specifically,
introducing fruit later may help children adopt healthier eating patterns later on.
How do researchers study development over time?
investigators use three types of research designs: cross-sectional, longitudinal, and microgenetic.
other-race effect (ORE)
is a well-established finding, initially observed in adults, in which individuals find it easier to distinguish between faces of individuals from their own racial group than between faces from other racial groups. The ORE emerges in infancy. Whereas newborns show no preference for own-race faces over other-race faces, 3-month-old White, African, and Chinese infants prefer own-race faces.
fetal alcohol syndrome
is caused by the teratogen effect of alcohol on the developing brain and other organs. other lifestyle teratogens include nicotine, some prescription drugs, viruses, stress and exposure to certain substances in our environment.
18-week-old fetus
is covered with very fine hair, and a greasy coating protects its skin from its long immersion in liquid. - The components of facial expressions are present—the fetus can raise its eyebrows, wrinkle its forehead, and move its mouth.
Why is random assignment crucial in an experiment?
is crucial for being able to infer that it was the varying experiences to which the groups were exposed in the experiment that caused the later differences between them. Otherwise, those differences might have arisen from some preexisting difference between the people in the groups. - The logic implies that groups created through random assignment should be comparable on all variables except the different treatment that people in the experimental groups encounter during the experiment.
The period of the zygote (or the germinal stage of prenatal development)
is the first few weeks, when development is characterized by cell division and the implantation of the organism in the uterine wall.
One reason young children are picky is because they have food neophopbia, or they generally reject novel foods. Parents can be reassured about this neophobia because
it decreases across the lifespan, and is strongest during the preschool years.
which of the following statements is true about the role of nature in development?
it refers to all the biological and genetic factors that influence development.
Charles Darwin kept a "baby biography," or a systematic description of his son's day-to-day development. This baby biography is important for the study of Child Development because
it represented one of the first methods for studying children
studies suggest that the squeezing that a fetus experiences during delivery serves several important functions. Which of the following is not one of them.
it squeezes amniotic fluid from the ear canals allowing the baby to hear
what intervention program, involving direct skin-to-skin contact, are parents of low-birth rate infants encouraged to use to support development and promote survival?
kangaroo care
What does it tell us when two variables are strongly correlated?
knowing a child's score on either variable allows accurate prediction of the child's score on the other
When conducting cross-sectional research design, which of the following factors should a researcher be concerned about?
lack of information about the stability of behavior over time
cone cells
light-sensitive neurons that are highly concentrated in the fovea (the central region of the retina). - infants' poor contrast sensitivity is the immaturity of their cone cells
All of the following are difficulties likely to affect infants born with fetal alcohol syndrome EXCEPT:
limb malformations.
list the categories of teratogens
medicines, psychoactive drugs, maternal diseases and infections, poor maternal nutrition, and environmental pollutants.
chromosomes
molecules of DNA that transmit genetic information; chromosomes are made up of DNA.
DNA (dioxyribonucleic acid)
molecules that carry all the biochemical instructions involved in the formation and functioning of an organism.
How does myelination in the prefrontal cortex help a child prepare to go to school?
myelination in the prefrontal cortex helps a child prepare for school because the process is strengthening the synapses and allows them to be quicker. This leads to better impulse control and the ability to sustain their attention, two qualities needed for formal education.
Faster and more efficient communication within the brain is the result of:
myelination.
Professor Marcus believes that Evolution has created many remarkable capabilities that are present even in early infancy, particularly in areas of special importance, such as understanding basic properties of physical objects, plants and animals, and other people. Based on these beliefs, Professor Marcos is likely a(n)
nativist
which of the following does not influence the severity of the effect of the teratogen on a developing fetus?
number of previous pregnancies' of the mother.
Historically, scientists have argued about the relative rules of "nature" and " nurture" in development. Which of the following is an example of " nurture"?
parenting style
auditory localization
perception of the location in space of a sound source. - When newborns hear a sound, they tend to turn toward it. However, they are far worse at determining the location of a sound than are older infants and toddlers. To localize a sound, listeners rely on differences in the sounds that arrive at both of their ears: a sound played to their right will arrive at their right ear before reaching their left ear and will be louder at their right ear than at their left ear, signaling the direction the sound is coming from. - Young infants may have more difficulty using this information because their heads are small; the differences in timing and loudness in information arriving at an infant's ears are smaller than for toddlers and children with larger heads. - this information may be difficult for infants to exploit because the development of an auditory spatial map (i.e., a mental representation of how sounds are organized in physical space—right versus left, up versus down) requires multimodal experiences, through which infants become able to integrate information from what they hear with information from what they see and touch.
We perceive objects to be of a constant size, shape, color, etc., despite the physical differences in the retinal image of the object. This is called _____.
perceptual constancy
fetal programming
refers to the belated emergence of effects of prenatal experience that "program the physiological set points that will govern physiology in adulthood"
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
refers to the sudden, unexpected, and unexplained death of an infant younger than 1 year. The most common SIDS scenario is that an apparently healthy baby, usually between 2 and 5 months of age, is put to bed for the night and found dead in the morning.
Nurture
refers to the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that influence our development, including the womb in which we spend the prenatal period, the homes in which we grow up, the schools that we attend, the broader communities in which we live, and the many people with whom we interact. - development is a function of the experiences and reflects the way children have been treated and what they have encountered.
9 week old fetus
reflects extremely rapid brain growth. - Rudimentary eyes and ears are forming. All the internal organs are present. - Sexual differentiation has started. - Ribs are visible, fingers and toes have emerged, and nails are growing.
What is necessary for external validity?
reliability and validity
gametes
reproductive cells—egg and sperm—that contain only half the genetic material of all the other cells in the body. (germ cells)
Romanian Adoption Story
research examines children in a Romanian orphanage who lived in horrible conditions, with no interactions with caregivers. Some of these children were adopted and taken to Great Britain where they were cared for by highly motivated caregivers. - To evaluate the long term deprivation of their development these children were compared to British children who were adopted by loving families in Britain as well. -asked whether human nature is flexible enough to allow the Romanian children to overcome the extreme deprivation. - the earlier the Romanian children were adopted, the more they weighed compared to the children who were institutionalized longer. The early adoptees weighed about the same as the British babies. - intellectual development at age 6 years showed a similar pattern. however, by the time the children had become young adults ~ 23, their intellect was in the normal range - had the most profound effect on emotional development. Had difficulty making friends, and controlling emotions. the difference in mental health increased in the Romanian children who were adopted later as young adults. - had low activity in amygdala
The Importance of Appropriate Measurement
researchers must use measures that are directly relevant to the hypotheses being tested. Even measures that initially seem reasonable sometimes turn out to be less informative than originally thought
Taryn was born prematurely to a single mother and remained hospitalized for the first month of her life. At age 2, her mother was convicted of drug possession, and Taryn went to live with her grandparents. Despite these adverse circumstances, Taryn is now valedictorian of her senior class, has several close friends, and is a gifted pianist. Taryn's _____ is/are the BEST explanation for her success.
resilience
Child's Phenotype-Child's Environment
restates the active child theme—children as a source of their own development. Each child evokes certain kinds of responses from others. The older child of one of your authors was a very outgoing baby. Because of his engaging personality, he created an environment filled with people—family and strangers alike—smiling and talking to him. The younger child, by contrast, was a very shy infant who actively avoided contact with strangers; her temperament limited the types of interactions she had with unfamiliar adults. Thus, these two children, despite living in the same home with the same parents, experienced very different early environments by virtue of their own behavior. - children also create their own environments by actively selecting surroundings and experiences that match their interests and personalities. As soon as infants start reaching, crawling, and walking, they begin to select objects for exploration rather than relying on their parents' choices of play objects
What can be learned during the fetal period
sensory information (auditory, taste, taste, visual) - Requires functioning sense organs, requires functioning brain regions that allow learning and memory, requires something to learn (the parts of the brain responsible for these sensations need to be working) - Auditory senses are very strong in a fetus as it is able to hear its mothers voice, the fetus will breathe and taste the amniotic fluid and can experience these
Antoine and Angelique have two sets of twins, fraternal twins André and Philippe and identical twins Aurélie and Nelisse. Antoine and Angelique raise their family all in the same household. André and Philippe have similar intelligence scores and Auélie and Nelisse have similar intelligence scores. This indicates the importance of ______________ on intelligence.
shared environment
which of the following senses is least active while the fetus is in the womb?
sight
Object knowledge
skepticism gradually arose about Piaget's explanation of this fascinating phenomenon. A number of clever studies since Piaget's time have established that out of sight is not out of mind, even for young infants. - The simplest evidence suggesting that young infants continue to represent an object that has vanished from sight is the fact that they will reach for objects in the dark. When young infants are shown an attractive object and the room is then plunged into darkness, most reach to where they last saw the object, indicating that they expect it to still be there
which of the following is a characteristic of non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep?
slow brain waves
an infant's ability to follow the path of a moving object is a demonstration of ____
smooth pursuit
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES "Can Children Learn to Be More Intelligent?" - Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007)
some children (and adults) believe that intelligence is a fixed entity others do not. - People who believe that intelligence increases with learning tend to react to failure in more effective ways - in contrast, people who believe that intelligence is a fixed entity tend to give up when they fail. - selected students were presented how learning alters the brain in ways that improve subsequent learning and thus "makes you smarter." Other students from the same classrooms were shown how memory works. - predicted that students who were told how learning affects the brain would change their beliefs about intelligence in ways that would help them persevere in the face of failure. the changed beliefs were expected to improve students' learning of mathematics. - their prediction was correct.
dominant-recessive pattern
some genes have only two alleles, one of which is dominant and the other recessive. In this pattern, there are two possibilities: (1) a person can inherit two of the same allele—two dominant or two recessive—and thus be homozygous for the trait in question; or (2) the person can inherit two different alleles—one dominant and the other recessive—and thus be heterozygous for the trait. When an individual is homozygous, the corresponding trait will be expressed. - pattern actually pertains to relatively few human traits—such as hair color, blood type, abundance of body hair, and the like—as well as to a large number of genetic disorders (see Box 3.2). Inheritance patterns are vastly more complicated for most of the traits and behaviors that are of primary interest to developmental scientists - the sex chromosomes present an interesting wrinkle in the story of dominance patterns. when a genetic female inherits a recessive allele on the X chromosome from her mother, she is likely to have a dominant allele on the chromosome from her father to suppress it, so she will not express the trait in question. In contrast, when a genetic male inherits the same recessive allele on the X chromosome from his mother, he likely will not have a dominant allele from his father to override it, so he will express the trait. Genetic males are thus more likely than females to suffer a variety of sex-linked inherited disorders caused by recessive alleles on their X chromosome
which statement is NOT true of Romanian orphanages in the late 1980's and early 1990's?
staff workers regularly interacted with the children by holding them and playing with them
According to Esther Thelen, babies lose the _____ reflex because of the changing ratio of leg weight to strength.
stepping
Dr Melchior asks new parents several questions about how well there's babies sleep at night. Dr. Melchior is conducting a(n)
structured interview
Correlation designs
studies intended to indicate how two variables are related to each other.
self-locomotion
the ability to move oneself around in the environment. - infants' first success at moving forward under their own power typically takes the form of crawling. Many (perhaps most) infants begin by belly crawling or using other idiosyncratic patterns of self-propulsion - When infants first begin walking independently, at about 11 to 12 months, they keep their feet relatively wide apart, which increases their base of support; they flex slightly at the hip and knee, thereby lowering their center of gravity; they keep their hands in the air to facilitate balance; and they have both feet on the ground - Eleanor Gibson and her colleagues found that infants adjust their mode of locomotion according to their perception of the properties of the surface they want to traverse. For example, an infant who had promptly walked across a rigid plywood walkway would prudently revert to crawling in order to get across a waterbed
interrater reliability
the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behavior. Without such agreement, one cannot have confidence in the research findings because there is no way to tell which (if any) of the ratings were accurate.
Correlation
the association between two variables.
experience and brain development
the brain develops prenatally and continues to grow after birth, areas become specialized, while others die off. - the developing brain is plastic as it can modify itself and adapt to environmental input and challenges. - this means that fewer information needs to be encoded in the genes. Aspects of how the brain develops can be determined by experience and input. this also means that the brain develops in ways optimal to the environment it is in.
experience-expectant process
the brain expects certain kinds of experiences (eg. binocular vision: we see the world by combining the information from our eyes). - The brain uses these differences to arrange objects in our view in depth. develops around 4-6 months in infants. their ability to use their eyes together enables binocular vision to result. this development relies on experience as because all humans have the same experience, the development remains the same. - binocular vision results from having these two different but overlapping views. - strabismus: lazy eye, this tells us that binocular vision develops based on experience, but it is an experience that almost everyone has, so it is experience expectant. - experience-expectant processes have critical periods as they develop during a specific period in development. if time passes and the experience did not occur then than the opportunity for the experience has passed. That part of the brain is no longer plastic. - the brain is adapting to 'typical' or 'normal' experiences
sex chromosomes
the chromosomes (X and Y) that determine an individual's designated sex at birth.
equal environments assumption
the claim is that both types of twins shared the same prenatal environment, were born at the same time (so experienced societal changes similarly), grew up in the same family and community, and are always the same age when tested. If the correlation between identical twins on a given trait or behavior is substantially higher than that between fraternal twins, it is assumed that genetic factors are substantially responsible for the difference.
intermodal perception
the combining of information from two or more sensory systems. - From very early on, infants integrate information from different senses. In studies with newborns, infants sucked on a pacifier that they were prevented from seeing. They were then shown a picture of the pacifier that had been in their mouth and a picture of a novel pacifier of a different shape or texture. The infants looked longer at the picture of the pacifier they had sucked on. Thus, these infants could visually recognize an object they had experienced only through oral exploration.
direction-of-causation
the concept that a correlation between two variables does not indicate which, if either, variable is the cause of the other.
Third variable problem
the concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable.
Test-retest-reliability
the degree of similarity of a participant's performance on two or more occasions. This type of reliability is attained when measures of a child's performance on the same test, administered under the same conditions, are similar on two or more occasions. - a lack of test-retest reliability would make it impossible to know which result (if either) accurately reflected each child's status.
Validity
the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.
internal validity
the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed with confidence to the factor that the researcher is testing. - Ex. a researcher tests the effectiveness of a type of psychotherapy for depression by administering it to a number of depressed adolescents. If, three months later, many of the adolescents are no longer depressed, can it be concluded that this type of psychotherapy caused the improvement? No, because the students' recovery may have been due to the mere passage of time. In this example, the passage of time is a source of internal invalidity because the factor believed to cause the improvement (the psychotherapy) may have had no effect.
Relaibility
the degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent.
External Validity
the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research. - Studies of child development are almost never intended to apply only to the particular children and research methods involved in a given study. Rather, the goal is to draw conclusions that apply to children more generally.
embryo
the developing organism from the 3rd to 8th week of prenatal development.
fetus
the developing organism from the 9th week to birth.
binocular disparity
the difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signals being sent to the brain.
Risk for the majority of teratogenic effects is greatest during:
the embryonic period
Apoptosis occurs during normal development. This term refers to
the genetically programmed death of cells.
control group
the group of participants in an experimental design who are not presented the experience of interest but in other ways are treated similarly. They are not presented the experience of interest or are presented with a different experience that is expected to have less effect on the variables being tested.
experimental group
the group of participants in an experimental design who are presented the experience of interest.
last 5 months of prenatal development
the growth of the lower part of the body accelerates. - At this age, the external genitalia are substantially developed, and a different camera angle would have revealed the sex of this fetus.
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD)
the harmful effects of maternal alcohol consumption on a developing fetus. Involves a range of effects, including facial deformities, intellectual disabilities, attention problems, hyperactivity, and other defects. Fetal alcohol effects (FAE) is a term used for individuals who show some, but not all, of the standard effects of FAS.
phylogenetic continuity
the idea that because of our common evolutionary history, humans share many characteristics, behaviors, and developmental processes with non-human animals, especially mammals. - For example, during the birth process in rats, the nipples on the underside of the mother rat's belly are smeared with amniotic fluid. The scent of the amniotic fluid is familiar to the rat pups from their time in the womb, and it lures the babies to the mother's nipples for nursing. When the mother rat's nipples are washed immediately after birth, newborn rats fail to attach to her nipples. This classic finding clearly demonstrates that nurture begins prenatally: experiences before birth play an important role in post-natal developmental processes.
Discontinuous
the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. eg. children of different ages seem qualitatively different. A 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, for example, seem to differ not only in how much they know but in the way they think about the world.
Continuous
the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that of a pine tree growing taller and taller. (eg. pine tree)
continous development
the idea that development progresses along a gradual, continuous path (eg. height of a pine tree in inches, child weight in pounds or number of words in a child vocabulary) - development you can count is most likely continuous - it is clear how the earlier and later points in development are related - another clue is when the same behavior is seen at different ages (just different amounts, different speeds etc.)
gene-environment
the idea that parents' own genetic makeup influences the environment parents provide for their children. eg. Parents' behavior toward their children (e.g., how warm or reserved they are, how patient or short-fused) is genetically influenced, as are the kinds of preferences, activities, and resources to which they expose their children.
sleeper effects
the impact of a given agent may not be apparent for many years. - For example, between the 1940s and 1960s, the hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES) was commonly used to prevent miscarriage and had no apparent ill effects on babies born to women who had taken it. However, in adolescence and adulthood, these offspring turned out to have elevated rates of cervical and testicular cancers.
dishabituation
the introduction of a new stimulus rekindles interest following habituation to a repeated stimulus.
cell migration
the movement of newly formed cells away from their point of origin. Among the many cells that migrate are the neurons that originate deep inside the embryonic brain and then, like pioneers settling new territory, travel to the outer reaches of the developing brain.
5 1/2 week old fetus
the nose, mouth, and palate are beginning to differentiate into separate structures.
phenotype
the observable expression of the genotype, including both body characteristics and behavior. including both body characteristics and behavior; - is a result of the interaction between genes and environment
During the fetal period
the organs become functional and the organism grows and develops fat.
cephalocaudal development
the pattern of growth in which areas near the head develop earlier than areas farther from the head.
perceptual constancy
the perception of objects as being of constant size, shape, color, etc., in spite of physical differences in the retinal image of the object.
pictorial cues
the perceptual cues of depth (such as relative size and interposition) that can be perceived by one eye alone.
sensitive period
the period of time during which a developing organism is most sensitive to the effects of external factors. - The major organ systems are most vulnerable to damage at the time when their basic structures are being formed. Because the timing is different for each system, the sensitive periods are different for each system
sociocultural context
the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child's environment.
One method researchers use is to present two different visual stimuli are displayed side-by-side to an infant. If an infant looks longer at one of the two stimuli, the researcher can infer that the infant prefers one over the other. This is an example of _____.
the preferential-looking technique
perception
the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.
sensation
the processing of basic information from the external world via receptors in the sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) and brain.
in the context of mechanisms of developmental change, the study of the development of "effortful attention" provides insight into
the role of brain activity, genes, and learning experiences.
five make old Johnny is touched on the cheek and promptly turns his head to the side that was touched. Johnny is displaying _____
the rooting reflex
behavior genetics
the science concerned with how variation in behavior and development results from the combination of genetic and environmental factors.
visual aquity
the sharpness and clarity of vision
How did the contemporary field of child psychology develop?
the study of child psychology has roots in early social reform movements that were devoted to improving children's lives by changing the conditions in which they lived. The Earl of Shaftesbury helped in the effort at social reform for children and passed labor laws that restricted the age of employment of children.
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development
theory holds that between birth and adolescence, children go through four stages of cognitive growth, each characterized by distinct intellectual abilities and ways of understanding the world. - For example, according to Piaget's theory, 2- to 5-year-olds are in a stage of development in which they can focus on only one aspect of an event, or one type of information, at a time. By age 7, children enter a different stage, in which they can simultaneously focus on and coordinate two or more aspects of an event and can do so on many different tasks.
A study compared the similarities of food likes and dislikes in a large group of 3-year-old twins. This study observed that MZ, or identical twins, were more similar than DZ, or fraternal twins, in their likes and dislikes for vegetables, fruit, and protein, but MZ and DZ twins were equally similar in their likes and dislikes for dairy, snacks, and starch. From this study we can conclude that
there is a stronger genetic component for preferences relating to vegetables, fruit, and protein, than dairy, snacks, or starch.
How do the Beng people of the ivory coast view the beginnings of life
they believe that every newborn is a reincarnation of an ancestor. In the first weeks after birth, the ancestor's spirit, is not fully committed to an earthly life and therefore maintains a double existence, traveling back and forth between the everyday world and "spirit village." - It is only after the umbilical stump has dropped off that the newborn is considered to have emerged from "village" and become a person. If the newborn dies before this point, there is no funeral, for the infant's passing is perceived as a return to the wrugbe.
genes, short segments of DNA, tell cells what proteins to make.
true, Genes instruct cells to make specific proteins.
The part of the brain that is critical for reflective thought, planning, and control of impulsive behavior is the prefrontal cortex.
true, this part of the brain is critical for reflective thought, planning, and control of impulsive behavior.
Quantitative Genetics Research Designs
use statistical methods to study "naturally occurring genetic and environmental variation" in a population by comparing the phenotypes of individuals who vary in the amount of genomic DNA they share
Despite the fact that the brain is influenced by experience, different individuals have similar brains. This is because
virtually all members of the species have the same experience.
Which of the following is the least developed sense in a newborn?
vision
music perception
we sing in a characteristic fashion which tends to be slower and higher-pitched, and to suggest more positive affect. Perhaps because of these characteristics, infants prefer infant-directed singing over adult-directed singing. Indeed, infants enjoy listening to infant-directed singing even more than to infant-directed speech, possibly because mothers smile more while singing than speaking - Infants are also more "sensitive" to aspects of musical rhythm than are adults. - infants diverge markedly from adult listeners in melodic perception, in which infants can make perceptual discriminations that adults cannot. For the adults in this study, who grew up immersed in Western culture, years of hearing music makes it very difficult to detect note changes that stay within a key. - there is a process of perceptual narrowing. Infants, who are relatively inexperienced with music, can detect differences between musical stimuli that adults cannot. We find developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system across numerous domains.
After birth, do newborns remember anything about their fetal experience?
yes! They still prefer to listen to their own mother's voice rather than to the voice of another woman. Furthermore, newborns prefer to listen to a version of their mother's voice that has been filtered to sound the way it did in the womb, rather than to another woman's filtered voice. Newborns prefer to listen to the language they heard in the womb over another language. Finally, newborns remember the sounds of specific stories heard in the womb.
A fertilized egg is known as a(n)
zygote.
researchers generally adopt one of three methods when designing a study depending on their goals.
• If the goal is to describe or document a particular behavior, researchers rely on the descriptive approach, which is a method of investigation used to observe, measure, and describe behavior. • If the goal is to attempt to predict the occurrence of a particular behavior, researchers use the correlational approach, which is a method that measures two different types of behavior and evaluates the relationship between them. • If the goal is to explain a behavior or understand why it occurs, researchers turn to the experimental approach, which is a method of investigation used to demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships by purposely manipulating one aspect of a situation that is thought to produce a change in a particular behavior.
in order to build a body, the DNA must accomplish two tasks
• to replicate every time the cell divides and • to synthesize proteins as needed for growth and repair of cells, tissues, and organs.
norms
A marker of average development or achievement.
On average, labor lasts about
8 to 12 hours.
The period of the fetus
8-38 weeks - Research is now showing that the fetus is leaning while in the womb
blastocyst
A cell mass that begins developing from the zygote about 5-6 days after fertilization during the germinal period before implantation. As the cells of the blastocyst continue to divide and multiply, the inner cell mass develops into the embryo while the outer layer of cells develops into the placenta.
population
A group of people, animals, or organisms that are of a particular concern in a scientific study.
Sample
A portion of a population or group that is selected to represent the group as a whole.
One way in which genes and environment work together in development is through niche-picking. An example of niche-picking is:
An active child choosing to participate in many athletic events.
How are external validity, internal validity, and reliability related
An unreliable measure, one in which the ratings of different people are not strongly related, cannot be valid because there is no way to tell which rater, if any, is accurately assessing the behavior being rated. Similarly, measures that are invalid with the original sample and experimental situation provide no reason to believe that the measures would be valid for different samples or situations. Thus, reliability is necessary for internal validity, and both are necessary for external validity.
describe some examples of how caregiver interaction helps to stimulate and activate a newborn's senses.
Consider a newborn's response to touch, to being held and the position of her body, the sounds that she hears. When a newborn is held close to the caregiver, the baby more easily hears, sees, and smells that person. The soft, musical sounds that a caregiver makes attract a baby's attention and help the baby to become familiar with the sounds of language. Exaggerated expressions of the caregiver help the baby learn about people.
postive and negative correlation
Correlations range from 1.00, the strongest positive correlation, to -1.00, the strongest negative correlation. - The direction is positive when high values of one variable are associated with high values of the other, and when low values of one are associated with low values of the other; the direction is negative when high values of one variable are associated with low values of the other.
Advantages and disadvantages of experimental designs
ADVANATGES - Allows causal inferences because design rules out direction-of-causation and third-variable problems. - Allows experimental control over the exact experiences that children encounter. DISADVANAGES - Need for experimental control often leads to artificial experimental situations. - Cannot be used to study many differences and variables of interest, such as age, sex, and temperament.
Genetically Transmitted Developmental Disorders
Dominant-Recessive Patterns Many genetic disorders are caused by a single gene and can occur when an individual has two recessive alleles for the condition (for example, PKU) or one dominant gene, as in cases of Huntington disease (a fatal degenerative condition of the brain) and neurofibromatosis (a disorder in which nerve fibers develop tumors). - In some cases, a single gene can have both harmful and beneficial effects. Sickle-cell disease, is a painful recessive-gene disorder affecting individuals who are homozygous for this trait (inheriting two sickle-cell genes, one from each parent). Individuals who are heterozygous for this trait (carrying one normal and one sickle-cell gene) have some abnormality in their blood cells but usually experience no negative effects. Yet the presence of sickle cell in an individual's blood confers resistance to malaria, a benefit for those who live in regions of the world where malaria is common, like West Africa. Sex-Linked Inheritance Some single-gene conditions are carried on the X chromosome and are much more common in genetic males. (Genetic females inherit such conditions only if they inherit the culprit recessive alleles on both of their X chromosomes.) Sex-linked disorders range from relatively minor, such as male-pattern baldness and red-green color blindness, to very serious, including hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Polygenic Inheritance many disorders result from interactions between multiple genes, often in conjunction with environmental factors. Among the many diseases in this category are some forms of cancer and heart disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and asthma. Psychiatric disorders (such as schizophrenia) and behavior disorders (such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia) also involve numerous genes. Chromosomal Anomalies Some genetic disorders originate with errors in germ-cell division that result in a zygote with either more or fewer than the normal complement of chromosomes (aneuploidy). Down syndrome most commonly originates when the mother's egg cells do not divide properly, and an egg that is fertilized contains an extra copy of chromosome 21. Gene Anomalies Genetic disorders also result from extra, missing, or abnormal genes. One instance is Williams syndrome, which involves a variety of cognitive impairments, most noticeably in spatial and visual skills, and, to a lesser degree, in language ability. Individuals with Williams syndrome are also typically characterized by outgoing personalities and friendliness paired with anxiety and phobias. This condition has been traced to the deletion of a small section of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7. Individuals with a smaller deletion show less impairment, suggesting a relationship between the number of deleted genes and the resulting phenotype Unidentified Genetic Basis For many developmental disorders, inheritance patterns clearly reveal genetic origins, though the specific genetic causes have yet to be identified. For example, consider autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A diagnosis of ASD is based on major impairments in social interaction and communication skills, as well as a limited set of interests or repetitive behaviors. ASD is highly heritable: identical twins are more than twice as likely as fraternal twins to share an autism diagnosis. Currently, there are between 500 and 1000 candidate genes associated with ASD, and new genes continue to be identified through molecular genetics techniques. Because autism is a complex and heterogeneous phenotype, differing greatly across individuals who share the same diagnosis, it is not surprising that its genetic roots are equally complex.
Which of the following statements best explains epigenetics?
Development results from the constant interplay between genetics and environment.
What event in the development of the brain leads to the need for synaptic pruning?
During the fetal period and extending into early childhood, neural networks grow at a rapid rate; in particular, the extensions of neurons and the gaps between neurons (synapses). Pruning removes some of these gaps, allowing customization to the individual's nervous system and life experiences. - my answer: the fetal period brings with it tremendous growth in the brain with the addition of thousands of neurons and synapses. This process continues into childhood. Pruning enables the brain to become more flexible and help the child become a better learner.
5-9 week old fetus
Facial features differentiate; rapid brain growth occurs; internal organs form; fingers and toes emerge; sexual differentiation has started.
A good descriptive study will try to select a population that will be representative of the sample to which the researchers want to generalize.
False - Researchers study a sample and then generalize to a population — not the other way around.
Each chromosome contains millions of genes arranged like beads on a string.
False, Chromosomes contain thousands, not millions, of genes.
25-38 week old fetus
Fetus triples in size; brain and lungs are sufficiently developed at 28 weeks to allow survival outside of womb; visual and auditory systems are functional; fetus is capable of learning and behaviors begin to emerge.
modern views of motor development
Impressed by the orderly acquisition of skills, two early pioneers in the study of motor development, Arnold Gesell and Myrtle McGraw, concluded that infants' motor development is governed by brain maturation. In contrast, current theorists emphasize that early motor development results from a confluence of numerous factors that include developing neural mechanisms, increases in infants' strength, posture control, balance, and perceptual skills, as well as changes in body proportions and motivation.
Dr. Marcus is interested in moral development. he develops a task and tests groups of children at ages 5, 10, 15, and 18 years of age. Which of the following is the best term for the kind of design Dr. marcus is using?
Cross-sectional design
Adoption study
In this approach, researchers examine whether adopted children's scores on a given measure are correlated more highly with those of their biological parents and siblings or with those of their adoptive parents and siblings. Genetic influences are inferred to the extent that children resemble their biological relatives more than they do their adoptive ones. - the correlations between identical twins who grew up in different environments are lower than those for identical twins who grew up together, environmental influence is inferred.
the violation of expectancy procedure provides evidence of what basic assumption about infants' understanding of their world?
Infants look longer at a seemingly impossible event than at a possible event.
What was John Locke's argument about development?
Locke argued that children ae tabula rasa or blank slates. Children's development reflects the nurture provided by parents ad society. What children know and how they behave reflects that nurture.
13-24 week old fetus
Lower body growth accelerates; external genitalia are fully developed; body develops hairy outer covering; fetus can make basic facial expressions; fetal movements can be felt by mother.
Cecilia is interested in how parents talk to their infants and slightly stressful situations. After obtaining informed consent, she places a recorder and a cracker box, and ask parents to put the Box in a shopping cart a state's job with their infants. Cecilia slowly Falls parents around, taking notes while trying to stay out of sight. Which of the following terms best describes the kind of steady Cecilia is conducting?
Naturalistic observation
which of the following systems protects the developing embryo from dangerous toxins?
Placenta
Researcher presents an infant with two objects. Determine whether the infant is able to discriminate between the objects and favors one over the other, the researcher measures the amount of time to spend looking at each objects. Which experimental technique is this researcher using?
Preferential looking technique
McGurk effect
To elicit this illusion, the auditory syllable ba is dubbed onto a video of a person speaking the syllable ga. Someone watching this display will hear the syllable da, which is intermediate between ba and ga. To experience this illusion, the perceiver must be able to integrate auditory and visual information together. And indeed, 4½-month-olds are able to experience this illusion: they treat the da sound as familiar after familiarization with the McGurk stimulus, even though they did not actually ever hear da
During the fetal period the fetus may increase in size as much as twentyfold.
True, As the time for birth approaches, the fetus's rate of growth does slow down, but during the entire fetal period, the size of the fetus increases by up to twentyfold.
why are infants a challenging group to study?
Unlike older children and adults, young infants are unable to reliably speak, understand speech, or even move and control their own bodies. Eating, sleeping, and looking around are the only activities babies can perform reliably.
which of the following describes an infant who is most likely suffering from colic?
Vivian cries for several hours a day for unexplained reasons
Cultural differences found in scene perception
Western adults tend to fixate on the focal objects in a scene, whereas East Asian adults tend to fixate on the actions and background contexts of the scene. - When viewing dynamic scenes, American 2-year-olds pay more attention to objects, whereas Chinese 2-year-olds pay more attention to actions
what factors determine which type of cell a given stem cell will become?
While much about this process remains unknown, it is clear that the cell's location influences its future development via chemical and cell-to-cell contact with neighboring cells, and that gene expression—which genes in the cell are switched on—distinguishes one type of cell from another.
What aspect of brain development might help to explain why a teenager can usually perform better as a babysitter than someone ten or eleven years old?
With the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, teenagers think with greater maturity, responsibility, and intelligence than ten or eleven year olds. These qualities would help the teenager make sounder decisions in a responsible job like
1 week old fetus
Zygote travels from fallopian tube to womb and embeds in uterine lining; cells arrange into a ball and begin to form embryo and support system.
dependent variable
a behavior that is measured to determine whether it is affected by exposure to the independent variable. - The behavior that is hypothesized to be affected by exposure to the independent variable
methylation
a biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is involved in regulating reactions to stress
Amygdala
a brain area involved in emotional reactions
mutation
a change in a section of DNA.
depth perception
a depth cue in which an object occludes increasingly more of the background, indicating that the object is approaching. - The simple fact that we have two eyes also aids in the early development of depth perception. Because of the distance between our eyes, the retinal image of an object is never quite the same in both eyes. Consequently, the eyes never send exactly the same signal to the brain
phenylketonuria (PKU)
a disorder related to a defective recessive gene on chromosome 12 that prevents metabolism of the amino acid phenylalanine.
What behavioral changes are thought to occur when the brain's activity shifts from the limbic system to the prefrontal cortex in adolescence and early adulthood?
a gradual shift toward deliberate and thoughtful behavioral control, Researchers think that these changes are responsible for a shift away from emotional and impulsive behavior.
nueral tube
a groove formed in the top layer of differentiated cells in the embryo that eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord. - One end of the neural tube will swell and develop into the brain, and the rest will become the spinal cord.
amniotic sac
a transparent, fluid-filled membrane that surrounds and protects the fetus. - The amniotic fluid operates as a protective buffer for the developing fetus, providing it with a relatively even temperature and cushioning it against jolting.
umbilical cord
a tube containing the blood vessels connecting the fetus and placenta.
how early does the fetus begin preparing for labor
about 266 days after conception, the fetus's brain secretes a hormone that triggers the fetus's lungs to prepare for breathing air and the mother's uterus to prepare for labor.
Which is NOT an effect that marijuana use during pregnancy has on children after they are born?
addiction to marijuana from birth
confounding variable in adoptive twin studies
adoption agencies generally place separated twins with families of backgrounds similar to one another. Therefore, even adoptive twin study designs are vulnerable to confounding of environmental and genetic factors.
An X-linked recessive gene almost never has a counterpart on the Y chromosome. Therefore, recessive traits on the X chromosome
affect sons more than daughters.
Fourteen-month-old Donte is a new walker. He recognizes that he can walk on solid, flat surfaces, but he can't walk on squishy, slick, or steeply sloping. This shows that Donte has discovered
affordances
Maternal factors
age, nutrition, disease,
The scientific method
an approach to testing beliefs that involves choosing a question, formulating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion.
Teratogens
an external agent that can cause damage or death during prenatal development.
Which of the following illustrates discontinuity in development?
an infant developing from being a pre-walker to being able to walk independently.
Teratogens
any agent that can cause a change in the development process. state of the mother, diseases, or chemical agents that can harm or alter the course of development before birth.
stage theories
approaches proposing that development involves a series of large, discontinuous, age-related phases. - according to these theories, a child's entry into a new stage involves relatively sudden, qualitative changes that affect the child's thinking or behavior in broadly unified ways and move the child from one coherent way of experiencing the world to a different coherent way of experiencing it.
The taste buds
are mostly found on the papillae on the tongue, but are also in the cheeks and throat.
Nativists
argue that evolution has created many remarkable capabilities that are present even in early infancy, particularly in areas of special importance, such as understanding basic properties of physical objects, plants and animals, and other people.
Empiricists
argued that infants possess general learning mechanisms that allow them to learn a great deal quite quickly, but that infants and young children lack the specialized capabilities that nativists attribute to them.
Variables
attributes that vary across individuals and situations, such as age, sex, socioeconomic status and popularity.
One-month-old Amir hears his little brother laugh loudly. He cannot see his brother but turns in the direction of his brother's laughter. This indicates that Amir has the ability called
auditory localization.
The time the most significant teratogenic damage can result from something the mother does or experiences occurs
before the woman might realize she is pregnant
In most typically developing infants, motor skills, such as sitting, crawling, and walking, develop in the same order. Based on this observations, psychologists Gesell and McGraw believed motor development was governed by
brain maturation
anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex
brain structures involved in setting and attending to goals
By age 2, transient exuberance is a main cause of increased:
brain weight, transient exuberance is the increase of dendrites in the cortex, a process that increases brain weight.
When young children appear clumsy, wobbly, and slow, it is often a result of the slow maturity and development of the:
corpus callosum, the slow development of the corpus callosum is often responsible for children who appear clumsy, wobbly, and slow.
why is prenatal development important
critical periods of development, formation of the body systems and organs, brain development, all highly susceptible to experience.
a team of reserachers is studying whether stable individual differences exists in sleeping behavior at various ages. They decide to test 3-month-olds, 6-month-olds and 9-month-olds. what type of design are they using to examine this question.
cross-sectional
What is the greatest obstacle to poor children's successful development?
cumulative risk
in a study to measure the effects of students studying for mathematics exams in groups compared with students who studied alone, the performance on mathematics exams would be the
dependent variable.
What is reengagement of attention following habituation called?
dishabituation
Experience-dependent plasticity helps to explain how differences in brains develop. This is because
each individual has different experiences, that result in different brain organizations.
Genome
each person's complete set of hereditary information; the complete set of DNA of any organism, including all of its genes.
What does effortful attention have to do with mechanisms of development.
effortful attention involves voluntarily controlling one's emotions and thoughts. It includes processes such as inhibiting impulses (e.g., obeying requests to put all of one's toys away, as opposed to putting some away but then getting distracted and playing with the remaining ones); controlling emotions (e.g., not crying when failing to get one's way); and focusing attention (e.g., concentrating on one's homework despite the inviting sounds of other children playing outside). Difficulty in exerting effortful attention is associated with behavioral problems, weak math and reading skills, and mental illness
embryonic stem cells
embryonic cells, which can develop into any type of body cell.
Dr. Dubois conducts twin and family studies in different cultures to explore how environmental factors influence the expression of genetic tendencies toward alcohol use disorder. Dr. Dubois specializes in an emerging field called.
epigenetics
Environmental factors
estimating heritability automatically estimates the proportion of variance not attributable to genes. The most obvious source of shared environment is growing up in the same family.
environment
every aspect of individuals and their surroundings other than genes.
Adolph's research demonstrated that infants learn from _____ what they can and cannot do with respect to each motor skill that they master.
experience
Jakob is given a tricycle when he is 2 years old. The parts of his brain that are used when he rides his new trike are strengthened. He develops better motor coordination than his friend Alexa, who is not given a trike. This is an example of _____________ development.
experience-dependent
in order to generalize her findings beyond the individuals who participated in her study, Dr. Liu needs to conduct additional research using participants from a variety of backgrounds . What quality of behavioral research is Dr. Liu addressing.
external validity
Infants are generally more interested in old familiar stimuli than new stimuli?
false
The DeCasper and Spence study, in which pregnant women read aloud twice a day from the same book during their last 6 weeks of pregnancy, was designed to asses
fetal learning
The development period when the brain experiences the most growth and maturity is the:
fetal period
fontanels
five separate bony plates allow the skull to compress into a bullet shape with a reduced diameter during labor making delivery less difficult. After delivery, the baby's head returns to a rounded shape.
reflexes
fixed patterns of action that occur in response to particular stimulation. - In the grasping reflex, newborns close their fingers around anything that presses against the palm of their hand. - When stroked on the cheek, infants exhibit the rooting reflex, turning their head in the direction of the touch and opening their mouth. - Oral contact with the nipple then sets off a sucking reflex, followed by the swallowing reflex, both of which increase the baby's chance of getting nourishment and ultimately of surviving. - Stepping or dancing with the feet when being held upright with feet touching a solid surface.
Why is a large sample size better sometimes
generally, large representative samples are preferred to small representative samples because they are more likely to reflect the patterns of the greater population. - However, a small representative sample may well be better than a large sample that is not representative of the population.
regulator cells
genes that control the activity of other genes.
individual differences
genetic susceptibility (probably in both the mother and the fetus). Thus, a substance that is harmless to most people may trigger problems in individuals whose genes predispose them to be affected by it.
prenatal testing
genetic testing used to assess the fetus's risk for genetic disorders.
carrier genetic testing
genetic testing used to determine whether prospective parents are carriers of specific disorders.
apoptosis
genetically programmed cell death.
in recent decades, researchers have come to the conclusion that, after infancy, most development occurs ____
gradually
Dr. Huang shows 3-month-old infant photos of the same dog several times. After the first three showings, the infant response declines and she shifts her attention away from the picture. Dr. Huang's study is demonstrating _____ in the infant.
habituation
Logan's dad is thrilled as Logan laughs each time he shows him a new toy: a monkey that squeaks when he pushes on its belly. After repeated exposure to the squeaking monkey, Logan becomes bored and no longer laughs. This process is known as
habituation
An experimental procedure was developed that allowed young infants experience reaching for and picking up objects by wearing "sticky mittens" with Velcro. When young infants were given this experience,
had increased interest in objects.
heterozygous
having two different alleles for a trait
homozygous
having two of the same allele for a trait.
the concept of the active child refers to
how children contribute to their own development.
Nutrition (Maternal factors)
if a pregnant woman has an inadequate diet, her unborn child may also be nutritionally deprived. An inadequate supply of specific nutrients can have dramatic consequences. For instance, women who get too little folic acid (a form of B vitamin) are at high risk for having an infant with a neural-tube defect such as spina bifida
nature vs nurture debate and schizophrenia
if schizophrenia was only due to nature then if one identical twin has the disorder then the other should have a 100% chance of getting it as well, but in reality, they only have less than a 50% of developing it themselves. This tells us that development is influenced by both nature and nurture. development is not a function of either nurture or nature but but in interaction between the two.
Conducting a study on whether having coffee after 7 p.m. increase insomnia and participants. She'll randomly assigned some participants to drink coffee after 7 p.m. and others to refrain for coffee after 7 p.m. In this experiment, whether or not people drink coffee after 7 p.m. is the ___ variable.
independent
how does the element of surprise 8 in the process of acting learning in infants?
infants are more likely to search for explanations to unexpected events
according to the society for research in child development , which of the following is not a stated ethical principle for conducting research with children?
information about the child uncovered through the course of the study must not be revealed to the parent or guardian regardless of its importance for that child's welfare
polygenetic inheritance pattern
inheritance pattern in which traits are governed by more than one gene
Because the brain adapts to the environment and different experiences,
less information needs to be encoded in the genes.
When studying infants' visual perception--for example their perception of shapes or faces--the dependent variable in habituation is infants'
looking time
which process of prenatal development is critical to the specialization of cells
cell differentiation
meiosis
cell division that produces gametes - a form of cell division in which the eggs and sperm receive only one member from each of the 23 chromosome pairs contained in all other cells of the body. This reduction to 23 chromosomes in each gamete is necessary for reproduction, because the union of egg and sperm must contain the normal amount of genetic material (23 pairs of chromosomes).
mitosis
cell division that results in two identical cells
the disproportionately large head of a 5-month-old fetus is a typical result of the normal process of _____
cephalocaudal development
On the first day of life, newborns are sensitive to:
changes in temperature, touch, and movements of their own body.
neurotransmitters
chemicals involved in communication among brain cells.
the question of nature in development is a very old question. which of the following statements is similar to Plato's view on this issue?
children are born knowing things
the first basic step in using the scientific method involves
choosing a question
11 week old fetus
clearly shows the heart, which has achieved its basic adult structure. - You can also see the developing spine and ribs, as well as the major divisions of the brain.
Seven-month-old Kendra is looking at a picture of a meadow in which the closer trees and animals block the objects that are farther away. Kendra appears to be sensitive to the picture's use of interposition, which is a type of
monocular depth cue
Harry and Ron are genetically identical twins and are referred to as ___. Athea (a genetic female) and Stephen (a genetic male) are also twins but are clearly ___
monozygotic, dizygotic
The speed of neural impulses along an axon is increased greatly by:
myelination - Myelination is the development of a form of insulation. Impulses are speeded because they can jump from one gap in the insulation to the next.
Which of these brain changes is most likely to be observed in adolescence?
myelination in the frontal lobe of the cortex, Myelination in the frontal lobe of the cortex is one of the changes that seems to promote efficient information processing and the inhibition of impulses in adolescence.
the understanding two objects or separate, even when they're touching, is referred to as ____
object segregation
Development is followed through three closely related areas:
perception, action, and learning.
1 month old Ella is shown a small cube that is close to her. Next she has shown a larger Cube that is farther away from her. Because the two cubes are at different distances from below, they appear to be the same size. I was actions indicate if she recognizes that the second cube is larger, signifying that she has ____
perceptual constancy
_____ is the observable expression of the genotype, including both body characteristics and behavior.
phenotype
All of the following are difficulties likely to affect infants born with fetal alcohol syndrome:
problems with attention and memory. problems with language development. poor social skills.
how is control achieved in an experiment?
random assignment
What two techniques are crucial to experimental designs?
random assignment of participants to groups, and experimental control.
heritable
refers to characteristics or traits that are genetically transmitted.
Malala strokes the cheek of her newborn daughter and the baby turns her head in the direction of Malala's touch and opens her mouth. This is an example of the _____ reflex.
rooting
2 year old Jaden attempts to put her foot inside of a toy car that is clearly too small for her. She's making which type of error?
scale error
genes
sections of chromosomes that are the basic unit of heredity in all living things.
What can be learned during the fetal period?
sensory information, if the sensory systems are functional.
How Can Research Promote Children's Well-Being?
several studies mentioned including the program for helping children deal with their anger and the recommendations for fostering valid eyewitness testimony from young children. educational innovations such as children's reasoning, remembering, conceptualizing, and problem solving is inherently related to education.
the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up a child's environment are known as
sociocultural context
Epegenetics
the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment. Stated simply, epigenetics examines how experience gets under the skin.
How are microgenetic designs similar to longitudinal studies?
they both repeatedly test the same children over time.
What is an important limitation of both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs?
they provide only a broad outline of the process of change
When talking about prenatal development, the three stages refer to
three equal divisions of pregnancy.
The effects of potential teratogens are heavily influenced by ______
timing
Primary goal of correlation designs
to determine whether children who differ in one variable also differ in predictable ways in other variables.
why do people who adopt a behavioral genetics perspective conduct twin studies?
to see if people who share more genes (like identical twins) are more alike on some traits
Habituation can be used to study infants' perception of auditory stimuli, like speech sounds.
true
In a double-blind procedure, neither the participants nor the experimenter know in which study group any particular participant is.
true
It is possible to measure learning during the fetal period by recording changes in the fetuses behaviors
true
The brain part that expands throughout the fetal period is the cerebral cortex.
true
The connections between neurons—where chemical signals from one cell's axon travel to another cell's dendrite or body—are at the synapses.
true
After a child's second birthday, the brain grows rapidly in size only to be limited by the closing of the sutures of the skull that occurs between the ages of 6 and 8 years.
true, After age 2, the brain grows more slowly in size.
alleles
two or more different forms of a gene.
which is not a symptom of fetal alcohol syndrome?
underactivity
by administering the same test to the same group of participants under similar conditions two or more times, a researcher can measure ______ reliability.
test-retest
newborn screening
tests used to screen newborn infants for a range of genetic and non-genetic disorders.
what is a basic tenant of behavior tenant
the DNA variation (and protein coding based on DNA transcription) renders behavioral variation.
Experimental control
the ability of researchers to determine the specific experiences of participants during the course of an experiment.
experimental control
the ability of researchers to determine the specific experiences of participants during the course of an experiment.
contrast sensitivity
the ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in a visual pattern. - infants can detect a pattern only when it is composed of highly contrasting elements.
Intermodal perception refers to
the combining of information from two or more sensory systems.
Which of the following is an example of discontinuity in prenatal development?
the emergence of the brain and nervous system during the early weeks of prenatal development
independent variable
the experience that participants in the experimental group receive and that those in the control group do not receive.
what is the mainstay of quantitative behavior genetics
the family study, which attempts to determine whether phenotypic traits are correlated with the degree to which people are genetically related—parents and children, identical and fraternal twins, non-twin siblings, or adoptive family members. (the strength and direction of a correlation indicate the extent to which two variables are related; the higher the correlation, the more precisely scores on one variable can be predicted from scores on the other.) The resulting correlations are compared to see if they are (1) higher for more closely related individuals than for less closely related people, and (2) higher for individuals who share the same environment than for individuals who do not.
genotype
the genetic material an individual inherits.
What distinguishes scientific research from nonscientific approaches?
the methods used to test the hypotheses distinguishes scientific research. When rigorously employed, these research methods yield high-quality evidence that allows investigators to progress beyond their initial hypotheses to draw firmly grounded conclusions.
what does the multiple-risk model suggest about negative developmental outcomes?
the more risk factors that are present, the more likely and worse the potential outcomes will be
In one study, older infants who no longer displayed the neonatal stepping reflex were suspended waist-deep in a tank of water and resumed stepping. This finding demonstrated that
the neural basis for the stepping movement remains throughout infancy but is masked by weight gain.
8 1/2 week old fetus
the nose and mouth are almost fully formed. - Cleft palate, one of the most common birth defects worldwide, involves malformations of this area and originates sometime between 5½ and 8 weeks prenatally, as these structures are developing.
epigenesis
the emergence of new structures and functions in the course of development.
what does mechanisms mean in development?
"the goal of producing increasingly precise accounts of the processes that produce an outcome of interest. Developmental mechanisms can be behavioral, neural, or genetic."
Which of the following aspects of prenatal development are susceptible to experience?
- Critical periods of development - Formation of the body systems and organs - Brain development
double-blind procedure
A scientific experiment in which both the subjects of the study and those administering the study are prevented from knowing critical details that might bias them and compromise the study's results.
Why accounted for Beth's change of thinking about pouring the water into the a tall glass vs. a thick glass.
According to Piaget's view, when confronted with a problem like the one that Beth's mother presented to her, most 4- and 5-year-olds focus on the single dimension of height and therefore perceive the taller, narrower glass as having more water. In contrast, most 7- and 8-year-olds consider both relevant dimensions of the problem simultaneously. This allows them to realize that although the column of water in the taller glass is higher, the column also is narrower, and the two differences offset each other.
7 month old Trevor has learned that small round objects can be rolled across a flat surface. Trevor's discovery is an example of which developmental learning process?
Affordances
When a young infant hears the same sound over and over, such as "ba-ba-ba-," what will happen?
The baby habituates.
In what way can a child's phenotype affect his or her environment?
Children actively seek out environments consistent with their interests and abilities.
How might we characterize the preference for sweet flavors across childhood, into adulthood?
Children are both less sensitive to sweet and show a stronger preference to sweet things than teenagers or adults.
which statements are true of Romanian orphanages in the late 1980's and early 1990's?
Children who lived in the orphanages were severely malnourished malnourished. The crowns of the heads of infants who looked at the orphanages were flattened from lying on their backs for so many hours. orphanage workers did not interact with the children.
How do we test habituation in the fetus
Evaluated pregnant women who had fetuses between 30-38 weeks gestation and presented vibroacoustic stimulation (VAS) which they both heard and felt, and as a response, the fetus began to kick a lot and the researchers measured the kicking response to the stimulus. - They found that the amount of kicking habituated. the kicking decreased with time as the fetus got used to the sound/ vibartions. This means the fetus formed a memory of some sort and the brain recognized that the sound happened again and again. - Especially important is that after the fetus became habitatuated to the sound, and the reserachers did the sounds again, the fetus habitauated even faster the second time. - It tells us that the stimulus was able to trigger a memory that made the fetus 'bored' faster. So these mechanisms are present during the later stages of pregagancy and could be related to long term memory.
Maria and Juanita are in school Twins, and therefore have identical genes. Where you develop schizophrenia, but Juanita did not. What does this example tell us about schizophrenia?
Even though it is genetic, experience and the environment plays a role in whether or not a person develops schizophrenia.
Teratogens and germinal period
It is believed that if exposure to teratogens occurs during the germinal period, which is the first two weeks of gestation, the teratogenic agent will probably destroy the organism before implantation occurs. - Beginning at the third week of gestation and continuing throughout the embryonic period, susceptibility to most teratogens is at its greatest. The reason for this is because all of the major organ systems, such as the circulation, nervous, and digestive systems, are beginning to develop during this time. The movement of cells to their final destinations and the differentiation of cells into their specific roles can be disrupted if the chemistry of the uterus is changed by the introduction of a teratogen, such as alcohol, the HIV virus, or radiation.
What usually happens when a newborn smells vinegar, rotten eggs, or ammonia?
She scrunches up her nose.
What are the two primary tasks the fetus must accomplish during the final phase of prenatal development.
Task #1 − Continued development of organ systems − Each system must mature and eventually begin functioning in preparation for birth. Task #2 − Continued overall body growth − As shown in this illustration, the size of the fetus increases by twentyfold during these few months. Arms and legs grow dramatically, and before long, the head no longer seems so disproportionate in relation to the rest of the body.
Which of the following statements about the neonate's ability to see at birth is FALSE?
The neonate has good color vision.
embryonic period
The prenatal stage of development from approximately 3 weeks to 8 weeks after conception during which the embryonic cells first resemble a human being. By the end of the embryonic period, most basic organs have developed.
protein synthesis
The process in which individual amino acids are connected to each other in a specific order so as to create a new protein.
implantation
The process of the blastocyst attaching to the uterine lining. Implantation occurs anywhere from 6 to 12 days after fertilization. Upon successful implantation, the mother's hormones trigger her menstrual cycle to stop.
phonemes
The smallest sound unit in a human language that has the ability to distinguish meaning.
How did Darwin's theory of evolution inspire scientists to study child development.
They thought by studying human development they could gain insight into human nature.
violation of expectancy
a procedure used to study infant cognition in which infants are shown an event that should evoke surprise or interest if it goes against something the infant knows.
Habituation
a simple form of learning that involves a decrease in response to repeated or continued stimulation.
spontaneous abortion
commonly referred to as miscarriage. Most miscarriages occur before the woman even knows that she is pregnant. - The majority of embryos that are miscarried very early have severe defects, such as a missing chromosome or an extra one, that make further development impossible. In the United States, about 15% of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage
which of the following is an example of perceptual narrowing?
compared to older children and adults, infants are better able to distinguish between different individual monkeys.
endophenotypes
intermediate phenotypes, including the brain and nervous systems, that do not involve overt behavior.
Raul is playing with his 2-month-old brother. He brings a stuffed cat closer to his face until he blinks. The blinking is an indication that his infant brother is sensitive to _____ cues.
optical expansion
Jane is a 2 month old infant. She wants to get her hands on the rattle that is lying next to her; however, all she can do is make very clumsy swiping movements in the general vicinity of the toy. Jane's movements are known as ____
pre-reaching motions
Nature
refers to our biological endowment, in particular, the genes we receive from our parents. This genetic inheritance influences every aspect of our makeup, from broad characteristics such as physical appearance, personality, intellect, and mental health to specific preferences, such as political attitudes and propensity for thrill-seeking. - it is inborn or biological, that development happens regardless of the experience the children have.
Which maternal factor is NOT one that can affect the fetus during prenatal development?
sleep-wake cycles
The impact of harmful agents, known as teratogens, during prenatal development can vary in their effect, depending on all EXCEPT
sleep-wake cycles.
Cumulative risk
the accumulation of disadvantages over years of development.
recessive
the allele that is not expressed if a dominant allele is present.
dominant
the allele that, if present, gets expressed.
object segregation
the identification of separate objects in a visual array.
Affordences
the possibilities for action offered, or afforded, by objects and situations. - They discover, for example, that small objects—but not large ones—afford the possibility of being picked up; that solid, flat surfaces afford stable walking whereas squishy, slick, or steeply sloping ones do not; that chairs of a certain size afford the possibility of being sat on; and so forth. Infants discover affordances by figuring out the relations between their own bodies and abilities and the things around them.
crossing over
the process by which sections of DNA switch from one chromosome to the other; crossing over promotes variability among individuals.
smooth pursuit eye movement
visual behavior in which the viewer's gaze shifts at the same rate and angle as a moving object. - When presented with a figure like a triangle, infants younger than 2 months old look almost exclusively at one corner. With more complex shapes, like faces, they tend to scan only the outer edges. Thus, when 1-month-olds look at a line drawing of a face, they tend to fixate on the perimeter—on the hairline or chin, where there is relatively high contrast with the background. By 2 months of age, infants scan much more broadly, enabling them to pay attention to both overall shape and inner details.
Research indicates that the cultural practice of wearing diapers affects infants'
walking behavior
which of the following is a possible exclamation for why young infants tend to have more trouble with auditory localization than older infants and children do?
young infants have smaller heads, which makes it more difficult for them to perceive whether a sound is closer to one ear or the other.
a single cell that forms when two gametes merge during conception is called the
zygote
