PSYC 105 Exam 1 Review
Give one piece of supporting evidence for the space and environment core domains.
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What are some examples suggesting that children may think very differently than adults?
- Children haven't quite developed a sense of self awareness yet. e.g. shopping cart - child logic = they make logical inferences based on the information they are given e.g. tooth fairy
What did Akhtar and colleagues find out about children's learning of words through overhearing? Why is this important for theories of language learning?
2 year olds learn words through overhearing. important because it can help add to our understanding of how children use different strategies to learn language.
In their study of "hands free" and "hands occupied" imitation of a novel action, what did Gergely and his colleagues find?
69% imitated head action when hands were free (replicating Meltzoff's study) When hands were occupied, imitation dropped to 21% Young children sometimes imitate and sometimes emulate. Imitating the means versus imitating the goal of others' actions. Seem to understand that there are intentions behind others' actions.
Why did Piaget think of his theory as relating cognitive development to biological development?
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Give an example of a research finding that supports Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience?
A not B error (can't change pattern of thinking) Preservation error that can be seen in infancy where there is an ability to inhibit salient actions executive functioning is not fully developed (frontal lobe)
Describe the core knowledge theory according to Spelke and Kinzler (2007)
All humans are born with basic cognitive skills that lets them make sense of the world. Emerged from criticisms of Piaget's conceptions of cognitive development.
What did Carey studies show that supports the idea that children are "anthropocentric"?
Anthropocentrism = human centered reasoning People have an omentum OR dogs have an omentum Young children (5 yrs) are more likely to make inference from human rather than dog. Only older children (7+) make inferences equally and have the biological concept of a dog. Carey argues that Biology is NOT a core domain
How do Ganea et al's findings help to explain children's understanding of animals and animal properties?
Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to any other nonhuman entity in the environment e.g. dressing chihuahua as a baby or interpreting deity as human Many children's book have unrealistic and fantastical animals that dress and speak like humans. The anthropomorphized animals in books may lead to less learning and influence children's conceptual knowledge of animals.
What is the logic behind the violation of expectation procedure used. by Baillargeon and her colleagues to test infants' understanding of objects? How do her conclusions about infant cognition differ from Piaget?
Baillargeon found that children (3.5 months) looked longer at impossible test events than possible test events., proving they are understanding objects earlier than Piaget thought. VOE procedure: habituation, placing the box, possible event, impossible event
How does Baillargeon's research support the idea of a core domain of knowledge about inanimate objects?
Baillargeon showed that children younger than Piaget studied have object permanence. Children from 3.5 months to 4 rather than around 8 months (Piaget) may have a concept of object permanence.
How did Baldwin (1991) test the ideas that infants use social-pragmatic cues to help them learn new words? What were her findings?
Baldwin created a study where in a discrepant labeling condition in which children had to label a toy in a bucket while also gazing into the bucket, then the child was asked to focus on a different toy, then the child had to wait 4 seconds before seeing the toy again. Then children were put in a follow-in labeling condition where child and adult were focused on ??? Infants are socially coordinating and achieving joint reference; children use pragmatic cues like eye gaze, expression, emotion to figure out what the speaker is communicating
Describe the results of a study showing that children's early grammar learning involves learning of abstract rules.
Berko (1958): starting at around four years old, children readily apply language grammar rules to novel or non words; abstract rules of grammar in a language can be applied across a language
Describe ways babies vision changes in the first several months of life.
By eight weeks, babies begin to focus their eyes on the faces of parents or other person near them. For the first two months of life, babies eyes are not well coordinated and might appear to wander or be crossed.
Is cognitive development a universal process? Constructivist versus sociocultural response.
C: Piaget would say yes because he compares it to a biological natural process that happens over time. He views children as little scientists who build on preexisting structures and seek out info to better understand the world and described this characteristic as innate. S: Vygotsky would say no and that cognitive development is a social process that is facilitated by the social interactions that a child is exposed to. He believed that the way the child interacted with the world shapes what their mental abilities will be. We have to look at cultural history and practices to really understand development.
Give one piece of supporting evidence for the "categories of people" core domain.
Children (ages 5-6 European American) were told to identify from images with audio who the child will grow up to be. It was a pic of a white kid who speaks french and a White adult who speaks english or a black adult who speaks french. The 5-6 year old European American kids chose the Black adult who speaks French. They chose based on language rather than race. The 5-6 year old African American kids and 9-10 European American kids chose race. African American kids use race as a more stable category over time.
According to Troseth et al. (2018) article, how likely are children to learn new words from video versus real life people? Describe the findings and how you interpret them?
Children are more likely to learn from real people in person than on video. In the study children 24-30 months old were studied. There were 4 different groups: responsive live, responsive video, unresponsive live, and unresponsive video. Children learned most reliably in the responsive live option. Older children (30 months) learned in the unresponsive live option. No children learned in both video options. This proves the video deficit and that social interaction is not the only reason for it.
In the Silva et al. (2010) article, children from what community were most often engaged in sustained attention?
Children from more Indigenous backgrounds
Describe one study that showed children's helpfulness may be related to cultural practices.
Cultural variation in spontaneous helping behaviors Lopez and Rogoff Found that helping without being asked is a key feature of learning and pitching into ongoing activities. Mexican heritage school aged children helped a RA pick up spilled items more than EA students. This follows the cultural value of being acomedido/a. In short, these children are motivated to observe, contribute, and help out more due to the structures of their communities and values.
How Dahl and colleagues study the social context of children's helping? What did they find?
Dahl et al. (2017) used various simple tasks with a researcher that would prompt the child to help. Children were either encouraged and praised or received no feedback. The researchers found that the encouragement and praise helped the 13-14m.o. group. but not the 16-18 m.o. group.
Explain the difference between "defining-features" and "probabilistic" accounts of conceptual development.
Defining features: traditional view; includes the necessary and sufficient features that determines whether an example is or is not an instance of the concept e.g. dog: shaggy fur, four legs, tail, barks probabilistic representations: properties that are somewhat but not perfectly correlated with the concept e.g. sit on it = chair?
What are some of the main goals of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience?
Defintion: a new evolving field that investigates the relations between brain development and cognitive development Main goal: finding links between behavior and neuroscience findings; understanding the notion between nature and nurture (how genetics and environment interact)
What are some theoretical assumptions of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory?
Development occurs in social interactions. interpersonal -> intrapersonal mechanisms for developmental change: internalization psychology process are mediated by cultural tools
What are some of the findings of how babies learn to walk and crawl?
Domain general- broad learning mechanisms. Babies skills learned in crawling helps them when learning to walk. (skills in one area may transfer to other areas)
what are the differences between domain-general and domain-specific development? Give an ex of each
Domain-general = broad learning mechanisms; skills learned in one area will transfer to another e.g. crawling and walking: skills learned during crawling (body coordination and balance) will transfer over into skills needed for walking Domain-specific = each developmental area has independent knowledge structures -> skills learned in one area stays in that area, theres no transfer, SKILLS DEVELOP SEPARATELY e.g. language versus memory
What is one strategy that Rowley and Camacho (2015) suggest to help with the problem of too little diversity in cognitive developmental research?
Ensuring that one is creative in recruitment methods for participants in a study, and that one works to establish trust within minority communities.
Give one piece of supporting evidence for the agents and actions core domain.
Hamlin: Hill paradigm Found that children prefer helpers over hinderers
What new conditions did Hamlin (2015) use to tease apart different explanations for the findings of Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom (2007)? What do you conclude about babies thinking about helping and hindering?
He made the block shake in some trials after it either, a) reached the top or b) got pushed back down to the bottom Babies thought this shake was the emotions like it was happy to reach the top or upset to fall back down. They chose the helper over hinderer
Give an example of a study that lead researchers to question Carey's that anthropocentrism is a universal way children think?
Herrmann, Waxman, and Medin (2010) designed a modified task for 3 year olds. Same type of question "Humans have andro" or "Dogs have andro" except its using puppets. "What do you think? Does a bee have andro?" One puppet says yes and one says no, the child has to choose which one is right. Urban 3 yo do not looks anthropocentric in this task, most likely because its more likely in different cultural communities than others.
Describe a study suggesting that there is cultural variation in whether deception is seen as an acceptable strategy for parents to use with children.
Heyman, Luu, and Lee (2009) Asian American parents and European American parents "parenting by lying"
How do some theorists explain the finding that children imitate the literal actions while apes imitate the goal of an action? (imitation vs emulation)
Humans will copy other humans verbatim even if it includes unnecessary actions, while apes will not.
Why is the findings of early infant imitation important? How was it interpreted in relation to Piaget's theory?
Imitation is a crucial part of skill development because it allows us to learn new things quickly and efficiently by observing those around us. Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four universal stages of mental development. His theory focuses on not only understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.
Describe a research finding that gives evidence of development in babies' perception of speech sounds. (hint: what is perceptual narrowing?)
Janey Werker's conditioned head turn procedure showed that infants were able to distinguish phonemes that adults were not, until about 10-12 months when the child's phonemes become specialized in the language they speak. focus of efficiency of speech sounds in own language rather than stretching these skills thin
Give one piece of supporting evidence for the numbers core domain.
Karen Wynn (1992) found evidence that infants have the ability to count, add, and subtract small quantities.
Kinzler and Dautel's research discussed in class supports the idea of a possible fifth core domain on categories of people. What was their procedure and what were the main results of their study?
Kinzler and Dautel tested children by having them look at pictures of a child and two adults. One adult was same ethnicity but spoke different language. Another adult was different ethnicity but spoke the same language. Then researchers asked children which adult the child grew up to be. The 5-6 year old European American kids chose the same language (even tho different ethnicity). The 5-6 year old African American kids and the 9-10 year old European American kids chose the same ethnicity/race but different language adult.
What is one reason Rowley and Camacho (2015) give for why there is too little cognitive development research on diverse populations?
Lack of trust in researchers within those populations; Assumptions by researchers that data from one group represents the norm in all cultures
What do Troseth et al. (2018) mean by "video deficit"?
Less demonstration of comprehension from video learning compared to live learning aka kids don't learn as much from video compared to live
How did Piaget define operations and operational thought?
Operational thought is how children interact with objects and how objects are represented. Relates to object permanence.
What is one of Piaget's contributions that Flavell (1996) discusses in the article?
Piaget helped us to accept the idea that children's cognitive behavior is more intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated.
What is the role of the social context in cognitive development according to Piaget vs Vygotsky?
Piaget: children are scientists with development in activity, social context is only "input" Vygotsky: children are social beings and their development is them making sense of their place in the social world, social context is the site of change
What is meant by psychological essentialism?
Psychological essentialism captures the intuition that there is something essential that makes you a member of that category, not just what you look like. e.g. raccoon
Qualitative change
Refers to the changes kids go through as they gain knowledge and grow larger physically
Define overextension and give an example.
Related to assimilation; calling a zebra a horse
In the Troseth (2018) study, describe the conditions and what the findings were for the conditions.
Responsive live = teacher is present in person and engaged with children; children learned the most in this condition responsive video = teacher is on a voice chat and engaged with children; no children learned the word in this condition unresponsive live = teacher is present in person but their words are scripted; only older children (30 months) learned the word in this condition unresponsive video = behavior and speech on video is scripted; no children learned the word in this condition
What is meant by "lean" interpretation and "rich" interpretation of infants' reactions to social interactions? Give an example of a study and give a lean and rich interpretation of the study.
Rich: babies understand what others are trying to accomplish; seems to happen at around 9 months; When richly interpreting babies' reactions to social actions, it is assumed the baby has a lot of experience and knowledge in these situations. Lean: babies understand that something is happening, but do not recognize that someone has a goal and is trying to reach it; they are mind blind; the lean approach to interpreting infants reactions to social actions accounts from low amount of previous knowledge or understanding
What do you think is one of the main challenges that keeps researchers from including children from diverse backgrounds in their studies? How should this best be addressed in the future?
Rowley (2015) discusses this in depth, citing a researchers lack of experience working with these groups, fear of misrepresentation, and lack of cultural competence as a main hindrance to diversification of studies. The best way to fix this is to incorporate diversity onto the research team, and to have an advisory board composed of the group being studied to key researchers into any key considerations or questions within the research.
How does Wynn's research support the idea of the core domain of knowledge about numbers?
Shows a possible innate numerical understanding and arithmetical ability in humans.
Describe a study that investigated children's ideas of acceptableness of lying and how it is related to cultural values.
Silva and Rogoff (2020) Mexican-American parents and European-American parents using Instructional ribbing to guide children's understanding of culturally appropriate behavior. European American= more negative comments Mexican heritage hi schooling: mixed comments Mexican heritage pueblo: more positive comments
What is one piece of evidence that Spelke and Kinzler (2007) give that one of the core domains focuses on agents and actions?
Spelke and Kinzler (2007) state that contingency, goal directness, efficiency, reciprocity, and gaze direction all support the idea of agent representation. Infants will interpret goals and actions from agents with or without a face, however, they do not with inanimate objects. This shows they can distinguish agents and their actions and thus support the idea of a core domain.
Give one piece of supporting evidence for the inanimate object core domain.
Spelke: focused on qualities of cohesion (objects maintain connectedness as they move), continuity (objects trace 1 connected path over space and time), and contact (distinct object will move together if object touches it); learned that children were born with expectations for objects.
How did Zhao et al. measure children's tendency to cheat?
Temptation resistance task = the children played a game with a grad student and had to make an obvious attempt to peak over the divider to see the cards
what was one of the findings that Zhao et al found surprising or unexpected?
The 3 yos behaved very similarly to the 5yos across conditions. This was surprising because previous research has only found children over than this responded to ability-related praise.
Define overimitation
The act of over-copying. Children are overimitating parents when they recreate actions or phrases that are unnecessary, are not beneficial, and are inappropriate. e.g. repeating curse words
In your view, does the existence of aggression in young children argue that moral development must be learned? Compare and contrast 2 different types of aggression seen in young children.
The existence of aggression in young children argues that moral development must be learned. Children observe, imitate, and reinforce what they see and experience around them aka social learning. They are more likely to interpret peers' actions as hostile, and more likely to believe that aggression is an effective strategy which is known as social-cognitive biases. Instrumental aggression: achieving a material goal Relational aggression: also hostile, social rather than physical aggression These two prove that aggression is due to society
Describe a research finding that suggests that infants have recall memory. Do memories seem different than older children's memories? How do we know?
The experiment with the mobile. They connect babies foot to the mobile and they kick to move it. They come back later in the week to connect baby again and they remember and kick. There was a video in class where they speak out words to the baby. When they said the same word again, the baby kicks, showing that the baby remembers.
What is the hill paradigm in studies of infants understanding of agency and goal-directed behavior? How do these studies provide evidence that babies are distinguishing between the helpers and hinderers?
The hill paradigm was an experiment where researchers showed babies a shape trying to climb a hill. Then the babies are shown the shape try to climb then another shape comes and helps push the struggling shape to the top, helping the shape reach its goal. Then babies are shown the shape try to climb the hill again, but another shape is at the top and pushes the climbing shape down. After this happens, the babies are shown both the helper and hinderer shape and allowed to choose. The babies choose the helper shape.
How did Scarf et al reinterpret the findings of Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom (2007)?
The replicating study of Scarf failed because he did not fix the eyes to the direction that the shape wanted to go.
What does the "rogue task" tell us about children's developing self recognition?
The rogue tasks places kids in front of a mirror to look at themselves. They are placed there a second time with rogue (blush) on their noses. If the child reaches up to touch their nose, that was an indicator to researchers that the child was aware of the change in their appearance on their face. This study was significant because it showed researchers that children were able to recognize themselves, recognize how they look and what they should look like, and recognize when something was off. If the child did not reach up to the rogue, it was indicator that the child did not recognize a change in their appearance- which led researchers to conclude that they did not have self recognition.
Describe the "whole object" constraint. Give an example.
The whole object constraint occurs when a child assumes a word applies to the entire object rather than one part of the object. e.g. if a child names a novel object to a child, the child will assume the word names the whole object "this is a modi" child will assume the entire object is a modi and not just a part
What is the theory-based approach to conceptual development? Explain how this approach is partly a response to problems with other approaches?
Theory-based approach emphasizes causal relations among elements.
Why are the helper and hinderer studies seen as relevant to moral development?
These studies show us that babies understand prosocial behavior and have some preference for it. Also, proves infants can interpret the goals of individuals e.g. the shape with fixed eyes trying to climb mountain
Describe the logic of the habituation (and dishabituation) paradigm for studying babies thinking.
This method involves presenting babies with stimuli until they are stimulated. Then the babies are presented with different kinds of stimuli to see if they are dishabituated.
What method did Warneken and Tomasello (2008) use to study toddlers' likelihood of helping others?
Warneken and Tomasello found that 14 month olds help spontaneously. children asked to help someone with three conditions: praise, reward, neutral. then offered another chance to help. no praise: helped the most again praise: helped second most reward: helped again the least Altruistic behavior is natural and not influenced by encouragement or praise. if you give reward= less likely to help again.
Describe two studies that found conflicting results regarding whether encouragement or praise influences children's helping. What did each study find and what do you conclude?
Warneken and Tomasello: altruistic behavior is natural, not influenced by encouragement or praise, but are we too quick to draw conclusions based on these lab studies with 20 month olds? Dahl: are infants who are just learning to help influenced by encouragement and scaffolding?; home observations: correlation between helping behavior and encouragement and praise in second year; later, parents used more implicit forms of scaffolding and these were correlated with helping (not encouragement and praise)
Accommodation
adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
equilibrium
balancing of assimilation and accommodation
Why might sociocultural theorists disagree with using the word "input" to refer to children's interactions with other people?
because sociocultural theorists view children's interactions with others as effectively participating in the interactions instead of acquiring concepts to better understand the world
What is prosocial behavior?
behavior that is intended to benefit other people with no direct reward for self (e.g. sharing or helping), related to feelings of empathy (sharing another's feelings) and sympathy (feeling concern for another)
*List two of the stage assumptions about cognitive development made by Piaget's theory. Evaluate each given the research discussed in class and in the readings
child constructs reality - new cognitive structures development occurs in universal stages
Flavell is critical or congratulatory about Piaget's theory?
congratulatory
What is one reason Rowley and Camacho (2015) for why there is too little cognitive development research on diverse populations?
deficit attitudes, lack of trust in researcher from diverse populations, thinking one group is the norm, helicopter research
Describe some changes over time that are often seen in the development of empathy.
global empathy: emotional contagion (babies reflex crying when they hear another baby cry) egocentric empathy: start to comfort others (toddlers' distinction between self and others) empathy for another's feelings: can empathize with people not present (story characters) empathy for another's life condition: appreciate that other's feelings are influenced by larger context (sickness and poverty)
Describe some characteristics of infant-directed speech aka motherese.
higher pitched, wider range of pitch, longer pauses, shorter phrases
Define object permanence and one task Piaget used to test it
idea of object existing independent of our actions; visual search, manual search, A not B error
What are the four core knowledge domains and the potential fifth?
inanimate objects, agents and actions, number, space and environment potential: categories of people
In Rogoff's sociocultural view, what is meant by the concept of LOPI?
learning by observation and pitching in
What is the vocabulary spurt?
many new words in short span of time; "what's that?" "who's that?"
Both Piaget and Vygotsky suggested that young children use "thematic" rather than "taxonomic" relations to categorize objects. Give an example of a task that was used to make this point. What did children do on this task?
method: sorting task Told children to "put the things that are alike together" e.g. horse, dog, tree, bee, flower, cactus
Define the "mutual exclusivity" constraint. Give an example.
occurs when a child assumes that only one word describes one object. Markman, Waslow, and Hansen (2003) demonstrated this constraint by showing children a bottle (something they are familiar with) and a novel item (press) in a bucket. If they were asked to find the bottle, they identified it. If they were asked to identify the press (novel item) they would identify it. Can you find novel item? Won't pick one they are familiar with.
Assimilation
prior/new knowledge that fit neatly into our pre-existing understanding. the child's understanding forms a stable structure; it is in equilibrium
Give one example of what Vygotsky would consider a psychological tool (vs a techinical tool)
psychological tool= "sign systems" or "symbols" involving thinking in an analogous way (analogies), such as language, writing, speech, music, math. technical tool: would being change on the environment
Continuous change
refers to development that is seen as a cumulative process: changes are gradual (such as gain in vocab, weight and height, teeth, hair growth, learning times tables, etc.)
Discontinuous change
refers to development that takes place in specific steps or stages. The changes are sudden (e.g. crawling to standing to walking, crying to babbling to speaking in broken words to speaking in complete sentences, etc.)
Quantitative change
refers to the changes in how a kid thinks and behaves. differences in how they perceive the world as they grow older
Define joint attention.
relationship between child, parent, and object; point and gaze is understood at about 9 months, Tomasello argues this is when they understand others as intentional
What is the major accomplishment of the sensory-motor stage of development?
representational thought stage
In the Troseth article, children of both ages were able to learn the novel words in which of the following conditions?
responsive live older children in unresponsive live no children in both responsive and unresponsive video
sociocultural theory
stresses the timing of development; Vygotsky; viewed as socially motivated; psychological process are mediated by cultural tools
constructivist theory
stresses universal pattern of development; Piaget, child as little scientist; biologically constructed; drive to learn and develop as innately motivated
What did Vygotsky mean by the zone of proximal development?
the difference between a child's ability when working independently and working with help
What is scaffolding; give an example
the enforcement of "problem solving framework" by someone with more experience, "apprenticeship" example: adult reinforcing definitions of words by co-watching tv with a child
Describe the logic preferential looking paradigm for studying babies' thinking.
the preferential looking paradigm (PLP) and head-turn preference procedure (HPP) are experimental methodologies employed by researchers to measure infants' and toddlers' spontaneous looking and listening behaviors towards audio and visual stimuli.
infants are able to detect differences between phonemes in most languages, however this ability rapidly decreases by 10-12 months in a process called perceptual narrowing. T/F
true
Explain DeLoache's concept of "dual representation" and why it is an important component of young children's symbolic thinking.
understanding one object as a symbol for another and as an object itself; Before children are able to understand an object as a symbol for another and an object as itself, they treat pictures as objects. Before 9 months, infants are able to recognize pictured objects, they are not able to understand them as a symbol for the object, which DeLoache argues has to do with the issue of dual representation.
What is "symbolic insight"? How early do babies seem to have it based on evidence with picture books?
understanding one thing as a symbol for another; based on DeLoache's study 19-month-olds were able to distinguish symbols as representing an object in a picture book
Define categorical perception and give an example
voice onset time; speech sounds belong to discrete categories; items belonging in one category are more similar and others that are less similar belong in another category