Psyc 101 Midterm 2

Epigenetics

the study of environmental influences on gene expression that occur without a DNA change, how the environment influences gene activation Is it inherited? still asked today

Semantics

the study of meaning in language

Phonology

the study of speech sounds in language Phonemes: units of sound that distinguish meaning cap and cat

Shared Environment

those environmental factors that are experienced by all relevant members of a household, same house, same parents

Non-Shared Environment

those environmental factors that are not experienced by all relevant members of a household birth order, friends, parent behavior

Visual Statistical Learning

three pairs of colored shapes that always occurred together in the same order, but the next stimulus could be any three shapes Result: babies looked longer when the original structure/sequence in the first set was violated* violation of expectation

Overregulation

treating irregular words as regular, overapplying rules ex: he "goed" to the store

Cross-Cultural universality

universal pattern, variation in exact age

Word segmentation

where do words start and end, track statistic of speech sounds, divide up words, recognize patterns, Transitional probabilities: how likely each syllable is to follow the previous one Study: Bidaku, 8mo heard artificial language where the only way to find words was through patterns, violation of expectation with sounds

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

widely used test designed to measure the intelligence of children 6 years and older, gives score on general intelligence based on several sub components, relative to children of that age, fall into a normal distribution

Alfred Binet

1857-1911; Field: testing; Contributions: general IQ tests, designed test to identify slow learners in need of remediation-not applicable in the U.S. because too culture-bound (French)

Phoneme Perception Development

1: learn to tell apart through experience, get better with age 2: learn NOT to tell apart sounds that aren't important, get worse, we are less sensitive to things we don't normally experience

Beginning of Production

6-8 weeks: cooing= responsiveness 3-10mo: babbling= repeating constant and vowel

Word meaning

6mo babies know common nouns, language explosion in middle of first year

Simultaneous Bilinguals

AoO matters ( age exposed to language) 2 native languages One-parent-one-language approach, high quality social interactions matter, balanced exposure

Nativism

(Chomsky, Pinker) we have an instinct to learn language, built-in, strong similarities in how all languages are structured, properties emerge even in newly created language by children

Constructivism

(Tomasello) language is learned with language specific learning mechanisms, the general purpose mechanisms + the desire for communication leads to language

Single-Language

1 language for 1 distinct environment (Granada Spain)

Sequential Bilinguals

1 native language (L1), 1 second language (L2) Changes in dominance, the earlier= the better/easier more likely

Producing syntax

12-18 mo: one word speech/ combination words ~2y: two word phrases

Mental theory of psychology

ideas about why or how things work, used to organize related information, predict and explain events, test and revise theories

Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart

A study that found that identical twins whether raised together or apart have very similar personalities-supporting the idea that personality is strongly related to genetics

Wug Test

A test created by Jean Gleason that asked children to generate correct endings to novel words around 4 years Children apply grammatical rules to nonsense words

False Belief Task

A type of task used in theory-of-mind studies, in which the child must infer that another person does not possess knowledge that he or she possesses (that is, that other person holds a belief that is false). Sally Anne test: where will sally look? child thinks she will look where the child knows the ball is because they know it is even though sally was not there to see that difficulty for ages 4-5, at around 5 years get it right Smarties test: inside box is not whats supposed to be there, they think others will think what they know

Egocentrism

in Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view, everyone has the same preference that they do, 3 mountain task, what they can see, 2 yo fail to understand what others can see, they think if they cant see it then no one can

Early Detection of Autism

ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule) run series of tests/tasks and look at behavior, takes a long time, hard to get in New method: Eye-tracking infants Prospective longitudinal study: start at 2mo go to 2 years old, watch to see if infants make eye contact with person, decreased eye showed early signs of autism, differences at 6 mo not 2 mo

Chat GPT

AI chatbot, tracking the statistics of each term, Refutes Chomsky's idea of predicting what comes next rather than just innate learning, it is possible to learn through statistics through LLMs (large language model)

Shape Bias

in early language development, children's tendency to rely heavily on shape as a distinguishing property when learning names for objects.

McGurk effect

interaction between hearing and vision bar and far

Autism Telephone experiment

All autistic and all non-autistic chains had around the same recall Mixed chain did very poorly communicate similarly when with the same group of people

Theory of Physics

An intuitive theory about certain properties of physical objects, ways that physical objects move, and ways that they interact Piaget noticed limitations in kids understandings of physical things

Theory of Biology

An intuitive theory about living things (including intuitions about essential differences between different animals) and about biological phenomena such as hunger, digestion, inheritance, illness, and death.

Misconception 2

Bilingualism is bad for development; mot true, overall develop more words

Misconception 1

Bilingualism confuses children; not true, they switch languages because of accessibility, adhere to grammatical rules

Dual-Language

Both languages are used but typically with different speakers (San Diego)

Henry Wellman

leading researcher on theory of mind, Wellman argues there are universal foundation and differences that are learned, all children share initial framework but more understanding is learned and constructed, the framework changes and develops

Autism and False-Belief Tasks

Children with autism got 100% wrong, the ones who passed were 10-15 years old, high support needs

Test 1

China and Iran: these 2 cultures have more emphasis on dependence and communal values, should develop in a different order than US, true, culture experience matters

Implicit grammar

learned naturally, without explicit teaching Darwin; man has instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in babble of young children By 5 yo, children master basic structure of native language

Darwin vs. Lamarck

Lamark - Individuals lose characteristics that they do not use, and develop further on characteristics that they use a lot and that these changes would be inherited (he was found to be wrong) Darwin - Some genetically programmed traits increase an organism's chances of surviving, do survive better, and spread through the population

Test 2

Deaf Children: deaf children of hearing parents are more delayed than deaf children of deaf parents, evidence that experience plays a role

Nurture

Environment, environmental influences, experiences the world provides, social/cultural

IQ Gender and Race

Gender: Virtually identical between genders, any differences represent socialization differences as well as genetics Race: affected by culture, ranges greatly overlap, describes performance in the environment they live

Feral Children evidence

Genie wasn't able to learn syntax because she was past puberty, couldn't figure out the blue block when stacked differently with red

Piaget Accidental vs Intentional

If it is intensional, attention to the action, the child is more likely to think something has changed When accidental, something/someone messed something up, they realize nothing actually changed and the same amount is still there, subtle forms of reasoning

Nature

Innate factors: genes, heredity, traits inherited from biological parents through genes Folk wisdom, selective breeding for domestication, physical and psychological changes, selected breeding foxes

Epigenome Study

Long term effect of feast and famine, increase/decrease in food supply just before puberty, predicted increase/decrease in health

Self Control

Marshmellow task, also involves trust, those who have more self control are more academically competent, more socially competent, verbally fluent, rational, attentive, better at planning, and better at dealing with stress and frustration

Functionalism

Organs, biological parts serve a purpose, ages 4-10 years old mountain for hiking heart for beating lungs for holding air

Parenting

Parenting style matters for happiness/wellness and attachment styles, traits seem to come more from genetics

What else affects IQ

Practical intelligence, Self-control

LLM 4 scenarios

Scenario 1: Innate endowment "classic nativist" built in Scenario 2: active/social learning "classic constructivist" teach Scenario 3: Grounding "multimodal" interaction Scenario 4: Evaluation differences "were approaching it wrong" no idea

Executive Function

Self control part of executive function: 1. Inhibition (stay focused) 2. Cognitive flexibility (change perspective) 3. Working memory (reason/ hold info in mind)

Dense code-switching

Speaker routinely switch languages in conversations often adopting/ morphing characteristics of each language, spanglish (Barcelona)

Understanding Preferences/Desires

Study: Cracker and Broccoli, 14mo doesn't understand others preferences, gives cracker cause he likes cracker, 18mo gives broccoli because lady likes broccoli

Bilingual advantage

Switches and inhibition, to learn new response child must inhibit first response, bilingual children did better at study and are able to rapidly suppress first response at 7mo

Continuity of IQ scores

Tend to be stable; correlate with school grades, achievement, test performance, highly heritable, stability of environment, can predict success at mentally complex jobs

Heritage Language

The language spoken in the student's home or by members of the family.

Bilingualism

The ability to speak multiple languages, it is a state not a trait

Second Language Learners

The age you start learning matters, Study looking at Korean and Chinese immigrants to the US, even if they are here for the same duration of time (10 years) it matters how young you start to learn, those who were younger tested better on the grammar test than those who were older

Phoneme Perception Test

The conditioned head turn model, played sound over and over again, when it would slightly change the baby would turn their head and a toy would appear, 8mo could do this but 12mo could not, becoming a native speaker through narrowing

Nicaraguan Sign

There were no schools for the deaf until around 1977/1983, no one spoke sign before, study showed that they developed their own sign language, those that were younger were more fluent and grammatical, those who were more exposed could build more on the language Implication: those who were deaf and had hearing parents struggled more when their parents couldn't sign

Mutual Exclusivity

a concept that refers to an infant's assumption that any given object has only one name, if there are two objects and they know the name of one then the other must have the new name ex. blicket

PKU (phenylketonuria)

a condition that makes it impossible for babies to metabolize certain proteins, defect on chromosome 12, it is a genetic factor but it can be fixed by starting a diet early on, genes does not mean fate

Austism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors, high support needs and low support needs, stimming for emotional regulation, challenges with social interactions, disability,

general intelligence (g)

a general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

Syntactic Rules

a general principle about how words or word parts get combined, adding ed for past tense, s for plural

Prosody

the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry and music, meaningful early on, infants prefer IDS (infant directed speech), mood regulator, babies/children prefer those that heard the same music growing up whether they liked it or not, markers of socio-cultural identity

Biological Knowledge

acquired from experience, innate biases shape learning as well Concept of Alive: preschool aged kids believe alive is something real, visible, present, existing dead is inanimate object, or gone

crystallized intelligence

acquired knowledge, our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Whole Object Bias

an assumption made by language learners that a word describes an entire object rather than just some portion of it

Adoption Studies

assess hereditary influence by examining the resemblance between adopted children and both their biological and their adoptive parents, if the twins are still similar even though they grew up apart its due to genes

Anticipatory Looking

babies anticipate what may happen next, if they could predict what happens next they would switch gaze to that location, shift gaze before event happens

IQ

big IQ differences depending on grade level, environment, lead exposure decreases IQ, environment,

Cross-linguistic influence

bilingual children's subject pronoun usage Study:Haznedar pronominal subjects in bilingual turkish; Ali-John; bilingual, Murat; monolingual, Ali-John shows influence from english when speaking turkish, is more likely to use subject pronouns when not necessary in other language

Magical Thinking

can children tell fantasy from reality Box Study: 3-5 years box 1 real, box 2 nothing, box 3 nothing but imagine its real, is there now a pencil in box 3 they say yes when someone asks for a pencil they do not reach for box 3 because they know its pretend Imaginary friends: common, used for company, high verbal skill and advanced ToM

autism and theory of mind

children with autism have special trouble mastering theory of mind tasks - suggest that impaired social interaction seen in autism may be partly due to an inability to "get inside someone else's head" --> inability to engage, low support needs still show social cog deficits/differences, arrows: normally see bullying and social interaction, those with autism see it as it is, arrows moving around with no social context

Piaget's Conservation Task

conservation of liquid quantity, solid quantity, and number, 4-5 yo fail conservation tasks, Children at 2-6yo are in Pre-operational; only focus on one feature Children at 7 yo move to Concrete operational; can solve tasks by using more reason and think about the non-obvious

Noam Chomsky

developed theory of language acquisition, strong nativist, claims we have an innate mechanism for learning syntax, "Universal Grammar", language acquisition only works in childhood

Environment

every aspect of your surrounding

Regulator Genes

genes that control the activity of other genes

high-income families

genetic differences explains differences in IQ

Genotype

genetic material you inherit

fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood, deals with new and unusual problems

Perceptual Narrowing

our experience shapes our perceptual abilities, we become less sensitive to stimuli we don't normally experience, face perception, rhythm perception, speech perception

Theory of Mind

people's ideas about their own and others' mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict. Understanding that others' perspectives can be different from one's own

Phenotype

physical characteristics of an organism, the expression of your genotype in your environment

Genes and Environment

plants growing at different elevation, same genes but different environment, Himalayan rabbits grow dark spots of fur where it is cold, environment effects expression of genes, MAOA aggression, MAOA gene inhibits aggression low MAOA leads to more aggression

Twin Studies

researchers assess hereditary influence by comparing the resemblance of identical twins and fraternal twins with respect to a trait, mz share 100% of genes, dz share 50% of genes, if the mz twins differ in traits and behaviors it must be due to environment, identical twins more similar, Big 5 personality traits, 40-50% due to genetics, 40% due to nonshared environment, 10% to shared environment

Syntax

rules for combining words, grammar/word order

Dunedin Study

self control study, measured self control with 9 measures, 3-5 years, measured impulsivity, aggression, hyperactivity, and lack of persistence, follwed up 40 years later, self control strongly predicts adult success

low-income families

shared environment explains differences in IQ

Turkheimer Study

shared environment predicted IQ differences in kids raised in low ses families but not high ses families,

Critical Period

sometime between 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult and less successful Evidence: Feral children, second language learners

Personality is 50% genetic

talking about heritability, measure how much genetics explains differences across groups of people, differences of people in a population, standardized curve, what makes people different from one another

Heritability

the ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next, the percent of the differences across people due to genes Depends on: variation in group tested and variation in their environment

Pragmatics

the appropriate use of language in different contexts, referring to adults attention, emotions, intentionality, pays attention to where the speaker is attending, toddler uses speaker gaze ex; modi= uses her response to find it 2y

Vitalism

the belief in a life force outside the jurisdiction of physical and chemical laws, a soul, 6-7 years old

Fast Mapping

the fact that children can map a word onto an underlying concept after only a single exposure, problem is reference ex koba

Essentialism

the intuitive belief that there is some deeper core or essence that defines something, a soul makes you who you are 5 year old saying the biological parent determines what kind of animal it will be, inside essence determines kind, a cat dressed up as a skunk is still a cat