Infant & Child Development: Exam 2, Rutgers University

Stepping

Repeatedly transferring the weight of the body from one foot to the other. 6-7 months.

Internal Working Model

The child's relationship with their primary caregiver leads to expectations regarding the caregiver's availability.

"Slow-to-warm-up" Babies...

are inactive; moody, slow to adapt to new situations, responds to change with passive resistance (but NOT upset by unfamiliar situations) (50% of slow to warm up babies have problems when they are older)

What happens when children are assigned groups?

Children assigned to red shirt group or blue shirt group. Teachers referred to groups in everyday interactions -Biases based on shirt color were formed by 3-5-year-old children in 3 weeks. Considered own group happier and more desirable to play with.

What are the three types of babies discussed by Thomas & Chess?

"Easy"babies, "Difficult" Babies, and "Slow-to-warm-up" babies.

Describe the developmental progression of reaching and self-locomotion.

(Move the hand to a specific location; use vision to guide arm movement; control arm movement *Coordinate fingers to grasp; take into account size & shape of objects). Newborns have little control of their hands before age 1. By 4 months, they can reach for objects. At 5-6 months, they coordinate motions of their hands so each hand is performing a different action to serve a common goal. At 7-8 months they begin to use thumbs to hold objects.

What is Visual Preference?

Discriminating-when baby is detecting the difference AND only prefers to look at one stimuli.

How well do infants hear? How do they use sounds to understand their world?

Don't hear very well. Have a much lower threshold than adults

By 9 Months, they are...

using social referencing:using another person's emotional reactions to guide one's own behavior.

How is self concept and self esteem measured in children?

2-3 years. Understanding of ownership - mine, I, me. Develop an autobiographical memory - ask them about their experiences and they can tell you about them. Can imagine future self but not too far ( tomorrow). 3 to 12. How do you define yourself? Method ask question. I am a (blank).

What differences are found in 6-month-olds' and 9-month-olds' ability to discriminate primate faces? What is the significance of these differences?

6-month-olds are able to discriminate primate faces. 9-month-olds are not able to discriminate between these faces because they lose this ability (fine tuning)due to the synapse being pruned.

Single Main Attachment Figure (mother)

Child has an innate need to attach to one main attachment figure. Child produces signaling behaviors that elicit contact or proximity to the caregiver (ex. crying, smiling, locomotion). Caregiver instinctively responds, creating a reciprocal interaction pattern. Attachment Develops in Stages.

What are the 9 dimensions discussed?

All nine dimensions-Activity level, approach or withdrawal, rhythmicity (regularity), adaptability, threshold of responsiveness, intensity of reaction, quality of mood,distract-ability, attention span and persistence.

At 2-4 months old they experience the emotions of...

Anger and Sadness. (Anger displayed after failure to achieve a goal)

How does experience contribute to face processing and in particular, to the development of the other race effect?

At 3 months, infants recognize adult faces from a variety of racial groups. By 9 months, infants only recognize faces from racial groups that they have seen frequently. Evidence for "other face effect" at 9 months. Predominant exposure to faces from own racial group. Familiarity and visual preference for own-race faces. Greater visual attention to own-race faces. Better recognition ability for own-race faces.

What is ADHD and what is the best treatment for ADHD?

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood disorders and can continue through adolescence and adulthood. It is when one has difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior, and hyperactivity (over-activity).

What are basic emotions and when do they develop? How do basic emotions change with development?

Basic Emotions: Happiness, anger and surprise.

How does attention improve as children grow older?

Becomes more able to pinpoint and focus on certain things.

According to DIT, what factors and characteristics of the social environment contribute to bias (and how)?

Bias and prejudice emerge from children's attempts to understand social world. Children see a dimension used to group people and then construct hypotheses about its importance. In DIT, groups are segregated, labeled, treated differently. Kids conceptualize groups as different in meaningful ways. Kids show preferential bias towards own in-group. Social environment affects what categories are salient and source of bias.

How does teacher feedback to children affect the development of learned helplessness and different types of mindsets?

Boy's get more comments while girls do not. If there is no feedback kids may not want to try harder an attribute the failure to something fixed in themselves. When you give kids praise, always so they did a good effort. If you say that they are really smart, they do not want to try harder because they think that intelligence is fixed.

Coordinating Skills

Each component skill must be mastered alone and then integrated with the other skills.9-15 months.Stand upright, maintain balance, step alternatively. Use perceptual information to evaluate surfaces- slope & support.

What do the results of the study by Johnson et al. (2007) described in lecture tell us about the development of internal working models of attachment?

Children looked at 2 images of ovals (1 large and 1 small). In one situation, the large oval moved away from the smaller one (surprising for securely attached children). In the second, the large oval moved closer to the smaller one (surprising for insecurely attached children). Child would look at whichever was more surprising to them.

How do children develop in group biases?

Children notice similarities among those who live, work, and socialize together. Infer that the social divisions were caused by inherent differences between groups. Proportional group size. Proportionally smaller (minority) groups more distinctive than proportionally larger (majority) groups. More likely targets of stereotypes and prejudices. Salience of grouping criteria (e.g., gender, reading ability) increases when adults label groups Patterson & Bigler (2006), cited in text. Would making a person-related feature (shirt color) more salient increase bias based on that feature?

Explain the role of culture and experience in the achievement of motor milestones

Culture plays an important role in motor milestones. For example, the people in Africa carry their baby in the back to develop strong leg muscles. As a result, they are able to walk earlier compared to other people in different cultures. In contrast, the Chinese culture had a late motor development due to the fact that parents want to protect their children from harm. They were always carried by their parents, so they were not able to roam around their floor for playtime.

Long Term Consequences of Maternal Deprivation

Delinquency, reduced intelligence, increase aggression, depression, psychopathology

What is an in-group bias and when is it evident in infants/children?

Developmental Intergroup Theory. Children are motivated to understand their social worlds. Want to know which of the available bases for classifying people are important within a given context. Younger children focused on perceptually salient dimensions such as race, gender, age, and attractiveness. May be an innate tendency. Bias and Altruism Origins, Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom (video). babies with cheerios. babies seem to want to punish those that are unlike them. biases may be innate, hatred may be innate.

What do studies of Romanian orphans who were adopted at different ages tell us about whether there is a critical period for attachment?

Differences between children who were adopted early (Before 4 months) and later adoptees (Before 8 months). Early Adopted (EA) children more securely attached. Later Adopted (LA) had more abnormal social interactions, behavior problems. Later Adopted showed more indiscriminately friendly behavior. Later Adopted children adjustment mediated by parent/family characteristics (age, education, SES, other children). Evidence for a sensitive period.

fixed vs. growth

FIXED - I am as smart as i am ever going to be, fixed not changeable. entity theory of intelligence, success and failure attributed to ability. response to failure: need to give up, learned helplessness. GROWTH - intelligence is changeable, a potential that can be developed belief that intelligence can grow. effort based theory of intelligence success and failure attributed to effort you put in response to failure is to work harder, mastery motivation.

At 6-7 months they experience the emotions of...

Fear (especially fear of strangers) & Separation anxiety or wariness (It is believed that infants experience all basic emotions by 6 months)

Long term consequences associated with Secure attachment

Few behavior problems. Higher quality friendships. More stable romantic relationships

How would a child in Adolescence (12) describe themselves?

Future orientation. More stable attitudes and personality. ( "My name is Hannah and I wanna be a nurse when i grow up. I love helping people and I really enjoy giggling!")

Explain the goodness-of-fit model of the relationship between temperament and environment. How does this concept apply to research by Stephen Suomi?

Goodness of fit: The compatibility of a person's temperament with parental child-rearing.When the compatibility is good the child will likely develop a high self esteem.When the compatibility is bad, there is a likelihood of difficulties for the child. Suomi- studied rhesus monkeys. two kinds of young monkeys: bold/daring or shy/timid, different baby emotions relate to different relationship between the baby and mother.

What is Habituation/Dishabituation?

Habituation: becoming unresponsive to repeated exposure to the same thing/face. Dishabituation -looking at an old stimulus as if it were new again

What evidence is there for genetic contributions to temperament, i.e., that temperament is biologically rooted?

Identical twins are more alike in temperament than fraternal twins. Impact of heredity increases with age

How accurate is infants' vision? Do infants perceive color?

In the first few months, newborns can perceive a few colors. Poor acuity, poor contrast, vision is blurry.By 3-4 months they can perceive the same color palette as adults. In addition, their vision is blurred until they reach 6 months, where they start to see clearly.

What is Operant Conditioning ?

Infant learns the relationship between her behaviors and their rewards. They produce behavior to prolong desired events. They learn to expect an event to occur when a new stimulus is presented

Critical Period Hypothesis

Infant needs continuous maternal care for the 1st 2 years of life. If the attachment process is broken or disrupted during the first 2 years, the child will suffer irreversible long-term consequences

At 9 months they experience...

Infants are experiencing all basic emotions. Universal and consist of subjective feeling, physiological change, and overt behavior. Joy, interest, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust

How does experience contribute to the development of the con-specific preference?

Infants recognize con-specifics very early but experience affects their preferences. Early preference for adult faces may be due to early experience with adults. Con-specific preferences at 3 months due to experience with humans in general, not necessarily with human infants or many races.

Insecure/Resistant Attachment (15%)

Intensely distressed when mother leaves, Can be comforted by stranger, Some distressed mixed with rejection when mother returns. ***Associated with inconsistent primary care - sometimes needs are met and sometimes they are ignored.

Adoph (2008) argues that infants are "learning to learn" when developing balance and locomotion skills. What is meant by this expression and how is it different from the maturation view of motor development?

Learning to sit, crawl, or walk, infants learn how to adapt to current bio-mechanical constraints.What infants learn in one posture must be relearned in a new posture, taking into consideration the new constraints for the new posture.

How does Maturation theory explain motor development?

Maturational theory: Development reflects the natural unfolding of a pre-arranged biological plan. Later research has shown that practice or lack thereof can speed up or delay the sequence.

What methods have been used to study self concept in infants and pre-verbal children?

Mirror test - 18 to 24 months - recognize self in the mirror. Coincides with development of self conscious emotions. Shopping cart study (class video). 15 month boy introduced to shopping cart, body on top mat attached to cart prevents cart from moving. They need a sense of self to figure this out, figure out that their body is what is preventing the cart from moving. 18 month boy understands and gets off mat researchers - by 18 months most children have a sense of self .

Long term consequences associated with Insecure attachment

More behavior problems, less positive peer relationships and adult romantic relationships. More health problems.

How does Dynamic Systems theory explain motor development?

Motor development involves many distinct skills that are organized and reorganized over time to meet the demands of specific tasks. Differentiation-mastery of component skills. Integration- combining them in proper sequence into a coherent, working as a whole to meet the demands of the specific tasks.

Social, emotional, academic, physical. Can decide what they are not so good at too. Social comparison - compare themselves in relation to peers. (ex

My name is Billy, I'm good at soccer, but I'm not so good at reading. I'm pretty popular but I'm sick of my parents!)

How does prejudice develop in children? What patterns are found for implicit versus explicit biases?

Negative view of others based on group membership. Age 2:Preference for one's own group. Preschoolers (3-5): Attribute many positive traits to own group Not prejudice per se, but enhanced view of their own group. School-aged children (6-12):Knowledge of racial stereotypes and prejudice increases. Prejudice declines.

Are newborn babies able to smell and taste? Do they respond to touch and experience pain?

Newborns have a keen sense of smell. They respond positively to pleasant smells and negatively to unpleasant smells. They can also recognize the smell of their mother. Newborns also have the sense of taste. They can differentiate between sweet and sour/bitter tastes. Newborns are sensitive to touch. Their body responds reflexively when touched. They can also experience pain. The pain cry is high-pitched.

In what ways does the environment contribute to child temperament?

Parenting style. Infants are less emotional when parents are responsive Environment can amplify genetic effects of temperament. Temperament can make children susceptible to environmental influences *Children with different temperaments may elicit different environmental responses.

What variables affect the quality of attachment?

Parents' responsiveness. Characteristics of child care. Infants' temperament.

At birth infants experience the emotions of...

Pleasure and Distress

Describe the development of achievement-related attributions. Explain what is meant by mastery-oriented attributions and learned helplessness. What is the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset?

Popular conception-high achievers - high self esteem , low achievers - at risk for low self esteem. research by carol dweck. children's self concept tied to their achievement related attributions and mindset attributions. common explanations of behavior. achievement related attributions. explanation for success and failure mindset

What component skills are involved in learning to walk, and at what age do infants typically master them?

Posture and Balance, Stepping, Environmental Cues & Coordinating Skills. More info on next cards.

6 weeks - 3 months

Prefer to look at normal (non-scrambled) faces. Integrate faces and voices - sensory integration; More complete scanning, exploration of internal features at 3-4 months. Increases in visual acuity and more complete scanning from 3-6 mos. allow infants to. Focus on distinctive features of faces. Distinguish Individual differences in faces

How do School age (5 - 11) children define themselves?

Psychological concept of self in separate domains

What is an EEG Recording?

Recording of brain activity during perception. Can tell whether a discrimination is made -- different areas of the brain are activated

How does self-esteem change with age?

Self-Perception Profile for Children. Measures overall self-esteem as well as self-esteem in 5 specific areas. Use statements with puppets, child points to puppet that is like them scholastic competence, athletic competence, social acceptance, behavioral conduct, physical appearance. Pictures or puppets used with children 4-7. Questionnaire used with older children. Preschool and young elementary school (4-6) inflated sense of self worth may reflect desires rather than general self appraisal. Older Elementary school children (age 7 -11) increasingly differentiated, accurate, and relatively stable sense of self overall sense of self worth includes scholastic, athletic, social and physical sense of self.

Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment

Shows mixture of other 2 types of insecure attachment behaviors. Approach/avoidant conflict when mother returns. May act dazed and confused at mother's return. ***ASSOCIATED WITH NON-RESPONSIVE/ABUSIVE PARENTING.

What aspect of temperament does Jerome Kagan believe has a biological basis and what is the evidence to support this idea?

Shyness/inhibition. children who are either very inhibited or uninhibited at 21 months tend to remain so at 4, 5.5 and 7.5 years.

Which aspects of Bowlby's theory have been supported by research and which have not?

Single Main Attachment Figure - disproved. Critical Period - disproved. *Sensitive period - a time when it is optimum

What is the treatment for ADHD?

Stimulants - Ritalin. Stimulates part of the brain that normally inhibit hyperactive and impulsive behavior. Has a calming effect and allows them to focus their attention. Best treatment-Medication with psychosocial treatment

Different cultures have different beliefs on what babies should do at certain ages, what are some beliefs?

The Balinese believe that for the first 3-7 months babies should never touch the ground they are held in slings. The Being believe that babies sitting and crawling should be encouraged but walking discouraged until 1. Americans believe babies should be encouraged to walk. Stomach sleepers achieve milestones earlier than back sleepers. Back sleepers were slowed down by the typical pattern of motor development. Let them sleep on their back but give them their "tummy time".

Explain what is meant by an internal working model of attachment?

The child's relationship with their primary caregiver leads to expectation regarding the caregiver's availability.

Describe how attachment is measured; describe the Strange Situation method devised by Ainsworth and four patterns of attachment/insecurity. Strange Situation

The parent and infant play. Parent sits while infant plays. The child uses parent as a secure base. Stranger enters and talks to parent. Child displays stranger anxiety. Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comforts if needed. Child has separation anxiety. Parent returns, greets infant, offers comfort if needed;stranger leaves. Child displays reunion behavior. Parent leaves, infants is alone. Child displays separation anxiety. Stranger enters and offers comforts. Child has stranger anxiety. Parent returns, greets infant,offers comfort. Child displays reunion behavior.

Describe the development of depth perception in infancy and explain the importance of size constancy, and the visual cliff experiment

The visual cliff is a glass-covered platform; on one side a pattern appears directly under the glass, but on the other it appears several feet below the glass. Most babies willingly crawl to their mothers when she stands on the shallow side but virtually all babies refuse to cross the deep side. Clearly infants can perceive depth by the time they are old enough to crawl. A 1 ½ month old's heart rate slows down when placed on deep side so they notice the deep side is different. Only older babies are actually afraid of the deep side though.

How do infants integrate information from different senses?

They can visually recognize an object they have touched before. Can detect relations between information presented visually and auditorily.

How do Preschool children define themselves?

They define themselves in concrete dimensions. Possessions, physical characteristics, preferences, competencies. Distinguish between internal and external self. Acquire a theory of mind. Tend to be positive in self descriptions. (ex: My name is Maya, I have a dog, I have brown hair, I like applesauce, I'm good at climbing!)

How do infants perceive object segregation?

They use different cues such as movement, color, texture, and edges to show evidence of object segregation

Insecure/Avoidant Attachment (20%)

Unconcerned by mother's absence. Stranger treated similar to the mother--no fear. Showed little interested when mother returns. ***Associated with unresponsive primary care -- child believes that their communication has no influence on the caregiver.

Posture and Balance

Upright posture is difficult since infants are top heavy. Growth of the legs and muscles allow them the strength to maintain an upright position.

Secure attachment (65%)

Upset when mother leaves. Not consoled by stranger.Shows separation anxiety. Happy when mother returns.

Environmental Cues

Use of perceptual cues to decide if a surface is safe for walking.

What are different methods for studying infant perception?

Visual preference, Habituation/dis-habituation, Operant conditioning, EEG Recording

Describe developments in infants' perception of faces. What changes are observed in scanning and discrimination from the newborn to 12 months of age?

Will be described on individual cards next.

What are the characteristics of attachment and how does it develop, according to the ethological theory of attachment? (Bowlby). (REMEMBER - some of these theories have been disproved/slightly altered)

Will be discussed one by one on next slides.

How do you avoid fixed mindsets?

You emphasize behaviors not attributes. "It's time to wash your hands" NOT "Don't be so messy"

"Easy" babies...

are even-tempered, positive mood, open and adaptable to new experiences, habits are regular and predictable. (18% of easy babies have problems when they are older).

How does children's understanding of other people develop?

describe others, think about others, prejudices.

Developmental Intergroup Theory

early tendency to categorize individuals (good/bad, like me/different). early tendencies for in-group bias

-"You did that puzzle all by yourself" NOT "You're so smart". Emphasize

effort, Process of learning, mastery, not grades, Individual learning goals

3-month-olds prefer to look at...

faces from their own race but can also recognize faces from other races. They can also detect emotion- discriminate happy, sad, and angry face

1 Month

fixate on particular features; do not scan completely

What factors influence the development of self-esteem?

high self worth associated with nurturing and involved parents who establish rules positive comparisons with others particularly peers. competence in child valued domains. low self esteem associated with problems with peers, psychological disorders, bullying and aggressive behavior, poor school performance, difficult to establish cause and effect relations regarding levels of self esteem.

"Difficult" Babies...

usually tend to be unhappy. active, irregular in daily habits, reacts negatively (and vigorously) to changes in routines (70% of difficult babies have problems when they are older).