PSY 3341 - Exam 2
Reflex Activity (Birth - 1 month)?
Active exercise and refinement of inborn reflexes (e.g., accommodate sucking to fit the shapes of different objects)
What is continuous reinforcement?
- reinforcing every response - increases numbers of response (rapid acquisition) - used when first learning new behavior
What is partial reinforcement?
- reinforcing only some responses - prevents extinction (used to maintain behavior) - ratio or interval
What is a variable interval reinforcement schedule?
- unannounced pop-quiz - slow steady responding
What is the Premack principle?
- uses activity as a reinforcement - one activity... (something you like doing) ... can act as a reinforcement for another activity Example: boy plays baseball when he cleans his room
Know evidences (things that support) the nature or in-born view of language ability and those that support the nurture/environment or learning view of language acquisition.
......
When do babies perceive the visual cliff?
2 months (Joseph Campus)
When does color detection mature?
2-3 months
What is the visual acuity of a 1 month baby?
20/120 vision on the standard eye chart
What percent of a newborn's sleep is spent in REM?
50% of sleep is REM - Sleep 70% of the day 6 months old: 25-30% of sleep is REM Children & adults spend 20% of sleep in REM
When do babies fear the visual cliff?
6-7 months
What is a language?
A communication system in which a limited number of symbols can be combined according to agreed upon rules to produce an infinite number of messages.
What is ADHD and its symptoms?
A disorder characterized by attentional difficulties, impulsive behavior, and overactive of fidgety behavior - Inattention, impulsivity, hyperactivity
What is learning?
A relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavior potential) that results from a person's experiences or practice - allows us to adapt to our environment
What is an unconditioned stimulus?
A stimulus that elicits a particular response without prior learning/naturally triggers a response
What is plasticity?
An openness of the brain cells (or of the organism as a whole) to positive and negative environmental influence; a capacity to change in response to experience
What is behavior modification?
Applying operant principles to changing specific needs
What are the three learning behaviors and who had thought of them?
Classical: Watson (and Rosalie Raynor) Operant: B.F. Skinner Observational: Bandura
PNS?
Peripheral Nervous System - Voluntary/Skeletal - Automatic - Motor - Somatic sensory - Autonomic (ANS)
What are the states of infant sleep?
Quiet sleep Active sleep - w/ movements & irregular breathing Drowsy Non-alert waking Alert waking
When does memory consolidation occur?
REM sleep
What are theta waves, what do they do, and where are they seen?
Regular repeating waves @ 6 cycles per second Produced by areas of the hippocampus & surrounding cortex During REM
What happens to "sensory thresholds" as you get older?
Rise of the threshold with age = sensitivity to low levels of stimulation is lost
What was the conditioned response in Pavlov's experiment?
Salivation after bell is rung
Vygotsky's ideas were?
Sociocultural perspective, higher mental functions, memes, mediation, scaffolding, zone of proximal development
What is spontaneous recovery?
The reappearance of an extinguished response after a rest period
What does the cerebellum do?
Motor Coordination 'Unconscious' or 'Procedural' Memory
7 months word segmentation,
- The cat scratched the dog's nose. • Sees as 6 words, not just one long word
What is a "wug"?
- "This is a wug. And if there were two, there should be two ___" - By Jean Berko Gleason, to demonstrate that even young children possess implicit knowledge of linguistic morphology.
What is Phoneme?
- A basic unit of sound - Roughly correspond to letters of the alphabet - CAT = k a t
What the punishment guidelines?
- ASAP - Intensity - Consistently - Be otherwise warm - Explain yourself - Reinforce alternate behavior - Alternative responses (TIME OUT, rephrase politely)
What is token economy?
- An item that can be traded for a reinforcer - Each token is a step toward a reinforcer Example: chart with stars, poker chips, point system
4 months babbling
- Bubbles speech sounds -Play with sounds (Piaget's circular reactions) • Vowel & consonant • Dadadada, bababa - Larynx has descended - (ALL phonemes still recognizable) - Deaf children babble with their hands
What is Syncretic Speech?
- Consistent use of a word or phrase to stand for an object or idea. May use word plus, gesture, intonation, emphasis and/or context to convey meaning. - Mothers understand their children's language before strangers can at this stage!
Birth - various cries
- Expression of emotional states - Larynx like a Beaver's
2-3 yrs - language explosion
- Huge increases in vocabulary & complexity - Articulation difficulty may persist: thithors, pasketti - Modulation if meaning - from free to bound morhemes (simple to complex
What is applied behavior analysis?
- Intense, systematic - Identify:behavior to be targeted and environmental conditions contributing to behavior - Obtain baseline - Do a functional analysis - Develop a treatment plan - Reassess for effectiveness Example: shaping social/language skills in autistic children
10 months jargoning
- Keep phoneme discrimination only for the ones they hear (their language), lose others - Jargoning: babbling with intonation patterns (pragmatics) - Comprehension is ahead of production - Receptive language - comprehension - Expressive language - production
What are the accomplishments of the formal operations stage?
- Mental actions on abstract ideas - Can think about the hypothetical - Hypothetical-deductive reasoning - Deductive reasoning: general → specific - Metacognition: think about thinking - Mature moral reasoning - Separation & control of variables - Proportional thinking
What are the accomplishments of the concrete operations stage: (7-11 years)?
- Mental actions on real/concrete objects - Conservation - The fundamental properties of an object do not change just because there is a superficial change in appearance - Gram cracker/water/quarter video - Liquid, mass, number = 6-7 years - Area, volume = 9-12 - Not egocentric - Can take other's perspective - Mountain video - Reversibility - Can reverse, undo a problem in their head - Decentration - Can focus on more than aspect of a problem - Seriation - Arrange items according to increasing or decreasing dimension - Transivity - Relationships between objects - A > B, B < C, what is larger, smaller? - Classification - Class inclusion - 5 dolls + 3 trucks; more dolls or toys? - Fact families: 6, 4, 2. 4+2 = 6, 6-4 = 2
What are the accomplishments of the sensorimotor period?
- Reflexive interaction - Begins to develop "means" or "schemes" - Repetition of interesting/rewarding acts on body, then on objects - Begins to show intent - Goal driven combination of related schemes - New ways to solve problems - Interest in novelty - Repetition with variation - Use symbols or symbolic representation - This allows internal (mental) combinations of schemes - "Beginning of thought"
1-4 months - cooing
- Repetition of vowel - like sounds (ooo, eeeee, aaaa) - Learn the rhythm of language, pauses, turn taking (back & forth)
What is motherese/child directed speech?
- Simple short sentences - Spoken slowly - High pitched voice - Infants pay more attenetion to high pitched, varied sounds
What are the Brain areas for language?
- Supramarginal Gyrus - Angular Gyrus - Wernicke's Area - Inferior Frontal Gyrus Broca's Area - Arcuate Faciculus
What are the accomplishments of the preoperational stage: (2-6 years)?
- Symbolic capacity flourishes - Animism-anthropomorphism - Attributing life, consciousness to objects - Egocentric - Cannot take others' view (Mountain video) - Centration - Focus on one dimension at a time - Cannot look at more than one aspect of a problem at a time - Sometimes looks at important/not important information - Static thinking - Cannot mentally transform one state to another - Fluid motion predicament - Irreversible thinking - Cannot mentally undo/reverse an action - Lack of conservation - A superficial change in appearance does not change fundamental properties - Gram cracker/water/quarter video - Intuitive thought - Based on experience, not logic - Reasoning that is neither conscious nor rational - Basic classification but problems with class inclusion. - Can group some things according to similarities - Time - Concepts of time still in development
What is prosody?
- The melody, phrasing, timing, emphasis - Pitch/intonation - Stress or accentuation - Duration and timing - Change the sound, change the meaning Ex: raising voice at end produces a question Ex: No! (loud & sharp) vs. Noooooooo (long & drawn out)
What is overextension?
- Using a word to refer to a wide range of objects - All 4 legged animals are called doggie
What is systematic desensitization?
- a type of behavioral therapy based on the principle of classical conditioning (Wolpe) - aims to remove the fear response of a phobia, and substitute a relaxation response to the conditional stimulus gradually using counter conditioning
What is underextension?
- opposite of overextension - 'blankie' is only my security blanket - Doggie is only our basset hound
What are pragmatics?
- language in social context - Talking to & with someone - Acknowledging the audience
Describe the changes in vision with old age.
- pupils become smaller (greater difficulty when lighting is dim & when it suddenly changes) - pupils slower to dilate - dark adaptation is slower - lens become less denser and less flexible - yellowing of lens - lens and gelatinous liquid behind lens are less transparent - visual acuity decreases - sensory receptor cells in the retina may die or not function as efficiently as they did before - retina change = decreased visual field/loss of peripheral vision = tunnel vision
What is morpheme?
- smallest unit of language that carries meaning - Un desire able s
What is adaptation?
- the process of adjusting to the demands of environment (Piaget, 1971) - occurs through two complementary processes: assimilation and accommodation
When does brightness detection mature?
2 months
vocabulary spurt
12 months - first few words 14 months - 10 words 19 months - 50 words
What is ABC?
A = antecedent - environmental stimuli & events that precede the behavior B = behavior - specific response the individual makes C = consequence - stimuli & events immediate following the behavior
What happens in the frontal lobes during REM?
Activation-synthesis: dreams
What is scheme/schema?
A cognitive structure or organized pattern of action or though used to deal with experiences - organized patterns of action or thought that people construct to interpret their experiences - schemes are like having a set of rules or procedures that structure our cognition
What is retinitis pigmentosa (RP)?
A group of hereditary disorder that all involve gradual deterioration of the light-sensitive cells of the retina - can cause tunnel vision
What is aphasia?
A language disorder
What is a conditioned response?
A learned response to a stimulus that was not originally capable of producing the response
What are cataracts?
A pathological condition of the eye involving opacification (clouding) of the lens that can impair vision or cause blindness
What is habituation?
A simple form of learning that involves learning not to respond to a repeated stimulus; - a method of assessing infant perception - learning to be bored by the familiar/losing interest - decreased response to a stimuli - stimulus discrimination
What is REM sleep?
A state of active, irregular sleep associated with dreaming; rapid eye movement associated with it
What is the formal operations stage?
Adolescents can think about abstract concepts and purely hypothetical possibilities and can trace the long-range consequences of possible actions. With age and experience, they can form hypotheses and systematically test them using the scientific method.
What is mediation?
Adult proposes meanings & interpretations of objects & events Encourages the child to think about events a certain way
What does the spinal cord do?
Afferent (incoming) sensory Efferent (outgoing) motor Reflex connections
What is an age related change in the retina that results in poor vision (esp. in the center of the visual field)?
Age-related macular degeneration - damage to the cells in the retina responsible for central vision
What is Perry & Punishment?
Although it is generally best to use more positive approaches before resorting to punishment, punishment can make children comply with parents' demands in the short run (Benjet & Kazdin, 2003). Spanking or another form of physical punishment can be effective in changing behavior in the longer run if it: (1) Is administered immediately after the act (not hours later, when the child is being an angel), (2) Is administered consistently after each offense, (3) Is not overly harsh, (4) Is accompanied by explanations, (5) Is administered by an otherwise affectionate person, and (6) Is used sparingly and combined with efforts to reinforce more acceptable behavior
What is the visual cliff experiment?
An elevated glass platform that creates an illusion and is used to test the depth perception of infants
What is a conditioned stimulus?
An initially neutral stimulus that elicits a particular response after it is paired with an unconditioned stimulus that always elicits the response
What is cognitive disequilibrium?
An uncomfortable state of mind that the child seeks to resolve
What is an operant/operant response?
Any response that "operates" on the environment - behavior happens first (we operate on our environment) - we are then rewarded or punished - Engage in behaviors that are rewarded; avoid behaviors that are punished
Describe the development of attention from infancy to adolescence.
As children get older... 1) their attention spans become longer 2) become more selective in what they attend to 3) better able to plan and carry out systematic strategies for using their senses to achieve goals Infancy: - selective attention: deliberately concentrating on one thing while ignoring something else - with age, attention becomes more selective and less susceptible t0 distraction - @ 2 yrs, able to form plans of actions --> guides what they focus on and what they ignore - systematic attention Adolescence: - longer attention spans - improved considerably between childhood and adulthood (b/c of increase myelination of the portions of the brain that help regulate attention) - become more efficient at ignoring irrelevant information - can divide their attention more systematically between two taskswwe
How do newborns view patterns/what do they prefer?
Attracted to moderately complex patterns - prefers a clear pattern like a bold checkerboard
What is operant conditioning?
B.F. Skinner - a learner's behavior becomes either more or less probable depending on the consequences it produces - acquiring and modifying "voluntary" or non-reflexive behavior by the application of reinforcers of punishers - organisms behave in ways that bring them desirable consequences or help them avoid unpleasant ones
How do babies use common motion (@ 4 months) to help identify contour or figures?
Babies are attracted to displays that are *dynamic or contain movement* - newborns can and do track a moving target with their eyes (although it is imprecise, unless the target it moving slowly) - infants also look longer at moving objects and perceive their forms better than stationary ones - expects all pars of an object to move in the same direction at the same time and USE COMMON MOTION in determining what is or is not part of the same object
What tactile sense can babies detect?
Babies can detect and react to touch or pressure, heat or cold, and painful stimuli
What is the social cognitive theory (observational)?
Bandura - claims that humans are cognitive beings whose active processing of information plays a critical role in their learning, behavior, and development - learning by observing the behavior of other people (models)
What is the Bobo Doll experiment and who performed it?
Bandura - experiment set to demonstrate that children could learn a response neither elicited by a conditioned stimulus (classical conditioning) nor performed and then strengthened by a reinforcer (operant conditioning) - An adult models aggressive behavior towards the clown doll and the child imitates the behavior (aggression-frustration model)
What is the process of hearing?
Begins when moving air molecules enter the ear and vibrate the eardrum; these vibration are transmitted to the cochlea in the inner ear and are converted to signals that the brain interprets as sounds
What was the conditioned stimulus in Pavlov's experiment?
Bell
What is biological predisposition?
Biological constraints on learning Garcia- Bright, noisy, tasty water
What are some functions of sleep?
Brain is active - Internal stimulation from PGO spikes - Visual, auditory, motor areas active - PFC active Memory - Primed hippocampus - Theta waves & repetitive firing Hippocampus - Part of the limbic system - Memory structure Theta waves - Regular repeating waves @ 6 cycles per second - Produced by areas of the hippocampus & surrounding cortex Awake animals produce theta rhythm during behaviors learned for survival Asleep animals produce theta waves during REM sleep Cell in the hippocampus fire longer (more times) in response to a single stimulus during theta wave production Complex tasks learned better with REM sleep By activating theta rhythm, PGO spikes prime the hippocampus to "save" information Theta waves function as signal enhancer Memory consolidation of the days events
What are the 2-3 month milestones?
Brightness (rods) - detects 5% change at 2 months Color (cones) - mature at 2-3 months - now perceives shades of colors Scanning - explore figure interiors - prefers "normal faces"
What tastes do babies prefer?
Can distinguish sweet, bitter, salty, and sour tastes BUT PREFER SWEETS - flavor preferences are highly responsive to learning/may be influenced by early tastes that are exposed during infancy
What is the sociocultural perspective?
Cognitive development is shaped by the sociocultural context in which it occurs and grows out of children's social interaction with members of their culture - the role of the environment
Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8 - 12 months)?
Combination of actions to solve simple problems (e.g., bat aside a barrier to grasp an object, using the scheme as a means to an end); first evidence of intentionality
What is figure/ground contour?
Contour: the amount of light-dark transition or boundary area in a visual stimulus - light/dark edges - babies prefer bold patterns with shape contrast - at 3 months
What is common motion?
Could also be known as the "Law of Common Fate" by Gestalt - states that humans tend to group similar objects together that share a common motion or destination
Know some things about expertise in a domain & cognitive ability...
Critics concluded that Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of young children; recent studies suggest that children master some Piagetian concepts earlier than Piaget believed they did, although defenders of Piaget would question whether some of the simplified tasks used by later researchers really demonstrate that young children have fully mastered the concepts tested
Higher mental functions?
Deliberate, focused cognitive processes
What is a interval (time) reinforcement schedule?
Dependent on "amount of time" that has passed (and a response being made) - fixed interval- pay day, pain meds - scalloping with post-reinforcement pause
What is a ratio (number) reinforcement schedule?
Dependent on amount of work - fixed ratio- piece work - variable ratio-slot machines
What was the unconditioned stimulus in Pavlov's experiment?
Food
What is Bronfenbrenner and what did he believe?
Ecological development: his theory was key in changing the perspective of developmental psychology by calling attention to the large number of environmental and societal influences on child development Microsystem: Immediate environment Mesosystem: Interrelationships of microsystems Macrosystem: External, social settings that have indirect effects Exosystem: Society, world events, the planet, historical era Chronosystem: Time
Who performed the visual cliff experiments?
Eleanor Gibson & Richard Walk
Elkind: imaginary audience, personal fable?
Elkind describes how young adolescents, because they are undergoing major physiological changes, are preoccupied by themselves. The egocentrism of adolescents lies in their belief that others are as preoccupied with their appearance and behavior as they are. As a consequence, the adolescent anticipates other people's responses and thoughts about herself, and is, in a way, constantly creating or reacting to an imaginary audience. - confusing your own thoughts of a hypothesized audience for your behavior (getting spaghetti on your shirt and thinking that people may think of you as a slob) According to Elkind, this probably plays a role in the self-consciousness so common in early adolescence, as well as other experiences in this period of life. Elkind also introduced the idea of the personal fable, in which the adolescent constructs a story about herself, a version of her life stressing the uniqueness of her feelings and experiences. Indeed, these ideas of personal uniqueness are also seen in a common conviction that the adolescent will not die. Elkind stressed how he found these concepts useful in understanding and treating troubled adolescents. Elkind believes the egocentrism of early adolescence usually lessens by the age of 15 or 16 as cognitive development proceeds. - tendency to think that you and yours thoughts and feelings are unique (being in love and saying the no one in the history of the whole human race has ever felt such heights of emotion)
What is functional grammar?
Emphasizes meaning being expressed, semantic relations between words. (Order may be important or not.) Ex: young children often use the same word order to convey different meanings - "Hit Billy" or "Billy hit" - Body language and tone of voice also communicate meaning
What is Steven Pinker?
Experimental psychologist who has studied and written extensively on all aspects of language development, estimates that a new word is acquired every 2 hours during this time.
Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 - 18 months)?
Experimentation to find new ways to solve problems or produce interesting outcomes (e.g., explore bathwater by gently patting it, then hitting it vigorously and watching the results; or stroke, pinch, squeeze, and pat a cat to see how it responds to varied actions)
How do you know when a person is in REM sleep?
Eyeball movement
What is the function of the amygdala?
Fear Recognition of what to avoid
What did Pavlov do?
First discovered classical conditioning - demonstrated how dogs, who have an innate (unlearned) tendency to salivate at the sight of food, could learn to salivate at the sound of a bell if, during a training period, the bell was regularly sounded just as a dog was given meat powder
Beginning of thought (18 - 24 months)?
First evidence of insight; solve problems mentally, using symbols to stand for objects and actions; visualize how a stick could be used (e.g., move an out-of-reach toy closer); no longer limited to thinking by doing.
What is Zone of Proximal Development?
Gap between what learner can do independently What can he do with help What he can't do Can do → Zone ← too difficult
What is the function of the temporal lobe?
Hearing Memory Personality Categorization & organization Speech comprehension Wernikie's area
What is glaucoma?
Increased fluid pressure in the eye that causes damage to the optic nerve and can cause a progressive loss of peripheral vision, and ultimately, blindness
What is vicarious reinforcement?
In observational learning, the consequences experienced by models, because of their behavior, that affect the learner's likelihood of engaging in the behavior - model is rewarded
What is vicarious punishment?
In observational learning, the tendency to engage in a behavior is weakened after having observed the negative consequences for another engaging in that behavior - model is punished
What is an LAD?
Language acquisition device (LAD), - sifts through language, applies the universal rules, and begins tailoring the system to the specifics of the language spoken in the young child's environment.
Who is Thorndike and what did he believe?
Law of Effect - the response to a stimulus is affected by the consequence of that behavior - trial & error learning results in some behaviors (those follows by a good consequence) being "stamped in", while others (those follows by discomfort or unpleasant consequences) are stamped out - behavioral response is affected by the consequence of that behavior - behavior changes because of its consequences - rewarded behavior is likely to reoccur
What is latent learning?
Learning occurs but is not evident in behavior; children can learn from observation even though they do no imitate (perform) the learned responses - learning that occurs but is not exhibited until there is reinforcement or an incentive to do so
Who was Noam Chomsky?
Linguist who drew attention to the child's learning of these rules by proposing that language be described in terms of a transformational grammar
What did Watson do?
Little Albert Experiment (classical conditioning - fears are not innate and can be learned) Rat was presented to Albert and showed no fear --> after presenting rat to Albert, Watson bangs a steel rod with a hammer (UCS) for fear (UCR) --> during conditioning, stimuli of the rat and the loud noise were presented together several times --> Watson present the rat without the bang --> Albert begins to whimper and cry (white rat - CS; fear after rat- CR) --> same response is generalized with furry items *emotional responses can be learned*
What is pidgin?
Makeshift combination of two languages - Not a true language - For practical tasks - No grammar -- No consistent word order -- No prefixes or suffixes -- No tense
What is multiplicity?
Many views
Parts of the brain stem and functions?
Medulla Oblongata - Vegetative functions - HR, Resp, BP Reticular activating system (RAS) - Arousal, wakefulness & sleep Thalamus - Sensory Relay Center
What is the function of the hippocampus?
Memory
What is SORC?
Model for conceptualizing a behavior S = stimulus or "antecedent" factors which occur before target behavior O = organismic variables relevant to target behavior R = the response = the target behavior C = consequences of target behavior
What are some lateralizations for babies?
More likely to turn their heads right 1/4 prefer the right hand in their grasp reflex More left hemispheric response to speech sounds Right handedness more popular (left hemisphere) - males more likely to be left handed - genetics play a role, though for left handedness experiences can be a factor
What soothes newborns?
Mother's voice, their own amniotic fluid, and their mother's breast milk
What is the corpus callosum?
Nerve fibers that connect the brain's two hemispheres - brain/body connections are crossed
Example of bottom-up processing?
Nose smells something funky (response in body) --> repulsion (emotion)
12 mo - one word / (syncretic speech) or holophrases,
One word stage Objects (nominal): - Food: juice, milk, cookie - Body parts: eye, nose - Clothing: diaper, sock - Toys: doll, block - Items: car, bottle, light, kitty Actions: - Up, off, peekaboo, eat, go Modifiers - Hot, allgone, more
What is over-regularization AKA overgeneralization?
Over-applying rules where proper form is irregular Example • Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits
What is the function of the frontal lobe?
PFC/Association "Personality" Strategy formation Associative learning Risk taking, rule breaking Motor inhibition Smell Motor Voluntary Speech Production Broca's Area
PGO spikes?
PGO: pontine - geniculate - occipital - Brain stem - thalamus - visual cortex Originate in brainstem area (pons) Activates visual cortex & motor cortex Inhibits motor neurons in spinal cord Stimulates rapid eye movements Causes theta rhythm in hippocampus
What are memes?
Passed down from generation to generation Informal conversations, schooling, rituals Ways of problem solving - an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture - acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme
Adult stage?
Postformal thought: Understanding that knowledge is relative, not absolute; there are far more shades of gray than there are clear dichotomies of knowledge. Accepting that the world (physical and mental) is filled with contradictions: inconsistent information can exist side by side. Attempting to integrate the contradictions into some larger understanding.
What is the preoperational stage?
Preschoolers use their capacity for symbolic thought to develop language, engage in pretend play, and solve problems. But their thinking is not yet logical They are egocentric (unable to take others' perspectives) and are easily fooled by perceptions, failing conservation problems because they cannot rely on logical operations.
What is equipotent?
Principles of learning should apply across different behaviors and across different species ("organisms")
What is presbycusis (truncated range hearing)?
Problems of the aging ear, which commonly involve loss of sensitivity to high-frequency of high-pitched sounds - hearing aids can help
What is presbyopia?
Problems of the aging eye, especially loss of near vision related to a decreased ability of the lens to accommodate to objects close to the eye - loss of accommodation - caused by the thickening of the lens - cope by moving newspaper further away to read, getting reading glasses
What was Rosenzweig's experiment about?
Rats raised in a large cage with a few other rats for company wheels for exercising, and blocks to play with develop more neurons, more connections between neurons, and more glial cells supporting neurons than rats raised in isolation *plasticity*
What was Greenough's experiment about?
Rats that grow up in enriched environments with plenty of sensory stimulation develop larger, better-functioning brains with more synapses than rats that grow up in barren cages *plasticity*
What is the olfactory capability at 1 week?
Recognition of mother by smell from breast-fed babies
Sensorimotor stages and ages?
Reflex Activity (Birth - 1 month) Primary Circular Reactions (1 - 4 months) Secondary Circular Reactions (4 - 8 months) Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8 - 12 months) Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 - 18 months) Beginning of thought (18 - 24 months)
What is shaping?
Reinforcing successive approximations of behavior
Primary Circular Reactions (1 - 4 months)?
Repetition of interesting acts centered on the child's own body (e.g., repeatedly suck a thumb, kick legs, or blow bubbles)
Secondary Circular Reactions (4 - 8 months)?
Repetition of interesting acts on objects (e.g., repeatedly shake a rattle to make an interesting noise or bat a mobile to make it wiggle)
What is dualism?
Right OR wrong
What is syntax?
Rules for word order for arranging words into sentences and phrases. - Englush rule - adjectives before nounds: white house - Spanish rule - nouns first: Casa blanca -sometimes we still need context to determine meaning
What is was unconditioned response in Pavlov's experiment?
Salivation
What is the concrete operational stage?
School-age children acquire concrete logical operations that allow them to mentally classify, add, and otherwise act on concrete objects in their heads. They can solve practical, real-world problems through a trial-and-error approach but have difficulty with hypothetical and abstract problems.
Example of top-down processing?
Seeing a sign that has missing letters (sensory), but still being able to make out the words because of PRIOR knowledge I l_ke c_tt_n ca_dy!
What is the function of the parietal lobe?
Sensory Association areas Math (angular gyrus - left) Body image Spatial ability & drawing Contralateral neglect (right)
What is the Skinner box?
Skinner would give a reward or punishment towards the birds or rats in the Skinner box, while teaching them a trick (light, food)
What is scaffolding?
Structure a learning situation so learning becomes easier Giving guidelines to complete tasks --> Legos
ANS?
Sympathetic - Fight or Flight - Mobilizes for emergency - Accelerates - Diffuse/widespread - Adrenaline - Epinephrine - Norepinephrine Parasympathetic - Rest & rejuvenate - Slows/digests - Discrete - Acetylcholine
What is time-out?
Technique for the control of problem behaviour based on operant conditioning principles
What was the experiment that Fantz performed and what was the outcome of it?
Testing the visual perception on infants Outcome: infantss preferred to look at the picture that seemed more of a human face rather than the scrambled one
What does the left side of the brain do?
The LEFT hemisphere controls the right side of the body (ie right hand) Right visual field to LEFT brain Math Speech/Words/Lists Explains, gives reasons Laughter Motor to and sensory from right body & right visual field
What does the right side of the brain do?
The RIGHT hemisphere controls the left side of the body (ie left hand) Left visual Field to RIGHT brain Spatial/Pictures/Diagrams Faces Emotional tone Motor to & sensory from left body & left visual field
What is visual accommodation?
The ability of the lens of the eye to change shape to bring objects at different distances into focus - 6 months-1 year
What is discrimination?
The ability to distinguish one stimuli from another, responding only to the CS
What is acuity?
The ability to perceive detail - ability to distinguish two points close together - sharpness - newborn: poor, 20/600 & prefers bold patterns w/ sharp contrast, closeness (8" from face)
The emergence of symbolic capacity?
The ability to use images, words, or gestures to represent or stand for objects and experiences—enables more sophisticated problem solving.
What is intermodal/cross-modal perception?
The ability to use one sensory modality to identify a stimulus or a pattern of stimuli already familiar through another modality - developed around 3-6 months
What is transduction? Related to?
The conversion of one form of energy to another/process that converts a sensory signal to an electrical signal to be processed in a specialized area in the brain - changing, encoding, or transducing that energy into neural signals *sensation*
What is extinction?
The gradual weakening and disappearance of a learned response when it is no longer reinforced Lessening of a conditioned response - Classical: occurs when the UCS is no longer paired with the CS - Operant: occurs when behavior is no longer reinforced
What is perception?
The interpretation of sensory input - selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory information - enables recognition and makes meaning of objects and events - based on "higher level" information (prior knowledge or experience or wiring) - making meaning *top-down processing*
What is hearing acuity?
The keenness or sharpness of hearing - is good at birth - more developed than vision - orient to soft sounds; startles & retreats from loud sounds (reflexive at birth; voluntary control at 4 months) - recognizes mother's voice - prefer relatively complex sounds
What is a sensory threshold?
The point at which low levels of stimulation can be detected - dim light being seen - faint tone being heard - slight odor being detected
What is sensation?
The process by which information is detected by the sensory receptors and transmitted to the brain/detection of physical energy from the environment by sensory receptors - Also is the starting point in perception - Based on properties of stimulus - properties of the stimulus + transduction *bottom-up processing*
What is dark adaptation ?
The process by which the eyes become more sensitive to light over time as they remain in the dark/process in which the eyes adapt to darkness and become more sensitive to the low level of light available - occurs more slowly in older individuals than in younger ones - less sensitive/glare
What is assimilation?
The process by which we interpret new experiences in terms of existing schemes or cognitive structures. - Thus, if you already have a scheme that mentally represents your knowledge of dogs, you may label this new beast "doggie."
What is negative reinforcement?
The process in operant conditioning in which a response is strengthened or made more probable when its consequence is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus from the situation (taking something away to increase behavior - something you will be glad is gone) - alarm goes off, pressing the snooze button, alarm noise stops
What is negative punishment?
The process in operant conditioning in which a response is weakened or made less probable when its consequence is the removal of a pleasant stimulus from the stimulus (taking something away to decrease behavior - you will be sorry it is gone) - Getting in a fight with sibling over toy, the mother take the toy away
What is positive reinforcement?
The process in operant conditioning whereby a response is strengthened when its consequence is a pleasant event (applying something increase behavior - something that you like) - candy, food
What is positive punishment?
The process in operant conditioning whereby a response is strengthened when its consequence is an unpleasant event (applying something to decrease behavior - something you don't like) - late to work, driving over the speed limit, gets pulled over and receives a ticket
What is bottom-up processing?
The process in which sensation is stimulated before the brain is active in decision-making - pressure waves of sound, temperature differences (heat, cold), chemical molecules for smell, wavelengths of light *sensory information/body response --> emotion --> brain/thoughts/beliefs
What is top-down processing?
The process in which the brain makes use of information that has already been brought into the brain by one or more sensory systems - rules the brain to interpret sensory information The Gestalt - the "percept" - a unified whole - things being grouped perceptually because the stimuli occur close to one another in time and space - ex: leaves and branches merging into trees, and trees merging into forests
What is accommodation?
The process of modifying existing schemes to incorporate or adapt to new experiences - Piaget's cognitive development theory - Perhaps you will need to invent a new name for this animal (dog) or ask what it is and revise your concept of four-legged animals accordingly
Add meaning
The relationship between words & things, interpreting sentences, paragraphs, etc.
What is A-not-B error?
The surprising tendency of 8- to 12-month-olds to search for an object in the place where they last found it (A) rather than in its new hiding place (B) is called the A-not-B error. The likelihood of infants making the A-not-B error increases with lengthier delays between hiding and searching and with the number of trials in which the object is found in spot A (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999).
What is size constancy?
The tendency to perceive an object as the same size despite changes in its distance from the eyes - an object keeps its same size no matter its distance from our eyes - change in size of image on retina is cue to depth - visual cliff experiment
What is a unconditioned response?
The unlearned response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus/natural response
Critiques on Piaget?
Themes are correct Sequence of events are correct Order develops roughly the same across cultures Age varies greatly Gradual change Context specific
What is constructivism?
Theory that children actively construct new ideas of the world based on their experiences - the position taken by Piaget and other that humans actively create their own understanding of the world from their experiences, as opposed to being born with innate ideas or being programmed by the environment
What is true object permanence?
This is the fundamental understanding that objects continue to exist—they are permanent—when they are no longer visible or otherwise detect- able to the senses. It probably does not occur to you to wonder whether your coat is still in the closet after you shut the closet door
18-24 - telegraphic speech/two word
Two word stage Ex: "all dry" ; "I sit", "no bed", "all messy"
What is "out of Sight, out of mind"?
Up through roughly 4-8 months, it is "out of sight, out of mind"; infants will not search for a toy if it is covered with a cloth or screen. By substage 4 (8-12 months), they master that trick but still rely on their perceptions and actions to "know" an object (Piaget, 1952).
How do babies react to sensory integration?
Vision --> sound - looking in the direction of a sound they hear Touch --> vision - infants expecting to feel objects they can see and are frustrated by a visual illusion that looks like a graspable object, but proves to be nothing but when they reach for it
What is the function of the occipital lobe?
Visual Primary visual cortex (some visual "association cortex" in parietal and temporal)
What is classical/associative conditioning?
Watson - behaviorism: Believed that conclusions about human development and functioning should be based on observations of overt behavior rather than on speculations about unobservable cognitive and emotional processes - Classical conditioning: a simple form of learning in which a stimulus that initially had no effect on the individual comes to elicit a response through its association with a stimulus that already elicits the response - we learn associations b/w events, anticipate important events - stimulus happens first and ELICITS the response; behavior then follows - Like John Locke
What is relativism?
What is right for you
What is generalization?
When stimuli that are similar to the CS evokes some level of the CR
What is preferential looking/visual preference method?
When two objects are presented together and there is a longer looking time to the "new/different" one - in cross-model matching, we look at the one that we have already experienced - length of time looking *baby will look at the UNSCRAMBLED face*
What can newborns smell?
Yes
Does early experience affect later taste preference?
Yes - babies that had a greater exposure to a variety of flavors during infancy may lead to a more adventurous eater later on - early experiences with different flavors also extend to the prenatal period and exposure to different chemicals in the amniotic fluid *cannot discount genetic predisposition!*
Can babies hear before birth?
Yes; fetuses can hear some things outside of the womb 3 months before birth
What is word segmentation?
ability to detect target word in a stream of speech. Ex: When they hear the sentence "The cat scratched the dog's nose"; they understand that this is not one long word but a string of six words.
What is Creole?
full complex language with grammar produced by children exposed to pidgin - immigrant children - Kanzi (bonobo or pygmy chimp)
What are semantics?
rules for meanings - Greek: significance, to signify meaning
What is transformational grammar?
rules of syntax for transforming basic underlying thoughts into a variety of sentence forms.
