PSYC 311 Exam 2

How do compensatory programs, such as Head Start, help kids? What is the effect of including parents in these types of early intervention programs? What are some of the research findings that support the inclusion of parents? Why is it so important to intervene early?

Compensatory programs aim to provide disadvantaged children with the kind of educational experiences that their middle-class peers were presumably getting in their homes and nursery school classrooms. It was hoped that these early interventions would place these kids on roughly equal footing with their middle-class peers by the time they entered first grade. However, the effects of these programs seemed to dwindle after a few years. Including parents in these programs, such as Learning to Learn, lead to better grades in basic academic subjects (such as reading) and were less likely to have failed a grade in school or to have been placed in costly special education classes. Some of the research finding that support including parents include the study by Joan Sprigle and Lyn Schaefer that evaluated long term benefits for Head Start and Learning to Learn, and found that although LTL students (which involved parents) didn't outperform Head Start kids on IQ tests, they were still making better grades and were less likely to fail a grade. Other investigators looking at two-generation interventions (that provided for both the child and the disadvantaged parents) saw improved parents psychological well-being, which may translate into more effective patterns of parenting and long-term gains in children's intellectual performance. Also, the Carolina Abecedarian Project displayed the importance of intervening early. Targeting families at risk for producing mildly retarded children, they started intervention at 6 to 12 weeks and continued it for the next 5 years, putting the kids into a special day-care program. They compared them to a control group (where they controlled for diet, social services, and pediatric care) and found striking results. The program participants outperformed the kids in the control group on IQ tests starting at 18 months and maintained this advantage through age 15. This is evidence that high-quality preschool interventions that begin early can have lasting intellectual benefits.

Deprivation dwarfism

Deprivation dwarfism occurs between 2 and 15 and is a childhood growth disorder that is triggered by emotional deprivation (social influence) which depresses the endocrine system (biological influence) and inhibits the production of growth hormone, which results in slow growth and small stature. When these children are removed from their homes and begin to receive attention and affection, secretion of GH resumes, and they display catch-up growth, even when they eat the same diet on which they formerly failed to thrive. If not corrected the child may remain smaller than normal and display long-term emotional problems and intellectual deficiencies

According to research, do most adults learn to reason in formal operations? What does research tell us about this ability? What factors seems to influence the ability to reason formally?

Edith Neimark's review of the literature suggests that a sizeable percentage of American adults do not often reason at the formal level, and apparently in some culture— particularly those where formal schooling is rare or nonexistent— no one solves Piaget's formal-operational problems. Cross-cultural research provides a clue why some would fail to attain formal operations: they may not have had sufficient exposure to the kinds of schooling that stress logic, mathematics, and science— experiences that Piaget believed help the child to reason at the formal level. Research tells us that even if an adult doesn't adhere to Piaget's formal operations, perhaps all adults are capable of reasoning at the formal level (which is the ability to think rationally and systematically about abstract concepts and hypothetical events) only at problems that hold their interest or are of vital importance to them (such as prey tracking). It seems then that each person has an optimal, or "highest," level of cognitive performance that will show itself in familiar or well-trained content domains. So maybe it's not that all adults don't reach formal operational, they just have a lack of interest or experience in Piaget's tests. Factors such as familiarity and interest/personal importance of the subject matter seem to influence formal-operational thinking.

What is IQ and how is it obtained? What does IQ score predict? What doesn't it predict? Describe some of the criticisms of current psychometric testing and what some researchers are doing about it.

IQ (intelligence quotient) is a numerical measure of a person's performance on an intelligence test relative to the performance of other examinees. It is obtained by dividing your mental age by your chronological age and multiplying by 100. However, nowadays this is no longer used and we instead use a deviation IQ that reflects how well or poorly a person does compared to others of the same age, not to those younger or older than them. It is difficult to say what IQ can and cannot predict. IQ is relatively good at predicting academic achievement, success, (correlation of around 0.5) and to some degree life satisfaction. However, these all come with caveats. IQ may be correlated with these things, but it can't per say predict them. The outcome of achievement or success could be caused by another factor (such as motivation, work ethic, prior jobs/grades) rather than IQ itself, which may just be another byproduct of those characteristics rather than the cause itself. Just like everything else in development, IQ seems to be a complex tool that is influenced by many different aspects of our lives such as heredity and environment, and therefore isn't linear and doesn't always lead to predictable outcomes. Some believe that psychometric testing needs to be more cost-effective. Others don't like how intelligence has been defined and measured. While intelligence is often defined as a potential to learn from experience, many IQ tests assess what has already been learned, not what can be learned. So some such as Reuven Feuerstein are trying to do a dynamic assessment in which they evaluate how well children actually learn new material when an examiner provides them with competent instruction, with his Learning Potential Assessment Device.

What is the authors' purpose in writing the DeLoache book? Why is it important to understand the ways that other cultures think about babies? Describe and contextualize (put into their cultural context) two things you learned from the book that you didn't already know (be specific and give the name of the culture - this needs to show me that you actually read the book). What is one thing from the book that you would like to share with others?

The author's purpose is to illustrate how the child-rearing customs of any given society, however peculiar or unnatural they may appear at first to an outsider, make sense when understood within the context of that society. To explain and showcase how infant care practices vary so much across different societies and historical eras due to the different physical, economic, and cultural frameworks they're embedded in. It's important for us to understand the ways other cultures think about babies so that we can respect and understand their ways of raising their children— and not assuming that "our way" is the "right way." By learning to respect and understand the different rearing practices between cultures, and the context in which they occur, it allow us to be more understanding and accepting of diversity and prevent undue judgement. One thing I learned was from the Beng culture, where they believe that if you're pregnant you cannot go near and seriously cannot touch the corpses of people and dogs. If you do, your baby could be born with the disease of "Dog" or "Corpse." Because of this, you should not bring your baby to a funeral because the corpse could entice the baby back to wrugbe. This is deeply rooted in the Beng culture and specifically their religion, which believes that once people die, their souls. Or nining, are said to become wru, or spirits, that travel to wrugbe, the land of the dead. Eventually, the ancestors are reincarnated into this life. All newborns are seen as having just emerged from this land of the dead. So going to a funeral could call that child or ancestor within the child back, so it must be avoided. In accordance with this, they also believe that until the umbilical cord stump falls off, the newborn has not yet begun to become a person because it's still living in the land of the dead— therefore, if they die a funeral won't be held because they never actually left wrugbe. Another thing that I learned was that in Bali, where they practice Balinese Hinduism and emphasize the importance of cremation and worshipping their ancestors, sons are given the task of maintaining house shrines, holding a cremation ceremony for their parents, and carrying on the family line— so they hold A LOT of importance, and families are often pressured into hoping they'll give birth to a son. For example, the book says that if you don't have your own son you really should adopt a male child, preferably a nephew, or convince your daughter's husband to sever ties to his own ancestral shrine and take care of yours— thus he would inherit your house and property as if he were your own son (instead of idk, letting the girl just do it??) If I were going to tell someone one thing from this book, I would tell them about how much of our current thoughts and even our underlying controversial political debates regarding conception and childbirth are strongly tied to our Puritan ancestry in America, and it's important to recognize how our history affects our underlying. thoughts While Americans no longer view themselves as Puritans or perhaps not even religious, we still to this day find ourselves holding a lot of the same beliefs and fighting against anything else. For example, in Puritan society they viewed those who breastfed their kids for 3 years and whose adulthood had idle hours as barbaric. This notion of "idleness is sinful" still carries on to today and how we view ourselves as contributing members of society. Also, they viewed abortion as murder, and the need to hold their neighbors accountable for such "sins," one common belief held in some aspects of today's political climate.

Describe the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Give examples of each (preferably ones that don't involve puppies or kitties). Be sure to put these ideas in their proper relation to each other.

-Assimilation is the process of interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into schemas that already exist. -Accommodation is the process of modifying existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new experiences. -An example of assimilation is that young children begin to think that all boys have short hair and girls have long hair. So as they meet new people with short hair, they assimilate them into their existing schema of 'boys.' However, if the child meets a boy with long hair and says it's a girl, they'll quickly be corrected that the other child is actually a boy. Thus, the child has to modify their existing schema for boys to include long hair as well, not just short. This is accommodation.

Explain cerebral lateralization. Which functions go to each side? When does the process begin and what happens at different ages?

-Cerebral lateralization is the specialization of brain functions in the left and right cerebral hemispheres. -The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and containers centers for speech, hearing, verbal memory, decision making, language processing, and expression of positive emotions. -The right cerebral hemisphere controls the left side of the body and contains centers for processing visual-spatial information, nonlinguistic sounds such as music, tactile (touch) sensations, and expressing negative emotions. -Brain lateralization may originate during the prenatal period and be well under way at birth since ⅔ of fetuses end up with their right ears facing outward, and it is thought that this illustrates the left hemisphere's specialization in language processing. Furthermore, plasticity is greatest early in life, before cerebral lateralization is complete. -By age 2, left or right handedness is well established, and lateral preferences such as this become stronger with age. For example, in a study only 32 percent of preschoolers, but more than half of adolescents, showed a consistent lateral preference

Define each and describe the development of (how it changes as they get older; be specific about ages) children's abilities of sustained attention and selective attention.

-Children's abilities of sustained attention (their attention spans— or capacity for sustaining attention to a particular stimulus or activity) is very short at around 2 to 3 years of age. They're easily captured by distractions and are often unable to inhibit the intrusion of task-irrelevant thoughts. However, it gradually improves throughout childhood and early adolescence. These improvements may be due, in part, to the maturational changes of the reticular formation, which is responsible for regulation of attention and isn't fully myelinated until puberty. This may be why teenagers and adults can spend hours studying, while small children can only sustain attention for around 15 to 20 minutes. -Selective attention is the capacity to focus on task-relevant aspects of experience while ignoring irrelevant or distracting information. Patricia Miller and Michael Weiss found that 13 year olds were better at ignoring irrelevant information from the question asked (ignoring household objects from the location of animals they were asked to remember) than 10 year olds, who performed slightly better than the 7 year olds. The younger the child, the more they remembered about the irrelevant details. This indicates that older children are much better than younger ones at concentrating on relevant information and filtering out the irrelevant information that could interfere with task performance.

What light does research shed on the accuracy of Piaget's and Vygotsky's language theories?

-Contemporary research sides squarely with Vygotsky's theory over that of Piaget. It seems that the social speech that occurs during guided learning episodes (for example, a conversation between a parent and child during an activity) gives rise to much of private speech (the child talking to themselves aloud as they try to do it on their own) that preschool children display. Also consistent with Vygotsky's claims, children rely more heavily on private speech when facing difficult rather than easy tasks, and their performance often improves after using self-instruction. Furthermore, the brighter preschool children rely on private speech most heavily, suggesting that self-talk leads to cognitive competence not immaturity like Piaget claimed. Private speech does eventually become internalized, progressing from words and phrases to whispers and mutterings, to inner speech— suggesting that it's an important tool that helps children plan and regulate mental activities to solve problems and make new discoveries.

What are the cultural influences that might affect IQ? Explain and give examples of these influences.

-Cultural influences such as social-class and ethnic differences may affect IQ. Social class effect shows that children from lower- and working-class homes average some 10 to 15 points below their middle-class age-mates on IQ tests (with infants as the only exception to this rule). For example, someone living in an impoverished home will not have access to the same toys, education, or food as someone living in a wealthier family would have, leading to a lower IQ -Ethnic differences also might affect IQs, as children of African American and Native American ancestry score, on average, about 12 to 15 points below their European American classmates on standardized IQ tests. Different ethnic groups may also display distinctive ability problems. For example, African American children often perform better on verbal tests than on other subtests, while Native Americans and Hispanic Americans do well on nonverbal items assessing spatial abilities. These differences may be due to the different skills that the culture emphasizes.

Explain guided participation and context-independent learning. What differences are found between them?

-Guided participation is adult-child interactions in which children's cognitions and modes of thinking are shaped as they participate with or observe adults engaged in culturally relevant activity. It's an informal "apprenticeship in thinking." Rogoff believes that cognitive growth is shaped as much or more by these informal adult-child transactions as it is by more formal teaching or educational experiences. -Context-dependent learning is learning that has no immediate relevance to the present context, as is done in modern schools; acquiring knowledge for knowledge's sake. Much more common in western societies. -Guided participation seems to not be as easily grasped for a culture such as our own since many aspects of cognitive development have shifted from parents to professional educators. Also, guided participation seems to be learned on more of a "need-to-know" basis, where children learn relevant and important skills and information. Meanwhile, context-dependent learning is knowing to know. It may become useful in the future, but it seems to be more of a preparation or leisure learning rather a need to know right now learning like guided participation.

Explain implicit and explicit cognition. What is fuzzy-trace theory?

-Implicit cognition is the thought that occurs without awareness that one is thinking; for example, speaking and all of the linguistic rules that underlie it. -Explicit cognition is the thinking and thought processes of which we are consciously aware. These are especially important when we consider executive function, because to an extent, in order to regulate our thinking, it helps to understand what thinking is. Research shows that a child's awareness of their own thoughts and distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness develops gradually during childhood. (being able to think about thinking= metacognition, which is important for many aspects of higher order thinking and problem solving). -Fuzzy trace theory is a theory proposed by Brainerd and Reyna that postulates that people encode experiences on a continuum from literal, verbatim traces to fuzzy, gistlike traces (preserves the essential content without all of the precise details). Fuzzy traces are more easily accessed and generally require less effort to use. Verbatim traces are more susceptible to interference and forgetting than fuzzy traces are. These are important developmental differences in how children represent information to solve problems. Verbatim can be useful in some problem situations, but fuzzy traces are often easier for less detailed problems. Before age 6 or 7, children seem to be biased towards verbatim traces, whereas older children and adults prefer fuzzy traces— which may be a reason why young children think more slowly and less efficiently than older children do.

What was Piaget's view of intelligence? What is the assumption underlying his ideas? Explain Piaget's ideas of organization and adaptation.

-In Piaget's theory, intelligence is a basic life function that enables an organism to adapt to its environment. -The assumption underlying his ideas were that children undertake intellectual activity to produce a balanced, harmonious, relationships between one's thought processes and the environment (to achieve cognitive equilibrium). So this view of intelligence is an "interactionist" model that implies mismatches between one's internal mental schemes (existing knowledge) and the external environment stimulate cognitive activity and intellectual growth. -His idea of organization was that it was an inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemas into coherent systems or bodies of knowledge. Meanwhile adaptation was an inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment

Describe the cultural variations in arithmetic between schooled and unschooled children. Give examples.

-Many unschooled children have arithmetic competencies embedded in real life concepts. For example, 9- and 15-year old street vendors in Brazil were able to correctly solve a math problem related to life ("If a large coconut costs this much, and a small one only costs this much, how much do they cost together?") 98% of the time. However, when presented in a out of context way (how much is 76+50?), they were only answered correctly 37% of the time. This seems to be because unschooled participants are less motivated to expend the effort necessary to solve these out of context problems than ones that pertain to their own work and lives. -Meanwhile schooled children learn arithmetic and become better or worse at it depending not so much on the maths pertinence to everyday life skills, but the way they learn it from their cultural linguistics and instructional supports. For example East Asian children seem to be more proficient at arithmetic due to the way their language represents numbers. The easier it is for children to understand more complex numbers, the easier more complex arithmetic becomes for them. For example, Chinese numbers for 11, 12, and 13 are "ten-one," "ten-two" and "ten-three," rather than English "eleven," "twelve," and"thirteen," which must be memorized in order to use. This simplicity of numbers in East Asian languages seems to carry over into fractions, allowing the children to more easily and quickly understand more complex arithmetic; whereas English speaking children would sort of have to accommodate their schema before doing the complex arithmetic, while East Asian children could more easily assimilate it into what they already know. Also, the instruction given to East Asian children seems to be linguistically simpler so they can more easily understand complex arithmetic. For example, saying "bring up" rather than "carry" helps to solidify the base-10 system structure (the 5 in 350 represents 50 and the 3 means 300). These make a difference in how well arithmetic is learned, but we've seen that differences are also due to cultural educational philosophies (how important it is for them to be good at it).

Describe and explain the three (learning, maturation, dynamic(al) systems) viewpoints of physical development.

-Maturational viewpoint describes motor development as the unfolding of a genetically programmed sequence of events in which the nerves and muscles mature in a downward and outward direction. As a result, children gradually gain more control over the lower and peripheral parts of their bodies. -Learning is a relatively permanent change that results from experience or practice. Explains why maturation is necessary but not sufficient for development of motor skills. Infants who are physically capable of sitting, crawling, or walking will not be proficient at these unless they have the opportunities to practice them (to learn them), because it can strengthen their muscles and their ability to use these skills. -Dynamical systems is a theory that views motor skills as active reorganizations of previously mastered capabilities that are undertaken by a curious, active infant to find more effect ways of exploring the environment or satisfying other objectives.

Explain Spearman's g and Sternberg's triarchic theory. Be specific and explain the components of each theory, as well as describing how the theories are the same and different.

-Spearman's g is his abbreviation for neogenesis, which is one's ability to understand relations (or a person's general mental ability). It affects one's performance on most cognitive tasks. However, he also noticed that some students only excelled in one area, and failed in others. So he proposed that intellectual performances had g (general ability, how they did on most things) and s (special abilities, areas where someone may especially thrive or fail, and are specific to particular tests). -Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence is a recent information processing theory of intelligence that emphasizes three aspects of intelligence: context, experience, and information processing skills. Sternberg viewed intelligence in the contextual component as good at adapting to situations, selecting compatible environments, and shaping environments to suit them. He also said that a person's experience with a task helps determine whether the person's performance qualifies as intelligent behavior. So, responses to novel challenges (that aren't completely foreign to the person) are an indication of the person's ability to generate good ideas of fresh insights. However, he also said that developing automatized routines for performing common tasks accurately and efficiently is also intelligent so that we don't waste time or conscious thought. So in order to avoid cultural bias, questions need to be equally familiar or unfamiliar to all test takers. The information-processing component is how someone solves a problem. Some people process information faster and more efficiently than others and our cognitive tests should measure these differences and treat them as aspects of intelligence. -These theories are similar in that both recognize that people may have different general and specific abilities depending on their personal intelligence and that different tests should be used to measure them. But Sternberg's theory is more specific and goes more to explain why we're better at some things than others (our strategies (information processing component), because we're familiar with it (experience), or how good we are at adapting to certain environments).

What are synapses? Neurons? Glia? What is myelinization? Synaptogenesis?

-Synapses are the connective space (juncture) between one nerve cell (neuron) and another -Neurons are nerve cells that receive and transmit neural impulses. They're produced in the neural tube of the developing embryo. -Glia are nerve cells that nourish neurons and encase them in insulating sheath of myelin. They're far more numerous than neurons are, and continue to form throughout life. -Myelinization is the process by which neurons are in enclosed in waxy myelin sheaths that will facilitate the transmission of neural impulses. It follows a definite chronological sequence that is consistent with the maturation of the rest of the nervous system. Occurs very rapidly over the first few years of life, however some brain areas are not completely myelinated until the mid-to late teens or early adulthood. -Synaptogenesis is the formation of connections (synapses) among neurons. The surviving neurons that are stimulated less often lose their synapses (this is called synaptic pruning) and stand in reserve to compensate for brain injuries or support new skills.

Draw and describe the store model of memory. Name and explain each of the parts.

-This is an information-processing model that depicts information as flowing through three stores: the sensory store, the short-term store (STS), and the long-term store (LTS). -The sensory store is the first processing store in which stimuli are noticed and are briefly available for further processing. Holds it as a kind of afterimage or echo of what you've sensed. Can hold large quantities of information, but only for very brief periods of time. -The STS is the second information processing store, in which stimuli are retained for several seconds and operated on (may also be called working memory— although some distinguish working memory as being able to be kept as long as you're actively thinking about it, while short term store can only hold for 10 to 15 seconds, and can hold only 5-9 items). Allows us to store information temporarily so that we can do something with it. -The LTS is the third information processing store, in which information that has been examined and interpreted is permanently stored for future use. Has a vast and relatively permanent storehouse that includes your knowledge of the world, your impressions of past experiences and events, and the strategies that you use to process information and solve problems. -Also includes the executive control processes which assists to plan and run each phase of information processing which includes: regulating attention, selecting appropriate memory processes and problem-solving strategies, and monitoring quality of tentative answers and solutions.

What did Vygotsky mean by the tools of intellectual adaptation? Zone of proximal development? Scaffolding? Explain each.

-Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky's term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize from their interactions with more competent members of society, it permits infants to use their basic mental functions more adaptively. It teaches the child how to use socially transmitted memory strategies and other cultural tools— basically, it teaches them how to think similar to the culture they're being raised in (and thus also teaches them what to think as well) -Zone of proximal development is the term for the range of tasks that are too complex for a child to master alone but can be accomplished with guidance and encouragement from a more skillful partner (parent, sibling, peer, etc. as long as they have more knowledge and can guide the child). This is where sensitive instruction should be aimed and where new cognitive growth can be expected to occur. The child should internalize whatever skill used and then use them on her own, rising to a new level of independent mastery. - Scaffolding is a feature of social collaboration that fosters cognitive growth. It's the process by which an expert, when instructing a novice, responds contingently to the novice's behavior in a learning situation, so that the novice gradually increases his or her understanding of a problem. It doesn't occur just in formal educational setting but any time a more expert person adjusts input to guide a child to a level near the limits of her capabilities.

How did Vygotsky and Piaget each think about language and the role of language in cognitive development?

-Vygotsky thought of language as a vital part of the cognitive/learning process. He believed language eventually became one of the more powerful "tools" of intellectual adaptation in its own right. For example, Vygotsky understood private speech (or egocentric speech to Piaget) as important because it creates self-directed regulation and communication with the self that eventually becomes internalized, which then played a role in furthering cognitive development. So a child's speech plays a critical role in making the child more organized and efficient. -On the other hand, Piaget viewed language as a byproduct rather than an important part of cognitive development. For example, he thought that language shifting from egocentric speech to more social reflected the children's increasing cognitive ability to assume the perspective of others and thus adapt their speech. (So Piaget thought your cognitive abilities made your speech more organized/social, while Vygotsky said that your speech made your thoughts more organized and efficient, furthering cognitive development).

Explain and give examples of the ideas of crystallized and fluid intelligence.

Fluid intelligence refers to one's ability to solve novel and abstract problems of the sort that are not taught and are relatively free of cultural influences For example, verbal analogies like: an inch is short; a mile is _(long)__. Or number series tests like: which number comes next— 5 7 6 9 8 __ . Crystallized intelligence is the ability to solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired as a result of schooling and other life experiences. For example: "At what temperature does water boil?" (100° C)

Is IQ hereditary? How do we know? Is it environmental? How do we know? You must give research evidence, not theories.

IQ seems to be in part hereditary, because in twin studies, the IQ for identical twins, who inherit identical genes, is substantially higher than the IQ correlation for fraternal and non-twin siblings. So intellectual resemblances increase as kinship does. Furthermore, in adoption studies, children's IQs are more highly correlated with the IQ's of their biological parents (who they share genes but no environment with) than their adoptive parents. However, it's not solely hereditary! If a child who's genetically predisposed to seek out intellectual challenges is raised in a barren environment that offers few such challenged, then he will probably not develop a high IQ. In adoption studies where adopted children left disadvantaged backgrounds and were placed with highly educated adoptive parents, they were scoring well above average on IQ tests by the age of 4 to 7. While these IQ's were still similar to their biological parents, they seemed to score 10 to 20 points higher than expected due to the stimulating home environment of their adopted parents, which (in relation to the reaction range principle) allowed them to express the intelligent phenotype. So, as we have seen in many attributes of development, IQ is influenced by both heredity and environment, both factors equally important and influential in their own way.

Is IQ stable across time? Explain your answer in depth, citing research to support it. How does the cumulative-deficit hypothesis explain some of the instability?

In a study conducted at the University of California, it was shown that the shorter the interval between two IQ testings, the higher the correlation between the two scores. But even after a number of years have passed, IQ seemed to be reasonably stable. Scores obtained at age 8 were still clearly related to those obtained 10 years later at age 18. However, these scores are based on a large group of children, and doesn't tell us if the IQ's of individuals remains stable over time. In another study by Robert McCall, they looked at IQ scores of 140 individual children between the ages 2 ½ and 17 and found that more than half of the children displayed large fluctuations in IQ over time. So IQ is more stable for some children than others. This leads researchers to believe that IQ represents a person's intellectual performance at one point— which may or may not be a good indication of their full intellectual capacity. Many fluctuations in IQ seem to be in a constant direction. The cumulative deficit hypothesis helps to explain this, which is the notion that impoverished environments inhibit intellectual growth and that these inhibiting effects accumulate over time. So this would help explain why people in an impoverished environments IQ continue to get worse over time and why those in stimulating and helpful environments get better over time. So, I would conclude that yes, IQ is relatively stable and most fluctuations are caused by lasting environmental influences.

Which part of the brain is still developing in adolescence? Which functions tend to be located in that part of the brain?

In adolescence, the higher brain centers including the prefrontal cortex are still developing. It's involved in higher-level cognitive activities such as: strategic planning, coordinating and adjusting complex behavior, impulse control, and control and organization of emotional reactions, and is still developing at least until age 20. Such area development also increases adolescent attention spans. The area is there during adolescence, but it's not fully myelinated so it's functional except for when the youth are emotionally aroused.

Explain metamemory. How do children develop this ability (ages, capacity)?

Metamemory is an important aspect of metacognition— it's one's knowledge of memory and memory processes. Children display this if they recognize, for example, that there are limits to what they can remember, that some things are easier to remember than others, or that certain strategies are more effective than others at helping them to remember. - Even at 3 and 4 years old, children have some idea that the mind has a limited capacity and some materials are easier to learn and retain than others. For example, preschoolers know that remembering many items is harder than remembering a few, and the longer they study items the more likely they'll remember them. But they usually still overestimate how much they can remember, and know very little about forgetting over time. Metamemory increases substantially between 4 and 12 as children come to regard the mind as an active, constructive agent that stores only interpretations (rather than copies) of reality. 5 year olds recognize forgetting occurs and that cues can help them, but children under 7 are still unaware that strategies such as rehearsal and organization may be useful. And even though 7 to 9 year olders realize rehearsal and organization are effective, not until age 11 do they recognize that organization is more effective than rehearsal.

Describe several of the arguments from the Nelson article. What was his conclusion on the importance of the first three years?

Nelson argues that of course the first 3 years of life are important— but they're not fatal. He points out that while some children end up with irreversible problems from early life , such as those neglected in Romanian or Russian orphanages for 1-2 years or more, this isn't the case for all children who start off life on the wrong foot. In fact, many develop normally or close to normally. Nelson points out that children are resilient, even if their rearing is suboptimal. Nelson also points out that research suggesting that the first 3 years are make or break, fail to look at other factors such as prenatal histories, genetic makeup, the child's diet, and selective sampling. Nelson concludes that while the first 3 years of life may be a "sensitive period" for some developmental aspects, they're not a critical period. Programs or interventions to help these in some way deprived children can help catch them up to their normally developing peers and the plasticity of the brain and body will also aid in helping. Parents do not need to be perfect. Our species wouldn't have survived long if they needed to be.

Nonorganic failure to thrive

Nonorganic failure to thrive occurs by 18 months of age and is an infant growth disorder, caused by lack of attention and affection, that causes growth to slow dramatically or stop. These infants appear to be wasting away in the same way those with marasmus do. These infants don't have an obvious illness, and no other biological cause is apparent. These babies have trouble feeding, and in many cases, their growth retardation is undoubtedly attributable to poor nutrition. This is because the social influence of their caregivers being impatient and hostile with the babies causes it to withdraw and become aloof to the point of feeding poorly(which leads to poor nutrition, and the biological wasting away) and displaying few, if any, positive responses. If it's not corrected in the first 2 years, affected children may remain smaller than normal and display long-term emotional problems and intellectual deficiencies.

Explain the memory strategies of rehearsal and organization. At what ages and how well can children use these different strategies?

Rehearsal is a strategy for remembering that involves repeating the items one is trying to retain until we think we will remember it. -3 to 4 year olds rarely rehearse. 7 to 10 year old rehearse more efficiently than the younger children, and the more they do it the more they remember. However, older children rehearse differently than younger children. A 5 to 8 year old usually rehearse one at a time. Meanwhile, a 12 year old are more likely to use active or cumulative rehearsal, repeating several earlier items as they rehearse each successive word. As a result, they remember more words than children who rehearse just one item at a time. Younger children (such as 5 to 8 yr olds) can be trained to do this, but it still usually isn't as efficient as older children's skills because their limited working capacity is unable to retrieve enough information to form useful clusters. Organization is a strategy for remembering that involves grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful (or manageable) clusters that are easier to retain. -Until about age 9 to 10, children are not usually any better at recalling items that can be semantically organized (put into groups) than those that are difficult to organize. This suggests that young children make few attempts to organize information for later recall. Young children can be trained to use this strategy, but they can still show a production deficiency. They can do it, but they fail to do so spontaneously or apply it to new situations. It also rarely eliminates any age differences in this skill.

There are several explanations for differences in IQ across ethnic groups. Explain the one that has the most research support.

The environmental hypothesis provides a lot of research to support its theory. Developmentalists have found many findings on low-income or poverty stricken lifestyles (which different ethnic groups such as African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans seem more prone to fall into) have direct effects on intellectual development. For example, a family's poverty status and lack of adequate income may mean that many children from low income families are undernourished, which may inhibit brain growth and make them listless and inattentive. Furthermore, economic hardship creates psychological distress— a strong dissatisfaction with life's conditions that makes lower-income adults edgy and irritable and reduces their capacity to be sensitive, supportive, and highly involved in their children's learning activities. Also, low-income parents are often poorly educated themselves and may have neither the knowledge or money to provide their children with age-appropriate books, toys, or other experiences that contribute to an intellectually stimulating home environment. When low SES parents do provide stimulating home environment, the children do perform better on IQ tests and later show intrinsic interest in scholastic achievement. Furthermore, carefully conducted cross-ethnic adoption studies have shown that the adoptees obtained an average of an IQ 6 points lower than their white adopted sibling, but 6 points higher above the average of white population and 15 to 20 points higher than those raised in low-income African American communities.This displays that the African American IQ scores weren't majorly due to genetic differences and that they actually performed just as well as other children in similar families.

What are the main findings from the Takeuchi paper regarding internet use, brain structure, and verbal intelligence?

They found that increased internet use was associated with decreased verbal intelligence and smaller volume increases in widespread brain areas after a few years. These brain areas were related to language processing, attention and executive function, emotion, and reward. They found that a large area where regional gray matter decreased in response to internet use were the left perisylvian region, hippocampus, lateral prefrontal regions, and cerebellum, which may be associated with a decrease in verbal intelligence. They also discussed that more research needs to be done to see if internet use causes decreases in emotion and reward areas due to it causing things such as depression and impulsivity. Furthermore, they discuss that in younger children there was a positive association between white matter volume and the opposite in older children, meaning that perhaps the cumulative effects of longer-term internet use in older subjects may erase any positive association that younger children experienced. However, different age groups (such as the elderly) could experience different results (such as better cognitive functioning and moods)

What do your textbook authors mean when they say that brain development is plastic? What does it mean to say that experience is critical for brain development? Give an example.

When the authors say that brain development is plastic, they're talking about the capacity for change. The brain is in a developmental state that has the potential to be shaped by experience. The development of the brain early in life is not due entirely to the unfolding of the maturational program, but is instead the results of both a biological program and early experience. When they say experience is critical for brain development, it's in a sense referring to the senses and the brains critical period in which if the neurons for that sense aren't stimulated they then undergo synaptic pruning and can no longer function; thus, that sense can no longer function because of the lack of experience that was needed to strengthen its neural connections. For example, (according to animal research, we can assume) that if we reared children in the dark, the child would experience atrophy of the retina and neurons, and if the darkness lasted longer than a year then the damage would be irreversible.

Why is this picture funny? Explain.

Young children spend around the first 2 years of life figuring out "object permanence." The realization that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable through the other senses. This picture is funny because the infant looks confused— as if it can't believe that you don't actually go anywhere when playing peekaboo. For adults, this seems obvious that we don't go anywhere. But for young children, who must discover how the world works in many ways during the first few years, believe that once the object (or person) is out of sight and reach, it may no longer exist. This game of peekaboo helps babies test and re-test this fundamental principle of existence.

What are the main findings from the Hegmann-von Arx et al. paper on comparability of intelligence test scores?

the main findings from the paper concluded that on the sample level, composite intelligence test scores were strongly correlated and provides evidence for the notion that all intelligence tests seem to measure a similar construct (general intelligence). On the individual level they found that 62% to 88% of the children obtained comparable test scores and that the use of confidence intervals (90 or 95%) and qualitative nominal intelligence levels can increase the soundness of conclusions. But they concluded that examiners can assume that their decision to administer a specific intelligence test does not lead to systematically higher or lower test scores. Instead, differences in intelligence test scores seem to be largely due to nonspecific effects, including unexplained error and interactions between an examinee and the test situation Therefore, examiners should assume that intelligence scores are pretty consistent across tests, but should still use two tests when stakes are high for intelligence testing since there is error