Psychology 315 Midterm 2

recursion

"sally met joey" "joey was walking to school" "joey's school is on the other side of the filed" "the filed belongs to mr. smith"...."sally met joey while he was walking to school in the other side of mr. smith's field"

bioecological model

Brofenbrenner's bioecological model of human development differentiates among interconnected systems, from the microsystem (the immediate environment) to the macrosystem (the culture), that influences children's development overtime a fundamental feature of the macro system is its opportunity structure-the economic resources it offers and people's understanding of those resources opportunities for members of a cultural community can vary depending on gender, income, and other factors and are reflected by the dominant adult roles within that cultural community child socialization practices in particular microsystems serve to prepare children for these adult roles thus traditional gender-typing practices perpetuate as well as reflect the existing opportunity structures forewoman and men in a particular community at a particular time in history

gender

a more neutral term that refers to simply one's social categorization as either female or male

transgender

a person whose gender identity does not match the person's genetic sex; includes individuals who identify either with the other sex, with both sexes or with neither sex

intelligence as numerous processes

a third view envisions intelligence as comprising numerous, district process information-processing analyses of how people solve intelligence test items and how they perform everyday intellectual tasks such as reading, writing, and arithmetic reveal that a great many processes are involved these include remembering, perceiving, attending, comprehending, encoding, associating, generalizing, planning, reasoning, forming concepts, solving problems, generating and applying strategies and so on viewing intelligence as "many processes" allows more precise specification of the mechanisms in evolved in intelligent behaviour than do approaches that view it as a "single trait" or "several abilities"

conversational skills

children's conversational skills lag well behind their burgeoning language skills much of very young children's speech is directed to themselves rather than to another person and this is not true just in solitary play, as much as half of young children's speech in the company of other children or adults is addressed to themselves Vygotsky believed that this private speech of young children serves an important regulatory function: children talk to themselves as a strategy to organize their actions gradually private speech is internalized as thought and children become more capable or mentally organizing their behaviour so they no longer nee to talk out loud to themselves when young children converse with other children their conversations tend to be egocentric Piaget labelled young children's talk with their peers as collective monologues-conversation between children that involves a series of non sequiturs, the content of each child's turn having little or nothing to do with what the other child has said gradually children's capacity for sustained conversation increases e.g. in a longitudinal study of parent-child conversations of four children from the age of 21 to 36 months, they found that the proportion of children's utterances that were on the same topic and added new information to what the adult has just said more than doubled, in contrast the proportion of utterances on unrelated topic fell dramatically a particular aspect of young children's conversations that changes dramatically in the preschool period is the extent to which they talk about the past at most 3 year olds conversations include brief references to past events in contrast 5 year olds produce narratives-descriptions of past events that have the form of a story one thing that makes longer, more coherent narratives possible is better understanding of the basic structure of stories parents actively assist their children to develop the ability to produce coherent accounts of past events by providing what has been referred to as scaffolding for their children's narratives an effective way to structure children's conversations about he past is to ask them elaborative questions, that is, questions that enable them to say something-anything-that advances the story the parent's questions help the child thick about the event and the parent also provides a conversational model those toddlers whose parents scaffold their early conversations by asking useful, elaborative questions produce better narratives on their own a few years later a crucial aspect of becoming a good conversational partner is the pragmatic development that allows children to understand how language is used to communicate such understanding is essential with utterances that require listeners to go beyond the words they are hearing to grasp their actual meaning-as in instances of rhetorical questioning, sarcasm, irony, and the use of hyperbole or understatement tomato a point children's pragmatic abilities develop over the course of the preschool years, facilitating communication with adults and peers in particular they learn to take the perspective of their conversational partner kindergarten aged listeners are able to make use of conversational partner's perspective (e.g. by considering what info relevant to the conversation the partner does or doesn't have) to figure out what the partner means and to provide a pertinent response the development of this ability is related to children's level of executive function; as children become more able to control their tendency to assume their own perspective, it becomes easier for them to take the perspective of a conversational partner children also learn to use info other than words to interpret meaning for instance older preschoolers can exploit the vocal affect of an ambiguous statement to figure out a speaker's intention e.g. when presented with two birds-one intact and one broken-an directed to "look at the bird" 4 year olds (but not 3 year olds) looked at the intact bird when the instruction was given with positive affect and at the broken bird when the instruction was given with negative affect children's growing understanding of narrative structure and their emerging ability to take other people's perspectives are crucial components in the development of their conversational skills collective monologs-children "talk to each other" while really talking to themselves; decreases by age 3 and disappears shortly thereafter talking about the past-very little before age 3; robust by age 5; aided by parent/caregiver scaffolding pragmatic development-increases as executive function increases; kids must pay attention to more than one aspect of language at a time e.g. "look at superman" :) "look at superman" :( (superman is broken) kids start to look at the correct stimulus around age 4 e.g. the language play of kindergarten children Ely and McCabe play of all types is important for different developmental skills "language play" may help kids acquire adult language research question: does children's play correlate with their literacy and metalinguistic development? population: 20, 5 year olds research setting: naturalistic observation, structured observations, and interviews measurements: "language play" in natural and structured settings, word definitions, Test or Early Reading Ability (TERA), riddle explanation task results: 23.2% of children' speech included language play; language play correlated with riddle explicit; riddle correlated with Early Reading Ability

androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS)

condition during prenatal development in which androgen receptors malfunction in genetic males, impeding the formation of male external genitalia; in these cases the child may be born with female external genitalia

congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)

condition during prenatal development in which the adrenal glands produce high levels of androgens; sometimes associated with masculinization of external genitalia in genetic females and sometimes associated with higher rates of masculine-stereotyped play in genetic females

social role theory

different expectations for each gender stem from the divisions of labour between men and women in a given society to the extent that family and occupational roles are allocated on the basis of gender, different behaviours (roles) are expected of women and men (as well as of boys and girls) e.g. the traditional exclusion of women from many occupations in North America and similar societies; women are under-represented in politics, business, science, technology, etc.; in turn girls were not expected to develop interests and skills that lead toward professions in those fields thus similar to the bioecological model, social role theory highlights ways that institutionalized roles impose both opportunities and constraints on people's behaviour and beliefs in the home, schools, the labour force, and political institutions

non-human animals

even their most basic linguistic achievements come only after a great deal of concentrated human effort, whereas human children master the rudiments of their language with little explicit teaching while the most advanced non-human communicators do combine symbols, their utterances show limited evidence of syntactic structure which is a defining feature of language only the human brain acquires a communicative system with the complexity, structure and generativity of language

neuroscience approaches

focus on testing whether and how hormones and brain functioning relate to variations in gender development

early word production

gradually infants begin to say some of the words they understand, with most producing their first words between 10 and 15 months the words a child is able to say are referred to as the child's productive vocabulary an infant's first word can be any specific utterance consistently used to refer to something or to express something infants' early word productions are limited by their ability to pronounce words clearly enough that an adult can recognize them to make life easier for themselves, infants adopt a variety of simplification strategies e.g. they leave out difficult bits of words (banana to nana), they substitute easier sounds for hard to say ones (bubba for brother, wabbit for rabbit), sometimes they reorder parts of words to put an easier sound at the beginning of the word (pasketti for spaghetti) the early productive vocabularies of children in the US and Canada include names for people (parents, siblings, pets, themselves), objects (cookie, juice, ball) and events from the child's everyday life (up, bye-bye, night-night) important modifiers are also used (mine, hot, all gone) many infants first words referred to specific people or are sound effects nouns predominate in the early productive vocabulary , one reason for this may be that because nouns label entities - whereas verbs represent relations among entities - the meanings of nouns are easier to pick up from observation than are the meanings of verbs similarly words that are easier to picture-that are more imageable-are easier for infants and toddlers to learn another reason is that mothers engage in frequent bouts of object-labelling for their infants-"look there's a turtle! Do you see the turtle?"-and the proportion of nouns in very young children's vocabularies is related to the proportion nouns their mother's speech to them significantly the pattern of object labelling my mothers differs across cultures and contexts e.g. in the context of toy play Korean mothers use more verbs than nouns, a pattern very different from that observed in English-speaking mothers, and indeed infants in Korea learn nouns and verbs at the sane rate, unlike English learning infants holophrastic period-the period when children begin using the words in their small productive vocabulary one word at a time, the child typically expresses a "whole phrase" (a whole idea) with a single word e.g. a child saying "drink!" to express the desire for a glass of juice children who produce only one-word utterances are not limited to single ideas, they manage to express themselves by stringing together successive one-word utterances e.g. girl with eye infection "ow" "eye" overextension-the use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate e.g. using "dog" for any four-legged animal, "daddy" for any man, or "hot" for any reflective metal most overextensions represent an effort to communicate rather than a lack of knowledges demonstrated by comprehension tests (what children wan tot talk about quickly outstrips the number of words in their limited vocabularies e.g. children were shown pairs of pictures of entities for which they generally used the same label-dog and sheep both of which they referred to as "dog"-but when asked to point to the sheep they chose the correct animal, thus these children understood the meaning of the word "sheep" but because it was not in their productive vocabulary they used a related word that they knew how to say in order to talk about the animal

arithmetic

humans do have evolutionary mechanisms for counting approximate number system: -differentiating between two quantities -Weber ratio limits how close these quantities can be: 1:2 in early infancy 2:3 later in infancy 7:8 or 8:9 by adulthood (is there more yellow or blue space) (10:11 is above adults Weber ratio so it is challenging) precise number system: -exact quantities up to 3 without counting how well children learn arithmetic depends on the strategies that they use,the precision of their representations of numerical magnitudes and their understanding of basic mathematical concepts and principles

individual differences

individual differences in reading ability tend to be stable over time children who have relatively advanced reading skills when they enter kindergarten tend to be better readers through elementary, middle and high school genetic and environmental influences are mutually reinforcing: parents who are good and frequent readers are likely to provide both genes and environment that make it likely that their children will be relatively good readers when they are young, which makes it more likely that the children will seek out reading opportunities, which will further improve their reading and so on

mathematics anxiety

many children experience mathematics anxiety-a negative emotional state that leads to fear and avoidance of math such anxiety can be evident as early as grade 1 and for many people presents a lifelong problem math evokes more anxiety than other school subjects probably because of the unambiguous right/wrong status of answers to many math problems, the widespread belief that math is closely linked to intelligence, and the frustrating periods with no apparent progress that math learning often entails math anxiety is considerably more prevalent in girls than in boys this difference is likely due to stereotype threat, not due to actual gender differences in math ability-situational predicament in which people feel themselves at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group e.g. spencer, steele and quinn -females given a challenging math task in two halves: 1. "this half of the test has been shown to produce gender differences" 2. "this half of the test has not been shown to produce gender differences" -females and males performed equally in the no differences condition -males performed better in the gender differences condition this same pattern has been observes in kids that are not old enough to understand gender stereotypes e.g. galdi, cadinu and tomasetto -three groups of 6 year old boys and girls asked to colour pictures before taking a math test - control condition (landscape) -boy succeeding on math (girl failing) -girl succeeding on math (boy failing) -girls were negatively affected when they coloured a picture of a girl failing -boys were not affected at all by the manipulation the feelings of dread that math can inspire contribute to the negative outcomes that are feared; a likely reason that the anxiety reduces the working memory resources needed to solve mathematics problems when presented with math tasks people with math anxiety show both unusually great activity on the right side of the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in processing negative emotions, and depressed activity in brain areas crucial to working memory kids worry more about math than any other subject in school: -answers to math questions are unambiguously right or wrong -many people believe that math ability is more strongly linked to intelligence than other skills math anxiety may become a lifelong problem for many parents and teachers who are themselves anxious about math tend to convey their beliefs and feelings to their children; the problem seems to be especially great for girls whose parents and teachers are pessimistic about girls' math abilities one way to reduce anxiety is to have students write a brief description of their emotions just before taking a test; such expressive writing reduces anxiety an boosts performance in a variety of areas in which negative emotions interfere with learning and performance including math putting the negative thoughts on paper might help students think about the situation more objectively and thus allow them to concentrate on the math problems even among children with math anxiety, most learn the basics reasonably well, however, the learning process goes seriously awry with certain children who suffer from the general difficulty in thinking about numbers that is known as mathematics disability

alternative perspectives on intelligence

many important aspects of intelligence are not measured by IQ tests they do no directly examine other abilities that seem to be inherent parts of intelligence: creativity, social understanding, knowledge of ones own strengths and weaknesses, etc. this perspective has led Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg to formulate theories of intelligence that encompass a wider range of human abilities than do traditional theories Gardener's theory of multiple intelligence-people have at least 8 types of intelligence necessary for functioning and survival; not based on test scores evidence for Gardner's approach: 1. these areas of intelligence have different developmental patterns (emerge at different ages) 2. damage to a specific brain area may impact only one type of intelligence and not others influence on education: children learn best via instructional techniques that utilize their strong areas Gardner labelled his approach multiple intelligences theory-its basic claim is that people possess eight kinds of intelligence: the linguistic, logical and mathematical, and spatial abilities emphasized in previous theories and measured on OQ tests, as well as musical, naturalistic, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal and interpersonal abilities Gardner used several types of evidence to arrive at this set on intelligences one involves deficits shown by people with brain damage e.g. some patients with brain damage function well in most respects but have no understanding of other people this phenomenon suggested that interpersonal intelligence was distinct from other types of intelligence another type of evidence was the existence of prodigies-people who from early life, show exceptional ability in one area but not necessarily in others (e.g. Mozart) the existence of highly specialized musical talents provides evidence for viewing musical ability as a separate intelligence although Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences is backed by less supporting evidence than traditional theories of intelligence, its optimistic message-that children have a variety of strengths on which parents and teachers can build-has led to its having a large influence on education Sternberg's theory of successful intelligence-envisions intelligence as "the ability to achieve success in life, given one's personal standard, within one's sociocultural context" in his view, success in life reflects people's ability to build on their strengths, to compensate for their weaknesses and to select environments in which they can succeed Sternberg proposed that success in life depends on 3 types of abilities: analytic (involve the linguistic, mathematical, and spatial skills that are measured by traditional intelligence tests), practical (involve reasoning about everyday problems, such as how to resolve conflicts with other people) an creative (involve intellectual flexibility and innovation that allow adaption to novel circumstances) intelligence and success in life clearly involve a broader range of capabilities that traditional intelligence tests measure, and measuring these broader capabilities may allow a more encompassing assessment of intelligence Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences: 1. linguistic intelligence-sensitivity to the meanings and sounds of words; mastery of syntax; appreciation of the ways language can be used (poet, political speaker, teacher) 2. logical-mathematical intelligence-understanding of objects and symbols, of the actions that can be performed on them, and the relations between these actions; ability for abstraction; ability to identify problems and seek explanations (mathematician, scientist) 3. spatial intelligence-capacity to perceive the visual world accurately, to perform transformations upon perceptions, and to re-create aspects of visual experience in the absence of physical stimuli; sensitivity to tension, balance, and composition; ability to detect similar patterns (artist, engineer, chess master) 4. musical intelligence-sensitivity to individual tones and phrases of music; an understanding of ways to combine tones and phrases into larger musical rhythms and structures; awareness of emotional aspects of music (musician, composer) 5. naturalistic intelligence-sensitivity to and understanding of plants, animals, and other aspects of nature (biologist, farmer, conservationist) 6. bodily-kinesthetic intelligence-use on one's body in highly skilled ways for expressive or goal-directed purposes; capacity to handle objects skillfully (dancer, athlete, actor) 7. intrapersonal intelligence-access to one's own feelings; ability to draw on one's emotions to guide and understand one's behaviour (novelist, therapist, parent) 8. interpersonal intelligence-ability to notice and make distinctions among the moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions of other people and potentially to act on this knowledge (political leader, religious leader, parent, teacher, therapist)

morphemic development

preschool children begin applying morphemic rules to words engage in overregularization

gender dysphoria disorder

psychiatric diagnosis included in the DSM-5 to refer to children who identify with the other gender and indicate cross-gender-typed interests

gender typing

refers broadly to the process of gender socialization and development the process of acquiring understanding of gender types

affiliation

tendency to affirm connection with others through being emotionally open, empathetic or cooperative the traditional feminine role stresses affiliation over assertion, with corresponding emphases on interpersonal sensitivity, supportiveness and affection

sex

tends to imply biological origins for any differences between males and females used only when referring explicitly to biological processes such as those involving sex hormones or genetic sex

pragmatic development

the acquisition of knowledge about how language is used

phonological development

the acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language the first step in children's language learning before birth to adolescence learn to differentiate (perceive) sounds of native language most phonological development complete by 10 months

comprehension

the point of learning to read individual words is to comprehend the text in which the words appear reading comprehension is fostered by: 1. mental models-mental representation of the idea in a text 2. comprehension monitoring-paying attention to what you do and don't understand in a text these metalinguistic skills improve with age reading comprehension involves forming a mental model to represent the situation or idea being depicted in the text and continuously updating it as new information appears all the types of mental operations that influence cognitive development in general-basic processes, strategies, metacognition (knowledge about peoples thinking) and content knowledge-also influence the development of reading comprehension basic processes such as encoding (identification of key features of an object or event) and automatization (executing a process with minimal demands on cognitive resources) are crucial to reading comprehension children who are able to identify the key features of stories will understand the story better, and children who are able to automatically identify the key features of words will have more cognitive resources left to devote to comprehension fast accurate word identification correlates positively with reading comprehension at all points from grade 1 though adulthood development of reading comprehension is also aided by acquisition of reading strategies e.g. good readers proceed slowly when they need to master written material in depth and speed up when they need only a rough sense of it proficiency in making such adjustments develops surprisingly late, not until around 14 years old increasing metacognitive knowledge also contributes to improved reading comprehension with age and experience, readers increasingly monitor their ongoing understanding and reread passages they do not understand such comprehension monitoring differentiates good readers from poor ones at all ages from grade 1 through adulthood another powerful influence on the development of reading comprehension is increasing content knowledge relevant content knowledge frees cognitive resources for focusing on what is new or complex in the text and allows reader to draw reasonable inferences about information left unstated the path to string or weak reading comprehension begins even before children start school hearing stories told or read by their parents helps preschoolers learn how such stories tend to go, facilitating their understanding of new stories once they read themselves the amount that parents read to their children during the preschool years also partially accounts for the differences between the reading comprehensions skills of children from middle and low-income families encouraging lower-income parents to actively engage their children in the reading process such as by asking them to relate what is being read to their own experiences or to explain the character's goal and motivations helps even more than the parents just simply reading to them daily once children enter school the amount of material they read varies greatly and has a large effect on their reading comprehension high reading ability leads children to read more; children who read more, in turn show greater gains over time in reading comprehension than do children of equal ability who read less reading problems: 1. dyslexia: -reading ability is lower than what would be expected based on IQ -difficulty with left/right, direction, background noise -not just mirror writing/letter reversal -worse in deep orthographies -affects 5-17% of the population -causes-genetics, phonological deficits (neural level) (old theory-visual impairment) 2. alexia: -acquired dyslexia

assertion

the tendency to take action on behalf of the self through competitive, independent or aggressive behaviours the traditional masculine role in most societies stresses self-assertion over interpersonal affiliation, with corresponding emphases on independence, competition, and task orientation

cultural influences

theories that address the larger cultural and social-structural factors that can shape gender development two relevant theories that reflect this approach are the bioecological model and social role theory; both emphasize how cultural practices mirror and perpetuate the gender divisions that are prevalent in a society

ongoing debates in language development

theorists have countered Chomsky's argument about the universality of language structure by pointing out that there are also universals in children's environments parents all over the world need to communicate about certain things with their children, and these things are likely to be reflected in the language that children learn (there is remarkable overlap in the earliest words acquired across three diverse cultures) these similarities reflect what parents want to talk about with their infants, and what infants want to communicate about virtually everything about language development is influenced by its communicative function children are motivated to interact with others, to communicate their own thoughts and feelings, and to understand what other people are trying to communicate with them according to this position, children gradually discover the underlying regularities in language and its use by paying close attention to the multitude of clues available in the language they hear, the social context in which language is use, and the intentions of the speaker according to the strongly nativist view expoused by Chomsky, the cognitive abilities that support language development are highly specific to language language is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains, it is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently the modularity hypothesis-proposes that the human brain contains an innate, self-contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning an alternative view suggests that the learning mechanisms underlying language development are actually quite general although these language abilities might be innate, their evolutionary development was not restricted to language learning e.g. researchers have demonstrated that the distributional learning mechanisms also help infants track sequences of musical notes, visual shapes, an human actions similarly the fast-mapping mechanisms that support rapid word learning are also used by toddlers to learn facts about objects also relevant is the fact that the less-is-more hypothesis for the critical period for language development is not tied specifically to language the ability to extract small chunks of information is likely useful in other domains as well, such as music, which also contains small pieces (notes, chords) organized into higher-level structures (melody, harmony) finally, recent theories concerning developmental language disorders invokes aspects of general cognitive function, not just language one influential perspective oriented around computational modelling is connectionism-a types of information processing theory that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units connectionist researchers have developed computer simulations of various aspects of cognitive development, including language acquisition the software learns from experience, gradually strengthening certain connections among until in ways that mimic children's developmental progress connectionist models are always open to criticism regarding the features that were built into the model in the first place (e.g. do they have the same "innate" constraints as infants?) and how well the input provided to them matches the input received by real children connectionist account-opposite of nativism children learn language the same way that they learn everything else (general purpose mechanisms) children learn language with repeated input (the same way they learn other patterns) computer simulations show that language can be learned with repetitive input interactionist account-there is some initial basis to learn language at birth this initial basis is elaborated by experience social communication drives language development focuses on word learning (less on grammar)

gender-typed

traditionally associated with a given person's gender behaviours associated with a particular gender

cross-gender-typed

traditionally associated with the gender other than that of a given person behaviours associated with the other gender e.g. playing with dolls is gender-typed for girls and cross-gender-typed for boys

conceptual understanding of arithmetic

4 year olds understand the commutative law of addition, the principle that adding a + b is the same as adding b + a not until years later, however, do they master more advanced arithmetic concepts such as mathematical equality-the idea that the values on the two sides of the equal sign must balance (for almost all problems that young children face numbers only appear to the left of the equal sign and it simply serves as a signal to start adding) as late as grade 4 most children answer problems in which there are numbers on both sides of the equal sign incorrectly in many cases, children's hand gestures reveal that they have somewhat better understanding of mathematical equality than is revealed by their answers or explanations children who initially show such gesture-speech mismatches-in which their gesturing conveys more information than their verbal statements, learn more from instruction on mathematical equality problems than do peers whose gesturing and speech before the instruction were consistent (that is those who said "12" and pointed only to the three numbers preceding the equal sign vs. those that pointed to the the numbers preceding and the one number following the equal sign, an implicit recognition that the fourth number might be important) the gestures play a causal role in learning as well: children who are encouraged to gesture appropriately while explaining answers to mathematical equality problems learn more than children encouraged not to gesture there is a positive relation between gesture-speech mismatches and subsequent learning variability of thought and action (e.g. generating diverging gestures and speech or advancing multiple explanations of a phenomenon rather than just one) often indicates heightened readiness to learn

a proposed resolution

Carroll's three-tiered model: 1. general intelligence (g) 2. basic intelligence-fluid and crystallized intelligence 3. a set of specific abilities-e.g. perception, generalizartion, problem solving John B. Carroll proposed a grand integration: the three-stratum their of intelligence at the top of the hierarchy is g; in the middle are several moderately general abilities (which include both fluid and crystallized intelligence and other competencies similar to Thurston's seven primary mental abilities); at the bottom are many specific processes general intelligence influences all moderately general abilities, and both general intelligence and the moderately general abilities influence the specific processes intelligence is a single trait, a few abilities and many processes intelligence can be viewed as a single general ability to think and learn; as several moderately general abilities, such as crystallized and fluid intelligence; or as a collection of numerous specific skills, process and content knowledge all three levels are useful for understanding intelligence

theoretical issues in language development

Chomsky and the nativist view (behaviourist account) behaviourists like Skinner believed that development is a function of learning through reinforcement and punishment of over behaviour Skinner argued that parents teach children to speak by means of the same kind of reinforcement techniques that are used to train animals to perform normal behaviours (verbal behaviour book) caregiver support language learning through reinforcement parents correct children when they make mistakes; parents reward children when they are correct for this to be true parents would need to correct every single mistake that their children make which is just unrealistic Noam Chomsky countered Skinner by pointing out some of the reasons why language cannot be learned through the processes of reinforcement and punishment one reason is we can understand and produce sentences that we have never heard before (generatively) similarly how could children produce words that they have never heard before like "wented" and "mouses"? the explanation of such instances must be that we know details about the structure of our native language that we have not been taught-facts that are unobservable and thus impossible to reinforce-contrary to Skinner's proposal Chomsky proposed that humans are born with a Universal Grammar, a hard-wired set of principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages Chomsky's account is consistent with the fact that despite many surface differences, the underlying structures of the world's languages are fundamentally similar this also provides an explanation for why most children learn language with exceptional rapidity, while non-humans (who presumably lack a Universal Grammar) do not (Nativist account) a dedicated language module has evolved in human universal grammar specific brain areas are used for language all normal developing children acquire language the first learned language looks different from the second language learned at the neural level

influence of society

Flynn effect-IQ scores have consistently risen around the world Flynn effect prevalence-in low SES communities, in less developed countries, among those with lower IQ scores possible reasons-increased nutrition, increased health, better formal education will the Flynn effect continue?-probably not-limits on storage space and processing speed, Flynn effect is not evident in the higher strata of IQ scores or in highly developed countries one reflection of social influences is that in many countries throughout the world average IQ scores have consistently risen over the past 80 years, a phenomenon that has been labelled the Flynn effect given that the gene pool has not changed appreciably over this period, the increase in IQ scores must be due to changes in society they key factors of the Flynn effect are improvements to the lives of low income families; such as improved nutrition, health, and formal education these researchers point to evidence that the increase in IQ scores has been greatest among those in the lower part of the IQ score and income distributions an alternative plausible explanation for the increases in IQ scores is increased societal emphasis on abstract problem solving and reasoning supporting this interoperation is the fact that scores on tests of fluid intelligence, which reflects abstract problem solving an reasoning, have increased much more than scores on tests of crystallized intelligence one source of these recent increases in fluid intelligence might be experience with new technologies, such as video games poverty hinders intellectual development

cognitive developmental theory

Kohlberg maintained that children's understanding of gender involves a three-stage process that occurs between approximately 2 to 6 years of age first by around 30 months children acquire a gender identity-they categorize themselves as either a girl or a boy; however they do not yet realize that gender is permanent e.g. young children could believe that a girl could grow up to be a father the second stage which begins at around 3 or 4 is gender stability-children come to realize that gender remains the same over time (I am a girl and I'll always be a girl); however they re still not clear that gender is independent of superficial appearance and think that a boy who has put on a dress and now looks like a girl has become a girl the basic understanding of gender is completed in the third stage, around 6 years old, when children achieve gender constancy-the understanding that gender is invariant across situations (I am a girl and nothing I do will change that) once gender constancy is attained, children begin to seek out and attend to same-gender models to learn how to behave (since I am a girl I should like to do girl things, so I need to find out what those are) the attainment of gender constancy occurs at more or less the same age as success on conservation problems (a ball of clay that has been mashed flat is still the same amount of clay; a girl who gets her hair cut short and starts wearing baseball shorts instead of dresses is still a girl) acquiring gender constancy increases the likelihood of many gender-typed behaviours

risk factors and intellectual development

a variety of factors in combination contribute to the problem of poor intellectual development Arnold Sameroff and his colleagues developed an environmental risk scale based on 10 features of the environment that put children at risk for low IQ scores each child's risk score is a simple count of the number of major risks facing the child risk factors related to IQ scores: 1. head of household un employed or working in low-status occupation 2. mother did not complete high school 3. at least four children in the family 4. no father or stepfather at home 5. African-American family 6. large number of stressful life events in the past few years 7. rigidity of parents' beliefs about child development 8. maternal anxiety 9. maternal mental health 10. negative mother-child interactions the average IQ score of children whose environments did not include any of the risk factors was about 115; the average score of children whose environments included six or more risk factors was around 85 the sheer number of risks in the child's environment was a better predictor of the child's IQ score than was the presence of any particular risk this study also provided an interesting perspective on why children's IQ scores are highly stable it is not just that the children's genes remain constant; over time their environment tends to remain fairly constant as well environmental risks seem to have both immediate and long term effects on children's intellectual development (if two children have the same IQ score at age 4 but one child ;lives in an environment with more risk factors, the child facing more risks will ,at age 13, probably have an IQ score lower than that of the other child) high IQ scores are associated with favourable environments as much as low scores are associated with adverse ones this is true for children from low-income families as well as for children in general low-income parents who, relative to others with similar incomes, are responsive to their children and provide them with safe play areas and varied learning materials have children with higher IQ scores thus, high-quality parenting can help alleviate the risks imposed by poverty

effects of poverty

adequacy of family income for meeting family needs is related to children's IQ scores the more years children spend in poverty, the lower their scores tend to be poverty exerts negative effects on intellectual development in numerous ways chronic in adequate diet early in life can disrupt brain development; missing meals on a given day can can impair intellectual functioning on that day; reduced access to health services can result in a greater number of absences from school; conflicts between adults in the household can produce emotional turmoil that interferes with learning; insufficient intellectual stimulation can lead to a lack of background knowledge needed to understand new material; etc. in those developed countries where the income gap between the rich and the poor is the widest, such as the U.S., the difference between the intellectual achievement of children from rich and poor homes is much larger than in countries where the gap is smaller, such as Canada the key difference is that poor families in the U.S. are much poorer relative to others in their society, and their counterparts in many other developed countries

measuring intelligence

although intelligence is usually viewed as an invisible capacity to think and learn, any measure of it must be based on observable behaviour thus when we say that a person is intelligent, we mean that the person acts in intelligent ways intelligence testing is highly controversial critics argue that measuring a quality as complex and multi-faceted as intelligence requires assessing a much broader range of abilities than are assessed by current intelligence tests; that current intelligence tests are culturally biased; and that reducing a person's intelligence to a number (the IQ score) is simplistic and ethically questionable advocates argue that intelligence tests are better than any alternative method for predicting important outcomes such as school grades, achievement test scores, and occupational success; that they are valuable for making decisions such as which children should be given special education; and that alternative methods for making educational decisions, such as evaluations by teachers or psychologists, may be subject to greater bias

metalinguistic knowledge

an understanding of the properties and function of language-that is an understanding of language as language knowledge about language and its properties adults have this, young language learners do not

influences of schooling

attending school makes children smarter e.g. children who were only slightly older but who had a year more schooling , did much better on IQ tests, than the slightly younger children in the grade below them average IQ and achievement test scores rise during the school year but not during summer vacation during the academic year schools provide children all backgrounds with relatively stimulating intellectual environments, but when school is not in session, fewer children from low SES families have the kinds of experiences that allow them to build up on what they learned to increase their academic achievement (their scores stay the same or drop whereas high SES tend to rise)

language development

by 5 y/o most children have mastered the basic structure of their native language or languages

generativity

by using the finite set of words in our vocabulary we can generate an infinite number of sentences expressing an infinite number of ideas

evolutionary psychology theory

certain behavioural tendencies occur because they helped humans survive during the course of evolution sex-linked dispositions evolved to increase the chances that women and men would successfully mate and protect their offspring more boys than girls tend to engage in physically active, rough and tumble, and competitive types of play many boys devote considerable effort to jockeying with their male peers for dominance in groups boys' play fighting may represent an evolved tendency to practice the competencies that were associated with male-male competition during human evolution a propensity to engage in physical aggression is thought to have provided reproductive advantages for males in competition with other males for resources, including access to females in contrast girls devote much effort to establishing and maintaining positive social relations, spend time in smaller groups of close female friends and tend to avoid open conflict in their interactions girls also engage in much more play-parenting, including play with dolls, than boys do these behaviours reflect evolved dispositions because maternal care in the form breastfeeding was required for infants' survival in addition nurturance and other affiliative behaviours may have increased the probability that their offspring would survive long enough to reproduce a number of its proposals regarding gender differences are controversial many of evolutionary psychology theory's claims about sex differences in personality traits cannot be tested some of the theory's explanations are based on circular reasoning (asserts its premise as its conclusion and therefore is a difficult argument to test)

word learning

children reach a productive vocabulary of 50 words or so by around 18 months at this point the rate of learning appears to accelerate leading to a "vocabulary spurt" there are multiple sources of support for learning new words some coming from the people around them and some generated by the children themselves

IQ scores as predictors of important outcomes

claims that an IQ score is a strong predictor of academic, economic and occupational success are based on solid evidence (strong positive correlations with school grades and achievement test performance , long-term educational outcomes; substantial relations between IQ score and performance in intellectually demanding occupations are present not only when the person is hired but for at least 10 years after entry into the occupation) in part the positive reaction between IQ score and occupational and economic success stems from the fact that standardized test scores serve as gatekeepers, determining which students gain access to the training and credentials required for entry into lucrative professions a child's IQ score is more closely related to the child's later occupational success than is the socioeconomic status of the child's family, the school the child attends, or any other variable studied these relations hold even at the top of the test score distribution ( the higher the test score the higher the subsequent achievement is likely to be) as strong as a predictor of academic, economic, and occupational success as an IQ scores, intelligence is far from the only influence a child's other characteristics such as motivation to succeed, conscientiousness, intellectual curiosity, creativity, physical and mental health, and social skills, also exert important influences e.g. self -discipline- the ability to inhibit actions, follow rules and avoid impulsive reactions-is more predictive of changes in report card marks between grades 5 and 9 than is IQ score, though IQ score is more predictive of changes in achievement test scores over the same period similarly "practical intelligence"-skills that are useful in everyday life but are not measured by traditional intelligence tests, such as accurately reading other people's emotions and intentions and motivating others to work effectively as a team-predicts occupational success beyond the influence of IQ score characteristics of the environment are similarly influential: parents' encouragement and modelling of productive careers predict their children's occupational success IQ scores are positively related to grades in school and achievement test performance, both at the time of the test and in the future, they are also positively related to occupational success in adulthood, however they are not the only influence on these outcomes

collaboration

coordination of assertion and affiliation in behaviour, which is associated with gender-role flexibility; more common among girls than boys although some children act in gender-stereotypical ways, many girls and boys are quite similar to one another in a wide variety of behaviours

strategies

counting skills do not equal mathematical skills; counting can be based on memorization (even kids that can count well may not know that 8 is larger than 5) e.g Odic et. al "developmental change in the acuity of approximate number and area representations" research question: does human development of area discrimination parallel that of number discrimination?" sample: 3 to 6 year olds variables of interest: age, number acuity, area acuity operationalization: dots array (number), blob arrays (area) findings: kids development of area acuity parallels that of number acuity; but area acuity is better throughout development arithmetic skills emerge around 4-5 years of age rudimentary techniques: finger counting, memorization more complex techniques around 6-7: counting from the larger addend, decomposition (3+9=3+10-1) like the Weber ratio, errors of small magnitude are harder to detect than differences of large magnitude (8x9=74 vs. 8x9=24) from 4 or 5 years when most children begin to learn arithmetic they use a variety of problem solving strategies the most common initial strategies are counting from one and retrieval (recalling answers from memory) when children begin to do arithmetic on a daily bias in kindergarten or grade 1 they add several new strategies one is counting from the larger addend (e.g. solving 3+9 by counting "9,10,11,12") another strategy is decomposition-which involves dividing a problem into two easier ones (e.g. solving 3+9 by thinking "3+10=13; 13-1=12") varied strategy use is present on all four arithmetic operations as children gain experience with he answers to single digit arithmetic problems, their strategy choices shift increasingly toward using retrieval of those answers the more often children generate the correct answer to a problem, regardless of the strategy they use to generate it, the more often they will be able to retrieve that answer, thereby avoiding the need to use slower counting strategies

generating written text

different types of written language: 1. alphabetic (english, french, russian, etc.)-symbols represent sounds shallow orthography (spanish, czech)-one symbol for one sound deep orthography (english)-more complicated symbol-sound relationships 2. syllabic (japanese, ethiopian)-symbols represent syllables 3. logographic (chinese)-symbols represent words writing requires focusing simultaneously on numerous goals, both low level and high level the low level goals include forming letters, spelling words, and using correct capitalization and punctuation the high level goals include making arguments comprehensible without the intonations and gestures that help us communicate when we speak, organizing individual points into a coherent framework and providing background information that readers need to understand the writing growth of writing proficiency reflects improvements in basic processes, strategies, metacognition, and content knowledge automatizing low-level skills, such as spelling and punctuation, aids writing not only because correct spelling and punctuation makes writing easier to understand but also because automatizing the low-level skills frees cognitive resources for pursuing the higher-level communicative goals of writing children's proficiency at low-level skills correlates positively with the quality of the children's essays acquisition of strategies also contributes to improvements in writing one common strategy is to sequence high-level goals in a standard organization or script-a set of actions or events that occurs repeatedly formulating outlines serves a similar purpose of dividing the task of writing into manageable parts metacognitive understanding pays several crucial roles in writing the most basic type of metacognitive understanding is recognizing that readers may not have all the same knowledge as the writer and that one therefore should include all the information that readers will need tallow them to grasp what is being said (good writers do this by high school age) a second crucial type of metacognitive knowledge involves understanding the need to plan one's writing rather than just jumping in and starting to write understanding the need for revision is a third key type of metacognitive knowledge asking children to reflect on the relative quality of essays written by other children and on why some essays are better than others can also improve writing content knowledge also plays a crucial role in writing, children generally write better when they are familiar with the topic than when they are not writing problems: dysgraphia-impaired letter writing; letter reversal/ mirror writing

shared and non-shared family environments

each child within a given family also encounters unique, non-shared environments a child whose interest or personality characteristics mirror those of one or both parents may receive more positive attention than other children in the family if homes that are extremely lacking in intellectual stimulation are excluded from consideration, such within-family variations in children's environments may have a greater impact on the development of intelligence than do between-family variations the influence of the non-shared environment increases with age, and the influence of the shared environment decreases with age, as children become increasingly able to choose their own friends and activities the relative influence if shared environments and genetics varies with family income among children from low-income families, the shared environment accounts for more of the variance in IQ scores and academic achievement than genetics does among children from middle and high income families the relative influence of shared environment and genetics is reversed

cognitive and motivational influences

emphasize the ways that children learn gender-typed attitudes and behaviours through observation, inference, and practice children form expectations about gender that guide their behaviour cognitive theories stress children's active self-socialization-individuals use their beliefs, expectations and preferences to guide how they perceive the world and the actions that they choose self-socialization occurs in gender development when children seek to behave in accord with their gender identity as a boy or a girl however cognitive theories also emphasize the role of the environment-the different role models, opportunities, and incentives that girls and boys might experience most psychological differences between men and women are likely not biological four cognitive theories have been proposed to explain gender differences: 1. cognitive developmental theory -children's gender-role development occurs in 3 stages 1. gender identity-by 3o months of age, categorize themselves as boy/girl 2. gender stability-emerges around 4 years, gender stay the same across time, unless something changes (e.g. clothing) 3. gender constancy-emerges around 6-7, superficial changes do not change gender 2. gender schema theory -starting in toddlerhood children begin to construct gender schemas; mental representations including everything the child knows about gender (memories, stereotypes) -children develop in-group/out-group biases according to gender (children prefer to learn from same-gender adults) 3. social identity theory -belief that gender identity is a child's most important identity -in-group bias-individuals and characteristics of the in-group are the best -in-group assimilation-children are socialized to assimilate to gender norms -biases and assimilation will be stringer for members of the dominant group (recall Baron's work on in-group biases in white vs. non-white participants???) -male biases/assimilation tend to be stronger (males more likely to endorse sexist beliefs) e.g. shell and Eisenberg -do kids choose toys based on the gender of the other kids playing with a toy? -68 4 year olds operationalization: 5 neutral toys, observation of children playing, observation of gender distribution while playing results: both boys and girls are more likely to play with neutral toys that are being used by same-gender peers 4. social cognitive theory -children use three techniques to learn gender roles: 1. tuition-direct teaching from parents/peers/caregivers 2. enactive experience-boys get positive feedback for 'acting like boys' and negative feedback for 'acting like girls' 3. observational learning-most common; seeing and encoding what others do these theories are not mutually exclusive; parts of each are likely true

biological influences

evolutionary approaches-evolution is important for understanding children's development however, there are different views regarding the proposal that females and males evolved different behavioural dispositions; two examples are evolutionary psychology theory and biosocial theory some basic psychological differences between boys and girls may arise from biological sex differences biological approaches to sex differences take many forms: 1. evolutionary theories a) evolutionary psychology theory: -sex differences arose for evolutionary advantage -evolutions main driver is reproductive success -boys rougher play styles may reflect evolutionary competition for resources/females -girls more affiliative nature may reflect nurture require for evolutionary success b) biosocial theory -there are physical differences between males and females (males greater size and strength and females child-bearing and nursing capacities -these physical differences drive psychological differences -but these physical differences are not that important anymore so gender differences could/should be collapsing 2. neuroscience theories a) hormones and brain structure cause differences -psychological gender differences may be caused by hormone and brain structure differences -androgens-steroid hormones occurring in males at higher levels than in females; affect prenatal development, especially nervous system development; may make males more tolerant of pain/roughness -brain structure-the corpus callosum is larger and denser in females; females use both halves of their brain for certain tasks in which males only use one half

biosocial theory

focuses in the evolution of physical differences between the sexes and proposes that these differences have behavioural and social consequences for much of human history the most important physical differences have been men's greater average size, strength and foot speed, and women's child-bearing and nursing capacities men's physical abilities gave them an advantage in activities such as hunting and combat and intern, tended to confer status and social dominance in society in contrast bearing and nursing children limited women;s mobility and involvement in many forms of economic subsistence such as hunting however according to biosocial theory, biology does not necessarily determine destiny nowadays in technological societies men;s strength and other physical qualities are not relevant for most means of subsistence e.g. strength is irrelevant for succeeding as a lawyer reproductive control and child care provide women greater flexibility to maintain their involvement in the labour force thus, according to biosocial theory both physical sex differences and social ecology shape the different gender roles assigned to men and women-as well as socialization of boys and girls evolutionary psychologists take issue with biosocial theory asserting that the body and the mind evolved together and that biosocial theory addresses only the body's impact on gender development in sum evolutionary psychology theory and biosocial theory bot acknowledge the importance of the physical differences between women and men, but evolutionary psychology theorists additionally argue for the impact of sex differences in evolved behavioural dispositions

later development

from 5 to 6 years of age on children continue to develop language skills although with less dramatic accomplishments school aged children become increasingly capable of reflecting upon and analyzing language, and they master more complex grammatical structures such as the use of passive constructions one consequence of schoolchildren's more reflective language skills is their increasing appreciation of the multiple meanings of words, which is responsible for the emergence of endless series of puns, riddles and jokes they are also able to learn the meaning of new words simply from hearing them defined, a factor that helps their comprehension vocabulary expand from 10,000 words at 6 years old to 40,000 words at fifth grade to 150,000 at college or university age

social identity theory

gender may be the most central social identity in children's lives children's commitment to gender as a school identity is most readily apparent through their primary affiliation with same-gender peers two influential processes that that occur when a person commits to an in-group are in group bias and in-group assimilation in-group bias refers to the tendency to evaluate individuals and characteristics associated with the in-group as superior to those associated with the out-group in-group bias is related to the process of in-group assimilation-whereby individuals are socialized to conform to the group's norms; that is peers expect in-group members to demonstrate the characteristics that define the in-group as a result children tend to become more gender-typed in their preferences as they assimilate into their same-gender peer groups social identity theory helps explain why gender-typing pressure tend to be more rigid for boy than for girls members of high-status groups usually are more invested in maintaining group boundaries than are members of low-status groups; in most societies males are accorded greater status and power than are females; consistent with social identity theory, boys are more likely than girls to initiate and maintain role and group boundaries; boys are more likely to endorse gender stereotypes and to hold sexist attitudes

qualities of the child

genetic contributors to intelligence-the genome has a substantial influence on intelligence this genetic influence varies greatly with age: it is moderate in early childhood and becomes large by adolescence and adulthood reflecting the same trend, the IQ scores of adopted children and those of biological parents become increasingly correlated as the children develop, but the scores of adopted children and their adoptive parents become less correlated over the course of development one reason for this increasing genetic influence is that some genetic processes do not exert their effects until late childhood or adolescence e.g. some connections linking areas in the brain that are distant from one another are not formed until adolescence and the extent of such connections reflects genetic influences another reason is that children's increasing independence with age allows them greater freedom to choose environments that are compatible with their own genetically based preferences but not necessarily with those of the parents who are raising them the genetic contribution to intelligence reflects small contributions from each of a very large number of genes, as well as complex interactions among them genotype-environment interactions-the environments children encounter are influenced by their genotype Scarr proposed that gene-environment relations involve three types of processes: passive, evocative, and active passive effects-of the genotype arise when children are raised by their biological parents these effects occur not because of anything the children do but because of the overlap between their parents' genes and their own e.g. children whose genotypes predispose them to enjoy reading are likely to be raised in homes with plentiful access to reading matter because their parents also like to read the passive effects of the genotype help explain why correlations between biological parents' and their children's IQ scores are higher when the children live with their biological parents than when they live with adoptive parents evocative effects-of the genotype emerge through children's eliciting or influencing other people's behaviour e.g. even if a child's parents are not avid readers, they will read more bedtime stories to a child who is interested in the stories than to one who is uninterested active effects-of the genotype involve children' choosing environments that they enjoy e.g. a high school student who likes reading will borrow books from the library an obtain books in other ways regardless of whether he or she was read to when young the evocative and active effects of the genotype help explain how children's IQ scores become more closely related over time to this of their biological parents, even if the children are adopted and never see their biological parents

grammar:a tool for building new words and sentences

human languages are generative-through the use of the finite set of word and morphemes in their native vocabulary individuals can create an infinite number of sentences and express and infinite number of ideas each language has a particular set of rules (and exceptions) that governs how linguistic elements cane combined the power language derives from the mastery of these regularities which allow individuals to produce and understand language beyond the specific words and sentences to which they have been exposed much of the research on this topic has focused on morphemes that are added to nouns and verbs e.g.in English nouns are made plural by adding -s young children recognize these formations and are able to generalize them to novel words e.g. one wug two wugs, since the children had never heard the word "wug" before their ability to produce the correct plural form for this totally novel word demonstrated that they could generalize beyond the other plurals they had previously heard evidence for generalization also comes from the way children treat irregular cases children initially use the correct regular forms of these words saying "men" for the plural of "man" and "went" for the past tense of "go" however they then start making occasional overregularization errors in which they treat irregular forms as if they were regular "mans" and "goed" before eventually mastering irregular forms children sometimes alternate between these overregularization errors and correct irregular forms parents play a limited role in their children's grammatical development they provide a model of grammatically correct speech they frequently fill in missing parts of their children's incomplete utterances but parents generally ignore even wildly ungrammatical mistakes accepting sentences such as "me no want go" it would be hard to do otherwise since so much of children's speech is like this ingeneral parents are more likely to correct factual errors than grammatical errors e.g. using artificial grammars-made up miniature languages-to determine which types of linguistic patterns infants are able to learn, after just brief exposure infants as young as 8 months can learn fairly complex patterns, generalizing beyond the specific items they have heard

continuity of IQ scores

if IQ is a consistent property of a person then the IQ scores that people obtain at different ages should be highly correlated longitudinal studies that have measured the same children's IQ scores at different ages have in fact shown impressive continuity from age 5 onward several variables influence the degree of stability of IQ scores over time the closer in time the IQ tests are given the more stability is found for any given length of time between tests, scores are most stable at older ages although a person's IQ scores at different ages tend to be similar the scores are rarely identical (change from around 7-13 points) these changes are due at least impart to random variation in factors such as the children's alertness and mood on the test days some of these changes however are not random verbal and nonverbal changes in IQ during the adolescent years are closely related to changes in brain structure some of these changes were predicted by reading ability: that is teenagers with higher reading ability at first assessment showed more improvement in verbal IQ than teenagers with poor reading skills changes in the child's environment, for instance through parental divorce or remarriage or moving to a better or worse neighbourhood, can also produce changes in IQ score short-term reliability is good-test-retest reliability over a short period of time long-term reliability is less consistent-infant IQ does not reliably predict child/adult IQ; child and adult IQ are correlated, but the correlation is lower with longer time intervals

adult influences on word learning

in addition to using infant directed speech (IDS) which makes word learning easier for infants, adults facilitate word learning by highlighting new words the stress new words or place them at the end of a sentence they tend to label objects that are already the focus of the child's attention, thereby reducing the uncertainty about the referent their repetition of words also helps, young children are more likely to acquire words their parents frequently use naming games in which parents ask children to point to a series of named items e.g. "where is your nose?" parents may facilitate their children's word learning by maintaining spatial consistency with the objects they are labelling, consistency in the visual environment helps children map words onto objects and events in that environment

gender schema theory

in contrast to Kohlberg's view that gender-typed interests emerge after gender constancy is achieved, gender schema theory hold that the motivation to enact gender-typed behaviour begins as soon as children can label other people's and their own gender-in other words when they are toddlers accordingly children's understanding of gender develops through their construction of gender schemas, metal representations incorporating everything the child knows about gender gender schemas include memories of one's own experiences with males and females, gender stereotypes transmitted directly by adults and peers, and messages conveyed indirectly through the media children use an in-group/out-group gender schema to classify other people as being either "the same as me" or not the motivation for cognitive consistency leads them to prefer, pay attention to and remember more about others of their own gender; as a consequence an own-gender schema is formed, consisting of detailed knowledge about how to do things that are consistent with one's own gender; simply learning that an unfamiliar object is "for my gender" makes children like it more children often look to their peers to infer gender-appropriate behaviour gender schemas are also responsible for biased processing and remembering of information about gender; children tend to remember more about what they observe from same-gender than from cross-gemder role models they also are more likely to accurately encode and remember information about story characters that behave in gender-consistent ways and to forget or distort information that is gender-inconsistent this tendency to retain information that is schema-consistent and to ignore or distort schema-inconsistent information helps perpetuate gender stereotypes tat have little or no basis in reality Liben and Bigler proposed that children use two filters when processing information about the world; one is the gender schema filter and the other is an interest filter children sometimes find a new toy attractive without initially evaluating its appropriateness for their gender; in these instances they use their interest filter to evaluate information furthermore children sometimes use their interest filter to modify their gender schemas (if I like this toy it must be something that is okay for my gender) although gender schemas are resistant to change, the contents of children' gender schemas can be modified through explicit instruction

hormones and brain functioning

in the study of gender development, much attention has been paid to the possible effects of androgens (class of stereos hormones that normally occur at higher levels in males than in females and that affect physical development and functioning from the prenatal period onward) a class of steroid hormones that includes testosterone during normal prenatal development the presence if androgens leads to the formation of male genitalia in genetic males; in their absence female genitalia are formed in genetic females androgens can also have organizing (potential result of certain sex-linked hormones affecting brain differentiation and organization during prenatal development or at puberty) or activating influences (potential result of certain fluctuations in sex-linked hormone levels affecting the contemporaneous activation of the nervous system and corresponding behavioural responses) on the nervous system organizing influences occur when certain sex-linked hormones affect brain differentiation and organization during prenatal development or at puberty e.g. sex-realted differences in prenatal androgens may influence the organization and functioning of the nervous system; in turn this may be related to later average gender differences in certain play preferences activating influences occur when fluctuations in sex-linked hormone levels influence the contemporaneous activation of certain brain and behavioural responses e.g. the body increases androgen production in response to perceived threats, with possible implications for gender differences in agression

intelligence as a single trait

intelligence formal definition-the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or challenging situations; the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment; the ability to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria intelligence predicts: 1. academic success 2. economic success 3. occupational success 4. success on standardized tests, which are often used as gatekeeper (the effects of intelligence are self-perpetuating) where does intelligence come from: 1. genetics-IQ scores are more similar between identical than between fraternal twins; IQ scores of adopted children are more similar to their biological parents 2. family environment-IQ scores negatively correlated with risk factors (low SES, low maternal education, etc.); IQ scores positively correlated with protective factors (high parental involvement, stimulating physical environment, etc.) 3. schooling-school improves children's intelligence; IQ scores are higher during the school year than in the summer; kids that miss the academic year cutoff have lower IQ scores than slightly older kids that made the cutoff some researchers view intelligence as a single trait that influences all aspects of cognitive functioning supporting this idea is the fact that performance on all intellectual tasks is positively correlated: children who do well on one task tend to do well on others too such positive correlations have led to the hypothesis that each of us possesses a certain amount of g, or general intelligence, and that g influences our ability to think and learn on all intellectual tasks measures of g, such as overall scores on intelligence tests, correlate positively with school grades and achievement test performance at the level of cognitive and brain mechanisms, g correlates with information-processing speed, speed of neural transmission and brain volume measures of g also correlate strongly with people's knowledge of subjects that may not be taught in school such as medicine, law, and art history such evidence supports the view of intelligence as a single trait that involves the ability to think and learn

genes, environment and the development of intelligence

intelligence is constructed through the continuous interaction of genes and environment Bronfenbrenner's biological model of development-envisions children's lives as embedded within a series of increasingly encompassing environments the child, with a unique set of qualities including his or her genetic endowment and personal experience, is at the centre surrounding the child is the immediate environment, especially the people and institutions with which the child interacts directly: family, school, classmates, teachers, neighbours, etc. surrounding the immediate environment are more distant and less tangible forces that also influence development: cultural attitudes, the social and economic systems, mass media, the government, etc.

the intelligence quotient (IQ)

intelligence tests such as the WISC and the Stanford-binet provide an overall quantitative measure of a child's intelligence relative to that of other children of the same age, this summary measure is referred to as the child's IQ (intelligence quotient) IQ tests are created to produce a standard score in the age group and location in which they are presented mean score on IQ tests is designed to be 100 standard deviation is designed to be 15 IQ scores follow a normal distribution normal distributions are symmetrical around a mean (average) value, with most scores falling relatively near the mean the farther a score is from the mean, the smaller the percentage of people who obtain it a score of 100 on an IQ test misgiven to children who score exactly on the mean for their age at the time the test is developed (the mean score can rise and fall in the years after a particular test is developed) standard deviation (SD) is a measure of the variability of scores within a distribution in normal distribution 68% of scores fall between 1SD below and 1SD above the mean and 95% of scores fall between 2SDs below and 2SDs above the mean (70 to 130) on most IQ tests the standard deviation is about 15 points (a child scoring 1SD above the mean receives a score of 115) an advantage of this scoring system is that IQ scores at different ages are easy to compare, despite the great increases in knowledge that accompany development in all children how do we measure intelligence-intelligence itself is not observable but correlates of it are IQ tests: 1. Stanford-Binet IQ test 2. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) IQ tests are consistent with Carroll's 3-stratum framework; test performance on a number of areas of multifaceted intelligence (e.g printed language, spatial relations, rate of test taking, semantic processing speed intelligence tests are different for different ages ideational fluency for 7 year olds (when you see the word plant, what else do you think of; name as many words as you can) naming facility for 5 year olds (what is going on in this picture?)

programs for helping economically disadvantaged children

intervention programs sis not result in lasting increases in IQ or achievement test scores but hey led to fewer children being assigned to special education programs and fewer children being held back in school a likely reason for this is that the interventions had long-term effects on children's motivation and behaviour these effects would help children do well enough in the classroom to be promoted with their classmates, which int urn might make them less likely to drop out of high school and less likely to turn to criminal activity, even if their IQ scores were unchanged participation also led to benefits after children finished school as adults former participants in some of the programs used the welfare system less and earned larger salaries than did non-participants positive effects such as these suggest that early intervention programs not only help participants lead more successful lives but might also more than repay their costs by reducing the need for social services some projects have failed to produce enduring gains in poor children's IQ and achievement test scores, which has led some evaluators to conclude that intelligence us unalterable, however two programs, the Better Beginnings, Better Futures project and the Carolina Abecedarian Project, report enduring positive effects on school achievement and other areas of functioning

brain language relations

language processing involves a substantial degree of functional localization at the broadest level , there are hemisphere differences in language functioning, for the 90% of people who are right-handed language is primarily represented and controlled by the left hemisphere studies using neuroimaging techniques have demonstrated that newborns and 3-month-olds show greater activity in the left hemisphere when exposed to normal speech than when exposed to reversed speech or silence EEG studies show that infants exhibit greater left-hemisphere activity when listening to speech sounds but greater right-hemisphere activity when listening to non-speech sounds, an exception to this pattern of lateralization occurs in the detection of pitch in speech which tends to involve the right hemisphere this specialization for language in the left hemisphere is evident for both spoken and signed languages

semantic development

learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, including word learning the second component in language acquisition birth throughout lifespan very high rates of acquisition after 10 months through early school age requires segmenting of speech (very quick for infants) mostly nouns Willard Quine-Quinean reference problem-"gavagi" -whole object bias, mutual exclusivity (each label applies to one and only one object; each object has one and only one label), basic level bias (superordinate=mammal, basic level=rabbit, subordinate=Arctic hare), linguistic context (grammatical cues, "this is a gavagi", "he is gavaging", pragmatic cues (pragmatics help children to find the reference of a new word)

brain structure and functioning

male and female brain show some small differences in physical structure one such difference is in the corpus callosum (the connection between the brain's hemispheres) which tend to be larger and include more dense nerve bundles in women than in men when engaged in cognitive tasks (e.g. deciding whether words rhyme or navigating a maze) the male brain tends to show activations in one hemisphere or the other, whereas the female brain tends to show activations in both hemispheres one limitation of research documenting sex differences in brain structure is that it is mostly based on brain imaging studies performed in adults rather than children so it is unclear to what extent these small differences are due to genetic or environmental influences it is also unclear to what extent these small differences in brain structure determine any gender differences in ability and behaviour

reading

many children learn to read effortlessly, but others do not Chall described five stages of reading development, these stages provide a good overview of the typical path to mastery: 1. stage 0 (birth until the beginning or grade 1)-during this time many children acquire key prerequisites for reading; these include knowing the letters of the alphabet and gaining phonemic awareness-that is knowledge of the individual sounds within words 2. stage 1 (grades 1 and 2)-children acquire phonological reading skills-the ability to translate letters into sounds and to blend the sounds into words (informally referred to as "sounding out") 3. stage 2 (grades 2 and 3)-children gain fluency in reading simple material 4. stage 3 (grades 4 through 8)-children become able to acquire reasonably complex new information from written text (in the primary grades children learn to read; in the higher grades they read to learn) 5. stage 4 (grades 8 through 12)-adolescents acquire skills not only in understanding information presented from a single perspective but also in coordinating multiple perspectives; this ability enables them to appreciate the subtleties in sophisticated novels and plays, which almost always include multiple viewpoints

two languages at one

more than half of the world is bilingual children growing-up bilingual reach developmental language milestones at around the same as monolingual kids do (onset of speaking, vocabulary size, word choice) common myths: 1. in order to truly be bilingual you must acquire both languages at the same time 2. bilingual mix their two languages because they are confused (code-switching) 3. bilinguals have lower vocabulary than monolinguals do 4. bilinguals have non-linguistic cognitive disadvantages compared to monolinguals (code-switching and lower vocab in one language) bilingual kids may learn both languages from birth (simultaneously) or may learn one language first and then the second language (sequentially) both are successful if started early in life bilinguals often switch languages between sentences or even mid-sentence-code switching bilinguals are not confused when they code-switch: 1.they may prefer to code-switch 2. adults around them code-switch 3. younger bilinguals may not have translation equivalents for all words language dominance-even early bilinguals may be dominant in one of their two languages in one language a child may have: 1. larger vocabulary 2. higher performance on cognitively burdensome linguistic tasks being dominant in one language does not mean that a bilingual will always have an "accent" in her other language e.g. Dupoux and colleagues tested three groups: 1. spanish monolinguals 2. french monolinguals 3.french-spanish bilinguals tested on spanish linguistic distinction that does not exist in french french monolinguals did poorly spanish monolinguals did well some bilinguals did well and some did poorly bilinguals may have lower vocabulary none language compared to their monolingual peers (especially true for "home" words when English is not spoken at home) bilinguals' combined vocabulary is higher then monolinguals biligual 5 year olds actually have some cognitive advantages over monolinguals (rule-switching, working memory); these advantages persist into adulthood in general switching rules is a challenging cognitive task; bilinguals tend to achieve successful rule-switching more quickly and accurately than monolinguals do

first sentences

most children begin to combine words into simple sentences by the end of their second year however young children know something about word combinations well before they produce any (shown videotapes and then heard sentences they looked at the corresponding scene) children's first sentences are two-word combinations, these two-word utterances have been described as telegraphic speech because non-essential elements are missing for young children learning languages like English in which word order is crucial for meaning their early sentences follow a consistent word order: a child might say "eat cookie" but would be unlikely ever to say "cookie eat" many children continue to produce one- and two-word utterances for some tim, whereas others quickly move on to sentences consisting of three or more words the length of children's utterances increases in part because they begin to systematically incorporate some of the elements that were missing from their telegraphic speech once children are capable of producing four-word sentences at around two and a half years of age they begin to produce complex sentences containing more than one element ("I want this doll because she's big")

understanding numerical strategies

numerical magnitude representations are mental models of the way quantities are ordered along a less-to-more dimension accurately linking numbers and the magnitudes they represent actually constitutes a major challenge over a prolonged period of development e.g. many preschoolers who can count flawlessly from 1 to 10 do not know whether 4 or 8 indicates the greater number of objects understanding symbolic numerical magnitudes is closely related to understanding arithmetic and math in general this reaction is evident in arithmetic errors, whose magnitudes usually are close to the correct answer rather than far from it similarly when asked whether answers to arithmetic problems are correct both children and adults identify incorrect answers more quickly when the magnitude of error is considerable (8+4=18) than when it is small (8+4=14) the range of numbers whose magnitude children represent reasonably precisely, as indicated by the accuracy of their magnitude comparisons and number-line estimates, changes greatly with age and experience accuracy of magnitude representations of the numbers 1-10 increases greatly between ages 3 and 6; that of number between 1-100 between ages 6 and 8; that of numbers 1-1000 between ages 8 and 12 children of any given age differ considerably in their knowledge of numerical magnitudes the more precisely a child understands numerical magnitudes, as measured by his or her accuracy in estimating the position of numbers on a number line, the greater the child's arithmetic proficiency

the contents of intelligence tests

older views: 1. reaction time 2. keenness of sight 3. association 4. head size Alfred Binet-invented the first IQ test using trial and error; puzzles, object naming, counting intelligence is reflected in different abilities at different ages on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test: 2 year olds-asked to identify that objects depicted in line drawings (a test of object recognition), to find objects that they had seen hidden earlier (a test of learning and memory), an to place each of three objects in a hole of the proper shape (a test of perceptual skill and motor coordination) 10 year olds-asks them to define words (a test of verbal ability), to explain why certain social institutions exist (a test of general information and verbal reasoning),an to count the blocks in a picture in which the existence of some blocks must be inferred (a test of problem solving and spatial reasoning) intelligence tests have had their greatest success and widest application with children who are at least 5 or 6 years old the most widely used intelligence testing instrument for children 6 years and older is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) the conception of intelligence underlying the WISC-IV is consistent with Carroll's three-stratum framework the test yields not only an overall score but also separate scores on four moderately general abilities-verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory and processing speed it measures these abilities because they reflect skills that are important within information-processing theories, correlate positively with other aspects of intelligence, and are related to important outcomes, notably school grades and later occupational success LOOK AT THE FIGURE ON PAGE 305!!!!

acquisition of academic skill: reading, writing, and mathematics

one important goal to which children apply their intelligence is learning the skills and concepts taught in school humans are not specifically evolved for reading and writing not all societies use written language; some humans learn to read and write and some do not (it does not make you any less of a fully functioning human being)

using symbols as information

one of the vital functions of many symbols is that they provide useful information to use a symbolic artifact such as a map requires dual representation-the artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same time, as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself very young children have substantial difficulty with dual representation, limiting their ability to use information from symbolic artifacts e.g. scale-model task-in a test of young children's ability to use a symbol as a source of information, a 3 year old child watches as the experimenter hides a miniature troll doll under a pillow in a scale model of an adjacent room, the child searches successfully for a leader troll doll hidden in the corresponding place in the actual room, indicating that she appreciates the relation between the model and room (most 2 and a half year olds can't do this, they have no idea that the model tells them anything about the full sized room) e.g. shrinking machine-when a tent-like room with troll doll hidden in it is "shrunk" the child is able to successfully find the troll doll because in the cild's mind the model simply is the room, hence there us no symbolic relation between the two spaces and no need for dual representation increasing ability to achieve dual representation-to immediately interpret a symbol in terms of what it stands for-enables children to discover the abstract nature of various symbolic artifacts e.g. school aged children realize that the red line on a road map does not mean that the real road would be red older children are also able to use objects such as rods and blocks of different sizes that represent different numerical qualities to help them learn to do mathematical operations

gender development

preschool-biggest differences between boys and girls are toy and play preferences; gender segregation begins social dosage effect-gender effects are stronger for individuals with many same-sex peers gender stereotypes are string and absolute middle childhood-children's gender stereotypes become more flexible by age 9-10 children begin expressing gender differences as being choice-based "sarah should be able to play baseball if she wants to" children begin to recognize and criticize gender discrimination adolescence-gender role intensification greater adherence to gender roles-romantic attractiveness, peer pressure gender role flexibility-rejection of gender norms-advances in cognitive development; more common among girls than among boys gender/sex differences: 1.intelligence -unsurprisingly boys' and girls' IQ scores are identical on average -but boys IQ scores are more extreme; there are more boys at the tail ends of the intelligence distribution 2. school -although IQ scores are equal, girls outperform boys in school-higher verbal skills from early in life through high school, lower incidence of language disabilities -but boys have higher scores in a couple of areas-visual/spatial processing (mental rotation), math 3. personality -some differences in personality traits appear evident between girls and boys -activity level is higher in boys -self-regualtion and impulsivity control higher in girls -risk-taking higher in boys

word identification

rapid, effortless word identification is crucial not only to reading comprehension but also to its enjoyment not only does poor word identification make the reading process slow and laborious, it also leads children to read no more than is absolutely necessary, which in turn hinders improvement in their reading skills words can be identifies in two main ways: phonological recoding and visually based retrieval phonological recoding-involes converting the visual form of the word into a verbal, speech-like form and using the speech-like form to determine the word's meaning; "sounding out", learning that sounds and letters correspond visually based retrieval-involves processing of a word's meaning directly from its visual form; whole word recognition most young children use both approaches choosing adaptively between them (whole-language reading); they do so through a strategy-choice process-in which they choose the fastest approach that is likely to allow correct word identification in the context of reading this on easy words children rely heavily on the fast not not always accurate approach of visually based retrieval; on hard words they resort to the slower but surer strategy of phonological recoding the mechanisms underlying this adaptive strategy choice involve a form of associative learning in which children's past behaviour shapes their future behaviour beginning readers rely heavily on phonological reading, because the associations between words' visual forms and their sounds are too weak to allow much use of retrieval correct use of phonological recoding increases the associations between words' visual forms and their sounds, which in turn allows greater use of visually based retrieval with age and experience, vocabulary knowledge becomes an increasingly important influence on word identification, particularly on words with irregular sound-symbol correspondence however phonological recoding skill also continues to be important, even for adults when they encounter unfamiliar words

theoretical approaches to gender development

researcher variously point to the influences of biological, cognitive-motivational, and cultural factors on gender development biological differences between males and females-including the influence of sex hormones and brain structure differences- many partly account for average gender differences in some behaviours cognition and motivation-learning gender-typed roles through observation and practice-can shape children's gender development; boys and girls are systematically provided different role models, opportunities, and incentives for gender-typed behaviour by parents, teachers, peers, and the media cultural factors including the relative status of women and men in society, may shape children's gender development it is likely that most aspects of gender development result from the complex interaction of all three sets of factors

syntax

rules in a language that specify how words form different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) in english the order in which words can appear in a sentence is crucial the rules governing how words are combined to form meaningful phrases and sentences (grammar) syntactical rules differ across languages e.g. English: I went to the beach yesterday Spanish: ayer fui a la playa (yesterday went to the beach)

production

speaking (or writing or signing) to others infants ability to understand precedes their ability to produce ( months or even years)

symbols

systems for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge and for communicating them to other people sets humans apart from other species include language and other nonlinguistic symbols (print, numbers, pictures, models, maps, etc.) arbitrary pairing

race, ethnicity, and intelligence

the average IQ scores of children from different racial and ethnic groups do differ these differences are explained in part by differences in social class backgrounds scientific statements about group differences in IQ scores refer to statistical averages rather than to any individual's score far more variability exists within each racial group than between groups thus the data on the average IQ score of members of an ethnic or racial group tell us nothing about a given individual differences in IQ and achievement test scores of children from different racial and ethnic groups describe children's performance on in the environment in which they live the findings do not indicate their intellectual potential nor do they indicate what their scores would be if the children lived in different environments with decreases in discrimination and inequality in the past 40 years, achievement test differences between children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds have decreased considerably

critical period for language development

the early years constitute a critical period for language during which language develops readily, after this period (which ends sometime between age 5 years and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful eg) Genie, 18 months until her rescue at 13 tied up and locked alone in a room, development was stunted, with some intensive training she made some progress but her language ability never developed much beyond the level of a toddler's adults who learn a second language after puberty use different neural mechanisms to process that language than do adults who learned their second language from infancy, these results strongly suggest that the neural circuity supporting language learning operates differently (and better) during the early years researchers tested two different groups of adults on an ASL language task: deaf adults who had no exposure to language during early childhood and deaf adults who had learned a spoken language during childhood (both groups were born hearing but later became profoundly deaf) both groups began learning ASL at school between the ages of 9 and 15, those adults who had exposure to a language during infancy, even though it was in a different modality, performed much better on the language task than adults who had received minimal language input during early childhood for reasons that are still unknown, some individuals continue to be talented language learners even after puberty, while most do not Newport proposed a "less-is-more' hypothesis that perceptual and memory limitations cause younger children to extract and store smaller chunks of the language than adults do, because the critical building blocks of language ( the meaning-carrying morphemes) tend to be quite small, young learners limited cognitive abilities may actually facilitate the task of analyzing and learning language

influence of the immediate environment

the influence if nurtureon the development of intelligence begins with a child's immediate environment of families and schools family influences-Bradley and Caldwell devised a measure known as HOME (home observation for measurement of the environment) the HOME samples various aspects of children's home life, including organization and safety of living space, intellectual stimulation offered by parents, whether children have books of their own, amount of parent-child interaction, parents' emotional support of the child, etc. throughout childhood, children's IQ scores as well as their math and reading achievement scores are positively correlated with the HOME measure of their family environment when HOME scores are relatively stable over time, IQ scores tend to be stable; when HOME scores change, IQ scores also tend to change in the same direction thus assessing varied aspects of a child's family environment allows prediction of the child's IQ score given this evidence it is tempting to conclude that better-quality home environments cause children to have higher IQ score, but this is not yet known the uncertainty reflects two factors: 1. the type of intellectual environment that parents establish in the home is almost certainly influenced by their genetic makeup 2. almost all studies using the HOME have focused on families in which children live with their biological parents these two circumstances may mean that the parents' genes influence both the intellectual quality of the home environment and children's IQ scores; thus the home intellectual environment as such may not cause children to have higher or lower IQ scores the correlation between HOME scores and children IQ are lower in adoptive families thus although scores on the HOME clearly correlate with children's IQ scores, whether causal relations exist between the two remains uncertain

the human brain

the key to full-fledged language development lies in the human brain language is a species-specific behaviour: only humans acquire language in the normal course of development language is species universal: language learning is achieved by typically developing infants across the globe

syntactic development

the learning of a syntax of a language learning how words and morphemes are combined the third component in language learning sentences (simple combinations of words) emerge by the end of the second year of life telegraphic speech-two word utterances four-word sentences may emerge by two and a half (or later) and sentences become more complex development continues through adolescence

morphemes

the smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes e.g. the word dogs contains two morphemes: one designating the familiar furry entity (dog) and the second indicating the plural (-s)

social cognitive theory

the theory depicts a triadic model of reciprocal causation among personal factors, environmental factors and behavioural patterns according to social cognitive theory, learning occurs through tuition, enactive experience and observation tuition-refers to direct teaching, occurs during gender socialization (e.g. when a father shows his son how to throw a baseball) enactive experience-occurs when children learn to guide their behaviour by taking into account that reactions their past behaviour has evoked in others (e.g. girls and boys usually get positive reactions for behaviours that are gender-stereotypical and negative reactions for behaviours that are counter-stereotypicaland they tend to use this feedback to regulate their behaviour in relevant situations) observational learning-the most common form of learning-occurs through seeing and encoding the consequences other people experience as a result of their actions; children learn a great deal about gender simply through observing the behaviour of their parents, siblings, teachers, and peers children also learn about gender roles through media such as television, films and computer and video games observational learning of gender-role information involves four key processes: attention, memory, production, and motivation to learn new information, it must of course be attended to (noticed) and then stored in memory; children often notice information that is consistent with their existing gender stereotypes (this is the main premise of gender schema theory) next children need to practice the behaviour (production) that they have observed (assuming that the behaviour is within their capabilities) finally children's motivation to repeat a gender-typed behaviour will depend on the incentives or disincentives they experience relative to the behaviour; these sanctions can be experienced either directly (as when a parent praises a daughter for helping prepare dinner) or indirectly (as when a boy observes another boy getting teased for playing with a doll) overtime external sanctions are usually internalized as personal standards and become self-sanctions that motivate behaviour according to the social cognitive theory, children monitor their behaviour and evaluate how well it matches personal standards; after making these evaluations, children may feel pride or shame, depending on whether they meet their standards when individuals experience positive self-reactions for their behaviour, they gain the sense of personal agency referred to as self-efficacy self-efficacy can develop gradually through practice (as when a son regularly plays catch with his father), through social modelling (as when a girl observes a female friend do well in math and thinks that maybe she could do well herself), and by social persuasion (as when coach gives a pep talk to push the boys' performances on the baseball field) researchers consistently find a strong relation between feelings of self-efficacy and motivation

phonemes

the units of sound in speech, a change in phoneme changes the meaning of the word different languages employ different sets of phonemes the smallest units of sound recognizable as as speech rather than random noise consonants and vowels not all languages use all phonemes

intelligence as a few basic abilities

there are two types of intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence fluid intelligence-involves the ability to think on the spot-for example, by drawing inferences and understanding relations between concepts that have not been encountered previously it is closely related to adaption to novel tasks, speed of information processing, working-memory functioning, and ability to control attention crystallized intelligence-is factual knowledge about the world: knowledge of word meanings, provincial and territorial capitals, answers to arithmetic problems and so on it reflects long-term memory for prior experiences an is closely related to verbal ability the distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence is supported by the fact that tests if each type of intelligence correlate more highly with each other than they do with tests of the other type the two types of intelligence have different developmental courses crystallized intelligence increases steadily from early life to old age whereas fluid intelligence peaks around age 20 and slowly declines thereafter the brain areas most active in the two types of intelligence also differ: the prefrontal cortex is usually especially active on measures of fluid intelligence but tends to be must less active in measures of crystallized intelligence a somewhat more differentiated view of intelligence proposes that the human intellect is composed of seven primary mental abilities: word fluency, verbal meaning, reasoning, spatial visualization, numbering, rote memory, and perceptual speed they key evidence for the usefulness of dividing intelligence into these seven abilities similar to that for the distribution between fluid and crystallized intelligence, scores on various tests of a single ability tend to correlate more strongly with one another than do scores on test of different abilities the trade-off between these two views of intelligence is between the simplicity of the crystallized/fluid distinction and the greater precision of the idea of seven primary mental abilities

prereading skills

through looking at books and having books read to them preschoolers acquire basic information about reading they learn that (in English and other European languages) test is read from left to right and that words are separated by small spaces having books in the home and being read to, however, are not enough, these activities alone are not directly related to eventual reading outcomes e.g. general reading activities at home did not predict kindergartener's early literacy skills teaching the names of the letters to randomly chosen preschoolers does not increase their subsequent reading achievement instead it appears that other variables, such as children's interest in books and parents' interest in and expectations about their children's reading, stimulate both early knowledge of the alphabet and later high reading achievement phonemic awareness is both correlated with later reading achievement and a cause of it to measure awareness of the component sounds within words researchers ask children to decide whether two words start with the same sound, to identify components sounds within a word, and to indicate what would remain if a given sound were removed from a word kindergarteners' performance on these measures if phonemic awareness is the strongest predictor of their ability to sound out and spell words in the early grades-stronger even than IQ score or social class background although explicit training can help foster phonemic awareness, most children do not receive such training, where then does phonemic awareness come from in the natural environment? one relevant experience is hearing nursery rhymes; many nursery rhymes highlight the contribution of individual sounds to differences among words (e.g. I do not like green eggs and HAM, I do not like them SAM I AM) other factors that contribute tot he development of phonemic awareness include growth of working memory, increasing efficient processing of languages and especially reading itself children with greater phonemic awareness read more and read better, which, in turn leads to futher increases in their phonemic awareness and in the quantity and quality of their reading

comprehension

understanding what others say (or sign or write)

nonlinguistic symbols and development

virtually anything can serve as a symbol as long as someone intends for it to stand for something other than itself because symbols are so central to our everyday lives, mastering the symbol systems important in their culture is a crucial developmental task for all children symbolic proficiency involves both the mastery of the symbolic creations of others and the creation of new symbolic representations

children's contributions to word learning

when confronted with new words they haven't heard before children actively exploit the context in which the new word was used in order to infer its meaning e.g. study demonstrated fast mapping-the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar word and the unfamiliar word, red and chromium trays, they know that the one is red and infer that the other one must be chromium, after this single exposure about half of the children showed some knowledge of it one week later by correctly picking out "chromium" from an array of paint chips the many inferences children make in the process of learning words are guided by a number of assumptions (principles, constraints or biases) that limit the possible meanings children entertain for a new word mutual exclusivity assumption-children expect that a given entity will have only one name e.g. 3 year olds with the blick, children map the novel label to the novel object, even 16 month old infants do the same bilingual and trilingual infants who are accustomed to hearing more than one name for a given object, are less likely to follow the mutual exclusivity principle whole object assumption-children expect a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than to a part, property, action or other aspect of the object e.g. label bunny to the whole object not just the tail pragmatic cues-aspects of the social contest used for word learning when confronted with novel words children exploit a variety of pragmatic cues to their meaning by paying attention to the social contexts in which the words are used children use an adult's focus of attention as a cue to word meaning, they use the relation between eye gaze and labelling to learn a novel name for an object before they have ever seen it another pragmatic cue that infants use to draw inference about a words meaning is intentionality, infants can use an adult's emotional response to infer the name of a novel object that they cannot see e.g. adult announced her intention to "find the gazzer" she then picked up one of two objects and showed obvious disappointment with it, when she gleefully seized the second object the infant inferred that is was a "gazzer" the degree to which preschool children take a speaker's intention into account is shown by the fact that if an adult's labelling of an object conflicts with their knowledge of that object they will nevertheless accept the label if the adult clearly used it intentionally another way children can infer the meaning of novel words is by taking cues from the linguistic context in which the words are used e.g. showed picture of a pair of hands kneading a mass of material in a container, to one group is was described as "sibbing" to another "a sib" and another "some sib" the children subsequently interpreted "sib" as referring to the action, the container, or the material depending on which grammatical form (verb, count noun, or mass noun) of the word they had heard 2 and 3 year olds also use the grammatical category of novel words to help interpret their meaning, they are sensitive to the way in which a new word is introduced e.g. hearing "this is a dax" they assume that "dax" refers to an object as well another objects from the same category hearing "this is a dax one" suggests that "dax" refers to a property of the object (like its colour or texture) hearing "this is dax" suggests "dax" is a proper noun (a name) children's interpretation of novel words applied to objects is particularly guided by the objects' shape possibly because shape is a good cue to category mentorship children readily extend a novel noun to novel objects of the same shape, even when those objects differ dramatically in size, colour and texture a shape bias is also evident in young children's spontaneous extension of familiar words to novel objects that are vaguely similar to familiar entities e.g. a cone might be referred to as a mountain this attention to the shared shape of objects is evident in categorization tasks even before infants have acquire many productive words another potentially useful cue to word meaning is the repeated correspondence between words the child hears and objects the child observes in the world, any single scene is ambiguous e.g.if a child sees four different novel objects together and hears the label "dax" the child has no way of knowing which objects is the "dax", but across experiences the child might observe that whenever "dax" is said one of those four objects is always present and thus that object is probably "the dax" through this process of cross-situational word learning even infants can narrow down the possible meanings of new words children also use the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning-syntactic bootstrapping e.g. duck pushing rabbit into a squat while both of them wave their right arms in circles, one group was told "the duck is kradding the rabbit" and the other was told "the rabbit and the duck kradding" the children arrive at different interpretations for a novel verb based the structure of the sentence in which it was embedded infants between 13 and 18 months map an experimenter's gestures or non-verbal sounds (e.g. squeaks and whistles) onto novel objects just as readily as they map words by 20 to 26 months they only accept words as names when novel labels are presented via computer rather than through interaction with an adult even 12 month olds accept only words as labels, not other non-verbal sounds thus infants learn quite early on that strings of phonemes are more likely to carry meaning than other types sounds

drawing

when young children first start making marks on paper, their focus is almost exclusively on the activity per se, with no attempt to produce reasonable images at around 3 or 4, most children begin trying to draw pictures of something; they try to produce representational art exposure to representational symbols affects the age at which children begin to produce them initially children's artistic impulses outstrip their motor and planning capabilities e.g. a scribble but the 2 and a half year old child creating the picture was narrating his efforts as he drew, making it possible to ascertain his artistic intentions although he represented the individual elements of his picture reasonably well, he was unable to coordinate them spatially young children simplify their drawings to produce these very simple, crude shapes, the child must plan the drawing and must spatially coordinate the individual elements even early "tadpole" people have the legs on the bottom and the arms on the side-although often emerging from the head the ability to create symbols is evident in young children's drawings

prewriting skills

writing is a difficult task (harder than reading) requires fine motor skills must employ written pragmatics, which are more opaque than verbal pragmatics (e.g. texting misunderstandings) preschoolers 'write' shapes that look like letters conventional writing emerges after age 5 by age 4 children's "writing" is sufficiently advanced that adults have no trouble distinguishing it from the figures 4 year olds produce when asked to draw a flower or a house preschoolers' "writing" indicates tat they expect meaning to be reflected print; they use more marks to represent words that signify many objects such as "forest" than to represent words that signify a single object such as "tree" similarly when asked to guess which of several words is the name for a particular object they generally choose longer words for larger objects