Developmental Psychology Exam 1 review

Synaptogenesis

"exuberant synaptogenesis"): Rapid forming of connections among neurons ALSO VARIES by region and EXPERIENCE. ex: sensorimotor first, then parietal and temporal, prefrontal last

memory

- Memory systems available in early life - Studies of development of working memory - Change-detection task research: found ability to detect change improves rapidly during first year had to do with the manipulation of change and time in between repetions of screens presented simultaneously. This assesed what infants can encode. Showed that 6 month old were only able to detect single changes like color and that by 12 months old they retained the contents of the containers in working memory, at least for small numbers of objects. (4 objects) - Reaching tasks: demonstrated ability to retain contents in containers in infants' working memory

instrumental conditioning (operant conditioning)

- NOT OBSERVSATIONAL Learning the relation between one's own behavior and the consequences that result from it - Learning the relation between one's own behavior and the consequences that result from it - Contingency: This young infant learned within minutes that kicking her leg would cause the mobile to move in an interesting way; she learned the contingency between her own behavior and an external event. •Infants' intense motivation to explore and master their environment, which we have emphasized in our active child theme, shows up in instrumental-learning situations: infants work hard at learning to predict and control their experience, and they display positive emotions during peaks in performance - Positive reinforcement

Basic Questions of Child Development: 1. How Do Nature and Nurture Together Shape Development?

- Nurture = environment Nature/genome = individual's complete set of hereditary information - All human characteristics are created through interaction of genes and environment - How does this interaction shape development? - Bidirectional interaction of nature and nurture - Schizophrenia: family and twin studies - Adopted children research

2. Child's Genotype - Child's Phenotype

- Physical characteristics but also intermediate Endophenotypes - switching of genes through ***regulator genes will elicit child's phenotype. always apart of a chain of events and never occur individually. - alleles can give influence to the same trait (eyes) but contribute to different outcomes (either brown or blue) depending on their dominant- recessive pattern

Expanding the world of the INFANT

- Reaching behavior enhances several aspects of infants' understanding of the world around them. - At about 7 months, reaching becomes stable when infants sit independently; this results in visual development and motor development. - self locomotion: ability to move around in the environment on their own. Ex: children who lay face down can see their caregivers faces vs crawling allows them to explore other things. Crawling s the 1st success of power, gives the child confidence and security. Another ex of self loco is walking at 11-20 mo. Allows them to experience world around them and DEPTH perception- example of "gangway" for those who didn't cross the precipice. integration of perception with motor skills; the misjudgement of steepness and crawling- showed that their decisions depended on the facial and social expressions of security, scale errors with dolls and chair sizes or other grasping and media errors.

Piaget's Theory

- Soffers an intuitively plausible depiction of the interaction of nature and nurture in cognitive development, as well as of the continuities and discontinuities that characterize intellectual growth. - constructuvist approach bc it depicts childen as activley construcitng knowledge for themselves IN response to their environment - nature/nurture contribute to their development - sources of continuity: assimilation: incorporating informatio to what they already know; assimilating a bald guy to a clown accommodation: accomodating current info in response to new experiences; realizing after time that it isn't a clown and a man ***equilibration; being able to balance assimilation and accomodation to establish a STABLE understanding, disequilibrium would be recognizing their shortcomings but not coming up with a superior alternative.

newborn infant stages of arousal sleep

- amount spent in each varies among individual - sleep: ****rapid eye movement (REM) sleepan active sleep state characterized by quick, jerky eye movements under closed lids and associated with dreaming in adults. 50 % of REM sleep when they are newborn and then decreases to 20 when they are 3/4 years. This is because their visual eye system is developing and it makes up for the dark time spent in the womb, the jerking eye movements help build sensory maps. ****non-REM sleeps quiet or deep sleep state characterized by the absence of motor activity or eye movements and more regular, slow brain waves, breathing, and heart rate brains don't become disconnected from external stimuli which means they can learn while they sleep. testing of nursing sounds they had heard when they had slept and they recognized it.

How can research promote children's well-being? (Research and children's welfare)

- anger management programs -more valid child eyewitness testimony. knowledge of developmental facilitates decisions about social policies that affect kids - choosing social policies: universal preschool? - educational innovations

Fetal Learning

- auditory responses from nonsense words and melodies; demonstrates recognition - At 32 weeks gestation, the fetus decreases responses to repeated or continued stimulation, a simple form of learning called habituation - dishabituation: when a perceptible change occurs and stimulus becomes interesting again - Fetuses as young as 30 weeks gestation show habituation to both visual and auditory stimuli, indicating that their central nervous systems are sufficiently developed for learning and short-term memory to occur - outside of womb they still prefer and remeber mothers voice, sounds, and have long lasting preferences such as food - DOESNT infer that pretnatal education programs can be used to manipulate cognitive abilities , aka you cannot train your child. they will remeber general sounds but not specific content!

physical growth: development of food preferences, obesity and undernutrition

- begins with innate responses to basic taste as a result of experience--> kids like sweet stuff over bitter. Salty food preferences emerge until after 4 months! - should repeatedly introduce foods bwtn 6-15 times over course of weeks to avoid food neophobia: unwillingnness to eat unfamiliar foods as a result of a rapid change from liquids to solids. It is also bad to pair foods as good or bad. - more willing to accept food from caregiver or most similar to them - associative learning with marketing of salad bars etc. obesity: has leveled off for kids 2-5 but increased by aprox 15% for teens. Is a problem in developing countries due to the adoption of the "Western diet" with high sugar low fiber foods as well as less physical activity. Take into consideration genes (impulsivity temperaments) AND environment for weight flux. f - interventions: changing school lunches, low calorie items on fast food menus, "honestyles" program for education to families undernutrition: half of all deaths of children under the age of 5 worldwide, happens in poor countries. ****gray matter is roughly the same in very young infants across SES groups. But by 12 months of age, gray-matter volume has already begun to diverge as a function of SES; and by 24 months, there are substantial differences in gray matter in toddlers as a function since it is more of an ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR - Nepal became the first country to deliver vitamin A supplements every 6 months to children nationwide Vaccines are good for development and help prevents 2 to 3 million deaths worldwide each year from diseases including polio and measles. - operates on herd immunity; the result of the stigma with autism makes it harder to reach since 10% didn't vaccinate after that. vaccines are affected by cost and logistical challenges like 20% of the children in Vanuatu that didnt recieve vaccinations. UNICEF helped deliver them with drones.

cognitive dev theory: social cultural theory

- development occurs with social interaction with others, also different than piaget - VYGOTSKY: believed in the power of the social world and how kids participate in events SPECIFIC to the time and environment they are in; focus on continual rather than gradual changes **** LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT ARE INTERTWINED not separate!! - believed that thought is internalized speech originating in statements that other people make to children. - 1. childs thoughts and behaviors controlled by others. 2. controlled by private speech (4-6 yrs old can be used for directing themselves to hard tasks) 3. internalized speech when they tell themselves what to do. The transition from 2-3 is when speech goes "underground" - methods: guided interaction/participation, scaffolding ORGANIZING the world more broad term, like teachers organizing a book in this direction etc (promoting temp frameworks at a greater level than they can achieve), zone of proximal development, cultural tools of all critical aspects and INTERSUBJECTIVITY - what we learn and tools are determined by socio historical context **INCLINATION TO TEACH SPECIES and attend to learning ****culturally- the problem given to chinese and US students based on hansel and Gretel;US > bc they are familiar with the cultural tale. - intersubjectivity: a shared place where learning and communication occur between two people, ex; between teacher and student. Begins at abt 6 mo ***joint attention like at 8-18 months when younger kids decide who to imitate- prefer to immitate adults who pursue goals competenly than incomp.

During the first 24 months after birth, there appears to be a change in the way sleep affects learning of specific material. What is the change?

During the first 18 months, sleep interferes with learning; after 24 months, kids learn better after napping

modern views of cognitive development

Early pioneers: infants' motor development is governed by brain maturation. Current theorists: motor development results from confluence of: Neural mechanisms, Increases in infants' strength, Posture control, Balance, Perceptual skills, Changes in body proportions, Motivation. Examples of the sociocultural contexts of the children who were massaged to enhance motor development ilke toileting and walking, or in Kenya kids sit more independently because they don't have as much furniture and arent cradled as much.

fetal programming

Environmental events during pregnancy may alter the expected genetic unfolding of the embryo/fetus the belated emergence of effects of prenatal experience that "program the physiological set points that will govern physiology in adulthood txtbook example: WW2 women in the netherlands were limited to 800 calories per day, famine babies had normal birthweight BUT grew to be OBESE because there was "prenatal programming" of their metabolisms, unable to adapt when exposed to normal nutrition

WEIRD

Ex of lack of accuracy and validity: in twin studies molecular genetics have a large sample size and can underrepresent heritability. Twin birth has increased 2x and have increased to IVF/ WEIRD wealthy families.

glial cells

Glial cells and the myelin sheath are Cells that help speed and facilitate neural info transmission (action potential) - they are the soccer moms! dress their kids in the myselin sheath and then transport them to the specific regions - are equivalent to the amount of neurons approx 1 billion are what produce the myelin

As you might imagine, it can be very difficult to figure out what sorts of sounds a fetus can learn, and whether they've learned anything. One common way researchers have used is to examine when the fetus becomes habituated. How does habituation indicate that a fetus has learned something?

Habituation indicates the fetus is bored by the stimuli. This indicates they have learned it and are no longer surprised by it.

Rational learning and active learning

Rational learning: Ability to use prior experiences to predict what will occur in the future. Involves integrating prior beliefs and biases with what actually occurs in the environment example: the ties with statistical learniung and tracking! Rationed thinking through the expected amount of red balls that were supposed to come out of the box, were shocked with the white ball outcome. •This study suggests sophisticated reasoning in the context of a simple toy-based interaction.When the problem appeared to be with the toy, infants explored new toys instead; but when the problem appeared to lie in the infants' ability to operate the toy, infants sought help. Active learning:Learning by acting on the world, rather than passively observing objects and events. Surprise can drive active learning. Active learning is TIED to instrumental conditioning (operant conditioning) with the ribbon and mobile example.

Myelination

Myelination: Formation of insulating myelin sheath around neurons, speeding transmission of electrical info. Rate depends on the region of the brain different than methylation

Basic Questions of Child Development: 2. How Do Children Shape Their Own Development?

Newborns: prefer things that move and make noise, respond better to own mothers voice. toddlers (1-2): internally motivated to learn and practice talking, use self speech young children engage in motivated play, fantasy play, and dramatic play to support their development. Older children: Use more organized, rule-bound play to enhance self-control and social development

SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)

SIDS refers to the sudden, unexpected, and unexplained death of an infant younger than 1 year. The most common SIDS scenario is that an apparently healthy baby, usually between 2 and 5 months of age, is put to bed for the night and found dead in the morning. In 2016, 1,500 infants in the United States died of SIDS, making it the leading cause of infant mortality unrelated to congenital issues or prematurity solutions are to remove any barries that put breathing at risk like monitoring, and avoiding them sleep on their stomachs.

How do children become so different from one another? (Individual differences)

Scarr's Factors of related diferences to children: - genetic differences, differences in treatment by parents and others, differences in reactions to similar experiences, different choices of environments

Synapse

Space between neurons where information is shared between neurons

genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA)

Takes advantage of actual genetic resemblance across large groups of individuals, making it possible to tease apart aspects of genes and environment that are confounded within families like SES. - EX Testing genetics on school achievement, have to take into consideration SES. GCTA showed that it accounted for only 1/2 of the correlation - helps uncover genetic stability if genes contribute to a particular trait across development

Which of the following was NOT discussed as a type of teratogen in Chapter 2 of your textbook?

The amount and type of illicit drugs the pregnant woman consumes. The amount of stress the pregnant woman experiences. Correct! The amount and quality of exercise the pregnant woman engages in. How old the pregnant woman is.

Methylation

a biochemical process that influences behavior by suppressing gene activity and expression - amount of stress that mothers reported experiencing during their children's infancy was related to the amount of methylation in the children's genomes 15 years later Other studies showed increased methylation in the cord-blood DNA of newborns of depressed mothers

dose-response relationship

a relation in which the effect of exposure to an element increases with the extent of exposure (prenatally, the more exposure a fetus has to a potential teratogen, the more severe its effect is likely to be)

Genetic nurture

child's educational outcomes were predicted, in part, by parental alleles that the child did not inherit. These non-transmitted parental alleles play an important role in the creation of the child's environment, a phenomenon that the researchers describe as genetic nurture. By affecting the parents' phenotypes (and thereby influencing the family environments), the parents' genes affected their children's educational success.

3. In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? (Continuity/discontinuity)

continuous development: - changes occur gradually with change in small increments - development occurs by skill and task by task discontinuous development: Changes with age include ocassional large shifts, qualitative differences occur, Piaget, Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg were stage theorists. (LARGE independent, short stages not gradual) ** depending on how its viewed HEIGHT can be continuous or discontinuous - height across years or heighT GAIN and changes per year - sun model theory

hazards to prenatal development

different blood types, X-Ray, contamination in water (mercury, lead, pesticides), maternal diseases (STDs) - miscarriages and spontaneous abortions; 15% in US and 18.9% in Kenya which is affected by other environmental factors. At least 25 % experience it. Miscarriages occur with children that already have severe defects like missing or extra chromo, which hinders dev.

dominant and recessive

dominant allele: the allele that, if present, gets expressed recessive allele: the allele that is not expressed if a dominant allele is present The X chromosome carries roughly 1500 genes, whereas the much smaller Y chromosome carries only about 200. Thus, when a genetic female inherits a recessive allele on the X chromosome from her mother, she is likely to have a dominant allele on the chromosome from her father to suppress it, so she will not express the trait in question. Genetic males are thus more likely than females to suffer a variety of sex-linked inherited disorders caused by recessive alleles on their X chromosome

environment

every aspect of individuals and their surroundings other than genes. children in the same family don't always share the same environment (older vs younger children)

Brain regions

occipital: vision temporal: sound, speech, language emotion parieta: spatial and integration of senory information frontal: executive, working memory, planning and impluse control corpus callous: cross hemi communication association areas: parts of the brain that lie between the major sensory and motor areas and that process and integrate input from those areas cerebral laterization: individuals can use one side or the other but contrary to belief there isnt a preference

cog dev theory: Information Processing Dual-Memory Model

occuring in order** 1. input: information is presented and how you attend to it depends on your clarity, complexity, relationship to prior knowledge, time. IS THE " ENVIRONMENTALSTIMULUS" to the system ex; the example of the boy on the road, wife and Gap example, elephant example OVERLAPPING WAVES THEORY!! 2. sensory: attention, perception, limitations to amount of time they pay attention to, impact of imagrey, the role of context "stroop effect" with red word in green etc. The slide with 3d letters" bird in the THE hand" likely to say "bird in the hand" instead likely due to using preevious contexts, rep of lack of paying attention to sensory 3. short-term memory/working memory. Based on duration and capacity, +/- 7 for capacity and retention, positioning effects as well "serial position where we forget the middle. Capacity increases with age for STM because we have more things to attach to. There is temporary storage, decay or interference, and **automaticity created by rehearsal, we "freeze up" other stuff in working memory to allow to use that info. 4. LTM: "permanent storage" is it limited? we don't know. EX of LTM are address, time tables or basic things like how to make eggs. Is where knowledge resides. It is episodic, semantic, and is represented as associated structures. It reached LTM through enconding (with rehearsal: maintenance, elaboration, application, organization: outling and concept- mapping) 5. rehearsal: depends on the depth of processing (shallow processing makes it harder to retrieve later), retrieval cues, meaning or how you make sense of it, and organization (linking words method for long lists of words) content knowledge: with age and experience the easier it is to learn something metacognition: requires prior knowledge of what knows and doesnt know, time required to comprehend, learning strategies avaliable, critical concepts, understanding, poor or misunderstanding. It is essentially when you are aware of your own thinking.

newborn stage of arousal crying

peaking around 6 to 8 weeks of age. Crying behavior tends to decrease in frequency around 3 to 4 months of age, potentially because infants now have somewhat more control over their environment. shaken baby syndrome- severe head trauma from shaking or cradling when crying colic: insessant crying for no apparent reason, happens for 1 in 10 infants and doesnt stop until 3 months of age

object perception

perception constancy: objects are a constant size, shape color despite the physical differences in the retinal image of the object. The ice cube study; display of multiple retinal images even though distance varied object segregation: telling of separate objects on the same place example a cup on a saucer - kellman and spieke 1983 common mvmt allowed the babies to percieve the 2 segments of rods as a single object - common motion isn't used for object identity until 2 months of age - contrary to piaget, studies found that infants can remember things that are no longer visible (proving sensorimotor object permanence exp wrong) this was seen when infants reached for objects in the dark. AFFORDANCES: walking on a flat surface vs squishy, or walking on water he possibilities for action offered, or afforded, by objects and situations depending on the INDIVIDUAL - violation of expectancy effect: infants observe an event that is inconsistent with what they know about the world then they will be shocked and surprised: " the impossible box and rotation study" - depth perception: optical expanision: size increases as it comes towards us ties to brain matter not just postnatal experiences. Pre term babies had delays in depth perception. - binocular disparity: differences in retinal image of eye that results in two different signals. The closer the grater the binocular disparity the further the less of a disparity - stereopis: visual cortex that puts degree of disparity to percieve depth. Informs us that there is is a sensitive period for depth;This form of depth perception emerges at around 4 months of age and is generally complete within a few weeks; kittens deprived of vision in one eye before about 3 months of age fail to develop normal binocular vision when vision is restored; disease in humans is strabismus where the eyes dont line up - 6/7 months infants begin to have monocular cues or pictorial cues in one eye. With an eye patch, The 7-month-olds (but not the 5-month-olds) reached toward the longer side, indicating that, like you, they perceived it as being nearer, providing evidence that they used relative size as a cue to depth. - can still have problems with dimentionality; One source of evidence suggesting that infants do not fully understand the nature of 2-D images is that they sometimes attempt to pick up pictured objects, suggesting that they think the objects are real.But they have perception of 2d and 3D differences! - influence of contingent interactions: How do infants come to understand that Grandma on Skype is the same as "real" Grandma? By age 2 years, toddlers are as good at learning labels for objects via video chat as they are from in-person interactions, probably because both of these sources of informati on provide contingent interactions

taste, smell and touch

preferences early in life influenced by mother, degree of reactivity to odors and food neophobia suggest influenced by SMELL rather than taste. From around the age of 4 months, as infants gain greater control over their hand and arm movements, manual exploration increases and gradually takes precedence over oral exploration through the dev of thier somatosensory cortext. intermodal perception; the combining of information from two or more sensory systems ex: shattering glass is visual and auditory, looking at a vieo that matches a soundtrack, peekabo, the "mcgurt" effect (ba is dubbed onto a video of a person speaking the syllable ga. Someone watching this display will hear the syllable da, which is intermediate between ba and ga) looking at the pacifier they had sucked on more or had oral experience with.

developmental resilience/ multiple risk model

successful development in spite of multiple and seemingly overwhelming developmental hazards, is a concept employed by researchers for the multiple risk model. Individuals who are faced with hazards, ex low SES or preterm that still do well in school.

genome

the complete set of DNA of any organism, including all of its genes

Genotype

the genetic material an individual inherits

synaptic pruning:

the normal developmental process through which synapses that are rarely activated are eliminated EXPERIENCE affects! use it or lose it! when a synapse is rarely active, it is likely to disappear: the axon of one neuron withdraws and the dendritic spine of the other is pruned away. eliminated early at birth because you are most likely not going to use that information, changes through adulthood as you use information that will help you with your job or life. Prunting continues until approx 30 years of age. TXT: delays in children with ASD and schizo

Phenotype

the observable expression of the genotype, including both body characteristics and behavior

Fetal experience and behavior

movement: At 7 weeks they begin hiccups or burping as a nursing reflex. Swallowing of the aminotic fluid helps with the development of tounge and taste. "Fetal breathing" at 10 weeks, begin to develop a steady breath at third trimester touch: 2nd half of pregnancy they begin hnad contact with umbillical cord, thumbs, and face. Sucking of hand determines "handedness" , as well as the bouncing against the wall stimulates a HR and vestibular sense. sight: visual information processing at third trimester demonstrates PREFERENCE that DOESNT require post-natal experience. Ultrasounds show that babies prefer top heavy oriented faces over inverted faces and features. taste: prenatal preferences dependent on mothers feeding and aminotic fluid smell: transmitted through aminotic fluid's odors which can then be transmitted to fetus when it comes into contact during fetal breathing hearing: are sensitive to outside environment in womb, which was proven by a change in HR when heard mothers voice. They begin to be affected by EXTERNAL factors during the LAST trimester. Tests show that a larger auditory cortext was present to preterms exposed meaning that they can distinguish between music and speech and that maternal sounds can facillitate development during gestation!

Developmental processes in the brain

neurogenesis, neuron migration, arborization, myelination, synaptogenesis, synaptinc pruning

Teratogens

Agents that damage the process of development and are heavily influenced by time and sensitive periods. - thaldomide used for morning sickness, affects 4th and 6th weeks after contraception of limb development, which showed several defects. Taking it before or after this period didn't have an effect. - individual differences!! A substance that is harmful to most may trigger problems to individuals whose genes PREDISPOSE them to be affected to it. "SLEEPER effects" - hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES) was commonly used to prevent miscarriage but those with sleeper effects offspring had cervical and testicular cancers

Aborization

Arborization: Dendrites branching out as they make connections to other neurons As arborization allows neurons to grow in complexity over the first several years of postnatal life, the cortex grows in surface area and the layers of the cortex become thicker. Spines also are the formation of dendrites on neuron that allows the dendrites to make connections

genome-wide association studies

Are used in attempts to link multiple DNA segments (single-nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) with particular traits. On their own, individual regions of chromosomes do not correlate with traits; it takes a combination of many genes, each with a small effect, to render a heritable trait

Epigenetics

- Experience alters gene expression. Recall that a specific gene does not lead to a specific phenotype. - seen through methylation which silences gene expression. Methyl molecules block transcription in the promotor region of the gene, turning off gene activity. Ex: stress & environment on glucocorid reeptor genes on rats Child abuse on traits. .

Cognitive dev theory: Dynamic Sytems theory

- "the scientist in the crib" DIFFERENT THAn piaget - INTERNALLY motivated. Kids are active and constantly trying to seek out environment - constant trial and error leads to constant shift in the self- environment THEY FOCUS ON ACTION!! - active child and mechanisms of change - soft assembly: components needed to adapt from situation to situation - Most woud believe A/B error is bc of lack of object perm a DYNAMIS would say that many factors other than conceptual understanding influence performance on the object permanence task like ATTENTION examples: the different stages of crawling, reaching (12 weeks- 20 weeks) BC of this change is DYNAMIC; CONTINUOUS they change in response to env and past rather than stable stages "systems" of the name refers to subsystems below that help aquire conceptual understanding. EX: the conceptual understanding of object permanence is influenced by the subsytems of the self. - self: attention, memory, emotions, actions - environment; constantly shifting situations active child: 10 to 12 months of age, infants are motivated to direct the attention of others to objects and events they themselves find interesting - "velcro hands" allowed them to explore more objects than those without the mittens process of self-organization which consists of SOFT ASSEMBLY because the components and their organization change from moment to moment and situation to situation, rather than being governed by rigid stages or rules that are consistently applied across time and situations.

experience-expectant plasticity

- ***severley impacted by sensitive periods. Brain and critical regions! Genie and language development - the process through which the normal wiring of the brain occurs in part as a result of species-typical experiences KEY word is that they are PRESERVED as a fn of the environment around them, vulnerability exists - if your not born with intelligence genes experience will unfold - since experience shapes the brain, less genes need to be dedicated to normal development or to be "pre installed" in brain - kitten experiment: deprived light in their eye and became functionally blind the cells that would have normally responded to it reorganized, responding instead to the eye that had continued to receive visual input. Cataract & the longer that it remained in place after birth the more visual acuity will be impacted when removed (hubel and weisels work).

experience-dependent plasticity

- **not affected by sensitive periods, some social settings and filtering of synaptic pruning the process through which neural connections are created NEW and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individual's experiences - more affected by cultural differences, ex: food habits - animals in complex environments vs. bare lab settings.. the animals in complex environment has richer dendrites on their spines. Another example is the adults who play wind instruments will have thicker lip cortical areas than those that dont (due as a fn of their individual experiences)

1. Parent's Genotype - Child's Genotype

- 46 chromos, 23 pairs each parent passes along one chromosome to the offspring so that offspring has 2 inherited, one from each side - genes differ at species level (humans have opposable thumbs) and individal like family resemblances - genetic variability through random assortment & crossing over when gametes divide - genetic variability through mutation in the gametes or germ cells that are passed to offspring. mutations enhance FITNESS! - XX females, XY males- one that always determines the genetic sex.

active child

- Children contribute to their own development from early in life, and their contributions increase as they grow older. - Three of the most important contributions during children's first years are their: Attentional patterns, Use of language, Play, - Older children and adolescents choose many environments, friends, and activities for themselves; their choices can exert a large impact on their future

prenatal drug exposure

- Drugs taken in 1st trimester may cause congenital defects. Later drug abuse may alter functioning of organs already formed - 2015- 4.7% pregnant women reported abuse - common prescription drugs accutance and isotretorin; teratogens for fetal dealth - antidepressants: difficult bc postpartum affects 10-30% of pregnant women and 7% take antidep... but not enough is known if harmful to fetus. CBT is a behavior intervention that is suggested opioids: fetuses can become addicted as well! NAS a form of drug withdrawal seen when fetuses exposed to opioids in the womb are born and they usually have a comorbidity with marijuana or other teratogens. VERY common in west virginia where the opiod crisis is high, NAS was > 5% marijuana: prior to legalization pregnant women rate nearly doubled from 2002 to 2014, with the highest rate (7.5%) among 18- to 25-year-olds. It is difficult to tell the effect that only marijuana has on fetus since smokers also use cigarettes or alcohol but affects impulsivity, learning, memory etc. cigarettes: both fetus and mother have less oxygen, and the fetus metabolizes the cancer causing agents. Slowed growth, low BW, SIDS sudden infant death syndrome. E CIGS overlooked bc people think they don't contain as much nictonine when in reality they can have up to more. alcohol: 1 in 10 use it in the prior month. Varies culturally but 25% in european and lowest in middle eastern countries. Is a probelm because crosses placenta into the fetus bloodstream and the amniotic fluid. Concentrations of alcohol equalize in both bloodstreams BUT remains high in the fetus' since they cannot metabolize it! environmental factors: 2014 flint michigan crisis, lead as a potent neurotoxin. Newark NJ, lead in water supply maternal factors: age of teen preg declining but also those born to less than 15 are 3 to 4 times more likely to die before their 1st birthday than are those born to mothers who are between 23 and 29. With increase in college degrees women are getting pregnant at older ages, are more likely to have ADHD or autism kids. Nutrition and the lack of folic acid/vitamin B from cereals. STDs: Cytomegalovirus (CMV), a type of herpes virus that is present in 50% to 70% of women of reproductive age in the United States, is the most common cause of congenital infection (affecting 1% to 5% of births; Manicklal, 2013). HIV can be passed but not necessarily infected. ZIKA & microcephacy "(small head) which targets the cortical neural progenitor cells for brain growth stress: minority groups experience more due to food anxiety and resources. IVF study: mothers were either genetically related or unrelated to their fetuses. The results revealed effects of maternal stress on birth weight and later antisocial behavior, in both related and unrelated mother-fetus pairs, suggesting that the prenatal environment, not shared genetics, was the strongest predictor of later outcomes. POSTnatal stress had more outcomes than prenatal

cog dev theory: Information Processing Theories

- focus is on the specific mental processes used to employ memory and problem solving HAS THE MOST emphasis on memory out of all the theories! Learning is more than a stimulus and a response INTERNAL processes ! - There are stages btwn input and retrieval, it is analogous to computer processing and affects all cognitive abilities. human knowledge is proceced like computer memory, coding and wiring -David khar; conversation with daughter ex and the computer simulations program that allowed them to either fail or succeed on conservation problems. - emphasis on time and GRADUAL, depends on the order of execution and speed/ accuracy of those operations for ex the DUAL MEMORY MODEL - task analysis: the research technique of specifying the goals, obstacles to their realization, and potential solution strategies involved in problem solving: Formatted like the convo of his daughter as "goal" task" - in terms of the A not B error, In contrast, viewing the A-not-B error from a dynamic-systems perspective suggested that many factors other than conceptual understanding influence performance on the object permanence task. infants' performance on the object-permanence task appears to reflect the combined influence of the strength of the habit of reaching to location A, the memory demands of the current task, and the infant's current focus of attention - selection, relative succes, and novelty are taken into consideration as mechanisms of change.

How does the sociocultural context influence development?

- influences every aspect of children's development - consists of close contacts with parents, siblings, friends - institutions or less tangible factors like historical era, economic structure - poverty rates based on culture and child development

Limitations of Piaget's Theory

- vaguely describes cognitive growth mechansims to thinking like assimilation - it underestimates the cog development and competence of youth, as seen with the falsey reported ages of object permanence acquisition. Piaget reported it isnt reached till 8 months, but early as 3 months it can be dev. - underestimates the contribution of the SOCIAL world to development, briefly talks about how the shape actions after womb but other peoples actions and culture impact more than emphasized - takes CONSISTENCY and continuity as an emphasis when in reality it is more discontinuous and gradual. conservation-of-number problems by age 6, whereas most do not succeed on conservation-of-solid-quantity until about age 8

cog dev theory: core-knowledge theories

- we are all born and predisposed to learn and develop in core and SPECIFIC areas (ex language development, theory of mind which allows us to leearn about ONES and OTHERs minds. - quick categorization of living and inanimate things - nativist: we are hard wired to certain things and are born with 4 specific domains: One system represents inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions; a second system represents the minds of people and other animals capable of goal-directed actions; a third system represents numbers, such as numbers of objects and events; and a fourth system represents spatial layouts and geometric relations biology, physics, and psychology - ex; language aquisition (chomsky) that allows children to understand complex systems of language like grammar in any language ex; not really instructed about language grammar vs taught rules about algebra etc. Constructivism: a type of core knowledge theory that blends piaget. We are both predisposed and learn further through experience. DIfferent than nativists and piaget bc of EXPERIENCE! - children form "naive" theories that are enhanced by experience - share three important characteristics with formal scientific theories: 1. They identify fundamental units for dividing relevant objects and events into a few basic categories. 2. They explain many phenomena in terms of a few fundamental principles. 3. They explain events in terms of unobservable causes. - henry and susan gelman; constructivists that showed that first theory of psych developed at 18 months of age, and first theory of biology and hunger at 2 yrs. Kids as "essentialists"

auditory perception

-Young infants may have more difficulty using this information because their heads are small; the differences in timing and loudness in information arriving at an infant's ears are smaller than for toddlers and children with larger heads. Another reason why this information may be difficult for infants to exploit is that the development of an auditory spatial map right vs left ear preference for CONSONANT tones - melodolic perception making peereceptual differences that adults cannot for example noting changes in the key of a melody but the results probaby jsut mean that they were able to note the differences bc they werent accustomed to implicit knowledge of western music - EXPERIENCE results in perceptual narrowing culturally: While all groups detected changes in the simple rhythms, only the North American infants and the Balkan adults detected changes in the complex rhythms. Thus, North American 6-month-olds outperformed North American adults on this task. - perceptual narrowing: developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system The researchers found that after the intervention, those infants who received additional musical experience were better able to process and detect altered patterns in both music and speech. These data support the view that experience plays a key role in supporting the development of musical abilities and suggest potential relationships between early musical experience and the development of language and literacy

vision

-prefferential looking frequency: a method for studying visual attention in infants that involves showing infants two images simultaneously to see if the infants prefer one over the other (indexed by longer looking) -visual aquity can be measured with eye charts on infants to see their response to the changes in patterns - poor contrast sensitivity; young infants prefer HIGH visual contrast! they can detect a pattern only when it is composed of highly contrasting elements liek the black and white stripped cattle. -lack of cone cells, located in the fovea for fine details and color - Newborns' cones are spaced 4 times farther apart than adults' cones, and they catch only about 2% of the light striking the fovea, compared with 65% for adults (for review, see Arterberry & Kellman, 2016). This is partly why in their first month, babies have only about 20/120 vision - visual acuity develops so rapidly that by 8 months of age, infants' acuity approaches that of adults. - COLOR isnt developed until 2 months of age but they prefer unique hue colors like green, blue. As newborns white and color are the same. Shows that infants brians represent some color categories PRIOR to learning their actual categories. - initial eye mvmts jerky but at 4 months they begin to focus on slow objects through smooth pursuit eye movemnts. ex a way to control learning in the way that at 1 month look at perimeter of face and at 20 months they are able to learn about specific traits - perceptual narrowing: better at discriminating at frequent faces in their environment "the other race effect". If they failed to respond to face perception it is most telling of a child with autism - 40 months they fixate at the eye of a talking face, most likely bc speech hasn't developed

Main themes for cognitive development

1. Piagetian: Nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity, the active child 2. Information-processing: Nature and nurture, how change occurs 3. Core-knowledge:Nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity 4. Sociocultural: Nature and nurture, influence of the sociocultural context, how change occurs 5. Dynamic-systems: Nature and nurture, the active child, how change occurs

4. Child's Phenotype - Child's Environment

ACTIVE CHILD: despite living in the same place with same, children experience DIFFERENT environments by their OWN behavior and interests. Demonstrate this from the moment they walk and reach for objects shows how their ability to choose affects intellectual development as well.

About when in the process of fetal development do the beginnings of hands and feet appear?

About 30-34 days after conception

When my son was a toddler, he was fascinated with any kind of ball--baseball, soccer, basketball, etc. As a result, I bought a lot of sports equipment and he became very good at baseball. My daughter had no interest in any of that stuff, so I rarely played these kinds of sports with her. Which of the seven "themes" of child development does this example best reflect

Active child

Piaget' stages of cog development

1. sensorimotor (birth-2 years) - intelligence is experience through sensory and motor experiences - adjusting their sucking to whatever is in their mouth, accomodating their actions to parts of the environment. Rooting, grasping, falling are more ex of active child - living in the here and the now - object permanence; searching for objects that have dissapeared in sight - A not B error: 8- to 12-month-olds have reached for and found a hidden object several times in one place (location A), they tend to reach there again even when they have observed the object being hidden in a different place (location B) - deffered imitation:the repetition of other people's behavior a substantial time after it originally occurred; ex a child putting on makeup after seeing her mother do so 2. preop (2-7 years old) - able to represent lang mental imagrey and thought, have egocentrism and centration - symbolic representation like a stick as a gun or a card as a phone, symbols become more conventional like pretending to be a pirate with an eye patch - egocentrism: percieving from their own point of view; ex difficulty of seeing the mountains from the dolls perspective, could only picture their OWN - centration: focusing on a single perceptual feature ; focusing on the amount of weight on each side rather than the equal distance 3. concrete operational (7-12) - reason logically about world, now they would consider both the weight on each sides and distance - still have difficulty with abstract terms; pendulum example and failure to take into consideration weight, string, and length; They fail to imagine that the faster motion might be related to the length of the string or the height from which the string was dropped, rather than the weight of the object. 4. formal operational (12+) - think systematically, test hypothesis in various ways, and have development of REASON. - they would realize that all components of the pendulum play a role and would test each variable systematically - piaget believe that NOT all ADOLESCENTS reach it; allows them to see life with infinte questions about truth, justice, and morality - Iris Levin and her colleagues devised a procedure that allowed children to actively experience how different parts of a single object can move at different speeds; does the inner or outer move faster?

contingency

A contingency relation exists between the behavior and the reward: if the infant performs the target behavior, then the infant receives the reinforcement.

5. Child's Environment - Child's Genotype

CHANGES the belief that our genes are fixed at conception because it takes into consideration EPIGENETICS, methylation, which SILENCES gene expression ! different than mylelination ex: rat pups whose mothers were unresponsive show less activity in the glucocorticoid receptor gene or motherts, stress and children who are surpressed with dopamine activation and suffere from depression

Neurons

Cell body• Axon: Fibers that conduct messages and connect with other neurons •Axon terminals: Ends of neurons that release chemicals and electrical signals •Dendrites: Branches at end of receiving neurons to receive electrical and chemical messages

Brain maturation

Certain areas controlling sensorimotor functioning develop earlier in life and the more complex areas like the frontal cortext develop later in life. Blue areas indicate more development and more myelination of the axons. 80% of the brain is "grey matter" which is the different lobes and regions of brain. White matter is the portions of the axon that are myelinated, which occur at different rates depending on the cortical area.

Main ideas of learning

Habituation: How we study infant learning by noticing when the novel thing gets more attention than what you have been showing them *Differences in habituation speed among infants appear to be related to aspects of general cognitive ability. Infants who habituate relatively rapidly, who take relatively short looks at visual stimuli, and/or who show a greater preference for novelty tend to have higher IQs when tested as many as 18 years later. -Statistical learning: LANGUAGE Music, action, and speech example often we separate words but we don't pay attention to where we start and stop them. Separate words and listening to where there are hard stops and pauses txtbook example: 2-8 mo olds were habituated with shapes that changed in different orders. They took longer looking at the shapes when they changed -Classical conditioning: Feeding time, all about physiology and reflex like pavlov. Eye blinking conditioning: tone CS with air puff UCS to elicit UCR after pairing and dropping the air puff to respond to soley the tone alone. - UCS: stimulus evokes a response like the nipples -UCR: the reflexive response from the stimulus elicited as the sucking reflex - CS: neutral stimulus paired with the unconditioned sight of the bottle or the breast. This becomes a signal for what will follow -CR: originally reflexive and becomes elicited by stimuli -Operant (instrumental) conditioning: Leg movement in the crib. -Observational learning (and imitation): Mirror neurons

overlapping waves theory

INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH approach that emphasizes the variability of children's thinking they discover NEW strategies that help with problem solving.

endophenotypes

Intermediate phenotypes, including the brain and nervous systems, that do not involve overt behavior. Act as a MEDIATOR between the environment and the expression of a gene

As you probably know, vaginal childbirth involves squeezing a relatively large baby through a relatively small canal. This squeezing of the fetus/baby actually serves several useful purposes. Which of the following is NOT one of them?

It stimulates mother-child bonding through their shared, painful experience.

Observational learning and limitations

Learning through observation or other people's behavior - By the second 1/2 of their first yr they begin to immitate more complex actions like touching their head or a light up box. -IMMITATION BASED ON INTENTION! persons> innanimate objects - seeing if babies would immitate in birth room - Imitation: a form of observational learning Mixed results for newer studies on neonatal imitation; they would have to have aquired prior self knowledge like what their tounge can do; which is why they say it is more REFLEXIVE - Another ex of immitation is the "finger slipping" study they make intention of what you are trying to accomplish not just the action they also didn't copy the device. failure to replicate Meltzoff and Moore work Infant attention to intention research Mirror neuron studies with monkeys; mu rhythm -"grit" learning at more abstract concepts such as trying at a given task no matter how hard it is. Watching experimenters who failed but persisted motivated the children to learn

How does change occur?

MECHANISMS: Not just what changes; How do changes occur? Book example: Rothbart and colleagues: effortful attention research (voluntary control of ones attention but playing with toys and forgetting playing with others, focusing attention despite distractions) Example: Kids go from thinking the sun follows them when they walk to understanding that it doesn't. How? DEPTH perception

birth experience

The squeezing of the fetus's head stimulates hormones that help the fetus withstand mild oxygen deprivation during birth and help regulate breathing after birth. The squeezing of the fetus's body forces amniotic fluid out of the lungs, in preparation for the newborn's first, crucial gasp of air. ON QUIZ: does all but stimulate mother-child bond birth exp varies by culture; unlike her counterparts in most societies, a U.S. woman in labor has a 32% chance of having a surgical delivery by cesarean (also called C-section)—a rate that is high relative to other countries but has been in decline for the past few years (Martin, Hamilton, & Osterman, 2018). Midwife and home births; The Balinese approach to childbirth emphasizes the social goal of immediately integrating the newborn into the family and community—hence the presence of many kin and friends to support mother and baby. Riskier for infant mortality DOULAS are women trained to assist emotionally and physically during birth

In Chapter 1, there was a discussion about schizophrenia and how it might have a genetic component. What has that research shown?

The strongest predictor of developing schizophrenia is whether one has an identical twin with schizophrenia.

One of the most distressing things for parents of newborns is that babies cry. Parents often wonder what they should do to reduce how much their babies cry. What does the research indicate about the best way to reduce the future crying of babies?

There does not seem to be a clear answer to this question. - Let the baby cry to a bit so they learn that their crying won't immediately illicit a parental response. - Swaddle the baby tightly. - Respond to baby crying as quickly as possible and try to sooth the baby.

Teratogens are environmental agents that, if they make it into the pregnant mother's bloodstream, may cause damage to the developing fetus. For example, pregnant women who were given Thalidomide, a drug to reduce morning sickness, often gave birth to babies with birth defects. What did research on the effects of Thalidomide reveal about the effects of certain teratogens?

They are often only damaging if the fetus is exposed to them during sensitive periods of development.

stages in fetal development

Trimester Weeks 1 Zygote travels from fallopian tube to womb and embeds in uterine lining; cells arrange into a ball and begin to form embryo and support system. 2-3 Embryo forms three layers, which will become the nervous system and skin; muscles, bones, and circulatory system; and digestive system, lungs, and glands; neural tube also develops. 4: Neural tube continues to develop into the brain and spinal cord; primitive heart is visible, as are leg and arm buds. 5-9: Facial features differentiate; rapid brain growth occurs; internal organs form; fingers and toes emerge; sexual differentiation has started. 10-12: Heart develops its basic adult structures; spine and ribs develop more fully; brain forms major divisions. 13-24:Lower body growth accelerates; external genitalia are fully developed; body develops hairy outer covering; fetus can make basic facial expressions; fetal movements can be felt by mother. 3 25-38 Fetus triples in size; brain and lungs are sufficiently developed at 28 weeks to allow survival outside of womb; visual and auditory systems are functional; fetus is capable of learning and behaviors begin to emerge.

3. Child's Environment - Child's Phenotype

ex: PKU phenylketonuria as a result of the defect of recessive gene on chromosome 12. BUT their environment of a natural diet will expose them to PKU and the amino acids present in sweetners or red meats WILL accumulate and cause brain development abnormalities. MOA gene: X gene that inhibits brain chemicals associated with ggresion. PROOF THAT a combination of environment on phenotype: The higher incidence of antisocial behavior was observed only for the group of boys who possessed both the genetic and environmental risk factors. Low activity stimulated higher antisocialness, and high was less antisocial and more aggressive. parent environment contributes to childs enviroment!! which then affects their phenotype. Ex genetic factors of dyslexia, Parents are less likely to provide reading environment enhancing that phenotype. Preventative measures like carrier testing (European and Tay Sachs for severe bith effects, preimplantation genetic diagnosis for IVF candidates) NIPT non invasive prenatal testing, newborn screening (pinpricks on heel) genetic nurture

regulator genes

genes that control the activity of other genes can be switched "on and off" and can be affected by external factors. EX of the thalidomine effect on limb development, or visual experience effects the regulator genes of the visual system development and the switching of genes on and off in the visual cortex.

homozygous and heterozygous

homozygous: having two of the same allele for a trait heterozygous:having two different alleles for a trait

polygenic inheritance

inheritance pattern in which traits are governed by more than one gene. 500 genes contribute to individual differences in human intelligence, a polygenic trait that is not determined by any single gene. - ***used by researchers to determine relationship outside of dominant-recessive patterns for things that are more complicated to analyze like height orobesity to psychological contructs like aggression and temperament

behavior genetics

the science concerned with how variation in behavior and development results from the combination of genetic and environmental factors 1) To the extent that genetic factors are important for a given trait or behavior, individuals who are genotypically similar should be phenotypically similar; and (2) to the extent that shared environmental factors are important, individuals who were reared together should be more similar than people who were reared apart. family studies, adoptive studies twin studies: specialized form of the family study used to compare the correlations for identical (monozygotic, or MZ) twins with those for same-sex fraternal (dizygotic, or DZ) twins. It is treated with an equal assumptions exposure of environment BUT it is problematic bc MZ twin pairs, have differences in placental sharing (known as chorionicity), complicating measures of prenatal environmental similarity. While many MZ twin pairs fully share a placenta, others do not, making their prenatal environments more akin to those of DZ twins

Physical growth: growth, variability, and nutritional behavior

•Growth depends on genes, nutrition, hormones (pituitary for growth thyroxine from thyroid also impact of stress hormones) - variability with secular trends that have occured over genersations, SES - breastfeeding is good; lowers breast and ovarian cancer while also increasing cognitive development and increased myelination - newborns who are fed breast milk has increased annually and, by 2015, had risen to 83% of neonate. Hard to maintain: 57% of infants in the United States still received at least part of their nutrition from breast milk, and by 12 months of age, only 36% did. - culturally poor countries actually breast feed UNTIL 1 yr old!! they cannot afford to mix formula with poor water conditions

Neurogenisis and Neuron migration

•Neurogenisis: Happens in the womb. Mostly complete by 20 weeks •Neuron migration: Movement from center to outer regions of brain

5 types of gene- environment associations

•Parent genotype-Kid genotype •Kid genotype-kid phenotype •Kid environment-kid phenotype •Kid phenotype-kid environment •Kid environment-kid genotype