Psych 2400 exam 3 review

sociodramatic play

2-3 years of age a kind of pretend play in which they enact miniature dramas with other children or adults more complex and social social pretend play is more strongly related to understanding other peoples thinking than nonsocial pretend play ex: playing house or doctor

Infant categorization

3 MONTHS ~ perceptual categorization (color, size, movement) 2 YEARS OF AGE ~ overall shape ~function 4-5 YEARS OF AGE ~causal understanding: relating features / functions to why they exist)

Current Perspectives: Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud's contributions to developmental psychology: • His emphasis on the importance of early experience and emotional relationships • His recognition of the role of subjective experience and unconscious mental activity • Psychoanalytic Theory Weaknesses: Major theoretical claims are vague, questionable, and not testable • Influence of Psychoanalytic Theories: Early experiences have lasting impact on later development and close relationships

The Self-Conscious Emotions

Feelings such as guilt, shame,embarrassment, and pride that relate to our sense of self and our knowledge of others' reactions to us Emerge during the second year of life ~15-24 months: some children show embarrassment when made the center of attention ~3 years: children's pride more tied to their level of performance Situations that induce self-conscious emotions vary across cultures

Influence of Society on IQ

Flynn Effect ~consistent rise in average IQ scores that has occurred over the past 70-80 years in many countries Reasons: better nutrition, health care, and access to education Effect seen mostly in lower IQ groups

behavior modification

a form of therapy useful for changing undesirable behavior ex: preschool child who spent too much time in solitary activities

standard deviation

a measure of variability of scores within a distribution

mathematics anxiety

a negative emotional state that leads to fear and avoidance of math

psychic energy

the biologically based, instinctual drives that fuel behavior, thoughts, and feelings

ID

the earliest and most primitive personality structure. it is unconscious and operates with the goal of seeking pleasure remains the sources of psychic energy (they want it now)

nativist view of naive psychology

the early understanding is possible only because children are born with a basic understanding of human psychology

superego

their efforts to cope with sexual desires leads to the 3rd personality structure consisting of internalizing moral standards what we think of as conscience and is based on the child's internalization guides the child to avoid actions that would result in guilt, which the child experiences when violating these internalized standards

Oedipus complex

the path for boys to develop superego a psychosexual conflict in which a boy experiences a form of sexual desire for his mother and wants an exclusive relationship with her

Electra complex

the path for girls to develop superego (less intense) involving erotic feelings towards the father

ethology

the study of behavior within an evolutionary context, attempts to understand behavior in terms if its adaptive or survival value Emphasize importance of studying effect of context on development of child • Child has an active role in selecting and influencing these contexts • Interaction of nature and nurture to produce development • Development is continuous

subordinate level (category hierarchies)

the very specific one share many common characteristics as basic level with a few major distinctions (ex: oak tree ... (tree, plant, oak tree))

essentialism

the view that living things have an essence inside them that makes them what they are

the bioecological model

this perspective treats the child's environment as " a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls each structure represents a different level of influence on development the child in the center with his or her particular constellation of characteristics (genes, gender, age, temperament, health, intelligence, physical attractiveness, and so on it considers how multiple levels of context influence outcomes

WISC-V

todays modern test Most widely used instrument for children 6 yrs and older consist with Carroll's three-stratum framework Gives overall score comprised of 5 tests: 1) verbal comprehension 2) visual-spacial processing 3) working memory 4) fluid reasoning 5) processing speed WISC-v measures theses abilities b/c 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

script

typical sequence of actions used to organize ad interpret repeated events, such as eating at restaurants, going to doctors' appointments, and writing reports

intermittent reinforcement

an operant conditioning principle behavior that has been sometimes been followed by reward and sometimes not makes behavior resistant to extinction

Stages of Psychosocial Development Theory

1) Basic Trust vs Mistrust ~ 1st year ~ developing a sense of trust with the mother ~if not developed the person will have difficulty forming intimate relationships later in life 2)Autonomy vs Shame/ Doubt ~ 1 - 31/2 years ~achieving a strong sense of autonomy (self-control without losing self-esteem) while adjusting to increasing social demands 3) Initiative vs Guilt ~4- 6 years ~ children identify and learn from their parents ~moral development 4) Industry vs Inferiority ~ 6 - puberty ~ crucial for ego development 5) identity vs role confusion ~ adolescences - early adulthood ~ core sense of identity

Counting Principles

1. One-one correspondence ~each object must be labeled by a single number word 2. Stable order ~ the numbers should always be recited in the same order 3. Cardinality ~ the number of objects in the set corresponds to the last number stated 4. Order irrelevance ~ objects can be counted left to right, right too left, or in any other order ~The order in which objects are counted does not impact # of objects 5. Abstraction ~any set of discrete (separated) objects or events can be counted 6. Successor Function ~Each successive word in the count list refers to a set of size n+1 (relative to set size referred to by previous # word in count list)

Early number concepts

5-month-olds understand numerical equality for sets of 1, 2, and 3 objects or events • Habituated to a scene of a puppet jumping two times • Dishabituated to event where puppet jumped one or three times. • 6-month-olds discriminate sets with 2:1 ratios (e.g., 8 vs. 4) • 9-month-olds discriminate sets with 1.5:1 ratios (e.g., 12 vs. 8)

Children's Understanding of Real and False Emotions improves from 3-5 years

50% of 3- to 4-year-olds chose correctly 80% of 5-year-olds chose correctly Between 4-6 years, children increasingly understand that people can be misled by other's facial expressions

Emotional Intelligence

A set of abilities that contribute to competent social functioning: • Be able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustration • Control impulses & delay gratification • Identify & understand one's own and others' feelings • Regulate one's moods • Regulate the expression of emotion in social interactions • Empathize with others' emotions A better predictor than IQ of how well people will do in life, especially in their social lives • In research by Walter Mischel, preschoolersabilities to delay gratification were found to predict their social, emotional, and academic competence many years later (SAT scores, drug use, self-esteem)

Theories of social development

Attempt to account for important aspects of development: Emotion, personality, attachment, self, peer relationships, morality, and gender Such theories must: • Explain how children's development is influenced by the people and individuals around them • Examine the ways that human beings affect each other

social cognitive theory

Bandura modified his theory to include cognitive aspects of learning: • Observational learning requires: • Attention • Encoding • Storing • Thanks to observational learning children know a lot about how the adult world works before they enter it!

reciprocal determinism

Bandura's concept that child-environment influences operate in Bothe directions; children are affected by aspects of their environment, but they also influence the environment

Categories of Objects: Toddlers

Before 18 months infants focus on a particular feature ~legs to be an animal ~wheels to be a car By the age of 2, children increasingly categorize objects on the basis of overall shape. At the same time, they also form categories on the basis of function, and use their knowledge of categories to determine which actions go with which type of objects

Infant Temperament

Chess&Thomas'longitudinalresearchdividedbabies into 3 categories (based on parents' reports): ➡ Easy babies (40%) ➡ Difficult babies (10%) ➡ Slow-to-warm-up babies (15%) Recent research(i.e., Rothbart &Bates, 2006)suggests that infant temperament is captured by six dimensions ~Fearful distress, irritable distress, attention span and persistence, activity level, positive affect, and rhythmicity

Cultural Context

Child street vendors in Brazil showed excellent understanding when arithmetic problems were presented in a street vending context ~Ex: "How much are 4 coconuts @ 35 each?" Same children showed poor understanding when the same problems were presented in the conventional school format ~ex: what is 35 x 4 ?

theory of mind module (TOMM)

CORE KNOWLEDGE theorists hypothesize (TOMM) a hypothesized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other human beings nativist explains the development of theory of mind difficulty understanding the social world seems to be due to the size and activity of certain brain areas that are crucial for understanding ppl (specially seen in children with autism spectrum disorder)

Acending School Boosts IQ

Cahan & Cahan (1989): Children only slightly older but who had a year more schooling did becer on parts of an IQ test IQ & achievement test scores rise during the academic year and are stable or drop during the summer

naive psychology

Children as young as 3 have a naive psychology, a commonsense level of understanding of other people and oneself is crucial to normal human functioning and is a major part of what makes us people 3 concepts that we use to understand human behavior: ~desire ~belief ~actions 3 properties of the concepts 1) refer to invisible mental states: (ex: no one can see desire or belief... we can see billy ringing the doorbell but can only infer his mental state) 2) they are linked to one another in cause-effect relations (ex: billy can become upset if jimmy isn't home which would later cause him to be mean to his brother) 3) they develop surprising early in life

Space

Children code space with respect to themselves: Infants understand which object is closer (reaching) egocentric spatial representations

Genes, Environment, and the Development of Intelligence

Children contribute to their own intellectual development through their genetic endowment, the actions they elicit from other people, and their choice of environments.

Understanding Causes & Dynamics of Emotions

Children quickly develop understanding of kinds of situations that typically evoke different emotions in others in preschool & school years Happy before sad: ~2-year-olds can identify happy situations in stories ~Children are not accurate in identifying sad situations until age 4 By age 4-6, children's explanations for why peers experience negative emotions in real-life situations in their school are somewhat similar to those of adults

ASD and Theory of Mind

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): • Prefer to look at objects over faces • Have trouble with joint attention • Sometimes have poor language skills • Continue to find false-belief tasks very difficult to solve even when they are teenagers. • Suggests that children with autism have difficulty "mind reading," and that this interferes with many aspects of their social functioning. they understand how desire affects behavior but not how beliefs influence behavior

self-socialization

Children's active shaping of their own development children's knowledge and beliefs about themselves and other people lead them to adopt particular goals and standards to guide their own behavior

Genotype-Environment Interactions

Children's environments partially influenced by their genotype. Sandra Scarr: Effects of the genotype arise because of: 1) Passive Effects: ~Overlap between parents and childrens genes 2) Evocative Effects: ~Children elicit or influence other peoples behavior 3) Active effects: ~Children choose environments they enjoy

Continuity of IQ Scores

Childrens IQ scores at different ages show continuity from age 5 onward ~Evidence from longitudinal studies Measurements conducted closer in time are more closely correlated Scores are more stable at older ages Changes in IQ scores over time function of: ~Characteristics of children and their parents ~Alterations in child's environment ~Random variation

Other linguistic factors

Chinese has a different way of representing the numbers 11-19 • ten-one, ten-two, ten-three etc. • Chinese preschoolers learn the names of numbers much earlier than children who speak English! • Chinese culture also emphasizes mathematics more than US culture.

Temperament

Constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and self-regulation that demonstrate consistency across situations, as well as relative stability over time Constitutionally based = biologically based - genetically inherited characteristics - prenatal environment (nutrition, teratogens, maternal cortisol) - complications from prematurity These early differences are labeled as dimensions of temperament

Current Perspectives: Ecological theories

Contributions: • Ecological theories are important because they place individual development in a much broader context than do other theories of social development. Criticisms: • Not easily testable • Overlooks human capacity to change our environment and ourselves • General omission of specific biological factors.

Arithmetic strategies

Counting From 1: Asked what is 3+2?, child counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (often using fingers). Retrieval: from memory, used for simple problems (2 + 2 = 4) Counting from larger addend: 9 + 3 ~9, 10, 11, 12 Decomposition: 3 + 9 ~3 + 10 = 13, and 13 - 1 = 12

Dweck's Theory of Self-Attributions and Achievement Motivation

Differences in achievement motivation style drive children's learning styles and impact outcome One's own view of intelligence or skill drives their behavior Incremental/mastery orientation view of intelligence •You can always improve, effort leads to mastery • Driven by learning Entity/ helpless view of intelligence •Ability is stable/fixed; some people are good or bad at things •Driven by reward (regardless of their own understanding)

Theories on the Nature and Emergence of Emotion

Discrete Emotions Theory ~Distinctive bodily & facial reactions; Species- universal identification ~Emotions are innate & discrete from one another from very early in life The Functionalist Approach ~Emotions scalar & vary based on environment ~Emotions' basic function is to promote action toward achieving a goal Research supports both perspectives to some degree, and no one theory has emerged as definitive.

Children's Understanding of Real and False Emotions

Display rules: A social group's informal rules about appropriate expression of emotion ~Prosocial: protecting others' feelings or their own e.g., pretend to like someone's cooking ~Self-protective: suppression (masking) of emotione.g., when being teased or when they lose a contest Things that help this development: ~Cognitive development ~Social factors (gender) ~Parents' beliefs and behaviors

Categories of Objects: infants

Early in development, infants use perceptual similarities as the basis for categorization 3- and 4- month- olds group cats as belonging to a single category But they distinguish between dogs and cats P.C. Quinn / Eimas (1996)

Mathematics

Early numerical skills form the foundation for children to learn arithmetic and more advanced mathematical skills Variety of strategies that children use to solve arithmetic problems in different contexts

The Development of Emotions in Early Childhood

Emotion is characterized by physiological responses, subjective feelings, cognitions related to those feelings, and the desire to take action. Psychologists debate the importance of the key components that make up emotion: ~Are emotions innate or partly learned? ~ What is the role of cognition in emotions? ~When and in what form do emotions emerge during infancy?

Gardners Theory of Multiple Intelligences:

Examples ~Spatial ~Kinesthetic ~Musical ~Naturalistic ~Intrapersonal ~Interpersonal Evidence: ~Deficits in people with brain injury ~Child prodigies & savants Educational application ~Children learn best if instruction builds on their intellectual strengths CAVEAT ~Children learn best from info in multiple modalities

Self-Conscious Emotions: Guilt and Shame

Guilt is associated with empathy for others and involves feelings of remorse and regret and the desire to make amends. Shame does not seem to be related to concern about others: self- focused. Whether children experience guilt or shame partly depends on parental practices.

Family Influences

HOME (Home Observa>on for Measurement of the Environment): measure of family influences (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984, 2003) Throughout childhood, children's IQ scores are positively correlated with the quality of their family environment as measured by the HOME (shouting, involvement, reading, eating together, 3+ books)

problems with Measuring Intelligence

Highly controversial and culturally biased Reducing someone's "intelligence" to a number is ethically questionable Intelligence does not equal worth or value. ~But useful for helping children, in the classroom and in science. ~Teachers - help them do their job (evaluations).

IQ Scores as Predictors of Important Outcomes

IQ is a strong predictor of academic, economic, and occupational success. A childs IQ is more closely related to their later occupational success than is socioeconomic status (SES), school acended, or any other variable that has been studied. BUT... motivation, creativity, health, social skills, and other factors are also important influences on success Also gatekeeper effects (determining which students gain access to the training and credentials required for entry into lucrative professions)

intelligences as numerous processes

Intelligence comprised of numerous distinct processes: - remembering - perceiving - planning - comprehending - solvingproblems - encoding - reasoning - forming concepts viewing intelligence as many processes allows more precise specifications of the mechanisms involved in intelligent behavior than do approaches that view it as a single trait or as several abilities

Sternbergs Theory of Successful Intelligence

Intelligence is: "ability to achieve success in life" ~Relative to personal and cultural standards Success depends on: ~Analytic abilities: traditional "IQ" skills ~Practical abilities: reasoning ~Creative abilities: application flexibility HARD TO MEASURE CREATIVE ABILITY

Children's regula/on abili/es are shaped by their expecta/ons of their environments

Most delay of gra/fica/on research focuses on child-internal factors or on adult expecta/ons •This study manipulated the RELIABILITY of the environment ~• Experimenter keeps (reliable) or breaks (unreliable) her promise to bring the big set of cool art supplies • Big effects on children's ability to delay gra/fica/on-- just from a few minutes in the lab! • Extrapolate this effect to real-life situa/ons....

Reading development

Most middle-income children learn the names of letters of the alphabet before they enter school NO CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP between early mastery of letter names and reading achievement (but the two are positively correlated) Phonemic awareness is both correlated with later reading achievement and a cause of it How to think about that • If people around a child use a language (that they can access), they will learn it. • If people around a child read, they will NOT learn to read. • Children need to be explicitly TAUGHT to read (so NOT species-universal), but do NOT need to be taught to use language (it is species-universal).

Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC)

Most widely used instrument for children 6 yrs and older Gives overall score comprised of 4 tests: 1) verbal comprehension ~How are a mountain and river alike? What is a helicopter? 2)Perceptual Reasoning 3) working memory ~Repeat the following numbers in order when Im finished: 5, 3, 7, 4, 9.Now say these numbers from last to first: 2, 9, 5, 7, 3 4) processing / perceptual speed

Measuring Intelligence

NO DIRECT MEASUREMENTS OF INTELLIGENCE ITSELF ~They are measurements of observable behavior on a variety of types of tasks that require intelligence Measure different aspects of intelligence in children of different ages ~They have their greatest success and widest application with preschoolers and older children.

stages of Psychosexual Development Theory

Oral: first year ~ the primary source of satisfaction and pleasure is oral activity. during this stage, the mother is established as the strongest love object Anal: 1-3 years ~the primary source of pleasure comes from defecation Phallic: 3-6 years ~ characterized by the localization of pleasure in the genitalia Latency: 6-12 years ~Characterized by the channeling of sexual energy into socially acceptable actives Genital: 12- + years ~ sexual maturation is complete and sexual intercourse becomes a major goal

Shift from Caregiver Regulation to Self-Regulation

Parents help infants regulate their emotional arousal in the first few months. First sign of emotional self-regulation by 6 months ~infants reduce their distress by averting their gaze Around 1 year, infants begin to use cognitive strategies & learn to select context-appropriate strategies ~Turn attention to non-distressing objects/people orpeople to distract themselves from sources of distress. Over time, children become more likely to rely on themselves rather than their parents when they must delay gratification. ~role of language in emotional regulation Childrens improving self-regulation is due to: - increasing maturation of frontal lobe - increases in adults' expectations of children - age -related improvement in the ability to control motor behavior.

egocentric spatial representations

Piaget (sensorimotor period) the location of objects are coded relative to the infants position at the time of the coding ex: if infants repeatedly found a toy located to their right, they would continue to turn right to find it, even if they were repositioned so that the hidden object was now on their left Can be overridden by a salient landmark ex: such as a tower, infants usually find the toy despite changes in their position

Word Identification

Rapid, effortless identification of words is crucial to reading comprehension and enjoyment of reading. Words identified in 2 main ways: 1) Phonological recoding ~the ability to translate letters into sounds and to blend the sounds into words 2)Visually Based Retrieval ~involves processing a word's meaning directly from its visual form

Skinner's Operant Conditioning

Research focus on reinforcement and punishment (operant conditioning) Attention as a powerful reinforcer (bedtime example) Best way to extinguish unwanted behaviors is to not reinforce them. intermittent reinforcement behavior modification

how do young children become able to find objects when their own position has changed and when no landmarks are available to guide their search?

SELF-LOCOMOTION ~experience with environment (Crawlers do better on object permanence tasks) ~enhances older children's spacial coding

Influences on Reading Development

SES & parental occupation can have impact on reading development • SES/occupation -> parent's interaction with child • Amount parent talks to child -> # of words child knows • Child's vocabulary -> reading proficiency

Jeanne Challs Stages of Reading Development

STAGE 0: birth - 1st grade ~children acquire key prerequisite for reading ~ this includes knowing the alphabet and gaining phonemic awareness STAGE 1: 1st and 2nd grades ~children acquire phonological recoding skills STAGE 2: 2nd & 3rd grades ~children gain fluency in reading simple material STAGE 3: 4th - 8th grades ~ children become able to acquire reasonably complex, new information from written text (read to learn) STAGE 4: 8th - 12th grades ~adolescents acquire skill not only in understanding information presented from a single perspective but also in coordinating multiple perspectives

Language and number: Some representations of number do not require language

Small exact numbers (1, 2, 3) • Subitization/parallel individuation system • Monkeys and (prelinguistic) human infants can track up to 3 objects Large approximate numbers (4 and greater) • Analogue magnitude system • Human infants & monkeys can assess these approximately

Positive Emotions

Smiling is the first clear sign of happiness that infants express ~REM Sleep (early, reflexive) ~Reaction to external stimuli (3-8 wks) ~Social Smiles (emerge 6-7 wks) Laughter (3-4 months) Smiling directed primarily at familiar people, rather than at people in general (7 months).

Current Perspectives: Social cognitive theories

Social cognitive theories have made important theoretical contributions and have been supported by research. However, they provide an incomplete account because they do not address biological factors in development.

Parental Socialization of Children's Emotional Responding

Socialization: ~the processes by which individuals, through experience with others, develop the skills and ways of thinking and feeling, as well as standards and values, that allow them to adapt to their group and live with other people. • Parents' expression of emotion with their children and other people • Parents' reactions to their children's expression of emotion (empathy) • Discussions parents have with their children about emotion and emotion regulation (Emotion coaching)

explains the development of theory of mind (empiricists view)

Sociocultural: Interactions with other people are crucial for developing theory of mind. General information-processing skills are necessary for children to understand people's minds. ~ understanding of false-belief problems is substantially correlated with their ability to reason about complex counterfactual statements and with their ability to inhibit their own behavioral propensities when necessary

The Development of Emotional Regulation

The process of initiating, inhibiting, or modulating: ➡ internal feeling states ➡ emotion-related cognitions ➡ emotion-related physiological processes ➡ emotion-related behaviors in the service of accomplishing one's goals. Its emergence in childhood is a long, slow process.

Negative Emotions

The first negative emotion that is discernible in infants is generalized distress ~2 months: we can sometimes differentiate anger or sadness from distress/pain in some contexts ~2 yr: easy to differentiate between child's anger and other negative emotions (fear, anger sadness)

Identifying Emotions of Others

The first step in the development of emotional knowledge is the recognition of different emotions in others. ~By 4-7 months, infants can distinguish happiness and surprise. ~At8-12months, children demonstrate social referencing: ~~Use of a parent's facial, gestural, or vocal cues to decide how to deal with novel, ambiguous, or possibly threatening situations By age 3, children can label a fairly narrow range of emotional expression. Chronological progression of identifying emotions of others: Positive (happy) --> Negative (sad, then anger/fear) --> Complex Emotions (e.g., self-conscious emotions, like guilt, shame)

Genetic Contributions to Intelligence

The genetic contribution to intelligence is greater in older children than younger ones. WHY? ~ Some genetic processes do not impact IQ until later childhood and adolescence - ex: neural connectivity ~Children increasingly select environments compatible with their own genetically based preferences

Effects of Poverty on IQ

The more years children spend in poverty, the lower their IQs tend to be. How poverty impacts IQ: - Nutrition - health care - intellectual stimulation -emotional support Some children are resilient despite apparent risk factors (often due to high quality parenting)

Categories of Objects: Preschoolers

Wugs and Gillies: krascum and andrews Around 4-5 years of age, causal understanding becomes important for children's categorization Children who were given a causal description ( relating features with functions) categorized pictures better than children who were given only a physical description Differences between 2 groups of kids - one who got causal explanation of features and one who didn't For the non-causal group: just pointed out difference in their features For causal group, explained that different features have different functions and there is a reason for that (wugs like to fight and gillies like to hide, features have function that helps them achieve this goal) Linking function and perception, and placing both under the umbrella of a characteristic of the animal (a desire)

parental investment theory

a primary source of motivation for parents to make such sacrifice is the drive to perpetuate their genes in the human gene pool, which can happen only if their offspring survive long enough to pass those genes on to the next generation. Cinderella effect ~ refers to the fact that rates of child maltreatment are considerably higher for stepparents than for biological parents

Selman's Stage Theory of Role Taking

a social cognitive theory role taking ~ the ability to think about something from another's point of view adopting the perspective of another person is essential to understanding others thoughts, feelings, and motives STAGE 1: 6-8 years ~children come to appreciate that someone else can have a perspective different from their own ~b/c that person isn't processing the same information they do STAGE 2: 8-10 years ~children not only realize that someone else can have a different view, but they also are able to think about the other person's point of view STAGE 3: 10-12 years ~children can systematically compare their own point of view another person's (or more) STAGE 4: 12-older years ~adolescents attempt to understand another person's perspective by comparing it with that of a generalized other, assessing whether the person's view is the same as that of most people in their social group

attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

a syndrome that involves difficulty in sustaining attention

Theory of Mind

a well-organized understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behavior: How psychological processes such as intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions, and emotions influence behavior. infants and preschoolers' naive psychology, together with their strong interest in other people provide the foundation for this 2-year-olds: ~understand relationship between people's desires/preferences and their actions, but difficulty understanding their beliefs 3-year-olds: ~understand that both desires and beliefs affect behavior, but have difficulty with false-belief problems 5-year-olds: ~find false-belief problems very easy

self-discipline

ability to inhibit actions, follow rules, and avoid impulsive reactions predicts 8th graders grades, even after IQ is taken into account.

internalization

adoption of the parents standards for acceptable behavior

false belief problems

another person believes something to be true that the child knows is false (ex: The Smarties task is frequently used to study preschoolers' understanding of false beliefs.) Most 3-year-olds answer like the child in the cartoon, which suggests a lack of understanding that peoples actions are based on their own beliefs, even when those beliefs deviate from what the child knows to be true.

systematic desensitization

approach is widely used to rid people of fear and phobias of everything from dogs to dentists a form of therapy based on classical conditioning

ethological and evolutionary theories

are concerned with understanding development and behavior in terms of given animals evolutionary heritage species-specific behaviors ~behaviors that are common to members ooff a particular species

erogenous zones

areas of the body that are erotically sensitive ex: mouth, anus, genitals

empiricists view of naive psychology

argue that experiences with other people and general information-processing capacities are the key sources of the early understanding of other people Evidence: Some aspects of this understanding develop more slowly.

Sigmund Freud: Psychosexual Development Theory

behavior is motivated by the need to satisfy basic drives these drives and the motives that arise from hem are mostly unconscious and individuals often have only the dimmest understanding why they do what they do he though that even children have a sexual nature that motivates their behavior and influences their relationships each child goes through a universal set of developmental stages in which each successive stage psychic energy becomes focused in different erogenous zones if fundamental needs are not met during any of the stages of psychosexual development, children may become fixated on these needs, continually attempting to satisfy them and to resolve associated conflicts unconsciously

Nativist view of conceptual development

believe that innate understanding of basic concepts plays a central role in development infants are born with some sense of fundamental concepts, such as time, space, number, causality, and the human mind or infants are born with specialized learning mechanisms that allow them to acquire rudimentary understanding of these concepts (time, space, number, causality, and the human mind) unusually quickly and easily

how children acquire biological understanding (nativists)

biology module ~this brain structure or mechanism helps children learn quickly about living things 3 MAIN ARGUEMENTS ~crucial for humans survival that children learn quickly about animals and plants ~children throughout the world are fascinated by plants and animals and learn about them quickly and easily ~children throughout the world organize information about plants and animals in very similar ways (in terms of growth, reproduction, inheritance, illness, and healing)

category hierarchies

categories that are organized according to set-subset relations help children make finer distinctions among the objects within each level superordinate level subordinate level basic level (ex: the category furniture includes all chairs, but the category chairs includes all chairs but not all furniture)

evoluntionary psychology

certain genes predisposed individuals to behave in ways that solved the adaptive challenges they faced

strategy-choice process

children choose the fastest approach that is likely to be correct word identification

what is the difference between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence?

children who do well on crystallized intelligence test do well on other crystallized intelligence tests, but not necessarily on test of fluid intelligence vice versa crystallized intelligence increase steadily from early in life to old age fluid intelligence peaks around age 20 and slowly declines thereafter brain areas most active for the 2 are different ~the prefrontal cortex is more active for fluid intelligence than crystallized intelligence

how children acquire biological understanding (empiricists)

children's biological understanding comes from their personal observations and form information they receive from parents, teachers, and general culture

mental model

cognitive processes used to represent a situation or sequence of events 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

Erik Erikson: Psychosocial Development Theory

development driven by a series of developmental crises related to age and biological maturation to achieve healthy development, individuals must successfully resolve these crises Enlarged the theory to include other factors such as culture and contemporary issues. ~Interested in the concept of identity(coined the term "identity crisis") • Eight age-related stages, characterized by a specific crisis that the individual must resolve. - If the dominant issue of a stage is not successfully resolved before the next stage begins, the person will continue to struggle with it.

Watson's Behaviorism

development is determined by the child's social environment via learning through conditioning his work on classical conditioning laid the foundation for treatment procedures that rebased on the opposite process the decondition or elimination of fear Little Albert ~classical conditioning on a 9 month old baby - white rat was paired with a loud clanking noise resulting in crying and fear of rat systematic desensitization Study of the brain or mind irrelevant (black box, can't be known) ~Extreme end of nurture scale!

general intelligence (g factor)

each of us possesses a certain amount of g and g influences our ability to think and learn on all intellectual tasks in other words, cognitive processes that influences the ability to think and learn on all intellectual tasks g CORRELATES WITH ~information processing speed ~speed of neutral transmission ~brain volume ~Indicators of school achievement ~people's general information about the world Most measures correlate strongly despite lack of surface similarity! why intelligences is seen as a single trait

important aspects of psychological understanding (naive psychology)

emerge late in the 1st year an early in the 2nd year 1) understanding of intention ~the desire to act in a certain way 2) a sense of self ~ children realize that they are individuals distinct from other people 3) joint attention ~two or more people focus intentionally on the same referent 4) intersubjectivity ~the mutual understanding that people share during communication Nativists evidence

pretend play

emerges at 18 months make believe activities in which children create new symbolic relations children act as if they were in a different situation than their actual one children who engage in greater amounts of pretend play tend to show greater understanding of other peoples thinking and emotions (depending on the type of pretend play they engage in)

social learning theory

emphasizes observation and imitation rather than reinforcement, as the primary mechanisms of development Albert Bandura & colleagues: • Preschool children can acquire new behaviors through observing others • Reinforcement is possible learning mechanism, but not necessary • children's tendency to reproduce what they learned depends on vicarious reinforcement

Dodge's Information-Processing Theory of Social Problem Solving

emphasizes the Crucial role of cognitive processes in social behavior analysis of children's use of aggression as a problem-solving strategy hostile attribution ~ the tendency to assume that other people's ambiguous actions stem from a hostile intent ~an expectation that others are hostile to them, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy ~Highly aggressive children seem to have

what are the 2 types of intelligence ?

fluid intelligence ~involves the ability to think on spot ex: drawing inferences and understanding relations between concepts that have not been encountered previously. it is closely related to adaptation to novel tasks, speed of information processes, working memory functioning, and the ability to control attention crystallized intelligence ~is factual knowledge about the world ex: knowledge of word meanings, state capitals, answers to arithmetic problems, and so on. it reflects long term memory for prior experiences and is closely related to verbal ability

concepts

general ideas that organize objects, events, qualities, or relations on the basic of some similarity there are infinite possible concepts because there are infinite ways in which objects or events can be similar are crucial for helping people make sense of the world and act effectively in it by allowing us to generalize from prior experiences tell us how to react emotionally to new experiences

superordinate level (category hierarchies)

general one (ex: plant ... (tree, plant, oak tree))

object substitution

ignoring many of a play object's characteristics so that they can pretend that it is something else emerges at 18 months ex: a playing card = a phone

Dyselxia

inability to read and spell well despite having normal intelligence

imprinting

is a process by which newborn birds and mammals of some species become attached to their mother at first sight and follow her everywhere a behavior that ensures that the baby will stay near a source of protection and food for it to. occur, the infant has to encounter its mother during a specific caritas period very early in life

phonemic awareness

knowledge of the individual sounds within words Recognition of same beginnings, same endings (rhymes) lays the foundation for understanding the relationship between letters and speech sounds Teaching PA skills to 4- & 5-year-olds causes them to become better readers (and spellers) for at least four years after the training

ego

later in the first year the 2nd personality structure it is the rational, logical, problem-solving component of personality arises out of the need to resolve conflicts b/w the id's unbridled demands for immediate gratification and the restraints imposed by the external world

counting

many children begin to count verbally at 2 years of ages, but their understanding of what they are doing is severely limited By age 3 years, children on average can count up to about 10 • They understand some of the principles of counting

Practical intelligence

mental abilities not measured on IQ tests predicts occupational success even after IQ is taken into account. ex: accurately reading other people's emotions and intentions and motivating others to work effectively as a team

numerical magnitude representations

mental models of the way quantities are ordered along a less-to-more dimension

Empiricist view of conceptual developmen

nature endows infants with only general learning mechanisms, such as the ability to perceive, attend, associate, generalize, and remember the rapid and universal formation of fundamental concepts such as time, space, number, causality, and the human mind arises from infants' massive exposure to experiences that are relevant to these concepts

conceptual development themes:

nature vs nurture ~ children's concept reflect the interaction b/w specific experiences and their biological predispositions to process information in particular ways active child ~ from infancy onward, many children's concepts reflect their active attempts to make sense of the world how change occurs ~researchers who study this attempt to understand not only what concepts chidden form but also the processes by which they form them socioculture context ~ the concepts we form are influences by the society in which we live

vicarios reinforcement

observing someone else receive a reward or a punishing would this affect the child's subsequent reproduction of the behavior ...yes

how do children go on to form superordinate and subordinate categories ?

parents and others use the child's basic level categories as a foundation for explaining the more general / more specific categories

normal distribution

pattern of data in which scores fall symmetrically around a mean value, with most scores falling close to the mean and fewer and fewer scores farther from it 68% of scores fall within 1 standard devia>on of the mean 95% of scores fall within 2 standard devia>ons

gesture-speech mismatches

phenomenon in which hand movements and verbal statements convey different ideas gestures convey more information than their verbal statements Gesture-speech mismatchers benefited more from instruction than children whose gestures matched their speech Suggests they are at an optimal point to learn new strategies

Alfred Binet

predict individual differences in school performance; identify children who needed special attention the Binet- Simon Intelligence Test ~children were asked to interpret proverbs, solve puzzles, define words, and sequences cartoon panels so that the jokes made sense Credited with developing Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Original view: simple associative skills -> reasoning

three-stratum theory of intelligence

proposed by John B Carroll An Integrated Model of Intelligence that places: 1) g at the top of the intelligence hierarchy 2) eight moderately general abilities in the middle (includes both fluid and crystallized intelligence and other competencies similar to Thurstone's seven primary mental abilities) 3)many specific processes at the bottom

intelligence quotient (IQ)

quantitive measure used to indicate a child's intelligence relative to that of other children of the same age typically with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 • The WISC & Stanford-Binet tests produce IQ scores IQ scores are standardized for children of different ages ~Advantage: Qs at different ages are easy to compare.

play

refers to activities that are pursued for their own sake, with no motivation other than the enjoyment they bring 1st YEAR ~the earliest form of play begins here ~play activity tends to be solitary ~ex: banging spins on metal high chair trays and throwing food on the floor

Incremental/ Mastery Orientation:

self-esteem is based on their own effort and learning and not on how others evaluate them reinforced by focusing on children's effort, praising them for a good effort and criticizing them for an inadequate one ex: your worked really hard on this good job or you need to work harder next time

primary mental abilities

seven abilities proposed by Thurstone as crucial to human intelligence 1) word fluency 2) verbal meaning 3) reasoning 4) spacial visualization 5) numbering 6) rote memory 7) perception speed scores on various tests of a single ability tend to correlate more strongly with one another than do scores on tests of different abilities

Social Competence:

skills that help children achieve personal goals and maintain positive relationships Children who are better able to do this (measured by tasks such as delay of gratification) tend to be more well adjusted and liked by their peers as adults

Intelligence as a Single Trait

some researchers view intelligence as a single trait that influences all aspects of cognitive functioning general intelligence (g factor)

Entity/ Helpless Orientation:

tend to base their self-worth on the approval they receive or do not receive from other people about their intelligence, talent, and personal qualities try to put themselves in situations that they know they will always succeed at reinforced by Bothe praise and criticism forced on children's enduring traits or on the child as. whole ex: you are very smart at these problems or you just cut do math

role taking

the ability to think about something from another's point of view

phonological recoding skills (sounding out)

the ability to translate letters into sounds and to blend the sounds into words

entity theory of intelligence

the belief that her intelligence is fixed and unchangeable goal is to be successful, and as long as she is succeeding, all is well not succeeding leads her to fell bad and doubt her abilities and self-worth you fail or succeed because you are either smart or dumb

Incremental theory of intelligence

the belief that intelligence can be developed through effort a focus on mastery, meeting challenges and overcoming failures, and generally expects efforts to be successful they focused on what they have learned even if they have failed

perceptual categorization

the grouping together of objects that have similar appearances (color, size, movement) (common in infants) (ex: Behl-Chadha study (1996): Infants can habituate to a mammal category with animals they have never seen / also notice that they are different from a bird or fish.)

numerical equality

the idea that all sets of N objects have something in common ex: recognizing that 2 dogs, 2 shoes, and 2 cups share the property of "twoness" NEWBORNS ~nonlinguistic or (non symbolic) sense ~Arithmetics (math 1+1 or 1-1) • Even 5 month olds have some sense of this • can habituate to images of two objects and dishabituate to images of three objects

mathematical equality

the idea that the values on the two sides of the equal sign must balance The values on each side of the equal sign must balance Children (in the US) mostly encounter problems like this: 3 + 4 = _____ ~Interpret the = to mean start adding all the numbers So problems like 3 + 4 + 5 = ___ + 5 ~Are often answered incorrectly

basic level (category hierarchies)

the medium or in between one often the first level learned objects at this level share many common characteristics objects are easy to discriminate from each other (ex: tree ... (tree, plant, oak tree))

Achievement motivation

whether they are motivated by learning goals, seeking to improve their competence and master new material or performance goals, seeking to receive positive assessments of their competence or avoid negative assessments

comprehension monitoring

with regard to language, understanding what others say or sign or write

Causal Reasoning

• 6 mo Infants surprised if an object moves on its own after watching it struck • 24 mo children could follow causal relationship for turning on the "Blicket detector" (they assumed object b was the blicket because when object A was placed on the music box it didn't play the music) • Older children (~5yrs) begin to appreciate the concept of magic

Genetic influences are mediated by family income (SES = Socio-Economic Status)

• Among middle and upper class families, genetic influences are higher • Among lower class families, influences of shared environment are higher. • True in the US but not in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, or Australia) WHY??? In other countries, access to quality education depends less on family income.

Homesigners

• Are deaf and do not acquire the spoken language around them • Live in Nicaragua; DO NOT interact with each other; have not acquired Nicaraguan Sign Language • Create gesture systems to communicate • Show no apparent congenital cognitive deficits • Have jobs, make and use money • No systematic elicitation of number gestures or a count list Typically developing children: Words, then meaning Homesigners: Meanings, then words/expressions

Anger & Sadness

• By age 1 children can clearly express anger (increases un/l 2nd year) • AKer children can move on their own, most anger is directed at loss of control • Sadness is less prominent in infants, unless children are leK alone for long periods of /me • AKer children develop language, nega/ve emo/onal displays become less frequent

Theory of Mind across cultures (Callaghan et al. 2005)

• Canada, India, Peru, Thailand, Samoa • On average, accuracy increased from 14% (3 year- olds) to 85% (5 year-olds) • Consistent performance across cultures: • In no country did 3 year-olds answer more than 25% correct • In no country did 5 year-olds answer less than 72% correct

Hostile Attribution Bias example

• EXP: Children presented stories in which one child suffers because of the actions of another but the intent of the perpetrator is ambiguous • E.g. Child is working hard to assemble a puzzle- peer bumps into table scattering puzzle pieces and merely says "oops". • Asked children what they would do and why (as victim) • some children interpreted the event as an accident and said they would ignore it • others concluded bumping was on purpose so they would find a way to get even

Features of Learning Theory

• Emphasize continuity in development (no stages) • Focus on mechanisms of change (i.e., learning principles) • Emphasize role of external factors in shaping personality and social behavior (reinforcement and punishment) • Individual differences arise because of different histories of reinforcement. • Contemporary theorists emphasize importance of cognitive factors & active role children play in their own development. Relevant for research and childrens welfare in that therapeutic approaches to treat children are based on learning principles.

Features of Social Cognition Theory

• Focuses on children's ability to think and reason about their own and other people's thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors • Self-socialization: childrens active shaping of their own development through their activity preferences, friendship choices, and other behaviors • The active child is a major theme • Emphasizes Individual differencesin thinking & behavior (M/F; non/ aggressive) • Social cognitive theories downplay the role of biology

Why test homesigners?

• If CULTURE is enough to drive representations of large exact number: • Homesigners should succeed on tasks using quantities larger than 3 • But if LANGUAGE is required to represent large, exact numbers • We would not expect them to succeed with quantities larger than 3

What about large exact numbers?

• Is language necessary to represent large exact numbers (4 or more)? Like 8? • Mundurukú, Pirahã, and Warlpiri languages do not have words representing exact quantities (other than 1) • If we find that (monolingual) individuals in these cultures cannot represent large exact numbers, is thisdue to culture or language?

Current Perspectives: Learning theories

• Learning theories are based on principles derived from empirical research. • Learning theories have generated much research and many practical applications (e.g. therapy, parenting) • Weaknesses: Limited attention to the impact of biological factors and (with the exception of Bandura's theory) cognition on social development.

Fear and Distress

• LiHle sign of fear before 6 months • AKer 6 months children begin to "fear" strangers • Intensifies un/l age 2, fades away (depends on child's temperament) - Adap/ve (no ability to escape) • Separa/on anxiety

Temperament and Social Adjustment

• Longitudinal study conducted in New Zealand: Children who were negative, impulsive, and unregulated: ~Had more problems as young adults with adjustment (e.g. including unemployment and conflict with roommates) Behavioral inhibition (fearful distress) in infancy associated with problems like anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal at older ages. Adjustment depends on: ~Child's temperament ~Goodness of fit between child's temperament & demands/expectations of environment (negative temperaments, constructive parenting more critical). The childs temperament and the parents' socialization efforts seem to affect each other over time

How Theory of Mind is tested matters: facilitating understanding

• No set of conditions allows a majority of 3-year-olds to pass the standard false-belief task • BUT, the framing of the task matters: "Let's play a trick on Sam and fill this candy box with pencils" • Most 3-year-olds will say that Sam will say that the box has candy (Sullivan & Winner 1993) • Assuming the role of deceiver helps the child appreciate the other child's (Sam's) perspective

Bandura's Bobo Doll Study

• Preschool children initially watched a short film in which an adult model performed highly aggressive actions on an inflatable Bobo doll (weighted at the bottom so it pops up when knocked down). Children were in 1 of 3 Conditions: (Between-Subjects Design) - Model Rewarded - Model Punished - Control (No Consequences) Bandura concluded that children learn: • how to perform the specific actions demonstrated by the model • that aggression is acceptable (and perhaps enjoyable). Results: 1. Observing someone else receive a reward or punishment for a behavior affects its reproduction. Also: Reward = No consequence!!) 2. Children learned more than they spontaneously repeated. 3. Boys initially more aggressive than girls, but girls increasingly imitated when offered incentives.

Representation of relative space difficult

• Use of landmarks for young children requires that it be very salient and the only salient landmark • Better by age 5 (multiple landmarks) • Navigating in new environments (college campus, hiking) • Difficult for children and many adults! • What modulates this ability • Importance (culture) • Experience (where did you grow up?)

the bioecological model levels

•Microsystem: the immediate, bi-directional environment that a person experiences ex:Child & Peers Child & Family Child and School • Mesosystem: connections between various microsystems ex: Parent & School • Exosystem: environmental settings that the person does not directly experience (but can affect the individual indirectly) ex: Parents' Workplace School Board • Macrosystem: the larger cultural context within which the other systems are embedded. ex: Culture Laws • Chronosystem: historical changes that influence other systems over time ex:Child's Age Time Period