Infant and child development chapters 5-7
dynamic systems theory
(bottom up) a type of connectionist theory that also emphasizes the building and strengthening of language networks. two key principles: child as an active participant in the world and the child as able to detect environmental regularities
primary circular reactions
- 1 to 4 months - Infants begin to repeat their actions. They combine actions into recurring behaviors organized around the immediate environment of their bodies. For example, infants will repeatedly suck their thumbs or kick their legs.
Tertiary circular reactions
- 12 to 18 months - Infants are capable of means-end analysis and can search for new solutions to solve problems. Infants display increased flexibility and creativity, often engaging in trial-and-error experiments to explore the consequences of their actions with objects.
mental representation
- 18 to 24 months - Infants are able to mentally represent and manipulate objects and events in their minds, as seen in the use of language, symbolic play, and deferred imitation (such as imitating another person's action of pulling a mitten off a stuffed animal)
secondary circular reactions
- 4 to 8 months - Infants enjoy watching the effects their actions have on the world, and they often attempt to recreate events by repeating their actions with objects. For example, a baby might swipe at a mobile, watch the dangling parts move, and then swipe again and again to reproduce the effort.
coordination of secondary circular reactions
- 8 to 12 months - Infants' actions now appear to be "goal directed" and intentional. Infants coordinate and combine several actions to accomplish a goal. For example, the infant might try to move a pillow aside to get a toy that is behind it. - object permanence
Reflexes (Piaget)
- Birth to 1 month - Newborns display movements including sucking and grasping and produce a variety of spontaneous and rhythmic actions by moving their fingers, limbs, heads, and torsos.
Harry Harlow's Monkeys
- If separated from its real mother, the infant monkey preferred the cloth doll mother without food and milk to the wire doll with food and milk - Exhibits preference for contact comfort, which stimulates attachment.
Milestones of Motor Development
- Rolls over: 2.5 mo - Sits unassisted: 5.5 mo - Crawls: 7 mo - Pulls to stand: 7.5 mo - Walks w/ support: 9 mo - Stands alone: 11.5 mo - Walks alone: 12 mo - Walks up steps: 17 mo
Infant categorization
- Young infants sort based on physical properties - Older infants expand in variety of features
Nativists
- assert that infants are hardwired with core capacities that allow them to reason about the permanence of objects at much younger ages than Piaget claimed. -piaget underestimated infants cognitive abilities -An alternative account is that 4.5-month-olds have learned quite a lot about the laws of physics as they watch objects fall and land on other objects, including the objects they themselves drop and manipulate. -nativists acknowledge that core capacities are only primitive building blocks.
Developmental systems' theorists
- focus on the multiple forces, inside and outside the child, that give rise to children's thoughts and actions. - reject Piaget's idea of top-down mental "schema" determining what babies understand and can do - "A NOT B" task
Indicators of attention in infants
- gaze (although infants often blank stare) - Trustworthy: heart rate or patterns of brain activity from electroencephalography (EEG) recordings
A not B task
- if a researcher increases the number of times an object is hidden at location A before switching to location B, infants are more biased to search and reach for the object at location A than at the new location B. - affected by infants positioning (infants chose correct answer)
what are the attachment stages and describe them and when they occur
- preattachment phase- birth to 6 weeks, innate signals, comforted by interaction - attachment in the making- 6 weeks to 6-8 months, preferential response to familiar people, social smiling develops - clear cut attachment- (6-8 months and 1.5-2 years), seeking contact with caregivers, shows protest and distress when separated - reciprocal relationships- last stage, children become active in relationships with caregivers
Rothbart's Model of Temperament
- reactivity: activity level, attention span/persistence, fearful distress, irritable distress, positive affect - self- regulation: effortful control
Karen Wynn study
- reported that five-month-old human infants are able to compute the outcomes of simple addition and subtraction operations on small sets of physical objects - Mickey Mouse
Possible explanations for failure in hidden object task and in A-not-B task
1. Co-ordinating memory with movement with unfamiliar situation 2. Cognitive interpretation: Learned response becomes "prepotent" or dominant, infant must maintain location in working memory AND inhibit the learned response 3. Social interpretation: Grownup wants me to reach to location A
babies' heart rates change in line with four phases of attention:
1. automatic response 2. orientation 3. sustained attention 4. attention termination
conventional words
12 months
Milestones of Emotional Development
1st-3rd months: self-regulation; becoming interested in the world 2-7 months: "falling in love" w/ caregiver 3-10 months: "I want a dialogue" (reach, coo, babble, etc.) 9-18 months: emergence of an organized self
core knowledge theory
A framework explaining that infants are born with several innate knowledge systems or core domains of thought that enable early rapid learning and adaptation.
conceptual self
A view of the self that includes a sense of the roles that we occupy in broader cultural and social contexts
Rothbart and Bates six dimensions of temperament
Activity: gross motor activity level positive affect: physical expressions of happiness fear: intensity of reaction, inhibition distress to limitations: distress in relation to desires soothability: reduction of distress attention: engagement with an object
Scaffolding
Adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance
differentiation of negative emotion
Anger: infants young as 2 months old react with what some researchers infer to be anger, Infants 4-5 months old express anger when a goal is blocked. Anger increases in intensity and frequency from 4 to 16 months old and later into the second year of life. Fear: strong rooted in infancy. From evolutionary perspective, early fear of snakes, spiders, heights and other potentially threatening stimuli may benefit survival and then be adaptive. Self-conscious emotions: relate to a sense of self and other awareness, such as embarrassment, pride, guilt, and shame. For example, infants avoid eye contact or hide their face when they're the center of attention, implying that they're embarrassed and a 2 year old may react to accidentally breaking a toy by hiding the toy and avoiding the caregiver (shame) or attempting to fix the toy (guilt)
John Bowlby
Attachment theory. Identified the characteristics of a child's attachment to his/her caregiver and the phases that a child experiences when separated from the caregiver.
contingent responsiveness
Caregivers who are sensitive to the child's cues and respond appropriately
Areas critical to survival throughout human evolutionary history
Children are active learners, constantly striving to solve problems and to organize understanding into coherent wholes
Dual Language Learners (DDLs)
Children who develop skills in two languages are dual language learners. Ideally education fosters proficiency in two languages rather than creating a language shift.
regulatory language
Directives that regulate infants attention and actions that often contain many pronouns
Harlows other monkey experiment
Harlow studied the effects of extreme social isolation on infant monkeys. He placed young monkeys in isolation chambers he called the "pit of despair," where they were kept alone in darkness and isolation for long periods without any social or environmental stimulation.
pre operational period
In Piaget's theory, the period from about ages 2 to 7, in which a child can think representationally, but can't yet relate these representations to each other or take a point of view other than her own.
Bogartz disappearing carrot study
In the test trial with the short carrot, infants' attention would be focused on the lower half of the screen. Infants would therefore not notice the introduction of the window in the top half of the screen. In the test trial with the tall carrot, however, infants' attention would be focused on the top half of the screen and therefore lead them to see the new window that appeared
Well equipped learners
Infants enter the world with specialized learning abilities that allow rapid effortless learning of information of adaptive importance, eg, face perception and language
Thomas and Chess
NY longitudinal study in 1956 interviewed mothers of 3 month olds about their infants' reactions to novel people and situations, energy level, positive and negative emotions, adaptability to change, rhythmicity, general mood, and distractibility
vocabulary spurt
Rapid increase in vocabulary that begins at approximately 18 months
developmental/ dynamic systems theories
Reaching experience promotes understanding of others' reaching ( 5 m versus 7 m) Centrality of movement "Sticky mittens" and accelerated understanding reaching (Woodward and others)
Receptive language
Refers to words and language an infant understands
canonical syllables
Six to ten months where full babbling and differing sounds are made.
Sensorimotor Stage (Piaget)
Spans the first two years of life Infants and toddlers "think" with their sensory and motor equipment Initial reflexes are transformed by learning Piaget believed the very young infant had no capability of mental representation of its experience Six substages
referential language
Statements or questions about objects or events that support infants vocabulary development
New York Longitudinal Study results
Temperamental styles: Easy babies (40%) Difficult babies (10%) Slow-to-warm-up babies (15%) Average babies (35%)
Emotion discrimination
The ability to distinguish among emotional expressions such as sad and angry speech or faces
distress tolerance
The ability to persist when faced with negative emotions and cope with everyday stressors including the demands of parenthood - positive relationships with children
Spritz's study
The lack of consistent caregivers and emotional bonding impacted the children's ability to form secure attachments, leading to emotional withdrawal and developmental issues.
Vocabulary spurt
The rate of growth in productive vocabulary accelerates substantially, with the addition of 8-24 new words per week. 18 months
social cognition
The subfield of child psychology that examines how children process, store, and apply information about people and social situations
Scripts and Schemas
We often have "scripts" or preset notions about certain types of situations Help us understand other people's verbal and nonverbal behavior
separation distress
a common emotional response to being separated from their primary caregiver or attachment figure.
insecure-avoidant attachment
a pattern of attachment when the infant seems not to care about the caregiver's presence, departure, or return
secure attachment
a relationship in which an infant obtains both comfort and confidence from the presence of his or her caregiver - secure base (most babies)
Genie, the abused girl who was locked in a closet until she was 13, was able to progress normally in all of the following areas except ________.
acquiring complex syntax
accommodation
adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
developmental systems theory
an overarching theoretical perspective on biological development, heredity, and evolution. It emphasizes the shared contributions of genes, environment, and epigenetic factors on developmental processes.
six basic emotions found in infants (Darwin)
anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness
mental representation (Piaget)
as infants' ability to "hold" and "manipulate" objects and events in their minds, for example by planning behaviors and predicting outcomes before acting. - for example by planning behaviors and predicting outcomes before acting
Bowlby's Ethological Theory of Attachment
attachment is an evolved response that aids the baby's survival.
Social smiles
between 6 weeks and 3 months smiles directed to people; caregivers By 4 months; smiles directed at other familiar people
30 million word gap
by age 3, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest families
disorganized attachment
characterized by the child's odd behavior when faced with the parent; type of attachment seen most often with kids that are abused or neglected
displaced reference (Piaget)
children's ability to understand and use words to refer to things that are not present
insecure-resistant attachment
classification of parent-child attachment in which the child shows little exploratory behavior when the parent is present, great distress when the parent leaves the room, and not easily comforted upon the parent's return
Influences on cognitive development
culture, genes, and environment
5 fundamental components of emotions
emotion elicitors (triggers) physiological changes cognitive appraisal (infant evaluates) emotional expression communicative function (gets attention)
mutual exclusivity
expectancy that a given entity will have only one name children inferred unknown object as a "blicket" since it had no label
Renee Baillargeon's research
fails up until 8 months
drive reduction theory
held that a primary motivation of humans is to satisfy biological needs
communicative accommodation
how much they adjusted their own behaviors to help young infants communicate their needs and interests
Under extension
in early language development, children may map words to an overly narrow class of referents
orientation
infant turns head and eyes to a picture, and heart rate rapidly slows down.
Joint attention
infants 12 months of age and older regularly share attention to the same objects as other people
Prosocial behaviors
infants who received material rewards were less likely to help the same adult than were infants in the social reward (thank you!) and no reward conditions
core capacities
innate, mental capabilities that serve as building blocks to cognitive development and allow infants to make sense of their environments
Adaptation
is the ability to adjust to new information and experiences
Semantic development
learning meanings of words and of combinations of words
syntactic development
learning the syntax or rules for combining words
still face
mother interacts with baby; then ignores with still face baby does everything to try to get things back to normal
Three components of temperament
negative reactivity : bad emotions Surgency: activity level and intensity of pleasure orienting regulation: infants ability to regulate attention towards goals and away from distress
Relational aggression
nonphysical acts, such as insults or social rejection, aimed at harming the social connection between the victim and other people (bullying)
Overextensions
overgeneralizing words to an overly broad class of referents—such as saying "daddy" to all men
child centered communications
parents interacted with their babies about whatever interested the child, used child-directed speech, and treated infants like controversial partners
Temperament
refers to a child's intensity of reactivity and regulation of emotions, activity, and attention
attachment
refers to the affectionate bonds that infants develop toward the important people in their lives and their reliance on loved ones for love and attention
emotion regulation
refers to the monitoring, evaluating, and moderating of emotional responses, particularly under stressful situations
Vygotsky's theory of private speech
self directed utterances called egocentric speech; foundation for all higher cognitive processes→ use more during challenging tasks, internalized as silent inner speech with age, children with learning problems use it more through life
sense of self in infancy and childhood
self-Awareness (0-2 Years): Mirror Recognition: Around 18 months, children often begin to recognize themselves in a mirror. This milestone indicates the beginning of self-awareness. Awareness of Preferences and Abilities: Children start to develop a sense of their likes, dislikes, and basic abilities, which contributes to their sense of individuality. Self-Concept (3-5 Years): Social Comparison: Children start to compare themselves to others, developing an understanding of their own abilities in relation to their peers. Use of Personal Pronouns: Children start using words like "I," "me," and "mine," signifying an understanding of themselves as individuals.
Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky)
social interactions are the source from which thought and language arise
Mary Ainsworth
studied how different attachment styles affected kids -secure base
Moral retribution
support of punishment against others who act immorally
self-regulation
the ability to control attention, emotions, thinking, and behavior
goodness of fit
the extent to which a persons temperament matches the requirements, expectations, and opportunities of the environment
stranger anxiety
the fear of strangers that infants commonly display
Developmental cascades
the process by which a child's previous interactions and experiences may spread across other systems and alter his or her course of development, somewhat like a chain reaction
Imprinting (Konrad Lorenz)
the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life - ducklings following
inhibitory control
the suppression of dominant or preferred response in favor of an acceptable one improves throughout toddlerhood
Object Permanence (Piaget)
the understanding that objects continue to exist independent of one's immediate perceptual experiences
Cooing
vowel-like noises "ahhh" and. "Ooo" 2-3 months
Babbles
vowel/consonant combinations that infants begin to produce at about 4 to 6 months of age
