PSY 105
Sally-Ann task (false belief task)
* Sally puts a marble in the basket. Sally goes out of the room. While Sally is away, Ann takes the marble and puts it in the box. Sally returns. Where will she look for the marble? * Children have to understand that, since Sally was not there when the marble will moved, she will look in its old location. If they pass the task, they will get this right. If they fail the task, they will say she will look at the box. * Questions * Where will Sally look for her marble? [False belief questions] * Where was the marble in the beginning? [Memory question] * Where is the marble now? [Reality question]
Smarties task
* Shown a Smarties box and asked what is in it. Actually contains pencils. * Questions * Your friend looks in the box. What will he think is inside? * What do you think was inside before I showed you?
What are the limitations of considering age in developmental questions?
1. Age by itself tells us about expected biological maturation, but actual maturation varies from one individual to the next. 2. Different aspects of development proceed at different rates, i.e. the physical and mental development of a child might be discordant. 3. Age alone reveals little about the underlying mechanisms of development.
Three variables in developmental psychology research and what they measure
1. Age: interindividual differences when used on cross-sectional research; intraindividual change when used in longitudinal research 2. Cohort: individuals differences 3. Time of measurement: intraindividual change
Five ways of applying evolutionary developmental psychology to contemporary issues of psychological development
1. Classifying developmental features according to their evolutionary or functional status 2. Proposing hypotheses and microtheories to explore the function of developmental traits 3. Collecting data from different sources to test developmental evolutionary hypotheses 4. Describing the phylogenetic and sociocultural history of human developmental features 5. Designing "evolutionary experiments"
Three principles of object mechanics in human infants
1. Cohesion: bodies mantain both their connectedness and their boundaries as they move 2. Continuity: bodies that move only on connected, unobstructed paths 3. Contact: bodies interact if and only if they come into contact
Three core principles of innate knowledge about objects in infants
1. Continuity: the idea that an object moves from one location to another in a continuous path and cannot be in the same place as another object 2. Cohesion: the idea that objects have boundaries and that their components stay connected to one another 3. Contact: the idea that one object must contact one another to make it move Research with infants has shown that all three of these appear to hold; infants increase their attention if objects seem to break any of these core principles.
The five environmental systems of the bioecological method
1. Microsystem: the innermost environment (home and school) 2. Mesosystem: the relationship among microsystems (the interaction between home and school) 3. Exosystem: a system in which the developing child is not actually present but that influence the child's development 4. Macrosystem: the outermost environmental level consisting of a child's culture and society 5. Chronosystem: changes in ecological system that are caused by time
Five developmental epochs
1. Prenatal 2. Infancy and toddlerhood 3. Early childhood 4. Middle childhood 5. Adolescence
Five assumptions about the brain in evolutionary development
1. The brain is a physical system, a type of organ. It is an information processing device that uses information to generate an appropriate behavior. 2. Neural circuits are designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors have faced during evolutionary history. 3. Consciousness is the very tip of the iceberg. There are tons of unconscious processes which are essential for functioning in an environment but seem effortless to us. 4. There are different neural circuits which are specialized for a certain process. 5. Modern skulls house a stone age mind. Natural selection takes a really long time to build behavior to adaptive problems and we have not had time to develop outside of our evolutionary environment of the hunter gatherer.
Six assumptions of evolutionary developmental psychology
1. The extended juvenile period of H. sapiens was favored by the need to master an increasingly complex social-technological environment. 2. Evolution favors ontogenetic diversity because humans live in a wide range of environments. 3. Many aspects of childhood serve to prepare the way for adulthood and were selected for, there have been different selection pressures on organisms at different times in ontogeny, there are aspects of childhood that did not evolve to serve any recurring problem and have not been shaped by natural selection but are a consequence of being associated with deferred or ontogenetic adaptations 4. Many evolved psychological mechanisms are proposed to be domain specific in nature 5. Behaviors, cognitions, and physical features that arise and change from infancy to old age emerge from an intersection of evolved mechanisms and the environment. 6. Because the living conditions in which our species evolved are far different from the information age environment, many of our species' evolved behavioral and cognitive adaptations are not well suited to modern life and may actually be maladaptive.
Five principles of counting
1. The one-to-one principle: each item in an array is associated with one and only one number name. 2. The stable-order principle: number names must be in a stable, repeatable order. 3. The cardinal principle: the final number in a series represents the quantity of the set. 4. The abstraction principle: the first three principles can be applied to any array or collection of entities, physical or nonphysical. 5. The order-irrelevant principle: the order in which things are counted is irrelevant.
Four requirements for natural selection
1. There are more members of a species born in each generation than will survive 2. There is variation in physical and behavioral characteristics among individuals within a species 3. This variation is heritable 4. Characteristics that result in an individual surviving and reproducing tend to increase in frequency in the population, whereas characteristics of nonsurvivors decrease
What four questions does evolutionary psychology seek to answer?
1. Why is the mind designed the way it is? 2. How is the mind designed--what are its mechanisms? 3. What are the functions of these mechanisms, and how are they organized? 4. How does the environmental input interact with these mechanisms to produce behavior?
Three components of Freudian personality
1. id: our basic instincts 2. ego: the key element of our personality which is in charge of rational thinking 3. superego: the moral component of our personality
Ordinality
A basic understanding of more than and less than and, later, and understanding of specific ordinal relationships. This appears at 16 months of life.
Operant conditioning
A form of learning in which a behavior elicits certain consequences, which in turn make the behavior more or less likely to occur in the future.
What rat study demonstrated that it was methylation leading to the behavioral changes seen in rats of high-stress mothers?
A further study made sure that it was the methylation that led to this change. In this study, a pup from a high investment mother was injected with a drug in their critical period which adds methyl tags. These pups went on to become anxious adults.
What were the major findings of the CAN study?
A large study looked at child abuse and neglect (the CAN study). Chronic childhood stress alters the stress response (epigenetic changes). Gene function is altered by child abuse and neglect. Other genes are altered in the same way (immune system, brain development, heart disease, cancer, psychiatric and substance abuse disorders). Causes frequent major health problems throughout life. Can be transmitted to the next generation.
Critical period
A particular period of time in which a biological or environmental event must happen for typical development to occur.
Sensitive period
A portion of time during which a particular experience has a strong effect on development.
Symptoms of autism
A profound disorder in understanding and coping with the social environment, regardless of IQ. Other symptoms include mental retardation, islets of ability, and "insistence on sameness".
Ethnography
A qualitative research approach that aims to capture the experiences and perspectives of the people being studied and to understand the meaning these people give to daily activities.
What was the study which looked at suicide victims and their epigenetic profiles?
A study looked at the brains of people who committed suicide but were not abused as children and people who died of other things; between these two groups, there was very little difference in the methylation of glucocorticoid receptors. However, people who committed suicide and were abused as children had a much higher level of methylation in the glucocorticoid receptor.
Cross-sequential study
A study that combines the cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. In a cross-sequential study, two or more age groups are tested at two or more points in time.
Cross-sectional study
A study that compares groups of children of different ages at a single point in time.
Longitudinal study
A study that follows the same group of children over a substantial period of time.
Language acquisition device
A theoretical mental organ that compares the language input that children hear around them with their innate theory, makes modifications, and eventually permits children to understand and speak their mother tongue.
Behaviorism
A theoretical orientation that emphasizes learning and focuses on observable behavior. Behaviorism believes that individuals are born as "blank slates" with no existing structure; individuals only develop based on their environment.
Evolutionary developmental psychology
A theoretical perspective that is defined as "the application of the basic principles of Darwinian evolution, particularly natural selection, to explain contemporary human development. Involves the study of genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the universal development of social and cognitive competencies and the evolved epigenetic processes that adept these competencies to local conditions; it assumes that not only are behaviors and cognitions that characterize adults the product of selection pressure operating over hte course of evolution, but so are characteristics of children's behaviors and minds."
Developmental systems theory
A theory emphasizing reciprocal interactions between the individual and multiple levels of the individual's environment; work based on developmental systems theory that examines interactions at four levels: genetic, neural, behavioral, and environmental.
Life history theory
A theory that posits that the young of a species calibrate their physiological and behavioral development as adaptive responses to features of their environment, including the environment provided by their parents.
Language acquisition support system
A theory that there is a device in adults that responds to infants and young children, automatically altering speech to a more understandable form.
Domain general theory of language development
A theory that there is no "innate knowledge" about language. Language is processed by domain general mechanisms with some limits on possible architecture. Rather, as children gain more words, their brains automatically start organizing these words, eventually giving rise to primitive grammar.
Classical conditioning
A type of learning in which a neutral stimulus (such as the sound of a bell) comes to evoke a response originally evoked by a different stimulus.
What is ABA?
ABA is short for Applied Behavior Analysis. Is is defined as the process of systematically applying interventions based upon the principles of learning theory to improve socially significant behaviors to a meaningful degree, and to demonstrate that the interventions employed are responsible for the improvement in behavior. ABA relies on the principle that all behaviors are created equal; it doesn't have space for sex differences, cultural differences, biological influences, or social influences.
What is a proposed theory for human intelligence?
Acquired natural language. Our language is not domain or task specific, and allows representations to be combined across any conceptual domains that humans can represent and to be used for any tasks that we can understand and untertake. Representations are neither encapsulated nor isolated. Natural language provides humans with a unique system for combining flexibly the representations they share with other animals.
Deferred adaptations
Adaptations in childhood that serve to prepare the way for adulthood.
Ontogenetic adaptations
Adaptations in children that were selected in evolution to serve an adaptive function at that time in development and not to prepare them for later adulthood.
Ontogenetic by-products
Adaptations that occur in children as a result of being associated with deferred or ontogenetic adaptations.
Formal operational stage
Ages 12+. In this stage, children begin to be able to reason about abstract and hypothetical situations.
Pre-operational stage
Ages 2-7. Success in this stage is first understanding of symbolic thought. Failures in this stage include "centration" (focusing on one aspect of a problem) in conservation task and "egocentrism" in perspective taking task; these are normal.
Concrete operational stage
Ages 7-12. In this stage, children begin to reason logically about concrete objects and events, not abstract ones.
Physical domain
An area of development that involves patterns of change in children's biology and health, including sensory abilities and motor skills.
Cognitive domain
An area of development that involves patterns of change in children's intellectual abilities, including reasoning, learning, attention, memory, and language skills.
Psychosocial domain
An area of development that involves patterns of change in children's personalities as well as their social and emotional skills, including relationships with others and the ability to regulate their own emotions.
Information processing theory
An attempt to explain what's going on in the human mind as it acquires, processes, retains, and comprehends information. Information processing theory focuses on what information children represent; how children represent, store, and retrieve information; how these representations guide their behaviors; and which mechanisms lead to changes in these processes across development.
How was it determined that autistic children did not have a theory of mind?
An experiment was run with high-functioning autistic children, Down's Syndrome children, and normal children. All children were given the Sally-Ann test. The normal children and Down's Syndrome children both passed the test, but the autistic children failed it; this showed that it was not a function of lowered IQ.
Quasi-experiment
An experimental study in which participants are not randomly assigned to groups but in which one group is exposed to the manipulated variable of interest.
Intuitive ontology
An idea that humans are born with a set of expectations about the kinds of things to be found in the world. There are five categories: person, animal, plant, artifact, and natural objects. There are also three classes of intuitive expectations: those related to physical objects, to biological entities, and theory of mind.
Expressed emotion
An index of negative dimensions of the affective climate of the family environment. Provides a measure of the level of criticism and emotional over-involvement expressed by parents when describing the relationship between themselves and the patient.
Vagal tone
An indicator of parasympathetic activation and ER; high is good.
Imprinting
An innate form of rapid learning that involves attachment.
Explain Angelman Syndrom and Prauder-Villi syndrome and how they relate to epigenetics
Angelman's syndrome is a disease in which children have a jerky gait, a happy personality, and severe cognitive problems. This syndrome is caused by a deletion on chromosome 15. This same deletion will also cause Prauder-Villi syndrome. In this syndrome, the children are very floppy and birth and become extremely obese when older. It was found that the gene caused Angelman syndrome when it came from the mother and Prauder-Villi syndrome when it came from the father.
Parameters
Aspects of grammar that vary across language.
Social-pragmatist opinion of language acquisition
Aspects of the social environment facilitate language acquisition and infants and their parents are prepared by evolution to take advantage of this social information.
Whole object assumption
Assumes that the label a knowledgeable speaker uses refers to a whole object.
Mutual exclusion assumption
Assumes that there is only one label for a given object.
Newborn audition
At birth, infants can discriminate sounds. They prefer female voices to male and their mother's voice the most. They also prefer their own language. This is due to prenatal auditory experience.
What are the ages for language development? Are they consistent between cultures?
Babbling starts occurring at approximately 9 months, first word occurs at 12 months, stringing two words together occurs at 18 months, and complex grammar emerges by 36 months. These ages are almost the same regardless of when their cultures dictate they be exposed to language; the ages can vary a little bit by individual, but the order of language development is always the same.
How does the stress response of infants vary with whether they were born to mothers experiencing high stress or low stress?
Babies born to mothers with low prenatal maternal cortisol have a much faster recovery (within two minutes) of cortisol to baseline levels after experiencing a stressful event. Babies born to mothers with high prenatal cortisol have a much slower recovery (longer than six minutes) of cortisol to baseline levels after experiencing a stressful event.
Non-verbal cues from knowledgeable speakers
Babies follow the attention of knowledgeable speakers and assume their attention means that the object is referred to by that name.
Social learning theory
Bandura's version of learning theory, which emphasizes the role of modeling, or observational learning, in behavior.
What is some evidence for contingent parental investment in nonhumans? Humans?
Birds are more likely to feed large offspring first and smaller offspring later when resources are scarce; they are more likely to feed small offspring first and small offspring later when resources are plentiful. In humans, parents in poor areas are more likely than parents in affluent areas to withhold nutrients from sickly children. Depressed mothers provide lower levels of investment with high-risk infants, and high levels of investment were provided by nondepressed mothers with high-risk infants.
Bioecological method
Bronfenbrenner's approach in which the individual develops within and is affected by a set of nested environments, from the family to the entire culture.
Development
Change that is systematic, organized, and successive in character.
Ontogenetic noise
Characteristics in children which are simply attributable to mutations, changes in the environment, or aberrations of development.
Demand characteristics
Characteristics of a child that they must have in addition to the one that's being tested in order to successfully complete a task. Examples include being required to reach for something in the A-not-B test when what is really being tested is object permanence.
Slow life history strategies
Characterized by long-term planning, later reproduction, and fewer (but more stable) sexual relationships. Adaptive when resources are readily available and the rates of mortality are low. Have fewer children, which allows for greater and more prolonged investment.
Assessment
Children are asked to perform a task or respond to a set series of questions.
What is the wug experiment?
Children are show a picture of a bird and told it is a "wug". They are then showed a picture of two of these creatures and asked what they are; they say "wugs", showing that they can form plurals without every having to have heard the word as it is an invented word. The same thing is done with telling the child that a person "bods" and that the person did this yesterday; the children then say that the person "bodded" yesterday. All of this occurs before formal teaching.
Why does children overestimating abilities and misattributing useful?
Children have a tendency to overestimate their own abilities and misattribute the actions of other people to themselves. Doing these things leads to greater memory. It may not be immature cognition, but a method to produce better learning; it is easier to remember something if you imagine yourself doing an action. The overestimation of abilities is a good thing. If a person overestimates their abilities, they try harder to do the action; this leads to more experience and better learning.
In what ways does family context affect the development of emotional regulation?
Children learn about emotional regulation through observation. Specific parenting practices and behaviors related to the socialization of emotion affect emotional regulation. Emotional regulation is affected by the emotional climate of the family (quality of attachment relationships, styles of parenting, family expressiveness, and the emotional quality of the marital relationship).
What are experiments that show how and when children are able to distinguish between different sounds in different languages? What happens to this ability as they get older?
Children listen for sounds that appear very often in their language. Very quickly, children lose the ability to distinguish sounds that do not appear very often in their language; the parts of their brain involves with these sounds are pruned. If the same toy experiment is repeated with English sounds and American and Japanese infants, American infants do better with the English sounds; over time, the American infants are able to better focus on the English sounds. In another experiment, American infants are exposed repeatedly to Mandarin and the experiment is repeated. The babies who were exposed to Mandarin were much better able to distinguish Mandarin sounds than infants who were not. Additionally, the infants who were exposed to Mandarin get better as distinguishing the sounds as they get older. All the infants are English speakers. This effect disappears if the second language comes from a machine. Younger infants discriminate all speech sounds; older infants tune in to their own language. Younger infants can hear the speech sound contrasts ALL LANGUAGES, whereas OLDER infants can hear speech contrasts only in their native language. This suggests that experience with speech sounds that are used in the native language are maintained at the expense of sounds that are not used/experienced.
What do children tend to do with natural objects?
Children tend to overly attribute goals/functions to natural things; concepts of life and death are based on animacy (whether or not the thing moves).
What experiments were done to show that chimps have imitative learning?
Chimps do seem to have some degree of imitative learning (with tools primarily). In sequence experiments with a series of three actions, the chimps will imitate the actions of the agent instead of attempting to try a new way to accomplish the same task with the object; it is unclear whether the chimps are understanding the goals of the tool or the goals of the agent using the tool. In an experiment with chimps, chimps are shown a box which can be opened by lifting or sliding a door. The chimps are then shown only one of the methods. Despite the fact that there are two ways to open the box, the chimp will only try the method they were taught; this will be true of any other chimps that learn from the first one as well. This indicates that chimps will understand that someone is doing something and mimic it but will not understand why they are doing it. Chimps seem to tolerate others learning from them, while humans intentionally teach one another when they know someone doesn't know something.
Limitations of chronological age as a variable
Chronological age only imperfectly maps onto maturational, psychological, and social aging processes. It is a proxy variable for a host of co-occurring, co-varying processes and events that can be more meaningfully used to account for age-related change.
What are some possible confounding variables for looking at the effects of prenatal depression?
Comorbid anxiety, high cortisol levels, high norepinephrine, low levels of dopamine and serotonin, stressful life events, daily hassles, and other markers of stress.
Case study
Detailed information gathered about a particular individual.
Three requirements for ethical research
Do no harm, maintain informed consent, and maintain confidentiality.
Prenatal epoch
During the prenatal period, the developing organism grows from a single cell to a fetus ready to be born.
Early childhood epoch
During the years of 2 to about 6, children's bodies continue to change, language develops at a staggering rate, children's thinking edges into the symbolic world, and their personalities begin to shape the nature of their developing relationships.
When are life history strategies most beneficial?
Earlier in life. There is a "critical period" early in life; information gathered at this stage is used to adjust one's life history trajectory that aligns well with the anticipated adult environment. In humans, this critical period seems to be between 0 and 5 years.
Counting
Early in development, there appears to be a preverbal counting system that can be used for the enumeration of sets up to three, perhaps four items. With the advent of language and learning of number words, there appears to be a pan-cultural understanding that serial-ordered number words can be used for counting, measurement, and simple arithmetic. Children display this as early as 2.5 years.
Simple arithmetic
Early in development, there appears to be a sensitivity to increases and decreases in the quantity of small sets. Infants as young as 5 months show some evidence of this.
What is the difference between the brains of people who learn a second language early in life and those who learn it later?
Early learners have a pattern of activation that looks identical to the pattern of activation for the first language; the activity is highly localized and lateral. In late learners, the activation pattern looks very different from the first language; it is distributed and bi-lateral, showing that the areas that are used for language acquisition early have been pruned.
What were early behaviorist theories for attachment?
Early psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories emphasized the role of feeding/food reinforcement in the development of attachment to parents; the parents and specifically the mother provide food, and the theory was that differences in how much food was provided determined attachment.
Emulation
Emulation is observing another interacting with an object and seeing the object achieve a specific goal; it is seeing movement of objects involved and the insight about the relevance to own problem, i.e. the organism represents the goal of the object but not the goal of the agent.
Epigenetics
Epigenetics is all heritable changes in gene expression independent of the DNA sequence itself. Epigenetic inheritance is an essential mechanism that allows the stable propagation of gene activity states from one generation of cells to the next. Epigenetics is the mechanism by which genes and environment interface.
Psychosocial theory
Erikson's explanation of development which focuses on the effects of social influence. Erikson believed that individuals pass through eight stages of development. In each stage, they must resolve a crisis that determines their continuing healthy psychological development.
Life History Theory
Examines how natural selection produces adaptations yielding age related and context-dependent tradeoffs between allocation of available resources to maintenance, growth, and reproduction.
Spatial abilities in infants
Experiments have shown that infants use the location of an object rather than other characteristics such as shape or color to define objects.
What experiments were done with individuals to test helping?
Experiments were done where experimenters tried to complete tasks and seemed to be having trouble with them. Human infants would help with tasks in a wide variety of ways. Chimps would only help with reaching tasks.
Fast life history strategies
Faster maturation, reproduction soon after sexual maturation, and fewer, less stable sexual relationships. More adaptive in an environment where resources are scarce and mortality is high.
Exaptations
Features that now enhance fitness but were not built by natural selection for their current role.
What were the experiments in rats that demonstrated a difference in maternal investment?
Female rats were exposed to high and low levels of stress. Once they became mothers, high stress females displayed low levels of licking, grooming, and arched back nursing compared to low stress mothers. The pups of stressed mothers showed lowered levels of glucocorticoid receptor expression, among other physical indicators of an up-regulated stress response. These pups were more defensive, vigilant, and experienced earlier puberty and increased sexual behavior. Importantly, these pups then showed reduced parental investment in their own offspring.
What was the violation of expectation experiment involving toy cars?
First, an infant is shown a car passing on a track and going behind a screen. There is a box located behind the track. They are habituated to this stimuli. In the second trial, the same phenomenon is shown, but instead the box is placed on the track. The infants stare longer when they are shown the seemingly impossible phenomenon. This experiment showed that infants as young as 3 1/2 months had a concept of what objects can and cannot do. This also shows some concept of object permanence since they can remember that there was a box on the tracks behind the screen.
Proposed limitations to early-developing, core systems of knowledge
First, the systems are domain specific; each serves to represent only a subset of the entities in the child's surroundings. Second, the systems are task specific; the representations constructed by each system guide only a subset of the actions and cognitive processes in the child's repertoire. Third, the systems are encapsulated; the internal workings of each system are largely impervious to other representations and cognitive processes. Fourth, the representations delivered by these systems are relatively isolated from one another; representations that are constructed by distinct systems do not readily combine together.
Freud's psychosexual stage
For Freud, personality development meant successfully moving through all five psychosexual stages. In each stage, the pleasure associated with that stage must be stimulated an appropriate amount in order to progress. The five psychosexual stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital and are from birth to a year, a year to three years, three to five years, five to twelve years, and twelve plus years.
Psychoanalytic theory
Freud's view of personality development, which attributes it largely to unconscious sources in the human mind. Psychoanalytic theory includes the idea that children pass through five stages of psychosexual development that affect their adult personalities.
Infancy and toddlerhood epoch
From birth to about two years is the period of most rapid growth. Remarkable physical and cognitive changes occur--for example, walking and talking--and the nature of a child's personality becomes apparent.
Object permanence experiments
General experiments to test object permanence involve hiding things in plain view of infants and seeing if they retrieve the object. Infants at 8 months begin to do this. Infants under 18 months fail the invisible displacement task, in which something appears to have been hidden by a cloth, but, when removed, there is a cup behind it; infants too young will not lift up the cup. However, more sophisticated experiments not requiring sophisticated search procedures but instead with measuring looking time showed that infants as young as 3.5 months of age had some idea of object permanence.
Creoles
Grammatically structured languages, possessing their own syntax, that reflect the integration of the majority language with the variety of other languages spoken by members of the community. Children develop creoles from pidgins within one generation of a pidgin being developed.
Three major components of environment
Home, peers, and culture
Proximate causation in socialization
How processes operate in socializing transactions to yield offspring who are likely to be socially competent adults.
Why are early-developing core knowledge systems not enough to account for humans' intelligence?
Humans seem to have abilities as infants to represent hidden objects, to estimate numerosities, and to navigate through spatial layouts. However, all of these abilities have been found in nonhuman animals, either equaling or exceeding the abilities of human infants. It is possible that there are other core-knowledge systems that do account for this, but there are also other theories.
What is some evidence that infants follow the intention of an actor?
If an infant is shown a person doing some manipulation with an object and a machine doing the exact same manipulation, they will try to copy the person but not the machine. This indicates that an infant is seeing the intention of the actor instead of the actual action. If a task is started and clearly messed up (i.e. dropping the object and saying "oops"), the infants will try to complete the intended action without having to see the entire action played out; infants can see intention of the person doing the task.
Garcia effect
If you get really sick after eating something, you will avoid the food for a while after that, even if it was hours after you actually ate the food and even if it was proved that the food you ate was not what made you sick.
Imitation
Imitation requires the observer to be able to take the perspective of the other person. The imitator must understand the goal of the other person and be able to understand why the other person is doing what they're doing.
What is the box test that measures whether an organism can imitate?
In an experiment, a chimpanzee is shown two boxes being brought into the experiment room. The experimenters make it clear that the first box is very light and the second box is very heavy via their behavior. A piece of fruit is placed in each boy, and the chimp has one attempt to pick which box to try to pull closer; the chimp fails this test, as it cannot abstract the experimenters' behaviors to understand the concept of light vs. heavy. When this experiment is performed with children, they easily get the box right every time.
What was the "cloth mother" experiment and what were it's implications?
In an experiment, baby monkeys were given a choice between a wire mother with food and a cloth mother without food; the money received no reinforcement for the cloth mother but still preferred it. There was no attachment to the wire mother despite food. This was evidence against equipotentility. Even if fur is a primary reinforcer, there should be an equal chance between the cloth mother and the wire mother, which is not what we see. Fur was a more important reinforcer in the context of attachment. Food can be used to condition monkeys in other contexts but not attachment. This shows that there is some sort of loose framework about how to interact with stimuli in different contexts.
What was the violation of expectation experiment involving dolls?
In another experiment, a doll appeared to move behind a screen with a hole in it and somehow skip passing through the hole. 3-month-olds were surprised at this event as shown by looking preference. Infants even a few weeks older did not show surprise. However, when shown that there was only one doll behind the screen and then shown the impossible phenomenon, they once again acted surprised; this seems to indicate that the slightly older baby had figured out that there was some form of trickery with two dolls and were surprised when this appeared to not be true (in fact, they had replaced the dolls).
What experiment was done to establish whether infants have a preference for human faces? What is a possible explanation for the results?
In infants who are 9 minutes old, they were given a preferential looking study. They are given three things to look at: something (a ping pong paddle) which looks like a face, something with the same features but scrambled, and something with scrambled features. One month olds do not show a preference for face over scrambled, but 2 months old do. When run with 9 minute old infants using head turning or eye tracking, they prefer the face over the scrambled image. A theory for the reason behind this is nursing. A young infant can distinguish faces up to the distance of their mother's face during nursing; beyond this, they cannot distinguish between different faces. Nursing may be the reason behind this mechanism. It is possible that the one month old infants do not need the facial recognition as much since they have already bonded with their mothers; at two months old, perhaps they begin to recognize faces more since they have developed more sophisticated mental focusing.
What is some evidence that parental sensitivity matters over infant temperament?
In one study, a group of parents all with "difficult" temperament infants were recruited. In one group, parents received sensitivity training, teaching them how to be extremely responsive to their infant; the other group received no training. Rates of secure attachment were higher in the trained group (62%) than the non-trained group (22%).
Visual cliff experiment
In the visual cliff experiment, babies will not go over what appears to be a cliff, even if it is actually safe. Why do crawling babies fear but not younger? Trial in error or a triggering experience that turns on the right domain of the brain that is responsible for keeping the infant safe once they begin crawling. Crawling babies crawl only towards the shallow side of the visual cliff. When they are forced to look over the deep side, the infants' heart races increase. This does not happen in babies who are not yet crawling, even if they are the same age as the crawling infants. The babies who are not yet crawling will have a decrease in heart rate when looking at the shallow side and even more of a decrease when looking at the deep side. If the babies learn to fear through trial and error with falling, this is an individual-specific environment. If the onset of self-generated movement triggers the fear, the system should activated fear of vertical drops which only comes online when needed; this is a species-typical environment.
Collaborative learning
In this kind of learning, two or more people (usually of the same age) work together to solve a problem. Children in this must be reflective agents, understanding that the other people have different perspectives and understanding what those perspectives are.
"Little Albert" experiment
In this study, a young boy was recruited. It was shown that the little boy had no fears to any animals at the beginning of the study. In the second half of the study, the researchers struck a loud metal strip whenever he reached for a white rat. This conditioned a fear of white rats and other similar stimuli in the boy (i.e. other similar animals, a white mask).
What are effects of prenatal depression on the fetus and neonate?
Increased activity, delayed fetal growth, premature birth, less responsiveness, higher arousal, and less attentiveness. In older babies, babies show less distress during still-face experiments; babies were more likely to cry more and have more difficult temperaments. Infants of depressed mothers were also more likely to have sleep disturbances.
What are the costs associated with early specialization of life history?
Increased risk of miscalibration due to less time to "assay" the environment and the high cost of shifting strategies if required.
What experiments were done to determine how SES caused individuals to respond to resource scarcity?
Individuals were primed for scarce resources (news reports on the economy, etc.). Those who grew up in low SES environments were more likely to make more impulsive and more risky decisions on temporal discounting tasks and were more likely to approach temptations (reaching for a desirable product); those who grew up in high SES environments were less likely to show these behaviors. These effects were entirely dependent on the childhood SES of the person regardless of their current SES. Additionally, people from a low SES background wanted to have children earlier than people from high SES backgrounds.
What is the evidence for grammar sensitivity in the telegraphic stage?
Infants are shown a picture and are told "Big Bird is doing something to Cookie Monster" and are trained to know who Big Bird and Cookie Monsters are. When they are shown a picture of Big Bird doing something to Cookie Monster, they are not surprised, but they are surprised when shown a picture of Cookie Monster doing something to Big Bird--even though they are unable to produce this grammar themselves.
Newborn olfaction
Infants quickly develop preferences for smells after birth, including a preference for their own mother's smell and the smell of lactating women versus nonlactating women.
What aspects of object mechanics do infants seem to understand?
Infants seem to have systems for perceiving objects and their motions, filling in the surfaces and boundaries that is partly hidden, and representing the continued existence of an object that moves fully out of view.
Box support experiment with infants
Infants were shown two boxes, one on top of the other. The top box appeared to have been pushed off the bottom box but still remain in the air, violating the concept of support. 2 month old infants showed no increased interest, but 4.5 month old infants did.
Implicit knowledge
Instinctual knowledge that a person does not have conscious awareness of.
Instructed learning
Instructed learning involves someone more accomplished teaching someone who is less accomplished. In this method, children can learn about an adult's understanding of a task and how it compares with their own understanding. Students understand why the teacher is teaching them. It is not just repetition, but internalizing information and being able to use it in a novel setting in the future, i.e. theory of mind.
Emotional regulation
Internal and external processes involved in initiating, maintaining, and modulating the occurrence, intensity, and expression of emotions.
What are some problems with interpreting infants failing the A-not-B test as not understanding object permanence? What is some evidence that points to a different result?
It was thought that infants before 8 to 12 months could not understand object permanence fully. Now we're starting to think that in the A-not-B test, infants are thinking that they are recreating the object by lifting up the towel and on top of that are getting significant positive reinforcement for lifting A from the investigator; babies have object permanence much earlier than this. New evidence is coming from the infant's attention during the A-not-B experiment. After a sequence of correct searches at A, the baby clearly watches the object hidden at B and maintains attention on B during hiding and even during the act of searching A--even before 8 months. Failing the A-not-B test does not indicate that the infant doesn't have a concept of objects, it means that they have been positively reinforced for doing an action on A.
Theory of mind
Knowing that other people know, want, feel or believe things. The ability to impute mental states to oneself and others.
Explicit knowledge
Knowledge that a person has conscious awareness of.
How does the autistic child's lack of theory of mind relate to symptoms?
Lack of theory of mind can explain the social incompetencies seen in autistic children. It also explains the lack of pretend play, as second-order representations are necessary for pretend play.
Pidgins
Languages that combine several languages at a rudimentary level and are used to convey necessary information within the group and between the group and its "hosts".
What is some evidence that children have an understanding of intuitive psychology before three years?
Leslie (1987) showed that two-year-olds are already engaging in pretend play. The ability to pretend play requires that toddlers understand that people's apparent behavior does not reflect their actual beliefs. Toddlers must understand that people's beliefs can be decoupled from their behavior or from reality.
What were risk factors for prenatal depression that occurred across studies?
Life events stress, lack of social support, marital difficulties, and unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.
What are the effects of prenatal depression on children?
Lower vagal tone, less attentiveness, externalizing behaviors, and internalizing behaviors.
Parental investment theory
Males and females invest differently in time and resources they devote to offspring. Males and females have evolved different psychologies relating to the attaining and maintaining of mates and to the care of offspring.
Mimicry
Mimicry is duplicating a behavior without understanding it.
What were some experiments that were done to directly test evolutionary approaches to parental investment?
Mothers with at-risk children were placed in an intervention that taught them ways to overcome caregiving challenges and find ways to gain access to needed resources in the community. Their children showed better health outcomes at age three, and the parents showed higher levels of investment. In another study, parents were primed for conditions of low and high resources. When primed for low resources, parents showed differential investment in low-risk offspring; when primed for high resources, they showed differential investment in high-risk offspring.
Does something have to be present at birth to be innate?
No
Is it equally easy to condition any fear in a person?
No. Fear responses are more easily made and are more difficult to extinguish for biologically relevant stimuli.
Are abnormal traits always environmental?
No. Traits that are "abnormal" often develop abnormally in a systematic and predictable way: i.e. they are genetic. For instance, neglected toddlers will have the same issues as one another.
Three influences on behavioral development
Normative age-graded influences, i.e. those things most highly correlated with biological age; normative history-graded influences, i.e. biological and social processes that are more culturally based and that are presumed to affect most members of a cohort; and nonnormative influences, i.e. biological and social processes which do not impact most members of a cohort.
What are the effects of prenatal depression on adults?
Obviously prenatal depression has negative health effects on the mother. Additionally, it has later effects on her adult child. Prenatal depression may be linked to the development of adult diseases and a delaying of postpartum immune adaptation.
What is an alternative method for testing intuitive psychology?
One alternative method for testing intuitive psychology is a visual attention false-belief task; we can make inferences about what children do and do not know based on their gaze. Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) tested 15-month-olds. In the first trial, all the children seen a screen with yellow and green box in front of it as well as a watermelon. In the second step, a woman takes the watermelon and puts it in the green box. In the second step, the woman returns and puts her hand in the green box. All children seen this. In the second step, children are put into two groups. In the first group, the infants are shown the watermelon then moving from the green to the yellow box by itself. In the second group, the infants are shown the experimenter watching the watermelon moving from the green to the yellow box. The experimenter then stops watching and the watermelon moves back from the yellow box to the green box. In both of the scenarios, the experimenter has a false belief about where the watermelon is located. After this, all the infants are shown the following two events: the experimenter reaches into the yellow box and the experimenter reaches into the green box. In FB-green condition, infants are surprised if the agent searches in the yellow box. In the FB-yellow condition, infants aree surprised if the agent searches in the green box. This experiment is one piece of evidence that infants have a concept of other people's mental states.
What is evidence that shows that infants are able to distinguish intentions of actors?
One example of this is children's early (9 month) distinction between two different (mental state based) reasons for the same outcome (not receiving a toy from someone): infants are able to distinguish between an unwilling (the experimenter keeps pulling the toy away) versus an unable (the experimenter drops the toy) actor. Infants show frustration when the experimenter is unwilling to give them the toy.
What are two hypotheses for why we have large brains?
One hypothesis is that we require a large brain to function in our complex ecology, i.e. using tools and manipulating objects. The other hypothesis is that we require a large brain for social functioning, for us to be able to read other people's minds, to know when we're being deceived, to know who to trust, and to know how to manipulate people.
What are things that infants appear to use to distinguish between an animate actor and an inanimate actor?
One of the cues that comes across throughout these types of experiments is the presence of eyes. The other thing that infants look at is contingent interaction (interacting with the infant when the infant interacts with you).
What is one likely molecular mechanism for differing life histories in humans?
One possible mechanism for different life history in humans is the methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene. Methylation will affect the density of glucocorticoid receptors in the hippocampus of people. This is important as having a low density of these receptors will make it difficult for the production of cortisol to be regulated. This may be the main mechanism in the brain which influences the behavior and life history strategy of people.
What is one theory about the immaturity of infants sensory systems?
One theory with some evidence is that sensory limitations of many young animals are adaptive in that they reduce the amount of information infants have to deal with, which facilitates their constructing a simplified and comprehensible world. There is some evidence that the disruption of this reduction in information in premature infants may cause developmental abnormalities. This also has implications for early schooling.
What are aspects of the emotional climate of the family which regulate emotional regulation?
Overall predictability and emotional stability of the environment; parental expectations and maturity demands; the degree of positive emotionality expressed in the family; and the degree of negative emotionality expressed in the family.
Parenting style
Parent's attitudes toward the child which create and emotional climate.
Contingent model of parental investment
Parental investment in low cost vs. high cost children differs depending on available resources.
Negative punishment
Parents "ground" a teen who stays out past curfew.
Positive reinforcement
Parents praise a child who picks up toys.
Positive punishment
Parents scold a child who rides a bike without a helmet.
Who is Pavlov?
Pavlov was a behaviorist; he believed that all behaviors developed through training. He did experiments with classically conditioning dogs.
Who is Piaget and what was his biggest theory?
Piaget proposed that there was little early knowledge or structure. He proposed a contructivist theory, which says that the child plays an active role in achieving developmental outcomes; he saw the child as a scientist. Piaget proposed stages of development.
Parental investment theory
Posits that parental investment is modulated by computational mechanisms that include 1) assessment of the available resources that parents may use to enhance the welfare of their young and 2) the reproductive value of a particular child versus the reproductive value of their other or future children.
What are implications for prematurity in development?
Premature infants have deficits in brain development frequently causing impairments resulting in speech problems, eye-hand coordination difficulties, impulsivity, attention deficits, and lowered IQ; however, these deficits are often accompanied by accelerated development or enhanced abilities in other areas.
What are the four components to the attachment relationship?
Proximity seeking, separation protest, safe haven (the infant can seek out this person when distressed), and secure base (the infant's confidence that you as a parent can provide some sort of care). A safe haven is reactive while a secure base is proactive.
What is a major cue that children use to determine life history strategy?
Quality of parental investment. Low levels of parental investment have been correlated with ecological stress, whereas high levels of parental time, attention, and sensitive care were correlated with more stable environments.
Limitations of longitudinal studies
Sampling with longitudinal studies is difficult; a representative sample may not be representative after some time and it is difficult to find a cohort of willing participants. Longitudinal studies may have major issues with attrition, and the participants who drop out may have some variable that makes them do so. Another problem is testing; participants may become more aware of study procedures over time or may outgrow the original test measure. Another issue is instrumentation, as the same instruments that worked for a variable in one age group might measure something completely different in another. Regression towards the mean is another fear. Another problem is the cohort effect, where the selected cohort is somehow different from others of the same age. A final problem is the age by time of measurement confound, if some major events happens during the study that might affect development in a measurable way.
What are some effects of attachment beyond infancy?
Securely attached infants at ages 2-3 are better problem solvers, more complex players, more positive and fewer negative emotions, and more socially competent. At ages 11-15, they have better social skills and peer relations and are more likely to have close friends. Insecurely attached infants at ages 2-3 are more socially and emotionally withdrawn, they are more hesitant to initiate play with peers, and are less curious and interested in learning. At ages 11-15, they have poorer peer relations, fewer close friends, more likely to display deviant behaviors, and more likely to have psychopathological symptoms. There is extremely mixed data about whether infancy attachment affects later adult romantic attachment.
Who was Skinner and what was his major theory?
Skinner was a behaviorist. He showed that pigeons could be taught to react differently to two different words, making it appear that pigeons could read. However, the pigeons were not acting independently but instead reacting based on what the environment was.
What are things that influence the development of social cognition?
Some things are number of adults in the household, the number of older peers, family size, and the number of older siblings.
Domain specialized theory of the mind
Specialized learning states that human reasoning is guided by a collection of innate, domain specific systems of knowledge. Each system has a core principle and support reasoning about problems in that domain. It states that there is a preexisting structure that does not need to be learned, i.e. humans have innate knowledge.
Parenting practices
Specific parental behaviors defined by content and socialization goals.
Infant-directed speech
Speech that involves the use of high-pitched tones, exaggerated modulations, simplified forms of adult words, many questions, and many repetitions. Adults make their voice slower and clearer. There is some evidence that infants are more attentive to ID speech.
Microgenetic studies
Studies in which researchers observe the same children over a short period of time to document how their behavior is changing.
Negative reinforcement
Teacher lets students who complete all homework in a unit skip the unit quiz.
What does the Garcia effect say about nature and nurture?
The Garcia Effect is very clear-cut evidence that people require both nature and nurture. Nature provides the template for these behaviors, but there needs to be environmental stimulus for these to take effect.
What does the Holocaust study tell us that the 9/11 study cannot?
The Holocaust study showed that the children of Holocaust survivors were more likely to have poor effects as adults and poor stress responses. In the 9/11 study, women who were exposed to 9/11 stress where followed and their children's outcomes documented. The 9/11 study tells us that there must be a biological reason for the differing stress response; it cannot be from hearing stories of 9/11 (versus the Holocaust survivors) as the babies were only a year old. The 9/11 study also told us what stage of pregnancy was most effect (third trimester).
Numerosity
The ability to accurately determine the quantity of small sets of items or events without counting. In humans, accurate numerosity judgments are typically limited to sets of four or fewer items. This appears within the first week of life.
Behavioral epigenetics
The application of the principles of epigenetics to the study of physiological, genetic, environmental, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in human and nonhuman animals.
Anthropomorphism
The attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects.
Culture
The customs, values, and traditions inherent in one's environment.
Theory of personal emotion
The development of one's personal understanding of how emotions function and are managed in oneself.
Zone of proximal development
The distance between a person's actual development level as determined by independent problem solving, and the higher level that the person can achieve under the guidance of an adult or more capable peer.
Domain general theory of the mind
The domain general idea of the mind says that there is no preexisting structure of the mind. A person has to learn the design of the mind; it is one single general purpose learning device.
Epigenesis
The emergence of new structures and functions during the course of development, through a bidirectional relation between all levels of biological and experiential factors, beginning with the level of DNA and progressing through the influence of one's culture.
Intuitive psychology
The evolved human capacity to explain and predicted this non-random, goal-directed behavior of intentional entities; the conscious output of this process are mental stage "tags".
Validity
The extent to which an instrument measures what it claims to measure.
Reliability
The extent to which an instrument produces consistent measurements.
Who was John Bowlby?
The father of modern attachment theory
Developmental psychology
The field of psychology concerned with describing and understanding how people grow and change over lifetimes.
What are three methods in visual attention tasks?
The first is preference; what does the infant prefer to look at? The second is discriminate; if no preference, can infants still discriminate between two stimuli? The third is violation of expectation; do infants act surprised if they are shown things that don't conform to the rules of the world?
What are the two distinct systems which human infants use to represent numerosity?
The first system represents small numbers of persisting, numerically distinct individuals exactly and takes account of the operation of adding or removing one individual from the scene; it fails to represent the individuals as a set. The second system represents large numbers of objects or events as sets with cardinal values and allows for numerical comparison across sets; this system fails to represent members of these sets as persisting, numerically distinct individuals, and therefore fails to capture the numerical operations of adding or subtracting one.
Continuity
The idea that development is a slow and steady process. In this theory, everyone is essentially the same person they were when they were small children.
Discontinuity
The idea that development is characterized by abrupt changes in behavior, often associated with stage theories of development. In this theory, people dramatically change between the different stages of development, i.e. they are fundamentally different people.
Equipotentiality
The idea that it is equally easy to pair any stimulus with any response. This is one of the core assumptions of equipotentiality.
What components are included in the "natural world"?
The natural world includes biological concepts such as life and death, the notions of species kind, growth, inheritance etc. are abstract.
Neonativism
The perspective that infants come into the world with knowledge or processing constraints for particular domains. At its extreme, neonativism argues that there is no development, only innate knowledge; most people take a more moderate approach and promote the idea of architectural innateness.
Social referencing
The process of looking to another person for information about how to respond, think, or feel about an environmental event or stimuli.
Strange situation and different forms of attachment
The strange situation places the child under some stress. First, the child is put in an attraction room with a lot of toys. Once the child has settled down to play, a strange adult enters; after a couple of minutes, the stranger attempts to interact with the child. The mother gets a cue to leave the room at this time. Then the mother returns and the stranger leaves. The mother comforts the baby and then leaves, leaving the child alone. Soon after, the stranger returns and tries to comfort the child. The variable of interest is the reunion episode. Every infant becomes upset when the mother leaves the room. Every infant becomes attached, but not all caregivers are optimally responsive. There are two major types of attachment: * Secure attachment: show distress when the mother leaves the room and greets mother when she returns * Mothers consistently respond to their infant's cues * Insecure attachment * Avoidant: does not seek mother when she returns and focuses on the environment, possibly not even becoming upset when the mother leaves *Mothers are not responsive to their infant's cues *Ambivalent/resistant: very upset at departure, still upset when mom comes back, and explores very little for the entire time thereafter * Mothers are inconsistently responsive to their infant's cues
Radical behaviorism
The theory that any behavior can be trained in a person through reinforcement.
Universal grammar
The theory that children have the most basic grammatical rules that typify all languages.
Enculturation
The transmission of culture across generations.
What are the triad of impairments on the behavioral level of autism?
The triad of impairments in the behavioral level include things in imagination, communication, and socialization.
Comparative developmental evolutionary psychology
The use of psychological stage models to compare cognitive development in monkeys, apes, and humans.
Dependent variable
The variable measured to determine whether it is affected by the independent variable in an experiment.
Independent variable
The variable that a researcher expects to cause changes in the dependent variable.
Socialization
The various processes by which the young are assisted in becoming effective members of their society; focuses on parenting tactics and parent-child transactions as the key intermediary process in the child's acquisition of relevant skills and knowledge.
Constructivism theory
The view that children construct knowledge rather than having it "poured" into them. In constructivism, children develop schemas, or mental structures that represent things they have experienced. Once a schema is formed, it is linked to others in a process called organization. Schemas change over time through assimilation and adaptation. In assimilation, children fit things into mental structures they have already formed. When new things are assimilated, the child must realize that the new thing is different and change his schema accordingly in a process called adaptation.
Adolescent epoch
The years from 12 to 19 are a period of rapid growth, when children begin to leave the comfortable surroundings of childhood and prepare to enter the world of adults. Bodies change; sexual maturity beckons, and society's expectations for children mount as they prepare mentally, physically, and emotionally for adulthood.
Middle childhood epoch
The years from 6 to 12 comprise a period of exciting changes. Children's talents in all phases of development begin to flourish. Their bodies become more coordinated, they become more involved in the symbolic world especially after they begin school, and their relationships expand briskly as their environment continues to broaden.
Stage theories
Theories proposing that development proceeds in a discontinuous manner; each stage is qualitatively different from the ones that precede and follow it.
What are the four social cognition modules?
There are four social cognition modules: intentionality detector, eye direction detector, theory of mind, and shared attention.
What is some evidence that shows that children understand some inheritance of biological traits?
There are two major pieces of evidence. In the first, the story goes that Mr. and Mrs. Cow gave birth to a cow which is then adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Pig. When asked whether this adopted cow would go "oink" or "moo", they answer "moo". When asked whether the cow will have a tail like a pig or cow, they answer cow. This shows that they have some idea of what traits are genetically inherited. In the second, a child is told that a sheep has a blue heart, spongy bones, likes scrambled eggs, and loves to play hide and seek. Do checks to see that infant remembers/understands. Then tell the child that the sheep is put in a magical replicating box that makes an exact copy of the original sheep. When asked what traits the new sheep has, they say that the new duplicate has a blue heart and spongy bones, but do not say that the new duplicate likes scrambled eggs and like to play hide and seek. Children assume that the physical properties (but not the mental properties) will be copied to the new hamster. This is a very early understanding of the dualism of mind/body separation.
What was the mouse and water experiment and what were its implications?
There is an experiment where mice were given choices between two waters: one regular and one that is sweet. For the mice that chose the sweet water, they are exposed to a high intensity X-ray which causes them to vomit; as expected, these rats begin to prefer the regular water. In another condition, the rats who drink the sweet water are exposed to an electric shock. In a third group of rats, they hear a click first and then either get sick or are shocked. If there is truly equal potential, all of these negative reinforcements should have equal effects on behavior. However, rats do not begin to avoid the water with pain or with a click and nausea. They do begin to avoid it with the nausea. They learn defense with a click and pain. This shows that there is no equipotentiality with negative reinforcement in this domain. This indicates that some organisms are "prepared to learn" some contingencies more easily than others.
Sensitive period for language
There is evidence that there are time periods within a child's life where they are prepared to make sense of language input.
What are the tenants of attachment parenting and baby friendly hospitals?
There's a few tenants of attachment parenting: feeding with love and respect, respond with sensitivity, use nurturing touch, make sure the baby is secure when sleeping, practice positive discipline, and strive for a balance in family and personal life. Tenants of baby friendly hospitals including healthy infants being placed immediately on mom's chest when they are born, the first physical assessment should be performed while the infant remains on mom's chest, weighing and measuring should wait until after first feeding, and the baby remaining with the parents throughout the recovery period.
Biologically secondary abilities
These abilities are built on the primary abilities and are the product of culture.
Limitations of cross-sectional studies
These types of studies cannot provide information about age changes or interindividual differences in intraindividual age. The results can be affected by historical differences between the age cohorts. Bias may be created by flawed selection procedures. Essentially, it must be true that the only difference between the cohorts is chronological age, which is unlikely. It is impossible to make inferences about how and when changes emerge using cross-sectional studies.
What are the limits to navigation tasks of young children? When does this change?
They can search in the vicinity of a geometrically defined landmark and can search directly at a nongeometrically defined landmark, but they cannot readily combine these two or search based on other characteristics of a space. The transition to more flexible navigation occurs with the emergence of spatial language.
What is a manual search task and what are some issues with it?
This method relies on infant developing capacity to reach and search for objects; it is not just measuring whether infants can understand objects, but also whether they are physically able to reach for the object.
Sensimotor stage
This occurs between 0 to 2 years. Achievements in this stage include developing early sensory and motor schemes which are coordinated to achieve the ability to re-present. Successes in this stage are marked by understanding object permanence.
Biologically primary abilities
Those abilities that have been selected over the course of evolution to deal with problems our ancestors faced.
Of children with some kind of health issues, which children were more likely to be placed for adoption?
Those with visible abnormalities, even over those infants who had more serious health issues which were not visible. This indicates that we do a visual assessment (unconsciously) to determine whether an infant is worth investing in.
At what ages do children pass the Smarties task?
Three-year-olds fail this task, but four-year-olds pass.
At what ages do children pass the false belief task?
Three-year-olds fail this task, but four-year-olds pass.
How was the visual cliff experiment modified to determine whether the aversion came from experience? What did it imply about the mechanisms and reasons for the aversion to the visual cliff?
To determine whether there was inborn knowledge about not crawling off the edge of a cliff versus whether this aversion came from experience, not-yet-crawling babies from 6-7 months old who were not yet crawling were placed in walkers for a total of over 40 hours; these babies had no prior experience with falling. In babies who were put in the walker, they did have an increase in heart rate when they see the deep side; 6-7 month old not crawling babies who had not been walking in the walkers did not have this. This indicates that the onset of self-generated movement is what triggers the fear of the deep end. The system is designed to activate fear of vertical drops when the baby starts moving on their own. This system is based on a species-typical environment, not the specific aspects of the environment that the infant might be in, i.e. the child has the fear response to edges even if it's not relevant because of the walker.
What is a method for testing whether infants are about to discriminate between objects?
To see if the baby cannot distinguish, take advantage of short term learning/boredom. The habituation of paradigm is that babies will look at new stimuli and show interest. After a while, they stop looking (get bored); they habituate to the old stimuli. If a baby becomes habituated to an old stimuli and then something new is introduced, is the baby still bored? If yes, they cannot distinguish. If they become interested again, the baby can discriminate that this is a new object.
Newborn vision
Vision is poor at birth and better on focusing on stimuli that are about 20 cm away from the face. Vision is controlled by subcortical areas of the brain, indicating a automatic process versus a purposeful process. By three months, infants show a preference for human faces over other visual stimuli, and interestingly for attractive faces over less attractive ones. Additionally, newborns will show a preference for their mother's face within the first day of life. This all indicates that infants are born with an idea of what a human face should look like and are wired to pick up on these visual cues more than any others.
Sociocultural theory
Vygotsky's theory that children's cognitive growth depends on their interactions with adults and more knowledgeable peers, which in turn are based on broad cultural values.
What is some evidence that men are more likely to be pickier about which offspring they invest in?
When asked about "willingness to invest" and faced with a hypothetical adoption test, men were more likely to invest in infants who looked like them (i.e. through facial morphing software).
Sex differences in spatial relationships
When tested in childhood and beyond, boys tend to perform better in spatial relationship tasks that involve manipulating spatial relations, finding their way through physical or virtual environments, making maps, and using maps. In contrast, girls tend to perform better in spatial relationship tasks that involve object-location memory. This may be due to different brain organization due to different genes or different hormones or it could be a result of differing play styles that cause boys and girls to develop differing motor skills.
Ultimate causation in socialization
Why particular parenting transactions had an adaptive advantage in our ancestral past.
