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200 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
John Watson
Environment is everything.
Biological versus Environmental Influences
John Watson vs. Arnold Gesell
Arnold Gesell
Development determined by an 'inner timetable which is produced by genes. Gesell is a Maturationist
Maturation
Genetically determined process of growth at unfolds naturally over development. Think of cognitive ability as growing just like children grow in height.
Most psychologists now tend to be interactionists:
E.g., there are interactions between the child's genetic tendencies toward aggression and the child's being exposed to violence on TV. Violent TV has a greater effect on children who are genetically inclined toward aggression
2.) PASSIVE CHILD VS ACTIVE CHILD VS TRANSACTIONAL MODEL OF CHILD
NO ONE MODEL IS CORRECT. DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSES ARE BETTER DESCRIBED BY DIFFERENT MODELS.
THIS IS THE CASE WITH ALL OF THESE ISSUES.

HOWEVER, AS THE TEXT NOTES, MOST PSYCHOLOGISTS DE-EMPHASIZE THE PASSIVE MODEL TODAY. (THE TEXT IGNORES THE TRANSACTIONAL MODEL.)
PASSIVE
CHILD PASSIVELY INFLUENCED BY ENVIRONMENTAL FORCES;EXAMPLE: REINFORCEMENT IN CLASSICAL BEHAVIORISM)
ACTIVE:
CHILD ACTIVELY APPROACHES, EXPLORES, OR INFLUENCES ENVIRONMENT; EXAMPLE: A CURIOUS CHILD EXPLORES A NEW TOY
TRANSACTIONAL MODEL:
CHILD INFLUENCES ENVIRONMENT AND ENVIRONMENT INFLUENCES CHILD; LIKE A CONVERSATION.
EXAMPLE: PREMATURE CHILD IS EXTREMELY IRRITABLE; THIS MAKES CAREGIVING DIFFICULT AND RESULTS IN FRUSTRATED PARENT; PARENT MORE LIKELY TO ABUSE CHILD)
3.) CONTINUITY VERSUS DISCONTINUITY
Textbook: Whether development is continuous or discontinuous "depends on the power of the lens we use in examining changes across development." If we look over a long period of time, the differences are large, qualitative and discontinuous. If we look over a short period of time, the differences are small, quanatitative and continuous. They suggest that Figure 1-1c (p. 10) is a good way to picture it: Child slowly learns the best and developmentally most advanced strategy. (KM: But there could be true discontinuities and qualitative change if, say, genes turn on at a certain age and result in a major cognitive or emotional advance. This may be the case with puberty and some of the other major advances in childhood.)
CONTINUITY
QUANTITATIVE, SMOOTH CHANGE
DISCONTINUITY
QUALITATIVE, STEP-LIKE CHANGE
QUANTITATIVE CHANGE:
A MEASURABLE CHANGE OF AMOUNT (E.G., CHANGES IN HEIGHT, OR
CHANGES IN LEARNING) ASSOCIATED WITH NON-STAGE THEORIES; (When you learn something
new you don't become a different person; you have simply added to your knowledge in a quantitative way.)
QUALITATIVE CHANGE:
A CHANGE OF TYPE (E.G., THE CHANGE FROM A CATERPILLAR TO A
BUTTERFLY) ASSOCIATED WITH STAGE THEORIES; QUALITATIVE CHANGES ARE FUNDAMENTAL, REORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES.
SMOOTH CHANGE (ASSOCIATED WITH NON-STAGE THEORIES





STEP-LIKE CHANGE (ASSOCIATED WITH STAGE THEORIES)
??
4.) SITUATIONAL VERSUS INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
DOES THE CONTEXT INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR?
?
PERSONALITY VERSUS SITUATIONS
THINK ABOUT HOW THE EXPRESSION OF THE FOLLOWING TRAITS WOULD CHANGE DEPENDING ON WHETHER YOU WERE IN AT A FOOTBALL GAME OR INTERVIEWING FOR A JOB, OR OUT ON A FIRST DATE:
AGGRESSIVE
SOCIABLE
NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT
THE UNIVERSAL COMMONALITIES OF CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT (E.G., WALKING, TALKING, STAGES) (PIAGET STUDIED UNIVERSALS);
OFTEN VIEWED AS RESULTING FROM BIOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS (E.G., ARNOLD GESELL);
IDIOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
SOURCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES CAN BE NATURE AND/OR NURTURE.
ALL POLITICIZED CONTROVERSY IN PSYCHOLOGY INVOLVES INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
CULTURAL RELATIVISM, EXTREME VIEW:
CHILD DEVELOPMENT HAS DIFFERENT LAWS AND PATTERNS IN DIFFERENT CULTURES
CULTURAL RELATIVISM, MODERATE VIEW:
CULTURES AFFECT THE RATE OF DEVELOPMENT; E.G., CHILDREN WALK SOONER IN CULTURES THAT ENCOURAGE MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
VOGOTSKY
MAIN THEORIST OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM
6.) RISK AND RESILIENCE
RESPONDING TO RISK: PROTECTIVE FACTORS
1.) INDIVIDUAL FACTORS LIKE AN EASY TEMPERAMENT, 'SUNNY DISPOSITION'
2.) FAMILY FACTORS: SUPPORTIVE HOME ENVIRONMENT
3.) SOCIAL SUPPORT: WELFARE SERVICES, GOOD SCHOOLS
Sleeper effects:
children cope well at first, but exhibit problems later.
4.) SITUATIONAL VERSUS INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
DOES THE CONTEXT INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR?
?
PERSONALITY VERSUS SITUATIONS
THINK ABOUT HOW THE EXPRESSION OF THE FOLLOWING TRAITS WOULD CHANGE DEPENDING ON WHETHER YOU WERE IN AT A FOOTBALL GAME OR INTERVIEWING FOR A JOB, OR OUT ON A FIRST DATE:
AGGRESSIVE
SOCIABLE
CULTURAL UNIVERSALS VERSUS CULTURAL RELATIVISM
?
NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT
THE UNIVERSAL COMMONALITIES OF CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT (E.G., WALKING, TALKING, STAGES) (PIAGET STUDIED UNIVERSALS);
OFTEN VIEWED AS RESULTING FROM BIOLOGICAL UNIVERSALS (E.G., ARNOLD GESELL);
IDIOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
SOURCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES CAN BE NATURE AND/OR NURTURE.
ALL POLITICIZED CONTROVERSY IN PSYCHOLOGY INVOLVES INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
CULTURAL RELATIVISM, EXTREME VIEW:
CHILD DEVELOPMENT HAS DIFFERENT LAWS AND PATTERNS IN DIFFERENT CULTURES
CULTURAL RELATIVISM, MODERATE VIEW:
CULTURES AFFECT THE RATE OF DEVELOPMENT; E.G., CHILDREN WALK SOONER IN CULTURES THAT ENCOURAGE MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
VOGOTSKY
MAIN THEORIST OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM
6.) RISK AND RESILIENCE
RESPONDING TO RISK: PROTECTIVE FACTORS
1.) INDIVIDUAL FACTORS LIKE AN EASY TEMPERAMENT, 'SUNNY DISPOSITION'
2.) FAMILY FACTORS: SUPPORTIVE HOME ENVIRONMENT
3.) SOCIAL SUPPORT: WELFARE SERVICES, GOOD SCHOOLS
Sleeper effects:
children cope well at first, but exhibit problems later.
7.) MOTIVATION: INTERNAL (INTRINSIC) VS EXTERNAL (EXTRINSIC)
INTRINSIC: DOING THINGS FOR THEIR OWN SAKE
??
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT
??
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT
Theories
1.) help organize and integrate information into coherent accounts;
2.) lead to testable hypotheses or predictions.
3.) No one theory accounts for all of child development; we need different theories to understand
different areas. A theory that accounts for the effects of divorce will probably not be useful for
understanding how children learn to count.
LEARNING PERSPECTIVES:
BEHAVIORISM
(I will not go over this because it is very basic stuff that you should know from PSY 100; please look at p. 14 if you don't know what classical and operant conditioning are; you should also know who Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner are.
1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING (PAVLOV, WATSON)
2. OPERANT CONDITIONING (SKINNER)
Box 1-1 (p. 16): "G" is for Growing
"G" is for Growing: Sesame Street as an Educational Tool.
Notice all children made gains in test scores after watching Sesame Street, and the more they watched, the more they gained, independent of social class and other variables studies (both low-and middle-income children gained). However, there was no long term effect: Once they got to school, there was no correlation of reading skills with having watched Sesame Street. Notice that young children (age 2-4) watch TV "actively and selectively." They were physically engaged in the program, by singing and clapping, etc. during the parts they really liked a lot.
COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY: (ALBERT BANDURA):
1. CHILDREN ARE ABLE TO LEARN THINGS WITHOUT REINFORCEMENT. Children observing aggressive models were more likely to imitate the aggressive behaviors even if they were not rewarded for doing so.
2. SOCIAL LEARNING AND COGNITION:
Children do not imitate blindly or automatically; cognitive factors are advanced as explaining why children imitate some things and not others.
Bandura changed learning theory
How?
by combining it with aspects of cognitive psychology. This can be seen in the four
processes Bandura proposes as relevant to social learning: Attention, Retention, Production, and Motivation. All
of these undergo age changes; they all develop. Therefore, age affects social learning.
Attention
Children gradually improve in their ability to pay attention. This affects social learning because they pay better attention to models. One couldn't lecture to kindergartners and expect them to pay attention.
Retention
Children gradually improve their ability to remember things they have seen or experienced. This affects social learning because children are better able to remember what models did.
Production:
Children's abilities gradually improve. This means that they are able to produce more of what they see and try to imitate. Obviously, young children can't imitate behaviors that they are physically unable to reproduce any more than I can dunk a basketball just by watching someone else do it.
Motivation:
Motivation changes as children get older. For example, older children are probably more concerned about how others see them and more motivated to be socially acceptable. This might affect what types of models they would pay special attention to. A teenager might pay special attention to the behavior of other kids who are seen as cool.
1.NATURE vs. NURTURE:
CSLT PROPOSES ALL INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ARE DUE TO DIFFERENT LEARNING CONTINGENCIES; i.e., NURTURE
2. CLASSICAL BEHAVIORISM VIEWED CHILD AS PASSIVE;
HOWEVER, CSLT SEES THE CHILD AS 'MODERATELY ACTIVE' BECAUSE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF CERTAIN CHILD CHARACTERISTICS IN AFFECTING HOW CHILDREN PROCESS THE ENVIRONMENT (ATTENTION, RETENTION, PRODUCTION, MOTIVATION)
3.DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE IS CONTINUOUS:
THERE IS QUANTITATIVE CHANGE: OLDER CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED MORE THAN YOUNGER CHILDREN; DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE IS SMOOTH, NOT ABRUPT
4.EMPHASIS ON SITUATIONS
EMPHASIS ON SITUATIONS (MODELING OPPORTUNITIES, REINFORCEMENTS, PUNISHMENTS) RATHER THAN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS;
5.EMPHASIS ON IDIOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT.
(NO CONCERN WITH NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT; CSLT IS CONSISTENT WITH CULTURAL RELATIVISM (why?), BUT THE LEVEL OF ANALYSIS IS THE INDIVIDUAL, NOT THE CULTURE. In other words, social learning theorists don't try to explain why Chinese children are different from British children. They are more likely to try to explain differences among Chinese children or differences among British children.
6.EMPHASIZE FAMILY
EMPHASIZE FAMILY AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS AS MODERATING RISK
7.MOTIVATION IS EXTRINSIC;
MOTIVATION IS EXTRINSIC; CHILD LEARNS IN ORDER TO GET REWARDS OR AVOID PUNISHMENT
(JEAN PIAGET)
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES
(JEAN PIAGET)
1.) DEVELOPMENT IS THE RESULT OF QUALITATIVE CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF CHILDREN'S THINKING
ASSIMILATION:(JEAN PIAGET)
INTERPRETING NEW EXPERIENCES IN TERMS OF EXISTING COGNITIVE STRUCTURES
ACCOMMODATION:(JEAN PIAGET)
CHANGING EXISTING COGNITIVE STRUCTURES TO FIT WITH NEW EXPERIENCES
CONSTRUCTIVISM:(JEAN PIAGET)
CHILDREN ACTIVELY INTERPRET THE WORLD, THEY ARE NOT MERELY PASSIVE RECIPIENTS OF REINFORCEMENTS; THEY CONSTRUCT THEIR OWN REALITY; THEY INTERPRET WORLD AS FUNCTION OF THEIR STAGE
EGOCENTRISM:(JEAN PIAGET)
CHILDREN TEND TO HAVE DIFFICULTY SEEING THINGS FROM OTHERS' POINTS OF VIEW. WITH AGE, CHILDREN GRADUALLY DECENTER.
YOUNG CHILDREN ARE LESS FLEXIBLE IN THEIR THINKING;(JEAN PIAGET)
e.g., moral rule are absolute: "stealing is bad"; there are no exceptions.
STANDING OF CDT ON DEVELOPMENTAL THEMES NATURE-NURTURE
INTERACTION BETWEEN CHILD AND ENVIRONMENT; ABILITIES SUCH AS ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION ARE INNATE; BUT DEVELOPMENT OCCURS BECAUSE THE CHILD CONSTANTLY MUST ACCOMMODATE TO NEW ENVIRONMENTS
ACTIVE CHILD
CHILD IS INNATELY CURIOUS AND EXPLORATORY
DEVELOPMENT IS DISCONTINUOUS
COMPLETE RE-ORGANIZATION AT EACH STAGE (QUALITATIVE CHANGE); CHANGE IS STEP-LIKE RATHER THAN SMOOTH.
SITUATIONAL VERSUS INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS:
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS, ESPECIALLY THE STAGE THE CHILD IS IN, ARE EMPHASIZED
5.) CULTURAL UNIVERSALS (NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT) ARE EMPHASIZED:
LL CHILDREN GO THROUGH THE STAGES
RISK VERSUS RESILIENCE:
STAGE THEORISTS DON'T EMPHASIZE THIS MUCH, BUT THEIR THEORY IS CONSISTENT WITH THE IDEA THAT INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS MODERATE RISK: E.G., OLDER CHILDREN WOULD REACT TO A DIVORCE DIFFERENTLY THAN YOUNGER BECAUSE THEY WOULD BE IN DIFFERENT COGNITIVE STAGES.
MOTIVATION IS INTRINSIC;(Belonging naturally; essential.)
CHILD ENJOYS FIGURING OUT THE WORLD
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
Vygotsky was the premier psychologist of the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a Marxist, and his theory reflected that
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory:
1) Did NOT focus on the individual child but on the child as a product of social interaction, especially with adults (parents, teachers).

2.) Focus on DYADIC INTERACTIONS (e.g., child being taught by a parent how to perform some culturally specific action), rather than child by himself.

3.) Cognitive development occurs as child's thinking is molded by society in the form of parents, teachers, and peers.

4.) The result is that people's thinking differs dramatically between cultures because different cultures stress different things. For example, Uzbekis responded to reasoning problems using concrete examples from their own experience. But after learning to read and write, they responded to the problems in a more abstract manner--like a syllogism, where the truth of the premises is irrelevant to the logical properties of the argument.
All people who live in red houses are purple.
John lives in a red house.
John is purple.
Freudian Theory: id
The id is unconscious by definition:

"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organisation, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle
Freudian Theory: ego
The ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief.[12] At the same time, Freud concedes that as the ego "attempts to mediate between id and reality, it is often obliged to cloak the Ucs. [Unconscious] commands of the id with its own Pcs. [Preconscious] rationalizations, to conceal the id's conflicts with reality, to profess...to be taking notice of reality even when the id has remained rigid and unyielding
Freudian Theory: superego
conscious

Freud developed his concept of the super-ego from an earlier combination of the ego ideal and the "special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured...what we call our 'conscience'."[17] For him "the installation of the super-ego can be described as a successful instance of identification with the parental agency," while as development proceeds "the super-ego also takes on the influence of those who have stepped into the place of parents — educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models
Freudian Theory:Oedipus complex
the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father
Freudian Theory: Electra complex
is a girl’s psychosexual competition with mother for possession of father. In the course of her psychosexual development, the complex is the girl’s phallic stage formation of a discrete sexual identity; a boy’s analogous experience is the Oedipus complex
Erikson
know his stage of basic trust (p. 23). The idea of basic trust has been influential in thinking about mother-infant attachment. Securely attached infants trust their mothers, insecurely attached infants don't
DST
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS THEORY
DST sees child development as a system of interacting parts. This is most like the transactional model mentioned above: everything affects everything else and it's all very complicated. The child is constantly changing the environment and the environment is constantly changing the child. It's is much as in the following figure (which is the same as Figure 3-8 on p. 86).
DYNAMIC SYSTEMS THEORY
A good example where the theory makes some sense is the family where, for example, if parents have a bad relationship, it may have effects on the child. Child psychologists often want to bring the whole family in if one child is having a problem; dad's drinking problem affects family finances and mom's mood, resulting in harsher punishment and fewer opportunities like after-school tutoring. So all these things affect the child: everyting affects everything else.

The child inherits not only the parents' genes but also the parents' environment and from the moment of conception they are constantly interacting:
DST Complexity:
Each part of the system is unique but related to the other parts of the system.
Wholeness and Organization:
The whose system is more than the sum of its parts. Its collective behavior can be described in terms that do not necessarily apply to the system's parts and their interrelationships. To study a family, you must do more than study an the characteristics of each member separately and the relationships between them, but the organization of all family relationships and the whole family as an interacting unit. See example above.
Equifinality
Although the dynamics of certain kinds of systems may be quite different, over time they tend to develop similarities. Family systems across different societies share many common characteristics (like parental affection), but the particular customs of a culture may dictate quite different expressions of these characteristics (giving a child a car as a graduation present in the U.S. versus giving a child a bow and arrow in New Guinea.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory The basic levels are: THE MICROSYSTEM:
the face-to-face world of the child; the setting in which the child lives; includes family, school, friends, etc.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory The basic levels are:THE MESOSYSTEM
Interrelations among the components of the micro system; e.g., how parents regulate children's interactions with peers; how parents try to influence classroom atmosphere at school.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory The basic levels are:THE EXOSYSTEM:
Settings that impinge on child development but which the child has only indirect contact. Father's work environment, local school board, major media conglomerate's decisions on TV programming.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory The basic levels are:THE MACROSYSTEM:
Ideological and institutional patterns that affect the broader culture. For example, capitalism versus communism, religious theocracy versus liberal democracy. This is the sort of thing we discussed in the section on the history of childhood: The governments of Sparta, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany had large influences on children's development, and there are constant pressures in the US by a wide range of influence groups to influence school curriculum and social services for children.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory
Ecological theory emphasizes not only the relationship between the child and the environment (family, school), but also the relationships among the environmental systems (e.g., the relationship between the family and the school).
See Figure 1-4 on p. 26.
ADAPTATION
A BEHAVIOR OR MORPHOLOGICAL
FEATURE DESIGNED BY NATURAL SELECTION IN
ORDER TO PERFORM A PARTICULAR FUNCTION
EXAMPLE: ATTACHMENT IS A BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM DESIGNED BY NATURAL SELECTION TO
KEEP THE BABY CLOSE TO ITS MOTHER
BEHAVIOR IS ELICITED IN PARTICULAR CONTEXTSBEHAVIOR IS ELICITED IN PARTICULAR CONTEXTS
E.G., AN ANIMAL MAY BE AGGRESSIVE ONLY DURING MATING SEASON, OR ONLY WITH OTHER MALES
MUCH OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR IS INSTINCTIVE
INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR =
1.) BEHAVIOR OCCURS IN ALL MEMBERS OF
SPECIES (= SPECIES-TYPICAL BEHAVIOR)
2.) NO LEARNING REQUIRED; OFTEN BEHAVIOR
CAN DEVELOP WITHOUT ANIMAL EVER
EXPERIENCING OTHER MEMBERS OF THE
SPECIES
3.) STEREOTYPED BEHAVIOR
METHODOLOGY:
NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION; STRONGLY OPPOSED TO LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS UNTIL BASIC NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION COMPLETED
IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS OF ETHOLOGY:
1.) NATURALISTIC OBSERVATION

2.) THINK OF CHILDREN'S BEHAVIOR AS INCLUDING A SET OF BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATIONS FOR SURVIVAL OVER EVOLUTIONARY TIME

3.) STUDY BEHAVIORS THAT ALSO OCCUR IN ANIMALS (DOMINANCE, AGGRESSION, ATTACHMENT)

4.) FOCUS ON NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR'EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIONS, THREAT GESTURES, ETC.

5.) CRITICAL PERIOD IDEA.

CRITICAL PERIOD: PERIOD IN DEVELOPMENT WHEN
ORGANISM IS MOST OPEN TO ENVIRONMENTAL
INFLUENCES (I. E., HAS GREATEST PLASTICITY)
CLASSICAL ETHOLOGICAL THEORY: (KONRAD LORENZ, NIKO TINBERGEN)
BEHAVIOR AS AN ADAPTATION (HAS SURVIVAL VALUE)

BEHAVIOR IS ELICITED IN PARTICULAR CONTEXTS: E.G., AN ANIMAL MAY BE AGGRESSIVE ONLY DURING MATING SEASON, OR ONLY WITH OTHER MALES
LIKE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY, ETHOLOGY EMPHASIZES UNIVERSALS OF DEVELOPMENT (NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT:
ALL CHILDREN DEVELOP THE BASIC EMOTIONS IN THE SAME SEQUENCE IN ALL CULTURES: JOY, SADNESS, DISTRESS, ANGER, FEAR, ETC.
EXAMPLES OF SENSITIVE PERIODS:
IMPRINTING IN DUCKS;
ATTACHMENT IN HUMANS;
EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT ON IQ(?)
PRENATAL EFFECTS OF TERATOGENS (E.G., ALCOHOL) ON BABIES
PLASTICITY
HIGH

PLASTICITY


LOW______________________________
AGE


?????????? FIND ANSWER
BASIC IDEAS:
Normative Events:
These are age-graded events that children and adults go through at about the same time. Some of these are biological or maturational, such as walking and talking. Others are programmed by society and differ between cultures, such as when children start school, begin dating, get married.
Nonnormative Events:
Events that do not happen to everyone, such as divorce, job loss, having a serious accident.
Cohorts:
A cohort is born around the same time and shares the same historical experiences. For example, children born in the 1930s grew up in during the Great Depression--a period of economic hardship, while many children today grow up around computers and have much more opportunity.
LIFE SPAN PERSPECTIVE
The life span perspective emphasizes that people continue to develop throughout life. In this department we have a course on adult development and aging that reflects this perspective.
The Great Depression in the 1930s had some important effects on child development. People delayed marriage and had fewer children
1.) Economic hardship and status loss during the Depression resulted in strained interpersonal relationships and emotional distance of adolescents from their parents. Deprived women from middle-class backgrounds who married relatively young tended to have emotionally distant relationships with parents (especially the father), and they were characterized by earlier dating and heterosexual experience.

2.) Rates of divorce, separation and desertion rose, especially among couples whose relationship was shaky to start with. Fathers became more punitive and less supportive of their children. Boys became more peer-oriented and moved away from the family earlier.

3.) Later in life, men who were forced to enter the job marked as teenagers preferred secure but modest jobs over riskier but higher-status positions--a conservative response.

4. Both women and men from deprived backgrounds were more highly committed to family life and parenthood and to secure interpersonal relationships than non-deprived subjects. Their marriages were no less stable than those of the non-deprived group and their husbands had higher levels of education, income, and social status than those of the non-deprived women.
Placenta
A fleshy, dislike structure formed by cells from the lining of the uterus and from the zygote that, together with the umbilical cord, serves to protect and sustain the life of the growing organism.
Umbilical cord
A tube that contains blood vessels connection the growing organism and its mother by way of the placenta; it carries oxygen and nutrients to the growing infant and removes carbon dioxide and waste products.
Cephalocaudal;
The pattern of human physical growth in which development begins in the area of the brain and proceeds downward to the trunk and legs.
Proximo-distal development;
the pattern of human physical growth wherein development starts in central areas, such as the internal organs, and proceeds to more distant areas, such as arms and legs.
Zygote
the developing organism from the time sperm and egg unite to about the second week of gestation; the period of the zygote compresses the implantation of the fertilized egg in the wall of the uterus
Embryo
the developing organism between the second and weight week of gestation; the embryonic period compresses the differentiation of the major physiological structures and system.
Fetus;
the developing organism from the third month of gestation through delivery; during the fetal period, bodily structures and systems develop to completion.
Lanugo;
a fine, soft hair that covers the fetus’s body from about the fifth month of gestation on; may be shed before birth or after.
Surfactant;
Surfactants are compounds that lower the surface tension of a liquid, the interfacial tension between two liquids, or that between a liquid and a solid. Surfactants may act as detergents, wetting agents, emulsifiers, foaming agents, and dispersants.
Respiratory distress syndrome;
a condition of the newborn marked by labored breathing and a bluish discoloration of the skin or mucous membranes; can result in infant death.
Age of viability;
the age of 22 to 26 weeks from conception, at which point the fetus’s physical systems are advanced enough that it has a chance to survive if born prematurely.
Teratogens;
an environmental agent, such as a drug , medication, dietary imbalance, or polluting substance, that may cause developmental deviations in a growing human organism; most threatening in the embryonic stage but capable of causing abnormalities in the fetal stage as well.
Principle 6.
The longer a fetus is exposed to a teratogen and the greater the intensity of the teratogen, the more likely it is that the fetus will be harmed.
Teratogens #1
Principle 1. A teratogen exerts its effects largely during critical periods of development
Teratogens #3
Principle 3. Maternal or fetal genotypes may counteract a teratogen’s effect
Teratogens #2
Principle 2. Each teratogen has specific effects
placenta as a semi-permeable membrane and as storage area for nutrients.
????
p. 89 various critical periods (or periods of susceptibility) and note that during the period of the zygote there is no susceptibility to common teratogens.
???
Legal and illegal drugs during pregnancy
Heavy use of aspirin has been associated with low birth weight, lower IQ, and poor motor control
SIDS:
in which infants under the age of 12 months stop breathing and die without apparent cause, is more common if mothers smoke, drink, or take narcotic during pregnancy
What are some of the effects of mothers' and fathers' smoking on babies
Smoker’s babies are at greater risk for nicotine addiction in adolescence and adulthood
Babies exposed to passive smoke can cause delays in intellectual and behavioral development. Exposed in utero are at increased risk for a variety of illnesses such as pneumonia, bronchitis, laryngitis, and otitis media (middle ear infection)
babies are more likely to be premature and underweight
Many of the effects indicate a lack of inhibitory control: irritable, distractible, and hyperactive
FAS
a disorder exhibited by infants of alcoholic mothers and characterized by stunted growth, a number of physical and physiological abnormalities, and often, mental retardation.
what are some of the physical and psychological symptoms of FAS
??
What happens to the baby when a pregnant woman has 1 ounce of vodka during the last trimester?
The respiratory actions of their fetuses may stop for more than half an hour.
What is the likely cause of mental retardation in FAS babies?
??
What are the consequences of 'moderate social drinking'?
??
What period of pregnancy is most dangerous for the effects of alcohol on brain development?
Last trimester
What are the symptoms of babies born to heroin and cocaine?
Withdrawal symptoms; irritability, minimal ability to regulate their state of arousal, trembling, shrill crying, rapid respiration, and hyperactivity. The severity of the newborn’s symptoms is related to the length, continuity, and intensity of the mother’s addiction.
What affects the severity of the symptoms? Heroin
The first pattern is associated with direct toxic effects of cocaine on the neurological system; it is accompanied by irregular, accelerated heartbeat, evaluated blood pressure, and constriction in the upper airways. The second pattern is likely an indirect result of cocaine use and is related to low birth weight and stunted growth.
How do does mother's cocaine abuse affect social behavior of baby?
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physical effects as well as effects on excitability, irritability, impulsivity (lack of inhibitory control).
Physical effects: bone, genital, urinary track, kidney, eye, and heart deformities, brain hemorrhages, and neuron damage.
excitability, irrability ertangja
What is DES and what are its effects on the grown children (both girls and boys) of mothers who used it during pregnancy?
DES a synthetic hormone once prescribed for pregnant women to prevent miscarriage but discontinued when cancer and precancerous conditions were detected in their children.

Effects; girls
Vaginal abnormalities, cancer in the cervix in adolescence, and increased risk of breast cancer, high rate of problems in pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, premature deliveries, and babies with low birth weight
Boys;
Damage to the reproductive tract, such as seminal fluid abnormalities.
Regarding the effects of thalidomide, note that it was difficult to find the cause. How does this illustrate the critical period idea?
Thalidomide; a drug once prescribed to relieve morning sickness in pregnant women but discontinued when found to cause serious fetal malformations.
Difficult to find because the pregnant women themselves showed no adverse effects from the drugs and only a small percentage had children with deficits.
Notice effects of general anesthesia on newborn behavior, but no long term effects. Note that genetic factors influence susceptibility
Show less responsiveness, less smiling, and more irritability for several days after birth, as well as depression, mitotic disorganization, and disruptions in feeding responses.
The extent to which obstetrical medications affect infants is determined by genetic factors, the mother’s general health, the length of labor, the size of the baby, and even the mother’s attitude.
parity
parity is a technical term that refers to the number of times a female has given birth to a fetus.
what ages of the mother are the riskiest for having the first child?
Ages under the age of 15 and over 35 are the riskiest
What are the risks of teenage mothers?
Teenage mothering is associated with a variety of bad things--the 'bad things go together' syndrome: poverty, poor nutrition, poor prenatal care, poor 'cognitive readiness.
Are teenage mothers in good socioeconomic circumstances at greater risk?
No teenage mothers in good socioeconomic circumstances are not at greater risk than that of women in their 20s.
Note Figure 3.3 on p. 88 for the general trends in reproductive risk by age.
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Note racial/ethnic differences in prenatal care
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What was the effect on babies born during the German invasion of the Netherlands.
They were more likely to develop schizophrenia than adults born in earlier or later years.
Notice again the theme that a supportive environment mitigates the effects of stress, as seen in the Guatemalan study. Are supportive fathers sufficient to lower rate of Caesarean deliveries?
No, the presence of the father alone may be less effective in reducing the need for cesarean deliveries than the presence of both the father and an experienced support figure.
In what three ways can children become infected with HIV?
1.Infected by passage of the virus through the placenta during gestation 2.the birth process
3.drinking the mother’s milk after birth.
Why are males more likely than females to have birth complications? (2 reasons; the genetic one will be discussed in the next section)
1. Sex chromosomes and in part to the larger size of, and hence greater pressure on, a male’s head during birth.

2.
What is the Apgar scoring system and what is it used for?
To assess the condition of the newborn infant after birth and check for any problems. At 1 min and 5 min after birth, the doctor measures the heart rate, reparatory effort, reflex irritability, muscle tone, and body color of the infant. The higher the score the more favorable the baby’s condition.
Preterm
several weeks before due dates avg. 5.5
Notice that effects of malnutrition depend on age—another example of a sensitive/critical period phenomenon. The effect of “severe and long-lasting” malnutrition that continues after childbirth also implicates the dose-response aspect of sensitive/critical periods (#6 on p. 79).
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Notice the distinction between malnutrition having physical effects on the brain and on behavioral effects (which ones?) that negatively impact cognitive development. (This theme is repeated later in the chapter.) But realize that malnutrition affects cognitive, social, and motor development.
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Besides improving the nutrition, what else do intervention programs include? This illustrates another theme: The importance of an adequate post-natal environment.
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What are the babies of anxious, stressed mothers like? Notice the long-term correlations with age 7.
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note the cutoff weights:
3.3 lbs (1500g).
5.5 lb. (2500g)
(7.7 lb. is average.)
Small for date;
either at about due date or several weeks before
Less than 3.3
Survival is severely compromised.
Note ethnic differences in frequency of low birth weight babies, with AA most likely and Mexicans midway between EA and AA. What are some of the reasons given?
Poor diet, inadequate prenatal care, and drug and/or alcohol use.
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Proved to benefit from the regulatory effects of the stimulated breathing sounds. Showed more even respiration and more quiet sleep than did infants without. The additional stimulation may have influence the organization of brain processes associated with mature sleep patterns.
Note the feelings of the mothers of preemies; Are mothers of preemies as emotionally involved as mothers of normal babies? What traits of the premies seem to be involved? Notice that some premies are abused. What factors in the baby and the mother are suggested to explain this tendency?
Mothers report feelings of guilt, failure, and alienation from their infants and loss of self-esteem, and they appear apprehensive about handling and caring for their fragile appearing infants. Mothers of preemies tend to show less emotional involvement with them than mothers of full-term babies. These babies’ typical physical appearance, small size, high pitched cry, feeding difficulties, and low responsiveness may make them unappealing and increase their parent’s frustration. Most premies are born to mothers who are poor, young, and uneducated.
What did Klaus and Kennel find?
When hospital personnel purposely increased the amount of contact, particularly skin-to-skin contact, that mothers have with their premature infants, this can improve mother-child relations.
Note the complexity of the factors suggested as causing long term problems and that medical problems arising directly from prematurity are far from the whole story. Note also that there may be long term effects on the parent-child relationship and on the parents' marriage
High incidence of marital discord in the first 2 years.
Long-termed effects are more marked and enduring for children in economically disadvantage families than in middle-income families.
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Resilience- the ability to overcome difficulties- results from the interaction between risk and protective factors in the child and the environment.
Fathers play a supportive role for both mothers and infants not just during childbirth but also throughout their children’s development.
Intellectual deficits are found in infants born to alcoholic mothers
Later attentional problems, such as ADHD, are linked with prematurity.
Minor perceptual, attentional, intellectual, motor, and behavioral disabilities to gross abnormalities.
What were the basic results at age 30 follow-up?
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This is an important longitudinal study, lasting over 40 years. Birth: Note high level of birth complications and 'at risk' status.
Age 2: severity of complications correlated with test results; note that 'bad things go together': infants with severe complications who are living in low SES, in unstable families, with low IQ mothers have worse results.
Age 10: No relation between IQ and birth complications but IQ was correlated with the usual environmental variables: Low SES, family instability. (The text treats these environmental variables as causes, but they may merely index genetic tendencies for low IQ. Still, the point is that birth complications by themselves don't explain much, if anything. The big story is a gradual improvement with age: Children become more normal. What were the characteristics of resilient children?
What are some alternatives to simply supposing that the problem is with low birth weight itself? This is a theme of the chapter: It’s not just what happens before the child is born that determines outcome.
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p. 95: Note the quote from the mother of a preemie. Notice that very low birth weight associated with problems in a number of areas; note 3.3 lbs seems to be a threshold for greater difficulties, and that the effects are worse in babies weighing less than 2 lbs than among those weighing less than 3.3 lbs.
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Neonate:
a new born baby
Infant state
a recurring pattern of arousal in the newborn, ranging from alert, vigorous, wakeful activity to quiet, regular sleep. Two fundamental states: Waking and sleeping.
Have a general idea of developmental changes in sleep over the first 8 weeks and by the end of the first year.
What two points does Figure 4.1 make?
At 2 weeks of age, infants tend to maintain about the same ratio of total sleep, active sleep, and fussy crying in the morning, afternoon, and at night, but by the time they’re 8 weeks old, they have begun to spend appreciably more time in quiet sleep during the nighttime.

need to answer What two points does Figure 4.1 make?
What is SIDS?
SIDS: The sudden, unexplained death of an infant while sleeping
What characteristics make babies more susceptible to SIDS?
Characteristics: low-birth weight male with history of respiratory problems, who were hospitalized longer than usual after birth and who have abnormal heart-rate patterns and night time sleep disturbances
What are some of the characteristics of mothers more likely to have SIDS babies?
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What is Lipsitt's (1990) theory on the origins of SIDS?
Lipsitt’s: Victims may have failed to develop adequate responses to nasal blockage and other threats to breathing
Should sleep on their stomachs or on very soft mattresses?
Babies should not sleep on very soft mattresses and surrounded by pillows and sleep on their backs.
Co-sleeping is one way to prevent SIDS, but is controversial. Why do you think it's controversial?
It’s controversial because of attachment issue with separation come later in life.
Define REM sleep:
REM sleep: REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep is characterized by rapid, jerky movements of the eyes and, in adults, is often associated with dreaming. ?? functional value
What is the autostimulation theory of REM sleep and what is the evidence on which it is based (circumcision results, physical and social stimulation)?
Autostimlation theory: The theory that during REM sleep the infant’s brain stimulates itself and that this, in turn, stimulates early development of the central nervous system. ?Based on??
3 types of crying. When is the switch from physiological to psychological function of crying?
Basic (physiological), Angry (psychological), and pain(physiological).
Be able to summarize the discussion of whether mothers should respond promptly to infant crying. Bell and Ainsworth are attachment researchers. Their basic idea was that prompt responding made the infant feel more secure and therefore lowered crying. But what did Hubbard and van IJzendoorn find? How does the textbook reconciles their results with the results of the attachment researchers?
Hubbard and van IJzendoorn found that delays in the mothers responding seemed to cause a decrease in the number of crying bouts. The textbook combines the idea that responding to a crying baby too rapidly may cause to coddle the baby. However, if the mother can distinguish between the babies crys and determine if it is an urgent cry or a fussing cry the mother can restrain from quickly attending to the baby if it’s a fussing cry, as a result the baby displays a considerable less amounts tantrums for insignificant reasons.
What are some ways that infants soothe themselves? Notice that some things that work at one age don’t work at another age.
Babies use sucking as a way to soothe themselves.
Sucking on a sweet liquid is effective in calming a 2-week-old baby but it is less effective in soothing a 4-week-old unless accompanied with an adult.
Why is getting babies in a calm state a “critical task of parenting”? Culture and soothability: Euro-Amer babies more emotionally labile than Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Native American babies. These effects are likely the result of temperament, at least partly. JA and NA babies are also more soothable. (Other researchers, not mentioned here, attribute this to lower emotionality in people from the Mongoloid (Oriental) gene pool.)
Infants pay more attention to events in their environment, and therefore can learn more, when they are in a calm but alert state.
What is the BNAS? Notice that it has a lot of uses, ranging from research on predictors of parent-infant interaction to diagnosis of neurological problems and African motor precocity. Scan Table 4-3 on p. 118 and notice some of the abilities of newborns based on the BNAS: habituation, orientation to sights and sounds, motor development, regulation and self-regulation (including 'cuddliness'); lots of concern with arousal regulation
Brazeltion Neonatal Assessment Scale: A scale containing a battery of tests used to measure an infant’s sensory and perceptual capabilities, motor development, range of states, and ability to regulate these states, as well as whether the brain and central nervous system are properly regulating involuntary responses.
Define sensation and perception. How do psychologists use babies' autonomic functions and sucking to determine what they are sensing? Notice that the infant is especially well-equipped to deal with its social environment and this may be the result of biological programming. (This is emphasized in the Turning Points section on pp. 116–118.)
Sensation: The detection of stimuli by the sensory receptors.
Perception: The interpretation of sensations to make them meaningful.
What is the violation-of-expectation method?
Violation-of-expectation method; introduces an unusal or impossible sight, such as an object floating in space. If on seeing this information the baby responds by altering his behavior (by slowing down or stopping his rate of sucking), it suggests that the baby knows something about how objects normally work and that his expectation of this normal course of events has been violated.
How do psychologists take advantage of babies' ability to habituate in order to understand what they can perceive?
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What is Fantz's visual preference method of assessing what infants can distinguish?
Visual preference method; A method of studying infants’ abilities to distinguish one stimulus from another in which researchers measure and compare the amounts of time babies spend attending to different stimuli
What is the habituation method?
Habituation; a process of learning by which an individual reacts with less and less intensity to a repeatedly presented stimulus, eventually responding only faintly or not at all.
What is infant-directed speech, a.k.a., motherese?
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Note babies can hear before birth. Why do adults use high-pitch when talking to infants?
High-pitched voice is more likely to capture the child’s attention.
Babies may possess biological preparedness to prefer certain types of music (lullabies versus heavy metal??). Is there any evidence that listening to classical music or other types of music increases intelligence?
Yes, listening to classical music can stimulate brain development and increase intelligence.
NOTE: ON JAP AND WESTERN MUSIC
Babies can distinguish music based on different scales (Javanese vs. Western) but adults can't. This is like language where 6-mo. old infants can distinguish sounds in any language, but older infants and adults who were not reared in a particular language environment can't so. (I may have time to show a film that shows this.) Both of these are critical/sensitive period phenomenon.
is there any evidence that babies innately prefer human voices? Note that newborns can distinguish mother’s voice. Why is it a problem that deafness is often not diagnosed until 2.5–3 years of age?
Babies learn to discriminate among voices very quickly; they can distinguish between their mother’s voices from those of other females.
2.5-3 is a critical period for language acquisition. Because of the impact that hearing difficulties may have on other aspects of development; especially language acquisition, early and regular checks for hearing difficulties and ear infections, which can impair hearing considerably.
Define visual acuity
Visual acuity; sharpness of vision; the clarity with which fine details can be detected.
What is the visual acuity of a newborn up to one month of age?
Visual acuity newborn; blurry
When do babies achieve basically adult levels of acuity?
babies achieve adult level; 5 years old
Color perception: What did the monkey study show? This is a critical/sensitive period phenomenon.
With training in color perception, the monkeys reared in monochromatic illumination were able develop some but not all of these abilities.
What are the nativist and empiricist theories of pattern perception?
Nativist; babies merely sees unrelated lines, angles, and edges, and only gradually learns through experience to perceive larger patterns. The pattern perception is innate.
Empiricist; argues that experience is needed to piece the elements together into meaningful patterns
What did Salapatek and Kessen find, and which theory does it support?
The typical newborn centered attention on one of the triangle’s angles but sometimes also scanned part of an edge in limited way. This suggests that although certain elements of a complex pattern attract a newborn;s attention, babies this young may not perceive whole forms.
When do babies see patterns at approximately adult level?
By 3 months of age, babies are almost as good as adults at picking patterns out of a moving form.
Notice that in the study referred to in Figure 4-5, babies 3-5 months-old perceive some moving displays (the walking figure) as patterns, and it’s not until 9 months that they realize it’s a walking figure; the authors conclude that “this capacity to infer form from movement may be innate or at least develop very early.”
SDANAVGAL
Innate preference for human faces compared to non-face-like images. This “early bias” interacts with a developing nervous system and an environment with faces.
How do young infants scan faces? (See Figure 4-6.) What seems to change at around 7 weeks to 2 months? But even though babies look longer at a person's eyes at 7 weeks and can recognize their mothers, we can't conclude that the baby sees the face as a whole. Why? (Hint: see study by Pascalis and colleagues [1995].)
The newborn’s recognition of and preference for the mother’s face may simply reflect the baby’s focus on one particular feature of her face. Pascalis and colleagues found that 4-day-old newborns looked longer at their mothers’ face than at those of strangers only when the mother as not wearing a head scarf.
What did Langlois et al. (1987, 1990) find? What are the symmetry and averageness hypotheses of facial attractiveness and which one does the study by Samuels et al.?
One-year-old children played more with the attractive doll and preferred to interact with the adults wearing the attractive mask, smiling at the adult, laughing, and withdrawing less often from him or her than from the person wearing the unattractive mask.
Evidence for inborn preferences, but also a role for “powerful general learning capability.” General learning implies mechanisms that can be used to learn a wide variety of things, as opposed to specialized learning mechanisms (the latter emphasized by evolutionary psychology).
Some argue that such faces contain more of the features that the infant’s visual system is organized to react to: infants prefer high contrast, contours, curves, and vertical symmetry, and attractive faces may have more of these characteristics than unattractive faces.
Pascalis et al. (2002): Fascinating research on the narrowing or specializing of face processing, allowing easy recognition of different people. Why might someone who never owned dogs while growing up have difficulty recognizing different wolves as an adult? This narrowing is similar to the narrowing seen in speech and music perception (see above). All seem to be sensitive/critical period phenomena.
Research Samuels et al 1994; when attractiveness and symmetry are varied independently; an attractive face that lacks symmetry or an unattractive yet symmetrical face is presented- babies, like adults prefer attractiveness to symmetry.
Neither infants nor adults were able to distinguish between different faces of monkeys. Face processing by human infants becomes specialized to human faces over the first year of life.