Lecture Notes on Child Development PDF

**[WATCH VIDEOS GIVEN IN LECTURE SLIDES]** **[Week 1]** Midterm - 7pm, week before reading week, written and in-person, an hour and a half long, 80 mcqs, contextual questions  - make up midterm: just email TA (by Oct 16) - bonus mark for participation in studies - academic conside...

**[WATCH VIDEOS GIVEN IN LECTURE SLIDES]** **[Week 1]** Midterm - 7pm, week before reading week, written and in-person, an hour and a half long, 80 mcqs, contextual questions  - make up midterm: just email TA (by Oct 16) - bonus mark for participation in studies - academic consideration: 2 discussions - only 1 counts, due next Thursday, week to reply to someone - 450-500 words - always loop it back to course material (at least 3) - don\'t need to reference or cite textbook, (as to discuss the idea in the textbook...) - interview someone who has given birth 2 essays - only 1 counts - 5 pages, double spaced, 12-point font - no citations/references (as was discussed in this chapter/lecture/textbook), page number with direct quotes  Finals - 80 mcqs - One essay- 3 options given ahead of time - Get lecture notes by emailing the TA focus on lecture and textbook content (mostly lectures) - usually on the 17th of December - Scientific to layman language  Provided Textbook: Seventh Canadian Edition of Siegler et al "How Children Develop" [Lecture] - different opinions of children -\> tabula rasa: blank slate (locke) - Nuture -\> prenatal experience, womb - nature -\> only genes - epigenetics/early childhood experiences - epigenetics- parent to child inheritance - canalisation (in the slides) - neurodevelopmental disorders: pathways of development are more limited  active v passive child - Kids seek out info that they\'re interested in - Paying attention to things- choosing to pay attention to their mothers face during the first month (8-10 inches vision)  - Continuity/quantitatively/no sudden changes versus discontinuity/stage theory/sudden changes - conservation task: piaget - each motor skills a child learns they forget everything and have to relearn everything - Crawled down a slope w some knowledge of danger/walked down freely without care - Microgenetic studies- kids learning stuff for the first time in a lab - multiple factors influencing child development - individual differences: nature, nuture  - eg- attractive/outgoing children are played with and responded to more - fixed vs growth mindset key properties of behavioral measures:  - relevance to hypothesis - interrater reliability - test-retest - internal validity: are we measuring what we intend to meaure - external validity: can this be applied to real life scenarios - you don\'t have to be reliable to be valid - Replicability  - file drawer problem: TALK ABOUT YOUR RESULTS AND REPLICAS  data gathering - interviews: structured, clinical (go with the flow), biases (desirability bias, lack of insight- don\'t understand what\'s going on inside them) - Naturalistic observation - exam question: is an experiment unethical? - structured observation  - physiological measures - WEIRD: western educated industrialized rich demographic (canada, usa, western Europe, Australia, new zealand) - most of our research comes from weird populations - Correlations: positive (+1), negative (-1), neutral/zero  - correlation =/= causation Why is the study of development important?  - Helps parents raise children  - What\'s appropriate and what\'s not?  - Ex. spanking is detrimental to children \--\> alternatives  - Building empathy for diverse groups of children  - Kids with intellectual disability  - Neurodivergent children  - Traumatic births  - Early experiences  - It influences social policies  - Ex. some dev psychologists believe phones are not problematic for students during school  - Research gets lost on the way to government policy  - Building a better understanding of the formation of human nature - why we are the way we are    History  - Plato  - Children were born with conceptual knowledge  - Aristotle  - All knowledge arises from experience  \--\> how much are we born with and what do we get from experience??  - Rousseau    - Children are born with an innate justice and morality, despite how they are raised  - Locke  - Tabula rasa, \"blank state\"  - Like Aristotle, believed that knowledge was acquired following birth    Nature and Nurture  - Nature = genes we receive from our parents  - NOT experiences in the womb, the womb is a component of the environment  - Nurture = all of the physical and social environment  \--\> how do nature or nurture interact to affect development?  - Some people are more nature while some are more nurture based  - Timing is CRUCIAL  - Epigenetics plays a huge role  - The turning on/off of genes leading to the synthesis of some proteins  - Intergenerational trauma  - Not just from the social experiences during early life  - Canalization  A diagram of a landscape Description automatically generated - This shows why early intervention is very important  - The hills and valleys are believed to be influenced more by epigenetics  - Still pathways to success, but not as much for children born with epigenetic trauma, developmental disabilities, etc.    The active vs. passive child  - How do children\'s own choices contribute to their own development?  - Unlike what Locke (learning theorists) thought, children seek out information in their environment rather than just taking in information from the environment  - Ex. children choosing to pay attention to their mother\'s face  - Biological perspective: a baby\'s best sight is within 8 cm, exactly how far their mother\'s face would be    Continuity vs. discontinuity (AKA qualitative vs. quantitative)  - Continuity: Growing incrementally and without stark changes  - Discontinuity: children have points in development where major changes happen leading to children seeing the world in an immensely different way  - This stage theory has fallen out of favour  - Stage theorists such as Piaget, Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg were very influential  - Experiment ex. conservation task  - Moving water between a short and fat glasses and asking which glass has more water  - Four yr olds would not be able to concentrate on height and width of glass, leading to them thinking the taller glass has more water  - Height is more salient to them  - Favour is falling because: it truly depends on how you look at these children, and how often you look - the framing of the information  - Ex. from 1-2 months there is a drastic change of behaviour, but what about the days between them? The smaller increments  - Just like growing taller, it is very incremental   - Motor development - generalization:   - With each new motor experience, a child has to re-learn the physical affordances they can do, what is safe and not safe, etc.   - Cannot be transferred from crawling to walking    Mechanisms of development - how development happens  - Not just when or why (aka nature or nurture) but how development happens  - Is the development of effortful attention driven by the brain?  - Different genetic mechanisms and interactions  - The study of epigenetics in development  - Training/microgenetic studies  - Giving children a chance to learn developmental skills in a lab environment    Sociocultural context in development  - The historical era in which they developed  - The economic structure  - Of family, country of birth, etc.  - Cultural beliefs and values  - Subcultures within culture  - Cross-cultural studies  - Examples of sociocultural context in development  - Children attending daycare is new  - Mothers stayed at home  - Social norm  - Economically feasible at the time  - Daycare previously seen as negative  - Shared sleeping - in some cultures, the entire family all sleep in the same bed    Individual differences  - Genetic differences  - Different treatment by parents or others  - More attractive children are played with more by strangers and even parents  - Those in school who do well are treated more positively  - Differences in reactions to similar experiences  - Such as a fixed vs. growth mindset  - Fixed: no matter how hard I work I will not improve  - Growth mindset: harder I work the better I do  - Ex. recognizing differences in experiences between siblings in the same experiences  - Differences in choice of environments  - Such as some children liking a sport more and choosing to stay in that sport as they develop    Reliability and validity of measures  - Things can be reliable but no validity  - Think of reliability as a lower rung of the ladder that you would have to climb to get to validity  - Relevance to hypotheses  - Interrater reliability: do different raters who make observations rate the same behaviour with the same method of scoring  - Test-retest reliability: are the scores or classifications that children receive on the measure stable over time  - Validity  - Internal validity: can effects of the experiment be attributed to the variables that the researcher intentionally manipulated?  - External validity: how widely can the findings be generalized to different children, measures, and experimental procedures than the ones in the study    Replicability of studies  - Do other studies yield the same results?  - Doing a study a second time in the exact same way should have very similar results  - There is a replicability crisis - only 62% of \"science\" and \"nature\" articles are replicated  - Null results should be published - why?  - Good quality yet null studies can still tell us more about the replicability of studies  - File drawer problem - people \"file away\" null results    Four main contexts for gathering data  1. Interviews  a. Structured interviews: all participants asked the exact same questions  b. Clinical surveys: follow what the child says  i. Interviews can have a desirability bias and lack of insight  1. Desirability bias: child participants often want to please the interviewer with the \"proper\" answer  2. Lack of insight: children may think they know what they are saying but they do not  2. Naturalistic observation  c. Lack of control - con  d. Can be a good method for unethical behaviour - pro  ii. If an experiment (controlled) were to be unethical such as having children be aggressive to one another  3. Structured observations in the lab  e. More control  f. Can be hard to be ecologically or externally valid  4. Physiological measures  g. Such as heart rate, galvanic skin response, eeg, etc.    WEIRD samples  - Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic  - Essentially Canada, US, Australia etc.  - Most of our research comes from these countries  - Within these countries, research is taken more from middle to high class population  - A mistrust of researchers in many ethnic groups  - Makes it difficult to improve research    Correlational designs  - If kids differ on one thing, do the differ on another?  - Ex. does tv effect aggression  - Nothing is being changed, just observation of how things occur naturally  - Types of correlations:  - Strong positive relationship between two variables, one goes up, the other goes up  - Strong negative relationship between two variable, one goes up, the other goes down  - No relationship  - Magnitude of correlation AKA strength of number (NOT the positive or negative sign) that determines correlation  - Number of correlation that is valid depends on different field, psych is not very strong just because correlational charts acknowledge the diversity and complexity of human participants  - Correlation does not mean causation  - Third variable problem: another variable is responsible for the correlation perceived to be between two variables  -  Developmental designs: longitudinal study (long period of time) /microgenetic (short period of time), observing skill development, cross sectional studies drawback- cohort (face processing and covid), solving the issue- cross sectional sequential studies- combining cross sectional and longitudinal - Cross sectional: doesn't inform about cohort issues - Ethical issues with children- very vulnerable, if deception is involved there must be a clear and well defined benefit, minimize risks - Young children: stressful/unfamiliarity of situation, absence of caregivers, situations evoking inappropriate shame/guilt/embarrassment, coercive-unreasonable demands (power balance between adult and kid), listen to them ("I'm tired" "we'll stop") - Older kids: perceived disapproval/disappointment from research, anything threatening to self-esteem, perceived failure, comparison with other, biases, threats to privacy  **[Week 2]** **[Prenatal development]** - Ancient Greeks: preformationism, little man inside the sperm (homunculus) - Aristotle: epigenesis (sperm and egg just basic material not a preformed human) - Zygote (conception-2 weeks)-\> embryo (post implantation, weeks 3-8)-\> fetus (9-birth) - Developmental process - Cell division begins in first 12 hrs after conception - Embryonic period- cell migration begins - Plan B makes the zygote impossible to implant into the uterus, makes it inhospitable - Cell differentiation- location determines type (after implantation) - Programmed cell death (apoptosis) - Zygote phase: blastocyst hallow sphere containing the inner cell mass- split of identical twins happens here - Implantation occurs in the first week - Embryo: 3 layers develop - Ectoderm: nervous system, nails, teeth, inner ear, eye lens, epidermis - Mesoderm: muscles, bones, circulatory systems, skin - Endoderm: digestive system, urinary bladder, lungs, glands - BRAIN: u-shaped groove comes down from ectoderm, neural tube, one end will become brain and spinal cord, the other end closes in upon itself - Placenta: SPM, fetus blood doesn't mix with mother's blood - Amniotic sac: constant temp, protection, fluid filled, allow movement - Cephalization: head development before lateral ends (tail) - Proximodistal (inside out) - 4 weeks: heart beat - Fetus: 11-12 weeks, genitalia, fully formed, startled at a loud song, you can usually feel it, organisation of organs/muscles/nervous system - Last trimester is about gaining weight, triples in weight, fat under the skin, for nutrition - 20 weeks: facial expressions - 22 weeks- if born at this time, 14.8% mortality rate - 28: age of viability, can survive without any major medical intervention - Can taste their own amniotic fluid - Sensory experience as a fetus - Vision very low and poorly developed - Hearing: prefers mom's voice, muffled/filtered - Interest shown by: movement, heart rate (decelerated heart rate - Habituation: how long a fetus takes to get used to a stimulus - Preference for food eaten in the womb - Prefer language/rhythm/cadence/stress patterns of language spoken most frequently in the womb - Teratogens - Sensitive periods - First two weeks prior plantation are relatively safe - Dose-response relation - Smoking- lower birth weight, lower IQ, SIDS, hearing deficits, higher likelihood for ADHD/cancer - Drug use when mom is pregnant- baby is addicted- neonatal abstinence- withdrawal after birth - Environmental pollutants **[Genetics ]** - Womb is environment/nurture - Genotype/phenotype - Epigenesis, epigenetics - 10% of genes are providing active instructions in your life - genes most active-\> - environment - probabilistic epigenesis - brain development - third or fourth wekek post conception- neural tube development at 250k cells per minute - 18^th^ week- synaptogenesis complete - While synapses are being formed, other srae dying away (synaptic pruning) - No communication between two neurons: - Axons grow longer, dendrite formation, differentiation into different type sof neurons - Experience - Neurons need repeated activation to be retained - Inter neuron communication necessary **[Week 3]** Piaget Theory - Active child, continuity - Processes - Biological drive to make sense of the world - Adaptation (response to environmental stimuli) - Assimilation (integrating new information into existing schemas) - Accommodation (modifying schemas in light of new information) - Organisation (of thoughts, concepts, expand upon them, done at the end of the day, talking to self) - Equilibration (balancing assimilation and accommodation) - Child at equilibrium: no discrepancy between experiences and understanding - Disequilibrium: understanding the discrepancy/knowledge gap, engaging in Piaget processes to lead to better understanding - Major criticism: these processes are not well defined, made tests too hard/tough for kids, foused more on performance and not on competence (kid understands on some level)(six month olds can pass the sally-ann test when shown a video) - In the middle of a stage: little accommodation, more assimilation - Stage transition: more accommodation, little assimilation - Assimilation is a smaller thing, accommodations are larger changes A diagram of different stages of equilibration Description automatically generated , Stages of Piaget (qualitative, types of thinking same across all types of cognition and contexts) - Note: brief transitional periods where kids vary back and forth exist - Not everyone reaches formal operational +-----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+ | Sensorimotor | - No | - (4-8 months, | | | representational | becoming | | Birth-2 years | thought (anything | increasingly | | | that's not right | interested in | | | in front of them | objects) | | | can't be thought | | | | about/considered | - 8 months: able to | | | | search for things | | | - Lack of object | hidden right in | | | permanence | front of them | | | | (hide at A | | | - No internal | multiple times, | | | symbolic thought | then hide at B, | | | | error) | | | - Representational, | | | | symbolic thought | - Learn to use | | | gradually emerges | inborn reflexes | | | | to suit their | | | - Object permanence | needs | | | develops | | | | | - Primary circular: | | | - Lacking object | building upon | | | permamence | basic reflexes, | | | | unintentional | | | | effects | | | | | | | | - Secondary | | | | circular: | | | | increasingly | | | | interested in | | | | objects, lack | | | | object permanence | | | | | | | | - Intentional | | | | behavior: 8-12 | | | | months, A not at | | | | B error | | | | | | | | - A not B: affected | | | | by number of | | | | times object was | | | | found at A, will | | | | still search at A | | | | even when looking | | | | at B (where the | | | | object is now | | | | present), like | | | | developing a | | | | habit to search | | | | at A | | | | | | | | - Tertiary | | | | circular: | | | | actively | | | | beginning to | | | | explore the | | | | world, action | | | | with new objects, | | | | experimentation | | | | | | | | - Symbol usage and | | | | representation | | | | begins from 18-24 | | | | months | +=======================+=======================+=======================+ | Preoperational | - Egocentricism | - Representation | | | (unable to | (can think about | | 2-7 | understand | things not | | | another person's | directly in front | | | perspective) | of them), no | | | | operations (can't | | | - Lacking | make connections | | | conservation: | between different | | | because of lack | concepts, can't | | | of | think about | | | reversibility/cen | multiple aspects | | | tration, | of something, can | | | focus on static | only focus on one | | | endpoints | feature) | | | | | | | - Schemas aren't | - Mental | | | reversible | representation | | | | | | | - Mental | - Delayed | | | representations | representation/im | | | | itating | | | - Understanding | | | | symbolic words | - Egocentric: | | | (anything that | unable to | | | isn't an | understand to | | | onomatopoeia) | take other | | | | viewpoints | | | - Symbols seen in | (related to | | | language, art, | theory of mind | | | play | | | | | - Centration: only | | | - Symbolic play | focus on one | | | | feature and | | | | exclude the | | | | others | | | | | | | | - *Focusing on | | | | static states* | | | | and ignoring | | | | changes/transform | | | | ation | | | | | | | | - Lacking | | | | conservation | | | | | | | | - Horizontal | | | | decalage: a lag | | | | in time in being | | | | able to | | | | understand | | | | different tasks | | | | that require the | | | | same cognitive | | | | framework | | | | | | | | - | +-----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+ | Concrete operational | - More objective | - Designing biased | | | rational thought | experiments to | | 7-12 | | test out | | | - Decentration | hypotheses | | | | | | | - Conservation | - | | | tasks achieved | | +-----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+ | Formal operational | - hypothetico-deduc | - scientific | | | tive | reasoning | | 12+ | reasoning | | | | | - pondering deep | | | - abstract thought | questions | | | | | | | - experimentation | - pendulum test: | | | (pendulum | what causes the | | | problem) | rate of the swing | | | | of the pendulum | | | | to vary? What | | | | tests would you | | | | conduct to | | | | isolate the | | | | responsible | | | | factor? | +-----------------------+-----------------------+-----------------------+ Issues with piaget's theory - biased sample (only picked upper middle class kids)/WEIRD samples - childrens thinking is not this consistent - underestimated competence - underestimated influence of environment Plus points for Piaget - noticed patterns - constructivism (active child theory) was very influential - kids have to be confused and know that they're wrong to learn and understand - vast amount of research Information Processing Theories - focusing on cognition (ALL mental activity) - task analysis - limitations of cognition: processing capacity, efficiency of thought processes, availability to relevant strategies or knowledge - comparing the mind to a computer - cognitive development occurs through effective execution of basic cognitive processes paired with acquisition of new strategies and knowledge - check out skinner's pigeons - assumptions made - continuous development - active child theory with respect to learning - basic memory and learning is present at birth and is expanded and perfected over time (domain general abilities) - know slide 25- aspects of info processing theories - metacognition: the ability to reflect one's cognition and abilities, whether you've learnt something or not - encoding: learning to encode information that's important to us, learning what to pay attention to, sometimes we just pick up things automatically, kids don't always encode important information (lack experience, existing knowledge base) - mental rotation: considering different visual perspectives of an object/visual search, scanning/ tapping: how fast you can tap- level out at age 12 - nature or nurture? More experience or myelination? Overlapping waves theory - strategy use and variation based on the problem - scale: 4-18, figure 7-8 in the textbook - kids don't think of problems in one way core knowledge theories - kids are born with some degree of innate knowledge - like people, basic physics, language- things that are important evolutionarily, for survival and development - known from birth - domain specific knowledge - this area in the brain is exclusively present to process this information - nativism versus constructivism - there are domain-specific modules in the brain sociocultural theories - cultural learning (parents, peers, family, teachers, environment) - other people take precedence over other elements in these theories - Vygotsky's Theory - Every human society- adults teach children facts, skills, values, traditions - Focused on adult teaching the child - Society and language shapes thinking - 4 key elements for Vygotsky's Theory - Intersubjectivity: mutual understanding of intentions between two people, being on the same page, relating to and understanding what another person is talking about, turn-taking/joint attention/social referencing - Scaffolding (textbook isn't right, refer to this): guided participation, supporting a child by giving them a framework for how to solve a problem/thinking and deliberation, eventually pull away and help less to let the child attempt the problem on their own - Zone of proximal development: teaching a child content that is slightly beyond their current capabilities, but not overwhelmingly so - Move from private to inner speech: little kids talk aloud to themselves all the time, start internalising speech, - Zone of Proximal development (very important!) - Below bottom boundary: kid can 100% do it on their own - Between bottom and top boundary: kid learning - Above top boundary: it's beyond cognitive capacity irrespective of scaffholding - Go through slide 35  Dynamic Systems Approach - Newborn-3 months: steps in the air when lifted up, almost like trying to walk - Put babies in water, babies started the stepping in water - Baby's legs became too pudgy and heavy to lift - Why do things occur? Why do things stop occurring? - Focusing on motor development - Influenced by: neural mechanism, general development, strength, balance, posture, perceptual skills, body proportion, environmental supports - Effect of action on cognition - Study non-obvious effects like motivation - Soft assembly: in any given moment, different things will be affecting what you will be doing, doing the same action but rooted in different motivations and vice versa - Attractor states: certain actions become more likely to be done, they're not static and ca be changed - Sticky mittens: Velcro mittens \\, understand the intention and how to reach for objects   **Week 4** **About language** - Arbitrary symbols - Infinitely generative - Allows for displacement - Structural meaning - Comprehension preceeds production during development **Components of language** - Phonemes: components of sound, 200 globally, English 45 - Morphemes: units of meaning - Can the word be broken down any further wrt meaning? - Bound (have to be attached to a regular word), free (don't) - Semantics: meanings of words and sentences - Grammar: syntax and morphology rules - Pragmatics: how language is used socially, turn-taking, relevance of responses/information to people, irony/humour/sarcasm - Metalinguistic: reflection on knowledge of language - The human brain - Animals don't necessarily communicate about the future **Early speech perception** - Distributional properties: how often do two things go together? Boundaries and connections between sounds, stressing on parts of a word, pausing, prosody - Exaggerated prosody, pausing when talking to infants and small kids - Infants are able to detect phonemes that are not present in their language (children in Canada able to identify phonemes in Hindi) - Categorical perception: - 6-8 months of age: purple vowels, green consonants, differentiate between them when not in their language; decreased ability by 10-12 months - Perceptual narrowing: born into a language, exposed to, over time as we don't hear the language, we lose the ability to understand the phonemes - Multiple language: one person per language teaching them, distinguishing between people and languages - Infant directed speech: "baby talk", tone, clear enunciation, prosody, more pauses, repetition of key words - Babbling: 6-10 months old (avg 7 months), making different noises/combining morphemes, names for parents are the same morphemes attached, first signs (ma-ma, ba-ba, da-da), babbling in their "own language", imitation - Deaf kid: babbling at 7 months, behavior dropped, does not require auditory experience, requires reinforcement, babies will babble in sign if they know sign language - Babbling will take on the intonations, sounds, rhythms of the language the child is learning - Pre-babbling is cooing Intersubjectivity A close-up of a list of children actions Description automatically generated - Person listening and talking should be on the same page - Not necessary for normal development, but it helps - Pragmatics, understanding intention of communicator and communication - Learning language through games and routines - Turn-taking: when parents talk, baby stops cooing Pointing: - 9 months of age, - Proto declarative: wanting to declare something (I want you to tell me what this is), autistic children don't engage in this type of learning - Proto imperative: in pursuit of something (give me this thing), for needs to be fulfilled Parental sensitivity - Children of highly responsive mothers were advanced in language development - 50 words in vocabulary/joining two words/talking about the past for 21-month-olds with responsive mothers Early words - Names for people and things - General examples of a category are learnt first - Action words come later - Descriptions are more difficult - The word *mine* is learnt very early - Holophrase: juice-\> mommy, get me juice from the kitchen - Nouns are the easiest to learn - Vocabulary spurt: avg 19 months, 13-24 months - Sentences: 24 months - Gaps between the bars on slide 13 are averages How do infants learn new words? - Labelling, stress, positioning, joint attention - Learning through games and routines - Fast-mapping - Really salient- learn it by hearing it once - Contrast familiar and unfamiliar words - Following another person's gaze - Under-extension (only thinking that one thing fits one particular name) and over-extension (use one word for everything very familiar, calling the moon a ball because they're both round) Quine's Dilemma: how do kids know what exactly is being referred to? - Kids will focus on a whole object - Mutual exclusivity: hold up a rattle and a bell, "which one is a bell", know what a rattle is based on sound, will point to the bell - Shape bias: if something is a certain shape, other things of the same shape must be related/a similar thing, texture change is fine, sizechange is fine, only thing that throws them off is shape change - Syntactic bootstrapping: duck and bunny experiment,use the rest of the sentence to infer meaning Grammar development - In use by age 2 - Will frame sentences in the order in which they sequentially occurs - Telegraphic speech: using 2-3 words, don't violate word order rules - Often get words correct, then overregularize (I went at age 2/I goed at age 4), instead of memorizing they're now applying general rules - Don't correct, but recast/repeat correct word Pragmatic development - Social use of language - Good at turn-taking, not so good at relevance - Collective monologues: two people talking about irrelevant things to each other in turn - Age 5: simple narratives developed - Common ground development - Grade school: metalinguistics - Vocabulary continues to increase over a lifetime - Older kids: complex syntax (passive constructionsembedded sentences) - No longer going by word order and now by meaning - "I don't understand"- wont try to say it in a different way, little kids will say the same thing louder  Theories of Language Development +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Nurture/reinforcement | - Skinner | | | | | | - Shaping | | | | | | - Reinforce sounds, words, | | | sentences | | | | | | - Responses to vocalisations | | | | | | - No punishing for incorrect | | | construction; punish for | | | truth value | | | | | | - "No, remember you saw X | | | instead of Y?" | +===================================+===================================+ | Nature/innate | - Chomsky | | | | | | - Universal grammar, grammar | | | all over the world must be | | | the same- many differences | | | when researched, disproved | | | | | | - Language acquisitional device | | | (LAD): a part of the brain | | | dedicated to learning | | | language, specialising in | | | learning the rules of | | | language | | | | | | - Like switches that go on and | | | off | | | | | | - Similar to core knowledge | | | | | | - Critical period= sensitive | | | period | | | | | | - If you don't learn a language | | | before puberty, you're not | | | likely to learn a language at | | | all (5-puberty) | | | | | | - (For essay: Genie is 13 but | | | is malnourished and is the | | | size of an 8 year old- has | | | not hit puberty yet) | | | | | | - Nicaraguan sign language and | | | creole | | | | | | - Ignore semantics and | | | pragmatics | +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Interactionist | - Social perspective | | | | | | - We're motivated to interact | | | with others | | | | | | - More of a nurture perspective | | | | | | - Domain-specific approach: our | | | general cognition, memory, | | | encoding helps us learn | | | language | | | | | | - | +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Connectionist | - Everything that we need to | | | learn is within the language | | | itself | | | | | | - Computer models | | | | | | - Statistical regularity allows | | | us to learn | | | | | | - Do not believe in innate | | | structures | | | | | | - Neural network models make | | | over regularization errors | | | | | | - Don't explain fast-mapping | +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ Modularity hypothesis - Modules in the brain only process information related to the area - Modules present from birth - Week 5 What is a category? - General ideas and understandings that can be used to group together objects and events that are similar - Allows us to learn from experience - We are born with the ability to form concepts (core knowledge theories) Three basic categories kids sort the world into: - Inanimate objects, people, living things - Learn the difference between living versus nonliving things - Allows for inferences - 3 types: superordinate/specific, basic/medium, subordinate/general - Functions and relations between objects - Kids learn medium/basic category words first - Sometimes children make their own basic categories - Place all vehicles into one category- anything with wheels tends to be seen as a single category Categorization - Core knowledge theorists insist on innate knowledge - Based on perception in the early years- will group similar looking things together, grouping a towel and a rug - Have to be instructed on the subordinate and superordinate categories: you don't learn the word 'vehicle' or 'labrador' alone - Causes for categorization: Wug and Gilly differentiations, *why things are the way they are aids in learning* - When just given a description of the animals, they found it hard to differentiate between the two - But when given reasons for why they have the features that they do, differentiation easier - Knowledge of self: differentiating self from others around one year of age - Have naïve psychology by the age of 3: expectations and explanations about the actions and minds of the self and others, predicting beliefs of others - Will not be tested on contradictions - Understand the effect of desire on actions - Imitate intended actions by 18 months of age- if I drop beans while filling them into a cup, an infant of this age will laugh and put the beans back into the cup - Understand the intention of others and self at this time - Symbolic and pretend play + imaginary friend: correlated with emotional understanding - Imitation experiment: baby understands the rules of the game, how to operate the toy, taking turns - Imitation begins at about 9 months of age - Intended action imitation- babies as young as 12 months old are able to infer another person's intended action after seeing it be done, can complete actions - Understand human intention quite early - Imitation is the first method of communication between infants and adults - Taking turns, back and forth actions- is much like a conversation - Intended action imitation- babies as young as 12 months old will perform the action correctly even if the other person doesn't do it right after being shown - Understanding that humans have intentions and mechanical objects don't THEORY OF MIND (important) - People can have thoughts and beliefs different from your own and these guide actions/applies to self as well - Develops between 2 and 5 - Age of 8- can pass a second order false belief task - 2-year-olds can predict actions based on desire, even if those desires are different from their own - Why do people believe/act the way they do? - By 12 months, infants will point to form others about events they do not know - First tier: emotions/perception - Emotion leads to desires (understood first) - Perceptions of the world lead to belief - Both these lead to actions and reactions - Circle, square, triangle experiment - Circle tries to roll up the hill - Square seems to help the circle - Triangle pushes or impedes the circle's progress - Babies as young as 8 months old show a preference for the square - Understand good and bad intentions - False belief tasks: - A first order theory of mind task - This box contains something you wouldn't expect; now that you know what's really in the box, what would someone who doesn't know say? (unexpected contents/object task) - kids under 4 can't get beyond their own knowledge to consider another's perspective, unexpected object task - 3 year olds will usually fail this test but understand that people have knowledge and desires different from their own - sally-anne task: unexpected location test - similar results across cultures - come in between 3 and 5 - Problematic for kids with autism- autistic kids do understand as they get older - Info-processing theory: this error in the false belief tasks occur because kids can't keep track of the conflicting information - Core knowledge theorists say there is a specific part of the brain for these processes - 2^nd^ born kids better than 1^st^ born than theory of mind: younger kid has someone to interact with all the time, older kids bother the fuck out of littler ones, so they have to stay vigilant and consider perspectives to protect themselves - Chinese kids get executive functions faster than Canadians, collectivist culture - The Jason and Lisa example: 2^nd^ order of theory of mind example - does Lisa know that Jason knows that she has read the letter? - Pass at about 7-8 years of age Knowledge of living things - Fascination - Almost always in first words - Objects \< Animals \< People (most interested in) - Personification of animals and objects- intentions and goals - Age 2: the cup meant to fall; the table hit me - Deem plants as objects and not living creatures unless shown that plants can MOVE - Characteristics of living things understood - They move on their own accord - They grow - Their outside is different from their insides - They inherit things from their parents - They can get sick and recover - Innate biology module- adaptive to have an innate understanding of living things (core knowledge theorists) - Essentialism: living things have an essence that they inherit from their parents (cat will have a 'catness' to them even if raised by dogs) - Causality: present very early - magic shows not enjoyed by preschoolers because they have their own 'magical reasoning' - don't understand the marvel of it - almost from birth - if a loud noise is made near a baby, the baby would turn their head to look at the source of the noise- understand that something caused that sound - blicket detector: a panel with to objects, both object placed on the panel, a noise is played when one particular object is placed upon it but nothing occurs for the other - which one made the music? Kids struggle with this till about the age of four - 2-year-olds able to reach out of reach objects with reach - Competence affects performance - Space: cultural tools help us form special categories via language - When being carried, babies don't really understand where they're going; hence self-directed locomotion is essential for understanding space - Cultural tools do help form special categories - Before crawling, will not understand that things have been moved - Using placed objects/geometric cues: navigation learnt - Time - Early understanding of temporal ordering - Lose understanding after long periods of time of waiting - Wouldn't be able to tell the difference between shorter intervals of time - Can't tell you the difference between 30 and 45 seconds - Can between 30 seconds and 5 minutes - Big ratios of time difference are understood, smaller ratios aren't differentiated between - Centration of events tend to interfere - Preoperational stage: which car has to go faster? A straight road or a convoluted road? - Which happened before, your birthday or Christmas? Kids can't order events in that way if it was months ago - Numbers: - Two systems in animals and human infants: - Hardwired in brains for evolution - Subitizing system in fish/every animal, they can count up to three - Subitizing system: counting - Ratio system: understanding more and less - Need large ratios to differentiate that, can't tell differences between similar ratios until they learn how to count - 16 cookies as compared to 4 cookies - Experiment: placed a bear on a stage, pulled the curtain down, hand seen placing another object and leaving empty, would show likely outcome (two bears) or 'impossible' outcome (one bear) - Result: infants looked much longer at the impossible outcome, proof that they understand the difference between one and two - Counting - Understanding five principles which come in by 4-5 years - One to one correspondence: if I'm counting things, I have to count each thing, and each thing gets one number-word - Stable order: I have to count in order, ie 1,2,3,4.... - Cardinality: when you stop counting, that's the number of items you have - Order irrelevance: I can count in any way I can- I can start from the left or right, top or bottom, in any direction as long as a stable order is there - Abstraction: you can count anything, last principle to come in - Difference between USA and Chinese kids counting abilities: Chinese kids able to count more numbers than USA kids at the same age - Why: language differences- Cantonese and Mandarin, its like ten-one, ten-two for eleven and twelve, easier for them to understand - Habituation - Getting used to a repetitive stimulus until they no longer respond to it - Phase 2: show them something similar and see if they dishabituate - Issue with research: designed to test perception, and now used for conceptual understanding - Can't gauge baby's understanding- do they actually understand the difference n concepts or just differences in perception? - Preferential looking - Two different stimuli on different screens, speaker plays sounds in the background, camera shows where the baby is looking - Shows whether the child understands the words or not - Until 2 years of age - Violation of expectation experiments- habituation trial occurs beforehand to get the surprise reaction, look longer if something defies their expectations - Intermodal perception - Perceive sight and sound together from birth - Look longer at a pacifier they've sucked on already: early in development, for the first four months, infants look longer at things that they like/expect/are known to them - Experiment: put a screen around to the belly, couldn't see their legs, had a video showing their leg movements (unexpected) - Result: baby would look longer at screen not synchronised with its leg movements - Can perceive their own body movements in space - Will look longer at speech synchronized with facial movements Week 6 Intelligence- , 22:41 content IQ and achievement - IQ tests- crystallised intelligence - Direct correlation between iq and achievement - Creativity not good when taking IQ test- which only want you to consider one answer - Heritability of intelligence - Behavioral genetics - Assessing nature and nurture influences - Across individuals within a culture or an ethnic group, fifty percent is environment/fifty percent is nature for intelligence - Adoptive families: middle class to upper class, very motivated to have children, intense process of adoption ensures people really want kids, tend to be ideal homes -\> not a lot of variability in adoptive studies - Kids tend to become more like their biological parents over time wrt to their IQ - Pronounced effect in adulthood - Choice affects as well- as a kid you don't have much choice with what you're doing, but is more variable as you get older - Genes influence more in adulthood Environmental effects on intelligence - Family influence has a great influence but decreases as you get older - Have more choice when you're old enough to respond and provoke a reaction from parents - Enriched environment increases IQ - Family environment is different for each child though they may be raised in the same home - Environment has a role in increasing IQ - Twin effect: - Raw scores are individual items from the test, in the past you had to get fewer items right to get the same IQ score that it would require now - In the last twenty years, IQ has been levelling out: technology, health, access to education, familiarity with tests - Both crystallised and fluid intelligence has been rising - Negative effects cumulative on IQ - Observed particularly for 13 year olds- average iq for kids with no risks is higher than kids with multiple risks - Risks can be overcome- positively influential authority figure - Overwhelming negative events- IQ drop Intelligence testing controversy - Very expensive to take one - Unfair, very Eurocentric and anglophone dominated - Growth industry - Focuses on outcome and not the processes - Poor/minority/English as an additional language kids may be placed in special ed classroom- influence of environment entirely neglected Culture fair tests - Eliminating cultural biases - Raven's progressive matrices - Black mothers ask more subjective questions- focusing on social and storytelling aspects rather than objective questions Stereotype threat - More motivated to prove the person wrong - Or low performance because of anxiety or demotivation - Slide 10 Academic achievement - Motivation an important aspect - In addition to personality - Beliefs, perseverance, - Empty beliefs - Parental influence: placing high value on education, kids are more successful - WEIRD: reading very emphasised on - Phonological decoding: picking the phonemes out of a word - Prereading: learning to sound out letters - Phonological awareness - Grades 3-4: switch so you can read to learn from learning to read - Using both phonological decoding as well as visually based retrieval - Reading to learn: forming a mental model - Writing is even harder than reading - Math is strongly related to parent's occupation in the USA - What's better: studying hard or having a good teacher, Japanese and Chinese favoured first, Europeans and Americans favoured the second -