Psych 201 Unit 2

A measure of bone development

From the Latin for "head to tail". During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body

Growth proceeds literally, from "near to far"--from the center of the body outward

The brain

100-200 billion

Nerve cells that store and transmit information

Between the neurons are tiny gaps where fibers from different neurons come close together but do not touch

Neurons send messages to one another across the synapses through this chemical

Makes space for connective structures: As synapses form, many surrounding neurons die, 20-80 percent depending on the brain region

Stimulation

Neurons that are seldom stimulated soon loose their synapses in this process that returns neurons not needed at the moment to an uncommitted state so they can support future development

About 40 percent

Half of the brain's volume is made up of these cells, which are responsible for myelination

The coating of neural fibers with an insulting fatty sheath that improves the efficiency of message transfer

Researches examine brain-wave patterns for stability and organization--signs of mature functioning of the cortex

Detect the general location of brain-wave activity

Yield detailed, three-dimensional computerized pictures of the entire brain and its active areas. Provides the most precise information about which brain regions are specialized for certain capacities and about abnormalities in brain functioning

When an individual is exposed to a stimulus, fMRI detects changes in blood flow and oxygen metabolism throughout the brain magnetically, yielding a colorful, moving picture of parts of the brain used to perform a given activity

Requires injection of a radioactive substance

Works well in early childhood and infancy. Infrared (invisible) light is beamed at regions of the cerebral cortex to measure blood flow and oxygen metabolism while the child attends to a stimulus

Surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half of a shelled walnut. It is the largest brain structure, accounting for 85 percent of the brain's weight and containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses

Cerebral cortex

The cortical regions with the most extended period of development

Lying in front of areas controlling body movement, is responsible for though--in particular, consciousness, inhibition of impulses, integration of information, and use of memory, reasoning, planning, and problem-solving strategies

Sides of the brain that differ in functions

Verbal abilities (such as spoken and written language) and positive emotion (such as joy)

Spatial abilities (judging distances, reading maps, and recognizing geometric shapes) and negative emotion (such as distress)

Specialization of the two hemispheres

A highly plastic cerebral cortex, in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a high capacity for learning. And if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over tasks it would have handled

Process of acquiring language and other skills

Age at time of injury, site of damage, and skill

To form neural connections that ensure mastery of essential skills

Stress hormone

Refers to the young brain's rapidly developing organization, which depends on ordinary experiences--opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people, and hear language and other sounds

Occurs throughout our lives. It consists of additional growth and refinement of established brain structures as a result of specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures

A hormone within the brain that promotes drowsiness

A return to a genetically influenced growth path once conditions improve

Wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby's mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk and bottle-feeding is inadequate

Caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. The disease usually strikes after weaning, between 1 and 3 years of age

Uncertain access to enough food for a healthy, active life

Changes in behavior as the result of experience

In this form of learning, a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once the baby's nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior by itself

Before learning takes place

Reflex

Does not to the reflex is presented just before, or at about the same time as the unconditioned stimulus

If learning has occurred, the neutral stimulus by itself produces a response similar to the reflexive response. The neutral stimulus is then called a conditioned stimulus

The response the conditioned stimulus elicits

When the conditioned stimulus is presented along enough times without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus will no longer occur

Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior changes the probability that the behavior will occur again

A stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response

Removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease the occurrence of a response

Refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation

A new stimulus--a change in the environment--causes responsiveness to return to a high level

Memory for stimuli to which infants were exposed weeks or months earlier

Copying the behavior of another person

Specialized cells in motor areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that underlie these capacities. Mirror neurons fire identically when a primate hears or sees an action and when it carries out that action on its own

Refers to control over actions that help infants get around in the environment, such as crawling, standing, and walking

Has to do with smaller movements, such as reaching and grasping

Mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of action. When motor skills work as a system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment

Allowing for different paths to the same motor skill

Newborns make poorly coordinated swipes or swings toward an object in front of them, but because of poor arm and hand control they rarely contact the object

The newborn's grasp reflex is replaced by this. It's a clumsy motion in which the fingers close against the palm

By the end of the first year, infants use the thumb and index finger opposably in a well-coordinated pincer grasp

What the baby's receptors detect when exposed to stimulation

We organize and interrupt what we see

Perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encountered

By analyzing the speech stream for patterns--repeatedly occurring sequences of sounds--they acquire a stock of speech structures for which they will later learn meanings, long before they start to talk around age 12 months

2 months

4 months

Fineness of discrimination

The ability to judge the distance of objects from one another and from ourselves

Motion

Arise because our two eyes have slightly different views of the visual field

The ones artists often use to make a painting look three-dimensional

Independent movement

Explains early pattern preferences. Contrast refers to the difference in the amount of light between adjacent regions in a patter. If babies are sensitive to the contrast in two or more patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast

We make sense of these running streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information, perceiving them as integrated wholes. We know, for example, that an object's shape is the same whether we see it or touch it, that lip movements are closely coordinated with the sound of a voice, and that dropping a rigid object on a hard surface will cause a sharp, banging sound

Information that overlaps two or more sensory systems, such as rate, rhythm, duration, intensity, temporal synchrony (for vision and hearing), and texture and shape (for vision and touch)

Intermodal sensitivity

Infants actively search for invariant features of the environment--those that remain stable--in a constantly changing perceptual world

spans the first two years of life. Piaget believed that infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment. They cannot yet carry out many activities inside their heads

Specific psychological structures--organized ways of making sense of experience

Involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment

During assimilation, we use our current schemes to interpret the external world

In accommodation, we create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely

When children are not changing much, they assimilate more than they accommodate

During rapid cognitive change children are in a state of cognitive discomfort

A process that takes place internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes, they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system

Provides a special means of adapting their first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experience causesd by the baby's own motor activity. The reaction is "circular" because, as the infant tries to repeat the event again and again, a sensorimotor response that first occurred by change strengthens into a new scheme

• 1. Reflexive schemes- newborn reflexes
• 2. Primary circular reactions- simple motor habits centered around the infant's own body
• 3. Secondary circular reactions- actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding world
• 4. Coordination of secondary circular reactions- Intentional, or goal directed, behavior
• 5. Tertiary circular reaction- Exploration of the properties of objects by acting on them in novel ways
• 6. Mental representation- Internal depictions of objects and events, as indicated by sudden solutions to problems

Newborn reflexes

Coordinating schemes deliberately to solve simple problems

Means-end reaction sequences

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight

Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate

Mental pictures of objects, people, and spaces

Categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together

finding a toy moved while out of sight

The ability to remember and copy the behavior of model who are not present

Children act out everyday and imaginary activities

They may habituate babies to a physical event (expose them to the event until their looking declines) to familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested. Or they may simply show babies an expected event (one that follows physical laws) and an unexpected event (a variation of the first event that violates physical laws). Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is "surprised" by a deviation from physical reality and, therefore, is aware of that aspect of the physical world

Children look at where they last saw the object, and not where it currently is

Gradually

Apply a solution strategy from one problem to other relevant problems

The realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present--a symbolic capacity

They do not develop together in a neat, stepwise fashioned like Piaget assumed

Poorer performance after a video than a live demonstration

Babies are born with a set of innate knowledge systems, or core domains of thought. Each of these prewired understandings permits a ready grasp of new, related information and therefore supports early, rapid development

First, information enters the sensory register, where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly

In the second part of the mind, we retain attended-to-information briefly so we can actively "work" on it to reach our goals

The number of items that can be briefly held in mind while also engaging in some effort to monitor or manipulate those items

To manage the cognitive system's activities, the central executive directs the flow of information, implementing the basic procedures just mentioned and also engaging in more sophisticated activities that enable complex, flexible thinking. For example, the central executive coordinates incoming information with information already in the system, and it selects, applies, and monitors strategies that facilitate memory storage, comprehension, reasoning, and problem solving

Are so well-learned that they require no space in working memory and, therefore, permit us to focus on other information while performing them

Our permanent knowledge base

Getting information back from the system

The diverse cognitive operations and strategies that enables us to achieve our goals in cognitively challenging situations

That most of us cannot retrieve events that happened to us before age 3

We can recall many personally meaningful one-time events from both the recent and the distant past: the day a sibling was born or a move to a new house

One in which children remember deliberately rather than implicitly, without conscious awareness

Noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced

Is more challenging because it involves remembering something not present

Grouping similar objects and events into a single representation

Categorization reduces enormous amount of new information infants encounter every day, helping them learn and remember

Researchers analyze each cognitive attainment to see how it results from a complex system of prior accomplishments and the child's current goals

Refers to a range of tasks too difficult for the child to do alone but possible with the help of more skilled partners

How children's thinking changes

Indicates the extent to which the raw score (number of items passed) deviates from the typical performance of same-age individuals

Giving the test to a large, representative sample and using the results as the standard for interpreting scores

Most scores cluster around the mean, or average, with progressively fewer falling toward the extremes. This bell-shaped distribution results whenever researchers measure individual differences in large samples

Because most infant test scores do not tap the same dimensions of intelligence assessed in older children, they are conservatively labeled developmental quotients rather than IQs

Helping to identify for further observation and intervention babies who are likely to have developmental problems

Speed of habituation and recovery to novel visual stimuli

A checklist for gathering information about the quality of children's home lives through observation and parental interview

Involvement and encouragement of new skills

These standards, devised by the U.S. National Association for the Education of Young Children, specify program characteristics that serve young children's developmental and individual needs, based on both current research and consensus among experts

An innate system that contains a universal grammar, or set of rules common to all languages. It enables children, no matter which language they hear, to understand and speak in a rule-oriented fashion as soon as they pick up enough words

Around 2 months, vowel-like noises because of their pleasant "oo" quality

Appears around 6 months in which infants repeat consonant-vowel combinations in long strings, such as "bababababa" or "nanananana"

In which the child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver

When young children first learn words, they sometimes apply them too narrowly

Applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate

The words children use

The words they understand

A transition from a slower to a faster learning phrase

These two-word utterances, like a telegram, they focus on high-content words, omitting smaller, less important ones

Their vocabularies consisted mainly of words that refer to objects

Compared with referential children, they produce many more social formulas and pronouns

A form of communication made up of short sentences with high-pitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between speech segments, and repetition of new words in a variety of contexts

When the balance of care is sympathetic and loving, the psychological conflict of the first year is resolved on the positive side

Is resolved favorably when parents provide young children with suitable guidance and reasonable choices

The child feels forced and shamed and doubts his own ability to control his impulses and act completely on his own

Happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust are universal in humans and other primates and have a long evolutionary history of promoting survival

Between 6 and 10 weeks the parent's communication evokes a broad grin

Appears around 3 to 4 months and reflects faster processing of information than smiling

The most frequent expression of fear is to unfamiliar adults

Can interfere with effective parenting and seriously impair children's development

Babies use the familiar caregiver as a point from which to explore, venturing into the environment and then returning for emotional support

Beginning at 8 to 10 months infants engage in social referencing--actively seeking emotional information from a trusted person in an uncertain situation

To compare their own and others' assessments of events

Humans are capable of a second, higher-order set of feelings, including guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride. They each involve injury to or enhancement of our sense of self

18-24 months

Refers to the strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals

The phenomenon of having one person's emotions and related behaviors directly trigger similar emotions and behaviors in other people.

Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation. Reactivity refers to quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity. Self-regulation refers to strategies that modify that reactivity

• Easy child- (40%) quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, is generally cheerful, and adapts easily to new experiences
• Difficult child-(10%) irregular in daily routines, is slow to accept new experiences, and tends to react negatively and intensely
• Slow-to-warm-up child-(15%) inactive, shows mild, low-key reactions to environmental stimuli, is negative in mood, and adjust slowly to new experiences

Self-regulatory dimension of temperament, effortful control--the capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response

React negatively to and withdraw from novel stimuli

Display positive emotional to and approach novel stimuli

• -Development of the biological systems on which temperament is based
• -The child's capacity for effortful control
• -Success of her efforts, which depend on the quality and intensity of her emotional reactivity

Inner brain structure devoted to processing emotional information

Thomas and Chess

Describe how temperament and environment together can produce favorable outcomes. Goodness of fit involves creating child-rearing environments that recognize each child's temperament while encouraging more adaptive functioning

Parental sensitivity, support, clear expectations, and limits all reduce the likelihood that difficultness will persist

The strong affectionate tie we have with special people in our lives that leads us to feel pleasure when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress

Recognizes the infant's emotional tie to the caregiver as an evolved response that promotes survival, is the most widely accepted view

The expectation that the caregiver will respond when signaled

Becoming upset when their trusted caregiver leaves

• 1. Preattachment phase (birth to 6 weeks)- built in signals like crying and smiling help bring newborn babies into close contact with other humans, who comfort them. Babies recognize their mother but aren't attached yet and can be left with others
• 2. Attachment-in-the-making (6 weeks to 6-8 months) Infants respond differently to a familiar caregiver than a stranger
• 3. Clear-cut (6-8 months to 18-24 months) Attachment to familiar caregiver is evident
• 4. Formation of a reciprocal relationship (18 months to 24 months) Rapid growth in representation and language permits toddlers to understand some of the factors that influence the parent's coming and going and to predict her return

Set of expectations about the availability of attachment figures and their likelihood of providing support during times of stress. The internal working model becomes a vital part of personality, serving as a guide for all future close relationships

A widely used laboratory procedure for assessing the quality of attachment between 1 and 2 years of age. 

In designing it, Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues reasoned that securely attached infants and toddlers should use the parent as a secure base from which to explore an unfamiliar playroom. In addition, when the parent leaves, an unfamiliar adult should be less comforting than the parent. The Strange Situation takes the baby through eight short episodes in which brief separations from and reunions with the parent occur

These infants use the parent as a secure base. When separated, they may or may not cry, but if they do, it is because the parent is absent and they prefer her to the stranger. When the parent returns, they actively seek contact, and their crying is reduced. (60%)

These infants seem unresponsive to the parent when she is present. When she leaves, they usually are not distressed, and they react to the stranger in much the same way as to the parent. During reunion, they avoid or are slow to greet the parent and when picked up, they often fail to cling (15%)

Before separation, these infants seek closeness to the parent and often fail to explore. When the parent leaves, they are usually distressed, and on her return they combine clinginess with angry, resistive behavior, sometimes hitting and pushing. Many continue to cry after being picked up and cannot be comforted easily (10%)

This pattern reflects the greatest insecurity. At reunion, these infants show confused, contradictory behaviors--for example, looking away while the parent is holding them or approaching the parent with flat, depressed emotion. Most display a dazed facial expression, and a few cry out unexpectedly after having calmed down or display odd, frozen postures (15%)

• -An alternative to the strange situation and suitable for children between 1 and 4 years
• -Depends on home observation
• -Either the parent or a highly trained observer sorts 90 behaviors into nine categories ranging from "highly descriptive" to "not at all descriptive" of the child. 
• -A score, ranging from high to low in security is computed

• -Early availability of a consistent caregiver 
• -Quality of caregiving
• -The baby's characteristics 
• -Family contact including parents' internal working models

Responding promptly, consistently, and appropriately to infants and holding them tenderly and carefully

Separates the experiences of secure from insecure babies. It is best described as a sensitively tuned "emotional dance," in which the caregiver responds to infant signals in a well-timed, rhythmic, appropriate fashion

• -Around age 2
• -Identification of the self as a physically unique being

Attempting to do things that their body size makes impossible

The ability to understand another's emotional state and feel with that person, or respond emotionally in a similar way

Between 18 and 30 months, children develop a categorical self as they classify themselves and others on the basis of age, sex, physical characteristics, and even goodness versus badness and competencies

They show clear awareness of caregivers' wishes and expectations and can obey simple requests and commands

Waiting for an appropriate time and place to engage in a tempting act