Exam 2 Study Guide - Sanborn Fall 2016 PDF

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Study Guide for Exam 2...

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Chapter 5: Seeing, Thinking and Doing in Infancy Perception Describe the preferential-looking and habituation techniques that are used to study infants ● Preferential-Looking Technique: ○ A technique to assess visual acuity in infants ○ Infants are shown 2 patterns or 2 objects at the same time to see if they have a preference for one over the other ● Habituation: ○ Repeatedly present an infant with a given stimulus until the response declines What do newborns prefer to look at? ● Young infants prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast because they have poor contrast sensitivity ● The more fine-grain a pattern they can detect, the better along infants are in their vision development Why do infants have poor contrast sensitivity? ● Has to do with development of the cones ● Infant’s visual “sharpness” approaches an adults by 8 months and reaches full adults acuity How do infants’ visual acuity and color vision change over development (when does it get to “normal adult levels?)? ● Newborns color vision limited at first, but similar to adults by 2-3 months of age. Describe the differences between 1- and 2-month-olds in how infants scan faces (what do they focus on?). ● One-month-olds scan the perimeters of shapes (a) (focuses on the outside rather than inside) ● Two-month-olds scan both the perimeters and the interiors of shapes (b) When are infants not able/able to smoothly track moving objects? ● Although attracted to moving objects, infants cannot track even slowly moving objects smoothly until 2 to 3 months of age **What is the difference between scanning objects/faces and smoothly tracking objects (why is tracking much more difficult than scanning)? ● Scanning is typically for static/non-moving objects and is possible right away after birth and gets better by 2 months as visual acuity/vision clarity improves ● Tracking has to do with gaze following of moving targets and doesn’t appear to be successful until about 2-3 months of age ○ Tracking objects has to do with following an actual object moving in front of you

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Before 2-3 months they only show quick, jerky motions called saccades where the eye jumps from one area to the next when tracking an object

Know about the newborn face preferences ● Top-heavy face bias ● Infants recognize and prefer their own mother’s face after about only 12 cumulative hours of exposure. ● Typically prefer female over male faces ● Attractiveness Bias: looking time preferences; more positive and involved play and less withdrawal with attractive masks (Langlois 1990) Describe the perceptual narrowing (what it is/what is the timing) seen in infant face processing (monkey/human faces) and know what prevents the narrowing process. ● Face processing becomes more selective over time. What you can perceive narrows as you get older. ● 6-month-olds can easily understand and detect differences between both human and monkey faces ● 9-month-olds and adults have a difficult time with the monkey faces; later on you learn to focus only on processing human faces because you stop seeing monkey faces (unless they have constant exposure to only monkey faces.) ● What prevents the narrowing process: ○ As you lose the ability to process non-relevant stimuli, you gain the ability to process relevant stimuli What is the probable advantage of perceptual narrowing? ● Allows us to be more efficient better processors of the preserved perception- whether it is perception of Human faces or your native language sounds ● Because what you can detect or perceives narrows and becomes more specific you are aware of only the sound systems (or faces) relevant for your own language (or social interactions) ○ That gives you more focus and ability to learn language faster Describe the “other race effect”, including the timing/trajectory of it and how experiences can affect it. ● The other race effect is well established in adults and is said to emerge in infancy. ● No preference for own race faces over other race faces for newborns. ● Own race preference established in 3-month-olds ● By 9 months infants have more problems discriminating between other-race faces than between own-race faces ● Race preference due to experience (e.g. biracial infants) How do young (2-4 months) vs. older (8+ months) infants use movement and knowledge of gravity to inform them about object segregation (hint: “rods” study; which rods will they look longer at if there is or is not movement?)

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4-month-old infants who see the display perceive it as two separate objects, a rod moving behind a block After habituating to the display, they look longer at two rod segments than at a single rod, indicating that they find the single rod familiar but the two segments novel If they first see a display with no movement, they look equally long at the two test displays Two-month-old infants use common movement to perceive object segregation Older infants (8 months+) and adults, use additional sources of information for object segregation, including their general knowledge about the world (i.e. gravity)

What is intermodal perception? ● The combining of information from 2 or more senses is present from very early in life, linking sight and sound, oral and visual input, visual and tactile input **How is intermodal perception measured? ● Violation of expectancy procedure ○ Study auditory visual intermodal perception ○ Two computer screens with different films, only one of matching sound ○ By 4 months, can match the film with the audio ○ The video camera records the infant’s looking time toward the 2 screens In what ways do young infants demonstrate intermodal perception? ● One month olds with the pacifier ● When 2 videos are presented simultaneously, 4-month-olds prefer to watch video that correspond to sounds they hear: ● By 5 months, infants associate facial expression with emotion in voices Motor Development What are reflexes (generally) and why are they important to measure in newborns (reflects CNS health; know how that’s the case- unusually strong/weak reflexes = brain damage)? ● Reflexes: ○ Involuntary, consistent response to a discrete external stimulus ● Why they are important? ○ Strong reflexes reflect good CNS health ○ Might indicate brain damage during labor or lack of oxygen Do some reflexes have any “adaptive value”? You don’t need to know about the details of the specific reflexes. ● Some reflexes have a clear adaptive value while others are unknown Be familiar with the differing ways cultures might influence motor development and why that is interesting to study (shows motor development is not entirely maturation driven but also experience driven).

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Current theories take a dynamic-systems approach, emphasizing many factors, including not only neural mechanisms but also increases in strength, posture control, balance, perceptual skills, and motivation. Mothers in Mali believe it is important to exercise their infants to promote their motor development Infants discouraged from early locomotion in modern urban China Ache (nomadic tribe) in Paraguay, infants are carried around 0-3 years Kipsigis (rural Kenya) dig holes for babies to sit in

Be able to explain the two differing explanations (maturational view vs. dynamic systems view) for the stepping reflex “disappearing” at 2 months? ● The reflex was thought to disappear at about 2 months of age because of cortical maturation. Stepping reflex could be prolonged or elicited long after it was scheduled to disappear ● Reflex disappeared because of increased fat on legs compared to weak muscles (how heavy their legs are) How does infant reaching change over the first year and what motor milestone helps reaching skills stabilize? ● Pre-Reaching movements ○ Clumsy swiping movements by young infants toward the general vicinity of objects they see. ● Sitting upright on your own coincides with reaching ● Successful reaching appears around 3 to 4 months of age and stable reaching around 7 months (sitting upright without support). ○ ~8 months of age- Infants become capable of self-locomotion (crawling). ○ ~ 11-12 months- Walking Explain findings from the visual cliff (Gibson and Walk; Campos studies) and risky slopes (Karen Adolph) studies, particularly with how crawling/walking experience affects whether/how they cross the cliffs/slopes. ● Using the visual cliff, Gibson and Walk found that 6- to 14-month-old infants perceived and understood the significance of depth cues. ● Crawling experience does not carry over to walking (skill must be relearned) How did the Campos study indicate that it was not depth perception development that explained whether infants would cross? ● Campos showed that young (2-5 month old) infants could perceive the difference in depth but showed no fear of the deep side by measuring heart rate How does the emotion of the parent (social-referencing) and infant (fear and experience) influence both situations? ● Experience moving in the environment plays a very important role in baby's’ developing understanding of the significance of differences in the height of surfaces.

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Social referencing appears to be important in infants’ development of wariness of heights

Do infants “transfer” what they know about traversing risky slopes from sitting to crawling to walking? In other words, will an infant who safely and successful goes down a slope as a experienced crawler also be safe and successful as a new walker? ● Karen Adolph found that infants do not transfer what they learned about crawling down slopes to walking down them ● Experience learning a certain way helps infants learn how they should best and safely approach a new challenge/task ● When they learn how to handle crawling in various types of spaces and become walkers, they don’t transfer skills (from crawling to walking) on something such as a new environment How can self-locomotion (i.e., crawling) affect other areas of development (social, emotional, cognitive)? ● Development in one domain (social) influences development in other domains (motor) ● Exploring the environment initiates more contact with other people and the ways in which they respond ○ “I want to be with Mommy! Let me find her.” ● Crawling infants receive more prohibitions from parents, and protest those prohibitions more readily ● Crawling infants also smile and vocalize more at people in a laboratory setting. ● Can help with environment and object exploration mobile babies can see and experience more. ● Onset locomotion affects how babies understand their perceptual world; perceptual feedback affects postural adjustments What are scale errors? ● Occur when toddlers try to do something with a miniature replica object that is much too small for the action to be completed When are scale errors made generally? ● Toddlerhood (around 2-4 years) Learning Describe the habituation technique ● A decrease in responsiveness to repeated stimulation reveals that learning has occurred ○ The infant has a memory representation of the repeated, now familiar status What is the habituation technique supposed to reflect? ● Habituation speed (and novelty preference) is believed to reflect the efficiency of the infant’s processing of information ○ Show a greater preference for novelty (when there is a new stimulus showing up, they show excessive interest in that new stimulus)

How does the habituation technique predict later cognitive development? ● There is continuity to cognitive ability (higher IQ) later in life (18 years) What is statistical learning? ● Infants pick up information from the environment forming associations among stimuli that occur in a statistically predictable pattern ● Infants are sensitive to the regularity with which one stimulus follows another How is statistical learning proposed to help infants learn about language? ● Used by infants to learn words they hear often, helps them to expect which sounds are likely to follow other sounds in a single word in their language, and learn to expect which words (verbs) will follow which other types of words (subjects/nouns) and what type of words typically follow verbs (objects/nouns) ● Mainly used to learn syntax and words in a language you are surrounded by What is instrumental conditioning? ● Positive reinforcement, in which a reward reliably follows a behavior and increases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated How was instrumental conditioning demonstrated in Rovee-Collier’s mobile studies? ● Rovee-Collier developed an instrumental conditions procedure for studying learning and memory in young infants by tying a ribbon around a baby’s ankle and connecting it to a mobile. ● The fact that the know to kick demonstrates that the remember the link between their past actions and past rewards. ● This task is used to study age related changes for memory: ○ 3 month olds remember kicking response for about 1 week and 6 month olds remember it for 2 weeks ○ Infants younger than 6 months remember kicking responses only when the test mobile is identical to training mobile while older infants remember the kicking motion results in a rewarding stimulus for any mobile. How does instrumental conditioning show increasing capacity for memory in infants (3 monthssame mobile for 1 week; 6 months – any mobile for 2 weeks)? ● There is a contingency relation between the infant’s behavior and the reward ● Used to study memory (3 months with the same mobile and 6 month olds = 2 weeks with any mobile) What is observational learning? ● Learning by observing others ● Newborns can imitate simple actions How does observational learning unfold?

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By 6-9 months ○ Infants imitate some of the novel actions they have witnessed By 18 months ○ Infants understand intentions even if the adult fails in their action (dumbbell study) ○ Infants do not imitate mechanical devices that would try to pull apart a dumbbell By 15 months, TV influences

**What do we know about infants’ imitation of people vs. nonliving objects (mechanical claw)? ● Cognition What is the violation-of-expectancy procedure? ● Object knowledge regarding understanding of object permanence (Baillargeon study) ● Object permanence is now believed to be developed much earlier than Piaget originally thought What have studies using violation-of-expectancy procedure revealed about various aspects of infant cognition? ● Infants as young as 3.5 month of age look longer at an impossible event over a possible event What physical cues do infants rely on to assess probability of an object being supported by another throughout the first year (contact, spatial orientation, amount, weight)? ● Knowledge of gravity begins in the first year. Infants have been shown to look longer at objects that violate expected motion trajectories ○ 7-month-olds are surprised by ball going UP the hill ○ 5-month-olds are not ○ 12.5 month olds know that the shape of the box might determine what is possible and not possible ● Infants are also gradually come to understand under what conditions one object can support another ○ What does this understanding come from? ■ As infants gain experience, they start to realize what is possible and not possible Know the major findings of the Hamlin et al. study ● Social Knowledge: ○ By the end of their first year, infants have learned a great deal about how people’s behavior is related to their goals and intentions ○ 10-month-old infants indicated surprise when the “climber” approached the “hinderers” compared to the “helpers” How do we know that 6-month-olds can interpret other people’s intentions (Woodward study)?

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6-month-olds who see a human arm repeatedly reach for an object in the same location assume that the action is directed toward the object, not the place They looked longer when the hand went to the new object in the old place Mechanical claw doesn’t elicit same effect Intention reading dependent on reaching experience (3 month old sticky mitten study) Kids looked longer when the person reached for a different object, and will find something surprising when the person reached for a different thing

How does reaching experience (sticky mittens with 3-month-olds) help drive intention understanding? ● Reaching experience seems to be related to this (6 months is when they start to understand intentions and reaching is well established)- Woodward study What makes infants give inanimate objects “intentions” (interactivity)? ● May attribute intentions and goals to inanimate entities as long as they “behave” like humans ○ In one study, 12- and 15-month-olds were introduced to a faceless, eyeless, brown blob that “vocalized” and moved in response to what the infant or experimenter did, thus simulating a normal human interaction. ○ Subsequently, when the blob turned in one direction, the infants looked in that direction. ○ They did not behave this way with a blob whose behavior was not contingently related to their own. ○ Thus, they only give intentions to inanimate objects if they “act” humanlike/show a sense of interactivity with the infant

Chapter 6: Language Development Language Development and the Components of Language Know the difference between language comprehension and language production (and which comes first) ● Language comprehension: ○ Understanding what others say (or sign or write) ○ Usually your focus is on pre-speaking infants ○ Comes first ● Language production: ○ Actually speaking (or signing or writing) to others ○ Studying kids right around the time they speak Understand the importance of generativity in our language system ● Generativity: ○ The idea that using the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas Be able to identify key areas of language development: ● Phonological (sounds) ○ Knowledge of sound system in a particular language ● Semantic (word meaning) ○ Expressing meaning (word learning) ● Syntactic (word order) ○ Syntax: Rules that specify how words can be combined ■ “Sarah ate the sushi” vs. “The sushi ate Sarah” ○ Syntax rules differ by language ■ The dog ran up the hill (English) vs. Hill the dog ran up (ASL) ● Pragmatic (social/cultural cues) ○ How language is used, includes conversational conventions, gestures, intonation, etc. ■ Context matters “The Fall was bad.” ■ Mandarin- The tone of your voice can change the whole meaning of the word: Define: ● Phonemes ○ Smallest units of sound that distinguish meaning ■ Bat vs. Cat- One phoneme difference ● Morphemes ○ The Smallest Unit of Meaning ■ Unknowable- 3 morphemes ● Un – know- able ■ Dog = 1 morpheme

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Dogs = 2 morphemes (Dog + s)

What is required for language? ● Anatomical Impacts ● Cortical Development ○ Crying/vegetative sounds and brain stem ■ First thing to develop ■ As they become older, infants may have more sounds in their crying due to development there ○ Cooing and Limbic System ○ Babbling and Motor Cortex ● Develops later than the limbic system What about language can non-human primates learn easily? ● Word-Signs/sign language What aspects of language do non-human primates fail to acquire (syntax, generativity of language)? ● Nonhuman primates can’t acquire syntax How is language a species-specific and a species-universal behavior? ● Language is a species-specific behavior ○ Only humans acquire a communication system with the complexity, structure, and generativity of language ● Language is also species-universal ○ Virtually all humans develop language if they get minimal exposure to the language during infancy/childhood How does this (language being a species-specific and species-universal behavior) support the nativist viewpoint of language development? ● According to the nativists, language is innate; we are all born with a language acquisition device that allows us to learn language as easily as we do, thanks to our innate “universal grammar” which applies to all human languages. ● Nativists use the fact that ONLY humans can successfully acquire language to infer that only humans are born with a language acquisition device; without having what is “special” to the human brain, we would be the same as chimpa...