Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology Alejandro Ezquerro-Nassar Department of Psychology

“The discipline that attempts to describe and explain the changes that occur over time in the thought, behaviour, reasoning, and functioning of a person due to biologicaland environmental influences.”

Alzheimer’s Nature-Nurture ”debate” Weight Extraversion Alcoholism Happiness Depression IQ

Nature vs Nurture • Is the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by genes (nature) or the environment (nurture)

Infant Learning Nativist • Important aspects of perception and other cognitive processes are innate • We have built in knowledge of what sensory inputs mean Empiricist • All knowledge comes from experiences and our senses • We relate sensory inputs to each other to determine what they mean

Infants Upon birth, humans can: • Discriminate between different tones, pitches, and loudness • It’s suggested that newborns show a preference for their mother’s voice • See within a range of about four feet • Discriminate brightness, color, and follow a moving stimulus with their eyes

Infants • Grasping reflex: • Infants close their fists tightly around objects placed in their palms • If the object is lifted, an infant can hang on and support his or her weight for about a minute • Rooting reflex • When an infant’s cheek is touched, their head turns toward the stimulus while opening their mouth until the stimulus is in their mouth • This triggers a sucking reflex These are considered reflexes (automatic responses) but are replaced by directed responses (voluntary) with development

Motor Development

Linguistic Development

Compare wheredidyougrowupwithgrandpa vs dedenlenereyegittinsen

Language Development Game Concepts Phonemes Whole-Object Constraint Word / Naming Explosion Over-Extension & Under-Extension Pragmatics Developmental Theories of Language

How the Game Works Your goal is to form a language. Since we only have a class period, your language will use a very limited world (i.e., shapes of varying size and color) and a very limited set of phonemes (i.e., 5). To illustrate your competence as using your language, one person should be able to describe a picture while another person produces it. Though this world is far less complicated than ours, communication is still complicated. Let’s try (in English).

k h grobman - devpsy.org

Rules of the Game During the game, you can only speak with your groups’ phonemes. During “time-outs” you can speak English but you can not talk to your group-mates about the game. You can take notes (with English) to help reduce the working memory demands of the game. But do not show anybody what you wrote. At the end of class, we’ll have each group showcase their ability to communicate in the same way we just did with English.

Your Phonemes Your group gets to use 5 phonemes. Each group has a unique set. Here’s a sample that does not match any actual group: ch chair, beach, nature affricate u soon, through, boot monophthong This means you get the sounds /ch/ and /u/. You do not get the sound /t/ even though a ‘t” is in bold. The words in the middle illustrate the use of the phoneme. The right column tells you the type of phoneme; it’s how your mouth, tongue, and vocal cords move. You can combine your phonemes in any way. For example, you might create a word that sounds like, “chooch.”

What are Phonemes? Phonemes are basic units of sound in a language. Everybody says particular phonemes slightly differently, but when you say a different phoneme, you say a different word. (e.g, “ch” is a different phoneme from “th” as “chug” is different from “thug.”)

Getting Ready to Play Pull out your lists of phonemes. Remember these are the only phonemes you can use in the game. Now pull out a single item from your world. When the game begins, say something using your language before you take anything else out of the envelope.

Time In! Speak only with phonemes from your language and try to communicate about the objects in your world.

Whole Object Constraint One thing that facilitates children’s word learning is the biases (i.e., assumptions) they have when they hear new words. Children behave according a whole object constraint. They assume that a novel word refers to the entire object we are paying attention to, rather than about a part or a quality of the object. Did you follow the whole object constraint within your group?

Language Explosion Between speaking our first words (about 12mo - 16mo) and starting to put together sentences (about 20mo - 30mo), we go through a period where we acquire a vast number of words (15mo - 22mo). As children approach 2 years of age, they experience a language explosion. They learn about 10 to 20 new words each week. Most of those words are nouns. Did you experience a language explosion during the game? Were most of the words you created nouns?

Over-Extension & Under Extension An over-extensionorunder-extension of a word’s meaning, is a particularly common error for children as they learn new words. An over-extensionis to use a word to refer to more than its intended referent. For example, a child may say “ball” to refer to balls, marbles, balloons, and eggs. An under-extension is to use a word to refer to less than its intended referent. For example, a child may only refer to her teddy-bear as “bear” rather than recognizing that everybody else’s teddy-bear and real bears are also “bears.” Were over-extensions or under-extensions a particular common error for you during the game? Or was another kind of error more common?

Pragmatics The spy sees the police officer with the gun. The spy sees the police officer with the binoculars. Who has the gun, the police officer or the spy? Who has the binoculars, the police officer or the spy?

Pragmatics The spy sees the police officer with the gun. The spy sees the police officer with the binoculars. Notice how the grammar of the two sentences is exactly the same. The ability to use background knowledge and context to understand language is called pragmatics. Like children, did you eventually develop pragmatics (in this game)?

Language Development Theories Three broad kinds of developmental theories explain language acquisition. Nativism: special innate abilities, that may include a language module, where acquiring language is different from other learning Interactionism: language is fundamentally a social experience Connectionism: Language is acquired through the regularities in our experience and exposure. Did you experience in today’s language game illustrate to you how one theory might be supported or refuted?

Time to test your language….

Testing your Language Development Divide your group into two sub-groups, talkers and listeners. The “listeners” get an envelope of the shapes. They should face away from the blackboard. The “talkers” face the blackboard and tell the “listeners” what to make, using their language. No group should look at what the others are doing. I’ll provide the drawing on the next slide. Then we will compare how close each group was to reproducing the picture.

A Picture

Important Times in Development In general, a child’s reaction to their environment depends on their age (and amount of knowledge) • Critical Periods • Times in development when certain events have an enormous impact • The same events have less impact if they occur earlier or later • If they happen too late, certain milestones will not be reached and a certain path of development is set

Important Times in Development • Sensitive Periods • Similar to the idea of critical periods, but with less rigid boundaries • During this time, the baby is particularly sensitive to a particular influence • For example, attachment to parents is more easily formed at an early age

Practice • Some maturation will happen regardless of outside influences (due to genetics) • Some milestones cannot be reached until a certain age; the infant’s brain and muscle tone must reach sufficient development • Some development depends on experience as well • For example, animals raised in complete darkness do not develop all structures of the visual system and therefore cannot see properly later on if exposed to light

Developmental Theorists • Piaget • Mahler • Erikson • Kohlberg There is question about how accurate any of these theorists are, but their contributions are important in a historical sense

Piaget Piaget is considered the first theorist to say that children were not miniature adults, but were different and went through a series of psychological changes on the way to adulthood

Piaget Believed that human development and behavior come from consistent and reliable patterns of interaction with the environment called schemas • Schemas are goal oriented strategies that people use to explore and learn about the world and their environment

Piaget Said that children learn through: • Adaptation: the exchange between an individual and his or her environment • Assimilation • The incorporation of one’s environment into an existing schema • Accommodation • The adaptation or modification of an existing schema to the characteristics of a new object Ex. a “grabbing an object” schema

Piaget’s Stages • Sensory-Motor: birth to 2 years • Preoperational: 2 – 7 years • Concrete Operational: 7 – 11 • Formal Operational: 11-15

Sensory-Motor Stage Birth – 2 years • The infant uses his or her senses and motor functions to understand the world • Infants do not differentiate between “me” and “not me” and lack object permanence • Object permanence: the understanding that an object exists outside of our immediate experience • Infants do not understand that a rattle continues to exist even if he or she is not holding it (show video)

Sensory-Motor Stage Birth – 2 years A not B effect • When a 9 month old sees an experimenter hide a toy under a blanket on their right (A), the child will remove the blanket to retrieve the toy • If the experimenter then hides the toy under a blanket on their left (B) (while the baby is watching) the baby will continue to search for the toy on the right • The baby interprets location A as being part of the toy’s identity

Sensory-Motor Stage Birth – 2 years • In the later 6 months of this stage, babies begin to form representational thoughts and can keep an object or event in their memory • For example, understanding that the toy exists even when it’s not seen is a mental representation of that toy • At this age, a child will become angry or frustrated if a toy is not where he or she left it

Preoperational Stage 2 – 7 Years • Children gain a well organized mental representation of the world • Develop a more sophisticated set of schemas called “operations” • Operations allow an internal manipulation of ideas according to a stable set of rules • This begins at about 7 years of age • Use of symbols, language, and speech • Understanding of past, present, and future

Preoperational Stage 2 – 7 Years • Children remain egocentric – do not understand that other people have different experiences from themselves • In a study, children 4 – 7 were given a 3-D model of a scene • While the child viewed the scene from one location, a teddy bear was placed in different locations around the model • When asked what the teddy bear would see, children consistently said that the bear saw the same thing they did

Egocentrism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0

Preoperational Stage 2 – 7 Years Failure of Conservation • Equal sized glasses A and B were put side by side and filled with the same amount of colored liquid • 4 year olds can easily say that the amounts are equal • A new glass C is added that’s taller and narrower than the original glasses, and the liquid is poured from A to C • When asked if there is more liquid in glass B or C, children say C because the level of higher Children do not yet understand that the amount of liquid is constant, even though it is being acted upon

Conservation of Number A young child will reply that there are more objects when they are spread further apart from each other

Conservation of Number

Developmental Psychology