Child development research helps answer child-rearing questions (e.g.

, best way to interact with their child to maximize their potential)

- e.g., How to react to children’s anger —> 25% of Canadians spank their children
- However this can make the problematic behavior of the kid worse
- Research showed that showing sympathy, time-outs, & finding positive alternative to express anger are more beneficial
Child development research can help inform social policies that affect children
- There was a research on if violent games cause children to be more violent, the results showed that violent video games have a very
small effect on the child’s aggression (i.e., more violent game + more time spent on this game = increase of child aggression)
- Research on screen time on children’s wellbeing is unclear, but the majority shows how the children are spending time on social media
affects their wellbeing
- This is especially true for females, where more use of social media is correlated with eating disorder & depression
Child development research makes us understand human nature & individual, the research is vital to understand how nature & nurture
shapes human psychology
- It can also help explain individual differences between people
- Teacher’s argument on why to study child psychology is that it helps us become more compassionate & resent more empathy
towards others
Childhood —> Every human being below the age of 18 years, unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier
The definition of childhood psychologically speaking is different;
1) Dependant on adult caregivers —> Child is free from important responsibilities, don’t have to bring resources, dependant on adult
- A child is profoundly useless & hopeless when they are born, they have the longest childhood of any animal
- Long childhood makes children very vulnerable, thus caring for them is very time-consuming
- Long childhood in humans vs. chimps —> We are slow in development compared to giraffes, & even chimpanzees
Large brain, narrow hips trade-off —> Our brains are large for our size & more complicated/neuron-dense than any other animal
- Large brain necessitates larger heads
- At the same time, the evolution of our ability to stand upright favored narrowed hips
- Narrow hips necessitates smaller heads to pass through the birth canal, this is where the conflict begins
- Evolution would state that to solve this conflict/trade-off, babies were evolved to be born earlier, where brain continues to develop
post-birth
Long childhood enables greater intelligence & more learning
- Length of species childhood predicts intelligence & ability to learn, where it is a strong predictor than head size
- e.g., Orangutans have one of the longest childhood, as a result they also tend to be very intelligence
- This may be due to the fact that longer childhood is associated with greater creativity
2) Fundamentally about learning —> Long childhood is adaptive for maximizing learning
- Many aspects of childhood demonstrate that children are “adapted” to focus on learning
- They tend to be very curious
- They tend to be highly suggestible (i.e., not critical thinkers), thus they believe anything an adult says (e.g., belief of Santa)
- They tend to readily imitate others (i.e., vicarious learning)
- They tend to overestimate their own abilities (e.g., best soccer player, fastest in the class, most intelligent)
- On a neurological level, they tend to have brains that are highly plastic (i.e., malleable, flexible)
Synaptogenesis —> Process by which neuron from synapses with other neurons
- A child’s brain tend to have rapid synaptogenesis, this makes their brain highly flexible
- Synaptogenesis results in brain being hyper-connected
Synaptic pruning —> Eliminations of synapses to increase the efficiency of neural communication
- Solution of the brain being hyper-connected
- It follows the use it or lose it principle —> Highlights importance of experience for learning where it is necessary, but means that older
areas
- This contributes to the onset & maturity of various ability
- The following graph shows how synaptogenesis & synaptic pruning
vary between different aspects & senses
Child development is a focus on learning is only possible if taken care of by adults
Child development —> Process of learning of perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities that allows an individual to grow from
the dependence of infancy to the independence of adulthood

Consistent themes in child development:

1) Nature vs. Nurture:
How does nature & nurture together shape development
Nature —> Our biological endowment; the genes we inherit from parents
Nurture —> The physical and social environments that influence our development
2) The active child:
How do children shape their own development?
Children contribute to their own development and this contribution gets bigger as they get older
- e.g., The child starts to smile after 2 months, when he does the mother also smiles back which reinforces this response
3) The sociocultural context:
How does the sociocultural context influence development?
Sociocultural context influences every aspect of children’s development
- Most important sociocultural context influence is people that children interact with
4) Individual differences:
How do children become so different from one another?
Genetic differences —> Even siblings aren’t 100% similar
Differences in treatment by parents and other adults
Differences in reactions to similar experiences
Different choices of environments
There is a lot of focus on infancy due to:
- Very rapid changes in the first 2 years of an infant’s life
- Changes in one area enable changes in other areas
- Methods for studying infants are different than methods for studying older children that can communicate more clearly with adults
- Sheds light on nature/nurture debate
- Helps us understand which abilities are innate and which aspects of abilities have to be learned through experience
Until a few decades ago, it was assumed that infants’ vision was almost non-existent and barely functional, however this is wrong
- From birth, babies visually scan environment and pause to look at stuff (i.e., pausing to look at something = there is vision)
Most research in infants uses two paradigm —> 1) Preferential looking paradigm, 2) Habituation paradigm
1) Preferential Looking Paradigm —> Paradigm takes advantage of infants’ preference to look at “interesting” things
- We first present the baby with 2 stimuli beside each other at the same time and if the baby looks longer at one stimulus than the other,
it means that:
1) They can distinguish between the two
2) Have a preference for one over the other
- Assesses infants’ preference for stimuli
- However the results can be biased from the caregivers response to looking at an image, but modern version of this paradigm uses eye
tracking softwares
- Infants prefer to look at stimuli that are:
- More complex, more saturated in colour or Familiar
- Natural familiarity —> Stimuli infants experience often in their lives (e.g., Preference of looking at Mom face vs. Other faces)
- Lab-induced —> Familiarize infant to a new stimulus by exposing them to it for some time (e.g., baby never seen an apple or
flower, the experimenter showed the flower before the experiment thus making it familiar for the baby and the baby preferring that)
- Will then show a preference for the familiar stimulus when paired with a new stimulus
2) Habituation paradigm —> Paradigm takes advantage of babies’ natural preference for novelty
- Assesses infants’ ability to discriminate between stimuli
- Habituation phase —> Repeatedly present infant with a stimulus until they habituate to it
- Slowed, changed, or stopped response to a stimulus (e.g., looks at it less) where we wait for infant to get bored
- Test phase —> Present habituated, “old” stimulus with a new stimulus:
- Dishabituation —> If the baby shows greater interest in the new stimulus, they can tell the difference between the two
- If the baby looks at stimuli equally, they can’t tell the difference between stimuli
- e.g., The baby is shown a sunflower by the experimenter, where the baby shows interest in which after 10 seconds they are going to
start looking around, the sunflower is going to be presented multiple times until the looking time will lower after each time they are shown
the image, afterwards they will be presented with the sunflower & a daisy (i.e., novel stimuli), where they are going to show greater interest
to this daisy compared to the sunflower
In general, infants show a preference for familiar stimuli
Prolonged/ repeated exposure to a stimulus will cause infants to shift their preference to a novel stimulus
In lab settings, length of exposure time determines whether an infant will show a familiarity or novelty preference:
- Short exposure = familiarity preference
- Long/repeated exposure = novelty preference
Exposure time in lab-induced preference procedures need to be long enough for the baby to become familiar with the stimulus but short
enough so that they don’t get bored (habituation), where there is usually only one familiarization trial that is brief
Habituation paradigms need to repeat the presentation of a stimulus enough times to ensure that the infant is bored, where there is many
trials unlike lab induced
 - Prefer familiar and/or complex stimuli
Habituation paradigm —> Infant presented with a stimulus many times until they get bored of it (habituate) and then presented with a
different stimulus on a test trial, Assesses an infants’ ability to distinguish between 2 stimuli
- Prefer novel stimuli
Visual Acuity —> Sharpness of visual discrimination, assessed by using preferential looking paradigm
- Infants presented with a succession of paddles with increasingly narrower stripes and narrower gaps between them until infant can no
longer distinguish between stripped paddle and plain gray one
- At birth, infants have poor visual acuity in which they prefer to look at patterns with high visual contrast
- Don’t discriminate between stimuli with lower contrast sensitivities
- Infants visual perception at birth is very blurry compared to them being 8 months old where there is adult-like visual acuity
- Their vision also tends to be black & white at birth
- Their vision also tends to be limited to 8 inches, this tends to be the distance of breastfeeding
- Their visual acuity at birth is poor due to immaturity of cone cells in infants’ retinas (light sensitive neurons involved in seeing fine
details and colours)
At 5 months they tend to start having adult-like color perception
- This is due to the maturity of cones & visual cortex maturing
- At this age they can also discriminate between colour categories and between hues of the same color (e.g., dark red vs. light red)
- When habituated to one colour, dishabituate when presented with a colour from another category (e.g., they habituate to one color,
then show preference for the novel color, thus increasing their ability to discriminate between colors)
From birth infants scan their visual environment and pause to look at something
- However they tend to have trouble tracking moving stimuli because eye movements are jerky
At 4 months —> Able to smoothly track moving objects if moving slowly
At 8 months —> Adult-like visual scanning; can smoothly follow objects
There is improved visual scanning due to brain maturation
The ability to visually scan is important because one of the few ways that infants have control over what they observe and learn
Newborns show a preference for faces or face-like stimuli vs. non-face like stimuli
- This may be due to the fact that there is an innate biological face perception mechanism
Fusiform face area (FFA) —> Area in the brain that shows increased activity when detection of face-like stimuli
Hypothesis of why infants are drawn to faces —> Infants have a general bias for stimuli that are more “top heavy” vs. “bottom-heavy”
- Top heavy stimuli —> Preference for stimuli of the top half of something (i.e., faces)
- Preferential looking paradigms of face preference —> They showed babies regular faces, upside faces, scrambled top heavy
faces, & scrambled bottom heavy faces
- The results showed that upright face was preferred over upside down face, where babies looked longer at upright faces
- The results also showed that top heavy faces vs. bottom heavy faces were preferred, where babies looked longer at top heavy faces
- Suggests that preference for faces simply result of general preference for stimuli that are “top-heavy” rather than “bottom-heavy”
Infants very quickly learn to recognize and prefer their own mother’s face
- Just a few days after birth, babies prefer their mother’s face compared to another woman’s face
Over 1st year of life, infants’ become face specialists
- Better at distinguishing between faces that are frequently experienced in their environment (e.g., family vs. strangers)
- Experiment shows that 9-month-olds (and adults) can distinguish between 2 human faces but struggle to distinguish between
2 monkey faces —> Face specialist (i.e., specialist in human faces)
- However 6-month-olds are equally good at distinguishing human AND monkey faces —> Face generalist
- This may be due to perception narrowing
Perceptual narrowing —> Tuning of perceptual mechanisms to the specific sensory inputs that infants encounter in their daily life
 - Perceptual narrowing is also present for several perceptual domains (i.e., sensory domains)
- Evidence of perceptual narrowing in face perception —> Infants becoming face specialists, and Infants demonstrate the other-race-
effect
Other-race-effect —> People find it easier to distinguish between faces of individuals from their own racial group than between faces
from other racial groups (i.e., ingroup > outgroup)
- This effect is also evident in infants:
- Researchers recruited Caucasian infants, where they habituated infants to: Face from their own race OR Face from another race
- They then presented habituated face with a new face from the same race
- Results showed the following and may be due to exposure effect:
- 3 month old babies —> Could distinguish between faces of all races
- 9 month old babies —> Could only distinguish between faces of own races (i.e., ingroup)
- Exposure effect —> Phenomenon in which people prefer things that they are familiar with
- During the first few months of life, 96% of faces that babies are exposed to are females from their own race
- If infant is equally exposed to faces of different races, will not show other-race-effect
People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulty with face perception (e.g., prefer to not look at eyes)
Toddlers with autism spectrium disorder preferred looking at geometric shapes over pictures of people, contrary to typical developing kids
Infants’ preference for non-faces could be an early indicator that the infant will later be diagnosed with autism spectrium disorder
From birth, infants have a preference for faces, especially their mother’s face
Face preference is not innate but rather a result of general preference for top-heavy stimuli
9 months —> Infants become face specialists as a result of perceptual narrowing
- Human faces vs. monkey faces study & Other-race effect in infants
Perceptual constancy —> The perception of objects as being constant in size, shape, colour. etc in spite of physical differences in the
retinal image of the object
- e.g., An image displayed on our retina close to our retina & far from our retina is going to be the “same”, since we know they both
simply have different distances
- e.g., A door opening & closed is the same “shape”
Experiment on perceptual constancy in infants, is perceptual constancy present from birth —> Habituation paradigm was used
with new borns
- The habituation was repeatedly showing an infant a small cube, the cube was shown at different distances on each trial (i.e., retinal
image is changed from trial to trial)
- Do infants perceive these as the same object or as different objects?
- To test this, they showed the baby the original habituated small cube & an identical larger cube
- Larger cube farther away so that both cubes projected the same-size retinal image
- If the baby has perceptual constancy they should look at the new thing (i.e., larger cube)
- If the baby does not have perceptual constancy they will not look at the new thing
- Results showed that the infants looked longer at the larger but further away cube
- Indicates that they see it as different in size from the original, smaller cube
- This means that infants saw the repeated presentations of the original, small cube as a single
object of a constant size, even though the retinal image varied
- Suggests that perceptual constancy is present from birth
Object segregation —> The ability to identify that objects are separate from each other (i.e., where one
object ends & the other one begins)
- Movement is an important cue, where separate objects moves in dependably of each other (e.g., phone is different than the desk, since
the phone can be moved independently from the desk)
Object segregation study in infants —> Is object segregation present from birth?
 - The test in this study was showing 2 rod stimuli moving side-to-side
- One rod vs. Broken rod
- The results showed the following;
- 4 month olds —> Preferred to look at the broken rod
- They see the broken rod as novel
- Indicates that they understood that the rod behind the box is one object
- Newborns —> Looked the same amount of time at broken rod and single rod
- Indicates that they did not understand that rod behind the box was a single object
- Object segregation is not innate, has to be learned with experience
Binocular disparity —> Difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signals being
sent to the brain
- Visual cortex combines the differing neural signals caused by binocular disparity, perceived at 4 months old
Sensitive period —> A time period during which experience shapes the development of an ability more than at other times
Sensitive period for binocular vision —> From birth to age 3
- Depth perception from cue of binocular disparity is a natural result of brain maturation as long as the infant receives normal visual
input
- If infants do not receive normal visual input until age 3, they may fail to develop normal binocular vision and have life-long difficulties
with depth perception
Monocular depth cues —> Depth cues perceived with one eyes (e.g., relative size or overlap)
- Perceived at 6-7 months old & are assessed using visual cliff
- Visual cliff —> Half the surface is non-transparent the other is, where the transparent surface has the same pattern of the non-
transparent surface, which makes it seem there is a drop
- 6 months olds will not crawl over visual cliff but younger children will (i.e., less than 6 months)
- Suggests that this aspect of depth perception needs to be developed through experience

At birth —> Rudimentary visual scanning, poor acuity, preference for high contrast, minimal colour vision, preference for faces vs. non-
faces, perceptual constancy
2 months —> Colour vision appears
5 months —> Adult-like colour vision due to cones maturing; object segregation and binocular depth perception appear
6 month —> Face generalists, monocular depth perception appears
8 months —> Visual scanning, visual acuity, and colour perception are similar to adults due to cones maturing
9 months —> Face specialists through perceptual narrowing due to synaptic pruning
Some visual abilities are native but refined and specialized with experience
Innate point of view of visual perception —> Perceptual constancy and preference for top-heavy stimuli
Improve with brain maturation —> Visual acuity, colour perception, and visual scanning
Experience dependent processes —> Object segregation, Face perception (perceptual narrowing), Depth perception (sensitive period of
binocular vision)

Recap of the two paradigm

- Preferential looking paradigm —> If you presented someone with an image of a dog vs. a cheap drawing of a dog
- Person will chose image of a dog
- Habituation paradigm —> Present someone with an image of a dog multiple times, then present him with an image of a cat
- Person will chose image of cat
- When stimulus is presented for a short time, the person will prefer familiar stimulus
- When stimulus is presented for a long time, the person will prefer novelty stimulus
 - Often vision and at least one other sensory modality
- Intermodal perception is present very early on
Study on if newborns integrate vision & touch —> Infants sucked on a pacifier that they couldn’t see
- A preferential-looking procedure was used where a picture of the pacifier they had sucked on vs. picture of a pacifier of a different shape
and texture
- Results showed that newborns looked longer at the pacifier that they had sucked on (i.e., looked at familiar pacifier)
- This shows that ability to combine visual information with touch is present from birth
Study on if infants can combine vision with sound —> Preferential looking procedure was used where 4 months old simultaneously
watched two videos side-by-side
- Video of someone playing peekaboo vs. video of someone playing drums
- At the same time, heard audio of person saying “peekaboo” (i.e., audio is synchronized with only one video)
- Results showed that they looked more at the person playing peekaboo vs. person playing drums
- This shows that infants can integrate visual and auditory information
- Important for language development because children need to understand that speech sounds are linked with a moving mouth
Reflexes —> Innate, involuntary actions that occur in response to a particular stimulation, reflexes are adaptive
- e.g., grasping, rooting (i.e., touching cheek & head will turn to the location touched), sucking, stepping
- Some reflexes however have an unclear function such as the tonic neck reflex
- Tonic neck reflex —> Tonic neck reflex: when an infant’s head is turned to the side, their arm on that side extends and the arm
and knee on the other side flex
- Most reflexes disappear by 2 months of age, some don’t such as coughing, blinking, withdrawal from pain
- Absent reflexes or reflexes that persist for too long can mean the infant has neurological problems
Moto milestones in infancy —> Major motor developmental tasks of a period, happen in sequence, rarely out of order
- Huge individual variation in the ages these milestones are achieved
At 7-8 months of age —> Babies begin to crawl, however it is not considered a motor milestone
- This is due to many healthy babies never crawl & skip right to walking
- Some babies skip crawling due to; upper body or core weakness, hypersensitive to the texture of the floor, tonic neck reflex still
present (i.e., may be a sign of neurological problems), insufficient opportunities to crawl
Cultural differences in motor development —> Average ages of milestones are based on WEIRD samples, but most infants in the world
are not
- Only 15% of the world’s population is WEIRD
- Cultural practices lead to individual differences in when motor milestones are achieved
Example 1: Culture & sitting —> According to the charts babies begin to sit without support from 5-8 months
- Huge cross-cultural differences in how long 5-month-olds can sit independently —> Italian babies can sit only for less than a minute,
whereas babies in Kenya & Cameroon can sit for up to 30 minutes
- This may be related to where infants are placed to sit
- Sitting on the ground or on adult furniture requires little postural support
- Sitting on child furniture & being held by an adult requires a lot of postural support
- Earlier independent sitting in countries where infants spent more time in places with less postural support (e.g., ground)
- Kenyan babies spent a lot of time sitting on the ground
- Later independent sitting in countries where infants spent more time in places with lots of postural support (e.g., child furniture or being
held)
- Italian babies did not spend any time sitting on the ground but more in mother’s arm
Example 2: Culture & encouragement of motor skills —> Motor milestones are affected by how many opportunities infants have to
practice and how much motor development is actively encouraged
- e.g., In some countries (like Urban China), some infants are actively discouraged from crawling because of safety or hygiene
concerns so they crawl later or never crawl
- e.g., Motor exercises in sub-Saharan Africa, where infants are more advanced in motor skill development than kids in North
America
- Motor exercises such as stretching arms & legs
Example 3: Culture, diapers & walking —> Diapers affect infant walking, where infants show more mature walking when naked vs. when
wearing a diaper (note that all infants were used to wearing diapers)
- Diapers may contribute to cross-cultural differences in walking, where babies that spend less time in diapers will have more refined motor
skills
Implications of cultural differences —> Cultural practices in one domain can have unintended consequences in another domain
- Context plays an important role in motor development
- Differences in the course of motor development reflect the contexts in which infants are developing

There is a lot of mechanism behind motor development, early theories have now shifted into the current theories of the mechanisms of motor
Current theories —> Motor development governed by complex interplay between numerous factors:
- Neural development, Increases in physical strength, Physical abilities (like posture control and balance), Perceptual skills, Change in body
proportions and weight, Motivation
- All these factors contribute to individual differences in motor development
The role of weight changes —> Infants are born with stepping reflex that disappears at 2 months but then start stepping again
between 7-12 months of age when learning to walk
- Hypothesis for why this reflex disappear —> Infants gain weight faster than they build leg muscles and thus have insufficient
strength to lift heavier legs
Experiment on this hypothesis —> Young infants who still showed stepping reflex stopped stepping when weights were attached to their
ankles
- Infants who no longer show stepping reflex resumed stepping when placed in a tank of water
- Buoyancy (i.e., ability to float) of water supported weight
- Proves that disappearance of stepping reflex is due to weight change rather than cortical maturation
The role of motivation —> Infants are highly, intrinsically motivated to explore and learn where they have persistence despite failing;
- Continue to practice new skills even though they possess skills that are more efficient that could accomplish the same goal
- e.g., practice walking even though they know how to crawl
- Look delighted when practicing new skills
Individual differences in motivation predict when motor milestones are achieved
Study on level of motivation of infants when achieving motor milestones —> Compared low and high motivation infants on when they
achieved motor milestones
- Low motivation infants —> Movements occur infrequently, prefer activities that require little energy, require lots of stimulation to
change position
- High motivation infants —> Move often, prefer high energy activity, change position often, do not need clear stimulation to move
- Results showed that infants whom where highly motivated achieved their motor milestones earlier compared to low motivation
infants
Infants are born with reflexes, many of which disappear by 2 months
Motor milestones are achieved in a predictable sequence
Lots of individual differences due to numerous complex factors (e.g., culture, weight gain, motivation, etc.)
Motor development matters because it enables active learning & expands an infant’s world
- It allows children to learn by acting on the world rather than just passively observing
- It increases opportunities for learning
- It facilitates development of skills in other domains, especially vision & social behavior
Crawlers & walkers see the world differently, where walkers ‘see more’
Reaching enables object exploration which has consequences for visual development
- 7 months —> Able to sit independently and to reach
- Allows kids to become more familiar with the properties of different objects, including 3D
- If they don’t reach, they see figures in 2D, where they don’t see/imagine the ‘behind’ of the object
Study on independent sitting & reaching facilitating the understating of 3D object —> Habituation paradigm with 4-7.5 month olds
- Assessed sitting and reaching ability
- Habituation —> Presented with rotating object with only 2 sides visible
- Test —> Presented with rotating complete shape beside a rotating hollow shape
- If infant saw shape as a complete 3D object, should look longer at incomplete display
because novel
- Results showed —> Infants that were more advanced in sitting and reaching were more
likely to look at the incomplete display
Study on motor development impacting depth perception —> Infants placed in front of walkways with either shallow or steep slopes and
encouraged to crawl across
- Can babies tell the difference between slopes (i.e., detect different depths)?
- Results showed that Perception of slope depended on crawling experience
- Beginner crawlers (about 8 months) confidently went down shallow slope BUT also attempted slopes that were too steep
- Experienced crawlers avoided steep slopes, this may be due to them having better depth perception
- When these same babies started walking (i.e., the beginner crawlers) , they made the same mistake as with crawling
- Initially went down slopes that were too steep
- Failed to transfer what they had learned about slopes through crawling to walking
- Suggests that infants have to learn through experience how to integrate perceptual information with each new motor skill developed
Scale errors —> Attempt to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the huge difference in size between the child
and the object
- Usually around 2 years of age, this is due to failure to integrate visual information with action planing
Adults proactively shift their gaze to the goal of an action when observing somebody performing that action
- Indicates that they understand the person’s intention
Study on motor development & understanding intentions —> Eye-tracking in adults, 12 month olds and 6 month olds
- Showed a video of a person placing objects into a bucket
- Results showed that adults & 12 months old showed proactive gaze towards buckets, but 6 months old did not
- The 6 months old probably did not due to not having yet developed the ability to pick up, carry, and drop objects
- Shows that infants ability to predict others’ actions relies on them being able to perform these same actions

Summary of motor development

Infants are born with reflexes, many of which disappear by 2 months
Motor milestones are achieved in a predictable sequence
Lots of individual differences due to numerous complex factors
- e.g., culture, weight gain, motivation, etc.
Motor development allows infants to play a more active role in their learning and dramatically expands their understanding of the world
Motor development is tightly linked with visual and social development

There are factors that influence motor milestones in motor development

- Cultural norms influence when a baby achieves milestones
- If a baby is placed in places with less postural support, they will sit earlier in terms of milestone
- Baby motivation is another factor that influence that influence motor milestone
- Babies weight influence this, the water & ankle weights experiment showed this
- Crawling is not considered a major milestone since not all healthy babies crawl, where some even “skip” this part & walk solo directly
Babies are born with a stepping reflex from 0-2 months such as many other reflexes disappear after this this time frame
Motor development influences other abilities
- 3D object perception
- Depth perception —> Mistakes demonstrated by scale errors
- Perceiving intention
Walking —> 11-14 months
Sitting —> 5-8 months
Cognitive development —> How humans acquire, organize, and learn to use knowledge
- 3 majors theories of cognitive development —> Piaget’s theory, Core-knowledge theories, Sociocultural theories
Best known theories of cognitive development is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
- Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, is considered the father of the field of cognitive development
- 1920, worked at the Binet Institute on intelligence tests
- At the time, children viewed as mini-adults since there was no intelligence test of children
- Piaget intrigued by children’s wrong answers, especially why did they get the answer wrong where he would ask the children’s
- Piaget proposed a cognitive development theory where:
- Children’s thinking is qualitatively different from adults’ thinking (i.e., the way they approach a problem is fundamentally different)
- Cognition grows and develops through a series of stages
Properties of Piaget’s Stage Theory;
- Children at different stages think in qualitatively different ways
- Thinking at each stage influences thinking across diverse topics
- Brief transitional period at the end of each stage
- The stages are universal (not culture dependent) and the order is always the same
Piaget’s View of Children’s Nature
- Children actively shape their knowledge of the world, thus they are more active not passive
- Children have ideas about the world, perform experiments, and draw conclusions from observations
- Children learn on their own
- Do not depend on instruction from others
- Children are intrinsically motivated to learn
- Do not require rewards from other people
- Cognitive development is shaped by both nature and nurture
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development —> Sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage & formal operational
stage
1) Sensorimotor stage (Birth to 2 years) —> Period of tremendous cognitive development due to new experiences and rapid brain
development
- Know the world through movements and sensations
- Initially, learn about the world through reflexes
- At 6 months —> They become more interested in the world around them beyond their own bodies
- Repetition of actions that produce interesting results
- Object permanence —> Knowing that objects continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard
- Develops around 8 months
- Tested by seeing how a baby reacts to an object being hidden
- If the baby doesn’t look for the object or gets upset —> No object permanence
- If the baby does look for the object —> Developed object permanence
- Piaget thought that if parent leaves the room, in the babies mind the parent has ceased to exit thus the baby cries
- A-not-B-error —> Tendency to reach for a hidden object where it last found rather than in the new location where it was last hidden
- Evidence that initial object permanence is fragile
- Disappears around 12 months of age (between 8-12 months of age will this error be present)
- e.g., Parent hides object in A, where baby then find the object at A, then parent hides object in B, but baby tries to find it in A
- From 8-18 months —> Greater active exploration of how objects can be used (i.e., mini experiments)
- Intentional actions and experimenting to see how the outcome changes
- e.g. Varying the height from which an object is dropped to see the outcome that happens from the variation
 - Indicated by deferred imitation —> Seeing someone do something & copying them but hours/days later, where in order to do this
the kid must have had a mental representation of this action in order to copy it
- More fully developed object permanence
2) Preoperational stage (Age 2-7) —> Defining feature of this stage is the kid having symbolic thought
- Symbolic thought —> The ability to think about objects or events that are not within the immediate environment (i.e., imagining things)
- Enables language acquisition where symbolic thought is necessary
- Develop ability to use symbolic representation —> Using one object to represent another thing (e.g., a kid rolling a piece of paper
& imagining that it is a telescope)
- Evidenced through ability to engage in pretend play and drawing
- There are two cognitive limitation at the preoperational stage
I) Egocentrism —> Perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view
- e.g., Difficulties taking another person’s spatial perspective (a person sitting at point A cant see the perspective of person sitting at point
B & vice versa
- e.g., The person will often say I see “him”, I see “that” instead of I’m seeing an owl & a tree, since they assume that the person knows
what is “him” & “that”
- Egocentric speech —> Speech in which there is no attempt to exchange thoughts or take into account another person's point of view
- e.g., A person trying to have a dialogue with a kid but the kid is in his world talking about something else
- A person becomes less egocentric when they start to show an increase in children’s verbal arguments, since you are now starting to pay
attention in what the other person is saying, thus showing a cognitive advancement
II) Centration —> Tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant
features
- This is due to difficulties with conservation concept —> Merely changing the appearance of an object does not change the
objects’ other key properties
- e.g., Filling glass A & B that are the same size to the same level, then transferring the same amount to glass C, which is a taller
skinny glass, thus glass C tends to have a ‘higher’ height of water compared to glass A. The child will state now that glass C has the
most amount of water even thought they have the same amount
3) Concrete operational stage (Age 7-12) —> Can reason logically about concrete objects & events
- e.g., Understand conservation concept, where they don’t make the centration mistake
- They are now able to do concrete operations such as;
I) Reversibility —> The capacity to think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point
II) Seriation —> The ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight
- Transitive inference —> Mental seriation
- e.g., Showing the kid small circle A & larger circle B, then showing larger circle B with even larger circle C, finally asking them
about the relationship between A & C which they would say A is smaller than C
III) Cognitive maps —> The mental representation of familiar large-scale spaces, such as their neighbourhood and school
- However there are some limits in the concrete operational stage such as;
- Can reason logically about concrete objects and events (e.g., understand conservation concept)
- However they cannot think in purely abstract/hypothetical terms or generate systematic scientific experiments to test their beliefs
4) Formal operational stage (Age 12+) —> Ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically
- Not universal since not all adolescents or adults reach it
- Can imagine realities that are different than the current one
- Allows them to be interested in politics, ethics, science fiction, and to reason scientifically
Piaget’s pendulum problem —> Test of deductive reasoning, where the person had to determine the influence of weight & string lenght
on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back & forth
- This was an unbiased experiment that requires varying only one variable at a time
Stage 1: Sensorimotor (birth – 2 years old) —> Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions
- By the end, achieve object permanence
Stage 2: Preoperational (2-7 years old) —> Can internally represent the world though language and symbols
- Thinking characterized by egocentrism and centration
Stage 3: Concrete Operational (7-12 years old) —> Begin to think logically about concrete objects
- Can see the world from other perspectives
- Understand that events are influenced by multiple factors
Stage 4: Formal Operation (12 years old and up) —> Can think systemically and abstractly
Strengths of Piaget’s Theory;
- Provides a good overview of children’s thinking at different ages
- Exceptional breadth
- Spans the lifespan
- Examines many cognitive operations and concepts
- Intuitively plausible depiction of children’s nature as active learners and how learning progresses
Applications of Piaget’s Theory to Education:
Children’s distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how to teach them (i.e., teaching has to be
adapted in a way that corresponds to their stage)
- e.g., We cannot teach kids in concrete operational state about inertia and calculus
- Children learn best by interacting with the environment
- Hands-on learning
- Experiments
Weaknesses of Piaget’s Theory:
1) Piaget didn’t use scientific method to develop theory
- Relied on observing own children
2) Children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized
3) Theory underestimates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development
4) Theory is vague about the mechanisms of cognitive growth
5) Theory depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is
- Once children reach a certain stage, their thinking is far more variable than Piaget thought
- e.g., Some children in preoperational stage will be able to pass in some conservation tests

Core knowledge theories:

Innate theories —> Children are more cognitively advanced than Piaget thought
- Have some innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance
- But many concepts are not mastered until later
Domain Specific Learning Mechanisms —> Children are born with specialized learning mechanisms that allow them to quickly and
effortlessly acquiring additional information in domains of evolutionary importance
- Understanding the minds of people and animals, Language, Spatial layout, Inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions, Numbers
- e.g., The language acquisition device is a domain specific learning mechanism
Revised object permanence —> Core-knowledge theorists proposed that object permanence may be present before 8 months of age
- There is evidence for earlier object permanence such that when shown an object and then the light in the room is turned off, most
infants younger than 8 months old will reach for where they last saw the object
- Suggests that they still expect it to be there
- Piaget’s object permanence task may be too difficult where infants younger than 8 months old may fail Piaget’s object permanence
task because haven’t developed the motor capacity to manually search
 - Infants are habituated to an event
- Test —> Presented with a possible and impossible event that are variations on the habituation event
- Possible event —> Consistent with knowledge or expectation being examined in the study
- Impossible event —> Violates knowledge or expectation being studied
- Longer looking at the impossible event indicates that the infant possesses the physical knowledge being studied
- Impossible event is viewed as more novel/unexpected
Drawbridge study —> Kids sit in front of a table & would watch a drawbridge go up & down, then after they have be habituated to this a
box have been placed being the drawbridge where the height of the box is shorter than the drawbridge
- The kids were then showed a possible event where the drawbridge goes up until it hits the box
- In the impossible event, the drawbridge keeps going even trough the box
- So if a child has developed object permanence, the kid would look longer at the impossible event since a kid with object permanence
would understand that a thing continues to exist even though they can’t see it
- Results showed that Infants as young as 3.5 months old looked longer at the impossible event (drawbridge going through a box) than
the possible event
- This indicates surprise due to violation of expectation that solid objects can’t go through another solid object
- Shows that infants knew that the box still existed behind the bridge even though they couldn’t see it
- Suggests that infants as young as 3 ½ months old have object permanence

Piaget vs. Core-knowledge theorists

- Both argue that children are active learners
- Piaget thought that kids learning abilities are influenced by nature & nurture vs. Core-knowledge theorists think that kids have an
innate knowledge where they see that children are more cognitively advantaged than Piaget thought
- Piaget saw cognitive development as discontinuous where there was stages vs. Core-knowledge theorist emphasizes that there is
continuous learning where there are incremental changes
- Piaget thought there were general learning mechanism vs. Core-knowledge theorist argue there is domain specific learning mechanism

Sociocultural theories:
Sociocultural perspectives —> Emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children’s development
Lev Vygotsky —> Was a Russian psychologist, a well known sociocultural theorist where he developed his theory of child development at
the same time as Piaget, however he was largely unknown outside of Russia until the 1970s
Piaget vs. Vygotsky
- Piaget argues that children learn on their own vs. Vygotsky argues that children learn from more knowledgeable members of society
- Piaget argues that children acquire knowledge about universal concepts (e.g., time, causation) vs. Vygotsky argues that children
acquire knowledge that is shaped by their culture & the time they live in
- Piaget empathizes discontinuous learning (i.e., stages) vs. Vygotsky emphasizes continuous learning
 - Children acquire skills through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society which is a universal process
across cultures
- According to sociocultural theorist, children learn through intersubjectivity, guided participation & social scaffolding in zone of
proximal development
Intersubjectivity —> The mutual understanding that people share during communication, it is the foundation of a child learning through a
person
- Requires joint attention —> Child and more knowledgeable member of society focus on the same object
- Children having more joint attention will learn more quickly & easily
- Foundation of learning from others
- Guided participation —> Assist children as they perform adult-like activities
- e.g., Parent is having her hand over the babie’s hand when the baby is eating
Social scaffolding —> A process in which a more knowledgeable person provides a temporary framework that supports children’s
thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own
- Involves more explicit instruction and breaking a task down than guided participation
- Support is tapered off (withdrawn) as a child learns to perform the skill themselves
- e.g., A kid learning to do a puzzle, if a parent is engaging in social scaffolding they would tell the kid how to do the puzzle (i.e., give
instructions)
Zone of proximal development (ZPD) —> Scaffolding should be geared towards zone of proximal development
- The difference between what a child can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a more
knowledgeable person
- Tasks that are just beyond a child’s individual capability (i.e., just beyond their comfort zone)
Vygotsky’s Emphasis on Language —> Adults transmit knowledge to children via language
- Language is the foundation of intellectual thought
1) Parents regulate children’s behaviour through language
2) At age 3, children start regulating their own behaviour with private speech —> Tell themselves out loud what to do the same way
their parents would have done
- Most common in 4-6 year olds
- More likely on more difficult tasks
3) Instruction become internalized where private speech becomes silent (i.e., thought)
Sociocultural perspective —> Emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children’s development
- Children acquire skills through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society
- Universal process across cultures
- Content of what children learn is decided by culture
Independent cultures —> Common in western countries, where there is emphasis in attending to self, self assertion & uniqueness
Interdependent cultures —> Common in most others countries in the world but most research is focused in Asian countries, these cultures
put emphasis on attending to the group harmony, & fitting in
Study on cultural differences in memories —> Participants were children whom were asked what was their earliest memories
- Chinese children’s earliest memories include more references to other people
- American children’s earliest memories include more references to own feelings and reactions
Study on cultural differences in categorization —> Kids were given a picture of a cow, chicken & grass, where they were then asked
which two go together
- American children put the chicken and cow together (both are animals)
- Chinese children put the cow and grass together (the cow eats grass)
Acculturation affect —> Kids of immigrant parents will be more similar to the place that they live than their parents are
Applications of Sociocultural Theories to Education —> Teaching should be aimed at zone of proximal development
All theories view nature and nurture as important to shaping development and see children as active learners
Piaget:
- Cognitive development occurs in distinct stages
- Children learn on their own and are intrinsically motivated
Core-knowledge:
- Emphasize innate knowledge (nature)
- Domain-specific learning mechanisms
Sociocultural:
- Emphasize importance of learning through others and wider culture
- Intersubjectivity
- Social scaffolding
- Zone of proximal development

Theories of cognitive development review:

Piaget’s theory
- Sensory motor —> 0 - 2 years old
- Object permanence that happens at 8 months while some other research showed that it developed at 3 and half months
- One task showed that the baby pursued the object even with the lights closed
- Another task showed the violation of expectation paradigm (i.e., drawbridge study)
- Preoperational —> 2 - 7 years old
- Child tends to be very egocentric —> They think that their point of view is the same as ours
- Centration —> Child tends to view only some factors of a situation to base their conclusion (e.g., ball of play dough > same ball
smashed)
- Concrete operational —> 7 - 12 years old
- Pass conservation tasks
- Logical operations
- Formal operations —> 12 years +
- Can think in purely abstract terms

Core-knowledge theorists
- Drawbridge study
- Kids are born knowing, thus having innate knowledge
- Domain specific learning mechanisms in areas of evolutionary importance

Sociocultural theories
- Emphasizes social learning & cultural learning
- Learning from more knowledgable members through scaffolding & guided participation
- Zone of proximal development —> A zone just outside the comfort zone of the child
Core-Knowledge Theories —> Innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance
- Children are born with specialized learning mechanisms that allow them to quickly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in
these domains
Domains of evolutionary importance:
-Understanding the minds of people and animals
- Language
- Spatial layout
- Inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions
- Numbers
Researchers are often curious about how children understand objects, where the answer is often via object categorization that happens in
infancy
Study on object categorization in infancy —> Showed 3 month olds various pictures of cats
- Habituated to the general category of cat (i.e., Looked at novel cat photos less and less)
- They show a lot of different images of cats to see if they can categorize the images of the cats
- Test trial: photo of a dog
- Results showed that infants looked longer at the dog
- This suggests that infants saw all the cats as a single category & the dog as a different category
Study on object categorization in infancy with more general categories —> Habituation tiral: 6 month olds habituated to photos of
mammals
- Then, on test trial, they were shown non-mammals where they looked longer at non-mammals (i.e., bird or fish)
- Shows that infants had formed category of mammal by recognizing similarities between mammals
Dividing objects into categories —> By 9 months old, children are able to divide object into 3 broad categories
1) People, 2) Animals, 3) Inanimate objects
- Indexed by different reactions to members of each of these categories
- e.g., in lab settings, 9 month olds pay more attention to animals than inanimate objects, but smile less at animals than they do at
people
- Object categorization is very crucial since different concepts apply to different types of objects
- e.g., All objects have height, weight, color, etc
- e.g., Only humans & animals need to breathe, move, eat, but only people can read & talk
- This allows children to draw accurate inferences about new objects
- e.g., If a child learns that a zebra is an animal, then it will know that it breathes, moves & etc.
Infants tend to form categories via perceptual categorization
- Perceptual categorization —> Infants categorize objects based on similarity in perceptual qualities
- Focus on specific parts of an object rather than the whole
- e.g., Infants <18 months rely on presence of legs to categorize an object as an animal, and wheels to categorize an object as a
vehicle
- Kids focus a lot in shape in order to form their categories
Study on prioritization based on shape —> Various objects placed in front of the 12 months olds
- Experimenter picked up target object and demonstrated that it rattles
- Infants were more likely to assume that an object of a similar shape also rattles vs. objects similar in colour or texture
- Demonstrates that infants prioritize shape when forming categories
By 2-3 years of age, children start to form category hierarchies
Category hierarchies —> Organize object categories by set-subset relations
- Allow for finer distinctions among objects within each level
 - e.g., Basic level tress tend to show very similar trees, superordinate level trees tend to show plants which are far less similar to one
another, subordinate level tend to shows trees that are very similar to one another
- Similarities at superordinate level are less obvious and differences between subordinate levels are hard to detect
Caregivers help children form superordinate and subordinate categories
1) Use children’s knowledge of basic categories to explain superordinate and subordinate categories to them
- Superordinate —> “Plants are things like trees, flowers, and vegetables, that need sun and water to grow.”
- Subordinate —> “Maples are a kind of tree”
2) Explaining or demonstrating the function of an object (i.e. causal relations)
- To be categorized as a light switch, an object needs to turn a light on and off
Study on understanding cause-effect is crucial for forming categories —> Told 4-5 year olds about “wugs” and “gillies”
- Some children provided only with physical description
- Other children provided with physical description + causal story that explained why these animals are the way they are
- Results showed that children who received the causal story were better at classifying animals
- They were also better at remembering the categories the next day (i.e., deep learning)

Summary of Object Categorization

Object categorization starts in infancy
By 9 months of age, differentiate people, animals, and inanimate objects
By 2-3 years of age, form category hierarchies
Early categories are based on perceptual similarities, especially similarities in shape
More advanced categories are learned through parents and an understanding of causal relations

Causality —> How one thing makes another thing happen

- Understanding causality matters because —> Makes the world predictable and easier to navigate
Violation-of-expectation paradigm —> A technique for studying infant cognition, based on habituation and dishabituation procedures, in
which increases in an infant's looking time at an event or other stimulus are interpreted as evidence that the outcome he or she expected has
not occurred (e.g., drawbridge study)
Study on if gravity is understood by infants —> Violation of expectation paradigm with 3 month olds where they were shown a 1 of the
two videos
- Possible event —> A hand places a box on a platform (i.e., gravity present)
- Impossible event —> A hand places a box in midair & it remains suspend (i.e., no gravity)
- Results showed that 3 months old looked longer at the box suspended in midair
Follow-up study —> Compared the looking times between the two videos shown (i.e., the possible & impossible event)
- Infants looked longer at the box suspended midair
- Shows that they expect the box to fall if there is no contact, which is important on understanding gravity
Study on understanding the type of contact events —> 5 month olds understand that type of contact matters
- Look longer at a box that is touching side of a support, but not the ground, but doesn’t fall (impossible event) vs. at box placed on
top of support (possible event)
- 3 month olds do not understand this thus there was no difference in looking times
Study on understanding the amount of contact matters —> 6.5 month olds understand that amount of contact matters
- Look longer at a box where the bottom is barely touching the top of the support but doesn’t fall (impossible event) vs. at box fully
placed on top of support (possible event)
- 5 month olds do not understand this thus there was no difference in looking times
Study on understanding shapes matters —> 12 month olds understand that the shape of the box matters
- Look longer at a box where “heavier” part is hanging off the edge but doesn’t fall (impossible event) vs. a box where “heavier” part
Taken together, these studies show that young infants have a rudimentary understanding of gravity and this understanding increases
incrementally with age
Study on understanding object movement via external force in infancy —> Violation-of expectations paradigm with 6 month olds
- Possible event —> Video in which a moving object collides with a stationary object that then moves in the expected direction
- Impossible event —> Video in which the stationary object starts to move shortly before it’s hit
- Violates expectation that objects can only move with an external force
- Results showed infants look longer at the impossible event
- Suggests that 6 month olds understand that objects can only move with an external force
Causal Reasoning in Preschoolers —> 4 year olds expect that if an object causes an effect, it should so consistently
- Search for a cause if it’s not obvious
- Explains why kids become fascinated with magic tricks around this age
Understanding causality is important because it makes the world predictable & easier to understand as well as facilitating learning
Study on understanding cause-and-effect allows infants to remember and imitate actions —> 9-11-month olds can imitate actions
that are causally related
- e.g., “make a rattle” —> Requires a specific sequences of action
- However they cannot imitate actions that are not causally related
- e.g., “Make a party hat” —> Order of action doesn’t matter
How do children learn about causality;
1) Actively seek knowledge about causality:
- By acting on the world and observing what happens (e.g., Trial and error)
-Asking many questions and having adults answer them
2) Observing the outcomes of other people’s actions

Summary of understanding causality:

Young infants have a rudimentary understanding of physical causal relationships and this understanding increases with age
- 3 month olds demonstrate a basic understanding of gravity
- 6 month olds understand that objects can only move with external force
Understanding physical causality facilitates learning

Do understand other people, infants need to understand 3 things —> People’s desires, beliefs & actions
- Desires & beliefs have to be inferred since they are internal state compared to actions which are visible
- Desires, beliefs & actions are casually related
Theory of mind —> An organized understanding of how internal states, including desires, beliefs, and emotions, influence behaviour
- Children come to understand the connections between actions, desires, and beliefs at different ages
To understand others’, an infant needs to first appreciate that they are separate from others
Born with implicit sense of self as separate from others:
- Rooting reflex —> If someone brushes their cheek, infant will turn in direction of touch and open their mouth
- However if infant touches their own cheek, will not turn in that direction
More explicit sense of self develops later:
- 18-24 month olds pass “rouge test” —> Recognize themselves in a mirror
Study on understanding other’s actions —> Understanding others’ intentions emerges at 6 months of age
- Study: Violation of expectation paradigm
- 6 month olds were habituated to a hand reaching for a ball that was beside a doll
- Test:
- Some infants shown a hand reaching for the ball
 - This suggests that they understand action intention
- However a variation of this experiment was done in which during the test trial, the ball (which was initially on the left) was now
switched with the doll (which was initially on the right) , this variation was done to prove that kids aren’t primed towards the location but
rather the action intention
- Results show that even when the position of the ball and the doll were reversed, infants who saw the hand reach for the doll still looked
longer at the display than infants who saw the hand reach for the ball
- Shows that the infants understood the intention of the original reaching as object-directed, not location-directed
Study on understanding other’s desires —> Understanding that desires lead to actions emerges by 1 year of age
- The study was a violation of expectation paradigm
- 12 month olds saw an experimenter look at one of 2 stuffed kittens with vocal and facial expressions of joy
- Screen descended and when raised, the experimenter was holding one of the kittens
- Situation 1 —> Experimenter holding the kitten she was excited about
- Situation 2 —> Experimenter holding the other kitten (i.e., the one she wasn’t excited about)
- Results showed that 12 months old look longer when the experimenter was holding the other kitten vs. The one they were originally
looking at
- Suggests that 12 month olds understand that desires are linked with actions
- 8 months old look at the 2 displays for similar amounts of time
- Suggests that they don’t understand that desires are linked with actions
Understanding that desires lead to actions is firmly established by 2 years of age
- 2 year olds can predict a character’s actions based on the character’s desires, rather than based on their own desires
Rudimentary understanding of beliefs’ leading to action emerges by 3 years of age
- When asked why a person is behaving in a certain way, will answer by making reference to beliefs
- e.g. Q: “Why is Matt looking for his dog?”; A: “He thinks the dog ran away”
But 3 year olds’ understanding of link between others’ beliefs and actions is also limited in important ways
False-belief problems —> Tasks that test a child’s understanding that other people don’t necessarily know what the child knows
- Does the child think that the other person will act consistent with their false/incorrect beliefs or consistent with the child’s objective
understanding?
- Correct responses indicate a developed theory of mind
Example of smarties task —> A child is presented with a box of smarties & asked what they think is inside the box, where they say
smarties
- However when the box is opened the child is disappointed since there is pencils inside, where when the child is asked what they think
their friend will think there is inside the box they will state there is going to be pencils inside
- 3 year olds fail —> Incorrectly think that other children will know that there are pencils inside the box
- 5 year olds pass —> Correctly say that others will think there are Smarties inside the box
False-beliefs tasks around the world —> Finding that most 3 year olds fail (14% pass rate) and most 5 year olds pass (85%) false
belief tasks is consistent across cultures (i.e., a universal, not culture biased task)
How does theory of mind develop according to;
- Core knowledge theorist —> Innate brain mechanism that allows us to understand others
- Empiricists —> Interactions with others and general learning mechanisms allows children to acquire theory of mind
Core-knowledge: Theory of mind module (TOMM) —> Hypothesized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other people that
matures over the first 5 years of life
- Evidence for TOMM is the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) are consistently active across different theory of mind tasks
- Different brains areas are involved in other complex cognitive processes
- There is also evidence for TOMM from children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) whom struggle with theory of mind
- Find false-belief tasks very difficult even as teenagers
Empiricist stance on theory of mind is that information processing skills & interactions matter
- Information-processing skills matter —> Growth of general information-processing skills is critical for the development of theory
of mind
- Preschoolers’ ability to inhibit their impulses is correlated with performance on false-belief tasks
- Interactions matter —> Interaction with other people are critical for the development of theory of mind
- Evidence for importance of interactions comes from preschoolers with siblings are better at false-belief tasks than preschoolers who
don’t have siblings, especially if the siblings are older and of a different gender
- This may be because interacting with people whose interests, desires, and motives are different from their own enables children to
appreciate how others are different from them
- Suggests that children with ASD struggle with theory of mind because they don’t interact much with others
How does theory of mind develop?;
All these explanations likely play a role
- Maturation of brain regions involved in understanding others
- Interactions with other people
- Improved information-processing ability

Summary of theory of mind:

Born with implicit sense of self but explicit sense of self develops between 18-24 months of age
6 months —> Understanding intentions of actions
1 years old —> Beginning of understanding that desires lead to actions
2 years old —> Mastery of understanding that desires lead to actions and appreciation that others’ desires can be different from one’s own
3 years old —> Rudimentary understanding that beliefs lead to action but fail at false-belief tests
5 years old —> Theory of mind and pass false-belief tests
Core-knowledge theories hypothesize a theory of mind module that matures with age vs. empiricists emphasize role of interactions with others
and general information processing abilities

Review of learning about the world & people:

Causality (cause & effect):
- Babies have a basic understanding of gravity around 3 months old
- Understanding causality makes the world more predicable & helps with learning
Object categorization:
- Infants focus on shape in forming categories
- 9 months old —> Divide the world into 3 categories; objects, people & animals
- Children learn the basic level first & then form category hierarchies (i.e., superordinate & subordinate)
Theory of mind:
- From birth —> Rudimentary sense of self (rooting reflexes)
- 6 months old —> Can predict action intention (i.e., study with ball & doll)
- 12 months old —> Understand that desires lead to action (i.e., study with the cat the child liked)
- 3 years old —> False belief problems
- 5 years old pass the false-beliefs problems
- Mechanisms of development of theory of mind —> Theory of mind module (TOMM) vs. Social interactions + Information processing
SPEECH PERCEPTION:
High amplitude sucking procedure —> Used to test infants from birth to 4 months of age
- Capitalizes on infants sucking reflex
- Infants hear a sound stimulus via headphones every time they produce a strong/ high-amplitude suck on a pacifier
- The number of strong sucks is an indicator of the infant’s interest
- Where a more strong suck means more interest
- There are 2 variations of procedure:
- 1) Discrimination and 2) Preference
1) High amplitude sucking procedure discrimination variation —> Used to test whether infants can tell the difference between two
auditory stimuli
- Variation of visual habituation paradigm
- Habituation phase —> Each time infant produces a strong suck, a sound is played over loudspeaker
- Continues until sucking has declined significantly (e.g. by 20%)
- Test phase —> Hear new speech stimuli every time produces a strong suck
- If can distinguish between stimuli, sucking behaviour should increase due to a novelty effect
2) High amplitude sucking procedure preferential variation —> Used to test infants’ preference for different stimuli
- 2 different stimuli are played on alternating minutes each time a strong suck is produced
- i.e., minute 1 = Stimulus A, minute 2 = Stimulus B, minute 3 = Stimulus A
- Number of strong sucks produced during presentation of each stimulus type is compared
- Preference —> Infants suck more during one stimulus minute type than the other
Using high amplitude sucking paradigms, research has shown that newborns:
- Prefer to listen to speech sounds over artificial sounds
- Prefer mother’s voice over another woman’s voice
- Prefer to listen to native language vs. other language
Suggests that language learning starts in the womb!
Speech perception relies on perceiving differences between speech sounds
- e.g., /a/ is different than /e/ & /i/
Often what distinguishes similar speech sounds is voice onset time (VOT) —> Length of time between when air passes through the lips
and when the vocal cords start to vibrate
- e.g., The voice onset time of /d/ is much shorter than /t/
- Even through gradual transition in voice onset time, there is no speech sound in between
- e.g., /b/ & /p/ are produced in the same way except for the voice onset time
- Continuum of /b/ to /p/ gradually varies voice onset time such that anything less than 25ms VOT = /b/
& more than 25ms VOT = /p/
Categorical perception —> We perceive speech sounds as distinct categories even though the differences between speech sounds is
gradual
- Categorical perception is useful because focuses listeners on sounds that are linguistically meaningful while ignoring meaningless
differences
- e.g. difference between a 10ms VOT /b/ vs. 20ms VOT /b/ is meaningless in English
Study of infant categorical perception of speech from Elmas et al., 1971 —> Tested 1 month old infants learning English
- High amplitude sucking paradigm to test discrimination between /ba/ and /pa/
- 2 groups:
- Different speech sounds —> Infants habituated to /ba/ (20 ms VOT) and then tested with /pa/ (40 ms VOT)
 - Suggests that newborns have the same categorical perception of speech in adults
Infants make more distinctions between speech sounds than adults
Adults do not perceive differences between speech sounds that are not important in their native language
- e.g. In English, difference between /r/ and /l/ is meaningful, but not in Japanese
- e.g. In Arabic, difference between /k/ sound in /keep/ and /cool/ is meaningful, but not in English
Study on infant cross-language speech perception by Werker et al., 1988 —> Tested 6 month olds American infants learning
English
- High amplitude sucking paradigm to see if they can discriminate between Hindi /Ta/ and /ta/
- English speaking adults struggle to distinguish between these 2 sounds
- Results showed that after habituating to one of these Hindi speech sounds, increased sucking when heard other speech sounds
- i.e., if habituated to /Ta/, then increased sucking when tested with /ta/
Infants discriminate between speech sounds they have never heard before (i.e., speech sounds not found in their native language)
Infants are biologically ready to learn any of the world’s languages
- However this dismisses around 8 months old
- Infants lose ability to discriminate between non-native speech sounds at 10-12 months old
- This improves perception of speech sounds in native language
- This is due to perceptual narrowing
When presenting a sentence to a child which has no space, they cannot know where to start (i.e., where to put spaces) up until 7 months old
Word segmentation —> Starts at 7 months old, where they discover where words begin & end in fluent speech
Statistical learning —> Babies are very sensitive to the regularity with which events occur in their environment
- Pick-up on patterns of native language
1) Stress-patterning
2) Distribution of speech sounds
1) Stress patterning —> Different languages place stress on different parts of a word
- English —> Stress usually on first syllable
- French —> Stress usually on last syllable
- Therefore babies that learn english (i.e., know when the word starts) when they hear the stress in the first syllable
2) Distribution of speech sounds —> Sounds that appear together often are likely to be words
- Sounds that don’t appear together often are more likely to be boundaries between words
- Example: “happy baby”
- “ba ” and “by” occur together often because make word “baby”
- “ha” and “ppy” occur together often because make word “happy”
- “ppy” and “ba” occur together less often because don’t make a word and many different words can come before “baby” (“happy”,
“little” ) and many words can come after “happy” (“birthday”, “baby”, “puppy”)
Preferential listening procedure —> Speaker on either side of infant’s head
- When the infant looks at speaker, a recording of speech plays
- Different speech from each speaker
- How long an infant spends looking in a particular direction/ listening to a particular
sound indicates how much they like it
- Familiarity effect —> Will listen longer to sounds they recognize
- Novelty effect —> If first habituated to a sound, will listen longer to new sound
Study on distribution of speech sounds —> The study used a preferential listening procedure on 8 months old
- Habituation —> 8 month old listened to a stream of syllables for a long time (2 mins)
- Some syllables always occurred together
- Others rarely or never occurred together
 - Shows that infants understood word boundaries by detecting the likelihood of syllables belonging together

Summary of speech perception

Speech perception is studied with high amplitude sucking procedure and preferential listening paradigm
Infants have remarkable speech perception abilities
- From birth, show adult-like categorical perception of speech for sounds that are physically similar and able to distinguish between
speech sounds not found in their native language
- As they learn sounds of their native-language, lose ability to distinguish between non-native sounds at 10-12 months of age
Infants are sensitive to the patterns of language and use it to segment words from speech beginning around 7 months of age

THE JOURNEY TO FIRST WORDS:

There are developmental milestones in production of language such as Cooing & gurgling, Babbling, First words, Knows 50 words
Cooing —> Start around 2 months of age, drawn out vowel sounds, like “ooooohhh” and “aahhhh”
- Helps infants gain motor control over their vocalizations
- Elicits reactions from caregivers leading to back-and-forth cooing with caregivers
Babbling —> Start around 7 months of age (6-10 months of age), repetitive consonant-vowel syllables, like “papapa” and “babababa”
- Speech sounds not necessarily from native language
- Infant babbling is very similar across languages
- Deaf infants that are exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) babble with repetitive hand movements made up of pieces of full ASL
signs
- Evidence that language exposure is critical for babbling
- Babbling has two functions; a social function & learning function
Social function —> Practicing turn-taking in a dialogue
- Infant babbling elicits caregiver reactions which in turn elicit more babbling
- Parent positive reaction to babbling elicits more babbling
Learning function —> Signal that the infant is listening and ready to learn
- Infants learn more when an adult labels a new object just after they babble vs. learning the word in the absence of babbling
Infants appear to understand high-frequency words around 6 months of age
Study show infants pictures of common food and body parts and monitor where they look when one of the pictures is named (eye-tracking)
- 6 month olds look to the correct picture more often than chance
- Shows that infants understand more words than they can produce
- Shows that infants understand more words than their caregivers realize
First word —> Any specific utterance consistently used to refer to or express a meaning
- Can be tricky to identify:
- Babbling can sound like words
- e.g. “mamamama”
- Meaning of a first word can differ from it’s standard meaning
- e.g. “gulgul” referring to “turkey”
- First words are produced around 12 months of age (10-15 months)
- Often mispronounced in predictable ways:
- Omit difficult parts of words:
- “Banana” —> “nana”
- Substitute difficult sounds for easier sounds:
- “Rabbit” —> “wabbit”
- Re-order sounds to put easy sound first
Meaning of first words are very similar across cultures
- Suggests that infants around the world have similar interests and priorities
Infants express themselves initially with only one word utterances so cannot clearly communicate what they want to say
They often make two main mistakes in their first words
Overextension —> Using a word in a broader context than is appropriate
- e.g. “dog” refers to any 4 legged animal
Underextension —> Using a word in a more limited context than appropriate
- “cat” only refers to the family’s pet cat
At 18 months old —> They often know around 50 words, having a vocabulary spurt
- Vocabulary spurt —> Rate of word learning accelerates

WORD LEARNING
Children’s assumptions about language is influenced from social context (i.e., caregivers & peers)
Children have several assumptions when learning a new word:
- Mutual exclusivity, Whole-object assumption, Pragmatic cues, Adult’s intentionality, Grammatical form, Shape bias, Cross-situational
word learning
1) Mutual exclusivity assumption —> A given object/being will have only one name
- A child will turn their attention to the object they don’t have a name for when they hear a new word
- Bilingual children will follow this rule less
2) Whole-object assumption —> Word will refer to the whole object rather than to a part or action of the object
3) Pragmatic cues —> Using the social context to infer the meaning of a word
- Adult gaze —> When an adult says a new word, the child assumes that it refers to the object the adult is looking at, even if the child
cannot see it
4) Adult’s intentionality —> If an adult uses a word that conflicts with child’s word for that object, they will learn the new word if it is said
with confidence
- e.g., If the adult says in a monotone a ‘new fact’, the child will not believe the fact the child has, however if the adult says it in a
confident tone that is more engaging, the child will ‘overwrite’ the fact they already had
5) Grammatical form —> Grammatical form of a word influences whether it’s interpreted as a noun, verb, or adjective
- Children are very sensitive to grammatical forms of the word
6) Shape bias —> Children will apply a noun to a new object of the same shape, even if that object is very different in size, colour, or
texture
- e.g., Kids will assume that similar shapes are the same shapes, even if the object varies in color, size & texture
- e.g., If they saw a ‘pink cow’ they will assume its a cow, but if they see a pig having the same color as a cow they will say its not a cow
since it has a different shape
7) Cross-situational word learning —> Determining word meanings by tracking the correlations between labels and meanings across
contexts
- e.g., Hearing the word Dax from 3 images (they don’t know what the Dax is), then they hear in an another context the word Dax &
only one image was present in both context, thus implementing this label on it
One of the ways where parents play a huge role in cognitive development in young age of their child is vocabulary development
- Children’s vocabularies are hugely impacted by the vocabularies and speech of their caregivers
- Caregiver factors influencing word learning:
- Infant directed speech
- Quantity of speech
- Quality of speech
 repetitions, More questions, Accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions
- The function of infant directed speech is that it draws infants’ attention to speech
- Infants prefer IDS to regular adult speech
- Even if in a non-native language!
- This is because infants pay greater attention to IDS, it facilitates their language learning
Study on infant directed speech & early word recognition —> 7-8 month old infants were introduced to words either in:
- Infant directed speech
- Regular adult speech
- Recognition of words tested 24 hours later using preferential listening procedure:
- How long do infants look in the direction of the word introduced in IDS vs. word introduced in adult speech?
- Results showed that infants looked longer at words introduced in IDS than adult speech
- Suggests that IDS facilitate recognition of words
The other way that caregivers influence their child’s speech is the quantity of speech
- The number of words children hear used around them predicts children’s vocabulary size, especially speech directed to child
- Children that hear more words have larger vocabularies
A classic study found that parents socioeconomic status predicts how much speech infant hear
- Method used was that they tested parents with their 7 month old children over 2.5 years until the child turned 3 years of age
- High, middle, and low socioeconomic status
- Came to lab for an hour every week
- Everything the parent and child said was recorded and analyzed
- Results showed that children from low socioeconomic status used half the words compared to a child from high socioeconomic status
- The 30 million word gap —> Children from low socioeconomic status learn around 13 million words compared to children from high
socioeconomic status that learn around 45 million words when they will be grown adults
- Differences in language exposure potentially contribute to achievement gap between higher and lower socioeconomic status children
- Vocabulary size can be linked to socioeconomic status rather than language disorder
The other way that caregivers influence their child’s speech is the quality of speech
- Quality of speech —> Richness of adult communication with their child predicts children’s language ability
- Joint engagement, Fluency, Stressing and repeating new words, Playing naming games, Naming an object when a toddler is already
looking at it
The grocery store intervention was a way to reduce the 30 million word gap
Grocery store intervention —> Focuses on increasing amount of time parents spend talking to child
- Signs placed in grocery stores in low socioeconomic status neighbourhoods encouraging parents to talk to their children about the foods
in the store
- Parents increased quantity and quality of speech to their child
Placing preschool children with similarly poor language ability in the same classroom negatively impacts their language growth
Better chance to “catch-up” on language ability if:
- Placed with children with higher language ability
- Teacher uses rich communication with students

Summary of Journey to First Words

Cooing —> 2 months of age Babbling —> 7 months of age
First words:
- Understand high-frequency words at 6 months of age
- Say first words at 12 months of age
- Children use a variety of strategies to figure out what words mean
If you are conducting an experiment where you habituate the sound “lalala” via 2 speakers one saying “lalala” on L speaker & “bababa” on R
speaker, then this is the preferential listening paradigm
- If they can tell the difference between the two sounds, they will prefer the one on R speaker, since they have been habituated by the
sound on L speaker
If you are conducting another experiment where you give a pacifier to the baby & put headphones on the child, where everytime they suck the
pacifier they hear the sound “pa” & “fa” alternating between minutes, then this is the high amplitude sucking procedure
- If they prefer one sound over the other, they will suck harder & more towards the preferred sound
Language production:
- Cooing shows at 2 months
- Babbling shows at 7 months
- It is universal & not culture dependant, this is because when a kids babble you cannot say which language the baby speaks
- First words shows at 12 months old
- Around 50 words shows at 18 months old
Social factors influencing word learning:
- Infant-directed speech (IDS)
- Word exposure (i.e., more word exposure = more words child going to know)
- Socioeconomic status (i.e., low socioeconomic status = less words, high socioeconomic status = more words)
- Peers influence word exposure
Statistical learning helps children segment words (i.e., where words ends/starts)
- This starts at around 7 months
Children’s innate have an innate assumptions about words
- e.g., Whole object assumption, cross-situational cues, mutual exclusivity, pragmatic cues
Speech perception:
- Language learning starts in the womb, where they show preference for native language
- Perceptual narrowing of distinction between speech sounds that happens at 10-12 months
- Word segmentation to see where one words ends/starts happens at 7 months —> Stress parenting + Statistical learning

PUTTING WORDS TOGETHER:

At 2 years of age —> Children begins to combine words into short phrases
- Telegraphic speech —> Short utterances that leaves out non-essential words
- e.g., “mommy cake” instead of “mommy I would like to have some cake please”
- This tends to be universal since in almost all languages this happens
Grammar —> The set of rules in a language for how words, phrases and sentences go together
At 5 years old —> Mastered basics of grammar
- Allows children to express and understand more complex ideas
We know that children have learned the grammar of their language when they can apply a grammatical rule to a new word/context
- e.g., Adding “s” to makes a word plural
- Overregularization errors
At 4 years old —> The kids are now able to pluralize which is not attributed to imitation because of the “wug test”
- Wug test —> New word called wug, where once present the child of an image saying its a wug, then proceeds to ask the child now
they are two of them thus there are two ___ (answers would be wugs obviously)
Overregularization errors —> Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular
- Evidence that they have learned grammatical rules but not the exceptions to the rule
- e.g., “mans”, “good”, “foots”, “breaked”, “branded”
 - e.g., If the kids says “look this breaked” then the parent won’t correct the child, but he would correct him if the child states something
factually false
Grammar is also learned via statistical learning —> Kids are very sensitive to grammatical patterns
Study on grammar & statistical learning —> A preferential listening paradigm was used to see if infants could pick up on new
grammatical patterns
- Habituated to a list of 3-“word” sequences in which second “word” is repeated (ABB structure)
- “le di di”
- “wi je je”
- “de li li”
- Test —> Presented with new sentences with same structure (ABB) or with a different structure (ABA)
- ABB: “ko ga ga” vs.
- ABA: “ko ga ko”
- Results showed that 8 months old look longer in the direction of sentences with different structure
- This is evidence that infants can pick-up grammatical patterns after brief exposure
1-4 years old —> Children initially struggle to engage in mutual conversation due to two factors
- Private speech
- Infants’ speech is often initially directed to themselves to organize actions
- Egocentric discussion between children
5+ years old are able to;
- Stick to the same conversation topic as their conversation partner
- Talk about the past
- Produce a narrative –beginning, middle, end
- Can use emotional tone to “read between the lines”

Summary of putting words together:

Age 2 —> Produce 2-3 word sentences
- Length and complexity of sentences gradually increases
Age 2-5 —> Acquiring the basics of grammar
- Extend patterns, like “add –s to make plural”
- Overgeneralization errors
Age 5 —> Master grammar and beginning to be able to engage in sustained conversations

NATURE vs. NURTURE:

To what extent is language acquisition governed by biology vs. the environment?
Evidence we’ve reviewed so far suggests that social context plays a huge role
- e.g. word learning
What evidence is there for an innate component to language acquisition?
Universal grammar hypothesis —> From Noam Chomsky, where according to this hypothesis, humans are born biologically programmed to
learn language
- Language acquisition device —> Hypothetical brain mechanism preprogrammed with the specific grammatical structures common to
all languages
- This idea is generally accepted modern language theorists
Sensitive period for language acquisition —> Period from birth to before puberty
- This is due to maturational changes in the brain whereby language brain areas are less plastic (i.e., malleable, reduced plasticity)
- Crucial period in which an individual can acquire a first language if exposed to adequate linguistic stimuli
After this period, languages are learned with great difficulty and native-like competence is rare
Sensitive period vs. Critical period —> Sensitive period is softer version of a critical period
- Idea of critical period is once the age is passed, you will never be able to develop the ability
1) Evidence of the sensitive period of language acquisition comes from Genie
- Discovered in LA in 1970
- From 18 months old until she was rescued at age 13, she was deprived of linguistic input
- Because of this she could barely speak which caused development to also be stunted in all other areas
- Language ability never fully developed despite intensive training after age 13
- “Father take piece wood. Hit. Cry.”
- However some argue that difficulty learning language may be due to inhumane treatment rather than linguistic deprivation per se
2) Evidence for the sensitive period of language acquisition comes from recovery after brain damage
- Children that sustain brain damage to language areas usually recover full language capability
- Children’s brains are highly plastic; other parts of the developing brain can take over language functions
- Adults that sustain brain damage to language areas are more likely to suffer permanent language impairment
- More mature brain is less plastic
3) Evidence for the sensitive period of language acquisition comes from deaf individuals which is one of the strongest evidence
- Researchers tested 2 groups of deaf adults:
1. No exposure to language during early childhood (i.e., born deaf)
2. Learned spoken language during early childhood (i.e., became deaf at a certain point in their childhood)
- Both groups began learning American sign language (ASL) in school between ages of 9-15
- Results showed that those with exposure to language in infancy, even though spoken, performed better on language task than those
with no language exposure
- People in group 2 where more proficient in the language task, which suggest that some sort of acquisition of language before puberty is
important
- Follow-up study tested deaf adults that had exposure to ASL in early childhood
- Performance of deaf adults with early exposure to ASL was the same as deaf adults with exposure to spoken language
- Shows that exposure to language, regardless of modality, in infancy is critical for full language development
- Both studies show that any form of language acquisition in early childhood (actual or ASL) lead to better performance in language
tasks
4) Evidence for the sensitive period of language acquisition comes from second language learners
- Performance on an English test by Chinese and Korean immigrants was related to the age at which they first arrived in the USA
- i.e., People that arrived in the US in childhood (<7 years old) had similar English proficiency as native learners
- Shows that language proficiency is related to first age of exposure to that language
- Language performance is highly variable when a language is learned after puberty
There are two implications of the sensitive period:
1) Deaf children should be exposed to sign language as young as possible to develop native-like ability
2) Second-language proficiency is related to first exposure to that language
- Foreign language exposure at school should begin as early as possible to maximize opportunity to achieve native-like ability

Summary of nature vs. nurture:

Universal Grammar Hypothesis —> Humans are biologically programmed to acquire language
Birth-before puberty —> Sensitive period for language acquisition
Many aspects of language are difficult to learn after this period
Language development is thus governed by both nature (sensitive period) and nurture (language exposure is critical during this period)
 - 7% of Canadians are English-French bilingual
- 20% of Canadians’ first language is neither English nor French
- 55% of Montrealers are English-French bilingual
Being monolingual is anormal, since the majority of the world is bilingual
“Monolingual brain” hypothesis —> Belief that infants’ brains are programmed to be monolingual and that they treat input in 2 languages
as if it were one language
- Bilingualism stretches limited processing capacity of infants
-Implications of this hypothesis was that if a child is bilingual from birth, children will confuse their languages and could result in language
delays
- Therefore it lead to people thinking that being bilingual would lead to language disorder
Study on bilingual learning begins in the womb —> Tested 2 groups of newborn infants
1. Some infants were born to bilingual English-Tagalog mothers
2. Other infants were born to monolingual English mothers
- Preferential high amplitude sucking procedure was used where:
- They exposed infants to Tagalog and English sentences
- They measured rate of sucking on a pacifier in which more intense sucking indicates preference for one language
- Results showed that English monolingual newborns had a preference for English
- Results also showed that English-Tagalog bilingual newborns had no preference for either language
- Suggests that bilingual infants start learning about two native languages pre-birth
- Limitation of this study was that the no increased in sucking may have not been due to the baby unable to differentiate between the
languages, they they did Study #2
Study #2 on if babies can discriminate between the two native languages —> Tested 2 groups of newborn infants
1. Some infants were born to bilingual English-Tagalog mothers
2. Some infants were born to monolingual English mothers
- Discrimination high amplitude sucking procedure was used where:
- Habituation —> Both groups habituated to English or Tagalog until sucking declined
- Test —> Hearing sentences in new language
- Can they tell the difference between old and new language?
- If yes, then will show increased sucking
- If no, then no change in sucking
- Results show that both bilingual babies and monolingual babies differentiated between Tagalog and English
- Shows that bilingual infants can differentiate between native languages despite showing similar preference for both languages
Suggests that bilingual infants are developing two separate language systems
- Rather than confusing 2 languages
- This goes against “monolingual brain” hypothesis
Evidence for two separate language system:
1) Language development in bilingual vs. monolingual children is very similar
- They say their first word roughly at the same time (i.e., 12 months)
- They have about the same vocabulary size when considering both languages
- Smaller vocabulary in each language separately vs. monolinguals
- e.g., Bilingual would know 25 words of language A & 25 words of language B, whereas monolingual would know 50 words
2) Children select language they use based on conversational partner
3) In general, language mixing in bilinguals is normal
- Bilingualism is not a sign of confusion because they may simply follow the norm which is around them
- 90% of bilingual parents mix their languages in speech
 - Bilingual children perform better on measures of executive functioning and cognitive flexibility than monolingual children
- Bilingualism seems to delay onset of Alzheimer’s in older adults, since in Alzheimer’s the first function to degrade is executive
functioning
- Bilingual individuals have to quickly switch between languages, both in comprehension and production
- This serves as practice in cognitive flexibility
- This also improves executive functioning
Implication of bilingualism should be that schools should support learning both native and non-native language from a young age

Summary of growing up bilingual:

Contrary to monolingual brain hypothesis, bilingual children simultaneously acquire a linguistic system for each of their languages
Start learning both (or more) languages of the family in the womb
Bilingual language development is very similar to monolingual
development
Emotions —> Combination of physiological and cognitive responses to experiences
- Neural response —> Amygdala activation, release of cortisol & adrenaline
- Physiological factors —> Increase heart rate, nausea
- Subjective feelings —> Recognition of danger, feeling of fear
- Emotional expression —> Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, mouth pulled back
- Urge to take action —> Lock the door, run away, defend home
Discrete emotions theory (innate theory) —> Neurological and biological systems have evolved to allow humans to experience and express
a set of basic emotions
- Basic emotions are happiness, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise
- These emotions come very early in life (i.e., first year in life)
- Basic emotions are important for survival and communication
- Emotional responses are largely automatic
- Evidence comes from basic emotions are universal across cultures and basic emotions are present from infancy
We know what a baby is feeling because of coding schemes;
- Coding schemes —> Systems of coding facial cues have been developed to make interpretations of infants’ emotions more objective
- Link particular facial expressions and facial muscle movements with particular emotions
Basic emotion of happiness in infancy —> Can be seen via smiling, raised cheeks, eyes squinting
Basic emotion of anger in infancy —> Can be seen via strongly furrowed brow that comes down in the center, open square-shaped
mouth, sometimes baring teeth and flared nostrils
At birth, infants experience 2 general emotional states:
- Positive —> Indicated by approach behaviour
- Negative/ distress —> Indicated by crying or withdrawal behaviour
Basic emotions emerge in a predictable sequence over the first year of life
Adaptive function of happiness —> Adaptive because motivates us to approach situations that are likely to
increase chances of survival
From birth —> Smiles are reflexive and evoked by biological states
- e.g. being satiated or during sleep
2-3 months —> Social smiles emerge
- Usually in interactions with parents
- Promote care from caregivers and foster bonding
5 months —> Infant’s first laugh
- At 5 months old, laugh at bodily noises but at 4 years old laugh at jokes
Adaptive function of anger —> Adaptive because helps us defend ourselves against threats and to overcome obstacles to our goals
- 4 months —> Infants begin to express anger
- Steadily increases in intensity over next year
- 24 months —> Peak in tendency to react with anger
- Tantrums in “terrible twos”
- Frequency of anger declines after this likely due to greater ability to express self with language and improved emotion regulation skills
- As children get older, are better able to match anger to situation
- Angrier if hurtful action was intentional vs. unintentional
Adaptive function of fear —> Expressions of fear are adaptive because motivates escape from danger or solicits protection from
caregivers
- 7 months —> Infants begin to express fear
- 8 months —> Fear of strangers and separation anxiety emerge
 - 3-5 years old —> Fear imaginary creatures
- 7+ years old —> Fears related to everyday situations
Adaptive function of surprise —> Adaptive because indicates that the world is working contrary to expectations and is thus important for
learning
- Emerges in the first year
- Violation of expectation paradigm relies on this basic emotion
Adaptive function of sadness —> Adaptive because elicits care and comfort from caregiver in reaction to a loss
- Often elicited in similar situations to anger
- Emerges in the first year
- Once object permanence has been acquired then sadness can be acquired, since with object permanence you can understand
that you had something & no longer now
- Usually in reaction to being separated from parents
Adaptive function of disgust —> Adaptive because helps us avoid potential poisons or bacteria
- Emerges in first year
- Children often learn what to react to with disgust based on parents’ reactions
- First expressions of disgust are often directed towards food
Self-conscious emotions —> Emotions such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, empathy that come online when 2 factors are met
1) A child has a sense of self separate from other people
- Emerges around 18 month of age, since self-awareness is when there kid passes rouge test
2) An appreciation of what adults expect of them
- Self conscious emotions emerges around 2 years of age
- Culture influences the frequency and type of self-conscious emotions that are most likely to be experienced
- Individualistic cultures —> More likely to experience pride
- Collectivistic cultures —> More likely to experience guilt and shame
Guilt and shame are often elicited by similar situations but are distinct emotional reactions
- Guilt —> Feelings of regret about one’s behaviour associated with desire to “fix” the consequences of that behaviour
- Shame —> Self-focused feeling of personal failure associated with desire to hide
- Generally, guilt is healthier than shame
Expressions of guilt and shame can be distinguished at 2 years of age
- When 2 year olds play with a doll that has been rigged so that one leg falls off during play, they showed different reactions:
- Guilt —> Trying to fix the doll and quickly told the adult about the “accident”
- Shame —> Didn’t try to fix the doll, avoided the adult and delayed telling them about the “accident”
Parental reactions to children’s actions influence which emotion a child experiences:
- Child is more likely to feel guilt, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the action (e.g., “You did a bad thing”)
- Child is more likely to feel shame, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the child (e.g., “You’re a bad boy/girl”)

SUMMARY OF DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Basic emotions are biologically based and have evolved to enable survival and communication
6 universal basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise disgust
Emotions develop in a predictable sequence
- All basic emotions are present by the end of the first year
- Self-conscious emotions develop around 2 years old once an infant has a sense of self and appreciation of others’ expectations of them

Identifying emotions in adults’ faces comes before identifying own emotions

Rudimentary recognition of others’ emotions emerges very early in life
 -7 month olds can distinguish expressions of fear and sadness
Recognizing parents’ emotions enables social referencing
Social referencing —> Use of parents’ facial expressions and tone of voice to decide how to deal with novel/ ambiguous situations
Social Referencing and Visual Cliff experiment
- Parent’s facial expression matters:
- 0% of babies cross if parent looks scared
- 75% of babies cross if parent looks happy
- Demonstrates that:
- Children can distinguish between emotional expressions
- Children rely on parents’ reactions to figure out how to react to a situation themselves (social referencing)
3 years old —> Rudimentary ability to identify and label emotions in others and self
- Initially describe feeling “good” vs. “feeling bad”
- Ability to label emotions improves over early childhood
5 years old —> Understand that people can experience more than one emotion at a time (i.e., understand mixed emotions)
- 3 year olds don’t understand this
5 years old —> Begin to understand that a person’s facial expressions do not necessarily match what they’re really feeling (i.e., understand
fake vs. real emotions)
Study on understanding real vs. fake emotions —> Children hear story about child forgetting her favourite toy for a sleep over but that
she doesn’t want to show how she feels
- 5 year olds know that the child will be sad but will be showing happiness on her face
- 3 year olds think that the child will be showing sadness
Improvement in understanding false emotions due to greater understanding of display rules
- Display rules —> Social norms about when, where, and how much one should show emotions and which emotions are appropriate in a
given context
- Crucial for successful social interactions
- Understanding false emotions also allows children to fake emotions themselves

Emotion regulation —> Set of conscious and unconscious processes used to manage emotional experiences and expressions
- Develops gradually during childhood
Co-regulation —> Parents’ regulate infants’ distress through soothing or distraction (e.g., tap in the head, “shhhhh” sounds)
- Necessary because infants cannot regulate their own emotions
5 month olds —> Infant show rudimentary emotion regulation skills
- Self-comforting behaviours —> Repetitive actions that create a mildly positive sensation (e.g., sucking their thumb)
- Self-distraction —> Looking away from the upsetting stimulus
Over the course of the first few years of life, children learn to rely more on self-distraction rather than self-comforting behaviours
- e.g. play as a distraction
Beginning in middle childhood (6-8 years old), children also rely on cognitive strategies and problem-solving
- e.g. thinking of a situation in a different way, telling themselves it’s going to be okay, addressing a conflict with a friend
- Cognitive strategies is the most advanced strategy & problem-solving is the least advanced strategy
Children that have good emotion regulation skills:
- Have higher well-being
- Are more socially skilled and are liked better by their peers and teachers
- Poor regulation skills put kids at risk for bullying
- Do better in school
Motor development improve self-regulation:
 - Children internalize this expectation and comply
Cognitive development improves emotion regulation
- Kids think situation in a new way (e.g., symbolic thinking)

Study on if adolescents are more moody —> Experience-sampling method was used —> Adolescents and adults wore a pager that
beeped at random times where they reported on mood when it beeped
- Results showed that adolescents report more frequent high-intensity emotions than adults
- BOTH more intense negative and positive emotions
- Results also showed that intense moods last less long compared to adults
- Shows that adolescents are indeed more “moody” than adults
Longitudinal study on emotional changes in adolescence —> Adolescents rated emotions during each day of the school week for 3
weeks where they did this every 5 years (13 years old to 18 years old)
- Results showed that happiness seemed to decrease over adolescence
- Anger, sadness & anxiety increased, especially true for girls
- Anger however seemed to decreased towards ends of adolescence (i.e., 18 years old)
Implications of this study (on emotional changes in adolescence):
- Gender differences in emotional experience in adolescents
- Increases in sadness and anxiety in adolescence are normal
- Struggles to cope with these changes can lead to the development of depression and anxiety disorders
- Can be difficult to distinguish between normal changes in adolescent emotional experience vs. mental health issues
Risk-taking in adolescents is common during this period where teenagers have more impulsivity increases during early adolescence, which
peaks in middle/late adolescence, and then declines in adulthood
- This is found across cultures and historical time (i.e., it is universal)
Motor vehicle deaths in 2016 in USA —> Once you are allowed to get your driving license at 16, driving accidents increase
tremendously until the age of 24 in which it then slowly decreases
- This is due to impulsivity in driving & risk taking behaviors (e.g., drunk driving)
Adolescents take more risk due to the results of changes in 2 important brain regions involved in decision-making
1) Limbic system —> Involved in emotional and reward processing
- Reward processing in limbic system is heightened in adolescence
- Due to synaptogenesis of dopamine receptors
- Degree of nucleus accumbens activation during reward anticipation is positively correlated with self-reported risk-taking in
daily life
2) Prefrontal cortex —> Involved in goal-directed behaviors, deliberation, & inhibitory control
- Synaptic pruning and myelination in prefrontal cortex (PFC) until mid-20s
- Myelination —> Thickening of myelin sheath surrounding axons which increases speed of neural signal transmission
- Immature prefrontal cortex associated with difficulties with inhibition, impulse control, and planning
Implications of these two major changes:
- Adolescents take more risks because of a maturational imbalance between their limbic system and prefrontal cortex
- BUT, from evolutionary perspective, risk-taking is a good thing since it promotes independence by trying new experiences

SUMMARY UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONS, DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTIONAL REGULATION & EMOTIONS IN ADO:

Rudimentary emotional recognition begins in early infancy
Emotional recognition enables social referencing
Age 3 —> Children begin to label emotions in others
Age 5 —> Children begin to understand that emotions can be mixed and that emotional expressions don’t necessarily match how someone
 - Initially rely on co-regulation but beginning at 5 months are able to engage in some self-regulation
Emotion regulation skills have massive consequences for children’s psychological, social and academic well-being
Adolescents are more emotional and take more risks than adults
- Due to maturational imbalance in limbic and prefrontal brain areas

Family, especially parents, play a huge role in children’s emotional development:

- Parent’s expression of emotions
- Indirect influence on emotional development
- Parent’s reactions to children’s emotions
- Direct influence on emotional development
Parents’ emotional expression serve as a model of when and how to express emotions
Children who grow up with parents that tend to not show emotions tend to:
- Not express emotions themselves
- Learn to see emotions as “bad” —> Unacceptable to show (Men gender bias where men shouldn’t show emotions)
- Have trouble identifying and understanding emotions in self and others
- Struggle with regulating intense emotions
Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of positive emotions tend to:
- Express more positive emotions themselves
- Be well-adjusted
- Be socially skilled
Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of negative emotions tend to:
- Experience and express more negative emotions themselves
- Be less socially competent
- Have poorer emotion regulation skills
Parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions directly influence children’s emotional development, where there are 2 main reactions
1) Mirroring —> Behaviours in which a parent reflects the emotions of their child back to them
- Conveyed through verbal and non-verbal cues
- Contingent responding to the infant
- Quick responsiveness to infant’s behaviour where parent has to mirror very quickly/immediate response to the kids emotion
- Characterized by warmth
- e.g., A baby looks upset. The parent also furrows their eyebrows and frown.
- e.g., A child begins pouting over a change in family plans. The family won’t be going to the park anymore. The parent says, “You look
sad. Youhave tears in your eyes and your face is turning red.”
- e.g., A child feels very anxious about an upcoming test. The parent says “You seem worried and upset about the test. I sometimes feel
the same way when I have a big thing to do at work.”
- Mirroring important because it is very validating to the child’s emotion & normalizes the child’s emotion
- Mirroring is also important because it helps the child identify & understand their emotions
- Still-face paradigm —> Lab procedure in which a parent goes through a repetitive sequence with their child in which they:
- Have 2 mins of play with infant and 2 mins of “still face” (i.e., No reaction to infant)
- Infants quickly become distressed in reaction to still-face and this distress increases with each still-face “episode”
- Infants are attuned to parents’ emotions
- Distressed when parent doesn’t react as expected
- Often engage in self-distraction
2) Emotional coaching —> Instruction to teach children how to cope with, regulate, and appropriately express emotions
- e.g., “You seem worried and upset about the test. I think you’ll feel better with a bit of studying. Let’s do the first step together.”
 your words instead to tell her that you’re frustrated.”
A supportive/sensitive reaction —> Mirroring + Emotional coaching
The ideal way to react to children’s emotions —> Validates child’s emotions, Helps the child understand their emotions, Fosters emotional
regulation, Associated with higher self-esteem, Fosters social competence, Associated with better performance in school
Example of a child feels anxious about an upcoming test & the parents reactions to children’s emotions
- Supportive/sensitive —> “You seem worried and upset about the test. I sometimes feel the same way when I have a big thing to do
at work. I think you’ll feel better with a bit of studying. Let’s do the first step together”
- Critical (no mirroring & no emotional coaching) —> In an angry tone. “What’s wrong with you? You always get like this before a
test and then you get a bad grade.”
- Dismissive (coaching but not mirroring) —> “You’re fine. There’s no need to be nervous. You’ll just study and it’ll be ok”
- No mirroring since there is no validation of the child’s emotion from the caregiver (i.e., parent)
- Over-validating (mirroring but not coaching) —> Parent looks anxious. “OMG! The test is next week! You must be so nervous.
You have so much material to study. Where do we even begin?”
- A lot of validation of emotion thus mirroring is present, but the parent provides no way to deal with this emotions thus no coaching
Implications of lack of effective emotional reaction;
- Parents who dismiss or criticize communicate to their children that their feelings are not valid
- Parents who “over-validate” their children’s reaction communicate to their children that emotions are over-whelming and can’t be
managed
- Children who grow up with parents that habitually dismiss, criticize, or “over-validate” are likely to be:
- Less socially competent
- Less emotionally competent
Why do parents react the way they do;
- Cultural differences —> Collectivistic cultures tend to be less expressive than independent cultures
- Reactions to specific emotions differ by cultures —> e.g., Reactions to shame in independent vs. collectivistic cultures
- Extent to which parental reactions match cultural norms matters
- e.g., Dismissive parenting is not associated with poorer social competence in places where controlling emotional expression,
rather than being expressive, is valued
- Generational differences in norms for emotional expression —> The way we approach to emotions tend to change with time
- e.g., Men expressing their emotions is normalizing & encouraged compared to 50 years ago
- Family reactions to emotions when parents themselves were children
- Intergenerational transmission of emotional reactions and regulation
- Parents’ mood and emotions in the moment
- Harder to be supportive if parent is having a bad day

SUMMARY OF INFLUENCE OF FAMILY

- Parents influence children’s emotional development indirectly through their own emotional expression and directly through their use of
mirroring and emotional coaching
- Infants become very distressed when parents do not react to them in still-face paradigm
- How parents react to children’s emotions has important consequences for their psychological, social and academic well-being
- Many different social factors influence which emotions a parent displays and how they react to their children’s emotions

Review of emotional development:

Emergence of emotions
- Basic emotions —> Sadness, anger, disgust, happiness, surprise
 - At 18 months old —> Guilt & shame are emotions that are developed since a kid can recognize his self (i.e., pass the rouge test)
Discrete emotion theory —> Evolutionary basis to basic emotions
The role of parents in shaping children’s emotional experience
- Modeling
- Mirroring —> In order to find out emotions the caregiver of the child must mirror the emotions
e.g., Child makes sad face —> Parent makes sad face & states “oh you look sad” —> Child figures out this ‘new’ emotion
Teenagers emotional experiment
- Some truth to stereotypes —> They tend to be more moody & risk-taking
- More risk-taking due to limbic system being more developed (i.e., synaptogenesis of dopamine neurons) + development of prefrontal
cortex
Emotional recognition
- Infants can distinguish between basic emotions (as seen in the habituation paradigm)
- Age 5 —> Understand fake emotions + Understand people can feel multiple emotions simultaneously (i.e., mixed emotions)
- Emotional recognition is important for social referencing —> How to act in a certain situation
- e.g., Kid falling & parent doesn’t act like its big of a deal = Kid also act like its not big of a deal
Emotion regulation
- At brith —> Kids rely on co-regulation —> Rely on caregiver to soothe their emotions
- At 5 months old —> Kids have rudimentary self regulation strategies such as self-talk & looking away
Temperament —> Individual differences in emotion, self-regulation, activity level and attention that are consistent over time and across
contexts
- Present from infancy thus thought to be genetically-based
- The reason why kids show very different reactions to the same situation
According to Thomas et al. There are 3 ways to categorize babies according to their temperament;
1) Easy babies —> Adjust easily to new situations, quickly establish daily routines such as sleep and eating, and generally are cheerful in
mood and easy to calm
- 40% of babies
2) Difficult babies —> Slow to adjust to new experiences, tend to react negatively and intensely to novel stimuli and events, irregular in
their daily routines and bodily functions
- 10% of babies
3) Slow-to-warm-up babies —> Somewhat difficult at first but become easier over time as they have repeated contact with new
objects, people, and situations
- 15% of babies
- However 35% of the babies weren’t accounted for because of this being a categorical approach which would mean that those 35%
of babies did not fit in any of those categories, this suggested researchers to push for a dimensional approach
The dimensional approach to temperament had 5 key dimensions of temperament which is assessed using;
- Parent and/or teacher responses to questions assessing each dimensions
- Observing how kids react to lab tasks designed to assess each dimension
1) Smiling and laughter —> Positive emotional response to a change in a stimulus
2) Distress (in infancy)/ anger (in childhood) —> Negative emotional response related to having an ongoing task interrupted/blocked
3) Fear —> Tendency to experience unease or nervousness to new situations
4) Attention span —> Attention to an object or task for an extended period of time
5) Activity level —> Rate and extent of gross motor body movements
Consistency of temperament —> Temperament is largely consistent/stable over time
- However some changes in temperament over time is possible, especially the younger the child is
Nature & temperament —> Strong genetic basis for temperament
- Monozygotic twins have more similar temperaments than dizygotic twins
Nurture & temperament —> Home environment also influences temperament
- Parents’ emotional expression and reactions to children’s emotions have a profound effect on their emotions and emotion regulation
There is a strong correlation between a parents temperament & the child’s temperament compared to the infants temperament vs. when this
infant becomes an adult temperament
Children contribute to their own emotional development through their temperament
Some children are easier to parent than others
- e.g., Children with difficult temperament require more patience from a parent

Differential susceptibility hypothesis —> Some children are highly sensitive to both negative AND positive environmental conditions
- “At risk” temperament+ negative home environment = negative outcomes
- “At risk” temperament + positive home environment = positive outcomes
Dandelions & orchids analogy —> Idea that some kids are like dandelions, where dandelions are very resilient regardless of the
environmental changes, & some kids are like orchids, where orchids thrive in specific conditions only
- Orchids are the more ‘beautiful’ flower as long as they have the specific requirements/conditions
- Dandelions thrive regardless of the home environment, & thus this doesn’t impact them as much
Negativity & childcare —> Children with more difficult/negative temperaments have:
 - Therefore they do exceptionally well if raised in the right environment
- An ‘X’ graph shows there is a differential susceptibility
Impulsivity & harsh parenting —> Children with impulsive temperaments have:
- Higher levels of alcohol abuse in adolescence if raised in harsh families
- BUT have the lowest levels of alcohol abuse if raised in positive family environments
Implications of Differential Susceptibility:
- Children’s temperament and the environment they grow up in jointly determine their outcomes
- While all kids benefit most from sensitive parenting, this style of parenting is particularly important for children that are more reactive to
their environment (orchids)

SUMMARY OF TEMPERAMENT & FIT BETWEEN CHILDREN & PARENTS:

- Children contribute to their own emotional development through their temperament
- Temperament is largely stable across contexts and time
- Temperament is largely determined by genetics, but environmental factors also play a role
- Children with “at risk” temperaments show differential susceptibility, such that they do poorly in negative home environments but thrive
in positive home environments
- Other children are more resilient and less sensitive to their environment

Attachment —> An emotional bond with a specific person that is enduring across space and time
Behaviorist view of attachment —> Pleasure derived from food is the basis of mother-infant bond
- Food = unconditioned stimulus
- Mother = conditioned stimulus linked with food
Harry Harlow & monkey surrogates experiment —> Tested whether pleasure of food or pleasure of comfort is most important to infant
monkeys
- Separated monkeys from their mothers and offered them 2 “surrogate mothers”:
- Wire “mother” —> Provides with food
- Cloth “mother”—> Provides no food
- Results showed monkeys spent most of their time on the cloth mother than the wire mother
- Evidence that infants needed comfort provided by cloth mother
John Bowlby —> Psychoanalyst who studied intense emotional distress of children orphaned during WWII
- Recognized that:
- Distress due to separation from parents and not having emotional needs met
- Behaviours observed (e.g., crying, clinging, searching) are adaptive responses to separation from an attachment figure
Bowlby’s attachment theory —> Children are biologically predisposed to develop attachment to caregivers as a means of increasing
chances of their survival
Attachment system —> Caregiver is close & life is good = Attachment system inactive —> Separated from caregiver or bad event —>
Seek proximity = Attachment system active
- Distress from a “threat” or separation from caregiver motivates children to seek proximity to a caregiver
4 features of the attachment system:
1) Proximity maintenance and seeking —> Children are biologically motivated to stay close to caregiver
2) Separation distress —> Children become distressed when separated from caregiver
- This activates attachment system, motivating child to seek proximity to caregiver
- e.g. Looking for caregiver, seeking physical proximity, crying, clinging
3) Safe haven —> Caregiver provides comfort and a sense of safety when child feels distressed
- Caregiver helps manage arousal through co-regulation
 - Cannot explore the environment is attachment system is activated

Bowlby’s attachment theory also states that development and quality of child’s attachments are highly dependent on their experiences with
caregivers
Marry Ainsworth —> Provided empirical evidence of attachment theory by developing the Strange Situation procedure
- Paradigm designed to systematically assess children’s attachment to a specific caregiver
The strange situation
1) Caregiver and child shown unfamiliar room with toys
2) Caregiver and child left alone in room
3) Stranger enters; tries to interact with child
4) Caregiver leaves child alone with stranger; stranger allows child to play/offers comfort
5) Caregiver returns and stranger leaves; caregiver allows child to play/offers comfort
6) Caregiver leaves child alone
7) Stranger enters; stranger allows child to play/offers comfort
8) Caregiver returns
Reaction to reunion episodes are the most important to assess attachment
4 Attachment styles from the reaction to the strange situation
1) Secure —> Uses parent as secure base, Upset at separation, Seeks parent at reunion and is easily soothed by the parent
- 60% of the kids
2) Insecure/Avoidant —> Readily separates to explore, Avoids or ignores the parent, Does not prefer the parent to the
stranger
- 15% of the kids
3) Insecure/Resistant —> Does not separate to explore, Wary of the stranger even when the parent is present, Extremely
upset at separation, Not soothed by the parent and resists the parent’s attempts to soothe
- 10% of the kids
4) Insecure/ Disorganized —> No consistent way of coping, Behaviour is confused and contradictory, Often freezes and
dissociates, Seem to want to approach caregiver but see them as source of fear
- 15% of the kids
Attachment styles replicated in several studies
Attachment styles are universal with approximately the same frequencies
Remains standard measure of children’s attachment style
Attachment styles in Strange Situation strongly correlated with attachment behaviour at home

Determinants of attachment styles:

1) Parenting —> Correlation between parental sensitivity/support and child’s attachment style
I) Parents of securely attached children —> Parent’s behavior is supportive/sensitive, Affectionate and expresses frequent
positive emotions towards child, Initiates frequent close contact with the child
 child’s bids for contact, May be angry or impatient
- Child learns that —> Proximity seeking is not a good strategy to soothe distress
- “Deactivates” attachment system —> Avoid proximity of caregiver when distressed
- Cope with distress by hiding it or avoiding situations that elicit distress
III) Parents of resistantly attached children —> Inconsistently available and sensitive in reacting to child’s distress, Seems
overwhelmed with caregiving
- Child learns that —> Proximity is sometimes a good strategy to soothe distress
- Hyperactivates attachment system —> Hyper-vigilance to threat, Excessive proximity-seeking of caregiver when
distressed, Cope with distress by heightening it (e.g., Crying louder, throwing a tantrum, clinging)
IV) Parents of disorganized attached children —> Confuses or frightens child, May be harsh or abusive, Often struggle with
severe mental health issues
- Child learns that —> Proximity seeking often results in feeling scared, Caregiver is extremely unpredictable and cannot be
trusted
2) Genetics —> No evidence that specific genes are related to attachment styles BUT evidence for differential susceptibility
- Genetic differential susceptibility study —> Conducted in Ukrainian preschoolers where they examined the relationship between;
I) Attachment
II) Rearing environment —> Raised in orphanage vs. with family
III) Variations in serotonin transporter gene —> S allele (vs. L allele) associated with greater reactivity to stress
- Results showed that children with at least one S allele (vs. 2L alleles) had;
- More attachment disorganization if raised in institution
- BUT less attachment disorganization if raised with family
- ss/sl alleles = Orchids vs. ll alleles = Dandelions
- Suggests that “at risk” genes and negative parenting work together to determine vulnerability to insecure attachment

Benefits of Secure Attachment

Children that are securely attached vs. insecurely attached:
- Are more emotionally expressive (in appropriate ways)
- Experience more positive emotion
- Are less anxious and depressed
- Are less likely to have behavioural problems, like aggression and delinquency
- Have closer relationships with peers later in childhood
- Show more empathy and helping behaviour
- Are more socially competent in general
- Do better in school
- Have more positive romantic experiences in adolescence and adulthood
A child can form different attachment styles for different parents, however research shows that having one secure attachment style is enough
Having at least one secure attachment seems to buffer against the negative effects of insecure attachment
- Children with insecure attachment to both parents had more behaviour problems than children with insecure attachment to just one parent
Bowlby’s Attachment Theory —> Children are biologically predisposed to develop attachment to caregivers as a means of increasing
chances of their survival
- Development and quality of child’s attachments are highly dependent on their experiences with caregivers
- The quality of children’s attachments shape their internal working models
Internal working models —> Mental representations of the self, of attachment figures, and of relationships in general
- Constructed as a result of experiences with caregivers
- Act as a filter through which interactions with the caregiver and other attachment figures are interpreted
 X-axis represents —> Model of self
- Am I worthy of love?
Y-axis represents —> Model of others
- Can others be relied on for support
Secure —> +, +
Avoidant —> +, -
Resistant/anxious —> -, +
Disorganized —> -, -

SUMMARY OF ATTACHMENT STYLES:

- According to Bowlby, attachment is biologically based and rooted in evolution
- Using the Strange Situation, children can be classified into 4 attachment styles —> secure, avoidant, resistant, disorganized
- Attachment styles are primarily shaped by experiences with caregivers
- Secure attachment is associated with sensitive, responsive parenting
- But, research also shows that children are differentially susceptible to negative parenting
- Attachment style has a profound impact on children’s social and emotional development
- Secure attachment is associated with many positive outcomes
- The quality of children’s attachments shape their internal working models which guide their expectations and behaviours in relationships
throughout life

Study of early child care & youth development (SECCYD) —> Longitudinal study conducted across 10 cities in the USA examining
the effects of childcare on attachment
- Studied 1364 children from birth to adolescence
- Measured:
- Childcare setup
- Children’s attachment to mother using Strange Situation
- Quality of mother’s interactions with children
- Children’s social behaviour and cognitive development
- Results of the SECCYD
- Attending daycare had no effect on attachment security
- 15-month olds in childcare were just as likely to be securely attached to their mothers as children not in childcare
- Maternal sensitivity was the strongest predictor of children’s attachment security
- Aspects of childcare only had an effect on attachment security if child experienced “risks” in home
- Low maternal sensitivity + poor quality childcare = less secure
- Low maternal sensitivity + high quality childcare = more secure
Implications of child care:
- Childcare does not undermine parent-child attachment security
- Childcare can compensate for negative parenting experiences at home by promoting attachment security
Review of attachment & emotional development
Emotional development
- Temperament —> Strongly genetically based
- Ideal parenting has a lot for mirroring & emotional coaching
- Differential susceptibility —> Dandelions & Orchids
- Orchids are more reactive to their environment for the better & worse
Attachment
- Strange situation
- 4 attachment styles —> Secure, Avoidant, Resistant, Disorganized
- Parenting influences on attachment styles
- Avoidant child = Parent unavailable
- Secure child = Parent is validating & coaching
- Children’s genetics interact with parenting styles
Lecture 10: Family

Discipline —> The set of strategies parents use to teach their children how to behave appropriately
- Effective if child stops engaging in inappropriate behaviour and engages in appropriate behaviour instead
- Ideally leads to internalization
Internalization —> The process by which children learn and accept the reasons for desired behaviour
- Desired outcome of discipline
Fostering internalization —> Reasoning that focuses on the effects of a behaviour on someone else is best strategy for promoting
internalization
- e.g. “pulling someone’s hair is wrong because it hurts the other person’s body and feelings”
- Teaches empathy
- Most common form of discipline
- Reasoning has to be combined with psychological pressure to foster internalization
Amount of psychological pressure & its effect
- Too little —> Child disobeys and ignores message (e.g., In a calm tone “stop pulling your sister’s hair”)
- Too much —> Child is obedient but only because they feel forced to do it (e.g., In an angry tone “stop pulling your sister’s hair”)
- Will only comply if there is a risk of being caught, since they are only doing it because they’re forced to
- Just right —> Slightly raised voice and disapproving look is often enough
There are 2 dimensions of parenting;
Y-axis) Control/ discipline —> Extent to which parents monitor and manage their children’s behaviour through rules and
consequences
X-axis) Warmth/ sensitivity/ support —> Extent to which parents mirror their children and are responsive to them
1) Authoritative Parents —> High in support/warmth and control
- Attentive and responsive to child’s needs and concerns and respect the child’s perspective
- Set clear standards and limits for their children and are firm and consistent about enforcement
- But also allow autonomy within those limits
- Effect of Authoritative Parenting on Kids —> Self-confidence, Socially skilled, Have many friends and are well-liked, Behave in
accordance with adults’ expectations, Do well academically
2) Authoritarian parents —> High in control, but low in warmth
- Cold and unresponsive to child’s needs
- Expect child to comply with parent’s desires without question
- Exercise power by using threats, punishments, psychological control
- Effect of Authoritarian Parenting on Kids —> Creates hostility in children and a refusal to internalize parents’ message,
Lower in self-confidence, Higher levels of mental health problems, Lower social competence, more behavioural problems, like
aggression and delinquency
3) Permissive parenting —> High in warmth, but low in control
- Responsive to child’s needs and wishes but are overly lenient
- Do not require child to regulate themselves or act in appropriate ways
- Trying to be the child’s friend rather than parent
- Effect of Permissive Parenting on Kids —> Higher in impulsivity, More behavioural problems, like delinquency and aggression,
Low academic achievement
4) Uninvolved Parenting —> Low in control and warmth
- Generally disengaged from parenting
- No limits and no support
- Sometimes rejecting and neglectful
 social competence, Low academic achievement, More behavioural problems

SUMMARY OF PARENTING STYLES:

- Internalization of appropriate behaviour is fostered by reasoning and a sweet spot of psychological pressure
- Warmth x control creates 4 parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved
- Parenting style has an important impact on children’s outcomes
- Authoritative parenting style is best for promoting internalization, well-being and social competence

Parenting of Moms vs. Dads;

- Moms —> Spend on average, even those that work, 1.5 hours more with their children than dads
- More likely to provide physical care and emotional support to children
- Dads —> More likely to play with children
- Parenting by moms and parenting by dads are equally important and affect children in similar ways:
- Warmth and responsiveness from both is important for children’s mental health
There are many similarities about parenting across cultures
- All parents teach about good and bad behaviour very often and are least likely to use love withdrawal
- Love withdrawal —> Saying to their child they won’t like/love their child if they don’t or do X thing
However there are also some differences across cultures
- Italian parents are most likely to yell or scold
- Kenyan parents are most likely to threaten or use punishment, but least likely to take away privileges
Research comparing European American vs. Chinese parenting shows that:
- Authoritarian style is more likely to be used by Chinese parents and has few negative consequences on Chinese children
- Authoritative parenting is linked with positive outcomes in both European Americans and Chinese kids but this link is
stronger for European American kids
- Suggests that authoritative parenting is best across cultures, but authoritarian parenting is less harmful in cultures where that
is the norm
60% of children worldwide experience regular physical punishment
- Rates are higher in countries where authoritarian parenting is the norm
BUT, meta-analysis of studies across 50 years shows that the more children are spanked, the:
- Less they comply and the more aggressive they are
- More problematic relationship with parents
- More mental health problems they have
- Lower their self-esteem
These negative outcomes are found across cultural groups, thus research shows that speaking is bad
United Nations —> Spanking is a form of violence against children that violates human right to be protected from violence

Parent-child interactions tend to be bidirectional

- Each influences and reinforces the other’s behaviour
Baby smiles <——> Parent smiles
- Can create both positive and negative cycles
Coercive cycle:
Parent makes request or says no —> Child disobeys —> Parent gets angry & yells —> Childs yells/throws tantrum —> Parent yells —>
Parent gives up or succeeds —> Gives up: Reinforces child’s tantrum —>
Parent makes request or says no
—> Succeeds: Reinforces harsh parenting —>
The role of shared genetics —> Parents’ and children’s behaviour can also both be caused by the genes they share
- Although parenting influences child’s behavior & vice versa, shared genes is the third variable between those two factors
behaviour/outcomes could be due to parenting practices, children’s behaviour AND/OR shared genes
- Does not imply causation between parenting and children’s outcomes
- Parenting practices are not solely responsible for children’s outcomes
Only way of definitively showing bidirectional relationship between children’s behaviour and parenting practices is a longitudinal study

SUMMARY OF EFFECTS OF GENDER, CULTURE & CHILDREN ON PARENTING:

- Parenting provided by moms vs. dads tends to be different, but a warm, supportive relationship with both is important
- Parenting varies somewhat by culture, but spanking is psychological harmful across cultures
- Parents and children mutually influence each other’s behaviour

Average age of first-time moms in Canada is increasing:

- 2001: 27 years old
- 2016: 29 years old
“Older” first-time parents (vs. younger parents) tend to have:
- More education and higher income, Fewer children, Less likely to get divorced in first 10 years, & More positive parenting
More same-sex couples are becoming parents in Canada:
- 2001: 8.6% of same-sex couples raising children
- 2016: 12% of same-sex couples raising children
Children raised by same-sex parents are no different that children raised by different-sex parents:
- Similar mental health, social competence, sexual orientation, and academic achievement
- Shows that parenting style matters, not parents’ sexual orientation
35% - 42% of marriages end in divorce
- Peak in divorce in 1987 at 50%
Initially, a divorce/separation negatively impacts children’s well-being
- Kids show more depression, lower self-esteem, more behavioural problems, and do worse academically
Study on if child’s age affect their adjustments to divorce —> Followed families for 4 years to examine effect of timing of
divorce on children’s outcomes
- Divorce:
- No divorce
- Early divorce: parents divorced when child was in Grade 1-5
- Late divorce: parents divorced when child was in Grade 6-10
- Children’s outcomes:
- Internalizing symptoms: depression and anxiety
- Externalizing symptoms: aggression, non-obedience, impulsivity
- Academic performance
- Results for internalizing symptoms shows —> Younger kids whose parents divorced showed more internalizing symptoms
(vs. older kids and no divorce kids)
- Results for externalizing symptoms shows —> Younger kids whose parents divorced showed more externalizing
symptoms (vs. older kids and no divorce kids)
- Results for academic performance —> Older kids whose parents divorced had poorer academic performance (vs. younger kids
and no divorce kids)
- Suggests which areas parents should target to help their kids through a divorce
However, negative effects of divorce on children tend to not last long
- Differences in well-being of adults whose parents divorced in childhood vs. adults whose parents stayed married are very small
It must be noted that not all divorce are the same
 - Multiple changes —> e.g. divorce + new home + new neighbourhood + new school + remarriage
- Ongoing conflict between parents/ stepparents
- Puts child in the middle and in the role of mediator
- Children do better if parents are able to be civil and communicate directly with each other
- Children have an easier time adjusting to divorce if parents show high levels of warmth
Divorce can be a good thing if parents were engaged in a lot of conflict before getting divorced
- Kids’ psychological well-being improves after divorce if parents had a lot of conflict
Quality of sibling relationship matters
- Negative sibling relationships predict:
- More depression
- More social withdrawal
- More problem behaviours
There two main predictors of positive siblings relationship
1) Siblings treated equally by parents
- If favouring happens, the least favoured child’s well-being suffers
- Differential treatment less detrimental if child views it as justified
- Older siblings
- Collectivistic culture
2) Parents get along with each other
- Modelling a positive relationship with family member
Socioeconomic status also has a role in children’s development:
1) Low socioeconomic status negatively affects children’s development:
- Lower academic achievement
- More behaviour problems
- More depression and anxiety
- Reasons for the effect of low socioeconomic status in children’s development:
- Material hardships —> Kids are fighting for survival, where kids are worrying about if they are going to have a roof or food
- Negative effect of low socioeconomic status on parenting:
- Amount of time parents can spend with their child
- Creates stress which can lead to poor parental mental health, harsh parenting, and marital conflict
- Parents of low socioeconomic status are less at home to get money, thus there is less discipline
2) High socioeconomic status also negatively affects children’s development where they show elevated rates of:
- Drug and alcohol use
- Delinquent behaviour
- Depression and anxiety
- Reasons for the effect of high socioeconomic status in children’s development:
- Parents spending more time at work —> Child will think work is more important than them
- High pressure to achieve & excel —> Will see that their parents are high achievers which will create pressure for them do so as well
Implications of socioeconomic status & child development
- Similarities in adjustment outcomes for low and high socioeconomic status children
- Suggests more than one pathway to detrimental outcomes —> Growing up differently can still lead to similar outcomes

SUMMARY OF FAMILY STRUCTURES;

- Older parents tend to have a more positive parenting style
 thing
- Sibling relationships matter and siblings get along best if parents treat them equally + parents get along themselves
- Low and high SES are both risk factors for children’s adjustment

Review of family lecture:

4 parenting styles characterized by warmth & control
- Authoritative —> High in warmth & High in control
- Kids have the best outcomes with this parenting style, it is the ideal parenting style
- Authoritarian —> Low in warmth & High in control
- In places where this parenting style is the norm, the child outcomes are less detrimental
- Permissive —> High in warmth & Low in control
- Uninvolved —> Low in warmth & Low in control
Spanking is never helpful & actually leads to worse outcomes for kids
Family structure:
- Divorce: Child’s age affects how they are impacted (the earlier the divorce the more they would internalize this, the later the divorce the
more academically they are going to be impacted)
- Divorce tends to have a better effects if parents had a lot of conflicts
- Negative effects of divorce on kids are short-lived except if the divorce comes with many changes & high level of conflict
Older parents are more likely to show more positive parenting
Both lower & higher socioeconomic status is associated with negative outcomes for kids
Kids raised by same-sex parents show similar outcomes to kids raised by different sex parents
Siblings get along better if treated the same by parents for the exception of moderators (Kids that are older have an easier time
understanding why the younger sibling is getting more attention)
Play —> Voluntary activities done for inherent enjoyment, where play looks different depending on a child’s age
Non-social play —> Play that doesn’t involve the participation of peers, where this is composed of 3 stages
1) Unoccupied play —> Child briefly watches things around them, but nothing holds their attention for long
- Birth – 3 months
- e.g., A kid watching his mobile toys on tops of him
2) Solitary play —> Child is focused on their own activity and is uninterested in playing with others
- 3 months – 2 years old
3) Onlooker play —> Child watches other children’s play
- May ask questions, but won’t join in
- Begins around 2 years old
Social play —> Play that involves participation of peers, where this is composed of 3 stages
1) Parallel play —> Children play next to each other, possibly doing the same activity, but do not interact much
- Begins between in 2-3 years olds
2) Associative play —> Children play together, engaging sometimes, but have different goals
Begins between 3-4 years olds
3) Cooperative play —> Children play together and are working towards a common goal
- Begins 4+ years old
- e.g., Kids playing jump rope together
Play is critical for learning, especially development;
1) Social-emotional development —> Learn to cooperate, develops theory of mind
2) Cognitive development —> Practice problem-solving, learning about the world via trail & errors, develops language skills
3) Motor development —> Unoccupied play focuses on motor skills
How does teaching affect exploratory play study —> Participants were 4-6 years old where they were shown a toy with many plastic
tubes & 2 following conditions were played
- Accident —> Adults accidentally bumped into tube making a squeak
- Teaching —> Adults showed the child that the tube squeaks
- Results show that Children played longer and tried more different actions when the experimenter squeaked the toy accidentally
- Teaching discouraged the children from discovery during play
- Implications of this study; Letting children play spontaneously allows them to learn
- Adults can best support play (and learning) by following children’s lead and scaffolding play so that a child can build knowledge
themselves
UN recognizes child’s right “to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child”

Friend —> A person that’s not a relative with whom an individual has an intimate, reciprocated, and positive relationship
There are 2 main factors that determine children’s friendship
1) Similarity —> Age, Acceptance by peers, Personality (e.g. cooperativeness, shyness), Level of negative emotions, Academic motivation
2) Proximity —> Live in same neighborhood, Go to same school, Participate in same extracurricular activities
Kids are more likely to be friends with kids of the same sex
- This preference emerges around 3-4 years of age
- Peaks around age 13
Age 13: Time with opposite sex friends increases, especially for girls
1-2 years old —> Show preference of some children over others
- Touch them more often
- Smile more at them
 - e.g., imitating peers’ behaviours, cooperative problem solving, turn taking
- Emergence of parallel play
3-5 years old —> Kids have a concept of friendship
- Most kids have at least one friend
- Friendship defined as playing together
- But friends also have more conflict than non-friends
- More likely to cooperate out of conflict than non-friends
Emergence of preference for same gender peers (3-4 years of age)
5-8 years old —> Define friendship on basis of activities with peers
9 years old-12 years old —> Definition of friendship expands to include trust, care, and help
Adolescence —> Friendship primarily defined by self-disclosure and intimacy
- Age 13 —> Start having more friends of opposite sex
As children get older, gender differences emerge in what they want out of friendship
- Girls (vs. boys):
- Desire more closeness and dependency in friendships
- But com es with more worrying and stress about friendships
- Girls and boys show similar levels of conflict and stability in friendships

Sociometric status —> Degree to which children are liked vs. disliked by peers
- Measured by having children nominate peers in their class that they like (positive nominations) and peers in their class that they dislike
(negative nominations)
Each child is classified into one of 5 status groups:
- Popular, Rejected, Average, Neglected, Controversial
1) Popular Kids —> 11% of kids, Liked by many peers and disliked by few
- Tend to be:
- Socially skilled
- Good emotion-regulation skills
- Assertive, but not aggressive
- Tend to have factors that give them high status
- Attractive, athletic, have popular friends
2) Rejected Kids —> 13% of kids, Liked by few peers and disliked by many
- Tend to have fewer positive social skills compared to peers
I) Aggressive-rejected —> 40-50% of rejected kids, Tend to show high levels of hostility, threatening behaviour, physical aggression,
and delinquency
Aggressive —> Rejected —> Aggressive ….
II) Withdrawn-rejected —> 0-25% of rejected kids, Tend to be socially withdrawn, timid, and socially anxious, Frequently victimized
and feel lonely, isolated, depressed
Withdraw —> Rejected —> Withdraw …
3) Controversial Kids —> 7% of kids, Liked by many but also disliked by many
- Characteristics of rejected-aggressive and popular kids
- Aggressive, disruptive, and prone to anger
- Compensate for this with many positive social skills like being cooperative, sociable, and funny
4) Neglected Kids —> 9% of kids, Don’t receive many nominations (Not liked or disliked, Neutral/ not noticed)
- Less social and less disruptive than average children
- But not at risk for negative outcomes where they simply prefer solitary activities
 - More social than rejected and neglected kids, but not as social as popular and controversial kids
Stability of sociometric status:
- Short-term (a few weeks – a few months) —> Neglected or controversial children are likely to change status
- Popular, rejected, and average children tend to remain so
- Long-term (years) —> Sociometric status more likely to change
- Average and rejected status most stable
There are 2 main importance of having friendships in child years & teen years;
1) Provides social validation & support —> Especially important during transitions
- Kids tend to rely more on friends than parents around age 16
- Chronic friendlessness is associated with increased loneliness and depression
- Friendship buffers against negative experiences
Study on friends buffers against negative experiences —> Participants were 10-11 year olds reported on their negative experiences
over the course of 4 days
- After each experience, indicated:
- Self-worth —> How they felt about themselves
- Whether best friend was present or not
- Measured cortisol as an indicator of stress reaction
- Results showed if best friend was not present, more negative experiences associated with increased cortisol and lower self-worth
- But not if best friend was present
2) Fosters development of positive social skills —> Builds cooperation, empathy
- Gossip allows children to learn about social norms
- Important for relationships into adulthood
Study on longitudinal benefits of friendships —> Friendship assessed at age 10 and then follow-up at age 22
- At age 10, kids who had a best friend (vs. those that didn’t) were seen as:
- Less aggressive
- More popular/ well-liked
- At age 22, those that had a best friend at age 10:
- Were more successful in university
- Had better family and social lives
- Had high self-esteem and less anxiety & depression
- Shows that having a close friendship in childhood has both short-term and long-term benefits for social and psychological well-being
Implications of being rejected —> Rejected, especially aggressive-rejected, kids are at high risk for negative outcomes:
- More aggression, Delinquency in teens, Substance abuse, Continued unhealthy relationships, Less education, Limited work success,
Crime in adulthood
Deviancy training —> Negative peer pressure wherein peers model and reinforce aggression and deviance by making these behaviours seem
acceptable
- Kids that have aggressive/ delinquent friends are more likely to also become more aggressive and delinquent themselves
- Similar effect with alcohol and drug use
- Can begin as early as age 5
Selection effect —> Children choose peers that are similar to them
- Implies that kids choose and contribute to “the wrong crowd”
- Aggressive kids —> Aggressive friends —> Aggressive kids …

Parents can shape their children’s peer relationships in a positive way using two strategies:
1) Monitoring —> Parents decide whom children interact with and how much time they spend doing particular activities
The more age-appropriate monitoring + coaching, the more kids are socially competent and liked by peers
School interventions aim to improve children’s peer relationships by enhancing their emotional development
- Example: Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS)
- Aim to change how rejected children interact with peers
PATHS —> Learn to to identify emotional expressions, learn to think about the causes and consequences of different ways of expressing
emotions, and learn strategies for self-regulation
- Used in kids aged from 4 to 11
Children that participate in PATHS (vs. control) show:
- Improved emotion understanding and regulation
- Increased social problem-solving
- Decreased externalizing behaviour (aggression, acting out)
- Decreased depression

SUMMARY OF PEER RELATIONSHIPS:

- Children choose friends that are similar to them and in close proximity
- As children get older, they define friendship in different ways moving from defining friendship based on activities in early childhood to
based on self- disclosure in adolescence
- 5 sociometric status groups: popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, average
- Sociometric status is associated with different behavioural profiles
- Friendship is important for kids’ emotional and social development
- Friendship can be associated with negative outcomes through deviancy training and selection effects
- Parents’ monitoring and coaching and school interventions can help improve peer acceptance

Review of peer relationships:

Play
- Non-social vs. Social play
- Play looks different at different ages
Peer acceptance
- Neglected —> Not really noticed with few positive & negative emotions
- Prefer to keep to themselves but social skills are okay
- Popular —> Many positive nominations & a few negative nominations
- Good social skills & good emotion regulation skills
- High status characteristics
- Rejected —> Many negative nominations & a few positive nominations
- Aggressive-rejected or withdrawn-rejected
- Controversial —> Many positive & negative nominations
- Aggressive but also are capable of showing good social skills
- Average —> Average number of positive & negative nominations
Choosing friends
- Similarity + Proximity (i.e., People are more likely to be friends with people in their surrounding)
- Making friends start with playing together —> Shared activities —> Closeness
- Girls tend to prioritize closeness in their friendship
Friendships are important because they buffer against negative experience and provides support & validation
Morality —> How people should be interacting with each other in which it involves principles concerning the distinction between right/wrong
and good/bad behaviour
- Justice, Welfare, and Fairness are concepts that use morality as their building block
Morality of actions is ambiguous, in which we clearly know that killing people is immoral, however when we are presented with the trolly
problems there are no “right answers”
- e.g., Should you save the 5 people while killing 1, should you not rather touch the lever
Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning —> Development of moral judgment relies on cognitive development
- Interactions with peers also matter
- With age, children are increasingly able to appreciate the importance of intentions
- This is assessed moral judgement with short stories
- Interested in explanation for why an action is viewed as right or wrong
- Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning has 3 stages of moral judgement
1) Premoral
2) Heteronomous
3) Autonomous
- The stages are discontinuous where each represents a qualitatively different way of thinking
- Stages occurs in a fixed order where there is a brief transition between stages
1) Premoral stage —> Birth until 5 years old, Unaware of rules and thus unable to distinguish between right and wrong
2) Heteronomous stage —> 6-10 years old, kids view rules as absolute & cannot change & they view grown-ups as the one enforcing
the rules
- Morality = obeying rules of parents and other authority figures
- Breaking a rule will lead to imminent and severe punishment
- Rules are unchangeable and can never be broken
- Outcome of an action is more important than intention
- Judge child that broke 15 glasses (John) as naughtier because outcome was worse
3) Autonomous morality stage —> 11 years old +, where children recognize that there is no absolute right and wrong
- Understand that rules are the product of social agreement
- Consider fairness and equality as important factors to consider when making rules
- No longer accept blind obedience to authority
- Motives and intentions matter
- Judge child that broke 1 glass (Henry) as naughtier because was trying to sneak jam
Piaget’s contributions —> First to acknowledge that moral reasoning is related to cognitive development, where research also supports this
- Recognized that children are increasingly able to take intentions into account as they age
Weaknesses of Piaget’s theory —> Underestimated children’s ability to appreciate the importance of intentions
- Evidence that children can appreciate intentions much earlier than 11 years old
Study on can children appreciate intentions at 2 years of age —> 21-month-olds participated in a lab task with 2 adults
- Infants stood at a table with both adults
- Both adults offered to give the infant a toy by placing it at the edge of the table but ultimately the child didn’t get the toy
- Negative intention —> Adult pulled the toy away
- Positive intention —> Adult watched in surprise as the toy rolled away from the infant
- Then, experimenter presents both adults with a single new toy where toy falls to the floor and both adults reach for it
- Test —> Does infant help? If so, which adult do they help?
- Results showed that 67% helped the adult & 75% helped adult with positive intention, this is evidence of selective helping
- Contrary to Piaget’s theory, suggests that 2 year olds are able to appreciate intentions when judging others’ actions
 - Positive intention but negative outcome —> Clearly offered the toy to the infant and watched in surprise as the toy rolled away
- Positive intention and positive outcome —> Clearly offered the toy to the infant and child was able to examine it
- Then, experimenter presents both adults with a single new toy, where toy falls to the floor and both adults reach for it
- Results showed that 2 year olds helped the adults equally (difference is not statistically sig.) suggesting that infants care more about
intentions than outcomes of actions
Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning —> Heavily influenced by Piaget, where he thought that moral development is tied to cognitive
development
- 3 stages (2 sub-stages at each stage) where children increasingly take others into account in decisions about how to behave
- Preconventional, Conventional, Postconventional
- Culturally universal
Hienz dilemma —> Heinz wife has cancer, druggist discovered a new drug in which he charges a lot, Heinz could not get the money so
broke into the shop to steal
1) Preconventional moral reasoning —> 2-7 years old, where the focus is on the self getting rewards and avoiding punishment from
authority figures
- Intentions don’t matter
- Not aware of social conventions
- Rules are fixed and absolute
- What they say for Heinz dilemma —> “It’s wrong to steal the drug to save your wife because you might get caught.”
- “Heinz should steal the drug, because if his wife dies, Heinz will be blamed and will go to jail.”
2) Conventional moral reasoning —> 7-15 years old, Focus on compliance with social duties, norms, and laws
- Good behaviour is doing what is approved of by the social group or what is consistent with the law
- “Good girl”/ “good boy” attitude
- What they say for Heinz dilemma —> "It's wrong for Heinz to steal because it's against the law.”
- “It's right to steal because Heinz means well by trying to help his dying wife.”
3) Postconventional moral reasoning —> As early as 12 years old +, focus on moral ideals, rather than societal conventions
- But not everyone reaches this stage
- Morality is upholding rules that are in the best interest of the group or universal ethical principles
- Life, liberty, basic human rights
- These principles need to be upheld regardless of majority opinion or the law
- What they say for Heinz dilemma —> "It's not wrong for Heinz to steal because human life must be preserved and life
is worth more than money or personal property. "
Kohlberg’s Contributions —> Moral reasoning changes systematically as children grow older
- Cross-cultural universality of changes in moral reasoning
Weaknesses on Kohlberg’s theory —> Children and adults show inconsistencies in their moral reasoning
- People often reason at different levels on different occasions
- More likely to reason at lower levels if can personally benefit
Social Domain Theory of Moral Development, Current dominant theory where social knowledge is made up of 3 domains:
- Personal, Societal, Moral
- Domains are developed in parallel rather than sequentially like in Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories
- Gradual changes in moral reasoning through interactions with peers and adults
1) Moral domain —> Rules that govern actions that have an impact on others’ welfare and their rights
- Guided by universal concepts of right and wrong, fairness, justice, and individual rights that apply across contexts
- Children learn about this domain through socialization from parents
2) Societal domain —> Rules and conventions that promote the smooth functioning of society
 - Decisions in this domain are central to development of autonomy and identity
- e.g., What are their hobbies, what they do in their free time, who are their friends
Implications of social domain theory of moral development —> Thinking about social issues requires coordinating knowledge from these
3 domains
- Parallel development predicts that moral-based judgments should be possible from a younger age than Piaget and Kohlberg thought
Evidence for Social Domain Theory —> Children distinguish between 3 domains early in life, showing that these domains do develop in
parallel
- Age 3 —> Kids generally believe that violations of moral rules are more wrong than violations of societal conventions
- e.g., see hitting someone as more wrong than not saying “please”
- Believe that they should have control in personal domain
- Age 4 —> Kids see moral transgressions as wrong, even if an adult doesn’t know about it and even if adults have not said it was wrong
Moral, societal, and personal domains exist across cultures
Similarities in moral domain across cultures
- All cultures view judgments about behaviours related to fairness and others’ welfare as in the moral domain
Differences across cultures in what falls within moral, societal and personal domain
- e.g., helping parents in older age is a moral judgment in collectivistic cultures but more of a personal judgment in individualistic cultures
Study on if moral judgment is innate —> 6 month-olds watched a play in which a red puppet is trying to climb up a hill but fails
- Helper —> Yellow puppet comes and helps red puppet
- Hinderer —> Blue puppet pushes red puppet down
- Results showed that depending on the study, 75-100% of babies prefer the helper vs. hinderer
- Follow-up with 3-month-olds using preferential looking paradigm shows that they also prefer helper over hinderer
- Suggests that moral judgment is innate!

SUMMARY:
Piaget:
- Children go from not appreciating the intentions behind actions to appreciating that these matter (heteronomous —> autonomous stage)
- Moral development tied to cognitive development
- But, research shows that children can appreciate intentions as young as 2 years old
Kohlberg:
- 3 broad sequential stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional, postconventional
- Focus on self —> focus on societal standards —> universal ethics
Social domain theory:
- Children distinguish between domains of moral, societal and personal judgments
- Knowledge of domains develops in parallel
Morality seems to have an innate basis

Prosocial behaviour —> Voluntary behaviour intended to benefit others

- e.g., Helping, Sharing, Comforting others
Empathy and sympathy are important motivators of prosocial behaviour
Empathy —> Understanding and sharing the emotional state of another person
- Outcome of perspective-taking
Sympathy —> Feeling of concern for another person in response to the their emotional state
- Often the outcome of empathy
How does prosocial behaviour happen:
Perspective-taking —> Empathy —> Sympathy —> Prosocial behaviour
8-24 months —> Prosocial behaviour appears
- 2 year olds helped the successful and unsuccessful adult equally suggesting that infants care more about intentions than outcomes when
judging others actions
18-24 months —> Prosocial behaviour appears
- Due to capacity to feel empathy and sympathy
- Facilitated by emergence of sense of self around 18 months of age
Study on if infants can sympathize with another person, even if that person is not visibly upset —> 8- 24-month-olds introduced to
2 experimenters (E1 and E2)
- E1 wearing a necklace that she visibly likes and takes it off at one point
- Harm —> E2 takes necklace in aggressive manner, but E1 shows no emotional reaction
- Neutral —> E2 takes another necklace that’s close by (not E1’s necklace) in a neutral way, and E1 shows no emotional reaction
- Coded infants’ facial expression in reaction to events
- Concerned: sympathy
- Results showed that infants showed more sympathy in harm vs. neutral condition
- Suggests that infants can feel sympathy even in absence of adults’ reaction of distress
- Next part of study, infants had opportunity to help E1 after her balloon flew away
- E1 pretends to not be able to retrieve it
- Results showed a correlation between sympathy and helping
- Shows that sympathy motivates helping as young as 18-24-months of age!
- Much earlier than Piaget thought was possible
Prosocial behaviour increases throughout childhood
- Due to more sophisticated moral reasoning and improved perspective taking ability
Genetics & Prosocial behaviour —> Identical twins are more similar in their level of prosocial behaviour than fraternal twins
- Suggests genetic basis of prosocial behaviour
- Possible involvement of individual differences in oxytocin gene
- Oxytocin —> Neuro-hormone involved in social bonding and childbirth
- Genetic differences manifest as differences in temperament:
- Emotion regulation —> Ability to experience emotion without getting overwhelmed by it is associated with empathy
- Behavioural inhibition (shyness) —> High level of shyness negatively associated with helping
Socialization by Parents
1) Modelling of prosocial behaviour and teaching prosocial values
- Children tend to be similar to parents in terms of prosocial behaviour because they copy their behaviour
- Sympathy-inducing rationales most likely to lead to internalization of prosocial values
- “Let’s donate money, because they need it more than us and it will make them happy.” vs. “because it’s a good/nice thing to do”
2) Providing opportunities for child to engage in prosocial behaviour
- e.g., Performing household chores, Community service hours in high schools
- Increases children's willingness to take on prosocial tasks in the future
- Fosters perspective-taking
3) Parenting style
- Authoritative parenting is associated with prosocial behaviour
- If kids experience warmth from parents, more likely to show warmth to others
- Discipline that uses reasoning to point out consequences of behaviour on someone else
- Offering rewards for prosocial behaviour or punishment for not behaving prosocially often backfire
All three factors are important for promoting prosocial behaviour
None of them individually is sufficient
Empathy and sympathy are important motivators of prosocial action
- Before 18 months —> Seeing someone else in distress most often leads to self-focused distress
- 18-25 months —> Prosocial behaviour emerges, facilitated by the emergence of empathy and sympathy
Individual differences in prosocial behaviour are due to differences in genetics and socialization