Developmental Psychology (PSY 254)

Final Review Session

Clarice Robenalt & Michelle

DeKlyen
January 19. 2015

HOW DO BABIES BREAK

INTO THE COMPLEXITIES
OF LANGUAGE?

Infant-Directed Speech
Speaking style used by adults when
speaking to infants
Highly variable pitch, shorter
sentences, more pauses, expanded
vowel space

Whats special about IDS?

Infants prefer it to ADS
Conveys emotion and meaning

Happy
regiver presents baby with new toy using
tone

Harsh
tone

Positive
words

9 month olds
respond more to
tone than words

Negativ
e words

12 month olds
respond equally to
tone and words

Tuning perception to sounds in your

native language
Newborns distinguish sounds that
make meaningful distinctions (e.g.
rake vs lake)
even in a language they may never
had heard before!

As babies mature, they lose contrasts

that are not meaningful in their
native language
Bilingual babies retain contrasts in
both of their languages

Statistical Learning
Statistics help babies find the
boundaries in between words

pret

ty

ba

by

prettybaby
ty

ba

Within words,
adjacent
syllables have
high transitional
probabilities
Between words,
adjacent
syllables have
low transitional
probabilities

Babies generalize patterns they

have learned to new input
le-le-di
go-go-la
familiarize fo-fo-nu
ki-ki-bo

test

ci-ci-ru
vs
ci-ru-ci

results

infants
show
novelty

F# F# D
CCE
G G D#
C# C# F

G# G# A
vs
G# A G#
no
preferenc
e for

unless tones
are perceived
as
communicative

What is the name for speech that is higher than normal

pitch, with extreme shifts in intonation and
exaggerated facial expressions and gestures?

Infant-directed speech

What is it called when children and adults experience

speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories?

Categorical perception

HOW DO CHILDREN LEARN

WORDS AND SENTENCES?

Language Milestones
Babbling: Infant produces repetitive
string of simple syllables (e.g. bababa)
Early interactions: turn-taking,
intersubjectivity (sharing a mutual
understanding), joint attention
(mutually attending to the same object)
Early word recognition/production
Overextension: using a word in a
broader context than is appropriate

Overextensions
ball: ball, balloon, marble, apple, egg,
pom-pom, spherical water tank
(Rescorla, 1980)
cat: cat, cats usual location on top of
TV when absent (Bowerman, 1978)
snow: snow, white tail on a horse,
white flannel bed pad, white puddle of
milk on the floor (Bowerman, 1978)

Learning Object Labels

Pragmatic context

Grammar
Find the fep one.
Now find the fep.

Constraints on Word
Learning
Whole object constraint

Mutual exclusivity

Novel word is
assumed to be an
object label (as
opposed to
characteristic)

Novel word is
assumed to label
unfamiliar object
(the one you
dont have a
name for)

Cross-situational word
learning

Wheres the gasser?

Wheres the manu?

e
ti m

By tracking
words and
objects over
time, it is
possible to
pair objects
Adults
can do
with their
this, but so can
labels

12 and 14mo
Wheres the gasser?
infants!

Online language processing gets

faster as babies mature

What is it called when a child rapidly learns a new

word simply by hearing the contrastive use of a
familiar and an unfamiliar word?

Fast mapping

What is the name for speech errors in which children

treat irregular forms of words as though they were
regular?

overregularization

HOW IMPORTANT IS
LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE?

Is there a critical period for

language development?
Brain plasticity: Children recover from brain
damage much more readily than do adults.
Feral children:
Ramu: found in India in 1976; apparently raised
by wolves; deformed and couldnt walk; learned to
dress himself, but never learned to speak; died in
1985
Genie: discovered in California at age 14; had
lived in darkened room, tied to chair; after 9 years
of intensive tutoring by linguists at UCLA, she
learned many words but never syntax

Is there a critical period for

language development?
Mixed findings from bilingualism:

Individual Differences in Language

Development
Cognitive differences: working
memory
Sex and birth order: girls and firstborns have larger vocabularies and
use more complex language.
Socioeconomic status: SES exerts
a powerful influence on language
outcomes.

Quantity of Language Input is

Related to SES

Infants who hear more child-directed speech at

19mo show faster language processing at 24mo

Importance of Language Experience

on Development
Infants need rich, varied, contingent, and
guided verbal interaction in the early years.
Language experience has a pervasive influence
on the development of childrens language
skills.
There is a large cost to children who do not
receive rich language experience.
Increased opportunities for language interaction
can alter the course of language growth
with cascading advantages for children.

What is the single best predictor of

early reading proficiency?

Phonological awareness: the

ability to attend to, reflect
on, and manipulate the
sounds of speech

WHAT IS EMOTION IN THE

FIRST YEAR OF LIFE?

What is emotion?
Emotions are feelings we have about what we
are experiencing.
They are generally positive or negative in
character, they have physiological correlates
(like accelerated heart rate when youre
scared) and have some sort of external
manifestation (like a smile when youre happy)
The limbic system (responsible for emotions)
is a network of old brain regions that is so old it
was probably shared with a common ancestor
of mammals and reptiles

Basic emotions
Disgust, fear, joy, sadness, anger,
surprise
Facial displays for these emotions are
the same in every human society
that has ever been observed

Do babies have emotions?

JOY

FEAR

Secondary (self-conscious) emotions

Embarrassment, guilt, shame, pride,
jealousy, empathy
Relate to our sense of self and our
consciousness of others reactions
Typically emerge in second year
Embarrassment ~15-24 mo
Pride increasingly tied to performance
by ~3 years

Individual differences in emotion

perception: Abuse
Physically abused kids require less visual information
to recognize anger

Individual differences in emotion

perception: Neglect
Children who had been
institutionalized were compared to
children living with their biological
families
Findings:
Institutionalized children were worse
than controls at emotion idenfication
Institutionalized children were worse
than controls in emotion understanding
for every emotion except anger

Display Rules
When and how is it appropriate to
display emotion?
Vary by culture:
U.S. = individualist society, shame =
harmful to self esteem, anger = OK for
self assertion (non-hostile)
Nepal = collectivist society, shame =
good, acknowledges wrongdoing, anger
is discouraged

What is it called when a child uses

other peoples emotional
expressions to gain information or
infer the meaning of otherwise
ambiguous situations?
Social referencing

What is the name for a

perseverative focus on one's
negative emotions, their causes
and consequences; a rick factor
for depression?
rumination

HOW DOES ATTACHMENT

TO PARENTS SHAPE
DEVELOPMENT?

Attachment as secure
base
Secure attachment = when the baby
is confident in its ability to secure its
needs, and so doesnt have to be
particularly needy
Other attachment styles
Secure (~60-65%)
Insecure-avoidant (~20%)
Insecure-resistant-ambivalent (~10%)
Insecure-disorganized (~5-15%)

Bowlbys attachment stages

Preattachment: 0-2 mo, innate signals +
parental responsiveness
Attachment-in-the-making: 6-8 mo,
recognition of caregivers and preferential
response to them
Clear-cut attachment: up to ~2 years,
active seeking of caregiver and distress
upon separation
Reciprocal relationships: 2+ years, other
children can be seen as relationship
partners

Secure attachment is predicted by

Close contact
Israeli babies who slept in community care
center were less securely attached than babies
who slept at home
Low income mothers given soft carriers had
more securely attached babies than mothers
given hard carriers

Specific parenting behaviors

Sensitivity to needs; adjustment to mood;
availability; acceptance of baby in difficult
times

Other Attachment Styles

Insecure-avoidant:
Caregivers dont respond to babies signals
Little physical contact
Caregiver is angry and irritable around baby

Insecure-resistant-ambivalent:
Caregiver is unaffectionate and inconsistent

Insecure-disorganized:
Baby experiences neglect or physical abuse at
the hands of the caregiver
Baby is raised by a depressed caregiver

Internal Working Models of

Attachment

Parenting Styles

Name the three infant

temperament profiles.

Easy
Slow-to-warm-up
Difficult

What are some benefits of secure attachment

later in life? Name at least two.

More positive, empathetic, and socially

competent
Harmonious peer relationships
Healthy romantic relationships
Better grades
More school involvement
Marital satisfaction
Less jealousy
Less prejudice

HOW DO KIDS LEARN

ABOUT THEIR SOCIAL
WORLDS?

Overimitation
1.

2.

3.
4.

Procedure
Preschoolers see an
adult demonstrate a
series of unnecessary
actions in order to
retrieve a toy.
In a training phase, the
adult explains that
certain actions are
unnecessary.
Children are asked to
retrieve the toy.
Measure how many
irrelevant actions are

Findings of Overimitation
Studies
Children are highly likely to copy adults
irrelevant actions
even when they were told to watch out for
irrelevant actions
even when speed was emphasized

Why?
Extreme causal opacity (how does this thing work
anyway?)
Social cues tell children that all steps are
important

Intentionality Matters for

Imitation

DO CHILDREN HAVE A
SENSE OF SELF?

Early Self-World
Differentiation
Newborns display distress signals
when they hear cries of other babies.
They do not do so when they hear
their own cries recorded.
Newborns display their rooting reflex
(turning head when cheek is
touched) more reliably to an
experimenters touch than to a
spontaneous self-touch

Development of Personal
Agency
Contingency: infants were seated in front of
a monitor with a string tied around their wrist.
For half the babies, pulling the string made a
short animation play on the screen. These
babies played with the string for longer and
showed anger when the string stopped
working
Reaching: 6 month old infants were seated in
front of objects of varying distances. Babies
who had better postural control were more
likely to reach for distant object

Rouge Test for SelfAwareness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=M2I0kwSua44

Sense of Self Over Time

3-4 years: physical features, preferences,
possessions, social characteristics, and skills
e.g., I have brown eyes, I like ice cream, I have a blue
purse, I have a brother

5-7 years: focus on competencies (mostly positive)

e.g., Im good at playing soccer, Im good at school

8-10 years: more aware of uniqueness, more

complex, personal attributes
e.g., I am smart in math, but dumb in social studies. I am
popular, nice, and helpful.

Adolescence: awareness is increasingly more

abstract and complex, takes into account more
aspects of personality.

Mindset

ARE CHILDREN MORAL

CREATURES?

Piagets Stages of Moral

Development
Stage 1 (before 7-8 years of age)
Moral realism
Objective responsibility
Punishment for its own sake
Imminent justice

Transitional stage (around 7-10 years)

More interactions with peers
Start to value fairness and equality
Become more autonomous in their thinking

Stage 2(around 11-12 years)

Rules are arbitrary
Intent > objective consequences
Punishment should fit the crime

Kohlbergs Heinz Dilemma

Heinzs wife is dying from an illness. A drug
that might save her has been discovered by a
local pharmacist, but he was charging 10
times what it took him to make it. This was far
more money than Heinz had. So Heinz went to
everyone he knew to borrow the money, but
he could only get together about half the
price. He told the pharmacist that his wife was
dying and asked for a discount, or if he could
pay the rest later. But, the pharmacist said,
No, I discovered the drug and Im going to
make money from it. So, Heinz got desperate
and broke into the store to steal the drug for
his wife.

Kohlbergs Stages of Moral

Development
Preconventional, Stage 1
Obedience to authority
Fear of punishment
Pro: If you let your wife die, you will get in trouble
Con: You shouldnt steal because you could go to jail

Preconventional, Stage 2
What is right is whats in ones own best interest
Might involve equal exchange between people
Pro: He can always pay him back
Con: The druggist just wants to make a profit like others

Kohlbergs Stages of Moral

Development
Conventional, Stage 3
Moral behavior is that which pleases, helps, or is approved by
others
Primary objective is to be thought of as good
Pro: No one will think you are bad if you steal the drug, but your
family will think you are inhuman if you dont
Con: If you steal, you might bring dishonor on your family; you
wont be able to face anyone.

Conventional, Stage 4
What is right is fulfilling duties, upholding laws, & contributing to
group/society
Dont fear punishment; rather, believe rules & laws maintain order
worth preserving
Pro: The druggist is leading the wrong kind of life if he lets someone
die, so Heinz had to steal but he must pay the druggist back and
accept punishment
Con: Natural to want to steal, but you have to follow the rules
regardless of your personal feelings

THE END
any questions?