Exam 1 (study guide)

Question 1

Reasons for learning about child development

Answer 1

• for a better future
• to learn about effective parenting/caregiving
• choosing social policies
• understand human nature

Question 2

Seven enduring themes in development

Answer 2

1. Nature v. Nurture
2. continuity/discontinuity
3. mechanisms of development
4. sociocultural context
5. individual differences
6. The active child
7. Research and Children’s welfare

Question 3

Nature v. Nurture

Answer 3

• Nature: our biology especially the genes that we receive from our parents
  
  • Influences every aspect of our being: physical characteristics, emotional
    temperament, IQ, etc.
• Nurture: he wide range of
  environments, both physical and social, that influence our development (can also influence every aspect of our being)
  - Prenatal teratogens, family styles, etc.
  Ex: Schizophrenia. There is a genetic component AND an environmental influence.

Question 4

Continuity / Discontinuity

Answer 4

continuous change:
- change occurs with age gradually, in small increments

Discontinuous change:
- Change with age includes occasional large shifts
- Stage theories: development is a series of discontinuous, age-related phases
Example: conservation-of-liquid task illustrates young children believe a taller glass holds more liquid, while older children confidently understand the amount stays the same

Question 5

mechanisms of change

Answer 5

How does developmental change occur? What are the processes that contribute
to change?
* Effortful attention (voluntary control of one’s emotions and thoughts) / self control
- gene influence, parenting influence, children’s
experience, sleep
- Example: Marshmallow task tests self control

Question 6

Sociocultural context

Answer 6

• the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical conditions in which a child grows up
• Cultural values shape everyday practices, such as childcare and sleeping arrangements.
• Socioeconomic status has a major impact on development
• Children growing up in poverty face higher risks
  Example: Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model

Question 7

Individual Differences

Answer 7

How do children become so different from each other?
* Genetic differences
* Different treatment by parents and others
* Different reactions to similar experiences
* Different choice of environments
Example: personality differences in identical twins

Question 8

The Active Child

Answer 8

How do children shape their own development?
* Children’s actions contribute to their own development, even during their first year of life (e.g., learning in context of play)
* As children grow older, they have even more control of environmental
influence
Example: toddlers talking to themselves alone in a room. Play and fantasy

Question 9

Research and Child Welfare

Answer 9

How can research promote a child’s well-being?
* growth mindset and academic performance
* Early diagnosis of developmental problems leads to early treatment and prevention
* E.g., screening questionnaires, behavioral measures, and biomarkers of autism spectrum disorders

Question 10

important criteria for good measurement

Answer 10

Reliability and Validity

Question 11

Reliability

Answer 11

Reliability - the degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent
- Inter-rater
- Making sure you and teammates are on the same page and seeing thing similarly
-Ex: empathy test - one person gives them a 7 score and other person gives them a 4 score
- Test-retest
-Trait that is stable is tested you must get the same score back consistently overtime
Ex: IQ

Question 12

Validity

Answer 12

the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure
- Internal
-Ex: questionnaire asking teens about their depression symptoms. Asking them if they like sad music and movies might not reflect what they are trying to measure
- Ex: bias when assigning people to group. Need random assignment to make sure all groups are the same
- External
-Extend to which you are doing something that means something in the real world
-Ex: fMRI - showing people pictures of emotions and seeing how the brain responds. But is this how the brain will respond to emotional stimuli in the real world

Question 13

Correlation

Answer 13

• Interviews and observations are
  correlational designs
  ● Test the association between two variables
  ○ Direction: positive or negative
  ○ Strength: measured between 0 (no relationship)
  and 1 (perfectly predictive)

Question 14

Issues: Direction of causation

Answer 14

● Direction of causation
● Reading skills ~ reading amount
○ Reading makes you a better reader, or are better
readers really likely to read?
● Third variable problem
● Ice cream consumption ~ murder rate
○ Both are related to hot weather (i.e., ice cream
consumption is proxy for relation between season
and murder rate)

Question 15

Independent variable

Answer 15

the experience that participants in the experimental group receive and that those in the control group do not receive.

Question 16

Dependent Variable

Answer 16

a behavior that is measured to determine whether it is affected by exposure to the independent variable.

Question 17

Random Assignment

Answer 17

a procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each group within an experiment.

Question 18

Experimental group

Answer 18

the group of participants in an experimental design who are presented the experience of interest.

Question 19

Control group

Answer 19

the group of participants in an experimental design who are not presented the experience of interest but in other ways are treated similarly.

Question 20

Designs for examining development

Answer 20

• cross sectional
• longitudinal
• Microgenetic

Question 21

Cross-sectional Design

Answer 21

compares children of different ages on a given behavior, ability, or characteristic by studying them at roughly the same time

Question 22

Longitudinal Design

Answer 22

following the same children over a substantial period (usually at least a year) and observing changes and continuities in these children’s development

Question 23

Microgenetic Design

Answer 23

• designed to provide an in-depth depiction of the processes that produce change
• children examined intensively over a
  short period of time while a change is occurring
• recruit children who are on the verge of an important developmental change, heighten their exposure to the type of experience that is believed to produce the change, and then intensively study the change as it is occurring

Question 24

Resilience

Answer 24

successful development in spite of multiple and seemingly overwhelming developmental hazards.
differential susceptibility

Question 25

impacts of poverty and neglect

Answer 25

- Our brains have evolved to expect caregiver input Biologically not being attended to is a threat to a baby - Synapses don’t form when neglected - The architecture of the brain is altered when a child is neglected

Question 26

Romanian orphanage

Answer 26

- Timing of experience influences development - Outcomes for those adopted after about 6 months vs. 24-42 months - Sensitive period for getting better cognitive and social input - adopted before 6 months turned out okay. adopted after 6 months had deficits in social and emotional development

Question 27

Stage Theories

Answer 27

- approaches proposing that development involves a series of large, discontinuous, age-related phases. - a child’s entry into a new stage involves sudden, qualitative changes that affect the child’s thinking or behavior and move the child from one coherent way of experiencing the world to a different one

Question 28

Germinal Stage

Answer 28

- Fertilization to 2 weeks - Fertilized egg becomes blastocyst at day 4 (a hollow sphere of cells with bulge of inner cell mass) * Travels to and implants in the uterus * Characterized by rapid cell division * Stage where identical twins usually originate (splitting of cell mass)

Question 29

Embryonic Stage

Answer 29

- 3 to 8 weeks - after implantation, the inner cell mass becomes the embryo and the rest of the cells develop into its system - development of major organs and basic anatomy - at end of stage, embryo is about 1 inch long

Question 30

The Fetal Stage

Answer 30

- 9 weeks to birth - formally starts when differentiation of major organs have occurred (now called fetus) - fetus experiences senses, especially sound, taste and touch - by 20 weeks, facial expression are present - by 28 weeks, a fetus could survive on its own - Full gestation 38-42 weeks, < 37 is considered premature

Question 31

cephalocaudal development

Answer 31

the pattern of growth in which areas near the head develop earlier than areas farther from the head. (head to toe)

Question 32

fetus’s behavior contributes to its own development

Answer 32

- Touch: sucking thumb, grasping umbilical cords, rubbing their face - hiccups - prefering mother's voice - smells of Amniotic fluid of what mother ate - taste of Amniotic fluid

Question 33

Evidence for human fetal learning

Answer 33

- Habituation is evidence for learning and memory: the stimulus loses its novelty (and becomes boring) only if the stimulus is remembered from one presentation to the next. - Fetuses as young as 30 weeks gestation show habituation to visual and auditory stimuli --> their CNS are sufficiently developed for learning and short-term memory - learn mothers voice, taste and smell in the womb

Question 34

Habituation

Answer 34

a decrease in response to repeated or continued stimulation

Question 35

Teratogens

Answer 35

Environmental agents that have the potential to cause harm during prenatal development

Question 36

Cigarette Smoke

Answer 36

reduced growth and birth weight, increased risk of SIDS, Lower IQ, hearing deficits, cancer

Question 37

Alcohol

Answer 37

abnormal facial features (e.g., thin upper lip, smoothed ridge between nose and upper lip), small head size, adhd, intellectual disability and learning disorders, speech and language delays, low body weight

Question 38

Air Pollution

Answer 38

stroke, lung cancer, heart disease. Fine Particulate Air Pollution (PM2.5)

Question 39

Newborn states

Answer 39

- active sleep - quiet sleep - drowsing - alert and awake - active awake - crying

Question 40

Infant Crying

Answer 40

* Infants cry for many reasons, including hunger, pain, discomfort, or illness * Older infants cry as a communicative act to get adults to respond to them * With experience, parents become better at interpreting cries * Using context and sound of the cry itself * Colic: excessive, inconsolable crying for no apparent reason * Crying can sometimes be soothed by swaddling, repetitive stimulation, carrying, and touch * Responding to children’s crying is good * Shaken baby syndrome (head trauma) is leading cause of child abuse death in children under 5

Question 41

Sleep

Answer 41

- REM and nREM - babies spend majority of the day sleeping - REM sleep - helps preserve and develop visual system

Question 42

Risk and Resilience

Answer 42

* Risk factors tend to occur together (inadequate prenatal care, poor nutrition, illness, emotional stress, substance use, exposure to environmental hazards) * Poverty increases risk for multiple exposures * Many children show resilience in context of risk * Protective factors – biological, personal characteristics, and responsive care

Question 43

Multiple-risk factor model

Answer 43

- The multiple-risk model refers to the fact that infants with a number of risk factors have a heightened likelihood of continued developmental problems. Poverty is a particularly insidious risk to development, in part because it is associated with numerous negative factors. - Some children display resilience even in the face of substantial challenges. Resilience seems to result from certain personal characteristics and from responsive care from someone.

Question 44

The Embryo Support System

Answer 44

- placenta - Umbilical cord - Amniotic Sac

Question 45

Placenta

Answer 45

- permits the exchange of materials between the bloodstream of the fetus and that of the mother; semipermeable - mother provides nutrients to fetus - fetus sends waste to mother

Question 46

Umbilical Cord

Answer 46

contains blood vessels that travel between the placenta and developing organism

Question 47

Amniotic Sac

Answer 47

- protective buffer - membrane filled with a clear, watery fluid in which the fetus floats. - amniotic fluid operates as a protective buffer providing a even temperature and cushioning it against jolting.

Question 48

Labor and Birth

Answer 48

Labor typically begins at 38-42 weeks gestation with uterine contractions * Fetus’ head squeezed during labor * Can cause separate plates of the skull to overlap, resulting in temporarily misshapen head * Squeezing stimulates hormone production that helps fetus withstand mild oxygen deprivation during birth and stimulates milk production * Forces amniotic fluid out of lungs

Question 49

Hormones

Answer 49

- determines sex (presence of testosterone - development of male genitalia) - glucocorticoids - limit fetal growth and help fetal tissues mature - facilitate maturation of key organs

Question 50

phylogenetic continuity

Answer 50

humans share many characteristics and developmental processes with nonhuman animals due to our shared evolutionary history.

Question 51

What stage doe cell differentiation occur?

Answer 51

embryonic stage

Question 52

What factors determine what each cell will become?

Answer 52

location: chemical and cell-to-cell contact with neighboring cells which genes in the cell are switched on distinguishes one type of cell from another

Question 53

mechanisms that contribute to genetic variability

Answer 53

- random assortment (crossing over) - chromosomes and shuffled before egg and sperm unite - mutation - spontaneous errors/changes in DNA

Question 54

epigenetics

Answer 54

the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment. equifinality

Question 55

Relation 1: Parent’s Genotype --> Child’s Genotype

Answer 55

* Passing on genetic material – mechanism of inheritance * Pairs of chromosomes – 1 from each parent * Genes are sections of the chromosome; basic units of heredity for all living things * Two copies of each gene (maybe slightly different versions - alleles) – one from each parent Example: sex determination

Question 56

Relation 2: Child’s Genotype --> Child’s Phenotype

Answer 56

* Genes -> proteins -> biological structures (endophenotypes) -> behaviors (phenotype) * Polygenic inheritance – traits are governed by more than one gene (e.g., no single gene for aggression) * Genes turn on and off (expressed or not) over the course of development * Expression is regulated, in part, by activation of other genes (chain of genetic events) Example: Gene expression

Question 57

Relation 3: Child’s Environment --> Child’s Phenotype

Answer 57

* Observable characteristics result from the interaction of environmental factors AND the child’s genetic makeup * Gene by environment interaction Example: Maltreated boys more likely to engage in antisocial behavior as young men (MAOA) Example: PKU – defective recessive gene results in lack of enzyme important for breaking down amino acid found in many foods. * Build up of amino acids due to diet leads to intellectual disability

Question 58

Relation 4: Child’s Phenotype --> Child’s Environment

Answer 58

* Active child theme – children evoke certain responses from others * Think of how environment can change over time for child based on their emotional and behavioral tendencies (i.e., temperament) * Early negative emotionality and aggression -> solitary play, social exclusion, rejection -> reduced opportunities to develop social skills

Question 59

Relation 5: Child’s Environment --> Child’s Genotype

Answer 59

- Epigenetics- Modification of expression of gene, not gene themselves * Methylation – turning gene expression down/off Example: * Gluccocorticoid receptor genes in rat offspring are silenced as a result of less exposure to mother licking/grooming behaviors * Cross fostering (raised by genetically unrelated mother) provides causal evidence for caregiving effects on epigenome and behavior

Question 60

Behavior Genetics Research Designs: Twin Study

Answer 60

- Twin design – compares correlations for identical twins (same genes) with same- sex fraternal twins (different genes) * “…with different levels of genetic similarity and essentially equal environmental similarity, the difference between the correlation for the two types of twins is treated as an index of the importance of genetic factors in development. - effect of GENES given the SAME ENVIORNMENT

Question 61

Behavior Genetics Research Designs: Adoptive Twin Study

Answer 61

- Compares identical twins reared apart * Considered gold standard for behavior genetics research - effect of NONSHARED ENVIORNMENT given the SAME GENES

Question 62

Heritability

Answer 62

A statistical estimate of the proportion of variance on a given trait among individuals in a given population that is attributable to genetic differences among those individuals (vs environmental factors)

Question 63

Limitations of Heritability

Answer 63

* Refers to variation in a population, not individuals (e.g., doesn’t say that 50% of your intelligence is due to your genes) * Applies only to population living in a particular environment * Can vary for groups growing up in very different environments * Heritability can change over development * Does not imply immutability

Question 64

Neurons

Answer 64

- Gray matter * cell body – keeps neuron functioning * Dendrites – receive input from other cells * Axon – fiber that conducts electrical signal to other neurons * Synapse – space between axon terminal of one neuron and dendrite of another

Question 65

Cerebral Cortex

Answer 65

- frontal lobe - parietal lobe - temporal lobe - occipital lobe

Question 66

Myelination

Answer 66

* Growth of white matter over development (formation of sheaths around axons made of fatty tissue) * White matter extends upward from deep in the brain over the course of development, replacing gray matter * Prefrontal regions mature slower than others

Question 67

Synaptogenesis and Synaptic Pruning

Answer 67

* Earlier development characterized by formation of more connections (synapses) * Followed by pruning synapses that aren’t used * Use it or lose it; neurons that fire together wire together * Overall pattern of maturation characterized by growth in connections then honing more narrow circuitry

Question 68

neurogenesis

Answer 68

the proliferation of neurons through cell division, begins 42 days after conception (in humans) and is virtually complete by the midway point of gestation

Question 69

Experience-expectant plasticity

Answer 69

- the process through which the typical wiring of the brain occurs in part as a result of the kinds of general experiences that every human in a typical environment will have If expected experience is not available, development will be impaired: - E.g., congenital cataracts: Born with clouding of lens in the eye Don’t deal with it early in life → brain is not experiencing visual input it expects. If dealt with too late the brain will not have received enough input to properly develop the visual cortex - Sensitive period - timing matters

Question 70

Experience dependent processes

Answer 70

* The process through which neural connections are created and reorganized throughout life as function of individual’s experience * Learning particular skills like how to play an instrument, a sport, or navigate a particular city * E.g., London taxi drivers have larger hippocampal volume, presumably to support spatial representation of city

Question 71

Brain Injury and Reorganization

Answer 71

- Timing and plasticity play important roles * The worst time to suffer brain injury is when neurogenesis and neuron migration are occurring. When is that happening? * Greatest plasticity is observed during synaptogenesis and pruning. When does this happen?

Question 72

Kinds of genes we have

Answer 72

- coding genes - take up about 1% of our genome - "junk"/non-coding genes make up the rest - plays a crucial role in regulating the activity of protein-coding genes.

Question 73

EEG

Answer 73

- non-invasive (can be use on young infants) - recordings of electrical activity generated by neurons are used to study the time course of neural events and brain/behavior relationships - Electrical activity of the brain (postsynaptic potentials in cortex) - Can measure rhythms of electrical activity at rest - Event-related potentials – electrical activity tied to specific events (order of milliseconds) - Good temporal resolution and cheap to collect, but limited spatial resolution

Question 74

fMRI

Answer 74

- powerful electromagnet to detect fluctuations in cerebral blood flow in different areas of the brain. - Participants must be able to tolerate the noise and close confinement of an MRI machine and must also be able to remain very still. (difficult for young children) - Better spatial resolution than EEG - Temporal resolution is not as good as EEG - Expensive

Question 75

fNIRS

Answer 75

- Using infrared light. Tiny light bulbs on the head and introducing light into the brain - Detector can measure how much light being emitted by the light bulb is picked up by the detector - Oxygenated blood will absorb some of the light - Can determine how much oxygenated blood is in an area of the brain - Same blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, more cost effective, less susceptible to motion-related artifact, not a confined environment - But less spatial resolution than fMRI and less temporal resolution than EEG - No detailed structured image like with fMRI