Studies

Question 1

Aknin, Hamlin & Dunn 2012: Prosociality

Answer 1

• 23- months old
• Warmup gives 3 puppets treats, eating treats themselves
• Experimental period (happiness coded at each stage)
  1. Meet Monkey
  2. Child receives 8 treats in own bowl
  3. Experimenter gives “found” treat to Monkey
  4. Child gives “found” treat to Monkey
  5. Child gives own treat to Monkey

Conclusion: Toddlers happy when prosocial

Happier after share spontaneously versus in
response to request (Lennon & Eisenberg,
1987)

Happier after benefit others (and, the self)
versus no one (Hepach et al., 2017)

Question 2

Rene Spitz: Orphanage vs Prison Studies

Answer 2

Orphanage v Prison Studies

1. Compared sterile (but physically supportive) orphanages to prison nurseries

After 4 months, babies in orphanages (NOT in prisons):
- Movement diminished: lay in one place
- Vacant, expressionless faces
- Infants unstable and hyper-fearful: sudden dramatic
clinging, biting
- Stereotyped motor behaviors (rocking, banging heads
against crib, thumb sucking)

• 37% of orphanage babies did not survive past second birthday
• Zero prison babies died

Question 3

Anna Freud & Sophie Dann: Concentration Camp Children

Answer 3

Concentration Camp Children

1. Group of 6 infants separated from parents in concentration camps; no stable adult figure; essentially raised each other

• Discovered at age 3
• Initially quite hostile towards adults, but lovely to each other: shared, took turns
• Fared better than orphanage children (with no relationships); became relatively normal adults
• Peer relationships may help in atypical attachment

Question 4

Harry Harlow: Wire mom vs Cloth mom

Answer 4

Wire mother was made up of wire, provided food; cloth mother was soft, did not provide food

Harlow’s monkeys turned out atypically,
especially if no cloth mother
- Lacked social skills, abused their own
offspring

• Cloth-mother infants able to use mother as
  “secure base” from which to explore
• Orphanage-reared children also atypical
• Recall international adoption studies: age
  adoption matters
• As with peer-raised kids, peer-raised monkeys
  fare better 14

Question 5

Mary Ainsworth: Attachment style

Answer 5

Strange Situation (Attachment styles)

Question 6

Mirror Rouge (Mark) Test

Answer 6

• Mirror Self Recognition = Is it me, or another baby in the mirror

Pass by 18 - 24 months
- Autistic kids have particular trouble

Question 7

Ross et al., 2016: Sense of physical entity

Answer 7

• Non-Western Children outperforming Western in Shopping Cart Task

Question 8

Shopping Cart Study

Answer 8

1. The baby is standing on a mat that is tied to a shopping cart
2. The baby is asked to push the shopping cart to their mother

• 18 months babies realizes that the cart won’t more because they are standing on it - A sense of body as physical entity

Question 9

The Still-Face Paradigm

Answer 9

• Mothers interact normally with babies for 2 minutes, then go totally neutral for 2 minutes, then go back to interacting

Infants find “still-face” phases extremely distressing

Question 10

Thomas and Chses: New York Study

Answer 10

New York Longitudinal Study

• Studied 141 children from infancy to adulthood

9 dimensions on which to characterize infants

Babies categorized:
- 40% “easy” = happy, adaptable, regular routines, not over- nor under-sensitive
- 10% “difficult” = unhappy, unadaptable, irregular, intense reactions
- 15%. “slow to warm up” = negative, low activity and intensity, unadaptable, withdrawn
- The rest didn’t fit cleanly

Predicts functioning years later
- Difficult children at high risk for adjustment problems
- Shyness in slow to warm up children

Question 11

Jerome Kagan et al.: Inhibition

Answer 11

Inhibited and Uninhibited infants

~20% of 4-month-olds can be characterized as “inhibited” (or, upset by novelty)
- More likely to end up shy children (who have peer difficulties and are 4-6X more likely to develop anxiety)
40% of 4-month-olds “uninhibited” (or, delighted by novelty)
- More likely to end up sociable children

Question 12

Genesee et al., 1996: Bilingual

Answer 12

• 1 and 2-year old French-English bilingual infants
• Videotaped while interacting with monolingual strangers
• Infants changed their language depending on the language of the stranger
• However, infants still used words from the other language

Question 13

Weikum et al., 2007: Visual Language Discrimination

Answer 13

Visual Language Discrimination
- All infants succeed at 4 & 6 months
- Only bilingual infants maintain at 8 months

Question 14

Bialystok, 2015: Adaptation Hypothesis

Answer 14

“Adaptation Hypothesis”

Enhanced executive function (EF)
- Inhibitory control
- Task switching
- Attentional allocation

Question 15

Spelke et al, 1995: Physical law in object v agent

Answer 15

People are not limited to laws of billiard-ball physics

• Infants distinguish agents from objects
• They differentially respond to their actions
• They know that objects are subject to physical laws like contact causality, but think humans/agents may not be

Question 16

Woodward, 1998: Mental States

Answer 16

Infants viewing others’ behaviors in terms of mental states

• A ball and a bear placed beside each other
• Reaching for either is its respective goal
• New goal, old location vs New location, old goal

Infants look longer at the change in goal object than at a change in location

Inanimate Claw condition
- Claw shows no specific cues to agency, therefore contact objects

Infants do not distinguish these test events showing that goal representation is specific to the actions of agents

Question 17

Gergely et al., 1995: Rational Behavior

Answer 17

Habituation: Little ball repeatedly jumps barrier to get to big ball

Experiment
- The barrier is removed but little ball continues to jump even when barrier is removed (infants look longer)
- Indicating that they expect agents to act rationally, even if that means changing their physical behavior

Question 18

False Contents task: False-Belief

Answer 18

“What do you think is in the box?”

“Smarties”

“Why don’t you open the box and see?”

“Oh it’s pencils”

“Let’s close the box. What do you think your friend Jenny would is in the box if she saw it?”

“Pencils!”

• Passing false-belief tasks

Question 19

The Sally Anne Task: False-Belief

Answer 19

1. Sally has a basket and Anne has a box
2. Sally put hers red ball in the basket
3. Sally goes out of the room and leaves Anne alone
4. Anne takes the ball out of the basket and puts it in the box
5. When Sally comes back and she wants to play with the ball, where will Sally look for her ball

For a participant to pass this test, they must answer the Belief Question correctly by indicating that Sally believes that the marble is in her own basket.

Question 20

DiGiogio et al., 2016: Autism

Answer 20

Compared 13 HR and 16 HR newborns preferences for face-like, direct gaze, and biological motion stimuli

Basis of the difference
- HR: No preference
- LR: Preference for social

• Differences between HR and LR newborns suggests innate subcortical orienting mechanism may not exist in HR infants

Suggests successful orienting to social stimuli from 2 mos in HR infants because cortical mechanisms do develop
- However, cortical mechanisms develop atypically/decline in function, because not supported by subcortical ones

Question 21

Izaard et al., 2009: Familiarization of sounds

Answer 21

After familiarization to # of sounds (4 or 12), newborns look to matching display

Question 22

Wynn, 1922: Unexpected Problem

Answer 22

Babies look longer at unexpected problem

1+1=1

Question 23

McKenzine & colleagues: Peak-A-Boo

Answer 23

1. Peek-a boo Paradigm: Train babies to anticipate location of peek-a-boo-er in circular surround (30 degrees to their right etc)
2. Then turn them and see if they anticipate egocentrically or allocentrically

Gets better and better from 4-8 months (pre-crawling)

Question 24

Sandbox Paradigm

Answer 24

1. Different-shaped sandboxes used to test different things

With younger babies, hide toy in one location, find it in another, 5-months-olds are surprised

Question 25

Lourenco & Longo, 2010: Magnitude

Answer 25

Habituation: Black = more (bigger size, longer duration) Test: Congruent: black = bigger # Incongruent: black = smaller # 9-month-olds longer looking to incongruent colour/number relation

Question 26

Meltzoff 1988, Deferred imitation

Answer 26

Adults perform an action and babies are not allowed to do anything until some time has passed - 9-months baby exemplify deferred imitation by solely repeating the adult's action through memory Shows that deferred imitation is present at 9-months onwards, and strongly present at 14-months

Question 27

Guy et al., 2013: Visual Recognition Memory

Answer 27

- “Short lookers” versus “long lookers” in VRM tasks - Thought to reflect more versus less efficient encoding - Short lookers do better on recognition, but also language, play, intelligence - Also show “global precedence” — primary focus on global info rather than local - Short-lookers show brain activity differences between familiar and novel-global; long-lookers between familiar and novel-local

Question 28

Turati et al., 2003: Categorizing

Answer 28

Explored newborns' ability to perceive perceptual similarities between different exemplars of 2 broad classes of simple shapes: closed and open geometric forms Tested on new instance of old category or new category Newborns showed preference for novel form! Newborns are able to form broad categories of distinguishable geometric shapes by relying on the shapes' perceptual similarity.

Question 29

A-not-B error

Answer 29

Babies of 10 months or younger typically make the perseveration error, meaning they look under box "A" even though they saw the researcher move the toy under box "B", and box "B" is just as easy to reach. Piaget called this phenomenon A-not-B error

Question 30

Kellman & Spelke, 1983: Representing Unseen Entities

Answer 30

A box is placed on top of a rod covering the gap between the rods -Infant perceive the rod without a gap if it moves together with the box

Question 31

Baillargeon et al., 1985: Screen or Drawbridge study

Answer 31

Younger babies look long at the impossible event (screen passing through box), - Means they remember the box Older babies even seem to know what angle the screen should stop at

Question 32

Spelke's Shelf study: Studying Solidity

Answer 32

2-year-olds fail to predict outcomes of physical events

Question 33

Leslie & Keeble, 1987: Contact Causality

Answer 33

Habituation Cause: yellow cause blue to move Pause control: Yellow moves, blue moves, no cause Test Causality reversal: Blue causes yellow to move Infants in cause condition dishabituate to causality reversal; infants in pause condition do not

Question 34

Stahl & Feigenson, 2015: Core Principles

Answer 34

Test Knowledge-Consistent and Knowledge-Violation outcomes in experiments - 11-months-old shown objects that either violated core principles, or did not

Question 35

The Moving Room

Answer 35

Test proprioception/the use of optic flow - Early walkers fall; adults sway: the more experience, the more behavioral flexibility Active experience matters No critical period Active feedback essential for learning to move around in space

Question 36

Gibson & Walk, 1960: The Visual Cliff

Answer 36

Infants with 6 weeks crawling experience avoid the cliff, those with only 2 weeks cross - Issue seems to be integrating perception and action

Question 37

Karen Adolph: The Veritable Cliff

Answer 37

Test of infant's perception of different depth in terms of its riskiness Experience integrating perception and action required

Question 38

Slater er al., 1990: Size Constancy

Answer 38

Habituation - Show newborns one object placed at varying distances (and, therefore, varying retinal image sizes) Do newborns realized this is one repeated object, or do they see this as many distinct objects (Size constancy) Test - Show old object, plus identical but larger object that is farther away Newborns looked toward new object, suggesting saw it as new -Suggest saw original as one repeated object, despite changes in retinal size

Question 39

The Ames Window: Testing Pictorial Depth

Answer 39

With one eye covered, 7-months-olds (but not 5mos) reach to long side - suggest pictorial cue develops around 6 mos

Question 40

Meltzoff & Barton, 1979: Testing Intermodal Perception

Answer 40

Habituation: - Suck on either a nubby or smooth pacifier Test - Shown both, tries to match Newborns succeed, suggesting an innate intermodal perception

Question 41

The McGurk Effect

Answer 41

Young infants detect sound-face movement matches for non-native speech sound; older infants do not

Question 42

Dominguez et al., 2008: Racial Differences

Answer 42

The role of general, pregnancy, and racism stress Only pregnancy and racism stress thus preterm and LBW more common against Black mothers