Motor Development
True or False: Infants avoid unsafe areas in inexperienced posture rather than experienced posture.
False - It's the opposite: they avoid it when they are in their experienced posture, but not when they are in their inexperienced posture.
What was Bowlby’s evolutionary take on attachment theory?
Forming relationships with caregivers is a primary aspect of development, and both are already predisposed to form those close attachments to one another.
What are the three processes of development and learning?
Assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration
Of the two theories of knowledge, which corresponds most with the “nature” view of development?
Core Knowledge - The idea that knowledge is coded by genes
What were the main findings that researchers compared restricted movement between Gahvora Cradling in Tajikistan and Indigenous Hopi Native American Cradleboards?
More extreme restriction of movement resulted in later development of motor milestones later in infancy (ex. Delayed walking)
In Ainsworth’s observational study, a stressful social situation was created to evaluate attachment relationships. What variation did researchers find among insecurely attached individuals?
Of the insecurely attached individuals they found avoidant (ignores caregiver upon return) and ambivalent/resistant (not easily soothed upon return) attachment styles.
True or False: It has been found that infants actually have object permanence as young as 1 month.
False - Infants as young as 3 months have object permanence
True or False: Looking time studies measure an infant’s expectation toward an event.
True - Infants look longer at events that are novel or unexpected.
Guess that age! Jamie just began using the couch to walk to their mom. How old are they?
9 months - display standing with help and means-end actions
What determines an infant’s attachment style?
Parental sensitivity (hypothesis), characteristics of the infant (temperament hypothesis)
A child is told that the rule is that a feather can break a glass. But when asked again if a feather can break a glass, they answer no. What stage (including age range) are they currently in?
Concrete Operations Stage, (7-12)
A researcher hides 3 balls in a box. When the infant finds one, the researcher secretly takes the rest out. The baby will keep searching for the rest of the balls. However, when a researcher does the same experiment with 4 balls they fail. Why?
Infants have core knowledge systems for exact small numbers, but fail when there is 4 or more objects.
Fred and George (Harry Potter) are twins! During infancy Fred was trained to climb the stairs by Mrs. Weasly, while George wasn’t. What would we expect from George knowing about Gesell’s findings of motor development? Why?
George would catch up spontaneously because differences in genes influence motor development across
What can cause an infant to fail to form an attachment to the caregiver?
Infants who experience neglect, severe punishment, and lack of warmth or responsiveness, can fail to form an attachment (Ex. Romanian Orphanages)
It is theorized that infants have the competence but not the skills to succeed at the A-not-B task. In addition to knowing where the object is, what are three skills infants need to succeed at the task?
Have to hold the location of the object in their memory, have to resist reaching in the same place, and have to not get distracted.
Hao is studying for his PSY 105 midterm and is getting confused about how nature and nurture make up an individual. How would you explain nature and nurture's contribution to an individual?
Nature and nurture BOTH occur together within an individual. It's between individuals when it differs.
A mother is concerned that her infant will never walk as they have not begun crawling and are nearing the milestone age to begin walking. Is the mother correct? Explain.
No, because while infants typically begin walking between 9-15 months (or later) it is normal for some infants to not crawl before then.
Paran works at a daycare center. One of his students, Kira, has been struggling with her academics, and displaying increased impulsiveness with her peers. After class, Kira’s mom comes right on time, and asks Kira about her day and what she learned. Based on the two dimensions of parenting, what parenting style is Paran noticing from Kira’s parents? Why?
Permissive, as Kira’s behavior correlates towards low demand parenting, but the warm way the level of warmth and engagement the mom has for her daughter, indicates high responsiveness.
Robin and Ernesto are brothers, and were given one large cookie and one small cookie to share. Both of them want the bigger cookie. In order to hide the big cookie from his brother, Robin breaks it in half so it looks smaller than the other cookie. Ernesto happily takes the smaller cookie, thinking it was bigger. What Piaget stage is Ernesto in? What task did he fail and why?
Ernesto is in the Preoperational stage (2-7). He failed a conservation task due to centration, where he focused on one feature (what the cookie looked like) at the exclusion of other important ones (that the broken cookie was actually bigger).
Ava is able to recite numbers from 1 to 100. However, when her parent asked her to give her 15 crayons, Ava gives her parent a random handful of crayons. Why is this? What are some possible methods to solve this problem?
Young children can recite numbers, but learn the meanings of numbers one at a time, and can take about 6 months to reach a knower level. To help Ava, her parents could use more number words and do more labeling of larger sets of exact numbers to improve her “knower” level.