Dev Psych Theories + Methods
3 major debates in Developmental psychology
What are Nature vs. Nurture; Continuity vs. Discontinuity; Activity vs. Passivity?
Agents, such as viruses and drugs, that can harm/damage an embryo or fetus
What are teratogens?
The term that describes we become better at identifying the most prominent sounds in our native language
Acquired Distinctiveness
The process where people use existing mental patterns in new situations.
What is assimilation?
The method Dr. Janet Werker used to test children's phonemic differentiation
Conditioned head turn procedure
How does myelination affect an infant's brain?
It allows electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along neurons.
Which ability/skill does Marshmallow task test?
Delay of gratification/inhibitory control
This reflex allows a newborn baby to find a breast or a bottle to begin feeding. You can trigger this reflex by stroking or gently touching the corner of a baby’s mouth.
What is rooting reflex?
Which study found that children independent sitting experience predicts their 3d object completion ability?
Soska, Adolph, & Johnson (2010)
Full name of the psychologist who suggested children achieve best learning in tasks that they can perform with guidance but cannot yet perform independently
Who is Lev Vygotsky and what is Zone of Proximal Development?
A thing in our brains at birth that becomes activated once exposed to language and allows us to understand and develop language, especially syntax/grammar.
Hint: Nativist perspective of language acquisition
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Bonus point +50: who proposed the idea?
The short phrase that summarizes the order in which an individual human brain develops tell us about the order in which the human brain evolved
“Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”
Eye-tracking measures the angle between _______ and _______ to compute the point of gaze
The angle between the center of the pupil and the corneal reflection
Two patterns of body growth that supporting the nature theory of motor development
Cephalocaudal and Proximodistal
Which skill did Dr. Baillargeon study by measuring infants' response to magical and realistic events?
What is object permanence?
This occurs when we focus on a single feature while blocking out the rest of our environment.
What is selective attention?
Two-word-sentences without pronouns (‘hug meow-meow’)
What is telegraphic speech?
The lobe that governs spatial processing and integrates sensory input with information in memory; also where motor and somatosensory cortex located
What is parietal lobe?
Why fMRI have low temporal resolution?
fMRI detecting the changes in blood oxygenation and flow, but the rate of neurotransmitter firing is different from the rate of blood flow
Bonus point +50: The full name of fMRI
Organs that release 1) CRH; 2) ACTH; 3) Cortisol
CRH - Hypothalamus;
ACTH - (Anterior) pituitary gland
Cortisol - Adrenal gland
How can you facilitate a three-month-old's visual preference for human faces based on Libertus & Needham (2014)?
"Sticky Mittens" study; any other experiences that might lead infants to acquire a new understanding of themselves and human as agents who can act on the world
Modal Model of Memory was developed by which psychologists at what year?
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968
Why the development of syntax/grammar cannot be explained by the empiricist perspective?
We often don’t provide corrective feedback to children’s grammatical mistakes; however, they are still able to acquire perfect grammar. Also, they are not copying sentences parents said, even they can do that, the linguistic input they receive is not sufficient. The fact is they produce new sentences they never heard before.
Six stages of neural development (has to be in correct order)
over-production (proliferation), migration, aggregation, specialization, synaptogenesis, apoptosis (synaptic pruning), myelineation