Emotional Development
Describe the developmental trend associated with the emergence of smiling, laughing, and expressing happiness in the first year?
Birth to 15 months, infants experience only "primary emotions" (joy, fear, sadness, and anger)
social smiling (2 mos). laughter (2 to 5 mos), active in games that elicit joy (6-12 mos), infants smile and laugh when achieving goals (9-11 mos)
What is attachment as defined by Bowlby?
Attachment: “an enduring emotional tie uniting one person to another” Bowlby (1988)
Define components of grammar: morphemes, syntax, semantics, pragmatics?
Morphemes: smallest units of language that carry meaning (e.g. prefixes, suffixes)
Syntax: the rules for how words can be combined to form understandable phrases and sentences
Semantics: the meanings of a large number of words
Pragmatics: The social conventions that enable effective communication in your language
How do children solve the segmentation problem in semantic development (i.e., where words begin and end?). Describe the help that children receive from their environment (input).
Cognitive Processing theory
-proposes that children are born with basic cognitive abilities
-children learn language by using their cognitive skills to make inferences about language patterns
infant directed speech (slowed down speech with clearer intonation and longer pauses)
Why do adolescents aspire to be in the perceived popular category more so than the socially accepted category?
- Perceived popular teens are viewed as higher status.
- High status is used to wield influence over others.
When are the emotions of anger, fear, and sadness expressed?
Anger, sadness, and fear are expressed around 6 to 8 months of age
Fear is often expressed in the presence of a stranger
(stranger anxiety) (7 – 9 months of age
When children are attached, their caregiver can serve as a secure base in the natural environment. What behaviors indicate that a child is using their caregiver as a secure base?
Keep track during exploration, approaching or touching when anxious or distressed
At what age, do infants first words appear?
10-15 months
Describe how the whole object assumption and mutual exclusivity assumption help children solve what new words refer to.
Whole-object assumption: Words refer to a whole object
Exclusivity assumption: An object has one label; a new word will therefore refer to different things
What is the function of aggression in maintaining or gaining popularity?
- Aggression is used to maintain status, they use aggression to counteract threats to their social position
At what age do young children begin to express self-conscious emotions such as guilt and shame? How are these behaviors manifested? What study demonstrated these behaviors?
24-36 months
Pride: Occurs when a child perceives they have met or exceeded a standard (e.g., "I built this tower all by myself!")
Expression of pride (Stipek et al., 1992). Monitoring caregiver when they are succesful; looking for acknowledgment
Guilt: Occurs when a child perceives they have fallen short of a standard. Focus is on the action. (e.g., “I did a bad thing.”).
Shame: Occurs when a child perceives they have fallen short of a standard. Focus is on the self. (e.g., “I am a bad person.”).
When children are attached, their caregiver can serve as a haven of safety. What behaviors in the natural environment indicate that a child is using their caregiver as a haven of safety?
stranger approaching can have a child run back to parents for safety, find comfort in proximity and contact
What is the word spurt? Around what age does the word spurt occur?
refers to rapid increase in the words an infant knows, they produce about 50 words, occurs at 18-24 months
According to learning theory, how do children acquire the knowledge needed to form grammatical sentences?
Learning theory posits that children learn language through imitation, modeling or reinforcement.
Why do teens want to be associated with boys that engage in overt aggression?
boys pair aggression with likable social behavior
-they may be aggressive, yet say they are joking
-adolescents are willing to forgive aggressive behavior if they are enacted by peers who they envy or admire
What is the still face paradigm? How did the infants react to their mother’s non-responsiveness? What are the implications of the findings related to emotional development?
Infants as young as 4 months of age demonstrate the ability to read basic emotions
• Demonstrated by Tronick in the 1970’s
• Still-face paradigm: Dr. Tronick designed the study to create a “social violation” – a break in the expected pattern of interaction that allows researchers to observe how infants respond when their social expectations are not met
When mother's were non responsive, the infants smile more, point, and use big gestures to try and win the mother back, baby tries to self-regulate, once efforts are failing they collapse into distress and eventually withdraw.
Study is significant because infants distress shows:
they anticipate reciprocal responses from their caregiver, can detect violations in expected social patterns, actively work to maintain social connection, and experience multiple consequences when social expectations are violated
What caregiving behaviors promote secure attachment?
- Sensitivity to the baby's signals, flexible–gear behavior to the baby's state, mood, and interests, psychologically available
What is babbling? What evidence is there that babbling is rooted in biology? How does experience play a role in the development of babbling?
Biological Basis
-Babbling is universal
-Similar patterns across cultures
-Infants exposed to sign language will babble with their hands (i.e. babble signs)
Need for experience
-Babbling is a way for infants to practice the needed muscles to make words
-Babbling can be delayed in cases where infants have been prevented from making sounds
Does learning theory adequately explain how children develop the capacity to produce complex sentences? Why or why not?
No,
-Noam Chomsky
- Children have prewired knowledge and skills that
make the language learning task simpler.
- They possess an innate set of principles that all
languages follow to help them interpret speech.
(Universal Grammar)
why are "popular" youth more prone to engaging in risk behaviors compared to likable youth?
adult persona, risky behavior is seen as a marker of maturity
social visibility, high status youth are more visible and may feel pressure to conform to the "high-risk" norms
opportunities, access to parties and social situations where risky behavior takes place
What is social referencing and what does this behavior say about emotional development?
Social referencing, the process of whereby infants/toddlers seek out information from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act
• By 12 months, infants can interpret a fear face as a sign of threat and use this social information to guide their behavior in novel situations
Is attachment fixed in infancy? Explain.
Attachment behaviors may change if the environment improves or deteriorates
What is telegraphic speech and what age do young children use it?
What is... producing 2-word utterances (i.e daddy hat) with consistent word order
What do children’s overregularization errors say about language development?
- demonstrates that they are learning language by actively applying grammatical rules rather than just imitating or memorizing
-children's language is rule governed
What are gender differences in popularity?
- For boys, popularity and being liked tend to remain closely connected.
- For girls, the connection weakens. Popular girls may still have high status or influence in the peer group, but they may not necessarily be liked by everyone.