HC Development, Learning & Behavior

Lecture 1: Giving an oral presentation

Some aspects of an oral presentation

• What you say
  • Needs to be carefully aligned with your adience
    • How you present it interesting
    • Angle, make it personal, interesting right from the start
• Make a good story
  
  • Certain elments: drama, action, suspense, offering solution for a problem
  • Certain structure:
    
    • context others can relate to/show relevance
    • problem that research questions adresses
    • solution and implications
• how you say it
  
  • you need to adapt to circumstances/audience
    
    • speech
      
      • tempo (slow down)
      • intonation
      • emphasis (exagerate)
      • articulation
      • words (will audience understand them? Professional audience or children?)
      • PAUSES (allows audience to process the information)
    • Body
      
      • Face (look happy/engaged)
      • Posture (active)
      • Gestures
      • Movement (attention grabber)
      • Clothes (appropriately)
      • EYE CONTACT (look at the audience as a whole)
• Visual aids
  
  • Do you want attention on you or on the screen? Think about that
  • Attention management
    
    • 1 message per slide (info about one topic)
    • 1+1= 0 (if what you tell doesnt match with your slides)
    • Attention snatchers (where do you want to have attention)
      
      • Movement (in gestures or slides)
        
        • But can be distracting as well
      • Signal colours
      • High contrast (to emphasize and shift attention)
      • Size matters (bigger headings draw attention)
    • Build up slides (information peace by peace to keep information relevant to audience)
• Less is more (think careful about what to say, focus on relevant, then audience will remember more)

Lecture 2: Prenatal development

WEIRD science

Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. These characteristics are in 95% of participants in social science research, while it’s only 12% of population. Visual perception is an example of a not universal characteristic. Example Muller-Leyer illusion: answers differed greatly between cultures. Some cultures were almost not influenzed by the illusion while others were influenced a lot.

So what we know about development may only be relevant for selective people. It’s not unuseful research, but we should not generlize without further investigation. We need to look at different groups of people, dealing with one average is not fruitful.

What is development: Specific type of chance

1. Qualitative (not in how much, but what chances)
2. Sequential (some chances precede others)
3. Cumulative
4. Directional (progressive or regressive)
5. Multifactorial (multiple factors detemermine development)
6. Individual (developmental pathways are unique for each human; milestone ages can differ between individuals)

Prenatal development

Start of development starts here. Egg and sperm cells are special.

Mitosis:  a manual describes te cell what to be: chomosomes. During mitosis all genetic material is duplicated and then split.

Meioses: crossing over of genes and then duplication  and then again, so only half of genes. Sperm cell delivers the other half.

The basis for genetic variation

Genetic basis for indivual differences

Helps us understnad the interactions between nature and nurture (research with monozygotic and dyzyogotic twins à compare those to see gene-environment interactions)

Four developmental process crucial for development of foetus

1st Mitosis: ‘ordianry’ cell divsion: division off cells rapidly

2nd Cell migration: cells migrate to new positions. Like brian cells actively pull themself to new position.

3th cell diferentiation: first cells can become anything/not specialized. While number of cells increases, the total size does’t. then some cells become blastocyst en others becom inner mass cells, and they are not multipotent but pluripotent: they can become everything, depending on neurochemical signals they receive during development. One specialized, they cant change anymore.

4th apoptosis: programmed cell death. For exxample cells conneting fingers dissappear.

These four processes very important for prenatal development, but not full story.

Womb is far from safe environment.

Stimulation form the outside.

10 w à sense of pressure (muscles, joints, skin)

13 w à detection of movement

20à detection of ligth

26 w à detection sound

26-28 w à detection smell and taste

They learn from all these experiences and develop preferences for same food and voice like mother. So foetus is far from passive.

Fetal movement

Non random movements: directed to objects in environment

All this movevement has important fucntion in development

Like swallowing important for activity in back of your throat.

Body movements also important for normal developments of muscles, bones, joints and skin

This is one of the reasons alcohol during pregnancy can be bad, as the foetus will move less because of alcohol.

Harmful influences are called teratogens. Think for instance of stress, meidcin, drugs, nicotine, chemicals, pollutions. Time, duration and time of exposure are importnat in the negative effects. Diferent susceptibality during development. Critical periods during prenatal development.

So even development in the wumb is effected by the environment. Even like community facilities that might influence stress levels of mothers.

Lecture 3 : Brain development

The brain is made up of neurons, and those have connections. So complexity of the brain.

Cell body: most cell processes
dendrites: receiving part of neuron
axon: sending part of neuron
myelin sheath: keep healthy and speed interaction
axon terminals: signals transmitted to other cells

How do neurons communicate?

Resting potential. Negative charge because of ions. Cel membrane with channelsà distribution of ions. Other mechanisms at play at the same time, when treshold of 55 mV is reacherd, then action potetnial/depolarization. When 40 mV is reached, then repolarisation. Then combe back to -70mV, the refractory period, so restored to resting state.

Potential propagation. How does siganl go from ons side of axon tot he other. Myelin sheat have openings in. Flowing in and out of ions in these openings. So action potential, then ions diffuse. Threshold reached and jumps to other opening. Because of these hops, signal can go very fast.

Neural communication

So electrical signal enters axon terminal. There neurotransmitters in synpatic vesicles. When signal reaches the axon, these vesicles move to border of cell, fuse and release neurotransmitter into synaptic. Then hook op with receptors on dendrite. Specific receptors for specific neutrotransmitters. What happens when neutrotransmitter bind on dendrite, they change plolarity of cell membrane. If polarity is disturbed enough, then dendrite will fire and continue signal in next cell.
Also synthesis in synaptic left by certain chemicals.

Information processing

If signal is received by dendrite, it might not be enough to fire and send it. neuron must be stimulated to reach the threshold. Factors that increase or decrease polarity of cell membrane. Exitatory and inhibitory transmitters. If a lot of such process in eacht neurons, information process thus super complex.

How to influence neurotransmission?

For example medication. Try to target neurotransmission. For isntance target synthesis of transmitters  by a diet with serotone.
Another way is focus on presynaptic receptors (sending side), like blocking reuptake. The idea is then more neutrontransmitter available, so more chance i twill bind to postsynaptic neuron.
Postsynaptic receptors focus à signal send never reaches second neuron by blocking the next neuron/postsynaptic receptors.
target metabolisation, so breakdown of certain neurotransmitters.

Actually for a large part we have no idea what kind of medicins we can use for influencing neurotransmitters. These systems are so complex.

How is the brain organized?

How do you found out?

• Brain damage
  • Person got dynamite through his head. He didnt die. He lost eye side. Very important was realisation that part of brain can be severly damaged, but you dont die, and where only certain things on which he changed. Only fucntions that are localized in these areas of the brain. So the brain is not just one big organ
• Brain stimulation
  
  • Implented electrodes in the brain to stimulate the brain. To find out what parts of the brain work for what. Can work for persons with parkinson or depression that can be treated otherwise.
  • Another way is electromatic field: temporarily stimulate of shut down part of of the brain.
• Electrical recording (EEG)
  
  • Record where and when certain brain areas are activated.
• Neuro imaging
  
  • If you want to know where brain is activated.

With these techniques they find out :

Three major subdivisions

Forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain

Hindbrain: part just above spinal cord.
brainstem just on top of spinal cord. Medulla is very critical for life functions.
pons: bridge between cerebrum and upper regions of brain
Cerebellum: muscular movement, especially small and smooth ones. First part affected by drinking.

Midbrain
brainstem: eye movement and muscle movement

Forebrain (biggest part of the brain)
limbic system: motivation, emotion, learning, memory (and hypothalamus is part of limbic system)(another important part is amygdala: social proces, agression, fear)(another part is hippocampus: forming and retreiving memories, neurogenesis doesn’t stop here)
thalamus: sensory input and route them
hypthalamus: emotion, nerve system, hunger and thirst, temperature, endocryne system
Cerebral cortex: number of areas associated with specific functions. Frontal lobe with executive functions. Broca’s areas within that, for speach. Occipital lobe about vision. All those regions assoicate with specific functions, but all thsose various regions are interconnected.

Motor cortex
very specific ares associated with certain parts of body. This is lateralized: everything you control on left side is regulated by right hemisphere and reversed.
amount of cortes for each body area says somtething about the complexity of movement.

Somatis sensory cortex
most body parts match areas from motor cortex. Again lateralized. Amount of area alotted agina correspondent to complexity of sensory system.

How does the brain develop?

Quite a lot happens over the period before a child is born. Much more growth in volume before birth than after birth.
number of important processes in brain development. 1st is cell birth. 2nd migration. 3rd outgrowth of axon and dendrite. Then programmed cell death. Then synaptic production. Then myelatnion: insulation of neurons. Then finally pruning: connections not necessary are removed over time. Some processes overlap and some are especially located in wumb or after birth.

Neurogenesis
Week 5-25 especiallly
neural stamcells (havent differentiated cell yet): neurons (transimit and communicate) and glial cells (supportive fucntions, also myelin sheats come from this)
created at outstanding rate.

Migration
pushing at first. More cells are created, so newer cells push older ones to outside of cell.
second: pulling by glia cells. Forming layers. Then brain grows to 6 lines of cells. The layer determines the function. Cause each line has different factors that tell the cell what they need to become.

Programmed cell death
at the hight of production of neurons, the brain has way more neurons than brain of a born child. Apoptosis then. Part of genetic instruction says destroy yourself. Needs tob e de-activited if cell wants to survive. Target cells release certain chemical, but just enough for number of neurons à Neural darwinism: survival of the fittest. They think this is done to make sure that within development embryo can cope with certain types of damage.
It also makes sure that if not good connection or not enough survival factors, these cells are removed.

Synaptic production
making of actual connections between neurons. Types of connections is steared by chemical processes, called chemoattratction and chemorepulsion. This actively stears which connections are made.
this takes places after birth, ages 0-4
many connections made per minute.
when you have all these connections, you need myelin

Myelination
shield the cells and communicating fast. Happens not at the same time in different regions. More cognitive areas, myelination start later.
is related to level of function development.

Actually if you look at cognitive fucntions, it depends of type of risk adolescents take. They are not stupid. It the ambiguous risks, the one that you can learn from, they are taking. This is functional as it is exploratory behavior.

Synaptic elimination/pruning
Very specific genetic code we need. It smore easy to make lots of connections and then see which connections are used very often, which are most fuctional where child grows up. Use it or lose it. what you end up with is brain that is perfectly attuned tot he environment. Therefore it makes sense this happens afther birth, as it depends on where the child is born.

Sensitive periods

In senstiive periods the system expects some sort of input. You also have experience-expectant: processes where organisms expects input, if doesn’t get, that certain area will not develop well. This areas get taken over by other areas: cross-motal plasticity. Like blind people hear better. If you have certain brain damage, that can be taken over by other areas of the brain. Very intereseint condition is synestesia: initial connectons do not get disconneted, like hearing colors or taste sounds. Likely that pruning process, didn’t happen.
one more example of brain plasticity: child with part of brain missing. This girls has slower development, but can come along.

Overview 

1. Neurogensis
2. Migration & differentiation
3. Developing axond and dendrites
4. Apoptosis
5. Synaptic production
6. Myelination
7. Synaptic pruning

Lecture 4: Genes en gene*environment interaction

Relative recent topic. Some things in this lecture may be outdated over a couple of years.

The topic of genetics

Human being inherit characteristics of their parents.
Children are physically looking like parents and siblings.

Psychological characteristics: gene can play important role, this can make people uncomfortable. Lecturer’s assumption about this uncomfortability of people is determinism. People are afraid there not in control of their characteristics.

Genetics is interesting as it is mysterious. Like with identical twins separated at birth.

Selective breeding

Long time researchers thought everything was due to environment.

Tyron’s experiment: some rats were doing better than others. Bright vs dull ones. Bright ones had children and dull ones had children. He did this across 7 generations. Results: generation of bright rats became brighter and dull became duller. Even if raised by dull mother, bright rats were doing way better. Critics on experiment: not blind on experimental conditions. But still indication that genes can be more influential than we thought.

How does the transmission take place?

Through genes carried by chromosomes of parents.

Cells, nucleas, in nucleus chromosomes.
cells for reproduction have nog 46 chromosomes, but only half/23.
Another type of cell also dont have chromosomes: red blood cells, as they dont have a nucleus.

Pairs as you receive one from mother en one from father.

Woman: 2 x, man: x and y. Thus father makes female or male child.

DNA is wrapped around. Chromosoom is very small. Each cell, if you unwrap DNA, it’s 2 meters. Chromosoom contains thousands of genes, segments of DNA. Each pair of chromosoom, same gene on same location.
Genes tell the cells what to be and what to do. Directions so that cell can perform particular fucntion. Mostly making proteins.

How come all the cells are not the same and do same thing? In any cell, only 5-10% of genes are active. This allows the cell to be specialized. There are some genest hat are specialized in makoing other genes switch on or off. This is why one cell become neuron/muscle/liver/etc.

Sibling arent identical, due to random assortment. Many egg cells and many sperm cells. When these cells are created, they come from one single cell, but divides and then randomisation takes place. Through this randomasation, it creates 2 to the power of 23 variations. So fort he same couple of children very little possibility.
Also due to crossing-over: exchange of DNA between 2 chromosomes (between mother and father chromosome).
Another factor is mutations: accidental changes in DNA. This can be duet o environmental factors. Many mutations are harmless, some are helpful, but the ones we hear about the most are the ones responsible for diseases. Most mutations are heritive. Dominant.

Genotype: genes we posses
Phenotype: our characteristics that can be observable
Differences in genotypes, often cause differences in phenotypes. But doesn’t have to be, can also be environmental cause. So not perfect correspondence between genotype and phenotype.
Brain and neurosytem are influenced by genotype, but they themselves influence phenotype characterstics. That’s why brains and neurosystem are consideren in between: endophenotype.

In human being a good example of difference between genotype and phenotype is eye colour.
Dominant allel is brown. Recessive one is blue.

A little test: 25% chance of blue eyes. See table in slides.

People long thought monogenetic trait, as they thought only influenced by one gene. Differences between people, are going to be qualitative, not quantitative. Heredity is not just blending mixing up material from mother or father, but pattern of dominance and recessiveness. An other characterstic that is monogenic is type of ear wax. Qualitative differences: not on continuum, there are just categories. Quantitaive: people can have a score on it.
polygenic: depends on mutiple genes. Then become quantative or continious. People are not just one or the other.

How influential are our genes?

Does only environment matters? This is not the case. There are some behaviors that are mate; you come to the world with it. nature vs nurture. The question we try to answer is why people differ. We try to explain variation between people. We identify 3 main sources for differences: genotype, shared environment (home environment; shared by people who also share our genes), unshared environment (experiences unique to individual). So for each trait, how to define relative contribution of these 3 factors?

By looking at twins and adoption studies. Because we know genetic level of similarity.
with regular sibling 50% probality of sharing a gene, for identical twin 100% and for non-releative we assume it’s zero %.
We can look at corrrelations about specific trait. 1 and -1 are max en min. Weakes possible correlation is zero. If no association between people on particular trait, correlation would be zero.

Example of intelligence:
identical twins, even when raised apart, .75 correlation. It slower than .86 so environment still matters, but genes indeed important. So when compared with ‘regular’ siblings, gives implication that genes matters a lot, but  environment still matters.
Heribility coefficient: estimates exten to which variation of specifie phenytypic charactersitc within a population can be attributed tot heir differing genes. Religious attitudes for exmaple is not heritable at all. Environment has more influence on weight than height. But be careful with interpretation! You should never think of heretive estimates as single factor. Heritiblity estimate onlly has meaning when we talke about whole population as it explains differences between people.

Picture the variance:
Imagine we are a population. If all of us had same height. There would be no variation. So variation would just be one dot. But is some are very small, very tall or something in between. Then variance would be bigger. Heritibility tells us along vairation what proportion is due to genes vs environment. So don’t use hertibility coefficient when talking about single people.

Clearly also the environment does matter. Environment matters for intentions. Changing homes and educational experiences. Like IQ is related to SES. Gradual increase in IQ if goes to environment with higher SES. Educational experiences also increase IQ. But also by national disasters. So environment can be particularly important. Home environment seems tob e more important than individual environment for IQ.

Differences in heritability coefficients across populations. Research suggests that home environment matters more for people with lower SES, than for people with high SES. Which means contribution of genes is not the same for high and low SES families. So the most likely explananation is that among rich famlies, there is less variation and environment is as helpful as it can be. So if differences, this comes from genes. But among low SES, there is high variation in stimulating learning. So then environment matters more than genes do. So heritibality coefficient can differ across populations.

5 personality traits. Different dimensions. Agreeableness: being nice/cooperative. Extraversion: outgoing vs shy. Conscientousness: being perfectionstisc, hard worker. Opennes: being creative. Neuroticisme: anxiety.

These different traits have not exact same heritibility coefficients. Environments still plays a role, but genes do too. Is it more home environment or has it more to do with other experiences? Research found that when identical twins raised together, it didn’t seem to make such a difference. For adopted children, seemed same outcome. But correlation of sibling is close to zero. So yes, environment does matter, but it’s not really about the home, but about all the experiences you have outstide the home. Nature vs nurture.

Gene-environment interactions

Reality is more complex. Gene and environment dont just add up, but interact. This means the effect of genes can depend on environmental factors, and effect of environment can differ depending on genes. Orchid people are super sensitive (in good and bad ways). Dandelions not that much. So same environemnt can have different affect depending on genes, as they make you orchid or dandelion.

Another example. There are also children who have been abused but not become delinquent. And delinquents who were not abused. Why do some get aggressive and others not? Not maltreated children whether had low MAOA or hing MAOA, didn’t matter for agressiveness. But if maltreated, it dependend on the gene. Genes dont matter at all-in good environment, only in cases of extreme environment like maltreatment. So gene-environment interaction.

Another example. Polymorphism related to seronine. Depression. Girls victimized vs not-victimized girls. Short and long alles, low level of depression. Only with 2 short allels in victimized girls had very high levels of depression. So same enviornment is only having effect only depdening on the gene.

Reaction range: influence of genes is not gonna determine exact level of intelligence, but can determine range in which you will fall and environment will determine where in that range you will come.

Can genes influence the environment?

Yes! Evocative influence: the way we behave is going to evoke different reactions in people. Like crying children will have bigger change of more controlling children. Easy children will be having differently acting parents; more pleasant/stimulating environment.

Another way is that environment doesn’t just happen to us. You choose to be at UU for example. Outgoing children for example may choose sports that tend to evoke this outgoing a lot. So self-selection of compatible environments. We actively pursue environments.

Can the environment change our genes?

Genes can influence environment. Environment can not influence genes was long thought. That is still true, to the extent that environment can not change DNA itself. But it can change the expression of genes. Lot of cells are inactive. That’s how environment can change genes: by changing which and how genes are expressed: drugs, food, etc. This is called epigenetics (above genetics).

One of this is DNA methylation. Within cell DNA can be tied by tiny chemicals, whcih can cause gene tob e turned on or off.
And histones: DNA wrapped around this. Histones can control how tightly this is done. This can change activity of the genes. Environment can change this histones and thus epigenetics.

Important to remember that diet or drugs can affect gene expression, because its promising in solutions to diseases. And epigenetic changes can be heritable. Like dutch famine during WWII. Epigenetic changes which you can see in children of survivors.

Lecture 5: The development of perception

Picture of a train:
spot next to someone else, person smiles to you. Then you adjust your behavior; she rather sits alone. How we behave based on what we perceive.

We can use many cues. Touch, see, smell, hear. Today focus on visual cues.

Visual information guides behavior

Put a child on very thick lay of glass. Floor droppeda bout a meter. May be quite scary. Mom placed at the end of box and smile. Then infant cross towards mom. If mother looked scary, didn’t crawl to the mom. This prevents them from doing dangerous things, thus useful.

New born doesn’t perceive the images we see. Less colours, way less details. So more difficult to interpret emotion. So important to know what stimuli child can see to interrpet behavior of child.

Do children look more to females then males?

You conclude longer watching female. Can you conclude hypothesis? Or might be a problem? Color of clothing is way different in female then male. Children may be way more interested in red. so important to know whether visual input is the same for things you’re not interested in. So multiple reasons why important to know waht children can see at different ages.

Multiple steps to perception…

1. Processing basic information
2. Object segregation
3. Perception

These processes influence and depend on each other.

What can a child perceive?

Basic information= stimulus properties. All features of the stimulus taht don’t describe the object and relations between object and stimulus. Like color is basic information. And straight lines = orientation. Spatial frequencies relate to number of fine lines/contoures you can see.

This basic information is processed in visual cortex, in the striat cortex. First entering eyes, and then LGN, then to striate cortex. This is sensitive to all basic visual stimulus properties.
today focus on contract and spacial frequency.

Spatial frequency relates to acuity

Often children look at stimulus theyre more intereseted in; preferential looking. Spatial frequency: with hight sptatil frequency, they look at it more often. Contrast is also important. Higher contrast is looking more often.
actually, the whole picture constitutes of lines. But some points, you just cant see it anymore.

How to test what an infant sees?
observe to which side of images child looks most to. If child can see the middle image, then it would look to left side because more interesting picture because preferential looking, so this way you can find out what children can see.

Developing sensation

In the stimulus the child can see, you can draw a figure of that. You can look at this for multiple ages. They dont see the higer spatial frequencies at young age. But older age children, can see it as well as adults. Contrast continues to develop for long time however.

So what? Object perception! We can filter spatial frequencies out. Filter the colour out, filter high spatial frequencies out (to look al global view), or hight spatial frequncies to see local details.

Using bacis information to recognize emotions
brain activity can tell us what child sees. High spatial frequencies to differs betewen emoitons. For lsf as well.

10 months old us HSF to discriminte between emotion, whils adults mainly use lsf. Because taking up all details takes lot of time.

Differences between children

Do children with autism more HSF? Yes, even with higher extent than children.

Detail effects perception, because you get distracted. So effect on socializing.

Object segregation

That you can see that this a pointer, and its not the same as my hand. But in camouflage images, its more difficult. So segregation constitutes of 3 processes: border detection (wheer object starts and the other begins), integration (grouping: all parts of animal as one animal), segregation (figure-ground segregation: segregation of object form the background).

History: Gestalt principles

We as human observers have tendency to organize stimuli into figure and background. But there are principles how you determine this.

4 grouping principles (on what things we group)
similarity: if features are the same, its one figure. Like triangels are background and we see triangle out of cirkels.
closure: we automatically fill in parts of image that makes sense to belong together
proximity: we tend to say thing close together form an object.
continuity: less likely that change in orientation of figure

[note: Enkele afbeeldingen in deze aantekeningen zijn door de WorldSupporter redactie verwijderd wegens vermoedelijke inbreuk op het auteursrecht]

because W is same colour and backgroudn is same colour

Becasue same colour as background and thus seen as the same image

we tend to see it as one thing. Why would similarity play a role? Same shape and move in same direction (similarity in motion). Not proximity, as à
similarity: one object, because same colour or shape. Proxitmity: close toe ach other than to other object.

These principle were the first to explain why we see things as one object.

Studying segregation

Which brain activity relates to segregation?

Found: infant scan start segregation around 6 months. Thoughout childhood become more acurate and faster, until 13/14, then as acurate and fast as adults. This might help in object perception: to see an object; object recognition. It mgith also help segregation. Once you know the boject, you cant not see it anymore. So recogniton helps the brin.

Relation to basic and object perception

Visual information enters eyes, into brain in cortex. multipe visual areas that process. Feedforward connections: from early (basic information areas) to later (more complicated information, such as a face or a house) areas. Feedback connetions:; these areas provide information back as well to lower areas. These feedback connections are related to segregation.

Object recognition

We are specialized in seeing some of these objects. Overview of very specialized areas. One are for faces. One for whole body. One related to places, like houses, scenes à PPA. One area relates to things. In general, not all areas can be active at the same time.  Some objects we really have specialized are, fors ome we dont.

Humans tend to have very strong interest in faces.

Innate preference for faces?
As newborns look very quickly at faces, this question arose.
which type of images do the children follow longer, are it the more face like images?
newborns have preferences for images with dots. Looks like faces. So children have preferences to look at faces. Because they do it a lot, they experience more and become more sensitive to faces.

Specialization to human faces

Infants at six months could discriminate between human faces, but not with monkey faces. This effect disappeared at nine months. So at young age we can discrimnate betweeen human and monkeys as well. We delearn it. it take brain capacity that we dont need.

Do we become faster at processing faces and how do barin areas that process face develop?
the line goes down, so goes faster when we grow older.

Areas activited more have colour. We see in youngest children only green and blue areas. Its more likely that all areas respond tof aces, brain isnt specialized to faces yet.

So wehn taking together: face processing is from birth onwards, which becomes faster and more specialized, and gets mature in adolescence.

Multiple steps in perception

3 steps
interaction between recognition and perception

HC 6: Cognitive Development

There are major themes regarding development:

• Nature vs nurture
  • Its nature and nurture, but some ask or
• Role of child
  
  • Active or passive
• Continutisy vs disc
• Mechanisms of change
• The weight they give to sociocultural context
• The explenations in why people differ

Major theories

• Piaget.
  • Developed theroy by observing his own children
  • Groudnbreaking and fundamental theory
  • Why and how thing happened
  • View of children nature
    
    • Mentally active form birth
    • Mental and physical acritive both drive edevelopment
    • Constructivist paproach: experiences construct knowledge
    • In response to own experiences they develop
    • Constructive processes are       
      
      • Geernating hyptoheses
      • Performing experiments
      • Drwaing conclusions form observations and so they learn
  • Nature and nuture interact thus
  • Main soruces of conitinout as within each stage there is continuity
    
    • Assimilation
    • Accomodation: learning from experience, so that new information also fits
    • Equilibartion: balance between assimatlion and acommodation to create a stable understanding. You can explain events around you. Then you find stuff that dont match with your knowledge base, then disequilibri, then accomoodation until equilibartion again.
  • 4 stage of discontionu cognitive devleopment (with limits and voordelen)
    
    • Sensorimotro
      
      • Sensory and motor abilities
      • Learn about object and people
      • Rudimentary forms of concepts
      • Experience is in here and now mostly
      • Birth to 1 month: what they do mostly limited to reflexes
      • Beyond first few motnhs: integrating reflexed
      • 8 motnhs: object permanence: if you hide object, at least for short time, child seems to kno wits there. It shows rudimental form of representations. Mental representation of object.
      • beyond first year: actions become coordinated en goal oriented.
      • 1-year old: little explorers
        
        • That explore drive drives development according to piaget
      • 18-24 motnhs: deferred imitation
      • [a not b error. Idea is that no object permanence or unstable object permanence if children can not do it. althoug in plain side toy hidden in new locatioin, child reaches for old location. Thus unstable obejct permanence.]
    • Preoperational (2 to 7)
      
      • Abilito t orepresent experience increases, but far from complete
      • Better emmory
      • Unable to doe certain operations
        
        • They can make symbolic representations
        • Trouble with centration: attention width is really narrow, focussing on 1 thing
        • Limitation à egocentrism: own perspective
          
          • [in movie you saw child pointed at things in his perspective. ]
        • Conservation concept: difficultue with conservation task
          
          • [movie: child focusses on water level, so centration also]
    • Concrete operational
      
      • Lgocial reasoning approve, but limited to here and now, concrete things
      • For instance pendulum task. You need to systematically vary the factors, height from wsing, weigh, legnt of rope, combination. Children do experiment, but not systematically.
    • Formal operational
      
      • Not everyon will reach this stage according to piaget
      • Children begin tot hink abstractly and reason hypothetically
        
        • Opens up thinking
      • Imagination thus thinking of things thta could bet he case
      • Piaget belieed this stage was not universal
  • Weaknesses of theory
    
    • Vage about mechanisms
    • Young children are more cognitively competent than piaget recognized
    • Social world is understated
    • Suggests that every child goes to same stages, while it is not that consistent
• information processing theories
  
  • how development occurs, what drives it
    
    • what makes it that child finds out stuff?
  • View of childrens nature
    
    • Cognitive development occurs contionously
    • Small achievements
  • Child as limitedcapaicyt processing sytem
  • The child is problem solver
    
    • Tyring to reach their goals
  • Working memory
    
    • Limited in capacity and time
  • Long-term memory: event and long term knowledge
  • Executive functioning
    
    • Where attention goes to, inhibition
  • Processing speed is going up, related to biologic changes, more connections wihtin brian
  • Encoding
  • Basic processes
  • Strategies
  • Content knowlegde: the more knowledge you have, the easier it is to fit in new knowledge (therefore not only learning skills)
  • The development of problem solving
    
    • Piaget thougth the stage characterizes the problem solving strategie
    • However this theory would say no the found at what works best in situation
    • This also improves planning abilites
      
      • The more experience, the more precise they get in what they can and can not do
• Core-knowledge theories (inborn)
  
  • Children enter the world with specialized learning mechanimse
    
    • Biologically prepared
  • Evolutionary empotance
  • Domain specific
    
    • 4 capabilities
  • Nativisme vs constructivism
    
    • Nativist: children have substantial body of knowlegde: born wit hit
      
      • Example language acquistion, is inborn
    • Constructivist: some inmate kwnoledge and that helps them to build new knowledge
      
      • Example: understanding in biology
• Sociocultural theories
  
  • Focus on surroundings of children and influence on development
  • Lev vygotsky
  • Social learners, children are helped by others
  • Change occurs thourgh soical interaction
    
    • More knowlegdable person can scaffold until child can do it itself
      
      • Zone of proximal development
    • Parents ask children to recall memories and their meanings
  • Focus on people surroudning the child is most oimportant in these thoerie
• Dynamic systems thoeries
  
  • Children are inaately motivated to explore; it drives their behavior/learn by problem solving
    
    • Just like in piaget, information processing theory, sociocultural theory motivated by environment
  • Focus on actions is unique of theory
  • Central development issues
    
    • Self organization
      
      • Soft assembly – gradually developing but not lineair, reorganizing
      • Change is thus the only constant
  • A not B error
    
    • Compared to piaget, he sais because object permanence not stable oenough
    • But DS say scan be many reasons it reaches the wrong location
    • So different theories provide different explanantons for same things
  • Mechanisms of change
    
    • Chose mechanism works best, so progress
• Scheme from book.
  
  • Benchmark was piaget
  • Ip where change comes from from
  • Ck inborn qualities
  • Sc emphasis on social world around the child
  • Ds also cognitive and active systems

Lecture 7: Learning

Examples.
clock with tictac sound. If you remain in the room, you won’t hear it anymore. Same if you live next to train. Works with smells as well. à habituation: tendency to decrease our response to stimulus. This is adaptive, because preventing us from getting overwhelmed.

habituation in infants
new stimulus which is little bit different, then increase in looking time à dishabituation. Now we use brain imagery to see which brain area is active.

Consider the following examples
sensitization is adaptive because when something is painful, its important you react to it.

What is learning?
learning. Experience is interaction with environment.
Basic learning processes is non-associative: only one stimulus involved.
much learning is more comples than this, this is associative learning.

What is behavorism?
learning is at the core of behavorism.
focus on behaviors as consciousness is not visible.
Watson was important behaviorist. This reminds of tabula rasa: blank slade. Everything is acquired. Skinner was also important.

What is classical conditioning?
example. Swimming reguarly. Swimming leads to feeling of relaxtion. And related to smell of chloride. What can happen is that smell of chloride alone might trigger feeling of relaxation.
classical conditioning was studied by pavlov. He observed that dogs started to sallavate when they heard the sound of bringing food.
before conditioning, automatic association is innate responsel with uncondition stimulus and uncondition response. And a neutreal stimulus had no response.
after condiiton the the tone become conditioned stimulus and leads to conditioned response.

How many pairings are necesaary?
acquisition. How many trials do you need to elicit response? Intensity and to present the tone right before the food and stil be present (forward pairing).

What facilitates acquistion?
so repetition in pairing is key, however one-trial learning is possible if it is striking, like food poisining.
UCS: illness
UCR: food aversion
neutral stimulus intially: sushi (before accident, there was no aversion)
CS after conditioning: sushi
CR: aversion for sushi

Can it be stopped?
it can be stopping the pairing à extinction: response will decrease.
if you again present the tone alone after rest, then spontanous recovery, slight decrease in rspondes, while no additional pairing. So somehow the association is still present in the mind. So wehn response dissappears, it is not inlearned, but the respons is inhibited.

Does it work only with the same exact stimulus?
stimulus generlaization: you can still make response work with a little bit different stimulus
stimulus discrimination: it could be that fear does not generalize to all sort of dogs

Higher-order conditioning
condition stimulus can be another stimulus, which is like a higher-order stimulus.

Higher Order Conditioning (also known as Second Order Conditioning) is a classical conditioning term that refers to a situation in which a stimulus that was previously neutral (e.g., a light) is paired with a conditioned stimulus (e.g., a tone that has been conditioning with food to produce salivating) to produce the same conditioned response as the conditioned stimulus. Wow...if you understand how a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (conditioning), you understand higher order conditioning because this is really just extending the conditioning one more level...the conditioning is happening not by pairing the stimulus with something that naturally produces a response, but with something that has been conditioned to produce a response.

Does classical condition explain psychological problems?
phobia: fear/anxiety
might come from trial learning. One particluar experiment was little albert by watson. He conditioned him to fear rabbits by making very louding noises wtih white rat.

Can classical conditioning be used to help?
exposure therapyà stimulus that triggers fear, but when dog is not paired with the other scary thing like pain. Ultimate goal is that response, fear, dissappears. This process is extinction.
aversion therapy: to create an aversion to stop undesirable behavior. Like for people with alcohol addiction. Pairing aversive stimulus with undesirable behavior.

Other uses of classical conditioning?
attitudes: associating smoke with something possitve. Or attrect products with something nice to look at.

Limiatiation of classical condition?
it relies on an existing respons. But in life we often learn completely new things. Also people are passive learners.

What is instrumental conditioning?
thorndiek made puzzle box, put cat in, and door only opens if cat hits the ball. So he would time how long it would take cat to open door? As you can see, overall it takes less and less time to open the door. à the law of effect: you start with random movements, if movement is fillowed by psotivite consequence, then movement will increase
operant conditioning: behavior can become more or less frequent depending on consequences
reinforcement: key mechanism à response strenghtened by what follows
primary reinforcer is for example food, as it fulfills physiological needs
secondary reinforcer: like money, as it gives acces to primary reinforcer
positive reinforcement: response reinfored by stimulus that is pleasant. Real life example is givng compliment to child. And noticing that learning give higher grade, might increase learning.
negative reinfocrcement: stimulus is removed, then increase of behavior. Real life example: seat belt on because you dont want the irritating noise in the car. Or when parents buy toys for child so child stops crying.
punishment: response becomes lessl ikely because of its consequence
positive punishment real life example: child asks questions, teacher says stupid, child asks less questions in future.
negative punishment real life example: partner redrwas affection if you spend to much time with friends, so you spend less time with friends

Another type of learning?
feedback.  But when first time? You then use observational learning.

How does observational learning?
bandura and bobo dolls. Experiment: divided children in 2 groups. 1 group saw dolls with agressive. Other not. 1 group was more agressive.
There is often instrumental conditioning learning gonig within observational learning. It means that when people observe behaviro, they-re much more likely to do that behavior in the future if that behaviro was followed by positive consequences when they witnessed it. for example in high shcool with popular persons.
there is a series of conditions involved. People need to pay attention, remember it and must be able to reproduce the behavior. And you need the motivation. Feeling capacity to do it is self-efficacy. Belief they can do it.

Back tot he behaviorsit perspective…
so now cognitions are back into the acquisation. Behavoriams was now about how experiences can influence our thoughts/cognitions, which in turn can influence our behaviors.

What about corporal punishment?
proponents might use finding on instrumental conditioning. Corporal punishment can be effective in decreasing behavior that is unwanted. But if you consider observational learning, this means that even though use of corporal punishment might be effective at reducing unwanted behaviro in short term, observational learning can be powerful so it tells you that if you display corporal punishment, than children model violent behavior and this can backfire.

Lecture 8: Motor development

2 definitions of motor development.

1st: the changes and how these changes occur
2nd: competence points to a goal of the infant, like exploring environment. Adaptive change refers to transactional relationship between child and environment. Factors withing the child and factors in the environment thus. So bio-ecological model.

Similar changes can be explained in different ways by different processes.
an example of this is the stepping reflex: als je kindbij de grond houdt, gaat het automatisch ene voet voor andere voet zetten.
how explain dissappearance? Corticoal inhibition.
Thelen thought it was not true. Reflex dissappeard, but in 2nd experiment, in pool, the stepping reflex reappeared. This can not be explained by cortical inhibation hypothesis. Thelen said had to do with weight of the legs. Other explanations? We will discuss them later.

Neuromaturational theory by Gesell
the cause, pattern and weight of maturation growth in children.
behavioral norms that describe development. Each milestone has an average age. They assume they go to same stages in same volgorde, although the time may vary from child to child. Individual differences duet o internal genetic mechanisms.

4 assumptions of the theory.
1.CNS: central nerval system
2.despite differents in environmental background, universal development.
3.development from head tof eet and from dichtbij to verder weg.
4. Speaks for itself

Falsifytin neuromaturiton
Is criticized by many others. They reach for toy with hands, but could also be because parents give it to hand instead of feets and thus they develop reaching with hands. So indeed hand tof eet development is not only explained by maturation, but also by trainging hands more than feet.

Is there a fixed sequential order of milestones? Individual variability. Large variablity onlye explained by individual difference sin terms of internal genetic factors? Plausible also environmental factors play a role.

This figure shows that 87% go from expected sequence of development. But 13% did not.
the following figure shows locomoted behaviors observed in daily behavior.s x-axes different motor behviros. Age on other x. y is mastery of it. multiple behavior overlap and large variability in different preferred locomotor behaviors and large variablity in use of specific behaviors. And we also see transtion in motor milestones. For example between 93 en 116, infant seems to exchange crawling by walking. One moving pattern is replaced by another. Relatively short period of instability, where walking is intsable and child sometimes still crawls.
How can we explain such transtiions in motor development? à dynamic systems theory

Dynamic systems theory
how motor developemnt are optimiez through interaction between different subsystems.
these subsystems are operating as paralle systems and follow own developmental trajoctory. In contrast to neuromaturational theory in which cns is director, none of the systems is the director in dynamic systems theory. Off course CNS (central nerve system) is important, but is might as well be temperament or motiviaton of the child, wich make a transition occur.

Underlying process is self-orginaziation. Typical feature of complex biological systems. Emerge due to complex interaction of different systems.

Example of self-organization. There is no central orgnaization that describes how it should move. Self-organization leads to most efficient way of walking.

And transition are non-lineair in nature. Speed of walking. Related to maintaining stable pattern.

It distinctions between 2 parameters. Order: order of movement pattern. Infant pattern like crawling. Control is speed of movements.

Development of reachting and grasping
they need to have finalized certain developmental tasks, like visual acuity. Visual perception is required for goal directed reaching. Hand-eye coordination. Integration of perceptual motor systems take place from age of 6 months onwards.

By age of 7 months, as children become able to sit independently, they become more stable in reaching.

Postural control and exploration
playing with objects in sitting position gives more abilities to explore objects. In sitting position, more motor mobile exploration, according to figure.

Perception-action theory
dynamic systems role of environment. In ecological perception this has more special role.

Ecological theory of development by gibson. Accorrding to him, key process in perceptual learning is differentiation. Infants have to learn this. Requires these 3 bullits. Particular important part is discovery of affordances. These are perceived possibilites for action. They use body scaled information to see whether actions can be performed.
gibsons theory of direct perception: information from environment is meanginful for action. We directly perceive environemtn. He argued we dont need representation in our brain, this is not like cognitieve theories.

Visual cliff is an exmpriemtn by gibson. Even when mom encourages the child, children between 6-14 motnhs did not cross the deep side of the cliff. Gibson thus argued the children were able to discriminate the depth. Depth perception would be innate.
other behavior such as reaching and looking develop earlier than motor locomotion, thus could have been used to asses visual perception, long before infants start to crawl.

Gibsons study lead to more experiments. Climbing on a cliff: child must also see the relative height. If too high, it might refuse to climb off.

How do children then discover affordances? It has been suggested they use strategies. In trying, infants used experience of earlies attempts. Perception-action cycle. One attempt, child gets into cicle. If cliff gets steeper, child mut not climb off, or go on belly. So child is then adjusting parameter of actions system based on visual information on the heigt of the cliff.

Children learn by perception cycle is the lawful relation between perception and action and body scaled information is taking into account.

Example of child discovering affordance to take a slope.
look at outcomes of study. More avoidance behavior when slope becomes more steep.
according to dynamic ssytems theory: slope can be considered a control parameter, that leaves transtion in the order parameter, which is the motor skill the child uses to descend the slope (walking or slides down).
otehr studies have showed that succesful ascending a slope is influenced by amount of experience in walking child has had. The more experience, the higher the rate of scucesful trials.

Latecy time: time before children take action and walk down. Findings suggest that chdilren first explore possbilites, but eventually choose to slide down if slope is steep.

Summarize. See slide.

Lecture 10: Intelligence and Academic achievement

Example of tommy. Difficulties learning how to read, only when 10 he was able to do so. Went to princeton university. Not excellent student. Went to law school. Phd political science. Became professor at princeton university. Published 9 books. Became president of university. Ran for governer state of university. He became president of US: wilson. During WW1. He played very important role in establishing peace in Europe. In 1919 he was awarded noble price for peace.

This story raises questions: if he had taken intelligence test as a child, would it be low as he was not able to read, or would it be high as he has capabilities. What exactly do we mean by intelligence?

Does it matter? Does it predict other things?

What is intelligence? à controversial question. Does it even exist? We happen to label things as intentions, but maybe there is no intelligence.
sort of agreement that intelligence refers to 3 kinds of abilities: acuire knowledge, think and resona efectively & deal adaptively with environement. So also lot to do with learning. To function properly in your environment. But broad defintiion. Are there actually multiple types of intelligence or is it that there is just one type. We should be able to measure it i fit exists. But in order to buil dit, you need to know exactly what it is you want to measure.

First one who attempted to measure it: Galton.
he saw within families, people often have same intelligence. He was not aware they did not only share genes, but also wealthy lifestyle. But the herditability was not ridiculous. About 50%.
his conception of intelligence had to do with sensory and perceptual skills, like reaction speed and accute vision, discriminatie between soudns, so related to perception and capacity of the senses. And he thought it had something to do with the size of the skull.
results were dissapointing to him. Didnt notice any difference in skull size and reaction speed was not related to other thinigs. But it did create interest in mental capacities. The seize of the brain can be related to intelligence.

Another attempt by alfred binet. Intelligence test to identify where to place children. Binet assumed that mental abilities develop with age. Essential was mental age and real age: like what you perform and what is according to your birthdate. It was considered the best test. Main reason for criticism is that it relied too much on language. A child with deficiences at language, was not able to show its intelligence. Average IQ or particular age group. IQ relies on assumption that majority of people around 100. IQ is today no longer computed this way.

Wechsler test is most used test nowadays. You get a verbal IQ and perfomrance IQ.
 

Still remains question whether there is a general intelligence or different ones. In the table you notice that reading comprehension and word defintion correlate pretty highly. But some others low. So some tasks seem to tap into something the same/related. This is called factor analysis. You can see then which ones are correlated, so you can cluster things that go togeheter.
But if all variables are very strongly related, then it support the idea that all abilities seem to depend on the same thing. So the factor analysis answers whether there is one intelligence or not.

Spearman helped in seeking whether there was evidence for general intelligence. He named the geneeral thing the G factor, as there were correlations. This means he thinks when a person has certain score, this score is explained by general intelligence plus intelligence in particular domain. This support idea that there is general intelligence.

But other persons said Spearman focused on that correlations were high. But you can also focus on the fact they were not that high. Thurstone developed a test and did another factor analysis. He concluded there were 7 abilities. Big question is, is there one factor? Tgurstone argued that these abilities were independent. High score on one of them doesnt say a thing about another one.

But criticism: correlations are .4, so not logical that they’re independent. So factor analysis is pretty arbitrary.

Fluid intelligence: sovling problems you have not conquered before. Thinking on the spot.
crystallized intelligence: all the knowledge you have acquired/long term memory.
a test of fluid intelligence and does not rely on verbal skills is raven.
crystalized intelligence can keep improving your whole life. But fluid intelligence stops at age 20.

most recent model is carolls three statrum model. All these sorts of intelligence influence how well people do on all these tasks.

But the flynn effect poses challenge to measuring intelligence. If population as a whole is getting smarter, then average is going up. Big question is why are we becoming smarter. One of them is that many countries have increase in kids going to school. People stay at school longer. And were much more used to taking tests. And improvement in nutrition.

Gender differences in intelligence. No evidence for, but fors ome tasks seem tob e difference. Spatial tasks, mathematical reasoning à man better. However women seem to score a bit better on mathematical calculation etc. however always see that also difference within group.

Is there emotional intelligence? If you perceive emotions right, you will be more likely to behave appropriate. Ability to access and use emotions: making choices on bases of emotions. Ability to understand emotions: why you feel emotion, then you can use it effectively. Emotional regulation: knowing how to channel emotion.

But EI is controversial concept. Some say its more about abstract thinking applied to emotions. Some say its more a matter of empathy. Some issues have to do with measurement: sometimes is asked more about knowlegde than emotion.

Does intelligence matter?
its related to academic performance. Iq  higher correlation than personality. However its .6 with acadmeic performance, thus there are other factors.
for job performance high correlation.
higher iq, higher life expectancy.

What may cause low intelligence?
she will not focus on genes.
general learning disability: people who’s iq is somewhere between 20 and 70. 50-70 have relative self-sufficience. But when lower than 50, usually delays in language development, and help is needed for basic actions.
these diseases can be transmitted even if parents dont have it.
down syndrome about chromosone 21. Fragile x syndrom is when top of x breaks of.
prenatal development. Low SES. Has aslo to do wiht involvement of parents.

How can parents promote achievement?
parent-oriented motivation: when source of childs motivation is concern for meeting expectations of parents and seeking approval of parents.
when parents are more involved, this emphasizes importance of school to children. Helping school is in relational context, so relatedness and trust and internerlize of school importance. And children might feel to reciprocate, feeling like owing it tot he parents.
how does parental motivaton relate to child achievement. Because more self-regulated learning strategies. Monitoring: if child always checking whether it understood things. Planning. Regulating: realising if theres somtething youre confused about. Rehearsal: practicing the things you learn.

What can help childre with learning disabilitly?
behavioral intervention. Observational learning and reward/conditiniong.
example of a program.

What predicts intelligence?

Genetic, home environment, interactions between those 2 (see book and other lecture), motivation and self-discipline (tekst book).

does society plays a role?
role of language: number expressed in particular way which makes it easier to learn math in asian countries.
some countire emphasize mathematics.
tests might test what is necessary in western culture.

Does anxiety play a role?   
we dont know what causes mathematics anxiety. Belief its the indicator of general intelligence might cause this anxiety.
and related to stereotype threat: the group that was told gender differences, then woman scored way less. This is also with black and white students. The fear of confirming a stereotype.

Do beliefs play a role?
anxiety is also about belief.
pygmalion effect: the way you have been treated. If one assumes you’ll do well, you’ll earlier.

What about gifted children?
from 130 is high IQ.
but not necessarily general, can be discrepancy between domains. Einstein for example not that good in verbal skills.
is the difference qualitiatve or quantitaive? Like thinking faster or better.
what determines succes? Hard work is also something for example.

Lecture 11: Language development

How did you acquire language?
from parents, from school? Before school you learn most important aspects. Role of parents is important and environment, but interesting that if you observe children, they say children they have never heard from their parents. So they do a lot of things themselves.

Deep puzzle
language learning is indeed a deep puzzle. Lecturer will talk about mechanisms underlying learning language.

What is language?
human system, communication, meaning. Symbolic and arbitrary. One kind of modality referred to other modality = symbolic. Abitrary = no direct relation between form and meaning of language. You already notice this when looking at different languages. See example of different expressions of tree. Small gallery of words that are not arbitrary (so direct relation between sound and meanding of word): au, koekoek.

The world’s languages
so lot of differences between languages, but all share arbitrary and symbolic.
 

Displacement
they also share displacement. You can talk about something that is not present in here and now. Future, past, possible wordls. You can use language to do so. Animals communicate about something that is present.

Generativity
you can with limited set of words and rules, an unlimeted sentences and expressions of meaning.

Multi-component strucuture of language
So there are different units in language.
Phonemes are smallest à units of sound. Property that it can change a meaning.
Morphemes are somewhat larger, smallest unit of meaning. Parts of words, then affixes. They consist of morphemes. S ads meaning tot the word. Prepaid: how many morphemes? 2. Pre and paid. Bargain is 1. It’s not build from two parts.
in addition learn about word order rules: syntax.
pragmatics about how you use language in real life.
metalinguistic: knowledge about language. Implicit knowledge in dutch for example.

What can they do?
the twins show (different components of language): syntactic? No. Morphological? No. Pragmatics?. They show turntaking. So interacting, so pragmatics. And kind of jokes, so pragmatics. Phonology? They produce sounds. They babble, so they structure sounds into syllables. To phonological knowledge already. So pragamtic and phonologics.

Phases
lot of individual variation though.
protoword: like vroom to a car
telegraphic sppech: many elements are still missing

Phonological development
languages differ to respect of phonemes they have. Like man and maan in dutch.
until 8-10 months babies can still distinguish between all phonemes in all world languages.
after period, they kind of tune in to mother tongue.

Habituation experiment
change in sound à perceive sound difference.
head turn when sound changes. So before toys appear.
it shows children until 8-10 motnhs they are able to perceive differences of all languages, but not later on.

Phoneme production
gradual development: easier sounds first. Young children omit and replace difficult sounds and difficulat sequences of sounds.

wordl learning
individual variation also.
vocabulary spurt. Many word learning in couple of days.
often between 15 and 20 months.

Fast mapping
mechanism in which children map things into forms. New word they dont know and observe new concept, they match it. for instance, dukdalf you will match it with two because you dont know the word for 2, while you know the words for 1 and 3. So if children know critical amount of words, you learn quicker new words.

Word learning
underextension: children use a word in narrow specific meaning.
overextenstion: use word for other things as well, use a word for too many different meanings

Grammatical development
early phase: telegraphic language, so no grammatical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes = Do not carry much meaning, but make it grammatical.
exampless à elements are missing
next pahse: fuctnion words and longer sentences
graphic: human participant signing/deaf: ruth. Chimpansee: Nim. This shows that child who is deaf, increase in length of sentences. Sing language develops samen as normal langauge. Chimpansees are not able to make longer sentences and be productive/make new sentences.
overregulaarization: error show the boy has knowledge, as he knows its  past word. So u-shape development: first few errors, bceasue they mimic. Then more errors as they learn ruels. Then fewer errors, as they learn to use rules correctly.

How we acquire language?
inborn mechanimsis
language input is prerequisite
but debate

Theoretical debate?
is is for human special gift or normal learning?
universal grammar comes back to human special gift

Nativisti view
input does pay role, but not very important; you dont need lot of input. Grammar is not learned in step by step manner, but acquired. Input is prerequisite, but dont need much, becasue treated exposure is not what language is based on, one trigger is enough

Nativist view: poverty of stimulus
input is limited. Hypothesis testing. We dont have negateive evidence. Child will only be exposed to just sentences and will not be corrected by parents, so they will need to have innate knowlegde to come with right grammar.

Alternative view
more prevalent
not innate language knowlegde, but innate social knowledge. So general learning mechanisms and rich input.

Social learning
joint attention. Use direction of eye gazet o infer meaning of words they dont know.
results of experiment. Teach children sounds. Teaching with live interaction and one with video exposure. In live setting, conrol groep. Television. Exposed in live, they learned the sound difference, televison didnt learn the sounds, were as poorly as children only eposed to english.

Cognitive mechanisms
statisctial learning: extract patterns from patterns.
facilitate wordl learning, like fast mapping
facilitate input processing, like ability to briefly retain verbal phonolgical information to retain it in mind (you need this to transfer it to long term memory).

Individual differences
driven by two types of factors. Innate abilities. External factors.
DLD runs in families. Has to do with genetics. 22q11 disorder that is language development is really difficult. Dyslexia is disability to learn written language.

Critical periods
predetermined time window to learn something.

Natural experiment
no grammer for her. In critical period she was not introduced to language. But there are many confounding circumstances in her case.
nicaraguan sign language: many death childrne were learning death signs. They made a knew kind of language. Younger chilren developed a more complex based on the simple one without grammar. This shows youre able to learn and generate a language at early age.

Early vs late language second language acquisition
migrants with different age of arrival. Steep decline, showing that older participants had poorer english tests. Indicating the older you get, the more difficult it is to learn language in native like way/

Grammar quiz with 2/3million speakers of english
afte rage of 17/18 it becomes more difficult to judge the sentences, do the task.
critical periods are often understond in innate factors.but realize that many environmental differences in younger and older age. Often more input for children than for adults.
so effects of lerning first language might be interfeering with second language. Transfer effect.

Variation in early development
mean of sentence length. When children grow older, the sentence length increases. Usually what we define is plus and minus 1 deviation around the mean. Still aceeptable if 4 year old chld performs as 3 year old child.

Phonological short-term memory
ability to retain verbal phonological information in mind. Is smaller pstm, then smaller vocabulary size. You nee to retain pstm to gain more knowledge.

SES 30 millino word gap
input of children compared to 3 gropus of children. Large gap on input compared profesional with welfare famlies. So you can conclude that children growing in professional families hear more language and more different language.
you saw this back in development of the children.

SES and gestures in prelingual phase
in lower SES parents uses much fewer gestures and much fewer types of gestures.

Intervention: an RCT study
first step in changing behavior is rasing awareness.
step 2: also let children talk
after one month behavorial changes didnt sustain

Cultural differences
see slide, regardless of those differences, all children will learn language

Bilingualism
very frequent. Grapf is from school in dutch.
important to look at bilingualism by itself. à iniput is by 2 languages. Both langauges are constatnly active at brain level.

Beware: the bilignual does not exist
huge variation. Learning two first languages, or learning them in sequence.

Simultaneous bilinguals
develop relatively independently. Timing of development is kind of same as monolinguals.

Distributed vocabulary
smaller in one language, combined/conceptual then its not smaller compare to monolingual. Input is namelijk distributed over different context and words used in different contexts.

Types of sequential bilingualism
migration: first langauge is minority one and second language is majority of people country they live in.
adoption then again the above
immersion schooling, then majority is first language and minority is second. Like french langauge learning as second in canadian schools.

Preschoolers in migrant families
not only input quantitiy but also different sources. Qualititave sources. Relative amount predicted development in both languages.

Development in two languages
can be dynamic and influenced by changes in environment. What we see is dominnt shift around age 7. When child grows older, this continues.

Types of sequential bilignualism
see table

Transfer
we see input, input situations, and learning context are very important for learning language. Another factor is transfer. Can countereffect the effect of limited input. So sometimes you can use knowlegde of first language in second. Otherwise, it can give you strumbling block in new language learning.

Discussion about cogntitive voordelen van bilingualism
chanigng views: about a century ago the view that bilinualism was problematic
executive functions: bilinagualism trains executive fucntions. Flexible bahevior, keep and change goals. 3 are most mentioned: inhitibiont, updating and shifting.
cognitive effects: bilignualism have better executive functions. Continuous train executive functions by shifting, keep in mind which language to use.
tasks: bilinguals perform better on those tasks.
Ongoing discussion: effect most prominent in children and elderly, not in adolescents. Not all studies find the effect. Effect in very specific experimental tasks, does this transfer to real life siutations.

Some take-home messages
see slide

Lecture 12: Media use and children

Developmental approach

MDH
this fits in developmental apporach: media preferences differ per age group thus.

Infants en toddlers (0-2)
labeled by piaget as sensorimotor stage. Development of senses are most crucial in determing their media preferences.

phsyical development
sight quickly develops.
innate preference for human faces

auditory skills are already well developed in womb. But preference for human speech.
strong preference for music and songs as well.
hight contrast and bright colours and human faces. Ands sounds.

Emotional development
limited emotions experienced.
regulation limited as well

Cognitive development
attention refers to selectively concentrating on stimuli
litlle control on what they focus on. they focus on what attracts.
in 2nd year they learn to control attention
language
about 12 months start learning words. Not tlaking, but understanding words.
15-20 motnhs vocabulary spurt
verbal labelgin is when parents hear the word and point to it. importang for language development.
object permanence is one of the importants things. If they can not see it, they think ik tsimply can not exist.
experiences are limited and schema as well.

Linking to medai preference
content or story line becomes more importnat when grow older.
limited schemas zo context should be familier
slow peace so time to process information
narrative is not necessary.

Booming busiseness
for youn age group is million dollar industry

To use or not to use
under 2 years no exposure?

Video deficiti hypothesis
we would learn better from real life then screen becasues of 2d vs 3d

Empirical evidence
children able to pick object seen on tv, so were able to make trnanstion. Learn best in vivo condition. Learned lest in child program condition. So no so much video vs vivo, but mabye more distracted in child program.
so children are able transiton from 2d to 3d, but learn less from real life than video. So this is often used for VDH. But is doestn show that media are bad. They help, just less than real life.
another important is that VDH focusses on video, but nowadays we have newer media. Television is passive, while apps are interactive.

Preschoolers
preoperational stage
bysmolic understanding. Egocentrism. Reversibilay. Peceptualb etc

Egocentrism:
very limited number of perspectives thus in media. An no switching in it

Revesibility: uynderstanding transformations. They focus on static states and not on transformations. Thus children do not understand them. But enjoy tranformation media as it surprises.
conservation task: if transformed, still te same object.
linking to media: the dont appreciate transfomration, but can be scary.

Perceptual boundedness & centration
rely on clear perceptual features. Ignore other cues like motives. This means for media that how character looks, is like who he is.
centration: tendency to focus on 1 feature. Like here 3 dolls, first 2 are expensie, but 3rd one has big red hart which is striking feature, so more loved by children. Centration decreases with repetition, because develop mastery of content. Relates to media: children love repetition. It enhances learning as it enables to focus on multiple aspects

Information processing capcity
scripts astart to develop round 4. Script is organized set of schemas. It imporves memory as new things can be stored there.
media implications: interest in narrative because of scripts, but still quite limited so simple narrative.

Imagination
unable to distinguish betwen fantasy en reality
media implications: cartoon characters and special effects.
examples animals that can talk

Emotional development
linking to media: interested in media, but still need perceptual cues.

Emotional control
delaying gratification: control yourself.
under age of 5 children difficulty in using strategied to controlling themselves
linking to media: explains why adversting is hard to resist.

Gender role development
boys are more specific, girls are less rigid

why gender stereytope
biological: homornes
social learning theory: learning from others, different treatment leads to other behavior ways
genderschemas developed by children
linked to media: identificaiton with different media characters
their are more male characters and they have more prominent role. And for boys it is less accepted tob e ‘girly’.

Early elementary schoolchildren (5-7 years)
now formal education. More scripts. Better attention span. Still perceptually bounded and tendency towards centration, but decreases.

distinction between fantasy realtiy imporves, but not fully
gender role wareness becomes very strong and rigid
link to media: amount of media use increases duet o increase dintention. Decreased preferenct for simple characters and slowpaced education programs (spinach syndrom: dislike for everything thats good for them)

Reasons for precern of action-packed media
1 cognitive processing abilites
2 rebellion against restricitons (by parents and by younger limited capacities)
3 importance fo peers and friends

link to media
preference to binary characters (good vs bas and woman vs man). Gendered media

Interplay between devellopment and media use
they both influence each other

Educational media effects
sesam street makes them more ready for school

Wrap up
early elementart chilren still preoperational stage, but very different from younger children

Media use and preteens

Preadolescents/tweens (8-12)
rapid changes
hardware: physical changes in brain, like white matter growing.
increase in speed/decrease in time they need in 4-10 years of age. At age of 12 almost same level of adult.s because of brian changes, able to process.
link media: fast-paces, repetion boring, longer time using

Software: strategies, mainly memory strategies.
better at entering new information into framework. Strategie!

functional use of memory strategies
1 rehearsal
2 organization: grouop together and create higher order categories
3 elaboration: make a sentence, create mental picture
linkt ot media: stimulate use of strategies

Concrete logical thinking
system of logic and operations
byt only concret opbjectes, difference with adolescents
link to media: more complex pots, but still concrete objects and problems

Concrete operations
decentering: exploring all details of an object. Children now become more critical and compare more. Link to media: more complicated characters. More ciritical of program quality.
transitivity:
seriation: sort ofjects or situations
classificatoin: identify

collecting: passiong for collecting stuff
before 6-7 more like gathering as much as possible
7-8 making distinctions between objects, has to do with concrete operations
important for opporutinity for social interactin. Make distinciton between peers and excercise need for decetnration.
link to media: games with collectinf as key focus and toys you can be buy and collect

Conservation: understanding object stays the same although physical transformation

Reversibility: ability that objects and numbers can be changed tot heir original form.
media implication: transformation of characters are now udnerstood, not magical anymore, but still funny.

Fantasy-reality distinction
specific interest for wold pehnoma
link media: fantasy still fun, but realstic and plausbile themes. Prefer realism in settings and characters as interes in social lessons learning.

Understanding the ‘other’ perspective
improved and thus can anticipate others reacitons and aprrecati other interste, but also start to look for pscyhological similarity
link to media: preference characters fel similar

Emotional display & understanding
emotional display rule: informal norm about expressing emotion (when, where, how)
better understanding of emotion. Also understadning internal cues.
link to media: recognize poor acting, identify with older actors, like charachters relevant tot heir own live. So emotions relevant. And wishful identification: bases on their age and gender

Social antenna develops
peer ineteractions become sophisticated because understanding persectives and emotions. And strong ocmmitment as they want to belong to group. Develop social antenna: whats cool and what not. How to behave.
link to media: dislike childisch media, especially in group context cause group members wil reject them

Gender differences
6-7 most gender rigid
end of preadolescen: becomes more flexible
link media: gender still matter

Use and gratifications
theory states we have different needs we want to gratify. Media can do that. Theory focuses on motivations for using social media.
differnt motivations for listening music for example. Age differents for need for gratifications. This tells us that needs we have are dpeending on individual factors including development. Socia media is diverser, thats why can gratify mutliple persons.

Adolescents
so many developments, that all influcne media.
physical development. Changes in appearance. Interest in seks. Impact on mood.
link to media by homrones à insecure about changes so seek information about things
link to media: pictures and talking about it, but can become risky behavior like sexting
other psychical changes: pruning. Grey matter declines. Brians become more efficient. But also becomes harder to learn new things.

Formal operational stage. Preadolescent were in preoperational stage. Now opernational stage: logical thinking in more abstract situations. Its a process. Often switch between these 2 stages.
formal operational thinking
advantages and disadvantages.
adolescent egocentrism imaginary audience: always thinking what others will think.
media implications: MDH. Challenging/deviate moderately. More complex sotry lines and characters and big world issues. Like hunger games. Want more fast-paces media and problem sovling like in games.

Cognitive development
changes in dopamine à hyper activity. Levels of dopamine sky high when rewarded. The become easily bored. Thus desire for adventrue

Sensations seeking
willing to take risks also. Immediate rewards. So need we want gratified.  
link to media: need for excitement and risk taking.
constatly thinkingn what others think of them. Gratify the need to know what others think of them.

Social-emotional development
self-ceoncetp: know who you are
self-esteem: be happy about it
lot of fluctuations. Gender identiy becomes less rigid. Becomes more fluid.
so developmental changes lead to certain needs: see slide
identify exploration: relevant information (do i feel the same). role models for example.identity experiments: epreiemtn with your presentation, what feauture do you present.

Cliques and best friends. So need to fit in. Subcultures are related tot his. Romantic relations start. Still practicing for later relationships. Fear of rejection and how to deal wit hit.
subcultures and para-social realtionships with idols. Para-social: relationship you have with media characters. You feel relationship but its not existing.
learning about social relationships: inform about difficulties of relationships

Difference in early and late adolescence
changes less dramatic. Fuhter development executive functions.
freindships becom important. Deeper friendships. More stable self-esteem. First real romantic relationships.

MDH: more complex humor.

Late adolescents – social emotional
link to media: older adolescent sneed that much social approval we think. More friends on social media. But quality over quantity.

Emerging adults (18-25 year)
now first time labeled as seperate age group. Thus we dont know much about their needs and preferences.

The rise of emerging adulthood
rise in ages of marriage and parenthood
several reasons: birth control, higher educaiton, social norms for adulthood, socal norms for woman have changed a lot.

Characteristics:
more indepdent. No children responibilites. College or fist job. Legally adults for voitn and drinking. Peer group. Instability like moving a lot. Feelingn of in between: dont feel adult yeat. Attractive consumer target group: flexibility (spenidng money wghile no repsonsibilites)

Needs: autonomy, initmiy, idenity eploration

Emerging adults – autonomy
relatvis freedom (cuture dependent). Less parental monitoring. Learn to make decisions independtly.
link to media: more freedom in media use. Amount of media use increases a lot. Can provide infomraiton on makeing decisions.

Emering adults – intimacy
froming, chanignr elationships. Romantic relationships more serious. Need for intimacy.
linkt o media: where peer groups seem like a family. How to deal with romantic relationships. Social media can help in contacting new and old friends. And for finding new romantic partners. And also need for music festivals: time, money and meeting new people.

Emering adults – identity
clear concept of who they are. In different areas. Wordl views, love, work, ethic and seual identity.
link to media: presenting yourself on linkedin. But also sexual identiy: talk about what you feel in chats. Informational value. Ethnic identity: communites on facebook for example

Wrap up
several factors: devlopmental factors and age