Lecture 1    -    Prenatal development and attachment   05/02/19

There is only 15% chance on a woman’s most fertile days to get pregnant. Upon ejaculation, 500 million sperms cells try to get to the egg, 6 hours later, only 1% reaches the egg. Gametes are the sex cells, which each have 23 chromosomes. When these fuse together, it becomes a zygote with 46 chromosomes.

Zygote (0-2 weeks)

In the first weeks, cell division, aka mitosis, starts. Processes that occur are;

• Cell migration means that cells move within the embryo to eventually for cells and arms etc.
• Cell differentiation means that cells reach their destination and become specific cells.
• Apoptosis; cells die. ( excess cells fall away).

2 weeks after conception, the zygote has moved to the uterus, this is a vulnerable stage that 50% of the zygotes do not survive. This is due to genetic defects. This implantation means that the zygote implants itself in the uterus well. Cells become a hollow sphere called the inner cell mass. Some parts of these become the embryo, embryonic sack or placenta. hGC is secreted, which can be tested for pregnancy.

Twins

Identical twins happen when the inner cell mass splits into two embryo’s. Genetically identical

Fraternal twins happen when 2 eggs are present and both fertilized.

Triplets happen when there are multiple eggs fertilised and one of these even possibly splits as well.

Embryo (3-8 weeks)

• The inner cells mass becomes 3 layers, ectoderm (outer), mesoderm (middle) and endoderm (internal)
• The neural tube forms à later becomes brain and spinal cord
• Support system aka placenta, umbilical cord and amniotic sac
• Organ systems develop, but this is extremely vulnerable to environmental influences (teratogens). However 15 to 20% does not survive this stage

Fetus (9 weeks until birth)

• Further development of organs and bodily systems
• Physical growth, mostly lower part of the body as the head starts growing first. This is called cephalocaudal development
• 90% get born healthy

Fact: 51.3% of the babies born are male. The chances of conception are 50-50 but in utero development boys survive more, however after birth, more girls survive.

Prenatal activity

• 5-6 weeks, the embryo starts moving
• 7 weeks: hiccups, which is the prenatal version of burping
• Week 10: ‘Fetal breathing” in which the amniotic fluid moves in and out of their lungs, to practise breathing. Wake-sleep cycle, the baby is awake 33% of the time.
• Week 12: all new-born behaviours are already present, such as grasping, swallowing, thumb sucking.

Prenatal sensory experiences

• Some visual stimulation
• Plenty of tactile sensation aka moving the amniotic sac
• Taste, the amniotic fluids taste like what the mother consumed, and babies prefer sweet things.
• Fetus responds to internal and external sounds, which means they can hear.

Prenatal learning

• During the 3^rd trimester, the baby learns and remember the mother’s voice
• Animal studies show memory of amniotic fluids

Harmful influences

Teratogens are the environmental influence that can harm or kill the baby, such as for instance smoking or alcohol.

Extent of the damage depends on: severity, duration and timing.

Teratogens can be drugs or alcohol, resulting in what can be for instance to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, which results in smaller eyes, larger forehead, and mostly behaviour problems. Smoking results in less oxygen getting to the baby. Diet also influences a baby, Folic acid aka vitamin B helps the baby, as well as other nutrients such as calcium for bones.

Age and health of the mother also influence the baby. Mental health issues can take difference influences. Stress delivers more hormones resulting in a slightly lower birth weight and depressed mothers can have a lesser emotional attachment with their child. Infections majorly influence development, and an even completely stop the growth of internal organs such as brain.

Attachments

The concept of attachment is the bond between a parent and a child. Most information is about mother-child because only in the later era, father’s are stepping up in their parent role.

Before 1940, emotional care was seen as unimportant.

During WW2, a lot of parents died, and the remaining babies did not get any emotional care. This showed to result in adult emotional scars with 2/3 of these children.

After 1945 it turned out that an emotional connect with a caregiver was important from a very young age.

Attachment theory, Bowlby 1953

• Babies have an innate learning ability
• Babies use their parents as a ‘secure base’
• Co-regulation

Attachment has 4 stages

1. Pre-attachment (0-6 weeks), baby communicates through innate behaviour such as crying
2. Attachment-in-the-making, (6 weks-6/8 months) Baby has a preference to familiar people, which is a development of trust
3. Clear-cut-attachment (8-18 months)  actively seeks contact and experiences separation anxiety
4. Reciprocal relationships (18/24 months +)  Understanding of others and decrease of separation anxiety.

Child develops an internal working model of attachment à bad attachments or relationships at young ages, can cause trouble in later life.

Mary Ainsworth create a test called the ‘Strange situation’, which tested the extend of the child’s use of the parent as a secure base, as well as how the child responds to separation. This resulted in attachment categories.

• Secure à Child is consoled by return of the mother
• Insecure avoidant à Child remains sad after return of mother
• Insecure resistant à Child gets angry after return of mother
• Disorganised/disoriented à Child doesn’t get upset that the parent is gone

Factors that influence attachment are parental sensitivity and culture for instance.

Lecture 2    -    Biology and behaviour   12/02/19

The human genes. 23 chromosome pairs, 46 chromosomes in all cells except for gametes.

Genetic diversity – Information about the extra reading material

Mutation means a change in a section of DNA, caused by environmental factors, or a spontaneous error. It does not need to have any or serious effect, but it can.

Crossing over: the process in which chunks of DNA switch from one chromosome to the other. It happens when chromosomes are aligned close together and it promotes genetic diversity.

Random assortment is the shuffling of chromosomes during meiosis, causing each member of each pair go into a new egg or sperm at random. This means that there is only one chromosome in a gamete and makes it extreme unlikely that people share the same exact genetic material aside of identical twins.

Behaviour genetics

Behaviour genetics means the science concerned with how variation in behaviour and development results from gene-environment interactions. This means how is behaviour influenced by our genes which are influenced by the environment (epigenetics)

Key ideas of behaviour genetics:

1.  All behavioural traits are heritable and thus influenced by genes to some extent
2.  Most traits are polygenic and multifactorial (influenced by more that one genes and environmental factors)

Premises:

1.  Genotypically similar individuals should be phenotypically similar i.e. behaviour patterns should “run in families”.
2.  Individuals who were raised of living together should be more similar than those raised or living apart

Research designs

1. Family studies. This is a:

• Measurement of trait in people who vary in genetic relatedness
• Assessment of correlations between measures of trait among those individuals. Higher correlations indicate greater correspondence to the trait
• Comparison of correlations as a function of relatedness or of environment

Types of family studies:

• Twin studies; comparing identical to fraternal twins. Higher correlation in identical twins if there actually is a genetic component. This is assuming they are raised in complete equal environments. (equal environment assumption)
• Adoption study: comparing adopted to biological children
• Adoptive-twin study: comparing identical twins who have stayed together during youth to identical twins raised apart.

Heritability

The estimated proportion of measured individual variance of a trait attributed genetic differences. This is on a population, not an individual! Saying 50% of a trait is heritable, this means that 50% of the variance in a population is due to genes. This is based on an equal variance assumption, which can be invalid. Also, something highly heritable can still be influenced by environment still.

Shared-environment effects à are factors that make genetic related people even more similar than their genes solely would suggest.

Nonshared-environment effects à are factors that make genetic related people less similar than their genes solely would suggest.

Brain development

Important is the cerebral cortex, which takes up 80% of the human brain

• The cerebral cortex is divided up into cerebral hemispheres, which are connected through the corpus callosum (cerebral lateralization occurs) and communicate through each other through it. 
• 4 lobes: occipital -visual, temporal – language, auditory, memory, parietal – special processing, and frontal – prefrontal cortex which had a role in executive functions.
• Specialized brain regions such as auditory, olfactory vs. association areas which integrates information
• Even though regions might be essential to certain behaviour, they never just isolated work on that specific behaviour.

Neurodevelopmental processes

Starts before birth, finishes in adolescence.

Neurogenesis =  the creation of neurons through cell division; followed by migration and differentiation (growth of spines)

Myelination = formation of myelin (fatty sheath) around axons, which increases the speed of information processing. Starts really fast before birth and slows down until the end of adolescence

Synaptogenesis = the formation of the synapses. When the synaptic connections aren’t used, something called synaptic pruning takes place, which breaks down the synapses (~40%)

The Prefrontal cortex is one of the last regions to mature in adolescence.

The value of experience

Plasticity is what is called the brain’s ability to change through experience. There are 2 types;

• Experience-expectant plasticity = changes in the brain because of general experiences that almost all human infants experience, such as visual and auditory stimulations. (Preservation of existing synapses, occurring in sensitive periods)
• Experience-dependent plasticity = changes because of specific experiences throughout life.

Lecture 3    -    Seeing, thinking and doing in infancy   19/02/19

Preferential looking: used in tests that give two different stimuli, measures what the child/infant prefers to look at.

Violation of expectancy: the surprise shown by child when something happens that is not expected.

Movement is important to infants to segregate object from each other.

Intermodal Perception: child starts to combine individual senses and sensory experiences, and understand what something they see, for instance, should feel like, or the other way around

Motor development

Most infants, when born, have several unconditioned reflexes that are present at a very young age, such as the stepping reflex. This occurs when you place a new-born in water or hold them just above the ground: the child will make unconditioned stepping motions, even though their legs are not strong enough for walking yet. These reflexes serve the purpose of training, preparing the child for the actual action of, in this case, walking.

Motor developed can be sped up or slowed down because of the parents. If the parent properly guides the infant, the motor development can take a significant leap, and vice versa.

Learning

There are 8 ways in which infants learn about the world around them:

• Habituation – the infant gets used to something happening in a certain way
• Classical conditioning
• Instrumental conditioning – classical conditioning enforced by reward of punishment
• Observational learning – watching things happen and people do things
• Perceptual learning – learning to strengthen the senses, such as being able to differentiate between different shades of colour
• Statistical learning – the ability of drawing statistical regularities
• Rational learning – being able to rationalise expectancy, such as being surprised if someone blindly picks a white marble out of a hundred red ones right away
• Active learning – applying concepts and understandings to scenarios

Theory of mind

Theory of mind means being able to place yourself in another person’s perspective. This is present in 5 year-olds, but not in children age 3. This can be tested with a false-belief test -> a scenario that is present where two people have mismatched information.

Lecture 4    -    Development of language    26/02/19

Lecture topic: issues to language development

When it comes to the development, what seems to be present is a Universal Grammar. This is a set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all languages. The Modularity hypothesis is the idea that the human brain has a self-contained language module that is innate and separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning. The Theory of Mind Module says that there is a specific part in out brain that is involved in taking someone else’s point of view.

Social interaction

Children often take part in collective monologues. This is when two or more children seem to be engaging in conversation with each other but are really just each taking turns having their own monologue, without really responding to what the other is saying.

The following interactions and processes help children with language acquisition

• Pragmatic cues are aspects of the social context used for word learning.
• Connectionism is a type of information-processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units
• Overextension is the use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate
• Over-regularization are the speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular

Different parts of language development:

• Phonological development: acquisition of knowledge about how syllables and letters sound when connected to each other.
• Pragmatic development: acquisition of knowledge about how language is used in contexts
• Semantic development: learning of system for expressing meaning in language, incl. word learning
• Syntactic development: learning of the syntax of a language

Non-linguistic language development

• Symbols: systems for representing thoughts, feelings, knowledge
• Phonemes: the elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce languages
• Morphemes: the smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes
• Syntax: language rules that specify how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) can be combined
• Metalinguistic knowledge: understanding of the properties and function of language—that is, an understanding of language as language
• Critical period for language: time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful

Lecture 5    -    Emotional and moral development            05/03/19

What are emotions?

Emotions are:

• Often characterized by physiological responses (heated cheeks, tears) , to subjective feelings, as well as the cognitions related to those feelings, and the desire to take action upon these feelings
• Important for survival and communication
• Universal (i.e., similar across cultures)
• Present very early in life
  
  • Social smiles: emerge at 6-7 weeks of age; strengthen bond with caregiver and promote care
  • Separation anxiety: emerges at approximately 8 months, variance depends on temperament, context
  • Self-conscious emotions: emerge later on in development (2-3 years old), learned through sense of self and social expectations

Emotion recognition

At 3 months, infants can distinguish the primal facial expressions, such as happiness, surprise, and anger. At 7 month, infants can distinguish facial expressions of fear, sadness, and interest

Labelling emotions is often influenced by age, culture (or language) and for instance, childhood maltreatment, however the recognitions of basic emotions often starts around age 2 to 4.

Theories of emotion

• Discrete emotion theory: emotions are innate and discrete from very early in life,
  • each emotion combines specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions
• Functionalist approach: emotions promote action toward achieving a goal,
  
  • emotions are not discrete from one another
  • vary somewhat based on the social environment
• The Marshmallow Test: well known test asking children to make a choice between little satisfaction now or larger satisfaction later.
  
  • Predicts social-emotional and academic functioning
  • Socio-emotional interventions seem boost academic performance

• Emotional intelligence: the ability to cognitively process emotional information (from the self and from others’ faces, bodies, and voices) and to use that information to guide own thought and behaviour.
  • Measurement: Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire
  • Findings: A higher EI means better emotion regulation, less aggressive behaviour, fewer mental health problems, less risk taking, better coping
  • Implications: Interventions that increase EI are important because it helps/encourages social and emotional coping skills

Emotion regulation: the process of initiating, inhibiting, or modulating internal feeling states and related physiological processes, cognitions, and behaviours

• Develops gradually throughout childhood and adolescence, mainly because of:
  • Prefrontal cortex maturation
  • Parental expectations
  • Social referencing: use of a parent’s or other adult’s facial expression or vocal cues to decide how to deal with novel, ambiguous, or possibly threatening situations
  • Behavioural inhibition: temperamentally based style of responding characterized by the tendency to be particularly fearful and restrained when dealing with novel or stressful situations

Moral development

Moral development is the morality of behaviour based on thinking (i.e., intentions and goals). It occurs through changes in moral reasoning and it is a contribution from cognitive and social development. Types of decisions that have to do with moral development are:

• Moral judgments
• Social-conventional judgments
• Personal judgments

Theories of moral development

• Piaget’s theory of moral judgement
  • Rigid acceptance of authority. Solution to this are modifiable rules that result from social interaction
  • Interactions with peers (not adults) influence development
  • Observations of children playing games and interviews about rules and fairness
• Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning

Critiques:

• Cultural differences (Western advantage)
• Reasoning is not discontinuous, but contextdependent
• Sex differences (male advantage)

Conscience

Conscience promotes compliance and guilt, even when no one is watching. Contributing factors to this are:

• Cognitive development, empathy
• Child’s temperament
• Parenting style (goodness of fit)
• ability to conform to social standards of conduct

Pro-social behaviour

Prosocial behaviour is mostly measured using pro-social-moral dilemmas. Contributing factors to this are:

• Genotype
• Social environment
  
  • Parents
  • Peers

Antisocial behaviour

Aggression emerges early in development and at a young age usually revolves around possession of objects such as toys. Aggressive behaviour develops from simply snatching said object away (before 12 months) to physical aggression  such as hitting or kicking (18 months to 2-3 years). Violence steadily increases in adolescence (peaking at age 17) Contributing factors to this are:

• Typical social pressures
• Poor emotion regulation
• Poor attention skills
• Weak future orientation
• Economic disadvantage
• Ethnicity (being a minority)
• Deviant peers
• Difficult temperament

Lecture 6   -    Family and peers       12/03/19

Family dynamics refers to the way family matters can impact child developments. This can happen in 3 ways;

• Parenting
• Child’s influence in parenting
• Sibling relationships

Parenting has an important role in the socialisation of the child. This means the parent teach their children social rules and norms. This is done usually done by discipline either through internalisation, meaning that the child has learned and internalised the norms and rules and takes them as normal and appropriate behaviour and therefor do them is usual setting. This is usually because of other-oriented behaviour, where the child learns to see things from someone else’s perspective

Punishment provides pressure to create internalisation. Too little punishment doesn’t help form internalisation, too much and the other-oriented behaviour isn’t in effect.

There are four  types of parenting styles, which affects the relationship and ways between parent and child

• Authoritarian: Cold and high in control. Promotes hostility in parentchild relationships
• Authoritative:  Warm and high in control: clear standards and limits. Promotes prosocial behaviour.
• Permissive: Warm but low in control.. Settle little to now boundaries. Promotes impulsive and bratty behaviour.
• Uninvolved: Cold and low in control. No limits and do not seem to care. Promotes in relationship struggles, both socially and parent wise

The relationship between parent and child is reciprocal. Children therefor can affect the way a parent parents them. This is also called bi-directionality. This can lead to what is called coercive cycle, which is a negative spiral that the parent and child get into because negative behaviour causes negative action and so on.

In sibling relationships, the age difference is very important. The smaller the gap, the more like peers the sibling relationship is, while the larger the more the sibling becomes more like a parent/child. However, siblings can also get caught in a competition for the parent’s love and attention, which can lead to conflict. If this conflict isn’t resolved, this can lead to later problems in both of the siblings. The biggest affect the parent can have on the sibling-relationship is because of favouritism.

Peer interactions

A clique is a friendship group that children form themselves. These are relatively unstable and generally gender homozygous. A crowd is a group of children that have stereotyped reputation. However, it is the peers that determine someone’s crowd. This can affect someone’s self-reflection and self-esteem, as well as behaviour.

Being part of a social society is important to development, however peer status seriously effect this. Sociometric status is a measure of social peer acceptance and shows peer popularity or peer reaction.

Factors that influence popularity are; physical attractiveness, athleticism, popular friends, social behaviour and personality.

Popularity, however, does not be likeable. It simply means that someone is influencing on their peers, and they are usually a mix of prosocial and aggressive.

Lecture 7   -   Cognitive and conceptual development       19/03/19

Conceptual development is learning upon concepts, which are situations, objects and things bearing a lot of similarities. These concepts become more and more complex and specific as children develop.

Cognitive development is the growth of people’s capabilities, such as perception, reasoning etc.

• Piaget’s theory: children construct their own knowledge. They create their own hypotheses and perform little experiments to discover the world -> ‘children are scientists’. They don’t need instruction how to do this, they will learn and discover on their own -> intrinsic motivation.
  • There are three continuous elements of cognitive development: assimilation (incorporating new information into existing concept), accommodation ( improving hard understanding based on new experiences) and equilibration (creating a stable understanding of the world through the other two processes)
  • Piaget proposed there were cognitive stages. Birth to 2 years -> sensorimotor stage. 2-7 years -> Preoperational stage. 7-12 years -> Concrete operational stage. 12+ years -> Formal operational stage. These stages aren’t set in stone, there are periods of intermediate steps, so sometimes a child might be transitioning and thus express two consecutive stages.
  • This theory is very plausible and based on a lot of observations. It seems to make sense with what children do. However, the theory is vague about the mechanisms of change, it underestimates children’s abilities and understates social contributions.
• Core-knowledge theory says that children are advanced in area’s of evolutionary importance. Children are capable of lying and other specialised mechanisms to promote survival. These are domain specific.
  
  • Nativism: evolutionary stuff is innate and easily acquired
  • Constructivism: New experience integrate with prior understandings (Piaget)
• Sociocultural theories: cognitive development occurs through social interactions -> guided participation.
  
  • Social interactions are more influential than own experiences.
• Mechanisms of change is a sociocultural theory. It says cognitive development depends on one’s ability to establish intersubjectivity through joint attention
  
  • Cognitive development is aided by social scaffolding (involves more explicit instruction than guided participation)
  • Culture is the product of the human propensity to teach and learn, and to establish intersubjectivity and joint attention with others

Lecture 8    -   Intelligence and Academic Achievement    26/03/19

What is intelligence?

g (general intelligence) is part of intelligence, common to all intellectual tasks, often referred to as IQ. This is often split up into two types. Fluid intelligence is the ability to think on the spot to solve novel problems. Crystallized intelligence is factual knowledge about the world, concepts and experiences.

Practical intelligence are mental abilities not measured on IQ tests but important for success in many situations, such as empathy. This is referred to as EQ.

Primary mental abilities are unrelated to either IQ or EQ, such as word fluency, verbal meaning, reasoning, spatial visualization, numbering, rote memory, and perceptual speed influencing intelligence

Theories of intelligence

• Three-stratum theory of intelligence:  Carroll’s model of intelligence, including g at the top of the hierarchy, eight moderately general abilities in the middle, and many specific processes at the bottom
• Multiple intelligence theory: Gardner’s theory of intellect, based on the view that people possess at least eight types of intelligence:
  
  • linguistic
  • logical
  • mathematical
  • spatial
  • musical
  • naturalistic
  • bodily
  • kinaesthetic
  • intrapersonal
  • interpersonal
• Theory of successful intelligence: Sternberg’s theory of intellect, based on the view that intelligence is the ability to achieve success in life

Genotype-environment interactions

• Passive effects : influences due to the genetic overlap between parent and child
• Evocative effects : influences that the child has on the environment
• Active effects : influences due to the child’s choices

The process of Word identification

Strategy-choice process: procedure for selecting among alternative ways of solving problems, involves choosing between three strategies:

• Phonological recoding: the ability to discriminate and remember sounds within words
• Visually based retrieval : proceeding directly from the visual form of a word to its meaning
• Phonemic awareness : understanding of different sounds in language

Chall’s  five stages of reading development

• Stage 0 : learning the alphabet and gaining phonemic awareness. AKA the ability to identify component sounds within words
• Stage 1 : acquiring phonological recoding skills. AKA the ability to translate letters into sounds and to blend sounds into words
• Stage 2 : reading simple material
• Stage 3 : extracting information by reading
• Stage 4 : understanding different perspectives