Developmental Psychology Flashcards

Question

ATTACHMENT THEORY: Criticisms of Bowlby's theory

Answer 1

- In ethology the idea of a critical period has been replaced by a ‘sensitive period’ - Deprivation effects in 6-month-old isolated rhesus monkeys can be overcome by placing them with 3-month-old normally reared monkeys (Suomi & Harlow, 1972) - Intensity of response to strangers depends on previous experience - Research does not uphold the idea of ‘monotropism’ - Children have been found to form attachment bonds with more than one adult and separation from one attachment figure can be compensated for if another is present (Main & Weston, 1981) - Excluded the role of fathers

Answer 2

- Cross-cultural variations in the prevalence of the insecure categories have been found (van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988) - Child’s experience of being left (Belsky, 2010) - Making inferences based on observation of a child’s behaviour – is this a reliable research method? - Whether the child’s behaviour in the SS could be a reflection of their temperament and also discussed how the child was being left with a variety of carers

Answer 3

- Maternal Deprivation Reassessed (1972) - Bowlby was right but for the wrong reasons - Anti-social behaviour not separation but family discord that impacted upon the child – complex but consider the child ‘at risk’ rather than pre-determined outcome - Romanian adoptees study – concluded ‘reason to be optimistic’ - Feral/attic/closet cases reported – usually positive outcomes

Answer 4

- Early maltreatment changes the size of some areas of the brain – the amygdala was found to be reduced by 12% (Shivley, 2006) - Being made fearful or lonely increases cortisol levels – Biological Effects of Daycare (Sigman, 2012) - This creates a jumpy, insecure and self doubting person (James, 2009)

Answer 5

- Attachment relationships become the template for social relationships throughout the lifespan - So, the emotions and expectations arising from the infant-parent relationship are the basis for the conceptualisation of the self and others in later years - However, other factors and life experiences are important

Answer 6

- Bowlby (1980) ‘Internal working model’ cognitive representation of oneself and others - Sensitive, responsive parent leads the child to view people as dependable – they have a positive internal working model ( + IWM) leading to a positive belief in adults - Jacobsen & Hofmann (1997) showed + IWM led to greater self confidence, educational achievement and social relations with peers than those with a negative model

Answer 7

``` - Factors to consider: ∙ Quality of the care ∙ Affordability of care ∙ Parents attitude to work ∙ Additional support for the family ```

Answer 8

- Social cognition is thinking about the characteristics of oneself and others - Theory of mind (TOM) is an understanding that the thoughts and feelings of others can be different from your own - Mind-blindness of autism (Baron-Cohen) - Mind-mindedness is attuning to these thoughts and feelings (Meins)

Answer 9

- Social referencing: interpreting environment using cues displayed by others - Social cognition: thinking processes and representations relating to the social world; thinking about the self and its relationship to others - TOM: awareness of others mental states and intentions - Mind blindness: characteristic of autism lack of awareness of thoughts of others - Mind-mindedness: attuning infants to thought processes

Answer 10

- Looked at the imitation, by babies less than four weeks old, of adults making faces at them - Context: ►Nativism vs Empiricism (Nature vs Nurture) ►Piaget (1962) – infants do not develop the ability to imitate another person until they are 8 – 12 months ►Lyakh (1968), Maratos (1973) demonstrated babies aged 1-2 months could imitate = children are born with innate cognitive abilities, that not everything comes through interaction with the environment - Alternative explanations: ✳︎ Survival strategy (Bjorklund 1987) ✳︎ General display of interest (Jones 1996) ✳︎ Can Newborn Infants Imitate? Jones (2017)

Answer 11

- 2 months: social smile - 6-10 months: social referencing & understanding intentions - 18 months: distinguishes animate from inanimate objects - 2 years: begins to lie & understands pictures represent objects - 3 years: develops TOM and understand pretend & make believe

Answer 12

- Naïve Psychology: a generic desire of human nature to explain behaviour (see Wellman) - At the centre of naïve psychology (the tendency to predict & explain behaviour) are three psychological constructs…ideas that people commonly use to understand human behaviour

Answer 13

- Taken from a story used as a diagnostic measure. E.g. Why did Mary go to Sam’s house? She WANTED to play with Sam (a desire); She THOUGHT Sam was at home (a belief), so she WENT to Sam’s house (an action)

Answer 14

- First, invisible: no one can see a belief - We can see behaviour related to the construct, but we cannot see the desire that underlies the behaviour - Second, the invisible constructs are all linked to each other in cause-effect relations - Third, naïve psychological constructs develop early

Answer 15

- By 18-months of age, infants can infer simple intentions of other people - 18-month-olds observed an adult trying to, but failing, to pull apart a small dumb bell toy. When the infants were subsequently given the toy, they pulled the two ends apart, imitating what the adult INTENDED to do, (Meltzoff, 1995) - ‘Behavioural re-enactment’

Answer 16

- By 1 year of age infants share joint visual attention demonstrating an understanding of intention – the child actively monitors the intentions of others - By 4 years of age children have developed a TOM

Answer 17

- By age 2, most children realise that when looking in a mirror they are looking at an image of the self (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979) = So, evidence of basic understanding of both intentionality and the self is evident by age two

Answer 18

- Surreptitiously place a coloured spot (lipstick or sticker) on baby’s face - Show infant their image in a mirror - Ask them to remove (clean) spot = < 18 months clean image = 18 months+ clean self = Therefore evidence that mirror image = self reflection (Lewis & Brookes-Gunn, 1979)

Answer 19

- Between age 3 and 4, typically developing children build on their initial naïve psychology to form a theory of mind - This theory of mind explains human mental functioning in terms of beliefs, desires, perceptions, and emotions - As this theory of mind develops, children’s knowledge about these psychological constructs becomes organised, and describes the interrelations among the constructs (Wellman & Gelman, 1998)

Answer 20

- If a child fails to understand the concept that the thoughts and feelings of others are different from their own then they typically have difficulty with social relationships (Baron-Cohen, et al., 1985) - Beliefs-desire theory of mind: beliefs and desires determine actions thereby understanding the relationship between these internal states (Wellman, 2011)

Answer 21

- Wellman & Wooley, 1990; Gopnik & Slaughter, 1991; Lillard & Flavell, 1992; Found that 2-year-olds predict that characters in stories will act in accordance with the characters own desires, even when these differ from the child’s own desires - E.g. If 2-year-olds would rather play with trucks than dolls, but are told that the story character would rather play with dolls than trucks they predict that if the story character is given a choice the character will choose to play with dolls.

Answer 22

- False beliefs: beliefs that do not accurately represent reality - Children are shown a tube of Smarties, and are asked: “what is inside the box?” - The child replies: “Smarties” - The experimenter then opens the box and shows the child that the tube actually contains pencils - When asked what another child would say is in the closed tube, the 5-year-old child would say “Smarties”

Answer 23

- Asked the child to hide pencils in the Smarties tube before it was shown to another child - The child predicted that the other child would say that the tube contained Smarties - Playing the role of a deceiver and hiding the pencils helped 3-year-olds see the situation from the other child’s perspective (Sullivan & Winner, 1993)

Answer 24

- Disorder of neurological development (possibly genetic) characterised by difficulties with social relationships; impaired communication; unusual & repetitive behaviours - Perhaps difficulty interacting with the environment - Spectrum/continuum

Answer 25

- Many individuals with autism have not developed a theory of mind; they are unable to infer the mental states of others - Baron-Cohen (1985) labelled this ‘mind-blindness’ - By not understanding what other people think they have difficulty with social relationships which can leave them vulnerable - Mini 'critique': ►Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985): Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"?

Answer 26

- A doll (Sally) hides a marble and then goes for a walk - A second doll (Anne) then moves the marble, while Sally is away and hides the marble in a different location - Children are asked where Sally will look for the marble ✳︎ Classic study involving 3 x groups of children (Typical/Down’s Syndrome/ASD) ✳︎ IV = group; DV = task ✳︎ Manipulation check = naming Sally or Ann ✳︎ Belief Question – where does Sally think the marble is? ✳︎ Control Question – where is the marble now? (reality) ✳︎ Control Question – where was the marble in the beginning? (memory) CRITICAL QUESTION: Where will Sally look for the marble? - Sally has beliefs that are different to the truth as Ann has moved the marble - Children in all groups got the naming task correct - 85% of the Down’s children were correct - 80% of the ASD children gave the wrong response - Results for typically developing children: - 3-year-olds say that the Sally will look in the new location for the marble not the original location; because they know it’s moved they think Sally knows too - 4-year-olds pass the task they understand Sally will not know the marble has been moved ✳︎ASD children have higher IQs than Down’s Syndrome children yet performance is poorer therefore haven’t developed TOM ✳︎ Use of dolls? Perhaps not realistic so children may behave differently ⭐︎ Contribution to the discipline ⭐︎ Demonstrated inability of ASD children beyond simple perspective taking (3 mountains task does not require the children to infer thoughts) to deficits in pretend play, TOM & social skills ⭐︎ Wealth of research followed

Answer 27

- Found 18/24 autistic participants (able autistics) could pass 1st and 2nd order false belief tasks though struggled in a naturalistic setting - 12 Story types: Lie, White Lie, Joke, Pretend, Misunderstanding, Persuade, Appearance/Reality, Figure of Speech, Sarcasm, Forget, Double Bluff, Contrary Emotions

Answer 28

- Problems in which appearance and reality diverge - Flavell, Flavell, & Green (1987) showed 3-to 5-year-olds sponges that looked like rocks and gave them to the children to play with to gain experience of the physical properties of the objects

Answer 29

- Both tasks involve the matching of an mental impression against a known reality (Flavell et al., 1993) - Results suggest that 3-year-olds have difficulty in entertaining two competing representations - Perhaps it’s just too abstract - they can't understand

Answer 30

- Call & Tomasello (2008) revisited TOM in Chimpanzees 30 years after the initial studies - Non verbal tasks – hidden food - ‘Understand the goals, intentions, perception and knowledge of others but no evidence of their understanding of false belief’ - Seyfarth & Cheney (2013) in primates & rats TOM helped establish social bonds & ensured reproductive success and the survival of the offspring

Answer 31

- Social Cognitive deficits can prevent children from sympathizing with another person’s suffering – an important inhibitor of aggressive behaviour (Blair, 2005) - Aggressive children may have experienced fewer positive experiences of sensitive and caring behaviours within the family (Webster-Stratton et al., 2001) - Interventions such as perspective taking have been helpful

Answer 32

- She examined the relationship between carers and infants thoughts - Carers ‘mind-mindedness’ their attunement to infant’s thoughts predicts social, emotional & cognitive development in particular attachment security & TOM - Similar to? What is the problem with not developing a TOM? - Elizabeth Meins mind mindedness explains? One of the problems in explaining TOM is that the three psychological constructs used to explain it are rather abstract concepts and cannot be visualised - Have you got the opportunity to attempt the ‘baby-in-the-mirror’ task – what does it demonstrate?

Answer 33

- All 6 served their sentences in adult prisons - In 1908 Children’s Act outlawed adult jail sentences - Minors could still be whipped - 1948 birching was outlawed

Answer 34

Uses the primary caregiver as secure base for exploration. During separation shows that she misses the parent. When the parent returns, greets her with smiles and vocalisations/gestures. If upset, shows that to the parent and seeks his/her comfort. After receiving comfort, returns to exploration.

Answer 35

Explores rapidly, shows little affect. During separation responds at minimum, and when remains alone shows very little distress. During the reunion, turns away from the parent, actively avoiding it, sometimes focusing on toys. If hugged, may become rigid, arching backwards. Seeks distance from the parent, being more interested in the toys..

Answer 36

Visibly stressed by the new environment, most of the time agitated or passive, fails to engage in exploration. During separation, she is markedly distress and anxious. During reunion, the bids for contact with the parent may alternate with angry rejection, temper tantrums. May seem either too passive or too upset for establishing contact. Fails to re-establish contact with the parent.

Answer 37

- The behaviour seems to lack any clear goal, intention or explanation. - E.g., sequences of contradictory behaviours, incomplete or interrupted acts; stereotypic behaviours, sudden catatonic postures, fear of parent, confusion, disorientation. - Lack of coherent attachment strategy, even though it can manifest behaviours specific for type A, B or C.

Answer 38

- The lack of a clear attachment figure 1. Nonattachment with emotional withdrawal: No evidence of attachment to caregiver; no pattern of comfort seeking, constricted affect, little social pleasure or exploration 2. Nonattachment with indiscriminate sociability: Lack of age appropriate cautiousness about approaching, being held by, or engaging with relative strangers; will seek comfort from strangers; shallow, perhaps little affect - Perturbed relation with the attachment figure 3. Disordered attachment with inhibition: Has focused attachment figure, but either clings anxiously around unfamiliar people when caregiver present (less so when caregiver is absent) with constricted affect or has inhibition characterized by fear and hypervigilence with exaggerated compliance and lack of pleasure 4. Disordered attachment with self-endangerment: Has focused attachment figure, but does not use this person to monitor cues about danger, reckless, accident-prone, aggressive behaviours in the context of relationship 5. Disordered attachment with role reversal: Has focused attachment figure, but exhibits heightened or precocious concern for caregiver’s well-being, caretaking of self and others may alternate with bossy and punitive behaviour 6. Disrupted attachment disorder: Prolonged separation from caregiver before onset of search behaviour, refusal to accept comfort from others, emotional withdrawal, sleep and eating disturbances, regression 7. Reactive attachment disorder - inhibited: Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate behaviour across contexts, failure to initiate and respond to most social interactions, manifested by inhibited, hypervigilant, ambivalent, contradictory social responses, pathologic parental care must be evident. 8. Reactive attachment disorder - indiscriminate: Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate behaviour across contexts, diffuse attachments with markedly inability to exhibit selective attachments, pathogenic parental care must be evident.

Answer 39

- Physical abuse: inflicts physical injury e.g. hitting/kicking, shaking - Sexual abuse: any sexual contact - Physical neglect: failing to provide or lack of supervision - Emotional maltreatment: emotionally insensitive to the child’s needs

Answer 40

- Psychological safety & security: environment free of hostility and violence, need for an available and stable attachment figure - Acceptance & self-esteem: need for positive regard, absence of excessively negative or unrealistic evaluation - Age-appropriate autonomy: need to individuate within bounds, without developmentally inappropriate responsibility

Answer 41

- Child labour- employment of children that deprives them of childhood and schooling; often full time and in dangerous jobs; also child soldiers, prostitution, drug trafficking - Child trafficking- for labour, drug trafficking, illegal adoptions, begging, sexual exploitation - Child marriage- still common in Asia and Africa, where child brides can be very young so major cultural differences exist

Answer 42

- Parenting: ►One such explanation lies with parenting ►Creating an atypical social environment ►Less positive emotion, more negative emotion ►Isolation; stressful experiences, etc. ►Children need to feel loved, valued and secure

Answer 43

- Neglectful parents: ►Less expressive and less engaged with their children ►Little exchange of affective information - Abusive parents: ►Interact more frequently with their children ►More negative ►Higher rates of verbal and physical aggression

Answer 44

In 50% of cases of Conduct Disorder symptoms associated with ADHD are also present. That means there is 50% comorbidity between Conduct Disorder and ADHD

Answer 45

- Child: Premature or sickly infants, difficult temperament, inattentive, overactive, developmental problems - Parents: psychological difficulties, substance abuse, low/lack of education, belief in discipline - Family: low income or poverty, homelessness, marital instability, high stress, unemployment, large number of children, unplanned pregnancy, partner abuse - Culture and community

Answer 46

- General deficits in: ►discriminating between different emotional expressions (Gaensbauer et al., 1981) ►understanding of emotions (Camras et al., 1996) - For example: abused children were more accurate at recognising angry faces and less accurate at recognising a happy face (Pollak (2008) - Additional findings: ►Maltreated children less accurate at inferring emotions ►Neglected children had difficulty inferring anger ►Neglected children had difficulty differentiating between sadness and happiness ►Abused children had difficulty inferring sadness ►Adults who reported moderate to severe childhood abuse show: ∙ preferential attention to angry faces ∙ increased sensitivity for the detection of angry faces at lower levels of emotional intensity. ►Interpretation biases more specific to anger than to happiness or sadness. (Gibb et al., 2009)

Answer 47

- It might or it might not lead to problems as some develop difficulties, some do not - There may be protective factors, such as social support - Difficulties include: ∙ Decreased functional and symbolic play ∙ Increased aggression ∙ Social disinhibition/’indiscriminate friendliness’

Answer 48

- Her case study is used to illustrate the damage brought on by neglect, abuse and isolation from the age of 20 months to 13 years - Her father believed that she was ‘retarded’ and isolated her - Never developed speech, had no attachment, poor motor skills, had severe physical difficulties

Answer 49

- Could failure to thrive be caused by difficulties in the mother-baby bond? - Evidence suggests yes – the stress system is extremely sensitive to negative parental experience - Amygdala & pre-frontal cortex = anxiety circuits – see Fox et al., (2002) on BB - Recap – Shivley (2006)

Answer 50

More recent interventions have shown that in cases of so called ‘feral/closet/attic’ children with the right care and intervention the outcomes have been very successful

Developmental Psychology Flashcards

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