Developmental Psychology I: infancy and childhood part 5 Flashcards

Question

Rough-and-tumble play

Answer 1

This is like wrestling without the WWE drama — it mimics aggression (wrestling, chasing, hitting), but it’s not meant to harm. Key points: Common between children or child and parent Happens in other species too (kittens, puppies, monkeys) They all show a play face — a relaxed, non-aggressive face Promotes: Physical development Emotional regulation (e.g., calming down when play gets intense) Social skills (e.g., reading others’ cues) More common in boys than girls 🧠 Analogy: Rough-and-tumble play is like a “social test lab” where kids try out boundaries and learn to read the room.

Answer 2

Let’s compare vertical relationships (child-parent) and horizontal relationships (peer-peer): Vertical relationships (child-parent): The adult sets rules, provides security and protection The child can explore safely Horizontal relationships (peer-peer): Kids are similar in age and power, but have different needs Requires reciprocity (give and take) and compromise 🧠 Analogy: Playing with a parent is like bowling with bumpers — safe and guided. Playing with peers is like real bowling — you need aim, strategy, and a sense of fairness.

Answer 3

As kids grow older, peer play becomes more complex. Key points: Cognitive development lets kids handle more complex games Early peer play helps children acquire and practise social skills They must subdue their own agenda (e.g., not always being the leader) They become aware of peer’s agenda too — learning empathy and negotiation 🧠 Analogy: Imagine two kids building a sandcastle. One wants a moat, the other wants a tower. The ability to coordinate that plan is a huge developmental milestone.

Answer 4

Let’s zoom in on the earliest stages. 6-month-olds: Show little attention to others Prefer objects over peers Around ~2 years of age: Begin parallel play: play next to each other, but not coordinated or reciprocal 🧠 Analogy: It’s like reading two books side by side — same space, but different stories.

Answer 5

Between 2 to 5 years children play with increasing reciprocity and cooperation, which is likely encouraged by attended nurseries or playgroups. Parten categorized 6 types of play: Play Type: Unoccupied play What It Means: Child isn’t doing anything noticeable ___________________________ Play Type: Onlooker play What It Means: Child watches but doesn’t join ___________________________ Play Type: Solitary play What It Means: Child plays alone ___________________________ Play Type: Parallel play What It Means: Children play side-by-side, not together ___________________________ Play Type: Associative play What It Means: Children play together but without organized goals ___________________________ Play Type: Cooperative play What It Means: Children coordinate play, sharing and taking turns ___________________________

Answer 6

Research (Gillibrand et al., 2016) challenges the idea that Parten’s stages always progress in order. Key points: Children between 2 to 5 years were thought to show growing social/cognitive skill by moving through the stages But real kids (both younger and older) often mix and match: They might switch between group play and solitary play Parten’s original categorisation has since been updated 🧠 Analogy: It’s less like climbing a ladder and more like navigating a jungle gym — kids take all kinds of routes.

Answer 7

Functional play (first 2 years): Simple physical actions: running, jumping, rolling Also called sensorimotor play (Piaget, 1951) Symbolic play (2 to 6 years): Symbolic representation of things not present e.g., pretending a banana is a phone 🧠 Analogy: Functional play is like testing what your body can do. Symbolic play is like acting in an imaginary movie.

Answer 8

Think of this as high-level roleplaying. Key points: Acting out roles, scenes, and stories Emerges from symbolic play Develops: Social role understanding Emotional regulation (e.g., pretending to cry) Negotiation skills ____________________ Make-believe play starts as acting out scenes with toys and dolls and progresses to using other children as participants: this promotes understanding of the participants involved in the interactions.

Answer 9

Constructive play (3 to 6 years): Building or creating something tangible or symbolic e.g., Lego, puzzles, drawing Games with rules (6 years onwards): Structured games with agreed rules e.g., football, hopscotch

Answer 10

Drawing is a form of imitation of reality. That means it helps kids mentally represent what they see and think — they turn thoughts into lines and colors. Key Ideas: Even though children’s drawings often try to be realistic, they’re not just copying reality. They’re using internal images and information (what they remember, imagine, or feel). Drawing starts as a motor activity: just hand movements that leave a mark — like scribbling! Over time, these become more expressive (e.g., smiley faces, houses). Drawing is pleasurable and closely related to play. It helps kids express themselves — like saying "This is what I’m thinking!" with a crayon. Drawing and language are connected. Early writing often starts as drawing — letters look like drawings to young children.

Answer 11

Motor: fine psychomotricity — the precise movements of the fingers and hand (e.g., holding a pencil, forming shapes). Cognitive: understanding the world and representing it spatially (e.g., knowing the house is bigger than the tree). Affective: drawings show interests, worries, or desires (e.g., drawing a scary monster = expressing fear). 🧠 Analogy: Drawing is like a mirror of the child’s mind — except the mirror is made of paper and colored pencils.

Answer 12

Age: ~12 months Language Development: Infants utter their first words ________________________________ Age: ~18 months Language Development: The naming explosion: rapid increase in vocabulary of nouns ________________________________ Age: ~18–24 months Language Development: Can use two-word combinations ________________________________ Age: ~24 months Language Development: Can use three-word combinations ________________________________

Answer 13

By 2 years, children can use basic grammar: Plurals, pronouns (I, me, she), verbs (sleep), adjectives (heavy). The cognitive change behind the naming explosion is called naming insight: Children around 18–24 months realize that names apply to all things, not just specific ones. not only apply to objects in the immediate environment, but to everything. This leads to the famous question: “What’s that?” 🧠 Analogy: Naming insight is like turning on the lights in the brain — the child realizes that everything has a name!

Answer 14

Around 2 years of age, kids begin placing words into categories — essential for fast vocabulary learning. Fast-mapping = quickly acquiring a word after hearing it once or twice. It often happens when child and speaker are jointly attending to an object (e.g., both looking at a dog and the adult says “dog”).

Answer 15

Despite developing the ability to rapidly assign a new word to a category, young children often apply the wrong meaning to words. * All developing children tend to make similar types of errors when misapplying meaning to new words: ______________________________________ Overextension: Using one word for many things E.g., calling all furry animals "doggies" Underextension: Using a word too narrowly Only calling their pet “doggy” but not others

Answer 16

Errors like overextension and underextension show how kids are still learning categories. When they ask “What’s that?”, they might be asking: “What is that exact thing?” Or “What are all things with four legs?” Until they ask more complex questions, they’ll often mislabel things during fast-mapping. 🔄 Overlap errors = mix of over- and underextension: E.g., calling everything in a mug “coffee” (overextension) But not calling coffee in a plastic cup “coffee” (underextension) 🧠 Analogy: It's like recognizing your teacher only in school — but not at the supermarket.

Answer 17

Vocabulary = 1000–5000 words Sentences up to 8 words Use of: Conjunctions (because) Adverbs (heavily) Articles (a, an, the) They ask many “Why?” questions 🧠 Analogy: They’re like tiny detectives — always looking for reasons.

Answer 18

By the age of 4 years, a child’s vocabulary can grow to around 10,000 words, and they can build longer sentences, up to 20 words in length. Their grammar skills become more advanced, now including: Dependent clauses, like: “When Mum reads me a story, I feel happy.” Sentence-ending tags, like: “It’s bedtime now, isn’t it?” This age is also when kids reach the height of curiosity — they ask a lot of “Why?” questions, and now you’ll hear “How?” and “When?” even more often. 🧠 Analogy: Imagine a young child turning into a mini journalist — they're not just asking what anymore, they want to know why, how, and when everything happens. You're officially being interviewed 24/7.

Answer 19

Vocabulary = up to 30,000 words Sentence length = unlimited, using “...and...who...that...” Grammar includes: Passive voice (“The man was bitten…”) Subjunctive (“If I were…”) Questions now become complex, formulated questions

Answer 20

Key Points: Infancy and childhood also see the appearance and maturation of memory processes. Piaget (1962) said infants younger than 2 years old are primarily reflexive, sensory beings. Previously stored information (i.e., memory) does not influence behaviour until late in infancy or early childhood (> 2 years). By adulthood, we possess a sophisticated memory system that stores different types of knowledge and information.

Answer 21

Memory Types: Memory splits into two main branches: 1. Implicit Memory (non-declarative / Procedural memory) You retrieve memories without being consciously aware. For well-learned, automatic skills like riding a bike. 2. Explicit Memory (declarative) Conscious recollection of learned or memorised information. Explicit memory splits further: Episodic Memory: memory for events or episodes. → Example: remembering what you had for breakfast. --> Retrospective (past experiences) --> Prospective (remembering to do things) Semantic Memory: general knowledge and facts, not tied to a specific moment. → Example: how many players are in a football team.

Answer 22

Memory is made of 3 core processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding: transforms sensory info into a storable format. Like typing an essay into a computer. Storage: keeps the info in memory over time. ( Maintains encoded info in mind over time and potentially converts it into a long-term memory. Like saving the essay on your hard drive. Retrieval: uses the stored information. Like opening the essay later to review it.

Answer 23

Preferential looking method: → Fantz (1964) showed that infants prefer new stimuli over familiar ones. If something is familiar, they look at it less. This shows they remember seeing it before → evidence of memory! Used in the Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task.

Answer 24

In the VPC task, infants: See a single stimulus. Then, after a delay, are shown two: one familiar, one unfamiliar. If they spend less time looking at the familiar one, it's taken as an index of recognition memory. Infants as young as 3 to 6 months can do this (Fagan, 1970).

Answer 25

Compared 1-year-olds and 4-year-olds using the VPC task. Encoding durations were: 5, 10, or 30 seconds. 4-year-olds recognised the familiar stimulus after just 5 seconds. 1-year-olds needed at least 10 seconds to show recognition. 👉 1-year-olds need more time than 4-year-olds to encode information. _____________________________ Longer Delays in Retrieval: Same task repeated after 24 hours and 7 days. 4-year-olds: Recognised after 5s encoding at 24 hrs. Needed at least 10s encoding for recognition after 7 days. 👉 “Performance in 30-sec familiarisation was the same as for 10-sec familiarisation (in 4-year-olds).”

Answer 26

1-year-olds only recognised stimulus after 30s encoding if tested after 24 hours. Could not recognise it 1 week later, regardless of encoding duration. _________________________ What does This Tells Us? The ability to Retrieve information from memory depends on how much time we spend encoding the information. → 👉 Increasing the familiarization period increases the duration of long-term retention. Encode develops significantly from 1 to 4 years of age.

Answer 27

VPC studies show memory processes exist before 12 months: 6-month-olds: recognise after 20 seconds. 9-month-olds: recognise after 2–3 minute delays (Rose, 1981). Bowlby (1958): infants at 2 months recognise caregivers = memory storage and retrieval is possible at a very young age.

Answer 28

Infantile amnesia = the fact that very few adults remember anything before ~3.5 years old (Conway, 2007 in Gillibrand et al., 2016) We don’t know if it’s due to encoding, storage, or retrieval being immature. One prominent explanation: importance of language. Before age 3, language is still rudimentary. Without verbal tags (labels), memories may not be stored in a way we can later retrieve.

Answer 29

Key ideas: Kids gradually learn to express & understand emotions, both their own and others’. Emotional regulation (controlling emotions) develops especially fast in early years. Recognising others’ emotions helps kids understand themselves — crucial for social interaction. Timeline of Emotion Development: 1. At birth: Basic emotions: interest, distress, disgust, contentment 2. End of 2 months: Social smiles → baby smiles in response to caregiver’s smile. 3. 2–7 months: More basic emotions emerge: anger, sadness, joy, surprise, fear (Shaffer & Kipp, 2014) 4. 18–24 months: Complex emotions like embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, pride → These need a sense of self-awareness (you need to know “this happened to me”).

Answer 30

At 7 to 10 months, infants monitor caregiver’s emotional reactions to judge situations. They use these cues to regulate their own behaviour. 📘 This is called social referencing. Example: If a caregiver looks scared, a baby will avoid that toy.

Answer 31

Learning emotions is key for social development. Kids begin to figure out: “If others are sad, maybe I should be sad too.” → Social referencing + empathy. Emotion recognition helps build theory of mind: Realizing that emotions on the outside match feelings on the inside.

Answer 32

Theory of mind = understanding that others have thoughts, beliefs, desires that are different from your own. Example scenario: A customer sighs at the till after checking her bag and pockets. → You infer she forgot her wallet. This inference = theory of mind.

Answer 33

Premack & Woodruff (1978): ToM = ability to predict what another person believes and how they will behave. 🧠 Why is this useful? Helps us manage social interactions. Lets us understand others’ intentions and empathise. ToM depends on: Desire: knowing what someone wants Belief: knowing what they believe is true

Answer 34

~8 months: Gaze following → Baby follows where someone is looking 🧠 shows awareness of others’ attention ~12 months: Proto-declarative pointing → Baby points to what someone else is looking at 🧠 shows they understand shared attention

Answer 35

At ~2 years, toddlers understand: Private self = what they feel inside Public self = how they show it to others 📘 Crucial for empathy. Example: A child sees a photo of another child crying next to fallen ice cream. They infer: “They’re crying (public) because they’re sad their ice cream fell (private).”

Answer 36

By ~2 years, kids understand: Desires create emotions “He’s upset because he wanted to eat the ice cream.” People’s behaviour is driven by trying to meet desires “Maybe someone will give him a new one if he keeps crying.”

Answer 37

Children around ~3 years start to understand: People hold beliefs (what they think is true), and desires (what they want), and they don’t always act on their desires if they conflict with their beliefs. Example: A child sees a friend not eating ice cream. Even though the friend wants the ice cream (desire), the child realizes: "Maybe they were told not to eat it (belief: 'I'll get in trouble')". This is belief-desire reasoning: understanding that behavior results from both what someone wants and what they believe is true. BUT... At this age, children cannot yet grasp that a belief can be false. 🔹 Key term: "...children have not yet developed the ability to understand that a belief may be false." Example: The friend might believe they can’t eat ice cream, but it’s Saturday and they are allowed. They don’t get yet that beliefs can misrepresent reality.

Answer 38

Another piece of ToM: Understanding that what a person knows depends on what they see. This is called the principle of "seeing leads to knowing" and develops around ~3/4 years. 🔹 Example: If a child sees an adult watch an object being placed in a box, they understand: “The adult knows the object is in the box.” If someone didn’t see it happen, they won’t know where it is.

Answer 39

At the same age (~3/4), children begin developing meta-representation — the ability to represent a representation. It shows up in pretend play. Key term: "Children learn to separate what is true about a situation from what someone is pretending to do." 🔹 Example: A child sees someone using a banana as a telephone. They understand: It’s really a banana (true), but the person is pretending it's a phone. This ability is central to symbolic play — using one object to represent another. 🔹 Piaget’s Theory (1962): Preoperational thought involves development of the use of symbols and symbolic play. 🧠 This is foundational for imagination, storytelling, and social role-play.

Answer 40

Children’s ability to understand false beliefs is studied using false belief tasks. ✴ Maxi and the Chocolate Task: Maxi puts chocolate in the green cupboard. He leaves. His mom moves it to the blue cupboard. Maxi returns. Question: “Where will Maxi look for his chocolate?” A child with Theory of Mind will say: Green cupboard (because Maxi has a false belief about where the chocolate is)

Answer 41

First-order false belief = understanding someone’s belief about the world. Story Summary: Sally has a basket, Anne has a box. Sally puts her marble in her basket. Sally goes for a walk. Anne moves the marble into her box. Sally comes back. Belief question: “Where will Sally look for her marble?” 👉 Correct answer: Basket (Sally believes it’s still there) Reality question: “Where is the marble?” 👉 Answer: Box Memory question: “Where was the marble in the beginning?” 👉 Answer: Basket If children can answer reality and memory questions, it shows they understand the task. But... ______________________________ Findings from Baron-Cohen et al. (1985) in Sally-Anne Task (First-order False Belief) 🔹 Subjects aged 3.5 to 5.9: Answered reality and memory questions correctly. But those under 4 years could not answer the belief question. “The authors concluded that children younger than 4 years-old may be unable to understand false-beliefs (despite understanding the task).”

Answer 42

This task is a clever test of false belief understanding using surprise and expectation. 💡 What's happening? A child sees a tube of Smarties. The researcher asks: “What do you think is inside?” The child says: “Smarties.” ✅ The researcher opens it to reveal: pencils! 🖉 Then asks: “If I show this to another child, what will they think is inside?” ✅ Expected Answer: A child who understands false belief says: “Smarties” A child who doesn’t says: “Pencils” — because they know, and they assume others must know too. This is a false belief task because it checks if the child can realize: “I now know it's pencils, but someone else would believe it’s Smarties.” 🔹 Highlighted point: “4-year-olds correctly answered Smarties (demonstrating understanding of the other child’s false belief), whereas 3-year-olds incorrectly answered Pencils (still no understanding of false beliefs).”

Answer 43

After basic false belief understanding (around 4 years), ToM develops further. 🔹 Key Idea: “ToM continues to develop throughout childhood as social behaviour becomes more complex.” At around ~6 years, social interaction intensifies — especially peer interaction — and ToM gets deeper. Children now understand second-order states. 🧠 What is a second-order state? It’s not just: "I know what she believes." But: "I know what she believes that he believes." 🤯 It’s a belief about a belief. 🔹 Example (from slide): Susan tells Mary, “No one wants to play with you.” A third child watches this. They understand: Susan wants Mary to feel unpopular. So they grasp Susan’s intention to affect Mary’s belief. 🔹 Key concept: "People say and do things to evoke a response in others."

Answer 44

📖 Story Breakdown (with analogies) a. Setup Kevin (brother) and Marieke (sister) are in the living room. 🍫 Their mom gives chocolate to Kevin only. Marieke gets none = she’s upset. b. Kevin eats some, hides the rest in the drawer. c. Kevin leaves. Marieke, upset, moves it to the toy box. BUT — Kevin sees her do this from the window 👀 (Marieke doesn’t know that Kevin saw her.) d. Mom later finds it in the toy box and hides it in the TV stand. 🧠 Control Questions (Check Understanding) “Where is the chocolate now?” → TV stand (Reality check) “Where will Kevin look?” → Toy box (First-order: what Kevin believes) “Where does Marieke think Kevin will look?” → Drawer (Second-order: what Marieke believes Kevin believes) Justification: “Why does she think that?” 🔹 Highlighted Term: Second-order false belief: The child understands what one character believes about another character’s belief. This shows deep recursive social cognition — vital for understanding jokes, sarcasm, secrets, manipulation, and social deception.

Developmental Psychology I: infancy and childhood part 5 Flashcards

(68 cards)