Devo/evo (MC) Flashcards
(130 cards)
1
Q
How do young children and nonhuman animals demonstrate impressive physical cognition?
A
They show an understanding of objects, number, causality, and tool use.
2
Q
What are the complexities of social life that make social partners unique?
A
Social partners are self-propelled, unpredictable, have hidden psychological motivations
(e.g., goals, desires, beliefs), and may have competing or deceptive intentions.
3
Q
Why is social cognition useful for children?
A
Social-emotional and prosocial skills in nursery help predict adult outcomes :
- number and quality of friendships,
- success in school/work,
- lower risks of crime and substance abuse.
4
Q
What social skills contribute to positive life outcomes in adults?
A
Empathy, perspective-taking, communication, cooperation, and social problem-solving.
5
Q
What social behaviours are common in nonhuman animals?
A
Nonhuman animals engage in:
-communication,
-competition,
- dominance hierarchies,
- social learning, and sometimes teaching.
6
Q
In what ways do humans go beyond nonhuman animals in social complexity?
A
Humans develop cumulative culture :
(e.g., marriage, group identity, institutions)
and have advanced language.
7
Q
Why do human infants need to facilitate bonds with caregivers?
A
Human infants are:
- especially helpless
-completely dependent on caregivers, so they are equipped with traits that encourage bonding, such as “babyness” features.
8
Q
What are “babyness” features, and how do they aid in bonding?
A
Traits like:
- a large head,
- prominent forehead,
- and big eyes,
which appeal to adults and encourage caregiving behaviours.
9
Q
Why was bonding initially thought to be a critical period after birth?
A
Early research suggested that the first hours post-birth were crucial for bonding, but later studies showed that bonding quality is influenced over a longer period.
10
Q
What is imprinting, and which species is it commonly observed in?
A
imprinting is when some species (mainly birds) attach to and follow their mother shortly after birth.
This behavior aids in protection, food acquisition, and learning.
11
Q
What was Konrad Lorenz’s study on imprinting with geese?
A
Lorenz divided goose eggs into two groups: one hatched with their mother and the other with him as the first moving object they saw, demonstrating imprinting.
12
Q
Why do human infants need to tune into the social world?
A
Human infants must learn a vast amount of social information, so they need to focus on and engage with their social environment.
13
Q
What was the early perception of newborns’ capabilities?
A
Until the 1950s, newborns were thought to be passive and incompetent.
This view shifted in the 1960s when research showed infants are capable of learning, remembering, and social responses.
14
Q
How do newborns show sensitivity to important social stimuli?
A
They seek relevant stimuli, respond socially, and remember important social cues.
15
Q
How quickly do infants recognize their mother’s voice after birth?
A
Within 2-3 days, infants can distinguish and prefer their mother’s voice over a stranger’s using an operant sucking paradigm.
16
Q
Is infants’ recognition of their mother’s voice a result of prenatal or postnatal learning?
A
It may be prenatal, as fetuses respond to sound in the third trimester, and infants don’t initially show the same preference for their father’s voice.
17
Q
: What study showed prenatal learning of sounds by infants?
A
Decasper and Spence (1986) found that babies recognized and preferred a story read by their mothers during the last six weeks of pregnancy.
18
Q
Why is a newborn’s recognition of the mother’s voice significant?
A
It aids in bonding, which is essential for the infant’s early social and emotional development.
19
Q
What types of information do faces provide that are important for infants?
A
- identity,
-group membership,
-emotions,
-gaze direction - characteristics like trustworthiness.
20
Q
How well can newborns see at birth?
A
Newborns are near-sighted and can see clearly only about 7-12 inches away. Their vision improves to near-adult levels between 6-12 months.
21
Q
What was Robert Fantz’s contribution to understanding infant face perception?
A
In the 1960s, Fantz used the preferential looking method to show that infants as young as 2 days old prefer faces over other stimuli.
22
Q
Do infants prefer faces because they recognise them or due to patterns?
A
Studies show that even newborns (as young as 43 minutes old) will track a face-like pattern more than other patterns, suggesting a preference for faces.
23
Q
When do infants start recognising and preferring their mother’s face?
A
infants as young as **1-3 days old ** can recognise and prefer their mother’s face over a stranger’s.
24
Q
What preference do newborns show regarding facial expressions?
A
Newborns prefer happy faces over fearful ones and direct gaze over averted gaze, which helps them connect socially.
25
How do chimpanzees show similar face perception abilities to humans?
Young chimpanzees **(1-month-old) ** prefer their mother’s face,
and older ones (10-32 weeks) prefer direct gaze, similar to human infants.
26
What is neonatal imitation, and who studied it?
Meltzoff & Moore (1977) found that newborns, as young as **42 minutes old**, imitate facial expressions, although it’s challenging to replicate consistently.
27
Is neonatal imitation universally observed in newborns?
No, about 50% of infants show imitation, mainly in lab settings, and it’s difficult to elicit.
Most reliable evidence is for *tongue protrusion.*
28
What are the key social abilities that newborns have at birth?
Newborns can:
- detect socially relevant stimuli (faces, eye contact, emotional expressions),
-recognise mother’s voice and face, and may imitate simple behaviours.
29
Why are newborns' social abilities crucial from birth?
These abilities support bonding, attract attention from caregivers, and enable early social learning and interaction.
30
/ What is the difference between newborn and social smiles?
- **Newborn infants** (and fetuses) smile due to internal causes (e.g., wind) and often during sleep.
-**Social smiling ** begins between 1.5 and 2 months in response to social stimuli like faces and voices.
31
What evidence suggests that social smiling is linked to neurological development?
- Babies born prematurely smile **socially** later, indicating it's tied to *age since conception * rather than postnatal experience.
- Some blind infants smile socially around the same time.
32
Do animals display behaviours similar to the human social smile?
Yes, apes exhibit a "play face," similar to a smile or laugh, during tickling and rough-and-tumble play.
- but it's not exactly a social smile
33
What is primary intersubjectivity?
It refers to mutually responsive face-to-face interactions between infants and caregivers, starting at around 2 months of age. (2-month- revolution)
34
What are the characteristics of primary intersubjectivity?
- **Dyadic **(between two people)
- Sharing and aligning emotions through eye contact, smiling, and movement
- Reciprocal, bi-directional, and involves turn-taking
35
What are "proto-conversations"?
Early interactions where infants and caregivers share emotions and take turns in facial expressions or vocalisations.
36
What is the still-face experiment by Tronick?
- After normal interaction, the caregiver presents a neutral, unresponsive face.
- Infants become distressed, showing they actively engage in social interactions.
37
Do animals engage in mutual gaze like human infants?
Yes, mutual gaze increases in baby chimpanzees between 0-2 months, similar to human infants (Tomonaga et al., 2004).
38
What is secondary intersubjectivity?
A psychological relation where the focus shifts to the outside world,
involving triadic interactions **(person-person-object).**
39
At what age does secondary intersubjectivity begin?
** Between 9 and 14 months**, infants start to share and align attention and attitudes about the external world. (9 MONTH REVOLUTION).
40
What are the key skills involved in secondary intersubjectivity?
- Coordinating attention to people and objects
- Sharing goals
- Engaging in triadic interactions
41
What is joint attention, and why is it important?
- It is the coordination of attention with others to an object of mutual interest.
- It is critical for language learning, cooperation, and social interaction.
42
How do infants demonstrate joint attention?
-They start by looking where others look or pointing to objects.
- **By 12 months,** they follow gaze or pointing in real-world settings.
42
What is gaze following, and how does it help infants?
- Infants look where others are looking, helping them learn about objects, language, and social cues.
- **By 3-6 months,** infants look at a puppet an adult is focused on.
42
Can other species follow gaze?
Yes, chimpanzees, tortoises, and ravens follow gaze direction and can even follow gaze around barriers.
42
How does gaze following differ from joint attention?
Gaze following lacks the **"mutual knowledge" ** required for joint attention, where both parties know they are sharing attention.
43
When do human infants begin point following?
Around **11-12 months**, infants start following others’ pointing gestures.
44
What is social referencing?
- infants seek emotional information from others about new or ambiguous situations.
- By 10-12 months, they use cues like facial expressions (e.g., happy or fearful) to decide how to act.
45
What experiment demonstrates social referencing?
- infants decide whether to approach a toy or cross a "visual cliff" based on the caregiver's emotional cues.
- Chimpanzees also exhibit similar behaviors.
46
Why is the "9-month revolution" significant?
it marks the beginning of **coordinated social interactions** involving:
shared goals, which are fundamental for cooperation and communication.
47
At what age do infants begin imitating actions on objects?
Around 9 months, infants begin imitating others' actions on objects,
even after a 24-hour delay between model and response (Meltzoff, 1988).
48
Do apes imitate like humans?
This is debated: some researchers argue that apes imitate, while others disagree.
However, humans imitate much more than apes.
49
What are the *three* social learning mechanisms?
**Imitation:** Copying both the action and its goal (means + end).
**Emulation**: Reproducing the goal but in one's own way.
**Mimicry: ** Copying actions without understanding the goal.
50
What is the consensus about social learning differences between humans and apes?
Human infants and children predominantly imitate.
Nonhuman apes mainly emulate, achieving the same result in their way without replicating actions exactly.
51
What is cooperation in the context of human development?
Sharing goals ("shared intentionality") and working together to achieve a joint goal, which begins around **14-18 months of age.**
52
How do children demonstrate cooperation in research settings?
-By 18 months (and sometimes as early as 14 months), children cooperate with adults to achieve joint goals.
- Children communicatively re-engage adults when they stop participating.
- In instrumental tasks, children often put rewards back into play to continue collaboration.
53
What does research show about chimpanzees and cooperation?
- Chimpanzees display less coordination of roles and do not make communicative requests for their partner’s continued participation.
- They show no interest in social games.
54
What motivates human infants to cooperate?
- Even when they can achieve goals independently, infants cooperate and engage with others for shared goals, not merely as a "social tool."
55
How does secondary intersubjectivity differ between humans and apes?
- Humans show advanced forms like joint attention and intentional communication.
- Apes can display gaze following and social referencing, but the human-like complexity of these behaviors remains debated.
56
(attachment & prosocial behaviour) // When do newborns begin showing a preference for their mothers?
Newborns have a preference for their mother's face and voice from birth
, but a specific emotional bond develops months later.
57
What is attachment, and when does it typically develop?
Attachment is a strong emotional bond between infants and caregivers, developing between 7-9 months (Ainsworth, 1982).
58
What are the signs of attachment?
- Attempts to stay near the caregiver.
- Separation anxiety: distress around 8 months when separated.
- Happiness upon reunion with the caregiver.
59
What is Freud’s drive reduction theory of attachment?
Freud proposed that attachment forms because caregivers satisfy biological drives (e.g., hunger), creating pleasure.
60
How does John Bowlby’s ethological theory differ?
Bowlby argued that caregivers provide more than just nourishment:
-They offer nourishment and **protection.**
- They serve as a secure base for **exploration.**
61
What did Harry Harlow’s studies reveal about attachment?
- Baby rhesus monkeys clung to a terry-cloth mother for **comfort**, even when the wire mother provided food.
- The cloth mother acted as a secure base for *exploration* and a source of comfort when frightened.
- These findings **support Bowlby’s theory** that attachment is driven by *contact and security*, not just food.
62
What is the Strange Situation test?
Ainsworth’s experiment measured differences in mother-infant attachment through brief separations and reunions, observing infants' responses to strangers and caregivers.
63
What are the attachment patterns identified by Ainsworth?
**Secure attachment:**
- Uses the caregiver as a secure base for exploration.
Distressed when the caregiver leaves; happy upon return.
**Avoidant attachment:**
- indifferent to the caregiver.
Little distress when they leave; does not seek contact upon return.
**Resistant/ambivalent attachment:**
- Distress when separated; not comforted upon reunion.
Seeks and resists comfort simultaneously.
**Disorganized attachment:**
- No clear attachment behaviors.
May seem dazed, confused, or apprehensive around the caregiver.
64
What are the long-term consequences of disrupted attachment?
- Harlow’s monkeys grew up socially abnormal.
- Children in poorly staffed orphanages often show impaired social, emotional, and cognitive development.
- Attachment styles influence the quality of future relationships.
65
What is prosocial behaviour?
Voluntary actions intended to benefit others, such as helping, sharing, or comforting.
66
At what age do infants begin displaying prosocial behaviours?
**By 12 months**: Provide needed information.
**By 14-18 months:** Help instrumentally (e.g., assisting with tasks).
67
What did Warneken & Tomasello’s studies on altruism find?
- Human infants help naturally and spontaneously without rewards.
- Extrinsic rewards can reduce their willingness to help.
- Infants even help at a personal cost.
68
Do chimpanzees exhibit prosocial behaviour?
- Yes, chimpanzees help both humans and their peers, even at a cost.
- However, their helping is primarily instrumental, unlike humans, who adopt others’ goals and cooperate more broadly.
69
What is Theory of Mind?
Theory of Mind is the ability to think about and attribute mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, intentions) to oneself and others to explain and predict behavior.
70
What is "mindreading" in the context of Theory of Mind?
"Mindreading" is understanding that we can infer unobservable mental states, such as beliefs and desires, to explain and predict observable behaviours.
71
What is a crucial aspect of Theory of Mind regarding others' mental states?
A crucial aspect is understanding that others' mental states may differ from our own.
72
In what everyday situations do we use Theory of Mind?
situations involving:
- communication
-cooperation,
- and even deception to predict others' behaviuor.
73
How does Theory of Mind relate to the 9-month revolution?
Aspects of Theory of Mind begin to develop around 9 months, such as **understanding others' perception and attention.**
74
What is intentional perception as described by Gibson & Rader (1979)?
Intentional perception refers to how different people attend to different aspects of the same environment,
like a painter focusing on colour and a climber focusing on the slope of a mountain.
75
At what age do infants start understanding that others can see or perceive things?
By around **one year old**, both human infants and apes understand that others can see and perceive things.
76
How do infants understand others' goals and intentions?
Infants understand that others have goals (an end result) and intentions (the means to achieve the goals), and behave accordingly to fulfill them.
77
Describe the 18-month-old dumbbell experiment and its significance.
Infants watched an adult either succeed or fail in pulling apart a dumbbell. In both cases, infants replicated the adult’s intended goal, showing they understood unfulfilled goals.
78
Can younger infants understand others' goals?
Yes, even 9-month-old infants can understand what others are trying to achieve, as demonstrated in tests where they distinguish between someone unwilling or unable to pass a toy.
79
What is emotional contagion in newborns?
Emotional contagion is when newborns cry upon hearing other babies cry, which is an *involuntary response.*
80
When do infants begin to show concern for others in distress?
Infants start showing concern between 8-10 months, and by 14-18 months, they begin to comfort others.
81
How does empathy develop in young infants?
Empathy develops gradually, with young infants offering comfort items like teddy bears, which reflect their own preferences,
not necessarily those of the distressed person.
82
What experiment demonstrates that 18-month-olds can understand that others’ desires can differ from their own?
In an experiment where infants were asked to give food to an experimenter who showed a preference for broccoli (over crackers), 18-month-olds gave the food she liked, even if they preferred crackers.
83
Do apes understand desires and emotions?
Apes understand emotional expressions and possibly desires, but there is *no strong evidence *yet
that they understand that others’ desires can differ from their own.
84
When do children start understanding that knowledge is based on having seen something in the past?
Older studies suggest this understanding develops around 2-3 years of age,
but more recent research shows some evidence of this as early as 12 months.
85
Describe the object-sliding experiment by Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello (2008).
A 12-month-old pointed more frequently to an object the experimenter had not seen fall, showing infants recognize ignorance and attempt to inform others.
86
How do chimpanzees demonstrate an understanding of knowledge/ignorance in competition?
Chimpanzees consider what others know or do not know, such as competing for food that others are unaware of.
87
What is the Sally-Anne test and what does it assess?
The Sally-Anne test assesses false belief understanding by asking where Sally will look for a marble based on her belief, which may not match reality. Four-year-olds pass this test by correctly predicting Sally's action.
88
How do 3- and 4-year-olds differ in the Smarties test?
Four-year-olds understand that others will have a false belief about the contents of a box (thinking it's Smarties), whereas 3-year-olds fail by answering with their current knowledge (pencil).
89
What are implicit false belief tests, and why are they important?
Implicit false belief tests, like anticipatory looking and violation of expectation, are important because they show infants as young as 15 months understand false beliefs without needing explicit verbal responses.
90
How do 16- to 30-month-olds demonstrate understanding of false beliefs in behavioural tasks?
Chimpanzees failed explicit false belief tests that required them to make a choice, but recent implicit tests, which measure spontaneous behaviour like looking, suggest they may have *some* understanding of false beliefs.
91
What is the key difference between explicit and implicit false belief tests?
Explicit tests: require active verbal responses and are passed by 4+ year-olds,
implicit tests: involve non-verbal measures, such as looking, and can reveal false belief understanding in much younger children.
92
/ When do babies start to intentionally communicate?
Intentional communication begins around 9-10 months, though some early communicative looks may start around 6 months.
93
What is the difference between a baby's unintentional cries and intentional communication?
Young babies’ cries may signal hunger or discomfort but are not intentional. Intentional communication involves the baby realizing that their signals (like cries or gestures) are aimed at an adult listener for communicative purposes.
94
: What is a good indicator of intentional communication in infants?
Eye contact,
particularly gaze alternation between an object and an adult, shows the infant is monitoring the adult’s attention and communicating intentionally.
95
What are dyadic, non-referential gestures,
and how do they differ from referential gestures?
Dyadic gestures involve interaction between two people but don’t refer to an object or event.
Referential gestures, which are triadic, direct attention to a specific object, person, or event and often involve gaze alternation.
96
What are the two main types of gestures described by Elizabeth Bates?
**Imperative gestures**: used to request objects (e.g., reaching, pointing).
**Declarative gestures:** used to share
attention and interest in objects (e.g., showing, pointing to declare).
97
What other types of gestures, aside from imperative and declarative, have been observed in infants?
informative gestures (to provide information)
and interrogative gestures (to ask a question).
98
What are baby signs and when can you start teaching them to infants?
Baby signs are simple gestures taught to infants around 9-10 months to enhance communication before they can speak.
Babies who learn these signs often have larger vocabularies later on.
99
What are iconic (pantomiming) gestures, and when do children start using them?
Iconic gestures are gestures that resemble the actions or objects they represent.
Children typically start producing more iconic gestures around 2-3 years of age.
100
How do chimpanzees communicate differently from humans?
Chimpanzees use both vocal and gestural communication, but their gestures are more flexible and complex. They use intentional and referential gestures but rarely use declarative gestures.
101
How do chimpanzees use gestures in comparison to imperative gestures in humans?
Chimpanzees mainly use gestures imperatively to request or demand something,
unlike humans who also use declarative gestures to share attention and interest.
102
What is unique about the alarm calls of velvet monkeys?
Velvet monkeys have specific alarm calls for different predators, which require different escape responses.
These calls are functionally referential, as monkeys respond appropriately to each type of call.
103
What is the first key step in children's language development?
The first key step is the discrimination of speech sounds.
Very young infants can perceive and discriminate more sounds than adults, but this ability narrows with exposure to their native language.
104
At what age do infants start understanding their first words?
Infants begin to understand their first words between 8-12 months of age.
105
What are pre-linguistic vocalizations, and when do they occur?
Pre-linguistic vocalizations, such as coos and squeals,
occur before intentional communication and typically happen in early infancy.
106
What is babbling, and when does it typically begin?
Babbling, which begins around 6 months,
is the playful production of speech-like sounds such as "mamama" and "bababa," without meaning or intentional communication.
107
When do children typically say their first intentional words?
Children usually begin producing their first words, like “daddy” or “kitty,” around 1 year of age.
108
What is telegraphic speech and when does it emerge?
Telegraphic speech, which appears around 1.5 years
, involves two- or multi-word utterances, such as "where ball" for "where is the ball?"
109
What is the vocabulary spurt and when does it occur?
The vocabulary spurt is a rapid increase in word learning that typically happens around 18 months.
110
When do children start forming more complex sentences?
Around 2.5 years, children begin using more complex sentences, and by 5 years, they can use adult-like grammar.
111
What are examples of over-regularisation in young children’s speech?
occurs when children apply grammatical rules too broadly, such as saying "mouses" instead of "mice" or "goed" instead of "went."
112
How many words might a child know by the age of 5?
By 5 years of age, a child may know up to 10,000 words.
113
//What does B.F. Skinner’s Behaviorist theory suggest about language acquisition?
Language is learned like any other behavior through conditioning and reinforcement.
114
What are the key mechanisms in the Behaviorist theory?
Classical conditioning: Pairing sounds with objects.
• Operant conditioning: Reinforcement by parents.
• Imitation: Reproducing what is heard.
115
What are the problems with the Behaviorist theory?
• Parents respond to meaning, not grammar.
• Parental corrections have little immediate effect.
116
What does Noam Chomsky’s Nativist theory argue?
Language is an innate ability due to the “poverty of the stimulus” argument and is unique to humans
117
What is the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) in Chomsky’s theory?
A pre-wired brain mechanism designed to understand universal grammar rules
118
What are some critiques of the Nativist theory?
Parents simplify and scaffold language for children.
• Feedback from parents aids learning.
119
What does the Social-Pragmatic theory propose?
Language develops from natural social interactions and the child’s intent to communicate.
120
What role do adults play in the Social-Pragmatic theory?
Adults support through routines, joint attention, and scaffolding interactions.
121
What is a critique of the Social-Pragmatic theory?
It’s unclear how well the theory applies to non-Western societies.
122
What is the “critical period” in language acquisition?
A time when language must be learned to achieve native-like proficiency, especially in grammar.
123
What happens to children deprived of language exposure during the critical period?
They struggle to achieve normal language competency.
124
What evidence supports the critical period hypothesis?
Language-trained apes fail to develop syntax.
• Deaf children not exposed to sign language early struggle later.
125
What is the “problem of reference” in language acquisition?
How children figure out what novel words mean
126
What solutions address the “problem of reference”?
Mutual exclusivity: Each object has one label.
• Social cues: Adults direct focus to objects.
127
How does scaffolding help solve the “problem of reference”?
Structured routines guide children to associate words with specific objects.
