Lecture 3 - Research in Developmental Psych Flashcards
(21 cards)
1
Q
Research methods
A
- self report
- clinical trials
- RT task
- TMS
- these methods need responses and we have to be able to trust it is a reliable response
- can combine these methods for reliability
2
Q
methods that do not require responses
A
- looking times & looking proportions
- sucking rates
- pupil diameter changes
- neural response
3
Q
habituation
A
- one of the most basic human responses
- it is a slowed, changed or stopped response to repeated or similar info
- requires attention
- often tested with dishabituation (once bored & habituated present something new & looking time should inc)
4
Q
sucking rates (habituation)
A
- in infancy we attune to the sounds we hear - a form of attention
- good as they do not have great ocular control yet
- sucking rates used to measure attention/habituation with 1-4mo infants
- sucking rates different for b vs p sounds
- infants will suck more intently when something has their attention such as new sound. if they think p is same sound it should dec rate of sucking
5
Q
habituation looking times (habituation)
A
- can track dec in attention through looking time also
- standard threshold is to reduce LT to 50% then test for dishabituation
6
Q
how do we learn categories (habituation)
A
- infants often have categorisation errors
- piaget - assimilation and accommodation. conflict of items within a category occurs then have to create a new category
- infants struggle with mutual exclusivity
- labels can be:
> invitation to form a category
> disrupt attention to the category
> be treated as a feature of the object category
7
Q
younger/plunkett (habituation)
A
- younger (1995/2008) looked at how infants form categories based on visual features.
- depends on what you show infants
> in broad condition infants formed one category to represent all animals
> in narrow condition certain features are paired together - plunkett et al (2008) - wanted to see if this relates to how we learn/label words
> saw series of giraffes in broad/narrow condition until habituated & tested for novelty preference - results:
> in both conditions looking was different from chance
> when these categories were accompanied by words, infants were also able to show knowledge of two categories
> when words were randomly assigned infants show no category knowledge
> when all objects had one label infants thought they were one category
8
Q
VOE (habituation)
A
- baillargeon habituate infants to possible events then tested them on possible vs impossible events = infants should know objects are permanent
- can habituate the other way showing opposite reuslt
- we use eye tracking now
- strengths: easy to do
- weaknesses: distractable infants
- can also use head turn preferences to see what is keeping their attention
9
Q
saffran et al (1996) (habituation)
A
- saffran et al wanted to test if infants learn regularities of words in language using headturn procedure
- examined transitional probability - likelihood one sound follows another in same word
- 8m old heard 2 mins of random letters and only clue to boundaries is probability
- then heard 3 syllables (words or non words)
- infants looked longer when they were non-words = dishabituation
10
Q
alternative to habituation - pupillometry (habituation)
A
- pupil sizes capture changes in arousal, cog load and VoE
- direct & robust
- restrictive setup
- pre-processing can remove blinks, interpolate missing data, filter, then either average or fit with a curve
- GAMM looks at raw data scores of pupil size and smooths them showing separate lines
- FDA is alt type of statistic where instead of doing t test on points treats curve as a point and do t test on differences between curves
- allows us to observe differences and see what time difference occurs
- pupillometry is a good alt for looking time but requires controlling luminance & lighting etc
- even gaze location on screen affects pupil size reading in most eye trackers but you can account statistically or in design
11
Q
preferential looking
A
- when you don’t need to train or habituate you can inc power by making every trial a test trial
12
Q
infant colour perception (preferential looking)
A
- Franklin & Dvaies wanted to build on findings that adults perceive colour categorically to test this in infants
- used stimuli pairs (blue/green boundary) and see if infants look more at ones that cross a colour boundary than not
- crossing the category should cause a preference since all else is equal = categorical perception of colour. showed infants do have categorical preference.
- can add a layer of auditory stimuli = intermodal preferential looking meaning a verbal cue prompts infants to look one way
13
Q
shape & colour - booth and waxman 2008
A
- made some stimuli same colour referring to some objects as ‘blicketts; then with a contrast stimuli not in same category
- they should look to the familiar category if understood the cue
- look more at noun condition than chance to familiar category. Not in either adjective condition or silent condition.
- no word shows no preference and no learning
- do not have much preference for ‘blickish’ when focussing on colour but when saying blicket and referring to shape they show preference.
- infants at 14m extend nouns to categories
- but issues of mutual exclusivity and some objects e.g. purple animals not existing irl. infants also fixate to things with eyes naturally more
14
Q
learning colour words (preferential looking)
A
- colour words harder to learn.
- age of colour word learning changed with research
- forbes & plunkett (2019)
> showed objects and asked children to look at specific colour. then had to account for difference in stimuli (counterbalance colour) & measure looking - before they hear the colour word they are exploring the space and should already provide preferential colour looking
- prenaming (before heard colour word)
> colour preferences matter
> green preferred over blue - post naming
> at 19m have understanding of colour learning showing slight preferences which inc at 24 and 48m showing they learned colour words.
15
Q
(neuroimaging)
A
- can tell us structure/functional activation of regions
- goof for talking about mechanisms & networks
- sometimes hard to interpret
- analysis not easy
16
Q
eeg (neuroimaging)
A
- measures electrical signals in brain
- easy to do with infants and children
- high temporal resolution
- scalp level activity
- sensitive to movement
- can use infant specific caps
- high dropout
17
Q
fmri (neuroimaging)
A
- uses magnetism and radio waves to measure BOLD response
- high spatial resolution
- not great temporal resolution
- not useable with infants or certain pops e.g. CI
18
Q
MRI (neuroimaging)
A
- uses magnetism and radio waves to measure structure or different tissue
- can tell soft tissue types apart
- diffusion tensor imaging is a special type of MRI using water diffusion
- just structure = infants can be asleep
19
Q
fNIRs (neuroimaging)
A
- near infrared light to measure absorption and scattering of photons
- also easy to use with children and infants
- slightly better spatial resolution than EEG
- worse temporal resolution and still only cortex
20
Q
FNIRs/DOT (neuroimaging)
A
- optical neuroimaging allows us to measure in infants what we would otherwise need fMRI for
- diffuse optical tomography transforms these images back into 3D space (usually higher density than fNIRS)
- even HD-DOT has been tested from 3-4m of age
21
Q
malnutrition and cog development
A
- malnutrition affects cognition
- we wanted to know not just behaviourally but how it affects wm networks
- Wijeakumar et al
> tested this in India with 6-9m olds
> combo of measures. with fNIRS can then look at dif between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in brain
