These revision notes cover childhood development and summarise useful theories and facts.
PRENATAL AND EARLY SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
- Cover's atypical development theories e.g. Barker hypothesis, stress and teratogens
- Newborn imitation
- What effects attachment styles and criticism
INFANT COGNI...
PRENATAL AND EARLY SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
CAUSES OF AYTPICAL PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT Stress ATTACHMENT THEORY
Barker hypothesis Early stress= ‘fast tracking’ Styles
Maternal undernutrition can lead to changes in the Late stress= Initial slow growth but catch up Secure
foetuses organs which can lead to disease in later life. Berghänel, Heistermann, Schülke, & Ostner (2017)- “Prenatal Resistant
That change within the organs can lead to: stress accelerates offspring growth to compensate for reduced Avoidant
- Poor growth during childhood e.g. shorter and lighter maternal investment across mammals” Disorganized
- Disease in later life THE NEWBORN Strange situation task
- Metabolic and endocrine dysfunction. Can young infants imitate? Criticisms:
Godfrey & Barker (2000): Meltzoff & Moore (1977): - Only focuses on the mother not multi
- Longitudinal, 25,000 men and women - Showed 3-week old infants reproduced 3 facial and one (Lewis, 2005)
- Association between low birth weight and disease in manual gesture. EVALUATION OF THE THEORY
mid-life . BUT - western centric
- However, babies born small could be premature. Jones (2009): - Attachment style can alter
Teratogens - Reviewed the evidence and argued that true imitation - Infants have multiple attachments
Teratogens are substances that can lead to birth defects does not develop until approximately 2 years of age. Factors affecting attachment security
or death and are split into 3 areas: - New-born's match adult behaviour but don't imitate. 1. Opportunity to develop close relatio
INFECTION: Oostenbroek et al (2016): caregivers is crucial
Rubella - Infants were shown 11 gestures at 1, 3, 6 and 9 weeks 2. Warm responsive parenting usully l
- During first 12 weeks, in 50% of cases baby would of ages and imitation effects were replicated until attachment security
have eyesight problems and after can cause brain extra controls were added 3. Infants temperament
damage or mental retardation. BUT 4. Family circumstances e.g. stressors,
MATERNAL PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: Meltzoff et al (2017): difficulties
Thalidomide - Criticises this by arguing that there is evidence for
- During the first 12 weeks can cause limb imitation of tongue protrusion.
malformation.
RECREATIONAL:
Nicotine
- Constricts blood vessels in the placenta so the heart
has to work harder (cardiovascular system)
- Associated with preterm delivery
Drinking
- Foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) - facial appearance
- Smaller brains, lower IQ and attachment disorder.
, INFANT COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Baillargeon et al’s (1985):
Drawbridge study shows 5 month year
VISUAL PERCEPTION Size constancy
longer at an ‘impossible event’
Up to half the brain processes visual information (Sereno Understanding that an object is still the same object even - Their surprise shows they believed t
et al, 1995) when it moves.
- Very young babies can understand that an object is existed when they couldn’t see it an
Newborns visual acuity is poor (Van Hofvan Duin &
the object was solid so the drawbrid
Mohn, 1986) and so is their visual accommodation the same despite being placed in different positions or
able to pass through it.
(keeping focus) can understand depth when two different size
BUT
Carpenter (1974) versions are placed in different positions.
Bremner (2007) suggests babies do un
2-7 weeks old babies preferred to look at their mothers’
permeance but are unable to use the k
faces than a stranger. MENTAL REPRESENTATION IN INFANCY
action sequences.
Is it innate? Object unity
- CONSPEC mechanism: a generic face Categorisation
Understanding that an object is whole or complete even
- CONLEARN mechanism: a specific face How we store and manipulate knowled
though part of it may be hidden by a foreground object.
Concepts are the mental representatio
Or due to rapid learning? Kellman & Spelke (1983)
- Via associating a mother’s voice with her face - 4 month years olds observed a rod moving behind a e.g. feathers are a concept of birds.
- Bushnell (1998)- 12 hours experience of visual’sound Habituation
box. - Familiarisation by showing pairs of d
from mother required to form preference - Then presented with two displays (continuous and
from the same category e.g differen
Atypical face processing discontinuous rods) - Novelty preference test- If the infan
Adults and babies with autism tend not to look people in - They preferred to look at two separate parts of the
the new category e.g. dog, they can
the eyes e.g. Jones & Klin (2013) with actresses making rod (evidence for object unity)
- But new-borns preferred to look at continues. has noticed that the dog is different
cooing noises at babies.
Bornstein and Arterberry (2003):
Babies later diagnosed with autism have an impaired Gradual emergence of object unity during the early
Tested 5 month year olds on categorisa
‘shared attention mechanism’ (Baron-Cohen, 1995) months.
expressions.
Depth perception Object permanence - Infants looked longer at fear than fa
- Gibson & Walk (1960) tried to entice 6-14 months over Piaget search task
Object manipulation techniques
an apparent drop but only 3/27 did. Argued that Can be mapped on to each sub stage of Piaget’s
For older infants- same technique as h
depth perception is innate as they sensed the drop. sensorimotor period. After this stage they will plan and
- Schwartz, Campos & Baisel (1973) increase in heart touching/holding for longer.
search for hidden objects.
- Stage 3 (4-8 months)- Infants will not search for a Issues:
rate of 9-month-olds (frightened of drop) - Order of acquisitions of categories:
- Campos et al. (1978) – 7 ½-month-olds less likely to go hidden object - Flexibility in categorisation: can infa
to ‘drop’ side if been crawling for longer - Stage 4- Infants will search for a hidden object but
items across different categories?
Experience of crawling doesn’t promote depth when moved will still search at original place. - On what basis do infants categorise:
perception but makes babies wary of drops. Search error is an example of infants egocentrism.
conceptual?
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