PSYC 302 MIDTERM

UNIT 7 TEXTBOOK
CAUSAL REASONING IN INFANTS
* 6 mths = infants = see causal connects in phys events.
* 6-10 mths infants shown vid of collision, moving obj + stationary obj = crash!
	Diff vid = stationary obj moves before crash? Infant stare longer because it violates the inanimate
		obj = don't move rule.
* Causality = remember and imitate act sequence
* 9-11 mths causal act? They can reproduce it. If causally unrelated acts? 20-22 mths to reproduce.
* 19-24 mths, box that plays music if you put obj B on it. 19 chose A as much as B, 24 inferred B causality.
* 1-2 yr olds have to pick six tools to get toy turtle
	2 yr olds more successful.
		1. They use tools more.
		2.They chose the better tools more oft.
		3. generalized what they learnt in earlier problems to new superficial problems.
CAUSAL REASONING DURING PRESCHOOL
* Preschoolers want consistency of causality and don't see hidden variables.
* Magic: 3-4 yr olds? Try to figure out what causes it. 5? Fascinated by unseen causality.
MAGICAL THINKING/FANTASY
* 4-6 yr olds = believe fantasy/magic/wishes.
* Belief in magic and causal understanding? Kids believe contradictory things and don't like embarrassment.
	This breaks at 1. learning of real causes. 2. peers disbelieving. 3. differentiating between magical beings and pretenders.
	Many 9 yr olds or adults believe in magic when diffi problems.
SPACE
* Nativ/empiricists = both agree impress understanding of spatial concepts, above, below, left of, right of.
* Own movement = stims spatial process.
* Hippocamp dev = place learning improvement.
* Geometric (lengths, angles, and directions) info = import to spatial process.
REPRESENTING SPACE RELATIVE TO ONESELF
* young infants are presented with two objects, they tend to reach for the closer one.
* 7 yr olds can find objs hidden 2 secs ago, not 4.
	12, 10 secs.
	This is due to maturing dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area in the frontal lobe.
	This reflects learning: infants who learn hidden objects in one sits improve in other situations.
* Piaget = During sensorimotor period, infants can form only egocentric spatial representations, in which obj loc are coded relative to the infants’ position.
	If toy was right, then infant would turn right to try finding it, even if they moved so that the toy's on their left. They still find it. Why though?
* Sense of space = self-locomotion, more crawl/move = more object permanence and info of depth.
	puzzle-making = specific pieces, rotating them = dev of spatial.
BOX 7.4 individual differences
* hearing helps with spatial location.
Representing Space Relative to the External Environment
* At 22 months, but not at 16 months, the presence of a landmark improves children’s ability to locate an object that is not hidden immediately adjacent to the landmark but fairly close to it.
	5 yrs, can represent object between multiple landmarks.
* Even toddlers show some degree of navigational ability—good enough to lead them in the right general direction a. The toddlers then walked to a different location, after which they were asked to find the toy. Despite no landmarks being present, the toddlers kept track of the hidden toy’s location well enough to show better than chance accuracy in their searches.
* However, forming relatively precise coding of locations in the absence of straightforward landmarks continues to be difficult for people well beyond 2 yrs. 6-7 yrs, hopeless. Adults vary.
* Culture also affects spatial knowledge.
TIME
* Infants understand order at 3 mths.
* 4 mths, when light-darkness exper stopped being consistent, deacceleration of heart.
* Infants can also discriminate between longer and shorter durations. The ratio of the durations is critical for noticing the differences 6 mths discriminate between two durations when their ratio is 2:1 (1 second versus 0.5 second or 3 seconds versus 1.5 seconds), but not when the ratio is 1.5:1 (1.5 seconds versus 1 second or 4.5 seconds versus 3 seconds). 10 mths can for the latter though!
* More recent times get more accurate musings, older kids = more accurate.
* Illusions of time, when focused or little to do, time crawls slower for kids.
* However, when 5 yr olds see two toy trains travel in the same direction on parallel tracks, and one train stops farther down the track, they usually say that the train that stopped farther down the track traveled for a longer time, regardless of when the trains started and stopped moving. Kids focus more on spatial pos than stop and move.
NUMBERS
* intraparietal sulcus, are heavily involved in representing numerical magnitudes
* numerical equality, basic understanding of sets.
* Discrimination among numbers becomes increasingly more precise during the 1st yr and beyond. 6 mths, infants discriminate between sets with 2:1 ratios (e.g., 16 versus 8 dots or sounds), but they still cannot discriminate between sets with ratios of 3:2 (e.g., 12 versus 8 dots or sounds). By 9 months, infants discriminate ratios of 3:2 but not 4:3 ratios. By adulthood, many people are able to reliably discriminate 8:7 ratios.
* One exception to the ratio dependence of nonsymbolic number discrimination is that discrimination between very small sets = more accurate.
* Most 5-month-olds look longer when there is only one doll, suggesting that they expected that 1 + 1 should equal 2 and that they were surprised when they saw only a single object. Similar results are seen with subtraction: 5-month-olds look longer when the apparent removal of one of two objects results in two objects being present than when the removal results in one object being there
* Many children begin to count verbally at 2 yrs, but limited understanding, more song.
* 1. One–one correspondence: Each object must be labeled by a single number word.
2. Stable order: The numbers should always be recited in the same order.
3. Cardinality: The number of objects in the set corresponds to the last number stated.
4. Order irrelevance: Objects can be counted left to right, right to left, or in any other order.
5. Abstraction: Any set of discrete objects or events can be counted.
* Counting is affected by language, Chinese learn quicker than English, given their counting is a consistent, easily learnt pattern.
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UNIT 7 LECTURE
* Piaget's theory: children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world
	Exa = easier to remember where restaurant is when you're actively driving.
* Schemes: ways of acting on and thinking about the world
	Assim = new info/obj into old schemes (banging diff thing)
	Accom = updating old schemes (banging an egg = splat!)
* Equilibration -> New Sit -> Disequilibrium -> Accommodation -> Assimilation
PIAGET FIRST STAGE
* SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (0-2 yr) = construct knowledge through senses and motor skills
	BIRTH - 1 mth (reflexes, no acc, all assim)
	1-4 mths (prim circ reacts = own body repeated act)
	4-8 mths (second circ reacts = involve objs/world, goal-directed)
		Object permanence = objs exist, despite out of view (dev 7-10 mths)
		Not great until 10-12 mths
	8-12 mths (Coordination of reactions; goal-directed behaviour)
	12-18 mths (Tertiary circular reactions, discover new ways to achieve goals)
	18-24 mths (Beginnings of mental representations; mental combinations)
* Influence: Foundation for dev psych.
	Child's active role in dev.
	Stages of dev.
* Criticism: Variability, child thinks one thing at a stage, might think more advanced elsewhere.
	Too much focus on motor skills.
	Underestimate infant/child
	Underestimate parents/teachers role in dev.
THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: CORE KNOWLEDGE
* Infants born with innate basic understanding of the world
	Domain-specific specialized learning mechanisms (different domains, objs, numbers, space, agents)
* Objs = until 7-10 mths, hide an obj? They won't search.
* Core = they know where the obj, just no motor skills to get it.
* 3.5 mths look longer at impossible events -> understanding of obj perm.
* Naive physics = innate info for mechan properties and obj principles.
	Persistence = objs persist despite out of view.
	Continuity = move from one loc to another, unless blocked.
	2-3 mths, infant look longer at impossible event.
	4 mths, understanding height matters.
	Support
	3 mths, surprised at unsupport obj not falling.
	7 mths, contact matters.
APPROX NUMBERING SYSTEM
* Reasoning about large numbers = accuracy is approx, but we can tell large difference.
	Weber's Law = how hard is it to tell diff, comp to original amount.
	Weber's ratio = larger num divided by smaller.
* Test? Large array.
* Newborns: can discrim ratios of 3:1
* 4-6 mths: can discrim ratios of 2:1, but not 3:2
* 9-10 mths: can discrim ratios of 2:1 and 3:2, but not 4:3
* Present in adults, across cultures, early dev, even in other animals.
OBJECT TRACKING SYSTEM
* Precise representation = what you can keep track.
* Test? Cracker choice.
	10-12 mths: can track 1 vs 2, 2 vs 3 NOT 1 vs 4, 2 vs 4, numbers more than 3.
* Not based on magnitude or Weber's ratio.
* Mixing systems? Bad. Slower.
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UNIT 7 PAPERS
LEVINE Piaget stages
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WANG Infants recognize counting as numerically relevant
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UNIT 8 TEXTBOOK
KNOWLEDGE OF OTHER PEOPLE AND ONESELF
* Naive psych = 1. Invisible ment states 2. linked in cause-effect 3. dev early.
* From first to second yr: (1) understanding of intention, the desire to act in a certain way; (2) a sense of self, in which children realize that they are individuals distinct from other people; (3) joint attention, in which two or more people focus intentionally on the same referent; and (4) intersubjectivity, the mutual understanding that people share during communication.
* 1 yr, fairly often offer both physical comfort (hugs, kisses, pats) and comforting comments (“You be okay”) to unhappy playmates.
	Knowing one's own emotions = understanding others.
* The understanding that desires lead to actions is firmly established by age 2 yrs.
* By age 3 yrs, children show some understanding of the relation between beliefs and actions.
* Performance improved greatly between ages 3 and 5 yrs in all five societies; averaged across them, accuracy increased from 14% correct for 3 yrs to 85% correct for 5 yrs. Especially striking was the consistency of performance across these very different societies: in no country did 3 yrs answer more than 25% of problems correctly, and in no country did 5-yrs answer less than 72% correctly.
* 14 yrs who gained experience acting in plays over the course of a school yr showed more understanding of other people’s thinking at the end of the yr than before their acting experience.
* Investigators who take a nativist position have proposed the existence of a theory of mind module (TOMM) = a hypothesized brain mechanism devoted to understanding other human beings
* AUTISM
	Children with the most serious forms of ASD (about 1 in 500 children) often engage in solitary, repetitive behaviors, such as continually rocking back and forth or endlessly skipping around a room. They interact minimally with other children and adults, rarely form close relationships, produce little or no language, and tend to be more interested in objects than in people (Willis, 2009). These problems, among others, have led many researchers to speculate that a failure to understand other people underlies these children’s limited engagement in the social world.
	Children with ASD have some understanding of how desire affects behavior, but the ways in which beliefs influence behavior largely elude them.
	Treated with Early Start Denver Model (ESDM).
	After 2 yrs, children who received the ESDM treatment showed considerably more gains in IQ score, language, and daily living skills than did peers who received the community-based treatment.
* Empiricists? Lack of interaction = lack of problem-solving.
* They cite evidence that children’s understanding of false-belief problems is substantially correlated with their ability to reason about complex counterfactual statements.
THE GROWTH OF PLAY
* Pretend play = roleplaying at 18 mths.
	object substitution = pretending an obj is something else.
	Yr later, sociodramatic play = more complex/social, better with adult or older sibling.
	Sports and board games later.
	Still done past childhood, more likely boys and only children.
	Children who do more pretend play = show more understanding of other people’s thinking and emotions.
	Social > Nonsocial.
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UNIT 8 LECTURE
* Living people = we think of mental states.
Theory of Mind
* to represent and reason about ment states. Our own + diff others.
* to test, false-belief = mental state diff from reality.
	3 yrs fail, 4 yrs olds don't.
* Infants care more about people than objs.
	Prefer faces to non-faces, direct gaze, and human speech.
	Imitate other people, prefer motion.
Rules of Soc Interact
* Turn-taking.
	Contingent responses, reactions.
	Still-face proc, still face? Negative react, baby stops interacting, smiling, and looks away.
	Six weeks = know violation of rules.
	Don't react to non-people.
* Joint attention.
	Gaze following à begins at 2-3 months, but not well- established until ~10 months
* Goal-direct act
	Human behav = purposeful, understood at 5-6 mths.
* Sticky mittens, 3 mth olds? Now know others' goal-direct acts.
*  14 mths, understand some acts are accidental or intentional = some sense of mental states.
* Failed act? 14 mths infants imitate intentions, not failure. Humans only.
* 10 mths, understand intention.
* 14 mths, infants shared in line with their desires.
	18 mths, shared in line with others' desires.
Theory of Mind
* Reason for mental states
	Special attention to social agents = from birth
	Understanding the rules of social interactions early 1.5-2 mths, increasingly complex in first two yrs
	Understanding others’ action as goal-directed = by 3-6 mths.
	Understanding others’ intentions and desires = sense to intention by 10-14 mths, desire by 18 mths.
	Understanding false beliefs?
Sally-Anne test = HARD
	Need to know others have beliefs, or false ones.
	Rely on verbal responses.
	15 mths, eyes in line with false belief.
SOCIAL GROUPS
* Prefer "like me" individuals
	Race, 3 mths.
	Also affected by experience. multi-cultural place less likely to have prejudices.
	Language (6-10 mths) prefer speaking own languages.
	Babies prefer faces of those who speak their language.
UNIT 8 PAPERS:
PUN Foundations of infants’ social group evaluations
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