Study Guide for Exam #2Motor:Name and describe examples of reflexes that are present at birth (particularly ones mentioned in lecture):Shared with adults: Blinking, coughing, sneezing, etc.Survival reflexes: breathing, sucking, eyeblink, rooting, swallowing, pupillaryPrimitive reflexes: moro, tonic neck, stepping, grasping, babinski, swimmingKnow examples supporting the role of culture and experience in the achievement/delay of motor milestones:“Kipsigis” (rural Kenyan) babies sit upright 5 weeks earlier, walk 3 weeks earlierWestern mothers believe crawling is important but 60% of Mali infants never crawl, believe exercise promotes motor developmentHopi Infants (< ~12 months) – swaddled for first year, almost no delaysRomanian orphans – deprived of crawling/walking up to 2 years, significant but reversible delaysDescribe the developmental progression of reaching and self-locomotion:Reaching – 0-3 months = prereaching movements, clumsy swiping movements toward general vicinity of objects; ~3 months = successful but poorly controlled, appreciates functional goal, easier with legs than arms; 7 months = along with ability to sit independently, reaching becomes stable; 10 months = shows sign of anticipatory reaching and approach is affected by what they intend to do with the object (e.g., throwing vs. stuffing)Self-locomotion - ~8 months infants become capable of self-locomotion for the first time as they begin to crawl; ~13 months they begin walking independentlyDynamic systems theory and supporting examples:Development of complex behaviors should be understood in terms of a complex interaction of physical, environmental, & perceptual factors; actions can be influenced by bodily mechanisms (e.g., increases in strength, posture control, balance, perception, motivation, etc.)Main conclusion from studies with animals (e.g., baby chicks, cats):Eye-beak coordination in baby chicks – effects of pecking with and without prism helmet onActive vs. passive experience with kittens – only active kitten responded normally = avoid the visual cliff, blinked in response to incoming stimuli, lowered feet toward an approaching surfaceHow active vs. passive experience affects motor development:2 – 3 months old; active = bring child to toy (moving towards, actively touching); passive = bring toy to child (sitting there, waiting for toy); babies with active training/experience spend more time reaching for things vs. babies with passive trainingVisual “flow fields” and how they support experience-based theories of motor development, and the important connection between vision and movement:Vision provides valuable information about how we are moving; walking at different speeds produces different “flow patterns” or “visual flow fields” that we use to help balance – e.g., blind children show delays in walkingLearning & Memory:Definitions and examples for each type of learning ability (habituation, classical, operant, statistical, observational):Habituation – desensitization/exposure therapyClassical – Pavlovian conditioningOperant – instrumental, learning the relation between own behavior & consequential result, usually involves positive reinforcement, observed by at least 2 monthsStatistical – implicit, infants are sensitive to statistically predictive patternsObservational – aka social learning, direct imitation, deferred imitationKnow examples of how our nature makes some things easier/harder to learn:“Prepared Learning” – biological predispositions (e.g., imprinting – easy to learn) (e.g., harder to learn fear of nice things such as flowers or rabbits – predisposed to fear of spiders b/c coevolved together)“Infantile amnesia” and possible explanations:Remember very little before age of 3 or 4 years old; doesn’t apply to implicit & semantic/procedural memory; Freudian theory = repression/”retrieval theory”; encoding fidelity = poor information processing (myelinization of neural tissue, development of hippocampus, maturation of the cortex)Cognition:Object permanence tasks (including the “A not B” task) – general results at different ages with different methods (e.g., reaching vs. looking time):The A not B task - ~9-12 mos= tendency to reach to where objects have been found before, rather than to where they were last hiddenThe ability to imitate a model that is no longer present (e.g., imitation happens hours, days, weeks afterwards) 18-24 months= The first sign of infants forming enduring mental representationsPiagetian learning mechanisms – accommodation/assimilation/equilibrium:Assimilation = translate incoming information into a previously understood form (e.g., extend a known action pattern to a new object); integrating reality into one’s own viewAccommodation = adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences (e.g., modifying action pattern to deal with new object); change one’s view to better match realityEquilibrium = learning is a process of balancing the two (assimilation & accommodation) to create a stable understandingLogic and main findings of studies testing infants’ sensitivity to physical principles (e.g., solidity, etc.):Infants’ understand of object support relationships (know the developmental progression):No object permanence until ~9 months of age; “out of sight, out of mind”Infants’ numerical abilities:A long process (e.g., “one-knowers” for 7 months, etc.) – takes 1 to 1 ½ years after mastering the counting routine/song; not all cultures have created linguistic symbols/a count list for numbers (e.g., no concept of precise number (exactly 7) on non-linguistic tasks)Development of counting abilities in children, performance on object/liquid conservation tasks:By age 3 most kids can count to 10; however, at the beginning this is mostly a meaningless listWhat cross-cultural studies of number understanding tell us?:Not all cultures have created linguistic symbols/a count list for numbers (e.g., no concept of precise number(“exactly 7”) on non-linguistic tasks)Different theories of cognitive development, e.g., information-processing theory (mainly discussed in text), Piaget’s stage theory, core-knowledge:Piaget’s stage theory – mind goes through radically different stages especially with psychology, sensori-motor stage (1st stage, no “object permanence” until ~9 months of age, “out of sight, out of mind”)Social Cognition & Symbols:Methods and basic results of tasks