Developmental and Educational Psychology - Workgroup notes (2018-2019)

FOREWORD: these workgroups as a whole consist out of a weekly study question and bi-weekly meetings. THe study questions will be devided under the meetings in the same division in which they are discussed during these sessions. Example answers to the study qestions are provided at the end of the page.

Workgroup 1

Questions based on the lectures:

1. Which development process occurs the earliest?
2. If a kid responds more positively to her mother, smiles at her a lot, but does not experience separation anxiety, which phase, according to Bowlby, is the kid in?
3. In the strange situation experiment, the mother leaves and the kid is mildly distressed, but easily comforted when she returns. What kind of attachment is this?
4. What is the capacity of the brain to be shaped by experience, conscious or not, referred to?
5. A geneticist notices that a man exhibits trait X. She asks the man, “Which of your parents also exhibits this trait?” The man is surprised that the geneticist knew that one of his parents had to also display trait X. Why did the geneticist know?
6. Trait R is a dominant trait. If the father is homozygous for the recessive part of R and the mother is heterozygous, how likely is it that the child does not have R?

Answers

1. Cell division
2. Attachment-in-the-making
3. Secure attachment
4. Plasticity
5. Because trait X is dominant
6. 50%

Study question 1

1. Create an example of parental sensitivity. Write a situation that shows a sensitive parent. The child and the parent should each have three turns in saying or doing something, in which the child does something that the parent reacts to and so on. The reactions of the parent should show parental sensitivity. Give your child an age between 0 and 12 years.
2. Explain why you view this as a correct example of parental sensitivity.
3.  Suppose you are training a parent in parental sensitivity. The parent initially has a difficult time behaving according to the script you provided, but she or he later becomes better at it. What do you think will be the outcome for his or her child? Briefly discuss the attachment to the parent, relationships with peers, expression of emotion, and social behaviours to showcase the influence.

Workgroup 2

1. An infant plays with a toy block in the dark, which means he can’t see it. Later, he is shown a ball as well as a block. He can distinguish that it was the block, not the ball, that he played with in the dark. This realization is best viewed as:
2. Recent research has concluded that infants learn more when they choose what they learn about. This is an example of what type of learning?
3. In an experiment in which infants looked longer at a screen that rotated 180 degrees than at a screen that rotated up and stopped at the top of a box. This research used a special paradigm to test whether the infants were able to mentally represent the box. The paradigm is called:
4. Using the distributional properties of language is an example of what type of learning?
5. The first time Sadie hears the word “adults” is when her father explains to her that the kitchen top is for “adults, not children.” Sadie uses the contrastive use of the familiar word “children” with the unfamiliar word “adults” to learn this new word. Sadie has learned the new word by a process referred to as:

Answers

1. Intermodal perception
2. Active learning
3. Violation-of-expectancy
4. Statistical.
5. Fast mapping

Study question 2

1. Parent’s genotype – Child’s genotype
2. Child’s genotype – Child’s phenotype
3. Child’s environment – Child’s phenotype
4. Child’s phenotype – Child’s environment
5. Child’s environment – Child’s genotype

The schema is important because it shows five different ways genetic and environmental factors can operate together. The first thing influences the second. An example can help to make sense of it. For this exercise, please explain the five categories with the help of an example, and let the example be something you are good at. Are you athletically inclined? Then please feel invited to use doing sports as an example. Use the same example for all five topics.

Study question 3

The goal of this study question is to properly understand the concepts of intermodal perception, perceptual learning, and perceptual narrowing. For each of these three terms, give an example and apply them to a single child. Give your child an age and show the three expressions in bold face print.

Workgroup 3

1. Which scenario is an example of social referencing?
   1. Jessica sucks her thumb when her brother takes away her favorite doll.
   2. Jose smiles when he opens a gift from his grandmother, even though he does not like the new shirt she has given him.
   3. Stacey hears her parents arguing and begins to cry.
   4. Henry looks up at his mother after he falls and, on seeing her content expression, gets up without crying.
2.  In terms of emotional regulation, as they get older, children:
   
   1. are better able to select appropriate strategies.
   2.  rely on their parents more.
   3.  use behavioural strategies to a greater extent.
   4.  engage in co-regulation more.
3. According to Piaget, advances in children's moral reasoning are a result of?
4. Which of the following is part of Bronfenbrenner's mesosystem?
   
   1. Parents' contact with a child's soccer coach
   2. Societal importance placed on athletic prowess of boys
   3. A child's favourite TV show
   4. A father's job as a truck driver
5. Children growing up with which type of parenting style then to be the most well-adjusted, social and self-confident?
6. Which category of children is MOST likely to have difficulties in the academic domain?
   
   1.  popular
   2.  neglected
   3.  average
   4. aggressive-rejected

As  children get older, they put away behavioural strategies and start using cognitive strategies, such as instead of throwing a tantrum, the child starts thinking about what caused the problem.

Bronfenbrenner diagram has four levels, microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems and macrosystems. Microsystems are things a child is directly connected with, such as parents or things the child likes/dislikes. Mesosystems are microsystem things that have a connections with each other, affecting the child. Exosystems are things that influence the child that the child does not have a direct connection with. Macrosystems are cultural/societal laws, rules and customs that have a general influence of the child. Chronosystems are changes over time.

Answers

1. D
2. A
3. Peer interactions
4. A
5. Authoritative
6. D

Workgroup 4

1. The experiment in which Piaget asks what a doll would see if it were sitting in a chair across the table from the child was designed to examine what?
2. The existence of a Theory Of Mind Module is advocated by a) nativists b) empiricists c) neurologists d) nurturists
3. Which statement would be considered evidence that an infant has formed the category “furniture”?
   
   1. The infant habituates after repeatedly being shown pictures of tables.
   2. After repeatedly being shown pictures of tables, the infant dishabituates to a picture of a sofa.
   3. After repeatedly being shown pictures of tables, chairs, sofas, dressers, and grandfather clocks, the infant dishabituates to a picture of a car.
   4.  After repeatedly being shown pictures of tables, chairs, sofas, dressers, and grandfather clocks, the infant does not dishabituate to a picture of a car.
4. Eric has an IQ of 100 at age 5 and an IQ of 100 at age 22. What can be said about his intelligence in comparison to others his age?
5. Sandra Scarr has proposed three processes in which an individual's genes interact with the environment they encounter. Which is the process that involves children's influence on other people's behaviour?
6. Nursery rhymes are particularly good at fostering which prereading skill?

Answers

1. Egocentrism
2. A
3. C
4. His comparative intelligence has remained stable
5. The evocative process
6. Phonemic awareness

Example answers study questions

Study question 1:

1. CHILD: Sophie, apple eat…

MOTHER: Do you want an apple? Here. Gives daughter an apple.

CHILD: Sits with apple in her hand for a while, brings is to her mouth a few times, but eventually just stares at it.

MOTHER: Do you want me to make a start for you? Takes the apple and takes a bite before handing it back. Here you go.

CHILD: Starts eating the apple. After a while, forcibly pulls the stem from the top and gives it to her mother.

MOTHER: Thank you, Sophie.

1. To me, this is a good example of parental sensitivity because the mother shows understanding that the child does not have the capacity to break through the skin of the apple yet, simply by looking at her daughter’s behaviour.
2. I think the relation between parent and child will improve in time. That said parental sensitivity is more than behaving according to a script. If insufficient sensitivity has been shown in the past, this might affect the trust, and in result the attachment that a child has with their parent. The child might inhibit its emotion because the trust hasn’t quite build up yet, or let out too much emotion, such as crying fits or anger management issues.

Study question 2

1. Parent’s genotype – Child’s genotype
2. Child’s genotype – Child’s phenotype
3. Child’s environment – Child’s phenotype
4. Child’s phenotype – Child’s environment
5. Child’s environment – Child’s genotype

Situation: I read a lot of books, I love to read books and I spend a lot of time writing stories/books

1. When she was young, my mother used to write stories and do creative arts. She does not anymore, yet still I am extremely creative. My mum inherited her creativity (parent genotype) from my grandma and I inherited mine (child genotype) from my mum.
2. Because I am extremely creative (child genotype) I have an ability of creating fictive worlds and stories (child phenotype)
3. Because my parents always encouraged me to read (child environment) I tended to read faster and more often (child phenotype)
4. Because I have the ability to extremely fast (child phenotype), I quickly surrounded myself by loads of book and my parents to encourage me to read more (child environment)
5. By sitting around reading all the time, it is possible that epigenetics might have activated genes that makes it quicker for me to retain fat.

Study question 3

Age of child: 3 years old

Perceptual Narrowing: with which a child learns to take unfiltered sensory sensations and is able to apply them to schema’s and concepts in a socio-cultural way. For example: the child is out with the mother and it begins to rain. The child may say something like ‘water’ or ‘rain’, or might look up to the sky as the first drops begin to fall because it understands that’s where rain comes from. However, when there suddenly is thunder, the child might hide behind the mother’s legs because it yet cannot place where that loud noise comes from

Perceptual Learning: learning on the hand of what you see. If the child, watching out of the window, sees a group of older boys kicking a ball around, the next time he encounters a ball, he might attempt to kick it, even though he doesn’t understand why you would kick it in the first place.

Intermodal Perception: learning to connect different sensations to a single concept. For instance, a child may be able to find their ball in a dark room, because they have seen it is round and know the relative size, and then are able to match that knowledge with what they feel in the dark.

GOOD LUCK ON THE EXAM!

Xx Emy