Psychology 47.260

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT I

Fall 2004

Study Guide for Exam II: Infancy across the first two years of life

These questions are a guide to the second exam.  Use them to focus.  Remember that this is a class in normal development; discussions of pathology are not our main focus.

1. What are the basic competencies of the newborn?  Significance of reflexes?  Apgar?

2. How does the brain change over the first two years?

3. What attentional preferences are evident in the first months of life?

4. What are the basic characteristics of Piaget’s early cognitive development during the Sensori-Motor period?  How is the sensori-motor period a time of “moving from the plane of action to the plane of thought?” 

5. Tie the child’s emerging physical and motor skills with cognitive development—i.e., how do abilities such as grasping, sitting, and crawling contribute to cognitive advances?

6. What is the evidence that infants possess competencies in arithmetic, physical properties, and categorization?  Remember that the controversy surrounds the competencies that some researchers have found prior to the 2-4 month shift.

7. What is the relation between increasing mental capacities (recall memory) and the child’s social-emotional behavior (stranger anxiety)?

8. What are primary and secondary emotions?  What is the evidence for emergence of a (a) sense of self or self awareness and (b) a sense of standards during the second half of the second year (18-24 mo) and how does that contribute to emotional development?

9. What does the visual cliff tell us about maturation (e.g., binocular vision or depth perception), experience (e.g., crawling), and social relations (e.g., social referencing)?  

10. What is language and what principles underlie its development?  What reorganization in speech perception occurs around 12 months of age?  Does learning theory adequately explain language development (Wugàwugs study, PidginsàCreoles, rate of learning, negative evidence (Brown & Hanlon), constraints (e.g., nouns)) ?  What are LAD and LASS?

11. What is temperament? What are two examples of children’s temperament that are first evident in infancy?  What is goodness of fit?

12. What is attachment and how is it measured?  What kinds of parenting did Mary Ainsworth find was related to secure attachments?  According to attachment theory what role does a secure attachment have in fostering child development?  What are criticisms of the Strange Situation as a way of measuring attachment (e.g., temperament, cross cultural studies, dyadic) ?

13. How did Harlow's studies of monkeys raised in isolation with wire and cloth surrogate mothers challenge the prevailing Freudian interpretations of how primary relationships are established?  What are the primary psychosocial tasks of the first 2 years according to Erickson? Stages of psychosexual development according to Freud?

14. What is the connection between (a) high quality daycare and a stimulating home environment and (b) cognitive, emotional, and social development?

15. What are some consequences of maltreatment in infancy?  Do abused children become abusive adults?