PY25O5.1 ~ {Temperament}

developmental psych

looking at changes in development over time; assumees discrete areas of development / processes if change [what is affecting that, enviro, the process of it all what do babies see, how do they learn language etc]

what are the 2 types of development

continuous development
discontinuous development

continuous development

something that continually improves / strengthens with age [plant or tree]: no stages, gradual increase with time, quantitative, not abrupt. [age]

discontinuous development

change in kind as opposed to linear change [caterpillar which eventually turns into butterfly] qualitative change, development in stages [visual acuity is usually poor when children are born but gradually improve and remains stable before becoming worse again at an older age]

what does discontinuous development look like on a graph

typically represented as either an 'n' or 'u' shape depending on whether its starts poor and ends poor or starts high and ends high with a peak or trough in the centre

visual acuity

the clarity or sharpness of vision, the ability to see fine details. a measure of how well a person can distinguish objects or shapes at a particular distance [usually measured using a Snellen chart]

snellen chart

consists of rows of letters that decrease in size as you move down the chart, performed at a distance of 20 feet [6m] and result is expressed as a fraction

diff between critical vs sensitive period

c - age range when experience is vital for development to happen
s - age range when experience is important for development, but without those experiences development may still occur

Beckett et al. (2006)

tested for children who were adopted in both Uk and Romania, the ones in R were often quite extremely deprived of stimulation + good nutrition + abuse, followed all the children up until they were 6 and 11 years

Beckett results

looked at both cognitive ability + intelligence, children in both locations who were adopted before 6 months fared very similarly in terms of mean scores, those adopted after a drop was seen in terms of cognitive development and intelligence, even worse for those adopted after 2 years

nativism

certain skills are inborn and hard wired at birth [language] philosophers - Plato and Rene - example they gave was depth perception [children bron at 40 weeks have better dp than premature babies]

empiricism

blank slate view: skills learned from experience [grammar]

behaviourism

behvaiour is exxplained by conditioning [John watson + Little Albert trained to fear a rat] we also have Pavlov's theories of classical conditioning

psychoanalytic

developed by Freud, that children go through psychosexual stages and. if they have a problem at a particular stage, that can shape their development later on

fixed psychosexual stages

oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
id, ego, superego]

info processing

Piaget believed that children go through diff stages of development when they learn diff things.

info processing stages

sensori-motor stage [0-2 years]
pre-operational stage [2-7 years]
concrete operational stage [7-11 years]
formal operations stage [11+]

main approaches to development

nativism + empricism + behaviourism + psychoanalytic + info processing

more recent approach to development

interactional + transactional model
individual + enviro are constantly interacting over time
Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory
Sameroff's transactional model

bronfenbrenner's ecological theory

framework for understanding human development in relation to the different environments or systems a person interacts with. [immediate surroundings + broader societal factors] all factors are interconnected and all impact person's growth

sameroff's transactional model

how development is shaped by continuous, dynamic interactions between the individuap and their enviro [ so reciprocal interactions whereby both the individual + their enviro are active participants in the process of growth]

how do we study development

cross-sectional study + longitudinal study

cross-sectional study

where we measure diff things at the same period of time then look if they are related

longitudinal study

strongest studies, look at children over long periods of time to track their development

ALSPAC

study from children in the 90s who were born in Bristol, they are still being studied today [key findings include: 15 minutes of daily vigorous exercise can reduce obesity by half, if a mother wats oiy fish when preganant, her child may have better eye-sight + higher IQ]

less famous ways of studying development

case studies, observational studies, questionnaires or standardised tests, inetrventions, ecperiments, physiological measures [EEg, MEG]

observation studies

natural observation / manipulated [brought to the lab]
used to code attachment styles, can be used to comapre children across the same situation + manipulate enviro to increase behaviour

pros + cons of observational studies

good real life + ecological validity, non-evasive, provide rich data
difficult to generalise behaviour , experimenter contamination, interpreter bias

standardised tests pros + cons

aka questionnaires
covers a wide range of behaviours + abilities in kids, commercially available, easy to score, high internal validity, individual scores can be compared to mean
if parents complete they could be bias, less ecological + external validity

experimental studies [non-nutritive sucking procedure]

babies get bored, so they like to suck [not just for milk but even for soothing] habituation and sihabituation which shows when a baby shows renewed interest in new stimulus [by sucking more - dh] which shows the baby can discriminate between the stimuli

eye tracking studies

an experimental study De Wit, Falck-Ytter & von Hofsten (2008)
autistic children and where they look when attending to images of people interacting, AC don't look at the face but look at clothes and other things and non AC maintain eyecontact.

challenges associated with working with children

unique ethical issues, informed consent how can children give this + withdrawal from participation + debriefing children
few longitudinal studies cause they are time consuming + expensive + children can't report by themselves + parents tend to have a bias and limited view + correlation is not causation

temperament [Mary Rothbart (1998)]

individuals diff in emotional, motor, attentional reactivity + self regulation [child's emotional responce, a physical / nature response and attentional response]

temparament [Bates (1989)]

biologically rooted individual diff in behaviour techniques that are present early in life and are relatively stable across various kinds of situation and over the course of time

New York Longitudinal study

Thomas + Chess (1977)
wanted to test whether children were born with tabula rosa, [they believed children were competent perceiving + have their own temperamental position] recruited 200 children at the start but at the end had 133

9 diff dimensions of temparament

from new york study
activity level + rhythmicity + distractibility + approach/withdrawal + adaptability + persistence + intensity of reaction + quality of mood + threshold of responsiveness

tabula rosa

translates from latin meaning 'blank slate'
the idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and all knowledge, behaviour + personality traits are instead shaped by experience + enviro

easy category

psoitive mood, readily bodily functions, low intensity of reaction, adapt and approach new situations
[in ny study around 40% fit into this]

difficult category

irregular bodily functions, tendency to withdraw or slow to adapt, louder crying + laughter, fristrations result in tantrums
[from ny study 10% children fit into this]

[ny study found that these kids were more likely to be at risk for later disorders + externalising problems]

slow to warm up category

low activity levels, withdraw of first exposure + slower to adapt, low intensity of reaction

[ny study showed these kids were more at risk for phobic disorders later in life, made up 15%]

New York study criticisms

small number of children, only 133 staying into completion, it was self selecting [potential reporting bias] stability from 3-7 turned out to be 25% so fair

Buss + Plomin (1984)

developed an EAS model of temperament [emotionality, activity, sociability] they also then added shyness, found stability in children from 18-50 months

Rothbart (1981)

she argues that temperance is based on reactivity of regulation, came up with 18 dimensions that she believed children differ.

Rothbart's model [3 broad dimensions of temparament]

reactivity [or negative emotionality]
self-regulation [or effortful control]
surgency [or extraversion]

Rothbart's 18 dimensions

fear, frustration, sadness,distress to limitations, soothability [reactivity] + attention, inhibitory control, perceptual sensistivity, affective regulation, effortful control, self-control [self regulation] + activity level, smiling & laughter, vocal reactivity, shyness, high intensity pleasure, sociability, impulsivity [surgency]

Buss + Plomin questions and what they stand for

SH = shyness, EM = emotionality, SO = sociability, AC = activity

categorical approach

Jereome Kagan believed most important was behavioural inhibition / shyness to predict their behaviour later in life. he took a qualitative approach

Jereome Kagan's qualitative approach

systematic observation
if you observe a child in the lab you can rate them as inhibited or not inhibited, from that you could determine future behaviours. 15% of 2-3 year old children are shy + timid, 15% uninhibited + socially responsive, 75% stability in extreme groups

Jerome Kagan experiment

4 month old babies shown a toy dangling and observes how babies react to repeatedly being shown the same toy, some get upset after a while whilst other just sit and watch in peace.

JK experiment results

2 main types of children
upset, tense, passes threshold, thrashing legs = more likely too become shy / timid when aged 1-3 years
if child watches mobile for longer periods of time happily with lack of tension = likely to be sociable, non-fearful outgoing 1-3 years

Kagan et al. (1987)

evaluated reactions of 2-3 of our children who were inhibited or uninihibited and followed them upto 6 years of age.

Kagan et al. results

found that inhibited children shhowed greater activation in areas linked to novelty so in the limbic system [area of brain linked with emotion, learning and memory based in the hypothalamus in the amygdala]

Kagan et al. results of r

correlation [r=.60 psychophysiological reactivity] so how tense children's muscles were, how quick heart would beat, how much pupils dilated, markers in urine that indicate stress

DiPietro et al., 1996

looked at whether temperament is formed or developed in the womb [testing if the way a baby behaves in the utero before they're born correlates with after] worked with 31 preganant women + scanned foetuses from 20 weeks of gestation upto 36 weeks

also asked moms to describe what foetus was like [even at birth] they were focussed on how active foetus was + heart rate

DiPietro et al., 1996 results

found that behaviour in foetus in pregnancy was associated with later temparament. active foetus: difficult, unpredictable, unadaptable, activity + fetal HR: lower emotional tone, activity, predictability

child's behaviour + predicting a temperament [DiPietro et al., 1996]

22-60% of variance from ratings at 36 weeks gestationn- quite a large variance
[can't be sure if mothers reports are biased]

is temperament genetic [twins]

by comparing identical on monozygotic twins to non-identical dizygotic twins, much greater similarity between identical than non on measures of temperament. results show there is some sort of genetic basis

results of twins temperament study

for MZ: emotionality = .57, activity = .64, sociability = .59, behavioural inhibition = .45
for DZ: emotionality = .11, activity = -.08, sociability = .10, behaviuoral inhibition = .17

visual cliff

child is encouraged to walk across a checkered surface [theres a glass coverin so child won't fall] parents stands at the other end and calls their child encouraging them to cross. children that crawl across are deemed to be much more confident child

is temperament shaped by culture (Kagan et al. 1994)

chinese, american + irish infants at 4m old. same battery of visual auditroy and olfactory stimuli to assess temperament and noticed minimal diff on freq of smiling, chinese less active, irritable + vocal and american showed highest levels of reactivity

consistency - Rothbart, Derryberry & Hershey (2000)

longitudinal study from infancy to 7 years
stability was found on psychobiological dimensions of temperament [fear, frustration-anger, approach] less consistency was found on activity levels