Developmental/IHD Seminar: March 7, Adrienne Wente

Desire as a constraint on young children’s reasoning

This talk will explore how desires constrain young children’s reasoning.  Three studies will be discussed. The first explores overoptimism in children, the second explores the relationship between children’s beliefs about free will and self-control, and the thirdlooks at how culture influences children’s concept of choice.  Taken together, these studies suggest that desires initially constrain young children’s reasoning, and this constraint is counteracted through culturally variable experience.


This talk will be held in  3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm.

Center on the Developing Adolescent Spring 2016 Speaker Series

All talks are held in 3105 Tolman, 2:00-3:30.


February 16     David Kirp, UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy Cancelled


March 1       Thao Ha, Arizona State University Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research


March 15     Gamification Panel: Raluca Buzdugan (UC Berkeley School of Public Health), Sandi McCoy (UC Berkeley School of Public Health), Elizabeth Ozer (UCSF Pediatrics and Division of Adolescent Medicine), Melina Uncampher (UCSF Sandler Neuroscience Center)


April 19    Cheryl Sisk, Michigan State University Behavioral Neuroscience Program


April 26     Chris Monk, University of Michigan Translational & Developmental Neuroscience


May 3     Jennifer Skeem, UC Berkeley School of Social Work and Goldman School of Public Policy  Cancelled

Developmental Psychology & IHD Seminar Series, Spring 2016

All talks are held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm

(1/25)

2/1       Prof. Stella Christie, Dept. of Psychology, Swarthmore College

Title: Learning by Alignment
Abstract: Comparison is ubiquitous, but to learn something useful from a comparison you have to align. In this talk I discuss the process of alignment and its results for learning. First, I show that alignment produces learning of new relational concepts whereas simply seeing two exemplars does not. Second, young children take alignment into account when learning from others—they prefer to learn from people who use informative alignment. Third, alignment plays a role in social cognition—young learners engage in an alignment process to decide whom they want to socially imitate.

(2/8)    TBD

2/15 – President’s day holiday

2/22    Ariel Starr (Postdoctoral fellow, UCB)

Title: From Magnitudes to Math: Developmental Precursors of Quantitative Reasoning 
Abstract: The uniquely human mathematical mind sets us apart from all other animals. How does this powerful capacity emerge over development? Although humans typically think about number symbolically, we also possess nonverbal representations of quantity that are present at birth and shared with many other animal species. These primitive numerical representations are thought to arise from an evolutionarily ancient system termed the Approximate Number System (ANS). My research aims to determine how these preverbal representations of quantity may serve as the foundation for more complex quantitative reasoning abilities through two primary lines of research: 1) How do representations of number relate to representations of other quantities in infancy and early childhood? 2) How do these representations support the acquisition of symbolic math skills? Taken together, this research suggests that number is a salient feature of the environment throughout early childhood and demonstrates that approximate number representations can be used as building blocks for the acquisition of symbolic math skills.

2/29    Daniel Dukes (Visiting graduate student, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Title: Affective Social Learning and the Role of Interest

Abstract: Newcomers to any culture have not only to learn about the nature of the different components of their environment (semantic knowledge) and about how to use those components  (procedural knowledge), they also have to understand how the members of their new cultural group value those objects (Clément & Dukes, 2013). This, we argue, is accomplished through Affective Social Learning (ASL) - an umbrella term coined to organize concepts such as social referencing and social appraisal, which highlight the use of other people's affective expressions to learn about the environment, in terms of the necessary ostensive input of the 'teacher' (Clément & Dukes, under review).  
In this presentation, this term will be introduced and the (understudied) emotion of interest will be investigated as a candidate for being the 'oil in the ASL machine'. For example, in one study, while 12 month olds choose an object significantly more often than chance that had previously been looked at with interest by a third-party, 15 month olds chose the other object significantly more often than chance which had been previously looked at with disinterest. These findings, and others, will be discussed within the context of ASL, as I reach the final months before my doctoral thesis deadline.

3/7       Adrienne Wente (student presentation)

3/14    Alison Miller Singly (student presentation)

3/21 – Spring break holiday

3/28    Shaun O’Grady &  Ruthe Foushee  (First or Second-year presentations)

4/4       Katie Kimura & Mariel Goddu (First or Second-year presentations)

4/11) TBD

4/18  Frances Nkara & Sophia Sanborn (First or Second-year presentations)

4/25  Exit talk (Zi Lin Sim)

Institute of Human Development & Developmental Seminar Series Fall 2015

Talks are held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30 unless otherwise noted.

Sept. 14  Hyo Gweon, Assistant Professor of Psychology
               Stanford
To give a fish, or teach how to fish? Children's ability to decide what, how, and when to teach others
Abstract:

Humans are remarkable social learners. What we know about the world is heavily mediated by what others know about the world, and in turn, we affect what others know by sharing our own knowledge. Furthermore, as teachers, we have an intuitive grasp of how to help others learn about the world, selecting information that is relevant and helpful for others. What cognitive capacities underlie this ability to teach? Inspired by recent developmental work on children’s abilities as active interpreters of socially transmitted information, I will present a series of recent experiments that highlight children's abilities as active providers of information. These studies suggest that young children can tailor their teaching with respect to the learners’ goals, epistemic states, and expected utility. Even early in life, children can use their understanding of others to not only learn about the world around them, but also to help others learn about the world. These communicative interactions between a provider and a recipient of information provide deeply interesting opportunities to study the inferential processes and the representations that underlie our ability to acquire, share, and accumulate knowledge. 

Oct. 5  Katherine Graf Estes, Assistant Professor of Psychology
           UC Davis
Naturalistic challenges in statistical language learning


Oct. 19- Zi Lin Sim, Graduate Student
             UC Berkeley
Probabilistic Reasoning in ASD Children
Abstract:  Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often show difficulties in learning and generalization. Yet the capacity to make inductive generalizations is a hallmark of human learning. Previous research has demonstrated that typical children make such generalizations with much ease, and recent work with 6- to 12-month-old TD infants has revealed an early emergence of “intuitive statistics” (the idea that a random sample enables one to make predictions about a population and vice versa), which may enable children to engage in inductive learning within the first few years of life. As such, we hypothesized that autistic children would show weaknesses in probabilistic reasoning. In this talk, I discuss preliminary findings from two studies examining probabilistic reasoning in 7- to 12-year-old ASD and TD children (groups were matched in chronological age and IQ).


Oct. 26  Kathryn Humphreys, Postdoctoral Fellow
             Stanford University

 Understanding the impact on early life stress and child psychopathology 

Abstract: Substantial evidence indicates that experiences early in life have an outsized impact on later functioning. In particular, experiences of early adversity (e.g., abuse or neglect) longitudinally predict increased rates of psychopathology. In this talk, using data from children who experienced institutional (orphanage) rearing, a severe form of neglect, I will discuss: (1) the association between adverse early experience and psychopathology, (2) potential mechanisms by which stress gets "under the skin", and (3) factors that mitigate risk. In addition, I will provide evidence challenging traditional conceptualizations that developmental adaptions to early adversity are necessarily maladaptive.

Nov.2  Silvia Bunge, Professor of Psychology
            UC Berkeley

Eyetracking as a window into typical and atypical brain development  

My goal for this talk is to illustrate ways in which eyetracking can be used to gain insights into typical and atypical human brain development. I will present results from a recent study of cognitive control in children with Tourette Syndrome, in which we used pupillary and eyeblink measures to make inferences about neurochemistry as well as the timing of engagement of cognitive control. 

Nov. 9-  Michael Rutter, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology
             King's College, London


Nov.16- Azzurra Ruggieri, Postdoctoral Fellow
              UC Berkeley & Max Planck Institute, Germany
Ecological learning: How children adapt their active learning strategies to achieve efficiency. 
Abstract: This talk presents the results of recent studies investigating the effectiveness of toddlers and children's active learning strategies. In particular, it will focus on how children adapt their active learning strategies (e.g., question-asking, explorative behavior, free play...) in response to the task characteristics, to the statistical structure of the hypothesis space, and to
the feedback received. Such adaptiveness and flexibility is crucial to achieve efficiency in situations of uncertainty, when testing alternative hypotheses, making decisions, drawing causal inferences and solving categorization tasks.

Nov. 30   Dan Yurovsky, Postdoc Fellow in Psychology
                Stanford
Toward a coordination account of early word learning

Abstract: Early word learning is fast; children produce more than 1000 words by the time they are able to run. This rapid acquisition is puzzling because, while children show early competence in statistical learning, their performance is severely constrained by developing attentional and memory system. I propose resolve to this puzzle by reframing language learning as a coordination problem: Rapid language acquisition emerges from the tight calibration between children’s developing learning mechanisms and parental language input

May 11: Minxuan He

Psychological Consequences of Walking in Typically Developing Infants: Perception and Language 

The acquisition of new skills in human infants often changes the person-environment relationship, which provide opportunities for psychological development. Abundant evidence has come out from studies on prone locomotion, i.e. crawling onset and experience using converging research operations. However, as another major developmental transaction and motoric milestone, the effect of upright locomotion, namely walking is under investigated. In this talk, I will present my work on the link between upright locomotion in typically developing infants and changes in two crucial psychological abilities, i.e. visual proprioception and language acquisition.

 

3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm.

May 4: Andrea Urqueta Alfaro

Joint Engagement and Attachment Patterns in Infants with Visual Impairments

This research reports on two early childhood developments, joint engagement and attachment patterns, and explores a possible relationship between the two in a sample of 20 infants with various levels of visual impairments, without additional disabilities. Joint engagement and security and organization of attachment patterns have been associated with positive developmental outcomes, such as better language and socio-emotional skills, better performance in theory of mind tests, and reduced risk for psychopathology. 

Study 1 focuses on joint engagement, that is, infants’ coordination of their attention between a social partner and an external focus of shared interest. Infants and their caregivers were videotaped during 30-minute free play sessions at their homes. Videos were coded to establish the duration of joint engagement episodes, and the overall time dyads participated in it. Results showed that all infants tested participated in joint engagement and that the percentage of time it represented of the 30-minute free play session significantly increased between ages 12 and 18 months. The average duration of single episodes of joint engagement increased but only approached significance. The level of each infants’ visual impairment was described as reductions from norms in visual acuity and contrast sensitivity as measured using both visual evoked potential and preferential looking techniques. Of the visual measurements, infants’ reduction in contrast sensitivity measured with preferential looking technique predicted infants’ percentage of time in joint engagement across ages. This finding supports the importance of considering contrast sensitivity levels, rather than only those of visual acuity, in research with this population.

Study 2 focuses on attachment patterns. Infants and their caregivers underwent the Strange Situation Paradigm with added instructions to accommodate for the perceptual needs of infants with visual impairments. Results showed that all but 1 of the 27 SSPs collected were deemed classifiable. Most attachment patterns were secure, ranging between 56% in the younger group of infants tested, and 70% in the older group. Attachments coded as disorganized ranged between 22% and 6% in the younger and older groups respectively. 

Study 3 explores the relationship between infants’ security of attachment and the percentage of time they participated in joint engagement with their caregivers during free play. Results did not find a significant effect. This is in line with the mixed results in the literature on the connections of attachment and joint engagement, which not only varies in the finding of significant effects within a given population, but also varies between the results in different populations.

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm.

April 27: Caren Walker, Department of Psychology

 Learning by Thinking and the Development of Abstract Reasoning

By 5 years of age, children already have highly structured knowledge of the world and they routinely form rich, abstract representations that extend beyond their direct experiences. How do children learn so quickly and accurately from such limited information? The vast majority of research to date has explored this question by investigating children’s developing abilities to draw inductive inferences from their observations. However, one of the distinguishing features of human cognition is our ability to go beyond the data and to generate ideas by thinking alone. How is learning by thinking possible? What does this phenomenon tell us about the nature of early mental representations and how they change? To begin to answer these questions, we must first isolate the contributions of our observations from the mechanisms that underlie learning. To this end, my research focuses on a suite of thought-based learning phenomena that are particularly widespread in childhood, including learning by analogy, by explanation, and by engagement in imaginary worlds. I will describe both theoretical and empirical work suggesting that these activities each impose unique, top-down constraints on children’s inferential processes. 

This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman, 12:00-1:30pm