Once you choose, you will need to talk about the following for each:
- What did he or she research?
- What novel method did they employ to study infants?
- What did they learn and contribute to the field of Developmental Psychology?
Because you will be consulting outside sources, you will need to follow standard APA guidelines, and providing citations for everything you relate. Also, be sure to write these in your own words.
This week I choose to talk about the great Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. Meltzoff is an internationally recognized expert on infant and early child development, specifically focusing on early cognition, personality and brain development (Brain Sciences, n.d.). Dr. Meltzoff has helped shaped modern practice through his research on social-emotional development, and children’s understanding of other individuals (Brain Sciences, n.d.). Meltzoff’s famous experiment on infants was the imitation of facial expressions. Meltzoff would choose infants to study and study them just hours after they were born. In 1977, Meltzoff and Moore gained evidence of two and three-week-old infants who imitated the facial expressions of the adult (Jones, 2009). This finding showed infants have an exceptional ability for social learning and to acquire new knowledge (Jones, 2009).
ReplyDeleteAndrew Meltzoff contributed immensely to developmental psychology from his twenty years of research on infants and children (Brain Sciences, n.d.). Cognitive science has gained many ideas of Meltzoff’s such as: ideas on early education, parenting, importance of role models for children, and child development (Brain Sciences, n.d.). Andrew Meltzoff is one of the most influential psychologists to contribute to developmental psychology because of his studies on infants and children. His work will always be studied by students and be used by modern physicians and psychologists.
References
Brain Sciences, UW Institute for Learning. (n.d.). Andrew N.
Meltzoff, Ph.D.: Professor and Co- Director. Retrieved March
6, 2019 from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-
labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Jones, Susan. S. (2009, August 27). The Development of Imitation
in Infancy. Retrieved March 6,
2019 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles
/PMC2865075/
Andrew Meltzoff, a professor at the University of Washington, researched child development pertaining to early cognition, memory, and early brain development. Meltzoff’s most famous study began with newborns being shown simple facial expression such as opening and closing their mouths or sticking out their tongues. The study showed that the children could detect and replicate the correspondence between their face and an adults, even at such an early age. Meltzoff made the point that this is remarkable, seeing as they have never seen themselves before.
ReplyDeleteThe study that Meltzoff conducted contributed greatly to developmental psychology. Mostly, the study showed the impact that parents, peers, and teachers can have on a child’s actions. It also pointed out the importance of role models and examples in a child’s life, seeing as they “copy” what they see at such an early age.
Meltzoff, A. N., & Williamson, R. A. (2017). Imitation and Modeling. Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology.
Andrew Meltzoff is who I decided to research this week. Meltzoff is a graduate from Harvard University and got his PhD at oxford university. Andrew Meltzoff currently holds the job as Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. Meltzoff is an expert on infant and child development. He researches infant imitation, social-emotional development, and children's understanding of other people. His discoveries are used today to help shape policy and practice (Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences: Andrew N. Meltzoff, n.d.).
ReplyDeleteMeltzoff studied preverbal infant psychology by using the method of studying a child's visual preference of an object. He gave the infant an object that they were not able to see but could touch. Later they were shown the same object, but could not touch it this time, and another object. Meltzoff would measure the how long the infant would stare at the object. He concluded that children looked at the object they touched longer than the object they were only allowed to look at. This shows infants have the ability to identify objects through different senses (Intermodal Matching by Human Neonates, 1979).
References
Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences: Andrew N. Meltzoff. (n.d.). Retrieved from Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences : http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Intermodal Matching by Human Neonates. (1979). In A. N. Meltzoff.
Andrew N. Meltzoff is the Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. He is well known as an expert on infant and child development with an emphasis on social-emotional development and children’s understanding of other people. Andrew N. Meltzoff is best known, however, for his experiment in which he studied the imitation of facial expressions with infants. Through his research on facial expression imitation, he made several discoveries that have greatly influenced the developmental psychology community’s understanding of the early cognition, brain development, and personality of infants and young children.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Brain Sciences, UW Institute for Learning. (n.d.). Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D.: Professor and Co- Director. Retrieved March 6, 2019 from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
I believe that his experiment really did opened people's idea of development! very much agree!
DeleteRobert L. Fantz was a psychologist who mainly focused on infant perception. Fantz was fascinated at how infants are able to perceive the world from a very young age. Many people thought that babies could not really understand the world around them and that it was just a “blooming, buzzing confusion” (Unknown, n.d., p. 137). Fantz did not think that was the case. His method to study infants was that of an observation chamber of sorts. The infant would be under the chamber and have different patterns to look at. Fantz and other observers were able to watch the infants and see how long they stared at different patterns. The amount of time that an infant stared at a pattern, the more intrigued they were. The infants stared at face patterns the longest, showing that infants are more aware of their surroundings than originally thought (Unknown, n.d., pp. 135-136).
ReplyDeleteReference
Unknown. (n.d.). Ch. 4 Physical Development in Infancy.
Mackenzie,
DeleteI did my research on Meltzoff and it sounds like Fantz and Meltzoff did almost the same research. Both had different method approaches, Frantz as you said used “observation chamber or sorts”. Meltzoff worked personally with the infants in his research study. Although, Fantz as you put it, focused on infant’s perception instead of infant responses like Meltzoff. Their conclusions both exclaimed that infants in fact do know what is taking on in their life and can pick up on their surroundings much faster then normally thought.
Robert Lowell Fantz researched, "the preferential looking paradigm" that is used in cognitive development and categorization studies among babies (Revolvy,n.d) He studied the babies by using a visual preference paradigm. He found that the babies looked at pattered images longer than they did looking at uniform images. Fantz wanted to show that babies had a preference for the novel stimulus. He could now estimate the perceptual and discriminatory capability of a baby by showing different pictures to the baby in controlled areas (Revolvy, n.d).
ReplyDeleteReferences:
Revolvy(n.d) Robert L. Fantz. Retrieved from: https://www.revolvy.com/page/Robert-L.-Fantz
Andrew Meltzoff studied social understanding and learning for infants. He made tremendous discoveries on infant imitation that apply to how children learn within the first 3 years of their lives (ZERO To THREE, 2019). Meltzoff studied and continues to study “underlying social-emotional and cognitive development” using measurements of an infants brains (ZERO To THREE, 2019). Currently, Meltzoff is the Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and is working on the sense of touch for infants. His theory is associated with social cognition and is called “the ‘Like-Me’ framework” (ZERO To THREE, 2019). The “Like-me” theory is a view that infants become interested with the self and other, and the similarities between the two, within the first few years that they are alive. He hopes to soon supply a more detailed picture of development within the first three years of life through this research. So far, Meltzoff has supplied a picture of how infants learn and understand within their first few years of life through his imitation research. He is also working on how infants view self and other within the first few years. Overall, Meltzoff has contributed tremendously to developmental psychology and will continue to do so.
ReplyDeleteReference
ZERO To THREE. (2019). Andrew N. Meltzoff. ZERO To THREE Early Connections Last Lifetime. Retrieved from https://www.zerotothree.org/our-team/andrew-n-meltzoff
Carolyn Rovee-Collier was a developmental psychologist who focused much of her research on cognitive development especially in infants. One of her major theories was based on babies and their memory. Throughout her studies, she was able to conclude that the “memory process in adults and infants are virtually the same, and argued that infant memories were never lost” (Sangenito). While most adults seemingly forget memories from when they were infants, they are actually just harder to remember and recall as the child grows because of other information they are being introduced to and learning she explained. So while it seems as though they are losing the memory all together, they actually just begin to lose the triggers that caused these memories to occur originally. While she received much recognition for this study, people were at first skeptical. In order to prove her theory to the skeptics, collier performed many experiments and tests. Many of her tests used imitation to study the infants memory and then followed them with a longitudinal study to see how it affected their future retention. After this, she was recognized as “the founder of infant long term memory research” (“Carolyn Rovee-Collier”).
ReplyDeleteSangenito, S. (2014 October 24). Carolyn Rovee-Collier, Who Said Babies Have Clear Memories, Dead At 72. [web]. Retrieved from https://www.acesconnection.com/blog/carolyn-rov
ee-collier-who-said-babies-have-clear-memories-is-dead-at-72-nytimes-com
Carolyn Rovee-Collier. [web] retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Rovee-Collier
Andrew N. Meltzoff
ReplyDeleteMeltzoff studied how an infant can imitate facial and manual gestures. He developed the “like me” hypothesis to how infants think. Meltzoff took six infants and showed each on three different facial gestures and one manual gesture. While collecting the data, Meltzoff recorded each reaction/response with a video camera, finding that infants between 12 and 21 days of age can already imitate all four gestures. Andrew N. Meltzoff is an important man in the Developmental Psychology due to his discoveries of infant imitation. His studies found “how infants connect self and others, gaze following, and the origins of theory of mind” (Zero to Three). Theses findings helped rediscover the learning mechanics in the first three years of life.
References:
University of Washington.(2012). Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph. D. Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences. Doi: http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Zero to Three. (2019). Andrew N. Meltzoff. Early Connection Last a Lifetime. Doi: https://www.zerotothree.org/our-team/andrew-n-meltzoff
Born February 9, 1950, Andrew Meltzoff is an American psychologist that is heavily praised for his dedication to child and infant development. Meltzoff's discoveries about imitation advanced the scientific understanding of personality, brain development, and early cognition. Andrew received a B.A. from Harvard and a PhD from Oxford University (Brain Sciences, 2012). Newly born infants between 12 and 21 days have the ability to imitate facial gestures and manual gestures. Infants were shown three facial gestures and one manual gesture, sequentially. The reactions/ responses of all the infants were recorded and ranked by observers and they did not know what the infants had seen. Surprisingly, all infants observed were able to imitate all four gestures. This discovery was a game changer due to the fact that other researchers thought that children weren't capable of this until they were beyond 8 months. Meltzoff continued to research and expanded on cognitive science and contributing more than 20 years of research. All in all, Andrew Meltzoff was an extremely courageous individual that helped shape psychology.
ReplyDeleteREFRENCES
(Brain Sciences, 2012) http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
(Zero to Three,2019) https://www.zerotothree.org/our-team/andrew-n-meltzoff
Connor it's interesting that many people believed that these actions weren't possible until beyond 8 months. Meltzoff and Collier both seemed to deal with the same stigma. Like Meltzoff, Collier had to struggle to show the intellect of infants to the world. Many believe infants couldn't do very much but I guess they both proved everyone wrong.
DeleteCarolyn Rovee-Collier studied pre-verbal infants can learn things and remember them. Many people believe back then, and some still do now, that babies at the age of 1 to 3 are just brainless tiny humans who want food and attention. On the contrary, before the babies can even talk, they are able to learn basic cause and effect actions that they perform themselves. There are many ways to study an infant’s attention span and motor skills, but Rovee-Collier combined both fields in her experiment. To quote the article that commemorated Collier, “She observed that when the mobile above Benjamin’s crib was moving, he was happy and entertained (allowing her to get some writing done), but that when it was still, he fussed. By gently attaching a ribbon between Benjamin’s ankle and the stand holding his mobile, she enabled him to soothe himself by merely kicking. Soon, though, Carolyn noticed that her son would start to kick before the ribbon was attached to his ankle – that is to say, that he remembered having set his mobile into motion. (Rutgers)
ReplyDeleteCollier took her findings from quieting Benjamin to the real world. One family after another she studied the rate of kicks an infant had in a minute without the ribbon. Then she would attach the ribbon to ONE leg and the other end to a dangling mobile. Infants soon learned that one of their legs controlled the mobile and they ended up kicking that leg only and kicking it at a higher rate. This study finally showed that infants have the capacity to learn and remember things in their environment. This allows family’s, psychologists, and others to research more on infants to see what if their memory has an effect in their future lives.
There is also a video on YouTube that goes into full detail on Colliers experiments.
Bibliography
Rutgers. About the Psychology Department. October 2014. Article. 2019. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgOu_Uc00ao
She also played Tennis and was good at it so go Carolyn!
DeleteAndrew N. Meltzoff studied infant and child development. Specifically, he studied personality, early cognition, and brain development. He used imitation to study the brain, memory, perception, and motor control. Throughout his work, he gave a better understanding to how an infant should be responding to adults around them as well as the importance of seeing a child imitate their parents/caregivers and what those actions can do down the road.
ReplyDeletereferences
Brain Sciences, UW Institute for Learning. (n.d.). Andrew N.
Meltzoff, Ph.D.: Professor and Co- Director. Retrieved March
6, 2019 from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-
labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Lets talk about Carolyn Rovee-Collier. She was psychology major who made major leaps in understanding the memory of pre-verbal infants. She came across this phenomenon by accident. Collier was in the middle of writing her thesis when her son became fussy. She noticed that his mobile was the one thing that would keep him from fussing but she would have to get up every few minutes to start it again. She decided to tie a ribbon to her son's ankle and to the mobile so that he could start it himself. What started out as a mom hack soon became a popular idea of psychology. Collier noticed that her son would start to kick his leg even when there was no ribbon attached. This means that the baby remembered that last time his mobile went still all he needed to do was kick his leg to move it again. Because of her findings, we now know that infants are capable of learning and memorization.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Tomaseli, D. (n.d.). New State Center Opens at Rutgers (Click for more info). Retrieved from https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-emeriti/496-obituary-for-carolyn-rovee-collier
Side note: This lady was kick ass. Not only did she make a huge discovery in Psychology, but she resigned from a killer job to stand up for what she believes in!
Hi Maggie, I agree with you that Carolyn Rovee-Collier was a kick ass lady. I also found it impressive that she turned down a promotion to stand up for what she believed in. I enjoyed reading about her life and her impressive accomplishments. It sounded like her students loved her and she was an inspirational teacher.
DeleteRobert Frantz was an American developmental psychologist that studied infant perception. He did this by placing an infant in front of two different pictures and kept track of direction and duration of the infant’s gaze. He found out that infants preferred to look at objects that were contour, complex, and whole faces. We now use Frantz’s findings to probe the mind of an infant without verbal communications.
ReplyDeleteThis week I decided to look into Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. He has been able to change the way we look at infants, especially their ability to imitate and how they react to other people. From his studies we have found that infants have the ability to imitate facial and manual gestures of those around them as young as 12-21 days old. Prior to this discovery we believed that infants wouldn't be able to achieve this until about 8 months old. He has become an "internationally renowned expert on infants and child development" (Brain Sciences, n.d) as well as co-authoring on two books that discussed early-learning and the brain. Over this years of research he has looked into early cognition, personality, and brain development as well as social-emotional development.
ReplyDeleteAndrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. (n.d.). Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Andrew N. Meltzoff is a Professor at the University of Washington. He studied the development of early cognition, memory and brain development. Meltzoffi's most know experiment is making faces at newborns and infants and seeing if they could replicate these faces. They would do things such as sticking their tongues out and just opening their mouths and they found out that children could detect and replicate these faces. The study and research done did impacted the Developmental Psychology field. This showed the importance that children do in fact detect and replicate what they see. It also showed the parents and peers actions do impact their children and other children.
ReplyDeleteAndrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. (2012). Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Leah, Andrew Meltzoff seems like he made great discoveries in the developmental psychology field. The way he studied facial expressions of new borns and how they can replicate ones made by other people is interesting. This proves how faces can be recognized even from such a young age.
DeleteCarolyn Rovee-Collier studied pre-verbbal infants ability to learn and remember things after noticing her son being upset while she was working on her thesis, but was calmed when the mobile above his crib was moving, so she tied a ribbon around his ankle and the mobile so he would be able to stimulate himself. She then noticed that he would begin kicking before she had attached the ribbon, showing that very young infants had the capacity to learn and remember(Rutgers). I also used the same youtube video as Brett, since it explains the method she used to study this phenomenon very well. Essentially, she and an assistant counted how many times an infant kicked in a minute with one ribbon tied around one of their ankles and nothing else, then tied the other end of the ribbon to a mobile, and saw that the amount of times the infant kicked per minute doubled(Deturk). This showed that rather than the commonly held belief at the time of infants not being real people, or something closer to rats, that infants were already able to learn and remember as young as 3 months old. Rovee-Collier had a large impact on how we look at infants today in regards to developmental psych, since from the 80's forward, we had a drastically different understanding of their capacity for memory and learning, which means that some of the developmental models of the time would have needed to be adjusted to account for that.
ReplyDeleteSOURCES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgOu_Uc00ao
Tomaseli, D. (n.d.). New State Center Opens at Rutgers. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-emeriti/496-obituary-for-carolyn-rovee-collier
Andrew Meltzoff, a bright and knowledgeable author and professor, became an expert on children's social-emotional development and their understanding of other people. Meltzoff had a lab where he would conduct studies on infants, children, and teenagers and observe on how the development of social cognition emerged. Not only did Meltzoff's studies correlate both developmental sciences and social psychology, but he also explored issues in the education system and stereotypes. Overall, Meltzoff is an influential psychologist who is interested in understanding how children view the world.
ReplyDeleteUniversity of Washington. (2012). Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. professor and co-director. Institute For Learning and Brain Sciences. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
I decided to go with Andrew N. Meltzoff. He is a Harvard Graduate and also graduated from Oxford University. He was the creator of the experiment " "Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates". He began to study the behavior of infants before the age of one. The experiment was ground breaking! He discovered that children would imitate adults/ caregivers at such a earlier state of development than we thought. He also realized that babies could remember the expressions months after the experiment. He discovered that babies' memories worked a lot better than we predicted. I think he proves to people that infants are much more intelligent than we think they're. That at a very early age, they can control their own facial expressions just from remembering seeing it being done by another human being. I think people underestimate the ability of babies. Dr. Meltzoff proves to others that babies can make these basic facial expressions even without ever seeing themselves. It's almost like a reflex to them just like grasping an object is or placing an object in their mouth. It's incredible that at such an early age, they're able to understand basic mirrored imitations.
ReplyDeleteReference:
Brain Sciences, UW Institute for Learning. Andrew N.
Meltzoff, Ph.D. Professor and Co- Director. Retrieved March
6, 2019 from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-
labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd.
Dr. Anthony (Tony) James DeCasper was a professor at the University of North Carolina that taught Developmental Psychology. He got a Bachelor’s degree, then served in the Air Force. Following his honorable discharge, DeCasper received his PhD in Developmental Psychology. He was one of the few people to study prenatal and newborn behaviors. Some of these studies were things such as the development of cognitive abilities, and sucking and pecking behaviors. The Novel method he used was mostly stimuli from the mother, such as singing.
ReplyDeleteTony was the first person to explain with evidence that newborns have the ability to recognize their mother’s voice. He explained how he discovered this is because a fetus can encode properties of voices in utero, so when they are born they can recall what their voice sounds like. DeCasper also brought contributed the evidence for newborn cognitive processing. He made these discoveries by studying the newborn’s sensitivity to responses of consequences. This was also proved by how they develop their sucking patterns that they learned in utero. He also explored how infants process sounds. He found that 2-3year olds’ have an “asymmetry in the processing of sound”, which he describes as a newborns being “sensitive to subtle temporal dimensions”. This research helped with the expectations of how newborns should act in the environment and how it affects them, as well as how their long- term memory is developed. He enjoyed his research in memory, so he chose to determine the earliest that newborns are able to learn. Anthony James DeCasper made leaps In the studies of neurocognitive development and speech.
REFERENCES
UNCG; In memoriam: Dr. Anthony James (Tony) DeCasper; The University of North Carolina at Greensboro; (N.D.); Retrieved from https://psy.uncg.edu/in-memoriam-dr-anthony-james-tony-decasper/
Dr. Decasper seemed to manage to accomplish a lot in his life. His span of study clearly helped many people. Could you imagine what it would be like if no-one ever figured out the many things DeCasper did? This was very informative and thought me a lot!
DeleteCarolyn Rovee-Collier researched and conducted many studies on infant learning and memory. She began her research when she accidentally discovered what is now known as the mobile conjugate reinforcement (FABBS, 2019). She noticed her child was happy when his mobile was moving, so she tied a ribbon to her sons ankle and the crib mobile. This allowed the baby to be able to kick and move the mobile all on his own. Rovee-Collie soon noticed that the baby would begin to kick, even if there was no ribbon there. She then began to test how long it took for infants to recognize the consequence of kicking their foot, and in what conditions they could recognize it. Her research changed the way people looked at a child’s memory. It proved that the infant brain is capable of the same type of memory processing that adults have. Rovee-Collie is known as the founder of infant long term memory research (FABBS, 2019). She made the discovery that infants memories, once forgotten, can be reactivated months later by briefly displaying infants to a small portion of the original memory condition (FABBS, 2019). She has received numerous awards for her contributions to psychology and infant memory. Carolyn Rovee-Collie passed away in October, 2014 after a long fight with breast cancer (FABBS, 2019).
ReplyDeleteReference
FABBS. (2019). Carolyn Rovee-Collier, PhD (1942-2014). Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Retrieved from https://fabbs.org/our_scientists/carolyn-rovee-collier-phd/
Alivia,
Deletei enjoyed reading your post. I wrote mine about Andrew Melztoff because i was intrigued by his imitation theory. Carolyn Rovee-Collier made a big impact on developmental psychology as well with her long term memory research. Her theory on how memory retrieval affects future retention is very fascinating. I love that her son inspired her to research infant memory.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier was a development psychologist who was famous for her study on cognitive development in infants. She started out by challenging a theory in the early 1980s that babies do remember a lot. When her son was born, she became aware how powerful an infant’s mind can be (Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences , 2014). She would observe her son being fascinated at his mobile, in fact, it was making him happy. Carolyn would attach a ribbon between her son’s ankle and the stand holding his mobile, so he can sooth himself just by kicking his feet to start up the mobile (Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences , 2014). That is how her idea that pre-verbal infants can learn things and still remember them (Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences , 2014). She would go on and provide experiments that would show that the brain process for memory between an adult and infant was almost similar (Vitello, 2014). However, it has not always been easy for her while experimenting this topic. A lot of people were skeptical about her baby amnesia theory (Vitello, 2014). Carolyn Rovee-Collier made a huge impact in the world by opening the concept of infant memory.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences . (2014, April ). Rutgers. Retrieved from Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences : https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-emeriti/496-obituary-for-carolyn-rovee-collier
Vitello, P. (2014, Oct 22). The New York TImes . Retrieved from Carolyn Rovee-Collier, Who Said Babies Have Clear Memories, Is Dead at 72: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/us/carolyn-rovee-collier-who-said-babies-have-clear-memories-is-dead-at-72.html
I chose Anthony DeCasper for my developmental psychologist to research for this week's discussion post. Anthony was a professor at the University of North Carolina where he made ground-breaking research on how auditory experiences affect development during the pre-natal stage of life (UNC, 2018.) How he conducted his research was very unique and utilized an interesting method of experimentation. In his early experiments, Anthony took newborns and analyzed their ability to differentiate between auditory experiences. He specifically studied the action of an infant sucking and paired this with a sound. The sounds would change when the infant would change their sucking patterns. This research was trying to test infants responses to auditory experiences and how that affects their continued development out of the womb. Through theses experiments, Anthony provided some of the first evidences that babies actually recognize their mothers voices implying that, in utero, babies can comprehend and retain auditory experiences. Anthony's findings had a huge impact on the medical/pediatric level and on the psychological development level as well. He provided evidence, contrary to popular thought, that babies can learn and retain information starting while still in the womb; therefore, presenting the fact that experiences can shape phycological development before birth (UNC, 2018). Overall, Anthony's research in infant phycological development has had major influences on how doctors and phycologists view how infants learn and what affects them in the utero stages.
ReplyDeleteUniversity of North Carolina, (2018). In memoriam: Dr. Anthony (Tony) James DeCasper. University of North Carolina Greensboro: Find Your Way Here. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from https://psy.uncg.edu/in-memoriam-dr-anthony-james-tony-decasper/
Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D., studied infant and child development, and graduated from Harvard while receiving his Ph.D. from Oxford University. He is considered an expert on infant and child development. His research on social-emotional development and the way children understand other people have played a large role in understanding the brain, early education, and parenting, etc (Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D.). One of Meltzoff’s well known studies is on child imitation.
ReplyDeleteMeltzoff conducted many imitation studies on infants some only 3 weeks old. In these studies, they would have a person making facial expressions, such as sticking their tongue out, in front of the infant. The three-week old infant would watch the adults facial expression and the adult face would return to a neutral gesture and remove the infants pacifier. The infant would then imitate the facial expression made by the adult. In some cases the infant would not see the adult for 24 hours but upon reuniting, the infant would repeat the facial expression previously seen. Meltzoff’s studies showed that, “information gained from vision can be stored and accessed at a later time,” (Meltzoff & Moore, 1997). The findings from his research gave new insight into developmental psychology and helped to understand a child’s brain. With this said many new ways of teaching and parenting in a way that benefits children and their understanding have been achieved.
References:
Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. (n.d.). Retrieved March 8, 2019, from Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences: http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1997). Explaining Facial Imitation: A Theoretical Model. Early Development and Parenting, 6.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier was a lead pioneer in the research of development in infant memory. She began her research by studying the cognitive abilities of puppies and later with her first child discovered the capability of an infant’s memory. She became a professor and started a group she called “the Baby lab”. Where her and her students would travel to homes all over New Jersey to observe the impressive memories of babies’. She came to the conclusion that the memory of adults and babies were extremely similar; and a person doesn’t actually lose their memory as a child, they simply forget over time. To support her theories, she conducted many tests of a child’s memory. She would tie a ribbon to a baby’s ankle and attach the ribbon to a mobile. She could then compare the kick rate of a child before and after the ribbon was attached and she found the baby’s kick rate would increase with the ribbon attached. After conducting her tests she would study the child longitudinally to see how it affected their future memory. With the evidence she provided, she became a huge influence in childhood memory development. Inspiring many of her students to further her studies in development.
ReplyDeleteCarolyn Rovee-Collier. (June, 1999) The Development of Infant Memory. Retrieved from https://faculty.washington.edu/sommej/Rovee-Collier1999.pdf (Accessed 3/8/2019)
In the 1960’s, an important discovery was made by Robert Fantz. Fantz helped advance the investigations of infants visual perceptions. He, along other researchers came up with data showing that infants look at different objects or things for different periods of time. Fantz placed infants in a “looking chamber,” which had two visual displays on the ceiling above the infants head (Unknown, n.d.). He would measure the amount of time babies looked at an object or face to estimate how interested in it they were. Fantz reported that a two-month old baby spent twice as long looking at a sketch of the human face as at a bullseye, for instance (Geddes, 2015). He contributed a great deal on infants vision perceptions, and many other researchers have followed with gaze experiments to show that babies are born with an instinct to recognize patterns, faces, the familiarity of their mothers voices, ect.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited
Geddes, L. (2015, November 4). The Big Baby Experiment. Retrieved from Scientific American : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-big-baby-experiment/
Unknown. (n.d.). Visual Perception in Infancy. Retrieved from Book Builder : http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view_print.php?book=28971
I chose to discuss Andrew Meltzoff. Meltzoff is the Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and the professor of the department of psychology. He researched infant and child development as well as a focus on social-emotional development and children’s understanding of other people. Meltzoff is most well known for his study of infant imitation of facial expressions, essentially researchers would make faces in front of the babies and try and get them to make the same face back. He learned many new things about early childhood that had not been discovered before such as cognition, personality, and brain development. He contributed so much information on cognition science; specifically memory, brain science, parenting, and education, to the field of Developmental Psychology.
ReplyDeleteAndrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D. (2012). Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://ilabs.uw.edu/institute-faculty/bio/i-labs-andrew-n-meltzoff-phd
Hi Katy,
DeleteI also chose to write about Andrew Meltzoff, and I found his work to be quite compelling. However, what I liked about your discussion is how you expanded more on his research. You mentioned that he focused not only on infants but also childhood development- such as social-emotional development and the understanding of other people. I'm intrigued to visit your link to read further more on his work in that area. In addition, I focused my discussion more towards the imitation aspect of his work. I found a fascinating article depicting really the break down of child/infant learning and memory. You should check that out as well!
Andrew Meltzoff was a psychologist that researched early learning and development that included social cognition, and imitation and memory. One of the studies he is known for is "Imitation of Facial and Manual Gestures by Human Neonates". This study was especially unconventional because it showed that infants can imitate at a significantly younger age than that of what Piaget suggested (Andrew N. Meltzoff, 2019).
ReplyDeleteMeltzoff used novel EEG measures to learn about neural mechanisms of cognitive development. These EEG brain scans allowed him to learn about the brain activity of infants (Andrew Meltzoff, Ph.D, 2019). Andrew Meltzoff contributed many things to developmental psychology. His “Like Me” theory provided insight into imitation that greatly advanced the understanding of early cognition and brain development.
References
Andrew N. Meltzoff (2019). Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_N._Meltzoff
Andrew Meltzoff, Ph.D. - UW Autism. (2019) retrieved from
https://depts.washington.edu/uwautism/research-team/andrew-meltzoff-ph-d/
The researcher I found most compelling with his work is Dr. Andrew Meltzoff. Meltzoff claimed that "babies naturally do as we do, not as we say" (Meltzoff, 2000). We as humans have developed a special and powerful form of learning, and that is through imitation (Meltzoff, 2000). This was what Meltzoff studied extensively throughout infancy.
ReplyDeleteMeltzoff employed several tactics to observe the learning capabilities in babies, and their retention span of information that is presented in front of them. He conducted an experiment that involved an adult initiating a certain action upon an object and then seeing whether the infant (after 1- week delay) would mimic that same action (Meltzoff, 2000). The adult was to look at a flat box with a yellow panel and then lean forward and touch the top of his head to the box causing it to light up. To ensure imitation, he conducted the experiment with three different groups of infants- (imitation group) watched the adult initiate the action; (control group 1) was not exposed to the adult model; (control group 2) was exposed to the adult model but the same target demonstrations were not presented (Meltzoff, 2000).
Meltzoff's results found that the infants in the imitation group performed the same action as the adult did after a one week delay, and the infants in both control groups did not (Meltzoff, 2000). Therefore, he discovered that infants do watch our actions carefully and repeat them when they are given the opportunity to (Meltzoff, 2000). Dr. Andrew Meltzoff contributed a great deal to the field of Developmental Psychology by illustrating the understanding of learning mechanisms, social-cognition, and brain development in the first three years of life.
Meltzoff, A.N. (2000). Born to Learn: What Infants Learn from Watching Us. Department of Psychology, University of Washington. Retrieved March 8, 2019, from http://ilabs.washington.edu/meltzoff/pdf/99Meltzoff_BornToLearn.pdf
I decided to write about Carolyn Rovee-Collier because of her research material. Carolyn Rovee-Collier "research focused on learning and memory in pre-verbal infants." (Wikipedia, 2019). She claimed that infants are able to remember a lot of information over a long period of time. Carolyn and other trusted collegues tried a study where they would out a baby in a crib and attach a ribbon to their foot with a mobile connected to it. The baby learned when it kicked its feet it would move the mobile. This showed the difference in the amount of kicks with the ribbon vs without the ribbon.
ReplyDelete“She was the one who opened the field of infant memory to research,” said Patricia J. Bauer, a professor of psychology and senior associate dean at Emory University in Atlanta. “Before her, there weren’t many people thinking about what babies know." (Vitello, 2014) Carolyn Rovee-Collier inspired several people with her studies and encouraged others to try her experiments to learn and grow from. She learned a lot about short-term memory in infants and their ability to learn.
Works Cited
Vitello, P. (2014, October 22). Carolyn Rovee-Collier, Who Said Babies Have Clear Memories, Is Dead at 72. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/us/carolyn-rovee-collier-who-said-babies-have-clear-memories-is-dead-at-72.html
W.W. Norton and Company, I. (2019). Retrieved from Critical Thinking Activities: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/psychology8/ch/08/critthinking.aspx
Wikipedia . (2019, January 6). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Rovee-Collier
I choose to research and write about Carolyn Rovee-Collier. Dr. Collier studied psychology as an undergraduate and then went on to get a PhD in experimental child psychology (Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, 2014). She is most famous for her research that demonstrated that infants can learn and memorize things before they can verbally communicate. This work began when she was writing her dissertation and trying to keep her infant son entertained. She found that when the mobile in his crib was moving, her son was entertained and quiet. She found that if she tied a ribbon to her son’s foot and then to the mobile, he could keep himself entertained by kicking and moving the mobile. She found that he would start kicking before she attached the ribbon to his foot. Her work was both observational and experimental. Carolyn continued her research on infant learning and memory. She mentored numerous students and their group was termed “the baby lab” because they traveled all over New Jersey making observations on infant’s memories in people’s homes.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences . (2014). Carolyn Rovee-Collier. Retrieved from https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-emeriti/496-obituary-for-carolyn-rovee-collier
I chose to write about Andrew Meltzoff. Andrew received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1972. He also received a D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1976. HE became a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, and later became the co-director of University of Washington Institute for learning and brain sciences. He was an American psychologist that studied the development of infant and children. HE mainly focusing on infant imitation, early cognition, personality, and brain development. The way that he studied this was through observation, he would show a set of 6 infants facial gestures and then observed and recorded. This was an amazing way of observing infants because it proved that they could imitate an adult at a very early age. I would say that Andrew contributed to the way developmental psychology evolved over time was tremendous. What he discovered in infants was amazing that he had learned that so that we can now learn it today.
ReplyDeleteReferences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_N._Meltzoff