Foreign Perspectives

Although I just finished the Child Development (ED209) on Wednesday and I’m currently doing Human Biology (SK277) which started in early October, it’s actually time for me to be thinking about the next course yet again.

You might think that since I’m plugging away with a Psychology degree that the next course would be quite a simple choice in that there’s a clear list of courses that comprise that degree. However, there’s a scheduling problem with that sequence in the form of Biological Psychology (SD226) which starts in February. Although the start date is OK, the wording in the description concerning recommended prior courses says that you are “strongly recommended” to do courses such as Exploring Psychology (DSE212), Child Development, Human Biology or Biology: uniformity and diversity (S204) before doing Biological Psychology. Now, if you look at the Human Biology and Biology course descriptions it’s clear that it’s an either/or recommendation and indeed that’s why I’m currently doing the Human Biology course. However, it’s not so clear if that also applies to the Exploring Psychology and Child Development courses which has me wondering if it would be better to do the Exploring Psychology course first rather than after Biological Psychology.

Now, assuming that I don’t do Biological Psychology this coming February (which seems quite likely at the moment), that leaves me with a gap in the early part of 2010. So what can I slot in? Well, I could leave it as a gap in that the Human Biology course is running through to June but I want to keep to 60 points a year which means adding another 30 point course. None of the other psychology courses fit the bill as they’re level 3 courses and definitely require Exploring Psychology.

However, as well as the psychology degree I’m also quite interested in following up a physics degree at some point and could see me doing a biology one if the Human Biology course proves as interesting as it seems to be at the moment. Of those, the next potential biology course (Infectious Disease [S320]) is at level 3 so that’s not really a runner ’til I get Human Biology completed. Which leaves the series of courses making up the physics degree. That appears to offer the most viable sequence of which the first one would be Using Mathematics (MST121).

One other “little” problem is that thanks to the funding mess that the ELQ policy has dropped upon the OU it seems quite likely that it won’t be possible to do either the biology or the physics degree for much longer because the required summer schools won’t be available. That seems to point towards the advantage of getting the required summer schools done as soon as possible for either the physics or the biology degree (it’s not possible to do both in the time required [no later than 2012]). The only issue with that is that the core courses in the psychology degree come with expiry dates so I need to keep those dates in mind.

So at the moment, it’s looking like it’ll be Using Mathematics in January though I don’t need to decide on that for another month or so.

This time tomorrow I’ll be having my very first look at the exam paper.

Today it’s time for last minute skimming over of the material that I didn’t quite get around to learning properly up to now…

There’s the TMA questions to have a look at. Sometimes examiners have a rush of blood to the head and include questions in the very same area or at least in an area that’s similar enough to be helpful in formulating an answer. Not too likely, but then 45 mins or so is all it takes to have a quick look at them.

The course guides are very useful for this course. Reading the chapter summaries and the key theme grids can prompt some thoughts that might be useful in an exam. I’m finding that this is more time consuming than I’d expected: 90 minutes a booklet.

Reading over the answer to the seen question lots of times in amongst all the above seems sensible. In optimistic moments I think that’s an easy way to get, say, 60% on one question which equates to 20% of the overall paper which in turn means that just 30% on each of the other two questions means a pass. Or was that in pessimistic moments?

Finally, there’s leafing over the chapters in the notes that I didn’t cover and/or the course books themselves.

As usual, the last few days before an exam are a peculiar mix of panic cramming and looking forwards to the courses coming up.

The ED209 exam is a little peculiar in that of the three questions on the paper, we’ve already been given one (it ain’t as easy as that sounds!) which means that we’ve “only” to choose two more from the six on offer on the day. Unfortunately, it’s not a straight 2 from 6 as you’ve to answer one question on two of the three books on the course.

I find that the seen question is throwing something of a wobbler with my revision. The idea is that you basically treat that question as though it were the seventh assignment which is fine, except that it means you’ve to try and learn off the text of the answer so that you can write it out on the day which seems a bit daft. Not only that, but you’ve to write it, not type it as with the other assignments which also introduces the problem that you need to work out just how much you can write in about an hour.

Slightly odd at this point is that I’ll be branching off into a number of biology courses for a while and leaving the psychology behind for a bit. What’s coming up right away is the Human Biology course (SK277) which looks really interesting and, so far, relatively doable despite it being my first biology course in a very long time indeed. That’ll be followed by Biological Psychology (SD226) which looks like an interesting mix of biology and psychology. Then there’s the summer school: Investigative Biology (SXR270) to round out the coming year.

After that it’s the usual hazy plan at the moment. In theory, I should be doing Exploring Psychology in October but if the biology courses turn out to be as interesting as they appear to be from this distance then I’m thinking of continuing on with Infectious Disease (S320) and its residential, Molecular Basis of Human Disease (SXR376). Possibilities following that include another sequence of biology courses in the form of a new one starting that October, followed by Molecular and Cell Biology (S377) and finally Plants, Pigments and Light (SXR376) if it gets the rumoured extention in its life. And then it would be back into the psychology. But we’ll see.

Understanding minds is the shortest chapter in the Erica Cox notes at just over three pages vs six pages for most of the preceeding chapters which certainly sounds good in terms of being able to learn the content.

Understanding a theory of mind is the realisation that others have views, opinions, feelings, etc. that are different from ours. Examining the development of a theory of mind was originally looked at by Premack & Woodruff who showed monkeys videos and then had them select a “what next” photo; Dennett pointed out that this was really flakey in terms of methodology as they could be working it out for themselves rather than considering what the actor might do next. Therefore, the attention moved on to Sally/Anne tasks where Wimmer & Perner found that 3 year olds couldn’t do it, by 4 or 5 half of them could and almost all 6 to 9 year olds managed it. Gopnik & Astington used the deceptive Smartie tube and found that children of around 4 got the right result ie recognised the false belief.

Moving on from this the second order theory of mind kicks in around 6 to 8. This is the ability to attribute beliefs about beliefs. Sulivan found that children from 5 to 9 could distinguish between the lie about having cleaned the room and the joke about eating the peas. Theory of mind generally is related to improved social interaction (Astington & Jenkins) and obviously facilitates social manipulation (Sutton et al re bullies).

Other means of looking at the development of a theory of mind include examining behaviour and talk, investigating cognitive skilla and research into environmental factors. Wellman & Bartsch investigated children from 2 to 5 and noted the trend of moving from talking about others desires to talking about their beliefs. Repacholi & Gopnik considered this via the broccoli experiment. On the cognitive skills front Charman et al examined joint attention which predicted future theory of mind knowledge and Meltzoff looked at understanding intentions through comparing actions following watching an adult fail and watching a machine fail at a task.

Social factors affecting theory of mind development include: language ability & number of siblings (particularly the number of older siblings), interaction with adults, how the mother spoke in terms of asking the child how the victim felt, age, gender (girls are slightly better), and speaking generally (deaf studies of deaf parents & children vs hearing parents & deaf children). Which all support Vygotsky’s learning through social interaction.

Overall, it looks like a reasonable chapter to revise and answer questions on.

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Although executive functions in childhood: development and disorder is probably one of the more complex chapters, the notes on it are amongst the shortest. Executive function refers to those activities that are under conscious control rather than being habitual or automatic functions that we do. Things tend to move from executive function activities to automated ones over time eg when you started to read it was very much an executive function but everyone reading this will be doing it pretty much automatically. This activity is handles by the prefrontal cortex. It’s generally divided into cognitive flexibility, planning and working memory and inhibitory control. Hughes et al looked at this using the Tower of London task which revealed good correlation between poor scores on the task and poor communication skills and high anti-social behaviour.

The development of executive function in children has been looked at by a number of researchers. The Stroop task (colours and colour names mixed up eg RED). Diamond discovered some inhibitory control at 9 months and improvement at 10 months. Piaget’s A-not-B and the go/nogo (press a button when a letter that’s not “X” appears) are also used. There are variants of this for children who can’t read eg the fist and pointing hand however they are more complex and it takes a 4 year old to pass them. Casey et al looked at these using fMRI scans which showed that children, as you would expect, needed more brain power dedicated to them than adults do. Finally, there’s the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test with different shapes and colours.

Executive disfunction is a massive field of study throwing up peculiar effects. Children with poor inhibitory control tend to be more distractible, less able to control emotions, more impulsive, etc. and have difficulty in social situations and tasks needing concentration. ADHD involves distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity; they have delayed myelination of the prefrontal cortex and low levels of dopamine. Since it’s hard to pick this up before age 6, Parker & Asher looked at pre-schoolers who are classed as disruptive and found that basically it was downhill from there.

Overall, a surprisingly short set of notes for what’s quite a massive field but presumably we’ll be picking this up in somewhat more detail at level 3. I can’t believe that the next installment on understanding minds is the last one to be done!

Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.