Ch.10

Question 1

Post-hoc fallacy and bidirectional influence

Answer 1

post hoc fallacy:
— false assumption that because one event occurred before another event, it must have caused that event

Bidirectional influence:
— Human development is almost always a two-way street: Developmental influences are bidirectional. Children’s experiences influence their development, but their development also influences their experiences.

Question 2

Cohort effects

Answer 2

effect observed in a sample of participants that results from individuals in the sample growing up at the same time

Question 3

Research designs (including cross-sectional and longitudinal (strengths/weaknesses of each))

Answer 3

Cross-sectional:
• research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time.
— don’t control for cohort effects: effects due to the fact that sets of people who lived during one time period, can differ in some systematic way from sets of people who lived during a different time period.

Longitudinal:
• research design that examines development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over time.
— ideal for studying change over time
— they can be costly and time consuming.
— attrition: participants dropping out of the study before it is completed.
— Selective attrition, when the dropout of participants is not random, but drawn disproportionately from a particular definable group (women, older adults, Indigenous Peoples, etc.).
- Aren’t experimental designs, can’t use these studies to infer cause-and-effect relationships.

Question 4

Gene-environment interaction and Gene expression

Answer 4

• Situation in which the effects of genes depend on the environment in which they are expressed.

gene expression:
• activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development
— reminds us that nurture affects nature. In turn, nature affects how we react to nurture, and so on.

Question 5

nature via nurture

Answer 5

• tendency of individuals with certain genetic predispositions to seek out and create environments that permit the expression of those predispositions.

For example, as children grow older, highly fearful children tend to seek out environments that protect them from their anxieties B/c highly fearful children select safer environments, it may appear that growing up in safe environments helps to create fearfulness, when the environment is actually a consequence of children’s genetic predispositions.

Question 6

Zygote

Answer 6

fertilized egg

Question 7

blastocyst

Answer 7

ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven’t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part.

Question 8

embryo

Answer 8

• second to eighth week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs of the body take form.

• Once different cells start to assume different functions, the blastocyst becomes an embryo
• During this stage, many things can go awry in fetal development.

Question 9

fetus

Answer 9

• period of prenatal development from ninth week until birth after all major organs are established and physical maturation is the primary change.

(- The last third of pregnancy in particular is devoted almost entirely to “bulking up.”)

Question 10

teratogens

Answer 10

An environmental factor that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development

Question 11

sucking reflect

Answer 11

an automatic response to oral stimulation. (In babies)

Question 12

rooting reflex

Answer 12

serves the same survival need: eating.

• If we softly stroke a hungry infant’s cheek, they’ll automatically turn their head toward our hand and begin casting about with their mouth, eagerly seeking a nipple to suck.
• These reflexes help keep infants alive because if they needed to learn through trial and error that sucking on an object yields nourishment, they might starve trying to get the hang of it.

Question 13

menarche

Answer 13

• the onset of menstruation
-tends not to begin until they’ve achieved full physical maturity.

• Menarche is the body’s insurance plan against allowing females to become pregnant before their bodies can carry an infant to term and give birth safely.
• timing of puberty in both sexes is genetically influenced

Question 14

spermarche

Answer 14

• first ejaculation by males.

• comparable milestone in males and occurs, on average, at around 13 years of age.
• Because males need not be fully physically mature to reproduce children, spermarche isn’t as closely tied to physical maturity as menarche.

Question 15

changes associated with aging and how to minimize decline

Answer 15

Many of the changes we typically associate with aging are actually due to diseases that are correlated with age, like heart disease and arthritis.

As we age:
• decline in muscle tone.
• increase in body fat.
• Basic sensory processes decline
- vision
- hearing
- smell.
• Fertility in females declines sharply during their 30s and 40s.
• Males experience nothing equivalent to menopause.
• gradual decline in sperm production.
• decline in testosterone levels increases difficulty of.
- maintaining an erection
- achieving ejaculation
• individual and task-specific differences in the effects of aging on motor coordination.
- simple motor tasks, show relatively small declines.
- Older adults become less flexible in learning new motor skills.

Ways to Minimize decline:
may minimize some of these declines and increase lifespan
• fertility treatments
• Viagra and Cialis
• Strength training
• increased physical activity

Question 16

Stage-like vs. continuous changes

Answer 16

• Some propose stage-like changes in understanding (sudden spurts in knowledge followed by periods of stability)

• Others propose more continuous (gradual, incremental) changes in understanding.

Question 17

domain-general vs. domain-specific accounts of development

Answer 17

• Some propose domain-general account of development, in which cross-cutting changes in children’s cognitive skills that affect most or all areas of cognitive function at once.

• Others propose a domain-specific account, in which the children’s cognitive skills develop independently and at different rates across different domains, such as reasoning, language, and counting (domain-specific).

Question 18

Assimilation and accommodation

Answer 18

Assimilation:
Piagetian process of absorbing new experience into current knowledge structures.

Ex: If a child who believes the Earth is flat learns that the Earth is round, they might assimilate this knowledge into their schema by picturing a flat disk, like a coin.
- This adjustment allows the child to absorb this fact without changing their belief.

Accommodation:
Piagetian process of altering a belief to make it more compatible with experience.

Question 19

Piaget’s stages (sensorimotor and object permanence/mental representation

Answer 19

• Piaget’s stages are domain- general, slicing across all areas of cognitive capacity.
• Each stage is characterized by a certain level of abstract reasoning capacity

Stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by a focus on the here and now without the ability to represent experiences mentally.

• between birth and 2 years.

Stage characterized by:
Mental representation-
the ability to think about things that are absent from immediate surroundings, such as remembering previously encountered objects.

Object permanence-
the understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of view.

Question 20

preoperational and egocentrism/use of symbols

Answer 20

Stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to construct mental representations of experience but not yet perform operations on them.

• between 2 to 7 years

Stage characterized by:
Egocentrism- an inability to see the world from others’ points of view.

Use of symbols- as language, drawings, and objects as representations of ideas.
—> meaning now have a mental representation that differs from their physical experience.

Question 21

concrete operations and conservation/mental operations on concrete objects

Answer 21

Stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to perform mental operations on physical events only.

• between 7 to 11 years

Stage characterized by:
Conservation-
Piagetian task requiring children to understand that despite a transformation in the physical presentation of an amount, the amount remains the same
- Can now pass conservation tasks.

Mental operations-
on physical objects, like sorting coins by size or setting up a battle scene with toy soldiers.
- still poor at performing in abstract or hypothetical situations therefore, need physical experience as an anchor to which they can tether their mental operations.

Question 22

formal operations and mental operations on abstract concepts/hypothetical reasoning

Answer 22

Stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to perform hypothetical reasoning beyond the here and now.

• 11 years to adulthood

Stage characterized by:
Hypothetical reasoning-
Can understand logical concepts, such as if-then statements and and either-or statements.
Ex: Pendulum task- Experiment systematically with hypotheses and explain outcomes.

Abstract concepts-
questions, like the meaning of life.

Question 23

Vygotsky’s ideas of scaffolding and zone of proximal development

Answer 23

Scaffolding:
Vygotskian learning mechanism in which parents provide initial assistance in children’s learning but gradually remove structure as children become more competent.

Zone of proximal development:
phase of learning during which children can benefit from instruction.
- are receptive to learning a new skill but aren’t yet successful at it.

Question 24

Theory of mind and the false belief task (and how they relate to Piaget’s preoperational stage)

Answer 24

• ability to reason about what other people know or believe.
• false-belief task: tests children’s ability to understand that someone else believes something they know to be wrong.
• children’s failure, may be due to aspects of the task rather than their inadequate understanding of others’ knowledge.

— Children who pass, understand that although they themselves know where the treat is actually hidden, the child in the story holds an incorrect belief about the treat’s location.

— Those who fail, believe if they know where the treat is, the child in the story must know as well.

• typically don’t succeed until around age 4 or 5.
• real-world situation and less of a story, most children can pass it.
• reason for the change was to “trick” someone, they’re more successful at an earlier age.

Question 25

Temperament (including easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up

Answer 25

• basic emotional style that appears early in development and is largely genetic in origin.

• babies vary widely in their social interaction styles. These individual differences in children’s social and emotional styles reflect differences in temperament.
• cultural differences in temperament
• temperament forms early in development and is genetically influenced, it can be shaped by environmental influences.

Easy: are adaptable and relaxed.

Difficult: are fussy and easily frustrated.

Slow-to-warm-up: are disturbed by new stimuli at first but gradually adjust to them.

Question 26

behavioral inhibition (not the percentages, just the ideas)

Answer 26

• Based initially on research with cats, “scaredy cats”

• behaviourally inhibited human infants become frightened at the sight of novel or unexpected stimuli
• Infants with high levels of behavioural inhibition are also at heightened risk for shyness and anxiety disorders in childhood or adolescence
• Infants with extremely low levels of behavioural inhibition may be at increased risk for impulsive behaviours in later childhood

Question 27

attachment

Answer 27

the strong emotional connection we share with those to whom we feel closest

Question 28

contact comfort

Answer 28

positive emotions afforded by touch

Question 29

The Strange Situation and attachment styles (not the percentages, just the ideas))

Answer 29

• attachment styles derived from the Strange Situation predict children’s later behaviour.
• must be careful to avoid mono-operation bias: the mistake of relying on only a single measure to draw conclusions.
• The Strange Situation is, after all, merely one indicator of attachment. To equate it with attachment, is a serious error.
• isn’t especially reliable.
• For most attachment theorists, the cause effect arrow runs from parent to child.
  — but bidirectional influence may result in an insecure attachment style.

Question 30

Attachment styles: Secure

Answer 30

• The infant reacts to the caregiver’s departure by becoming upset, but greets their return with joy.

• infant uses the caregiver as a secure base: a rock-solid source of support to which to turn in times of trouble
• tend to grow up to be more well adjusted, helpful, and empathic than infants with other attachment styles

Question 31

Attachment styles: insecure-avoidant

Answer 31

• The infant reacts to the caregiver’s departure with indifference and shows little reaction on their return.

-

Question 32

Attachment styles: insecure-anxious

Answer 32

• infant reacts to the caregiver’s departure with panic. They then show a mixed emotional reaction on the caregiver’s return, simultaneously reaching for them yet squirming to get away after they pick the infant up.

• “anxious-ambivalent.”
• are more likely to be disliked and mistreated by their peers later in childhood than infants with other attachment styles.

Question 33

Attachment styles: disorganized

Answer 33

• pattern react to the caregiver’s departure and return with an inconsistent and confused set of responses. They may appear dazed when reunited with the caregiver.

Question 34

Parenting styles (including permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, and uninvolved)

Answer 34

• Diana Baumrind’s (1991), Based on her observations of White middle-class families.
— Baumrind’s findings are only correlational and don’t permit us to draw cause-and-effect inferences.
— possibility that child temperament may partly influence parenting style.

• PERMISSIVE. Permissive parents tend to be lenient with their children, allowing them considerable freedom inside and outside the household. They use discipline sparingly, if at all, and often shower their children with affection.

• AUTHORITARIAN. Authoritarian parents tend to be strict with their children, giving them little opportunity for free play or exploration and punishing them when they don’t respond appropriately to their demands. They show little affection toward their children.

• AUTHORITATIVE. Authoritative parents combine the best features of both permissive and authoritarian worlds. They are supportive of their children but set clear and firm limits with them.

• children exhibit the best social and emotional adjustment and the lowest levels of behaviour problems,

• UNINVOLVED. Neglectful parents tend to ignore their children, paying little attention to either their positive or their negative behaviours.

• children tend to fare the worst, and children with either permissive or authoritarian parents fall in between.

Question 35

Transgender experience

Answer 35

• gender identities do not match their biological sex.
• sometimes face a difficult path, particularly because society largely regards sex and gender as the same thing, and many people who are cisgender, struggle understanding how someone’s gender could possibly fail to align with their biology.
• typically report having had a gender identity that was at odds with their sex from as early as they had an awareness of gender as a concept.
• transgender girls (those whose biological sex is male) think about gender just as cisgender girls do
• transgender boys are indistinguishable from cisgender boys in their thinking about gender.
• important because it revealed that transgender children are not confused or delayed in their understanding of gender they are quite typical for their gender, just not for their sex.
• do not have social support, report high levels of depression an anxiety.
• reported that boys generally like balls, guns, and fire trucks; girls like dolls, stuffed animals, and cookware.
  —> This finding suggests that toy preferences may reflect differences in biological predispositions, such as aggressiveness and nurturance, shared by many primates.

Question 36

Erikson’s idea of psychosocial crises

Answer 36

• dilemma concerning an individual’s relations to other people.
  —> these findings are only correlational.

Question 37

Kohlberg’s levels of morality (including preconventional, conventional, and postconventional)

Answer 37

• The first level preconventional morality, is marked by a focus on punishment and reward.
- What’s right is what we’re rewarded for; what’s wrong is what we’re punished for.

• The second level, conventional morality, is marked by a focus on societal values.
- What’s right is what society approves of; what’s wrong is what society disapproves of.

• The third level, postconventional morality, is marked by a focus on internal moral principles that transcend society.
- What’s right is what accords with fundamental human rights and values; what’s wrong is what contradicts these rights and values.