Chapter 1 - Understanding Lifespan Human Development Flashcards
What area of development is concerned with aspects of the self, and social and interpersonal interactions?
a) Cognitive development
b) Physical development
c) Psychosocial development
d) Emotional development
c) Psychosocial development
Pat, a 35-year-old woman, is worried that if she and her husband do not have children soon, she will miss her chance to be a parent. Pat is experiencing:
a) A rite of passage
b) The social clock
c) The mothering instinct
d) Ageing
b) The social clock
Patterned events experienced by an individual over time are known as the:
a) chronosystem
b) mesosystem
c) exosystem
d) macrosystem
a) chronosystem
Research that characterises human behaviour at different ages and traces how it changes with age is consistent with which one of the broad goals of life span development research?
a) Explanation
b) Description
c) Prevention
d) Optimisation
b) Description
What is the study of gerontology?
a) The social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of childhood development
b) The social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of ageing and later life
c) The social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of adolescent difficulties
d) The social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of male development
b) The social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of ageing and later life
Naturalistic observation is described as one in which:
a) Participants are observed in a controlled environment such as a laboratory
b) Participants are interviewed and asked a series of questions about their natural environment
c) Participants are observed while taking part in everyday activities in their natural environment
d) Participants are observed out in nature
c) Participants are observed while taking part in everyday activities in their natural environment
What is an independent variable?
a) The aspect of behaviour measured in an experiment
b) A type of experiment in which cause and effect are ascertained
c) The measurement of variables in an experimental study
d) An aspect of the environment that the researcher manipulates to see its effect on behaviour
d) An aspect of the environment that the researcher manipulates to see its effect on behaviour
What is the name of the measure ranging from +1.00 to –1.00 that measures the extent to which two variables or attributes are systematically related to each other in a positive or negative way?
a) An experiment
b) Correlation coefficient
c) Statistics
d) The correlational method
b) Correlation coefficient
Which of the following is not one of the four ethical obligations of investigators to respect the rights of participants?
a) Debriefing
b) Protecting participants from harm
c) Informed consent
d) Random assignment of individuals to treatment conditions
d) Random assignment of individuals to treatment conditions
Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and New Zealand’s Health Research Council (HRC) require universities that conduct research with humans to do what?
a) Send all research proposals to them for government approval
b) Appoint a professional ethicist to assess all research proposals
c) Instruct researchers to conduct research ethically
d) Have ethics committees to determine if proposed research projects conform to ethical standards
d) Have ethics committees to determine if proposed research projects conform to ethical standards
What are orderly pattens of change, as well as continuities, that occur in an individual through their life span called?
Development
What is a component of development concerned with physical and biological processes?
Physical Development
What is a component of development concerned with thought and other mental and intellectual processes called?
Cognitive Development
What is a component of development concerned with aspects of the self, and social and interpersonal interactions called?
Psychosocial Development
What are the three broad areas of development?
Physical, Cognitive and Psychosocial development
What is growth?
The physical changes that occur from conception to maturity
What is a centenarian?
An individual who lives to be 100 years of age or older
What is biological ageing?
The biological and physical deterioration of organisms that leads inevitably to their death
What are the 9 Periods of life?
Prenatal period Infancy Early Childhood Middle Childhood Adolescence Emerging Adulthood Early Adulthood Middle Adulthood Late Adulthood
What is the prenatal period?
Conception to birth
What is infancy?
First two years of life (the first month is referred to as the neonatal or newborn period)
What is early childhood?
2 to 5 or 6 years of age (some refer to children aged 1 to 3 who have begun to walk as toddlers)
What is middle childhood?
6 to about 12 years (or the onset of puberty)
What is adolescence?
Approximately 12 to 18 or 20 years (or when the individual becomes relatively independent of parents and begins to assume adult roles)
What is emerging adulthood?
18 to 25 years (or even up to 29 years!). These young people are neither adolescents nor adults and are exploring their identities, careers and relationships
What is early adulthood?
20 to 40 years
What is middle adulthood?
40 to 65 years
What is late adulthood?
65 years and older (some refer to sub categories in this period, such as the young old, old old and very old based on age ranges or differences in functioning).
What is a system of meanings shared by a population of people and transmitted from one generation to the next?
Culture
What is a socially defined age group or stratum, with distinct statuses, roles, privileges and responsibilities in society called?
An Age Grade
What are age expectations about what people should be doing or how they should behave at different points in the life span called?
Age Norms
What is a personal sense of when things should be done in life and when the individual is ahead or behind the schedule dictated by age norms called?
A Social Clock
What are generalisations about the attributes of a group which are assumed to be true of all members regardless of individual variation among the group members called?
Stereotypes
What is prejudice or discrimination against individuals or groups based on age called?
Ageism
What is a person’s classification in or affiliation with a group based on common heritage or traditions called?
Ethnicity
What is the position people hold in society based on such factors as income, education, occupational status and the prestige of their neighbourhood called?
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
What is the passing of traits to offspring from their parents or ancestors called?
Heredity
What are events or conditions outside the person that are presumed to influence and be influenced by the person?
Environment
What are developmental changes that are biologically programmed by genes rather than caused primarily by learning, injury, illness or some other life experience?
Maturation
What is a relatively permanent change in behaviour, or behavioural potential, that results from a person’s experiences or practice?
Learning
What is Bronfenbrenner’s model of development, which emphasises the roles of both nature and nurture as the developing person interacts with a series of environmental systems?
Bioecological Model
What is the immediate settings in which a person functions?
Microsystem
What is the interrelationships between microsystems or immediate environments called?
Mesosystem
Settings not experienced directly by individuals but which still influence their development are called …?
Exosystem
What is the larger cultural or subcultural context of development called?
Macrosystem
What is the system that captures the way changes in environmental systems such as social trends and life events, are patterned over a person’s lifetime?
Chronosystem
What is the professional action and practice grounded in theory and research, ensuring that interventions provided to optimise development have been demonstrated to be effective?
Evidence-based practice
What is the study of the social, psychological, mental and biological aspects of ageing and old age?
Gerontology
What is the view of development as a lifelong multidirectional process that involves gain and loss, is characterised by considerable plasticity, is shaped by its historical-cultural context, has many causes and is best viewed from a multidisciplinary perspective?
Life span perspective
What is the capacity of an organism to change in response to both positive and negative environments and experiences across the life span?
Plasticity
What is the ability of brain cells and brain structures to change in response to experience?
Neuroplasticity
What is the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary study of human development across the life span?
Developmental Science
What are the four goals driving the study of lifespan human development?
Describing
Explaining
Predicting
Optimising Development
What are the seven assumptions of Balte’s (1987 & 2006) life span perspectives?
Development is a life long process
Development is multidirectional
Development involves both gain and loss
Development is multiply influenced
Development is characterised by lifelong plasticity
Development is shaped by its historical-cultural context
Development must be studied by multiple disciplines
What is the method and attitude about the pursuit of knowledge that dictates that investigators must be objective and allow their data to decide the merits of their thinking and theorising?
The scientific method
What is a set of concepts and propositions designed to organise, describe and explain a set of observations called?
A theory
What are the theoretical predictions about what will hold true if we observe a phenomenon?
Hypotheses
What is a group of individuals chosen to be the subjects of a study?
Sample
What is a well defined group that a researcher who studies a sample of individuals is interested in drawing conclusions about?
Population
What is a study sample formed by identifying all members of the larger population of interest and then selecting a portion of them in an unbiased or random way to ensure that the sample studied is representative or typical of the larger population of interest?
Random Sample
What is the research method in which the scientist observes people as they engage in common everyday activities in their natural environments?
Naturalistic observation
What is the research method in which scientists create special conditions designed to elicit the behaviour of interest to achieve greater control over the conditions under which they gather behavioural data?
Structured observation
What is the brain scanning technique that uses magnetic forces to measure the increase in blood flow to an area of the brain when it is active and can determine which parts of the brain are involved in particular cognitive activities?
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
A good scientific theory should be:
Internally consistent
Falsifiable
Supported by data
What are the three main data collection techniques?
Reporting
Behavioural observations
Physiological measurements
What is an in depth examination of an individual or a small number of individuals by analysing information from a variety of sources and methods, such as observing, testing and interviewing?
Case study
What is a research strategy in which the investigator manipulates or alters some aspect of a person’s environment to measure its effect on the individual’s behaviour or development?
Experiment
What is the aspect of the environment that a researcher deliberately changes or manipulates in an experiment to see its effect on behaviour?
Independent variable
What is the aspect of behaviour measured in an experiment and assumed to be under the control if, or dependent on, the independent variable?
Dependent variable
What is the technique in which research participants are placed in experimental conditions in an unbiased or random way so that the resulting groups are not systematically different?
Random assignment
What is the holding of all other factors besides the independent variable in an experiment constant so that any changes in the dependent variable can be said to be caused by the manipulation of the independent variable?
Experimental control
What is an experiment-like study that evaluates the effects of different treatments but does not randomly assign individuals to treatment groups?
Quasi-experiment
What is a research technique that involves determining whether two or more variables are related?
Correlational method
What is a measure, ranging from +1.00 to -1.00, of the extent to which two variables or attributes are systematically related to each other in either a positive or a negative way?
Correlational coefficient
What is the problem in correlational studies of determining whether a presumed casual variable is the cause or the effect?
Directionality problem
In correlational studies, what is the problem posed by the fact that the association between the two variables of interest may be caused by some third variable?
Third variable problem
What is the research method in which the results of multiple studies addressing the same question are synthesised to produce overall conclusions?
Meta-analysis
What is a developmental research design in which different age groups are studied at the same point and compared?
Cross-sectional design
What is a group of people born at the same time; a particular generation of people called/
A cohort
What are the effects on research findings of participants getting older or developing?
Age effects
What are the effects on research findings of various age groups, being born at different times with different formative experiences?
Cohort effects
What is the developmental research design in which one group of subjects is studied repeatedly over months or years?
Longitudinal design
What are the effects on research findings of historical events occurring when the data for a study is being collected?
Time-of-measurement-effects
What is the developmental research design that combines the cross sectional approach and the longitudinal approach in a single study to compensate for the weakness of each?
Sequential design
What are the standards of conduct that investigators are ethically bound to honour to protect their research participants from physical or psychological harm?
Research ethics
What are the four ethics standards in research?
Informed consent
Debriefing
Protection from harm
Confidentiality
