Chapter 11

Question 1

What is the germinal stage?

Answer 1

the 2-week period that begins at conception

Question 2

What is the embryonic stage?

Answer 2

a period that starts around the 2nd week after conception and lasts until the 8th week

Question 3

What happens during the embryonic stage?

Answer 3

implanted embryo continues to divide, and its cells begin to differentiate; arms, legs, beating hear

Question 4

What is the fetal stage?

Answer 4

a period that lasts from about the 9th week after conception until birth; skeleton and muscles; myelination

Question 5

What is myelination? What prenatal stage does it start?

Answer 5

the formation of a fatty sheath around the axons of a neuron; fetal stage

Question 6

What is a teratogen?

Answer 6

any substance that passes from a mother to unborn child and impairs development

Question 7

What is fetal alcohol syndrome?

Answer 7

a development disorder that stems from heavy alcohol use by the mother during pregnancy

Question 8

What evidence do we have that fetuses can hear their mother’s voice in the womb?

Answer 8

experiments show that newborns suck a nipple more vigorously when they hear the sound of their mother’s voice than when they hear the voice of a female stranger; also happens w/voices in mother tongue; crying melody mimics mothertongue

Question 9

What age is generally meant by the term infancy?

Answer 9

the stage of development that begins at birth and lasts between 18 and 24 months

Question 10

What are motor reflexes?

Answer 10

specific motor responses that are triggered by specific patterns of sensory stimulation

Question 11

What is the cephalocaudal rule?

Answer 11

the tendency for motor rules to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet; “top to bottom”

Question 12

What is the proximodistal rule?

Answer 12

the tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the center to the periphery “inside to outside”

Question 13

What is cognitive development?

Answer 13

the process by which infants and children gain the ability to think and understand

Question 14

What are Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development?

Answer 14

1) sensorimotor stage
2) preoperational stage
3) concrete operational stage
4) formal operational stage

Question 15

What is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 15

a stage of cognitive development that begins at birth and lasts through infancy where they acquire info a/b the world by sensing it and moving around; schemas

Question 16

What are schemas?

Answer 16

theories a/b the way the world works

Question 17

What is Piaget’s notion of assimilation?

Answer 17

infants apply their schemas to novel situations

Question 18

What is accommodation?

Answer 18

infants revise their schemas in light of new info

Question 19

What is object permanence? How did Piaget observe babies’ ignorance of this?

Answer 19

the fact that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible; babies stop searching for object when its out of view

Question 20

What disproved Piaget’s theories about infants and object permanence?

Answer 20

experiments showing that babies looked longer at impossible events that violated the idea of object permanence, showing that infants develop the ability much earlier than Piaget thought

Question 21

What is childhood?

Answer 21

the period that begins at about 18 months to 24 months and lasts until about 11 to 14 years

Question 22

What is the preoperational stage?

Answer 22

the stage of cognitive development that begins at about 2 years and ends at about 6 years, during which children develop a preliminary understanding of the physical world

Question 23

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 23

the stage of cognitive development that begins at about 6 years and ends at about 11 years, during which children can learn how actions, or operations, can transform the concrete objects of the physical world

Question 24

What did the Piaget egg experiment demonstrate about preoperational vs. operational children?

Answer 24

when the same # of eggs were put in cups, pre-op kids knew they had same amount. but when eggs were taken out and placed in a line that extended beyond the row of cups, they thought there were more eggs than cups b/c the line was longer

Question 25

What is conservation?

Answer 25

the notion that the quantitative properties of an object are invariant despite changes in the object’s appearance

Question 26

What is the formal operational stage?

Answer 26

the final stage of cognitive development that begins around the age of 11, during which children learn to reason about abstract concepts

Question 27

What is egocentrism?

Answer 27

the failure to understand that the world appears different to different ppl

Question 28

What is the false belief task?

Answer 28

a puppet named Maxi puts chocolate in a cupboard, 2nd puppet moves chocolate, 5yr olds think Maxi will look for chocolate in first cupboard, but 3 yr olds will think Maxi will look for chocolate in second cupboard b/c thats where they saw it being moved to

Question 29

What is the theory of mind?

Answer 29

the understanding that the mind produces representations of the world and that these representations guide behavior

Question 30

What were Harry Harlow’s experiments about? What methods did he use?

Answer 30

baby rhesus monkeys w/out social interactions for 6 months had extreme social anxiety and rejected or even attacked their own children; monkeys clung to warm furry mothers instead of wire mothers

Question 31

What is the “Strange Situation” method and how is it structured in a typical environment?

Answer 31

a behavioral test used to determine a child’s attachment style; involves bringing a child and their primary caregiver to a lab and then stage a series of episodes in which the primary caregiver briefly leaves the room and then returns

Question 32

What are the 4 attachment styles?

Answer 32

1) secure- may or may not be distressed; non distressed infant acknowledges re-entry, distressed infant goes to her and is calmed
2) avoidant- not distressed when caregiver leaves, doesn’t notice re-entry
3) ambivalent- distressed when caregiver leaves, rebuffs attempts at calming from caregiver after re-entry
4) disorganized- no consistent pattern

Question 33

Define temperaments

Answer 33

characteristic patterns of emotional reactivity

Question 34

What is attachment style determined by?

Answer 34

an infant’s social interactions with their caregiver

Question 35

What is an internal working model of relationships?

Answer 35

a set of beliefs about the self, the primary caregiver, and the relationship between them

Question 36

Describe 3 trends about morality Piaget noticed

Answer 36

1) shift from realism to relativism; moral rules are inventions; ppl can change them
2) shift from prescriptions to principles; specific guidelines i.e. rotate iPad every 5 min to general principles i.e. fairness
3) shift from outcomes to intentions; breaking iPad accidentally more “wrong” than breaking pencil on purpose; then they realize morality depends on actor’s state of mind

Question 37

What does the trolly problem demonstrate about morality?

Answer 37

moral judgments are the consequences, not the causes, of emotional reactions

Question 38

As we reach adulthood, which cognitive abilities start to decline?

Answer 38

cognitive tasks that require effort, initiative or strategy; decline in working memory more than long-term; decline in episodic mem more than semantic mem

Question 39

What is socioemotional selectivity theory?

Answer 39

younger adults are largely oriented toward the acquisition of information that will be useful to them in the future whereas older adults are generally oriented toward info that brings emotional satisfaction in the present

Question 40

What does socioemotional selectivity theory tell us about the emotions of older adults?

Answer 40

b/c they have much shorter futures, they spend their time attending to, thinking about, and remembering positive info that fills their emotional needs today; i.e. older adults show much more amygdala activation in response to very pleasant pics vs very unpleasant pics, which differs from young ppls reactions