Chapter 9

Question 1

What is Development?

Answer 1

Refers to the continuous change in human capabilities throughout life.

Question 2

Developmental changes occur on 3 levels. What are they?

Answer 2

Physical processes: involves change in biological nature
Cognitive processes: change in individual’s thought, intelligence and language.
Socioemotional processes: changes in an individual’s relationships with others, in emotion and personality

Question 3

What can we say about
the studies done on development?

Answer 3

Because age is a variable that cannot be manipulated, studies on the relationship between age and other things are by definition correlational in nature.

Question 4

Describe how a cross-sectional study on development would work

Answer 4

Number of people of different ages are assessed at one point in time, differences are noted. By examining how the ages relate to characteristics measured, they can find out whether younger differs from older people.

Question 5

What is one fault in cross-sectional studies of development

Answer 5

Cohort effects: differences between individuals that stem not from their ages, but rather from the time period they were born in. For example, people born in 1940 might be less likely to attend college than 1990.

Question 6

What is one type of study on development that does NOT have cohort effects?

Answer 6

Longitudinal studies: assesses the same participants multiple times over a lengthy period of time. They can find out if age groups differ AND whether a certain characteristic in the same individuals change as they age

Question 7

What is nature and nurture
How does nature and nurture influence development?

Answer 7

Nature: refers to individual’s biological inheritance (genes)
Nurture: refers to individual’s environmental and social experiences.
We know both influence development but we do not know to which degree for each. However we know environmental factors can help or harm the developing person. Phenylketonuria (PKU) is the inability to digest sweeteners used in sodas. Diet restrictions can help.

Question 8

Prenatal development begins with Conception. What is that?

Answer 8

It is when a single sperm cell merges with an ovum to produce a zygote, a cell with 23 chromosomes from each parent

Question 9

The development of zygote to fetus is divided into 3 periods, what are they?

Answer 9

Germinal period (weeks 1-2): begins with conception. After 1 week, zygote made up of 100-150 cells. After 2 weeks, the mass of cells has attached to uterine wall.
Embryonic period (weeks 3-8): the rate of cell differentiation intensifies, support systems for cells develop, beginning of organs appear, neural tube (become spinal cord later) appears. Within 4 weeks of conception, the neural tube is formed and closes, encased inside embryo. At the end, heart begins to beat, arms and legs become more differentiated, face starts to form and intestinal tract appears.
Fetal period (months 2-9): At 2 months, fetus is the size of a kidney bean and starts to move around. At 4 months, fetus is 5 inches long and 5 ounces. At 6 months, fetus has grown to 3/2 pounds. Last 3 months, organ functioning increases, fetus puts on hella weight and size, adding baby fat.

Question 10

What is a teratogen?
What are some examples of threats to the fetus

Answer 10

It is any agent that causes a birth defect. These include chemical substances ingested by mother, or certain illnesses
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: a cluster of abnormalities and problems that appear in the offspring of mothers who drink alcohol heavily during pregnancy.

Question 11

An infant is capable of sitting upright, standing, stooping, climbing and often walking. what age are they in?

Answer 11

1+ years old

Question 12

When do rapid gains occur in activities for children?

Answer 12

During the second year. Such activities are running and climbing.

Question 13

What is one of the most remarkable motor skill attained by infants? What processes are involves in this motor skill?

Answer 13

It is the ability to reach for things, emerges in infants 3-5 months old
It involves
Sensory capacities: being able to see or hear the object
Motivation: wanting to grasp the object
Attention: being able to focus on a particular thing
Bodily control: coordinating movements and posture
Learning: getting positive reinforcement from getting the object of their desire.

Question 14

What is one way psychologists can study infants if they cant tell us what they see hear or feel?
What did researchers find using this technique?

Answer 14

Psychologists use preferential looking: a technique that involves giving an infant a choice of what object to look at, repeatedly presented in different locations.
They found out that as early as 7 days old, infants are already engaged in organized perception of faces and are able to put together sights and sounds.
At 3 months, infants prefer real faces over scrambled faces.
By 6 months, babies can detect human faces more quickly than animal faces.

Question 15

What changes occur in the brain during development?

Answer 15

Myelination begins prenatally and continues after birth till young adulthood.
During childhood, the number of synaptic connections increase dramatically.
From 3-6 years, the most rapid growth takes place in the frontal lobe areas.

Question 16

What is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

Answer 16

He believed that children actively construct their cognitive world as they go through the 4 of stages (sensorimotor, pre-operational etc.). In his view, children use schemas to make sense of their experience.

Question 17

What are 2 processes responsible for how schemas develop?

Answer 17

Assimilation: occurs when individuals incorporate new information into existing knowledge. It is using existing schemas in a new way. For example, strategies with romantic partners that worked in the past are used to resolve current conflict with spouse.
Accommodation: occurs when individuals adjust their schemas in response to new information. Existing schemas can be changed and new schemas can be developed.

Question 18

According to Piaget, we go through 4 stages in understanding the world. What are they?

Answer 18

Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
Preoperational stage (2-7 years)
Concrete Operational stage (7-11)
Formal Operational stage (11-15 and continues through adult years)

Question 19

What happens in the Sensorimotor Stage? What is the most important event that happens in this stage?

Answer 19

Infants are able to understand the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions, hence sensorimotor. The most important event in this stage is object permanence. It is Piaget’s term for understanding that objects and events continue to exists when they cannot directly be seen, heard or touched. Once this is learned, the infant can think about future events.

Question 20

What are Operations?

Answer 20

They are mental representations of the object that are reversible. Not understanding this fact is what separates preoperational thought from more mature thinking

Question 21

What happens in the Preoperational stage?

Answer 21

Preoperational children have difficulty understanding the notion of reversibility. The child has not grasped the concept of conservation: the belief in the permanence of certain attributes of objects despite some changes.
Preoperational children are also egocentric since they cannot put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

Question 22

What happens in Concrete Operational Stage?

Answer 22

It involves using operations and replacing intuition with logical reasoning in concrete situations. One important skill in this stage is the ability to classify things into different sets/subsets and to consider their interrelations. The song “one of these things is not like the others” was used to coax you into concrete operations.

Question 23

What happens in Formal Operational stage?

Answer 23

This stage uses thought that is more abstract and logical than concrete operational thought.
1. they can make predictions using logic to come up with hypotheses about the future.
2. They can conceive hypothetical possibilities, called idealistic thinking.
3. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning: devising plans to solve problems and systematically testing solutions.

Question 24

What are some criticisms towards Piaget’s theory?

Answer 24

First, formal operational thought does not emerge as consistently and universally in early adolescence as Piaget envisioned.
Second, Piaget likely underestimated the cognitive capacities of very young children.
In summary, he overestimated the cognitive ability of adolescents and adult and underestimated children.

Question 25

What does the nativist approach say about infant cognition?
Which view does it contrast?

Answer 25

They say infants can expect things about objects and events in the world and that these expectations are not that dependent on experience as Piaget thought.
Studies showed that not only did 3-month-olds realize that a doll still existed but they also had expectations about where she was heading.
It contrasts the empiricist approach: emphasizes the role of experience as the driver of cognitive development

Question 26

What is the Empiricist approach to infant cognition?
Which view does it contrast?

Answer 26

Emphasizes the role of experience in the world as the central driver of cognitive and perceptual development. They point out that even if very young infants show understanding of object permanence, that capacity might still originate in (very early) experience.

Question 27

What is Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural cognitive theory?

Answer 27

The goal of cognitive development is to learn the skills that will allow the individual to be competent in his or her culture

Question 28

What is the Information-Processing theory of development?

Answer 28

It focuses on how individuals encode information, manipulate it, monitor it, and create strategies for handling it.

Question 29

What is a particularly important aspect of cognitive development in childhood?

Answer 29

It is the executive function: refers to high-order, complex cognitive processes.
For one to be successful in school for example, one must be able to sit, wait in line, raise their hand etc.
A large longitudinal study showed that aspects of executive function asses in early childhood predicted less risk taking, decreased drop out rates and less drug use.

Question 30

What is Temperament? What are the 3 basic types of temperament children and the 3 others?

Answer 30

It refers to an individual’s behavioral style and characteristic ways of responding.
The easy child: positive mood, adapts to new experiences.
The difficult child: reacts negatively and cries frequently. Slow to accept new experiences.
The slow-to-warm-up: low activity level, somewhat negative, very cautious to new experiences.
Effortful Control or Self regulation: controlling agitation.
Inhibition: being shy and showing distress to new experience
Positive and negative affectivity: tending to be happy and tempered/frustrated and sad.

Question 31

What is infant attachment?

Answer 31

It is the close emotional bond between an infant and its caregiver. Newborns come into the world equipped to stimulate the caregiver by crying, clinging, smiling.

Question 32

What is secure attachment?

Answer 32

It means the infants use the caregiver as a secure base from which they explore the environment. The securely attached child freely moves away from the mother but also keeps glancing at her periodically.

Question 33

What are 2 types of Insecure attachment?

Answer 33

Avoidant infants: They might not even notice the mother is gone.
Anxious infants: respond with intense distress, only to rage at the mother when she returns.

Question 34

What are the criticism regarding attachment theory?

Answer 34

1. It does not adequately account for cultural differences.
2. It fails to take infant temperament into account.
3. It fails to acknowledge that caregivers and infants likely share genetic characteristics and the attachment relationship might be a product of those shared genes.

Question 35

What is Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development?

Answer 35

It proposes that there are 8 psychosocial stages of development from infancy to old age. First 4 take places in childhood. Last 4 take place in adolescence and adulthood.
Each of Erikson’s stages represent a developmental task the individual must master in their lifespan. These tasks are represented with 2 outcomes, either strength and competence, or weakness and vulnerability.

Question 36

What are Erikson’s 4 childhood psychosocial developmental stages?

Answer 36

Trust vs. Mistrust: Trust is built in infancy by giving comfort, food and warmth. A helpless infant depends on caregivers.
Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt: children can develop either a positive sense of independence and autonomy, or negative feelings of shame and doubt.
Initiative vs. guilt: Preschoolers experience a sense of taking responsibility, they develop initiative. Otherwise they may feel guilty or anxious.
Industry vs Inferiority: 6 years into puberty, children can achieve industry by mastering knowledge and intellectual skills. If they don’t, they can feel inferior.
Industry means: gaining competence in academic skills and acquiring the ability to engage in self-discipline and hard work.

Question 37

What are Erikson’s 4 Adult psychosocial developmental stages?

Answer 37

Identity vs identity confusion: If they do not explore their identity during this stage, they end up confused about who they are.
Intimacy vs Isolation: individuals either form intimate relationships of become socially isolated.
Generativity vs stagnation: making a contribution to the next generation.
Integrity vs despair: evaluating his or her life and seeking meaning.

Question 38

What are 4 basic styles of parenting?

Answer 38

Authoritarian: strict style, limits and controls the child with little verbale exchange. Those children lack social skills, show poor initiative and compare themselves with others.
Authoritative: Encourages child to be independent but still places limits and control on behavior. Those children tend to be socially competent, self-reliant and socially responsible
Neglectful: Lack of parental involvement in the child’s life. Those children tend to be less competent socially and show poor self control.
Permissive: Placing few limits hoping it produce creativity and confidence. Those children and poor in social competence, they fail to respect others.

Question 39

What are the 3 levels of Kohlberg’s moral development?

Answer 39

Pre-conventional: individual’s moral reasoning is based on the consequences of behavior, punishments and rewards.
(Their moral reasoning is guided by not wanting Heinz to go to jail, or concern for the drug store profit.)
Conventional: individual abides by standards learned from parents of society’s laws (Heinz should act based on his role as a good husband or he should follow law no matter what)
Post-conventional: recognizes alternative moral courses, explores the options and then develops and increasingly personal moral code. (Might reason Heinz’s wife is more important than the law.

Question 40

What are some criticisms on Kohlberg’s theory?
What is his theory called and what perspective contrasts it?

Answer 40

1. Moral reasoning does not necessarily mean moral behavior. People might recognize what is right and wrong, but they might not do it themselves.
2. They argue that his view does not adequately reflect concern for people and social bonds. Kohlberg’s theory is called a justice perspective because it focuses on the right of the individual as the key to sound moral reasoning.
   In contrast, the care perspective views people in terms of their connectedness with others and stresses interpersonal communication, relationships and concern for others.

Question 41

What are the 5 foundations render moral judgement?

Answer 41

Care: kindness towards others + avoiding harm to others
Fairness: having outcomes be fair to all involves
Loyalty: consider their allegiances to groups and being true
Authority: consider what their leaders believe and obey thm.
Purity: base moral judgments on whether they find a behavior to be noble or disgusting/animalistic.

Question 42

What is prosocial behavior?

Answer 42

It is behavior that is intended to benefit other people. Kids engage in prosocial behavior due to supportive parenting.

Question 43

What is puberty? What are the male and female hormones associated with puberty?

Answer 43

It is a period of rapid skeletal and sexual maturation, occurs in early adolescence.
Androgen (includes testosterone): class of sex hormones that predominate in males.
Estrogen (includes estradiol): class of sex hormones that predominate in females.

Question 44

What are 2 important changes in the brain during adolescence (10-19 years)?

Answer 44

The development of amygdala which involves emotion and the later development of prefrontal cortex which is concerned with reasoning and decision making.

Question 45

What is adolescence egocentrism?

Answer 45

It involves the belief that others are as preoccupied with the adolescent as he or she is. For example, they perceive others looking at them more than actually is the case.

Question 46

What is Marcia’s theory on Identity status?

Answer 46

In her view, there are 2 dimensions of identity.
Exploration: refers to a person’s investigating options for a career and for personal values
Commitment: involves making a decision about which identity path to follow and making a personal investment in attaining that identity.

Question 47

What is biculturalism/multiculturalism?

Answer 47

Identifying in some ways with their ethnic minority group and in other ways with the majority culture.

Question 48

What is emerging adulthood?

Answer 48

It is the transitional period from adolescence to adulthood. 18-25 years. Characterized by experimentation and exploration.

Question 49

What are 5 main features of emerging adulthood?

Answer 49

1. Identity exploration, especially in love and work
2. Instability, especially in love, work and education
3. Self-focus: focusing on their own goals.
4. Feeling in-between: neither adolescents nor adults
5. A time where individuals have the opportunity to transform their life.

Question 50

What is selective optimization with compensation?

Answer 50

It means that older adults match their goals with their current abilities and compensate for declines by finding other ways to do the things they enjoy.

Question 51

What is The Cellular Clock theory?

Answer 51

Biological theory of aging. States that cells can divide a maximum of about 100 times and that as we age, our cells become less capable of dividing.
Each time a cell divides, the telomeres protecting the ends of the chromosomes shorten until the cells cannot divide.

Question 52

What is the Free-Radical theory?

Answer 52

Biological theory of aging. States that people age because unstable oxygen molecules known as free radicals are produced inside their cells.

Question 53

What is the Hormonal Stress theory?

Answer 53

Biological theory of aging. States that aging in the body’s hormonal system can lower resistance to stress and increase the likelihood of disease.

Question 54

What is lateralization and how does it apply it to older and younger adults?

Answer 54

Note: adults can grow new brain cells, however the evidence is limited to hippocampus and olfactory bulb.
Lateralization: the specialization of function in one hemisphere of the brain. Research showed that the prefrontal cortex is lateralized less in older adults than younger adults, meaning older adults have to use both hemispheres for a task while young adults use 1.

Question 55

How does cognition change from early to late adulthood

Answer 55

Early adulthood: intellectual skills peak during this time in life. Idealism of Piaget’s formal operational stage is replaced by more realistic and pragmatic thinking.
Middle adulthood: cross-sectional indicates that it is the time of cognitive decline. Longitudinal says middle (not early) adulthood is the peak of intellectual skills.
Late adulthood: takes longer to remember information, but retrieve it more often than younger adults. Decline occurs for working memory as well. Wisdom increases due to buildup of life experiences.

Question 56

What are 4 principles in successful marriages?

Answer 56

1. Nurturing fondness and admiration: positive spin on their talk with and about each other.
2. Turning toward each other as friends in times of stress
3. Giving up some power: Bad marriages involves one partner who is a powermonger
4. Solving conflicts together.

Question 57

What is the socioemotional selectivity theory?

Answer 57

Addresses the narrowing of social contacts and the increase in positive emotion that occur with age. It states that older adults tend to be selective in their social interaction in order to maximize positive and meaningful experiences.

Question 58

What is involved when an individual pursues a life theme?

Answer 58

It in the opportunity to cultivate meaningful optimal experiences that drive a person to pursue a life theme.