Chapter 9: Human Development Flashcards
Lecture
What is development defined as?
-series of changes (for the better and for the worse)
What is chronological age?
-normal biological age
What is developmental age? Use an example to explain. (2)
-the chronological age at which MOST children show a particular level of physical or mental development
-the developmental age for walking without assistance is 1 year old so a 10-month old child that can walk is considered at a developmental age of 1 year
What are normative investigations? What is an example? (2)
-research aimed at establishing standards or norms for a specific population.
-Example: research aimed at understanding what is developmentally normal for a 1 year old baby
Define a longitudinal design
-The same participants are observed repeatedly sometimes over many years
What are advantages of longitudinal design? What are disadvantages? (2)
Advantages:
-Researchers can identify individual differences
-Researchers can examine relationships between early and later events and behavior.
Disadvantages
-Time consuming and costly
-Data are easily lost
-Data might be contaminated by biased sampling, practice effects or cohort effects
What is a cross-sectional design?
-Groups of participants of different chronological ages are observed and compared at a given time.
What is the cohort effect that affects both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies? Give an example. (2)
-it is a generational effect which may bias your study
-maybe one decade of individuals lived through a war or a famine
What are advantages of a cross-sectional study? What are disadvantages? (2)
Advantages
-takes less time to complete
-less costly
-not subject to practice effects
Disadvantages
-cannot tell if important individual differences exist
-cannot tell if an early event has an impact on a later event
-cohort effects
What is crystallized intelligence? What is the general trend for this over the time for individuals? (2)
-knowledge and skills you have learned through experience and education
-increases over the lifespan and starts to decrease slightly in old age
What is fluid intelligence? What is the trend for this over the lifespan? (2)
-capacity to reason and solve novel problems independent of any knowledge from the past
-increases from birth onwards and then begins decreasing around age 20ish
What types of memory does aging not seem to effect? (2)
-memory of general knowledge (semantic memory) that occurred long ago
-memory of personal events (episodic memory) that occurred long ago
When we compare remote (older) memory to new memory, which do older adults struggle more with?
-new memory
What four memory deficits do older people tend to show? (4)
-transience
-absent mindedness
-misattribution
-suggestibility
What is transience?
-tendency to lose access to information across time
What is absent-mindedness?
-failure to remember information because of insufficient attention
What is misattribution?
-remembering a fact correctly but attributing it to an incorrect source or context
What is suggestibility?
-tendency to incorporate information provided by others into your own recollection and memory representation
While the mechanisms that underlie memory impairment in older adults are unknown, what are some possible explanations? (3)
-neurobiological change in the brain
-lack of organization
-reduced ability to pay attention
What is infantile/childhood amnesia? Why does it occur? (2)
-inability to remember events and experiences that occurred during the first 2-3 years of life
-not enough synapses/connections
During infancy, the brain experiences synaptogenesis. What is this? What does it play a vital role in? (2)
-an explosion of synapse formation between neurons during early brain development
-learning, memory formation and adaptation
At about 2 to 3 years of age, the number of synapses hit a peak level and the brain engages in a process called synaptic pruning. Define this:
-the brain starts to remove synapses that it no longer needs
What did Piaget believe in general marked the difference in cognitive development from a child to an adult? Compare child to adult. (2)
-children are only able to conceptualize the here and now of the immediate, concrete present
-adults conceptualize the world in symbolic and abstract terms
Describe Piaget’s sensorimotor stage from age 0-2 years. What actions reflect this? (3)
-neither real objects nor any conception of self (because they have no long-term memory) meaning they live only in the present
-an infant cannot both grasp and suck an object simultaneously because the coordination of these senses is not developed and we have not developed sensory interneurons
-object permanence