Chapters 1,2,3

Question 1

What is a cross-sectional comparison?

Answer 1

Contrasting different individuals at different ages and drawing inferences about development

Question 2

What is the main problem with cross-sectional comparison?

Answer 2

It does not take into account individual differences that are not affected by developmental status such as biological differences and differences in cognitive abilities

Question 3

What is a longitudinal comparison?

Answer 3

Contrasting the same individual(s) at different ages and drawing inferences about development

Question 4

What is cognitive development?

Answer 4

The study of how cognition changes in predictable age-related ways over the course of infancy throughout adolescence

Question 5

What does cognitive development study?

Answer 5

Differences in ways that people of varying developmental levels aquire, process, store, and manipulate information

Question 6

How does cognitive psychology relate to people?

Answer 6

How people obtain, retain, use and communicate information

Question 7

What is perception (in regards to cognitive processes)

Answer 7

The cognitive processes used to interpret sensory information to yield a meaningful understanding

Question 8

What are some examples of perception?

Answer 8

Light = vision, sound = hearing, smell = taste

Question 9

What is figure-ground discrimination?

Answer 9

The ability to separate the elements of a visual image on the basis of contrast to percieve an object against a background

Question 10

What is attention?

Answer 10

The ability to allocate mental resources to certain tasks

Question 11

How can selectively attending to a conversation help us remember it?

Answer 11

We are able to focus on more aspects of the exchange with a richer memory of the conversation