DEV PSYC - General principles Flashcards
How did Chaffer, 2006) define development?
the process of change associated with age which characterises all human beings from conception death”
List the 9 periods of development
- parental period
infancy
early childhood
middle/late childhood
adolescence
emerging adulthood
young adulthood
middle adulthood
late adulthood
What is developmental psychology for?
Applied
- we develop tendencies and psychological mechanisms for looking after children
Theoretical
- to understand what a human being is, one must study its development
-theoretical advances also brings better applications
Explain the 1945 study that compared american infants raised in an orphanage with those raised in a prison nursery
- standards of heigine and medical care were very similar
- 37% of orphans were dead before the age of two, compared to none of the prison babies
Define attachment in an infant
- the infant’s drive to interact with the care-giver, and the infant’s internal working model of how the care-giver responds
What is the buffereing effect of secure attatchment to an additional parent?
that having one secure attachment to mothers, but not fathers, yields equivalent beneficial outcomes to having a secure attachment to both parents.
What is the buffereing effect of secure attatchment to an additional parent?
that having one secure attachment to mothers, but not fathers, yields equivalent beneficial outcomes to having a secure attachment to both parents.
What is the flynn effect is psychology?
- a secular increase in population intelligence quotient (IQ) observed throughout the 20th century
- the Flynn effect is due to environmental rather than genetic effects, e.g., increasing prosperity leads to more education.
-
What is a pseudo experimental design?
nonexperimental designs in which the investigator nonetheless maintains some control over the manipulation and the collection of data.
- Various techniques used to mitigate the consequent threats to validity, e.g., demographic matching of control schools, and removal from sample of children whose parents chose GN school because of GN pedagogy
What did the early preschool childhood environments and gender study find?
- girls stereotype more than boys
- older children stereotype more than younger children
- gender neutral school shows intended effect
- the effect is strongest for oldest boys
What is an example of a study where puppets are taken out of the equation?
Kenward & Osth, 2015
- Would young children engage in third party punishment towards agents they plausibly regard as real
- Swedish five-year-olds do (probably) want to make something bad happen to someone who did something bad.
- That they apparently didn’t usually dare to do so when told they would assign the negative outcome in person suggests:
they are taking the situation seriously;
studies like this one but with puppets don’t tell you much about real situations.
-
What is an example of a study where puppets are taken out of the equation?
Kenward & Osth, 2015
- Would young children engage in third party punishment towards agents they plausibly regard as real
- Swedish five-year-olds do (probably) want to make something bad happen to someone who did something bad.
- That they apparently didn’t usually dare to do so when told they would assign the negative outcome in person suggests:
they are taking the situation seriously;
studies like this one but with puppets don’t tell you much about real situations.
-
How many genes in the human genome?
How many neurons and synapses in the human brain?
human genome: 30,000 genes
Human brain:
20,000,000,000 neurones
100,000,000,000,000 synapses
What did Perrin, Berger and Markram (2011) find about initial connectivity?
Initial connectivity patterns are genetically canalised and this could be the basis for some inherited core knowledge.
Defiine:
Nature
Nurture
Nature- The role of genetics in forming our behaviour, our personality or any other part of ourselves
Nurture - the role of familiy, society, education and other social factors in forming our behaviour, our personality or any other part of ourselves
What are the basic principles of development?
- interplay between genes and environment
- y genes- x environment
- results in phenotype
What is heritability?
is a measure of how well differences in people’s genes account for differences in their traits. Traits can include characteristics such as height, eye color, and intelligence, as well as disorders like schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.
What does heritability of 0 mean?
- means none of the variance in that trait can be attributed to genes
there is either
- no variation
- only variation due to environment e.g choice of religion
What did the study on rats by Ronca et al 2008 highlight
- Fetal exposure to gravity is necessary for the development of the vestibular righting “reflex” in rats
- there is no trait so genetically determined that the environment cannot influence it
What does canalisation mean?
- the tendency for development of a specific genotype to follow the same trajectory under different conditions (different environments or different genetic backgrounds)
What are developmental cascades?
JVA: looking where others look
Responding to others’ attention (a simple behaviour) can provide many opportunities for learning
JVA at 12 months predicts language abilities at 24 months (Mundy et al. 2007)
Genetically initiated developmental cascades mean genes can have a very important influence
Genes can have more influence the older you are because of cumulative effects – you really do get more like your parents as you age.
Genes are very important for educational outcomes
E.g., roughly 70% of variation in various English test scoresin school is genetic (heritability estimate).
Types of adaptation in development:
Adaptation is an evolutionary concept – a behaviour that improves survival
Ontogenetic adaptation
Behaviours important for survival in the juvenile stage
e.g. babies’ crying is important for eliciting care, in the moment
Deferred adaption
Behaviours whose primary purpose is to improve fitness in the future
e.g. JVA promotes the acquisition of skills for longer term use
Some behaviours are argued to have both functions, e.g. play
What is behaviourism?
What is constructivism?
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
Behaviourism: Individuals learn to repeat rewarded behaviours
Constructivism: individuals seek information that allows them to build new schemas - mental structures that represent the world and model possibilities for action
