DEVELOPMENT 1/2 Flashcards
Development
2
- Change and continuties that occurs within the individual between conception and death
- Developmental psychologists are looking at how individuals change over time, or how they stay the same.
Process that leads to developmental change:
Maturation
1.1
- The biologically timed unfolding of canges within the individual according to that individual’s genetic plan.
EX. a particular genetic plan might lead to a maturation timeline where they will grow their first baby tooth at 5 months old, start walking at 12 months, enter puberty at 12 years, and die at 8 years.
Process that leads to developmental change:
Learning
2.1
- Relatively permanent changes in our thoughts, behaviours, and feelings as a result of our experiences.
- The acquisition of neuronal representions of new information.
EX. Avoid touching a stove, looking both ways before crossing the street, that become automatic with continued practice.
Process that leads to developmental change:
Interactionist Perspective
3.2
- The veiw that holds that maturation and learning interact during develoment
- Some essential system (maturation) must develop before learning proceeds and vice versa.
- Without a minimal input of learning from the outside, maturation will be delayed.
EX. Development of muscles in the torso and limbs before child learns how to walk.
EX. A child fed with proper nutrition, but isolated in the dark will mature physically, however they will lack in developing normal vision, speech, motor, and social skills.
Studying Development
Habitutation Procedure
2
- Infants show interest in novel objects that can be measured throguh physiological/sensory response (i.e heart rate, breath or behavioural orienting responses)
- Novel objects show a burst of activity until the infant habituates to the stimuli, becoming a baseline.
Studying development
Habituation
1
- A decrease in the responseiveness to a stimulus following its repreated presentation
Studying Development
Dishabituation
1
- An increase in the responsiveness to a stimulus that is somehow different from the habituated stimulus
Studying Development
Event-Related Potentials (ERP)
2.1
- A special cap with electrodes is placed on the infants’s head to detect changes in electrical activities across a population of neurons.
- Particular behaviours will evoke change in various brain regions.
EX. Visual stimui will activate occipital lobe
Studying Development
High-Amplitude Sucking Method
3
- Measuring the baseline sucking rate in the absense of relevant stimuli.
- During the shaping procedure, the infant is presented is a control (i.e musical notes)
- If the infant likes the musical notes, they will suck for longer with a higher sucking rate. If they dislike the note, they continue sucking at the baseline rate or slower.
Studying Development
Preference Method
2
- When infants are presentd with two different stimuli, their attention is directed to one stimuli over the other.
- Generally not used until the researchers have determined if the infant can tell the difference between the two stimuli.
Studying Development
Competence-Performance
2
- An individual may fail a task not because they lack those cognitive abilities, but because they are unable to demonstrate those abilities.
- A researcher may strongly assume that failure to respond to your question means no preference.
Developmental Research Methods
Longitudinal Design
1.1
- A development reseaarch design in which the same indivudals are studied repeatedly over some subset of their lifespan.
EX. Testing the same people from age 5 until they are 75 y/o, tracking their development and the links between early to late life.
Developmental Research Methods
Drawbacks to Longitudinal Design
3
- Cost and time: expensive and time consuming
- Selective attrition: when people are more likely to drop out of a study than others, making sample non-representatie of the original poopulation.
- Practice effects: changes in partipant responses due to repreated testing.
Developmental Research Methods
Cross-Sectional Design
2.1
- A development research design in which individuals from different age groups are studied at the same point in time.
EX 30 Y/O do better than 50 Y/O, but not as good as 20 Y/O - As a result, researchers can formulate developmental trends according to age groups.
Developmental Research Methods
Drawbacks to Cross-Sectional Design
2
- Cannot distinguish age effect from generational effect
- Cannot directly assess indvidual develoment changes, where you are not really observing what happens as a person ages, but rather inferning trends in group data.
Hereditary Transmission
Conception
3
- Sperm meets ovum to form zygote
- Single cell contains 46 chromosomes, with 23 chrosmomes contributed by each parent.
- The chromosomes are made made of DNA whcih comprises the genes and chemical code for development (proteins)
Zygote
Monozygotic Twin
2
- AKA identical twin
- Genetically indentical because they come from the same sperm and ovum, which form one zygote and then split into two separate zygotes.
Zygote
Dizygotic Twins
2
- AKA fraternal twins
- Share 50% of genes because they come from two different sperm and ova, and start off as two different zygote.