Development

Question 1

What is Developmental Psychology?

Answer 1

The scientific
study of how and why human beings
change over the course of their life.

Question 2

What is meant by a “cells to society” approach?

Answer 2

-Inherently interdisciplinary largely quantitative scientific enterprise
-multiple levels of analysis approach on our over time(from cells to society) Child is influenced by the environment and vice versa. -Studying individuals will start at the individual’s basic characteristics and move to the surrounding influences.

Question 3

What are the three primary domains of developmental psychology?

Answer 3

1. Social and Emotional Development
2. Cognitive (including Language and
   Perceptual) Development
3. Biological and Physical Development
   (including puberty)

Question 4

Why might we be interested in acquiring a developmental perspective, as distinct from a psychological perspective?

Answer 4

recognizes that personality and psychopathology are characterized by both consistency and change across the lifespan.

Question 5

Origin of developmental science

Answer 5

Embryology
Child study and welfare movement
Birth of named discipline of psychology.

Question 6

What are the four historical periods of research on human development?

Answer 6

Emergence (1880-1919) (darwin), Early period (1920 - 1946), Middle Era (modern) (1947 - 1990s ) Transitional era

Question 7

Preformationism?

Answer 7

-Development is continuous (stability is default)
Organisms develop from miniature versions of themselves
- Development is continuous
- Nature (often), nativists (later interactionists)
- Selection
- Ultimate causes and ultimate mechanisms
- Early is important
- Intervention is tough

Question 8

Epigenesis?

Answer 8

-Development is discontinuous (change is default)
Epigenesis (aka neoformationism) is the process by
which animals, plants, and fungi develop from an egg,
seed, or spore through a sequence of steps in which
cells differentiate and organs form

Question 9

What is maturation?

Answer 9

Maturation:
- Normative changes in social and emotional behavior
Heredity
- Individual differences in social and emotional behavior

Question 10

What are the two grand theories about nurture? How are they different from each other?

Answer 10

Behaviorism
- Focus on behavior
Psychoanalytic Theory
-Focus on internal life

Question 11

Does context matter?

Answer 11

Boys:
externalizing,
drinking/drug,
academic
failure
Conger et al., 1992, 1993
Girls:
internalizing,
loneliness,
decreased
prosocial beh.

Question 12

What is Bronfrenbrenner’s Ecological Model?

Answer 12

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory views child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values, laws, and customs.

Question 13

What are some of the key issues that the field of Developmental Psychology has focused on?

Answer 13

Transactions between organism (developing
children) and their experiences
 Contributions of (early or earlier) experience
 Nature and role of emotional and
cognitive states/processes