developmental psych

Question 1

why study child development?

Answer 1

• Raising children
• Choosing Social Policies
• Understanding Human Nature

Question 2

7 enduring themes

Answer 2

• Nature and nurture
• The active child
• continuity/discontinuity
• Mechanisms of developmental change
• The sociocultural context
• Individual differences
• Research and children’s welfare

Question 3

nature

Answer 3

refers to our biological endowment, especially the genes we receive from our parents

Question 4

nurture

Answer 4

refers to the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that influence development.

Question 5

The active child

Answer 5

• Children contribute to their own development early in life; their contributions increase as they grow older
• Attentional patterns
• Use of language
• Play

Question 6

Continuous development

Answer 6

• Age-related changes occur gradually
• Changes with age occur gradually, in small increments
• Development occurs skill by skill and task by task

Question 7

Discontinuous development

Answer 7

• age-related changes include occasional large shifts so that children of different ages seen qualitatively different (not just quantitatively different)

Question 8

Mechanisms of developmental change

Answer 8

• What actually causes the change we see?
• the interaction of genes and environment determines both what changes occur and when those changes occur

Question 9

The sociocultural context

Answer 9

• The physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child’s development
• Contexts of development differ within and between cultures

Question 10

Individual differences

Answer 10

Children’s genes, their treatment by other people, their subjective reactions to other people’s treatment of them, and their choice of environments all contribute to differences among children, even those within the same family.

Question 11

Research and children’s welfare

Answer 11

Child-development research yields practical benefits:
Helps in diagnosing children’s problems and help them overcome problems

Question 12

The scientific method

Answer 12

1. Choosing a question
2. Formulating a hypothesis
3. Testing the hypothesis
4. Drawing a conclusion

Question 13

Contexts for gathering data about children

Answer 13

Interviews
Naturalistic observation
Structured observation

Question 14

Clinical interviews

Answer 14

a procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers the interviewee provides; questions depend on the person’s responses

Question 15

structured interview

Answer 15

a research procedure in which all participants are asked the same questions

Question 16

naturalistic observation

Answer 16

• Used when primary goal of research is to describe how children behave in their usual environments
• Researcher goes to the child’s natural environment and records behaviour

Question 17

Limitation of naturalistic observation

Answer 17

-Hard to know what mechanisms actually influenced the behaviour of interest
- Many behaviours occur only occasionally in everyday environments

Question 18

Structured observation

Answer 18

• Involves presenting an identical situation to children and recording each child’s behaviour
• Enables direct comparisons of different children’s behaviours

Question 19

Limitations of structured observation

Answer 19

• Does not provide a natural situation
• Does not provide as much information about children’s subjective experiences

Question 20

General research designs

Answer 20

Correlational design
Experimental design

Question 21

Correlational design

Answer 21

• Gather info on individuals - without altering their experiences, not manipulating or exposing them to something different
• determine how variables are related to one another, variables may be related to one another, but one does not cause the other
• measured by the correlation coefficient

Question 22

genome

Answer 22

each person’s complete set of hereditary information

Question 23

epigenetic

Answer 23

the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment

Question 24

methylation

Answer 24

a biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is involved in regulating reactions to stress

Question 25

Reliability

Answer 25

The degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent

Question 26

Validity

Answer 26

Refers to the degree to which a test or experiment measures what it is intended to measure.

Question 27

Longitudinal Designs

Answer 27

Same children are studied twice or more over a substantial length of time

Question 28

Cross-Sectional Designs

Answer 28

Children of different ages are compared on a given behavior or characteristic over a short period of time.

Question 29

heritability

Answer 29

a statistical estimate of the proportion of the measured variance on a trait among individuals in a given population that is attributable to genetic differences among those individuals.

Question 30

Twin-Study Designs

Answer 30

Correlations for pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins on a trait of interest are compared to those of dizygotic (fraternal) twins.

Question 31

Adoption Studies

Answer 31

Researchers examine whether adopted children are more like their biological or their adopted relatives.

Question 32

Neurogenesis

Answer 32

the proliferation of neurons through cell division

Question 33

synaptogenesis

Answer 33

Each neuron forms synapses with thousands of other neurons

Question 34

synaptic pruning

Answer 34

the normal developmental process through which synapses that are rarely activated are eliminated.

Question 35

Plasticity

Answer 35

the capacity of the brain to be affected by experience.

Question 36

Experience Expectant

Answer 36

Normal wiring of the brain occurs as a result of experiences that every human who inhabits any reasonably normal environment will have (e.g.,language, visual stimuli). (universal)

Question 37

experience dependent

Answer 37

neural connections are created and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individual’s experience. (specific)

Question 38

ways that genes and environments combine

Answer 38

- Contribution of parents’ genotype to child’s genotype - Contribution of child’s genotype to child’s phenotype - Contribution of child’s environment to child’s phenotype - Influence of child’s phenotype on child’s environment

Question 39

Language comprehension

Answer 39

Refers to understanding what others say (or sign or write)

Question 40

Language production

Answer 40

Refers to actually producing (through speaking, signing, or writing) language to others.

Question 41

Overextension

Answer 41

Using one term to refer to other objects that may be similar or in the same category.

Question 42

Overregularization

Answer 42

Applying regular grammatical changes to irregular words. For example, using tooths instead of teeth

Question 43

dual representation

Answer 43

treating a symbolic artefact both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself (map)

Question 44

Critical Period Hypothesis

Answer 44

Sometime between age 5 and puberty, language acquisition becomes much more difficult and ultimately less successful

Question 45

holophrastic period

Answer 45

one-word utterances (up)

Question 46

telegraphic speech

Answer 46

two-word utterances

Question 47

Assimilation

Answer 47

the process by which people translate incoming information into a form that fits concepts they already understand.

Question 48

Accommodation

Answer 48

people adapt current schemes and create new schemes in response to new experiences

Question 49

piaget stages of development

Answer 49

- sensori-motor - pre-operational - concrete - formal