Developmental Psych Flashcards
What is developmental psychology?
The study of what changes and what stays the same, across different periods of life
Two central questions
- What development happens in stages and what happens continuously
- How do nature and nurture influence development
Qualitative development
Stages, you can see a change in quality
Quantitative development
Continuous, development bit by bit
Nature and nurture
- What we inherit
- What we experience
Interplay between these two
Nature and nurture driven similarities
All humans share as they develop (e.g. pre-installed reflexes or hearing speech during a critical period)
Nature and nurture driven differences
Vary from person to person with development (e.g. birth weight or crawling development)
Reflexes
Automatic patterns of motor responses triggered by some type of sensory stimulation
Baby reflexes
Rooting reflex, sucking reflex, grasping reflex
Habituation
Decreased response to a repeated stimulus
Novelty-preference procedure
Demonstrates infants ability to perceive and respond: present –> observe habituation –> present old or new
Dishabituation
Increased response to new stimulus after habituating to the old
Motor development
Changes in the ability to coordinate and perform bodily movements
Rules for motor development
Head –> toe and centre –> periphery
Discipline of cognitive development
Changes in mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Piaget’s theory
understanding the world emerges in concept-units called schemas
Schema (and what is is used for)
A concept or mental model that represents our experiences, used to guide how we interpret new information
Assimilation
Use an existing schema
Accommodation (Developmental)
Revise a schema or create a new schema
Theory of mind
Ability to think about what others think, develops at approx age 5
Four cognitive stages
- Sensorimotor (0-2)
- Preoperational (2-7)
- Concrete operational (7-12)
- Formal operational (12+)
Social referencing
Relying on the facial expressions of caregivers as a source of information to inform reactions
Woodward and colleagues
infants at around 6 months pay more attention to the intention of an action rather than the action itself
Conservation
the idea that the physical properties of an object (e.g. mass, volume, number) remain constant despite changes in shape or form
Heuristic
Loosely defined rule that lets us solve problems quickly (e.g. children in pre-operational stage see height of water as an indication of volume)
When do children pass the conservation task?
Concrete operational (7-12). They can consider two aspect of an object at the same time and mentally transform and imagine the result
What capability develops at 18 months?
Self-awareness (i.e. recognition in a mirror)
Egocentrism
difficulty with thinking about how objects or situations are perceived by other people (exhibited by pre-operational children)
Gender socialization
the process by which people internalize social expectations and attitudes associated with their perceived gender
Gender schema
mental representation for the concept of gender including assumptions about how people with different genders are supposed to think, feel, and act (rigid for 3-5 year olds)
Gender constancy
the sense that a person’s gender identity remains consistent despite how they behave
