Developmental psychology

Question 1

What are the key issues when talking about developmental psychology?

Answer 1

• Sources of development (nature/nurture)
• Plasticity (sensitive, critical period)
• Continuity vs Discontinuity (nativism, qualitative, quantitative changes)
• Individual differences (Personality, Intelligence)

Question 2

Who are tow researchers associated with these approaches;
- Sociocultural theory
- Constructivist theory

Answer 2

Sociocultural - Vygotsky
Constructivist - Piaget

Question 3

What are seen as the 4 criteria when studying development?

Answer 3

• Objectivity
• Replicability
• Reliability
• Validity

Question 4

What does ‘primary intersubjectivity mean’?

Answer 4

Primary intersubjectivity - a dyadic ( 2 person) encounter in which infants reach out to a person communicatively with the goal to connect with her, subject-to-subject.

Question 5

What is meant by the ‘cohort effect’?

Answer 5

Cohort effect - differences in abilities or experiences of groups of people who were born at different points in history

To bypass this issue psychologists may look to a longitudinal design

Question 6

What is another way that can be used for measuring infants perceptual abilities and who proposed this idea?

Answer 6

Visual Habituation technique
this technique makes use of the fact that after a period of exposure to visual stimuli infants begin to habituate to them (they look at them less than they did initially )

proposed ny Fantz 1964

Question 7

What are some interpretations when talking about face perceptions in new born infants?

Answer 7

• One interpretation is that infants looked longer at schematic faces because of the symmetry of the features
• Another was that infants preferred faces that were more complex

this was from Fantz 1961 study were he tried to show face preference in young children and how infants discriminated them from other stimuli in the environment