Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Teratogen
Substance that interferes with normal prenatal development (alcohol, some drugs, radiations…).
Developmental psychology
Looks at how we change over our lifespans, in terms of changes and continuities.
Fetal alcohol syndrome
Thin upper lip, smooth philtrum, small eye openings, mental retardation
(Basic) prenatal development
Zygote–> embryo (differentiation of cells)–> fetus (from 9weeks on)
Early psychological developments: hearing language sounds and mother’s voice while still in the womb
Infant development
Born with instincts (careful about bright light and sharp objects) and reflexes (rooting reflex: when you rub an infant’s cheek, it will turn to the side and try to suck); further bond with the mother.
Harlow’s experiment on dependency in monkeys
Baby monkeys raised with their real mothers and other monkey playmates develop into happy, secure adults.
Babies raised with a real mother but no playmates are more fearful and aggressive.
Those raised without their real mothers have trouble learning to socialize when returning to communal cages.
Those raised without both their real mothers and playmates have lifelong social impairments and confusion.
Harlow’s experiment showed that love and comfort are non-physical important needs to normal development.
Piaget’s definition of adaptation (assimilation + accommodation)
Adaptation is the way children learn and categorize the world. Together, assimilation and accommodation work to help children learn quickly and with increasing sophistication.
Assimilation: allows children to gather information quickly and to interact with the world in ways for which they are best developmentally suited.
Accommodation: helps children develop more sophisticated systems of categorizing information, since new and modified schemas are created in response to objects not fitting.
Piaget’s 4-stage model of cognitive development
Sensorimotor stage (0-2): babies learn about the world through senses; learn object permanence at around 8 months.
Pre-operational stage (2-7): egocentricity; gradually learn that other people think differently than they; initial stage of using language and abstract thinking.
Concrete operational stage (7-11): more capable of thinking logically; acquire cognitive skills such as conservation, which is changing the outer form of an object does not necessarily change its quantity.
Formal operational stage (11/12 and over): acquire abstract reasoning.
Piaget believed his stages were universal and progressed from start to finish with no backtracking.
L. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
Pre-conventional level: based on direct consequences to the individual who is perpetrating the morally questionable act. Stage1: try to avoid punishment; stage2: self-interest.
Conventional level (adolescents): based on wanting to please, to be accepted by others. Stage3: getting people to like us; stage4: maintaining a functioning society by recognizing that laws are more important than the individual needs.
Post-conventional level (not all adults): based on a sense of justice. Stage5: achieving the most good for the most number of people; stage6: ethical principles
Opponents to this theory (such as Carol Gilligan) claimed that it is too focused on boys.
Parenting styles
Authoritarian parents: very demanding
Permissive parents: very responsive
Neglectful parents: …
Authoritative parents: balanced mix of responsiveness and demanding ness. Children from authoritative parents tend to have higher self-esteem, happiness, motivation, discipline, and success in life.
Erikson’s stages of identity formation
8 stages (4 childhood, 1 adolescence, 3 adulthood) for building a psychosocial identity, with a conflict between two forces in each stage:
Oral sensory stage: trust vs mistrust
Muscular-anal stage: autonomy vs shame/doubt
Locomotor stage: initiative vs guilt
Latency stage: industry vs inferiority
Adolescence stage: identity vs identity crisis
Young adulthood: intimacy vs isolation
Middle adulthood: generativity vs stagnation
Late adulthood: ego integrity vs despair
Opponents accuse Erikson’s theory of being too broad, vague, and impossible to falsify.
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
Looks at the important contributions that society makes to individual development; stresses the interactions between developing people and the culture in which they live; Lev Vygotsky believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large were responsible for the development of higher order functions; every function appears twice: inter-psychologically and intra-psychologically.
