Developmental Psychology

Question 1

What is Developmental Psychology?

Answer 1

• study of changes in behavior and mental processes over the life course
• prenatal to aging
• caught in Nature-Nuture dichotomy
• how development happens scientifically

Question 2

Early Development

Answer 2

• focus today
  1. Prenatal
  2. Infancy: neonatal reflexes, early social interactions, attachment, temperament

Question 3

Prenatal Development

Answer 3

• a huge amount of development takes place before birth
  1. Zygote: weeks 1 and 2
  2. Embryo: weeks 3 - 8
  3. Fetus: weeks 9 - 38 or birth

Question 4

Teratogens

Answer 4

• substances that negatively impact development that are int he environment
• Lead: found to be toxic; in water, paint, saw dust, metal
• cigaret smokes, pharmaceuticals, insecticides
• alcohol: causes flat nose and no upper lip
• PCB’s: stabilizer that stays in your system

Question 5

Neonatal Reflexes

Answer 5

• important reflexes that babies develop naturally
• breathing, sucking, swallowing
• rooting: if you touch a baby around the mouth, they will turn its head to the object
• moro: if you pretend to drop the baby, its arms and legs extend out to grab onto something
• grasping: if you place you finger in their palm, they will grasp it
• lack of reflexes may indicate neurological problems
• many reflexes disappear over the first few months; you start to develop to the adapt to the environment

Question 6

Early Social Interaction

Answer 6

• asks the question: are very young infants ready to be social? is it natural?
• evidence that babies imitate reactions
• the older they get, the more sophisticated their imitations
• starts as early as hours after birth

Question 7

Attachment

Answer 7

• mother-infacnt bi-directional bond
• why do infants become attached?
• is it because their mother is the source of food?
• studies found that satisfaction and comfort leads to emotional attachment

Question 8

Harry Harlow and Attachment

Answer 8

• showed that comfort is what babies seek

- attachment doesn’t come from feeding

Question 9

Konrad Lorenz and Attachment

Answer 9

• said attachment is instinctive behaviors

- proximity seeking: babies will attach to anyone near them

Question 10

Human Attachment Experiment

Answer 10

1. mom and infant in a lab room
2. a stranger enters and greets them
3. stranger and mom leave
4. child cries in protest and the mother enters again to comfort the child
5. the child either accepts the moms comfort and calms down OR keeps crying even with the return of their mom

Question 11

Secure vs. Insecure

Answer 11

• the quality of the child reaction to the return of their mother shows the relationship they have with their mom
• Secure: mom is always there to respond, confident relationship, comfort
• Insecure: mom is unreliable to always respond; sometimes there, sometimes not there; confused

Question 12

Infant Temperament

Answer 12

• stable traits that predict aspect of personality in babies
  1. Prevailing mood
  2. Intensity of emotional response
  3. Threshold of response
  4. Extroversion/Introversion

Question 13

Jerome Kagan and Infant Temperament

Answer 13

• children who seek less social input lead to them being more introverted
• children who seek more social input lead to them being more extroverted

Question 14

Early Cognitive Development: Innate Ideas

Answer 14

• Jean Jacques Rousseau
• we are born with a sense of the world
• innate knowledge about the world
• fundamental properties of geometry, basic object properties (identity, permanence, transformation)
• categorical structures: animate, inanimate, liquids, solids

Question 15

Early Cognitive Development: Learned Ideas

Answer 15

• John Locke
• all concepts and knowledge are construction the baby has discovered
• the world could be radically different depending on where you grow up

Question 16

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Answer 16

• Jean Piaget was a stage theorist
  1. Sensorimotor: 0 to 2 years
  2. Pre-operational: 2 to 7 years
  3. Concrete Operational: 7 to 12 years
  4. Formal Operational: 12+ years
• described knowledge acquisition as a growth process
• driven by interactions with the environment
• constrained by biological and body properties

Question 17

Piaget and Object Concept

Answer 17

• children develop a concept of object that includes permanence: think things just vanish
• Assimilation: taking in of the environment
• Accommodation: when you take in the environment and you change to fit in

Question 18

Piaget and A-not-B error

Answer 18

1. a child searches for a hidden object
2. don’t know the difference between location and identity
3. always look in pace A for an object, even if they saw you move it to place B
4. Argued this error is due to the incomplete conceptual separation of object and location

Question 19

Piaget and Pre-operational Period

Answer 19

• children begin to represent the world mentally
• develop rules for operating on representations
• transformations: conservations of number

Question 20

Piaget and Concrete/Formal Operations

Answer 20

• later on, children develop sophisticated means for operating of representations
• Concrete: physical material facilitate cognition
• Formal: logical relations dominate

Question 21

Beyond Piaget

Answer 21

• many researches questions Piaget’s claims
• development of object concept
• Renee Baillargeon: children will look longer at an object than expected
• Rise of Information Processing Approaches: mind as computer (memory, process, executive control)

Question 22

Executive Control

Answer 22

• information processing theories propose that central controller runs much of cognition
• measures in a number of ways
  1. Delay of gratification
  2. Predicts success in a number of domains
  3. Test scores, attention, social relations over very long periods

Question 23

Social Cognition: Egocentrism

Answer 23

• Piaget

- lack of perspective talking

Question 24

Social Cognition: Three Mountain Task Perspective

Answer 24

• either the central mountain is in the back or the central mountains in the front
• the child has to figure out what the person in front of them is seeing
• children have trouble doing this
• they can’t identify or understand that others have different prospect other than their own

Question 25

Social Cognition: Theory of Mind

Answer 25

• developed by Josef Perner
• false belief tasks
• children can’t hold a false belief for someone else
• what children think are real for them and they think it must be real for everyone
• they don’t know about other peoples realities

Question 26

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reason

Answer 26

• interested in structure of moral reasoning people go through
• the process not the value of morals
• Heinz Dilemma: should he have broken into the store to steal drugs for his wife?
• there are 3 categories and 6 stages that children go through with moral reasoning

Question 27

Categories of Moral Reasoning

Answer 27

• Pre-conventional
  1. Obeying rules and avoiding punishment
  2. Individualism and making a fair exchange
• Conventional
  3. Pleasing other
  4. Following rules to maintain social order
• Post-conventional
  5. Recognizing that rules have limits
  6. Universal ethical principles