Exam 1 Flashcards
Childhood development explores three broad domains:
1) Physical development
2) Cognitive development
3) Emotional and social development
Organismic theory:
Psychological structures exist inside the child. Natural evolution of skills that come with maturation.
Continuous development:
skills are gradually added to what was there to begin with
Discontinuous development:
development takes place in stages. the belief that all children will follow in the same sequence
Plasticity:
open to change in response to influential experiences
Three Behaviorisms:
classical conditioning, operant conditions (reinforcers or punishments) and social learning
Piaget’s Four Stages:
1) Sensorimotor (Birth - 2) 2) Preoperational (2-7)
3) Concrete operational (7-11)
4) Formal Operational (11+)
3 points to Piaget’s Theory:
Cognitive-developmental theory: Development occurs in stages as children actively manipulate and explore the environment.
A child’s mental structures adapt to understand the external world and to achieve a sense of mental balance - equilibrium.
Children are active learners. Cognition.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory:
Focuses on how culture is transmitted to the next generation. Social interaction is necessary for children to acquire the ways of thinking and behaving to define a community’s culture.
Information processing:
Uses a digital computer as a metaphor for our thought processes. Emphasizes the study of attention, memory, problem-solving. Not a stage theory of development.
Longitudinal design:
Participants are studied repeatedly over an extended period of time.
What is the most widely discussed threat to the accuracy of longitudinal findings?
Cohort effects, in which cohorts are children born at the same time, who are influenced by particular cultural and historical conditions.
What is a more efficient strategy compared to the longitudinal design?
Cross-sectional: individuals of different ages are tested at the same point in time.
Which design is it that combines both longitudinal and cross-sectional designs?
sequential designs
What are directly observable characteristics called?
Phenotypes
What are the complex blend of genetic info that determine our species and influence all our unique characteristics?
Genotype
What are the rodlike structures that store and transmit genetic information?
Chromosomes
What are chromosomes made up of and how many chromosomes are there in a cell?
DNA and 23 pairs of chromosomes
What is contained in the chromosomes, totaling up to an amount of 20,000 to 100,000?
Genes, molecules of DNA, the blueprints for the development of the individual, tell the cells what to do.
What are gametes?
sex cells. seem in the male and ova in the female.
What is the process of cell division through which gametes are formed?
Meiosis
Difference between XX and XY pair of sex chromosomes:
Females have XX. Males have XY.