Exam 1 Chapter 1 Flashcards
Any perspective explaining why people act the way they do; allow us to predict behavior and also suggest how to intervene to improve behavior.
Theory
Biological or genetic causes of development.
Nature
Environmental causes of development.
Nurture
Believed that we could not study feelings and thoughts because inner experience could not be observed
The Original Blockbuster “Nurture” Theory (Watson and B.F. Skinner)
The original behavioral worldview that focused on charting and modifying only “objective” visible behaviors.
Traditional behaviorism
Refers to our birth group, the age group with whom we travel through life
Cohort
According to traditional behaviorists, the law of learning that determines any voluntary response.
Operant conditioning
Behavioral term for reward.
Reinforcement
A behavioral worldview that emphasizes that people learn by watching others and that our thoughts about the reinforcers determine our behavior. It focuses on charting and modifying people’s thoughts.
Cognitive behaviorism (Social learning theory)
Launched by Albert Bandura
Learning by watching and imitating others.
Modeling
According to cognitive behaviorism, an internal belief in our competence that predicts whether we initiate activities or persist in the face of failures, and predicts the goals we set.
Self-efficacy
the roots of emotional problems lay in repressed (made unconscious) feelings from early childhood. Moreover, “mothering” during the first five years of life determines adult mental health.
Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud argued that which three hypothetical structures define personality?
Id, ego, and superego
Present at birth, is the mass of instincts, needs, and feelings we have when we arrive in the world.
Id
Occurs during early childhood and has to do when the conscious, rational part of our personality emerges. Functions involve thinking, reasoning, planning - fulfilling our id desires in realistic ways.
Ego
The moral arm of our personality - exists in opposition to the id’s desires
Superego
What did Freud argue about what drives human life?
sexual feelings (which he called libido)
Theory formulated by John Bowlby centering on the crucial importance to our species’ survival of being closely connected with a caregiver during early childhood and being attached to a significant other during all of life.
Attachment theory
Theory or worldview highlighting the role that inborn, species-specific behaviors play in human development and life.
Evolutionary psychology
Field devoted to scientifically determining the role that hereditary forces play in determining individual differences in behavior.
Behavioral genetics
Behavioral genetic research strategy, designed to determine the genetic contribution of a given trait, that involves comparing identical twins with fraternal twins (or with other people).
Twin study
Behavioral genetic research strategy, designed to determine the genetic contribution to a given trait, that involves comparing adopted children with their biological and adoptive parents.
Adoption study
Behavioral genetic research strategy that involves comparing the similarities of identical twin pairs adopted into different families, to determine the genetic contribution to a given trait.
Twin/adoption study
The nature-interacts-with-nurture principle that our genetic temperamental tendencies produce certain responses from other people.
Evocative factors
The principle that people affect one another, or that interpersonal influences flow in both directions.
Bidirectionality
The nature-interacts-with-nurture principle that our genetic temperamental tendencies cause us to choose to put ourselves into specific environments.
Active forces
The extent to which the environment is tailored to our biological tendencies and talents.
Person-environment fit
Research field exploring how early life events alter the outer cover of our DNA, producing lifelong changes in health and behavior.
Epigenetics
Like Bowlby, believed in psychoanalytic theory; but rather than emphasizing sexuality, argued that our basic motivations center on becoming an independent self and relating to others
Erik Erikson Psychosocial theory
Who is called the father of lifespan development?
Erik Erikson
Jean Piaget’s principle that from infancy to adolescence, children progress through four qualitatively different stages of intellectual growth.
Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory
In Jean Piaget’s theory, the first step promoting mental growth, involving fitting environmental input to our existing mental capacities.
Assimilation
In Piaget’s theory, enlarging our mental capacities to fit input from the wider world.
Accommodation
The baby manipulates objects to pin down the basics of physical reality.
Sensorimotor Ages 0-2
Children’s perceptions are captured by their immediate appearances. “What they see is what is real.”
Preparations Ages 2-7
Children have a realistic understanding of the world. Their thinking is really on the same wavelength as adults. While they can reason conceptually about concrete objects, however, they cannot think abstractly in a scientific way.
Concrete operations Ages 7-12
Reasoning is at its pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible, fully adult. The person’s full cognitive human potential has been reached.
Formal operations Ages 12+
An all-encompassing outlook on development that stresses the need to embrace a variety of approaches, and emphasizes the reality that many influences affect development.
Developmental systems approach
