exam 1 notes

Question 1

Erikson versus Freud

Answer 1

Erikson - the foundational theory for developmental psychology, is discontinuous and qualitative, continues for all of life, we keep building from stage to stage (8-9), we have psychosocial crises at each stage
Freud - believes in the sexist theory that focus on sexual drives not biology, an emphasis on early childhood experiences, the theory that we like our mothers and fathers based on “biological” drives

Question 2

how are Erikson and Freud similar

Answer 2

• they both study the stages of life -> that development in life occurs in stages
• both show that childhood plays an important role in shaping adult personality

Question 3

biggest difference between Freud and Erikson

Answer 3

Freud believes in psychosexual development, and Erikson believes in a psychosocial development

Question 4

Nature

Answer 4

genetics and where we come from, by genetic inheritance and biological factors.
- focus on genetic hormonal, and neurochemical explanations for behavior
- nature is more than just genes, even when we know someone genes anything can happen
- Statistically most of the time if two good athletes have kids most of the time they will have athletic kids, but not always. Same goes for ugly people maybe having beautiful kids and vice versa.

Question 5

nurture

Answer 5

is like an influence of outside factors like the environment, and the exposure or experiences of an individual
- all behavior is learned from the environment through conditioning
- with nurture the idea is that a child’s environment may influence they way they grew up, and who they grow to be.
- you can’t necessarily take a child and turn them into whomever you want them to be

Question 6

what are all of the steps of the research method/research papers?

Answer 6

identifying a research question
reviewing existing literature
developing a hypothesis
designing the study collecting data
analyzing data
interpreting results
drawing conclusions
and writing the research paper (which includes an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections)

Question 7

why is development lifelong

Answer 7

development is lifelong because it occurs for the entire life, and takes on all forms

Question 8

multi-dimensional development

Answer 8

has many different domains; physical, cognitive, emotional, social, etc.

Question 9

multi-directional development

Answer 9

know that development happens in many directions. Kids shape their parents and siblings shape each other.
- kids personalities and mannerisms can change parents. Sometimes children change a parent the parent may decide they do not want children anymore. We all shape each other

Question 10

plasticity in development

Answer 10

neuroplasticity - the brain’s ability to change and adapt dependent on physical damage, hard experiences, psychological and emotional trauma.
- our learning and experiences change our brains.

Question 11

growth in development

Answer 11

the ability to learn new things, have new abilities, and grow as a person

Question 12

maintenance in development

Answer 12

the ability to maintain the abilities you have and hold steady. This is the same for cognitive and physical abilities. It’s good to grow but sometime all we can do is maintain

Question 13

loss in development

Answer 13

it happens, how we deal with it, come back from it, and learn from it

Question 14

multi-disciplinary development

Answer 14

• being able to unlock all of the mysteries of development throughout various stages of life
  
  • medicine, chemistry, history, ecology, communication, etc

Question 15

contextual development

Answer 15

our growth and development is very specific to our own circumstances and aspects of our lives
- exposures to things, experiences, people, lives, languages/cultures, locations, etc.

Question 16

continuity

Answer 16

continuity: we get older, we get taller, we become more of what we are, we change in
weight, we change in verbal development

Question 17

discontinuity

Answer 17

• things like cognitive development (brain shifts in the way you think; may not
  be more of something but a different stage shift where the brain does something different.
  Not always learning more, but learning in a different way) Ex: addition is hard but then
  learning the concept of subtraction. Puberty: disrupts everything and changes so much

Question 18

nature

Answer 18

nature is more of the genetics and where we come from, by genetic inheritance and biological factors.
- focus on genetic, hormonal, and neurochemical explanations of behavior

Question 19

nurture

Answer 19

Nurture is like an influence of outside factors like the environment, and the exposure or experiences of an individual
- all behavior is learned from the environment through conditioning

Question 20

what happens with just nurture

Answer 20

◦With nurture the idea is that a child’s environment may influence the way they grow up, and
who they grow to be. “That you can take a child and turn them into whomever and however
you want them to be” not necessarily true.

Question 21

what happens with just nature

Answer 21

◦With just nature people may assume that only environment matters, and if you grew up with a bad parent you may be a bad parent. Or if parents don’t teach us right that we will be destined to not do well.. Maybe even that only people who are genetically fit should possess
the ability to reproduce.
- can lead to us not to think about experiences on top of genes. Make us not realize that genetics and a person’s experiences influence their personality

Question 22

Scarr’s passive interaction

Answer 22

‣ Passive -> not your own genes but your parents genes. Your context and abilities are
based partially on your parents genes. You environment was shaped by the environment
and behaviors based on your genes.

Question 23

Scarr’s evocative interaction

Answer 23

‣ Evocative -> based on who you are from the very start each person has their own unique
way of interacting with the world. Some evoke different responses. Pretty babies are
more likely to get a different and more reactions than that of a uglier baby. Those that
may be more interactive, make eye contact, and look around from the start as a baby
may get more reactions and responses from people around them.

Question 24

Scarr’s active (niche Picking) interaction

Answer 24

‣ Active (niche-picking) -> Based on genes but a combination of evocative and passive
interactions by around middle school you start getting into active. By this time this is
when people start niche-picking and not only finding who they are, but if they are an
athlete, nerd, leader, or what they do.

Question 25

Robert Plomin

Answer 25

◦Age, race, gender, family income, what school you go to, where you live.
‣ This is the shared environment in families.
◦What really makes sense are the non-shared environments in families
‣ Who’s the favorite child, age differences, behaviors. These small differences ex:
individual is a good athlete, but the older sibling is an even better athlete. the small
differences do better at showing who we are.
- believes that the analysis of DNA can help predict individual characteristics
- Plomin argues that genes largely shape our personalities and that the latest science is too compelling to ignore

Question 26

brofenbrenner’s microsystem

Answer 26

family, health services, school, peers, church group,
neighborhood play area. Things you may see every day or on a regular basis
* If something is not on a regular basis it may not be part of the microsystem. if it is
this scenario it may more likely be your

Question 27

Brofenbrenner’s mesosystem

Answer 27

relationships between the things in the microsystem
and the exosystem. Interactions between parents/guardian with teachers, relationship
parents have with each other or relationship of a parent with a child’s friends parents.

Question 28

Brofenbrenner’s exosystem

Answer 28

These are less direct and are things that are in relation with the mesosystem. Links between a social setting in which the individual does
Friends of family, neighbors, mass media, social welfare services,
legal services. Things out there that kind of influence you but aren’t very important to daily life.

Question 29

Brofenbrenner’s macrosystem

Answer 29

The attitudes and ideologies of the culture. Things that are not common in all parts of the world.
the culture in which an individual lives

Question 30

in Erikson’s theory what does each stage have

Answer 30

each stage has a crisis which is later resolved in some way before moving on to the next stage

Question 31

skinner’s positive and negative reinforcement

Answer 31

positive - something is given to make the behavior keep going or make it better
- giving a baby positively reinforces their behavior and teaches them that if they want a pacifier they should cry
negative - when we increase something happening by taking something away
- for a parent this may be: the baby won’t stop crying so the parent gives them a pacifier and they stop

Question 32

in operant conditioning what is reinforcement defined by

Answer 32

an increase in behavior

Question 33

in operant conditioning what is punishment defined by

Answer 33

• anything that can decrease behavior
• anything that stops the behavior, but doesn’t teach the proper one
  
  • positive -> spanking
  • negative -> timeout corners

Question 34

rules for operant conditioning

Answer 34

• always use reinforcement first
  
  • think positively
• never use a punishment without reinforcement first
  
  • make sure reinforcement is more common than punishment
• use social rather than tangible reinforcers
  
  • make them social and/or small
• make consequences consistent

Question 35

schedules of reinforcement - continuous

Answer 35

giving something every single time something happens, but can sometimes backfire because people can learn to manipulate this

Question 36

schedules of reinforcement - intermittent

Answer 36

every once in a while doing something, but on a schedule
- every 5 times

Question 37

schedules of reinforcement - random

Answer 37

the person never know when it will happen but you do

Question 38

implications for personality

Answer 38

language choices
- we make random sounds and people reinforce this to turn it into words. We learn from this
emotional expressions
- often if a boy cries they are asked if they are mad. If a girl cries they are asked if they are sad or scared
habits and preferences
- we manipulate these from a young age
avoidant behavior and phobias
- if something bad happens of we fear something we may avoid is more. the more it is avoided the more negatively reinforced it gets. May turn into a phobia

Question 39

the three goals of psychology

Answer 39

describe
predict/control
explain