exam 2: development

Question 1

areas of development (3)

Answer 1

• physical: how our bodies function has an effect on our behavior and mental life; newborns do not have as much capacity as someone older; as our capacities change physically, it opens or closes the door on our psychological experience (behavior and mental life)
• cognitive: we think about and solve problems differently as we get older
• social development: as we get older, our ways of interacting with others changes

Question 2

major issues in developmental psychology (3 vs)

Answer 2

• stability vs. change: do our early personality traits persist throughout life? or do we assume different personalities as we age?
• continuity vs. stages: is development a gradual, consistent process? or does development occur through a sequence of distinct stages?
• nature vs. nurture: how does our genetic inheritance influence development? how does our experience affect development?

Question 3

cross-sectional vs longitudinal research (with advantages and disadvantages)

Answer 3

cross-sectional: people of different ages are assessed at the same time and their responses are compared; advantages: quick and easy method; disadvantages: relies on the correlational method (does not imply causation)
- longitudinal research: the same people are re-tested at different times in their lives to measure age-related changes; advantages: can understand the directionality of change among variables (allows investigators to assess change as a function of age); disadvantages: the method is labor-intensive and time-consuming (typically need to recruit large samples because people drop out over time for various reasons)

Question 4

habituation

Answer 4

the tendency for attention to a novel stimulus to wane over time; enables researchers to assess what infants see and remember (ex. increased heartrate and long gaze at a novel stimulus, but the intensity of these responses decreases over time)

Question 5

DeCasper and Spence (1986)

Answer 5

They brought pregnant mothers into the lab during the last six weeks of pregnancy. The mothers read aloud passages from two books. After the infants were born (three days old), they were brought into the lab and given headphones. The electronic pacifier, when sucked at different rates, would produce one story or the other. What they discovered is that the infants chose to hear the familiar story that their mother read to them in utero.

Question 6

DeCasper and Fifer (1980)

Answer 6

Infants prefer the familiar rhythms of their mother’s voice relative to an unfamiliar male voice.

Question 7

DeCasper and Sigafoos (1983)

Answer 7

They also prefer the familiar sound of the heartbeat, in particular, the rhythm of the mother’s heartbeat.

Question 8

reflexes

Answer 8

automatic, unlearned reactions to certain types of stimulation

Question 9

grasping vs rooting

Answer 9

grasping: when you press the infant’s palm, the infant will grasp the hand so hard that it can support its own body weight
rooting: if you touch an infant’s cheek, it will turn its head toward the finger and open its mouth (to feed)

Question 10

visual preference of an infant

Answer 10

eight inches away (distance from the mother’s breast to the mother’s face)

Question 11

Meltzoff and Moore, 1983

Answer 11

found that within three days of being born, infants show a tendency to mimic the facial gestures of others; automatic and universal tendency

Question 12

auditory preference of an infant

Answer 12

sound location, auditory discrimination; prefer mother’s voice over other female voices

Question 13

smell preference of an infant

Answer 13

infants are more attracted to their own mother’s smell and that of other lactating females relative to other nonlactating females and to males

Question 14

Wynn (1992)

Answer 14

Infants were five months old and looked at a puppet stage. They see either one or two Mickey Mouse dolls. Then, the stage and dolls are covered by a screen. Next, either one doll is added or one doll is subtracted. The infants see this mathematical equation. Finally, the screen is lowered so the infant can see how many dolls are on the stage. Sometimes, the correct number of dolls was on the stage. Other times, an incorrect number of dolls was on the stage. The study showed that the infants looked longer at the impossible, unexpected outcome.

Question 15

Sharon and Wynn (1998)

Answer 15

They habituated infants to watching a puppet jump three times over and over. What they found was that habituated infants look longer at a puppet that jumped only two times (unexpected outcome) rather than a puppet that jumped three times (expected, habituated outcome).

Question 16

Jean Piaget

Answer 16

most influential figure in the study of cognitive development; proposed that children aim to make sense of their experience (and are not passive recipients of information from the world around them), children are born as active, curious, and constructive thinkers who want to understand and make sense of the world around them

Question 17

schemas
assimilation
accommodation

Answer 17

• schemas: concepts or mental molds into which we pour our experiences
• assimilation: children try to fit new information into their preexisting schema
  accommodation: children modify their preexisting schema to fit new information

Question 18

cognitive stages (definition)

Answer 18

unvariant, universal set of stages that permit specific kinds of thinking (rates at which people move through these stages can differ)

Question 19

cognitive stages (list 4)

Answer 19

sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational

Question 20

sensorimotor stage
object permanence
ending the stage

Answer 20

• sensorimotor: from birth to two years of age; infants come to understand the world around them through their senses and actions.
• object permanence: an object exists only for the moment and only insofar that it is in direct sensory contact
• the stage ends when the child is able to remember objects that are no longer in view

Question 21

preoperational
conservation
egocentrism

Answer 21

• preoperational: from ages two to six years of age; children are too young to perform mental operations; they reason in an intuitive, prelogical manner
• conservation: the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the form of the object; children in this stage lack an understanding of this concept
• egocentrism: children in the preoperational stage have difficulty perceiving things from another person’s point of view

Question 22

concrete operational

Answer 22

from six to twelve years of age; children grasp the principle of conservation and become capable of logical reasoning

Question 23

formal operational

Answer 23

from twelve years of age; children can reason at a logical, hypothetical, abstract level (abstract thought)

Question 24

the strange-situation test

Answer 24

a separation and reunion procedure that is staged in a laboratory and designed to study different styles of attachment; children are coded based on how they react to separations and reunions with the mother

Question 25

styles of attachment (2/3)

Answer 25

• secure attachment: infants explore the environment when the mother is present; when the mother leaves, infants react with distress; the mother is greeted with waves, smiles, hugs, and kisses when she returns
• insecure attachment
• anxious: the infant clings to the mother; the mother has to leave and exits; the child cries when the mother leaves; when the mother returns, the kid responds with anger or indifference
• avoidant: the mother is there and the kid does not care; the mother leaves and the kid does not care; the mother returns and the kid does not care

Question 26

parenting styles (and how their children turn out) (3)

Answer 26

• authoritarian: parents that impose rules and expect obedience; they have kids who have less social skill and less self-esteem
• permissive: parents that submit to their children’s desires; they have kids who are more immature and more aggressive
• authoritative: parents that are demanding (as if they have expectations for their child), yet are also warm and responsive; they have kids who have high levels of self-esteem, self-reliance (not necessarily independence), and social confidence

Question 27

early vs current views on development

Answer 27

• early views on development: traits are established and set in childhood; for Sigmund Freud, our personality is shaped by the types of conflicts that we encounter in early childhood and how those conflicts are resolved, where that last critical conflict (last stage) occurs at about the age of six; Jean Piaget claimed that the ultimate stage of cognitive development occurs with puberty
• current views on development: human development is a lifelong process; infancy and childhood are in some ways formative

Question 28

adolescence

Answer 28

the period of transition between childhood and adulthood (about ages 13 to 20, but not set in stone); begins with a biological event, namely puberty, and culminates with a social event (independence from parents)

Question 29

World Wars I and II vs 1890s and 1930s (concepts of adolescence)

Answer 29

• World Wars I and II: young people were needed for factory work and for military service; teenagers were viewed as competent and responsible; adolescence was thought to end by age 16
• 1890s and 1930s: there were conditions of economic depression, and work was hard to find; teenagers were portrayed as incompetent; adolescence was thought to end at a later age

Question 30

rites of initiation to adolescence (African Thongas, Native Americans, United States)

Answer 30

• African Thongas: when boys reach puberty, they are beaten with clubs, stripped and shaved, exposed to cold, forced to eat unsavory foods, circumcised, and secluded for three months
• Native Americans: when girls menstruate for the first time, they are bathed, their bodies are painted by older women (elders), and they are isolated for four days
• United States: (Judeo-Christian) Confirmation, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah

Question 31

adolescence is marked by a(n)

Answer 31

cognitive growth spurt (our way of thinking, reasoning, and solving problems changes in a dramatic way; those who mature earlier score higher on intelligence tests)

Question 32

moral reasoning

Answer 32

the way people think about and try to solve moral dilemmas (issues of right and wrong) (see notes)

Question 33

Lawrence Kohlberg

Answer 33

stated that adolescence is a particularly rich time of life for moral development; was interested in studying different stages of moral thought; developed vignettes (hypothetical stories that are told) and told them to different age groups with the question “how should the story be resolved?” with no right or wrong answers; tried to understand how people of different ages reasoned through these situations in different ways

Question 34

stages of moral thought (list 3)

Answer 34

pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional

Question 35

pre-conventional stage of moral thought

Answer 35

typically before the age of 9 years; morality focuses on self-interest; moral dilemmas are solved in ways that satisfy self-serving motives; an action is deemed morally correct if it enables someone to avoid a punishment or to obtain a reward

Question 36

conventional stage of moral thought

Answer 36

typically entered by early adolescence; morality focuses on caring for others and upholding laws and social rules; reflect the laws of the land; norms or rules that are established by parents or other sources of authority; an action is deemed morally acceptable if it meets with social approval or if it maintains social order

Question 37

post-conventional stage of moral thought

Answer 37

not necessarily entered into but typically after the formal operations stage of cognitive development (teens, maybe earlier or later); morality focuses on people’s rights (not laws) and self-defined basic ethical principles; moral dilemmas are resolved based on abstract principles (i.e. equality, justice, value of life); an act is moral if it affirms one’s conscience, even if it violates the law

Question 38

support vs criticism of the stages of moral thought

Answer 38

• support: invariant sequence (as children and adolescents mature, they climb Kohlberg’s moral ladder in the predicted order)
• criticism: culturally biased, gender biased, limited to moral thought; theory says nothing about moral behavior

Question 39

Erik Erikson

Answer 39

the social task for adolescents is to form an identity; “The search for identity” (to take their past experiences, present experiences, and future ambitions, and to make sense of them into a clear sense of self)

Question 40

identity crisis

Answer 40

when forming and searching for identity, a lot of adolescents struggle to establish a sense of identity

Question 41

family relationships in adolescence (3)

Answer 41

• tension between adolescents and their parents in the midst of identity formation
• disengagement from their family
• transformation within their family

Question 42

peer relationships in adolescence

Answer 42

happens when adolescents move about of family networks; greater reliance on peers; more intimate than they were during early childhood

Question 43

images of adolescence (Aristotle, Socrates, G. Stanley Hall, modern stereotypes)

Answer 43

• Aristotle: talked about adolescents as heated by nature as are drunken men by wine
• Socrates: inclined to contradict their parents and to tyrannize their teachers
• G. Stanley Hall: (founders of American psychology) described adolescence as a time of storm and stress
• modern stereotypes: mood swings, identity crises, rebellion, anxiety, depression, drug use, suicide

Question 44

sources of difficulty during adolescence (3)

Answer 44

conflict with parents; risk-taking behavior; mood disruptions (exaggerated with stereotypes)

Question 45

aging and memory (recall tests and recognition)

Answer 45

• recall tests: require you to call from mind some bit of information (i.e. fill-in-the-blank); there is marked age-related decline
• recognition: (i.e. multiple choice) there is only minimal age-related decline (the information is there)

Question 46

neurocognitive bases of forgetting (why there is age-related decline sometimes) (sensory acuity and neural speed)

Answer 46

• sensory acuity: as people age, their eyesight and hearing abilities decline; likely to have a hard time remembering as a result
• neural speed: as people age, they process and react to information more slowly; affects their ability on a variety of cognitive tasks

Question 47

early beliefs about intelligence
fluid intelligence
crystallized intelligence

Answer 47

• early beliefs about intelligence: suggested that intelligence peaks during the early 20s then declines gradually up until age 50 then declines rapidly after 50; longitudinal research suggests that intelligence need not decline with age (because there are different types of intelligence)
• fluid intelligence: the ability to reason quickly and abstractly; the ability to solve problems with logic; the ability to mentally orient objects in 3D space; decreases slowly up until the age of 75 then declines rapidly after age 85
• crystallized intelligence: our accumulated factual knowledge, skill, and expertise (i.e. sheer size of vocabulary, ability to add or subtract); increases up until old age

Question 48

Erik Erikson’s stages of adulthood (list 3)

Answer 48

intimacy, generativity, integrity

Question 49

intimacy stage of adulthood

Answer 49

following our formation of an identity, young adults desire to connect with others in meaningful and close relationships

Question 50

generativity stage of adulthood

Answer 50

adults desire to contribute to the welfare of a new generation (at work, at home, and in the community)

Question 51

integrity stage of adulthood

Answer 51

older adults desire to have a feeling that their life has been worthwhile; serenity and self-fulfillment; without integrity, we tend to experience regret and despair; really critical to be able to evaluate someone’s life as well-lived

Question 52

life satisfaction

Answer 52

does not vary by age; about 75-80 percent of adults report that they are satisfied with their life