Instuderingsfrågor Utvecklingspsykologi

Question 1

Describe the three basic issues in development. What does lifespan developmental psychology have to say about these issues? As you learn more about development, identify which issue a research finding is meant to address.

Answer 1

three basic issues, first it the course of development continuous or discontinuous?Second, does one course of development characterize all children, or are there many possible courses? theerd, what are the roles of genetic and environmental factors-nature and nurture-in development?

Question 2

What is a “sensitive” period of development? When are sensitive periods most likely? Give two examples of sensitive periods, in terms of the timing and the development that should take place at that age/developmental period.

Answer 2

A sensitive period is a time that is optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences. However, its boundaries are less well-defined than those of a critical period. Development can occur later, but it is harder to induce.

Question 3

What is an epigenetic effect? How does epigenesis operate to change the development of offspring?

Answer 3

Accumulating evidence reveals that the relationship between heredity and environment is not a one-way street, from genes to environment to behavior. Rather, like other system influences considered in this and the previous chapter, it is bidirectional: Gene affect children’s behavior and experiences, but their experience and behavior also affect gene expression. Stimulation- both internal to the child and external to the child- modifies gene activity. Researchers call this view of the relationship between heredity and environment the epigenetic framework.

Question 3

Describe infants’ states of arousal. How much time, roughly, do newborns spend in each state? How do these states change as they grow older? What affects patterns of arousal?

Answer 3

Between birth and two years the organization of sleeping and wakefulness change substantially the total sleep time to declines slowly the average two-year-old needs 12 to 13 hours per day. But periods of sleep and wakefulness become fewer but the longer the sleep-wake pattern increasingly come from circadian rhythm or a 24-hour schedule.

Question 4

Describe infant crying—what are some variations in cries that help people around infants understand what the crying means?

Answer 4

Crying in the first way that babies communicate letting parents know they need food comfort and stimulation. During the weeks after birth all babies have some pierced when they are difficult to consoled. But the most of the time the nature of crying combined with the experience that led up to it helps guide parents towards its cause. The baby’s cry is a complex auditory stimulus that varies and intensive from one birth to a message of all out the stress. As early as the first few weeks infants can be identified by The Unique vocal signature of their cries which helps parents locate their baby from a distance.

Question 5

What are some ways to soothe a crying baby?

Answer 5

Techniques to soothe a crying baby. Talk softly or play rhythmic sounds, offer pacifier, massage the baby’s body, swaddle the baby, flip the baby to the shoulder in rock or walk, take the baby for a short car ride or walk in a baby carriage swing the baby in a cradle, combines several of the methods just listed and or let the baby cry for short.

Question 6

What is the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment? How is it used?

Answer 6

Neonatal behavioral assessment scale evaluates the baby’s reflexes muscle state state changes responsiveness to physical and social stimulus and our reactions

Question 7

What is habituation? How is it assessed by Brazelton? How is habituation used in research to understand development?

Answer 7

Habituation refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of a response to repetitive stimulation. heart rate and respiratory rate may all decline indicating a loss of interest once that this has occurred a new stimulus a change in the room I meant cause of death habit rated responsive to return to high-level an increase called recovery. For example when you walk through a familiar space you notice things are new or different I recently hung picture on the wall or a piece of furniture that has been moved the habituation and Recovery makes learning more efficient by focusing our attention on those aspects of the environment we know least about.

Question 8

Name and describe the reflexes of infants? Which reflexes persist? What do researchers think are the purposes of the reflexes?
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Answer 8

Reflexes: Eye blink, Rooting, Sucking, Swimming, Moro, Palmar grasp, Tonic neck, Stepping and Babinski.

Some reflexes have survival value. the rooting reflex helps a breastfed baby find the mother’s nipple. The swimming reflex helps a baby who is accidentally dropped into water stay afloat. Other reflexes probably helped babies survived during our evolutionary past.

Question 9

What are some qualities of infant crying? What are some reasons why infants cry? What qualities of crying help caregivers figure out why an infant is crying?

Answer 9

The babies cry is a complex auditory stimulus that varies in intensity from a whisper whimper to a message of all out the struts. Young infants usually cry because of physical needs hunger is the most, the babies also cry in response to temperature change when addressing a sudden noise or painful stimulus duck an infant.

Question 10

What are gross motor movements? What are fine motor movements?

Answer 10

Gross motor development refers to control over actions that help infants get around in the environment such as crawling standing and Walking. Fine motor development has to do with smaller movements such at reaching and grasping.

Question 11

Describe the general sequence of the fine motor skill of picking up an object with the fingers—from infant reflexes on.

Answer 11

prereaching newborn, ulnar grasp three to four months, transferring objects from hand to hand 4-5 months, Pincer grasp 9-months.

Question 12

Describe the somatosensory system (including the sensations we call “touch” and pain) and its development during infancy—from newborn to about 2 years of age. When it comes to infant pain, how can it be relieved?

Answer 12

The senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing are well-developed at birth. Newborns use their palms to distinguish the shapes of small objects. They are also highly sensitive to pain and prefer sweet tastes. Around 4 months, liking for the salty taste emerges and probably supports acceptance of solid foods. Newborns orient toward the odor of their own mother’s amniotic fluid and that of the lactating breast responses that help them identify their caregiver and the locate an appropriate food source.

Question 13

Describe the development of the other senses during infancy, from what newborns can perceive to what they are able to do at about 2 years of age. Which senses seem to be the most developed at birth? What senses seem to be the least developed at birth?

Answer 13

newborns can distinguish almost all speech sounds. They prefer listening to slow high-pitched expressive voices,to their own mothers voice.
vision is the least developed of the newborn’s senses. As the eye and visual centers in the brain develop during the first few months, focusing ability, visual acuity, scanning , tracking and color perception improve rapidly.

Question 14

What is intermodal perception? Describe its development from birth to first year. How does intermodal perception promote infants’ development?

Answer 14

Infant’s remarkable capacity to engage in intermodal perception enables them to combine information across sensory modalities.Detection of amodal sensory properties, such as rate, rhythm, duration, intensity, temporal synchrony, and texture and shape, seems to provide the basis for detecting more specific intermodal relationships. Intermodal perception is a fundamental ability that fosterns all aspects of the psychological development, including perception of the physical world and the social and language processing.

Question 15

Describe the two trends in physical development. How do they change across childhood and adolescence?

Answer 15

In childhood physical growth follows cephalocaudal and proximodistal trends. During puberty, growth proceeds in the reverse direction and sex differences in body proportions appear. Body fat increase quickly during the first nine months, then rapidly again at adolescence for girls. Muscle accumulates slowly until puberty, when it rises dramatically, especially for boys.

Question 16

What is the “secular trend” in physical and pubertal growth? What causes this trend? What does it look like across different cultures?

Answer 16

Means changes in body size from one generation to the next, have occurred in industrialized nations. In Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, USA and nearly all european countries, most children today are taller and heavier than their parents and grandparents were as children. The secular gain appears early in life, increases over childhood and early adolescence and the declines as mature body size is reached.

Question 17

Describe changes in the skeleton, muscles, and fat across infancy, childhood, and adolescence. How do these changes differ across boys and girls?

Answer 17

Body fat increases in the last few weeks of prenatal life and continues to do so after birth reaching a peak at about 9 months of age. around 8, girls start to add more fat on their arms, legs and trunk, they continue to do so throughout puberty, while the arm and leg fat of adolescent boys decreases.

Muscle accumulates slowly throughout infancy and childhood, with a dramatic rise at adolescence. both sexes gain muscle at puberty, but this increase is 150% greater in boys , who develop lager skeletal muscles, heart and lung capacity. Boys gain far more muscle strength than girls , contributing to their superior athletic performance during the teenage years.

The best measure of a child’s physical maturity is skeletal age, which is based in the number of epiphyses and the extent to which they are fused. Girls are ahead of boys, a gap that widens over infancy and childhood.

Question 19

Describe the advantages of breastfeeding? What are some disadvantages or difficulties that can occur when parents try to breastfeed their children?

Answer 19

Benefits to child: Early – immunological factors from mother, Correct fat-protein balance, Nutritionally complete, Better digestion, Better growth, Better jaw / tooth development, Easier to transition to solid food.

Benefits to mother: Helps shrink the uterus, bonding with child.

Downside: Can be difficult to start, Sometimes painful for mother, support from others?, change in eating/ drinking habits.

Question 19

How do researchers study and describe individual variation in pubertal development? Why do they have to study boys and girls separately?

Answer 19

Heredity contributes substantially to the timing of pubertal changes. Identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins in attainment of most pubertal milestones, including growth spurt, menarche, breast development. Nutrition and exercise make a difference. Variations in pubertal growth also exist between regions of the world and between income and ethnic groups. Early family experiences may also affect pubertal timing.

Question 20

What are marasmus and kwashiokor? What causes them and what are their effects on development (consider type of effects, duration of effects, and why timing of interventions play a role)?

Answer 20

Marasmus is a wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby’s mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk and bottle-feeding is also inadequate. Her starving baby becomes painfully thin and is in danger of dying.

Kwashiorkor is caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. It is common in regions where children get just enough calories from starchy foods but little protein. The child’s body responds by breaking down its own protein reserves. Soon the belly enlarges, the feet swell, the hair fall out, and a skin rash appears. A once bright-eyed, curious youngster becomes irritable and listless.

Conseqences:

• Physical symptoms
• Growth and weight problems
• Poor motor development
• Learning, attention problems
• Passivity, irritability, anxiety

Question 21

Describe the psychological impact of puberty. How does the impact vary between boys and girls? Depending on when adolescents start their pubertal development?

Answer 21

Girls with early maturing: unpopular, withdrawn, low confidence, more problem behavior, delinquent, depressive symptoms, negative body image, more long -term problems. Late maturing sociable lively, school leaders, positive body image.
boys with early maturing popular, confident, independent, positive body image, locked into sex-stereotyped behaviors. Late maturing unpopular, anxious, talkative, attention-seeking, negative body image.

Question 22

Describe cognitive development from a Vygotskian perspective. What changes and how do these changes occur? In what ways was Vygotsky’s description accurate? Inaccurate? What have we learned from Vygotsky that we apply to childrens’ learning environments?

Answer 22

Vygotsky, while also viewing children as active seekers of knowledge emphasized the profound effect of the rich social and cultural context of their thinking. According to the Vygotsky infants are endowed with basic perceptual, attention and memory capacities that they share with other animals. These developed during the first two years through direct contact with the environment. Then rapid growth of language leads to a profound change in thinking start it broadens preschoolers participation in social dialogues with more knowledgeable Individuals who encourage them to master culturally important task. Soon young children start to communicate themselves much as they converse with others. As a result basic mental capacities are transferred into unique human high cognitive processes.
According to the dusky private speech or language used for self guidance emerges out of social communication as adults and more skilled pairs help children mastered challenging tasks within their zone of proximal development eventually private speech is internalised as inner verbal thought abilities
no intersubjectivity as scaffolding are 2 features of social interaction that promotes transfer of cognitive process to children guided participation recognizes cultural and situational variance in adults support of children’s efforts.

Question 23

Describe the general structure and processes involved in cognition, from an information-processing perspective.

Answer 23

Most information processing theory is to view the mind as a complex symbol men look manipulating system through which information from the environment flows, often using the metaphor for a computer. First information is encoded taken in by the system and retained in symbolic form. Then a very variety of internal processes operate on it, recording it or revising it it’s symbolic structure into a more effective representation, and then decoding it or interpreting its meaning by comparing it combining it with other information in the system. When these cognitive operations are completed individuals used information to make sense of their experience and to solve problems.

Question 24

Describe cognitive development according to Piaget. What are the stages and substages? What can children do in each stage?

Answer 24

The first stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is sensorimotor stage; from birth through age 2, a child learns about the world through senses and motor behavior.

The second stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the preoperational stage; from ages 2 to 7, children learn to use symbols and language but do not understand mental operations and often think illogically

Third stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is concrete operational stage; from about 7 to 11 years old, children can think logically about real (concrete) events.

Final stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is formal operations stage; from age 11 and up, children are able to deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations.

Question 25

Define and describe the development of the three forms of attention—sustained, selective, and adaptable. What role does cognitive inhibition play in attention processes?

Answer 25

Sustained attention: ökar skarpt mellan 2-3,5 år. Man kan hålla uppmärksamhet. Om man har en vuxen bredvid som hjälper funkar det bättre.
Selective: inhibering av information som man inte är önskvärda. Internal: ens egna tankar. External: TV:n är på i bakgrunden.
Adaptable: Task-switching, man multitaskar. Divided attention (kör hem från skolan och tänker bara på att komma hem, så går en pedestrian över vägen plötsligt och min uppmärksamhet vänds plötsligt däråt). Sociala medier multitasking förstör inlärning. Man kan inte göra två saker samtidigt.

Question 26

What are the two broad types of memory (in terms of content)?

Answer 26

Episodic memory: Personliga erfarenheter, man har väldigt lite minnen sedan vi var barn. Autobiographical memories är något man varit med om själv, personal meaning, ju personligare desto mer minns man detta. Tjejer har mer utvecklat autobiographical memories. Scripts är minnen om saker som man minns dom, dom behöver inte vara sanna, det är typ ”what you’re supposed to do” kan vara som man lärt sig av andra. Minnen som man lärt sig att man ska vara som. Episodic memory blir så småningom semantic memory.
Semantic memory: Semantic knowledge contributes to development. HUGE, organized, fakta.

Question 27

What are the functions of emotions?

Answer 27

The functionalist approach emphasize that the broad function of emotions is to energize behavior aimed at attaining personal goals. Emotions also contribute to the emergence of self-awareness, which makes possible new, self-evaluative emotions. Gradually, children gain voluntary control over their emotions.

Question 28

When do self-conscious emotions emerge? Why not before?

Answer 28

Anger and fear increase from the second half of the first year into the second year, as infants cognitive and motor capacities improve. Newly mobile babies use the familiar caregiver as a secure base from which to explore.

Question 29

Describe the development of emotional self-regulation?

Answer 29

Emotional self-regulation emerges as the prefrontal cortex develops and as caregivers sensitively assist infant in adjusting their emotional reactions. With motor, cognitive and language development and warm parental guidance, children acquire more effective self-regulatory strategies. Children who experience negative emotion intensely find it harder to inhibit feelings and shift attention away from disturbing events.

Question 30

What are emotion display rules? Describe a cultural variation in display rules?

Answer 30

regler på att man ska visa/hålla tillbaka vissa känslor. Flickor blir lärda att hålla inne aggression mer. Pojkar lär sig att hålla inne rädsla mer. Beror även på att dessa känslor speglar att fokus blir på en själv och man ”backar” ett steg från gruppen då, och det vill man inte göra.

Question 31

What is temperament? How have dimensions of temperament been described? What are the classifications that have been used?

Answer 31

When we describe one person as cheerful and upbeat, another as active and energetic and still others as calm, cautious, persistent, or prone to angry outbursts, we are referring to temperament-early appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation. Reactivity refers to quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention and motor action. Temperament consist of nine dimensions. Rated on these dimensions certain characteristics clustered together, yielding three types of children: the easy child, the difficult child and the slow-to-warm-up child.

Question 32

What is the general trend in empathy development?

Answer 32

Empathy has roots early in development. Newborn babies tend to cry in response to the cry of another baby. And earlier we noted young infants matching of others emotional expressions.

Question 33

How does self-concept change from toddler through adolescents?

Answer 33

As children think more intently about themselves, they construct a self-concept. In middle childhood, self-concept shifts from a focus on observable characteristics and typical emotions and attitudes to competencies, personality traits, and social comparisons.

Question 34

What is theory of mind? How is theory of mind tested? What is the first sign that children have a theory of mind?

Answer 34

Young preschoolers develop an inner self of private thoughts and imaginings, which contributes vitally to perspective taking. As toddlers and young preschoolers comprehend mental states that can be readily inferred from their own and others’ actions, they form a desire theory of mind, thinking that people’s actions are always consistent with their desires.

Between age 3 and 4 children develop a belief - desire theory of mind, as mastery of false belief reveals. As school-age children realize that people can increase their knowledge by making mental inferences, they grasp second- order false belief. Performance on other complex tasks requiring recursive thought also improves over middle childhood.

Question 35

Adolescents have several ways that they compare different aspects of self. Describe three of these.

Answer 35

Adolescents unify separate traits into more abstract descriptors, forming an organized system that emphasizes social virtues and personal and moral values.

Question 36

What is identity, according to Erikson? What are the processes for achieving identity?

Answer 36

Erikson first recognized formation of an identity as the major personality achievement of adolescence. Identity achievement (exploration followed by commitment) and identity moratorium (Exploration without having reached commitment) are psychologically healthy identity statuses.

Question 38

The idea of identity has been extended to include ethnic (and racial) identity? How do the processes of developing ethnic or racial identity differ from those described by Erikson?

Answer 38

Similarly, supportive parents, peers and schools can foster a secure ethnic identity among minority adolescents. A bicultural identity offers additional emotional and social benefits.

Question 39

Selves:

Answer 39

Catergorical: barn katogeriserar sig sj och andra utifrån ålder, kön, fysiska egenskaper, goodness/badness. Develops with language.

Remebered: Life story from autobiographical memories. Developed through adult-child conversations.

Enduring: a view of self as persisting over time (viktigt för adolescense).

Question 40

Development of memory:

Answer 40

• Encoding: rehearsal, organization, elaboration: selective (om man kan utveckla något, tänka på detaljerna, hjälper det att förstå något).
• Storage: short-term och long-term finns
• Retrieval: recognition: knowing the previous stimulus (var försiktig med detta när det kmr till barn och att dom ska vittna om något). Recall: representaion generated in absence of stimulus. Reconstruction: selective and interpretive, att man får för sig att man har vissa minnen, selektivt minnande.