Psy-2503 Flashcards
Why is studying developmental psychology important?
It helps us understand how minds and behaviors grow and change over time, provides insights into psychological processes in adults, and informs social policy decisions.
What are the main periods of development?
Prenatal, Neonatal, Infancy, Preschool, Young School Age, Later School Age, Adolescence, Young Adulthood, Middle Adulthood, and Late Adulthood.
How do qualitative and quantitative changes differ in development?
Qualitative changes involve new structures or processes, while quantitative changes involve incremental improvements in existing ones.
What is the nature versus nurture debate?
It examines the relative impact of genetic inheritance (nature) and environmental factors (nurture) on development.
What visual preferences do newborns have?
Newborns prefer looking at faces, particularly their mother’s, and can distinguish brightness differences.
How do infants perceive brightness and visual acuity?
Infants can perceive brightness differences but not as sharply as adults. Visual acuity develops significantly by 12 months.
What are the three methods to measure visual acuity in infants?
Preferential looking method, habituation method, and visually evoked potential (VEP) method.
What cues do infants use for depth perception?
Dynamic cues (immediate post-birth), binocular cues (from 1 month), and pictorial cues (from 6 months).
What are some reflexes found in newborns?
Babinski, Moro, Rooting, Sucking, Palmar, and Stepping reflexes.
How does dynamic systems theory explain motor development?
It views motor development as emerging from the interaction of neural, muscular, and environmental factors.
What cultural variations exist in motor development?
Practices and beliefs influence motor skill onset, such as delayed walking in Beng culture or active teaching in Kokwet culture.
What role do mirror neurons play in imitation?
Mirror neurons enable infants to imitate observed actions, forming a basis for empathy and social understanding.
What is Piaget’s sensorimotor stage?
It is the first stage of cognitive development (0–2 years) where infants learn through sensory experiences and motor actions.
How do infants develop object permanence?
By understanding that objects exist even when out of sight; this develops gradually, with A-not-B errors common before 12 months.
What are the core knowledge principles in infant reasoning?
Continuity, solidity, contact, gravity, and inertia guide infants’ understanding of the physical world.
How do experiments show infants’ knowledge of physics?
Studies reveal infants look longer at ‘impossible’ events, indicating awareness of principles like object permanence and solidity.
What is attachment, and what styles exist?
Attachment is the emotional bond between a child and caregiver, classified as secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant, or disorganized.
What is the ‘Strange Situation’ experiment?
A test developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess attachment styles in infants by observing their reactions to separations and reunions.
What is social referencing?
Infants use caregivers’ emotional expressions to guide their own behavior in uncertain situations.
What does the still-face experiment reveal?
Infants as young as 1.5 months become distressed when caregivers show no emotional response, highlighting the need for reciprocity.
What are basic and complex emotions?
Basic emotions (e.g., joy, sadness, anger) emerge by 6 months, while complex emotions (e.g., guilt, pride) develop with self-awareness.
How do infants regulate emotions?
Through methods like situation modification, attentional deployment, and response modification.
What is temperament?
It is an infant’s consistent emotional and behavioral response tendencies, forming the foundation of personality.
What is emotional contagion?
Infants mimic the emotions of others around them, typically observed by 6 months.
What are the stages of early language development?
Prelinguistic vocalizations, babbling, holophrases, and telegraphic speech.
What is ‘child-directed speech’?
Simplified, high-pitched speech used by caregivers to help infants learn language.
What are overextension and underextension in word learning?
Overextension applies words too broadly, while underextension uses them too narrowly.
What is fast mapping?
The rapid acquisition of word meanings, often mapping hundreds of new words monthly.
What are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?
Sensorimotor (0–2), Preoperational (2–7), Concrete Operational (7–12), and Formal Operational (12+ years).
What are conservation tasks?
Tests to determine if children understand that certain properties (e.g., volume) remain unchanged despite transformations.
What is Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’?
The range of tasks a child can perform with guidance, emphasizing social interaction in learning.
What is animism?
A tendency to attribute human-like qualities to inanimate objects, common in preoperational children.
What is infantile amnesia?
The inability to recall memories from the first 2–3 years of life due to changes in memory systems and brain development.
What is executive functioning?
Cognitive skills involved in goal-setting, problem-solving, and self-regulation.
What are the differences between explicit and implicit memory?
Explicit memory is conscious and verbalizable, while implicit memory influences behavior without conscious awareness.
What is the role of the hippocampus in memory?
It binds information from various brain regions to form new memories and supports long-term storage.
How does Piaget describe moral development?
He outlines stages from premoral (no rule awareness) to moral realism (rules are absolute) and moral relativism (rules are negotiable).
What is the evolutionary psychology view of morality?
Morality is seen as an adaptive trait selected for survival and social cooperation.
What role does cultural psychology play in understanding morality?
It emphasizes the influence of culture in shaping moral values, practices, and reasoning.
How do children develop a sense of fairness?
Fairness develops through social interactions, influenced by cognitive growth and cultural norms.
