PSY210: 1. Theory + Research Flashcards

Question

Operant Conditioning

Answer 1

Reinforcers and punishments | operant: change behaviour with reinforcement

Answer 2

Modelling social learning: can’t constantly punish/reinforce simply by watching other adults behave can learn complex behaviours with one instance

Answer 3

Children actively construct knowledge.! • Adaptation to environment is made in order to achieve equilibrium.! • All children move through four broad stages.

Answer 4

there is still an inner mental state gathering info through experiences to make sense of world - seeking equillibrium intermental life + outside world change intermental world

Answer 5

Sensorimotor!sensorimotor: gathering info with senses | • Preoperational!preoperational: intermental representation, but can’t mold thoughts

Answer 6

* Concrete operational!concrete: shape thoughts, but more concretely * Formal operational formal: understand world in abstract ways, possibilities

Answer 7

Human brain is symbol-manipulating system! input equals experiences output equals behavioural response Development seen as continuously changing, not formal stages

Answer 8

info, wm, ltm, behaviour always same system, but slightly more efficient same structure, can do more because of improvement in speed + efficiency

Answer 9

Study of relationships between ! • changes in the brain! • development of cognition, behaviour!

Answer 10

* Brings together researchers from! * psychology! • biology! * neuroscience! • medicine

Answer 11

functional, structural infantile amnesia: no memory of infancy-3 no coherent sense of self - hard to make sense of memories recent study: diff in brain - neurogenesis younger than 3: producing neurons at rapid rate at 3: neurogenesis slows experiments with rats induced neurogenesis new neurons, new synapses, gets in way of memories being wired

Answer 12

Study of adaptive value of behaviour and its evolutionary history! • critical period! • sensitive period how come this behaviour exists - adaptive attachment: it made sense to bond with parents - stuck around + weren’t killed

Answer 13

critical period: smaller sensitive: prolonged - new skill must be learned, we miss it, difficult to learn skills cats with no visual stimulus in early life, never learn vision sensitive period of language acquisition

Answer 14

Seeks to understand adaptive value of human competencies! • Studies cognitive, emotional, and social competencies and change with age! • Expands upon ethology

Answer 15

Transmission of culture to a new generation! • values, beliefs, customs, skills! • Social interaction necessary! • cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society

Answer 16

by interacting they learn values… | emphasis on social interaction as source of development

Answer 17

Bronfenbrenner argues that children develop within a system of complex human relationships that encompass immediate environments such as the family and larger environments such as communities layer of systems of interactions

Answer 18

Ever Changing micro: child with family, school, child care meso: how they interact each other exo: community services, workplace, friends, neighbours, relatives macro: culture, customs, laws, values important: experiences of child are diff

Answer 19

canada vs. us: mircosystem has similarities | when they get sick: canada values health care - goes to checkup

Answer 20

``` Prenatal Conception to birth Infancy and toddlerhood Birth to 2 years Early childhood 2 to 6 years ```

Answer 21

``` Middle childhood 6 to 11 years Adolescence 11 to 18 years Early adulthood 18 to 40 years Middle adulthood 40 to 65 years Late adulthood 65 years to death ```

Answer 22

early stages - 5 diff unique stages last 80 years - only 3 stages early on in what adulthood comprises of we have to understand holistic perspective

Answer 23

physical, cognitive, emotional/social domains

Answer 24

can’t have one without the other | all affect each other, as we get older, they get more dependent on each other

Answer 25

``` • Age-graded! • History-graded! • Nonnormative age-graded: puberty, happens for everyone roughly at same age history: if born at specific time period nonnormative: divorce, no specific age ```

Answer 26

The extent the developing person’s abilities, interests, and personality are determined by biological or evolutionary influences or by environmental influences

Answer 27

To what extent do individuals stay unchanged through their lives cognitively, emotionally, and socially, or to what extent do individuals change, adapt or emerge from the environment

Answer 28

personality - lean toward stability if you can change - plasticity what stays the same + what changes as we age

Answer 29

Organismic versus Mechanistic • People are active or passive in exploring the world free will

Answer 30

Development as a continuous process of growth and change or development as discontinuous

Answer 31

do we start with same structure + improve in efficiency? are there stages? - discontinuous lifespan: continuous piaget: discontinuous

Answer 32

Does one course of development characterize all people, or are there many possible courses? what better represents development: 1 lifecourse/multiple

Answer 33

Helps us separate dependable information from misleading results. ! Individuals who understand research can build bridges between research and practice. ! media does poor job of describing limits + method understanding research - make decisions on application

Answer 34

way of gathering info | design: how to organize info, structure gathering

Answer 35

Biased it happens as byproduct of method haphazard observation - casual

Answer 36

observations done in such a way to eliminate or reduce bias. increases chances of equal observation coding

Answer 37

procedures set in place before observation occurs

Answer 38

In the “field,” or natural environment, where behaviour happens not every person has equal opportunity to exhibit behaviour you want to see great external validity, but takes a long time for it to happen

Answer 39

Laboratory situation set up to evoke behaviour of interest All participants have equal chance to display behaviour perspective taking in imaginary play: cops + robbers do they see themself as them or batman me batman: more active areas for imagination

Answer 40

Participants may react in unnatural ways. – Can be minimized minimized with cameras

Answer 41

Observers record what they expect, rather than what really happens. limit through double blind + through training

Answer 42

Children Family members Teachers and peers interested in child, but can talk to many ppl about child they take a long time to respond to self report train researchers to be patient

Answer 43

``` must be phrased in child friendly manner difficulty in phrasing answers have to be upbeat train in probing bored really easily just as likely to lie as adults ```

Answer 44

Flexible, conversational style with the aim of probing for the participant’s point of view. Allows participants to express their thoughts and feelings in their own words. Can yield a large amount of information in a brief period of time.

Answer 45

open ended interview style | allows you to ask based on responses

Answer 46

``` Accuracy of participants’ expressions Distortions in participants’ – Recall – Global Judgments Flexibility may make responses too varied ```

Answer 47

curtail answers recall: how worried were you as a parent when ebola spread? response may change later on: recall shaped by current view of reality global judgements: broader the question, less useful ask about specific behaviour difficult to compare responses between participants

Answer 48

Each participant is asked the same questions in the same way | May use questionnaires, get answers from groups

Answer 49

Do not yield the same depth as clinical interviews Distortions in participants’ – Recall – Judgments just as susceptible to distortions

Answer 50

Measure the relationship between physiological processes and behaviour.! How does the structure of the central nervous system contribute to development?!

Answer 51

Inferring the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of infants and young children, who cannot report their psychological experience directly .young children who can’t verbalize

Answer 52

Heart rate Blood pressure Respiration Pupil dilation Stress hormones out of our control, but susceptible to psychological state heart rate decrease to new stimuli, attending to new stimuli infer what they are doing based on these markers

Answer 53

Measures of electrical activity! Electroencephalogram (EEG)! | Neuroimaging techniques:!

Answer 54

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)! Position emission tomography (PET)! Near-infrared optical topography (NIROT)

Answer 55

eeg: do tasks while hooked up to see brain activity neuroimaging: structure + functions

Answer 56

Some measures are not well suited for research with children. is the measurement appropriate with the age group

Answer 57

Can be used on very young babies as they sit on their parent’s lap.! NIROT is limited to examining the functioning of the cerebral cortex.

Answer 58

Interpreting the data! Extraneous factors! external validity lots of noise: lots of decisions on what is meaningful extraneous: hunger, boredom, inattentiveness, irritable have to time studies are they valid in the real world

Answer 59

``` Brings together a wide range of information on one individual/ group Interviews – Observations – Test scores – Psychophysiological measures ```

Answer 60

Detailed insights into factors affecting development – Study of uncommon individuals lots of info

Answer 61

Generalizability | not sure if results apply to other children

Answer 62

A research design that permits investigators to establish relationships among variables as well as the strength of those relationships. Magnitude Size of the number between 0 and 1 Closer to one (positive or negative) is a stronger relationship

Answer 63

Direction Indicated by + or - sign Positive (+): as one variable increases, so does the other Negative (-): as one variable increase, the other decreases

Answer 64

just collect them, no manipulation children who watch sesame street had better cognitive performance + school separate data points collected + tested for a correlation no causation

Answer 65

An experiment is a procedure in which researchers systematically manipulate and observe elements of a situation (i.e., variables) to answer their research question. Experimental and control groups Experimental group is exposed to proposed causative factor Control group is not exposed to proposed causative factor

Answer 66

Independent variables Experimenter changes, or manipulates Expected to cause changes in another variable Dependent variables Experimenter measures, but does not manipulate Expected to be influenced by the independent variable

Answer 67

Use rare opportunities for random assignment in natural settings field: empathetic, caring behaviours of teacher could be passed on half children more empathetic teacher/half normal interaction observe whether kids passed toys to new baby caring teacher = more likely to help

Answer 68

Compare differences in treatment that already exist Groups chosen to match characteristics as much as possible natural: no money/not feasable measured stress in 2 diff cities cannot say cause - not enough control

Answer 69

Same participants studied repeatedly at different ages. literacy: track reading ability yearly cohort: more similar to each other than others

Answer 70

Advantages Permits study of common patterns and individual differences in development and relationships between early and later events and behaviours.! Problems! Age-related changes may be distorted because of biased sampling, selective attrition, practice effects, and cohort effects.!

Answer 71

Cohort effect: observed differences between ages that are due to cultural-historical differences and not developmental differences.! Theoretical and methodological changes in the field can make findings obsolete. how do they change after a year more/less change at specific time?

Answer 72

bias sampling: lots of commitment selective attrition: ppl drop out which reduce generalizability only certain ppl participate in this work findings can be obsolete because it takes many years

Answer 73

People of differing ages all studied at the same time. don’t wanna invest time + money compare cohorts

Answer 74

``` Advantages Efficient ! Not plagued by selective attrition, practice effects, or theoretical and methodological changes in the field! less time 1 measurement ```

Answer 75

Problems Does not permit study of individual developmental trends Age difference may be distorted because of cohort effects can’t track individual patterns of change is it the teacher, curriculum?

Answer 76

Same groups of different-aged people studied repeatedly as they change ages. compare gr. 3s in diff years, if same then no cohort effects

Answer 77

Advantages When the design includes longitudinal sequences, permits both longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons ! Reveals cohort effects ! Permits tracking of age-related changes more effectively than the longitudinal design!

Answer 78

Problems May have the same problems as the longitudinal and cross-sectional strategies, but the design itself helps identify difficulties identify them, but doesn’t eliminate cohort effects

Answer 79

Same participants studied repeatedly over a short period as they master a task or learn36 a skill. in previous studies: snapshot of changes short period see whole progression of change

Answer 80

Criteria Observation period spans the entirety of change! Frequency of observation should match the rate of change! Advantage Offers insights into how change occurs!

Answer 81

Problems Requires intensive study of participants’ moment-by-moment behaviours ! The time required for participants to change is difficult to anticipate! Practice effects may distort developmental trends have to begin before change cannot miss change how do you know when to start + stop must first do a cross-sectional study have to rely on theory on how frequently to collect data

Answer 82

compare where they end up