Psychology - Chapter 10: Developmental Psychology - important concepts Flashcards
Describe bi-directional influences and how these relate to human development.
Human development is a two-way street.
Experiences affect development and development influences experiences.
What is the major problem with cross-sectional designs?
What design rectifies this?
Cohort effects
Use longitudinal designs to get around this
Longitudinal effects measure what?
Describe.
True developmental effects:
- changes over time within individuals as a consequence of growing older
What are issues with longitudinal studies?
Costly and time-consuming
Not experimental designs - cannot infer cause and effect
What are externalizing behaviours?
Behaviours such as breaking rules, defying authority figures, and committing crimes.
What is attrition?
Participants dropping out of the study before it is completed.
What are two myths concerting development?
Infant determinism
Childhood fragility
What is infant determinism?
Assumption that early experiences - especially the first three years of life - are almost always more influential than later experiences in shaping us as adults
What is childhood fragility?
Holds that children are delicate little creatures who are easily damaged
What is nature?
Nurture?
Nature - genetic endowment
Nurture - the environments we encounter
What are the three stages of prenatal development?
What time frames do they run from?
Germinal stage - 0-2 weeks
Embryonic stage - 22ndd-9th weeks
Fetal stage - 9th week onward
Describe, briefly, the germinal stage.
Zygote begins to divide and double to form a blastocyst
During middle of week, cells begin to differentiate and organs start to develop
Describe, briefly, the embryonic stage.
2-9 week
Limbs, facial features, major organs begin to take shape
Spontaneous miscarriages occur most often during this period
Describe the fetal stage.
9th week
- embryo becomes a fetus
Major organs established
Physical maturation of fetus
When does brain development occur?
18 days after fertilization until late adolescence/early adulthood
What is proliferation?
Development of neurons at a very high rate
occurs from day 18 to then end of month 6
What are the obstacles to normal fetal development?
1 - Exposure to hazardous environmental influences
2 - Biological influences resulting from genetic disorders or errors in cell duplication during cell division
3 - Premature birth
What is premature birth?
Birth prior to 36 weeks gestation
What is the viability point?
Point at which infants can typically survive on their own - 25 weeks (typically)
What are reflexes?
Automatic motor behaviour
What are stage like theories of cognitive development?
Characterized by sudden spurts of knowledge followed by periods of stability
What are domain general theories of cognitive development?
Children’s cognitive development affects most areas of cognitive function at once.
What are continuous theories of cognitive development?
Gradual, incremental changes in understanding occur over time.
What are the ways in which cognitive theories of development differ?
1 - Stage-like vs. continuous
2 - Domain-general vs. domain-specific
3 - Primary source of learning:
- physical experience, social interaction, biological maturation
What are the different perceived primary sources of learning according to theorists of cognitive development?
Biological maturation
Physical experiences
Social interaction
Piaget’s model had cognitive change marked by what?
Describe it.
Equilibration
- maintaining a balance between our experiences of the world and our thoughts about it
- Process of assimilation and accomodation lead to equilibration
What are the stages of development, according to Piaget. Provide the age spans as well.
1 - Sensorimotor stage - 0-2 years
2 - Preoperational stage - 2-7 years
3 - Concrete operations stage - 7-11
4 - Formal operations stage - 11-further
What do children in the sensorimotor stage lack?
What do they focus on?
What is the major milestone for this stage?
Lack object permanence
Focus on the here and now
Major milestone - mental representation
What is mental representation?
The ability to think about things that are absent from the immediate surroundings, such as remembering previously encountered objects
What do children in the preoperational stage use as representations of ideas?
What is this stage hampered by?
What is this stage characterized by?
What tasks are done here?
Language, objects, drawings (can be used as representations of ideas)
Stage hampered by egocentrism
Stage characterized by inability to perform mental operations
Conservation tasks
Children in the concrete operations stage can now pass what?
What other tasks can they do?
What is the stage characterized by?
What are they poor at?
Can now pass conservation tasks
Can complete organization tasks
Stage characterized by ability to perform mental operations on physical events only.
Poor at performing mental operations on hypothetical situations.
A con of Piaget’s theory is that much of the development is more ______ rather than ______.
Continuous rather than stage-like
What was Piaget’s attempt to explain the domain-general cases?
What was the issue with this?
Horizontal decalage: cases in which a child is more advanced in one cognitive domain than another.
Difficult to falsify
Psychologists today, due to Piaget’s influence, have reconceptualized cognitive development by what? (3 things)
1 - Children are viewed different in kind rather than degree
2 - Learning is active, rather than passive
3 - more domain specific than general
Piaget emphasized what as the primary source of learning?
Vygotsky?
Physical interaction - Piaget
Social interaction - Vygotsky
General cognitive accounts are more similar to whose theory?
How are they different?
Similar to Piaget in that they emphasize general cognitive abilities and acquired (Rather than innate) knowledge.
Differ:
- gradual rather than stage-like
Sociocultural accounts resemble whose theory most closely?
Vygotsky
Modular accounts emphasize what type of learning?
Domain-specific
What are naive physics?
A young child’s basic understanding of how physical objects behave
What is a false-belief task?
Tests children’s ability to understand that someone else believes something they know to be wrong.
- (Test: child hides candy in one place, moves away, mother moves them to a different place. Ask the tested child where the fictional child would look for the candy)
What are the three temperamental styles according to Thomas and Chess?
Easy infants - adaptable and relaxed
Difficult infants - fussy and easily frustrated
Slow-to-warm-up infants - disturbed by new stimuli at first, but gradually adjust to them
Rest
What is the additional temperamental style, not proposed by Thomas and Chess?
Behavioural inhibition - scaredy cats
Which experiment showed contact comfort?
Rhesus monkey - surrogate mother experiment
What are the different attachment styles?
1 - Secure attachment
2 - Insecure-avoidant attachment
3 - Insecure-anxious attachment
4 - Disorganized attachment
Describe the infants reaction to the mother leaving and returning for each attachment style.
Secure attachment - infant reacts to mothers departure by being upset, greets her with joy upon return
Insecture-avoidant attachment - little reaction when she leaves and returns
Insecure-anxious attachment - panics when she leaves, mixed emotions when she returns
Disorganized attachment - confused in both cases
What are the shortcomings of the strange situation?
- Mono-operation bias - relies on a single measure to draw conclusions
- not very reliable
What are the different parenting styles?
Permissive
Authoritarian
Authorative
Uninvolved
Describe permissive parenting styles.
- Lenient
- use discipline sparingly
- shower kids with affection
Describe authoritarian parenting styles.
- Strict - allow little time for free play/exploration
- Punish children when they don’t respond accordingly
- little affection shown
Describe authoritative parenting styles.
- Supportive of children
- set clear and firm limits
(mix of authoritarian and permissive)
Describe uninvolved parenting styles.
Neglectful parents
Ignore children
Which parenting style is best in individualistic countries?
Collectivist?
Authoritative
Authoritarian
Which is worse for children’s development?
When parents have mild conflict before divorce, or more conflict?
Mild
What is delay-of-gratification task?
What does it predict?
Children can get a bigger reward if they wait longer.
Predicts superior coping ability with frustration as adolescents.
What is sex segregation?
Children’s understanding that they fit better with their same sex.
What is an identity crisis?
Confusion most adolescents experience regarding their sense of self
What is a psychosocial crisis?
Dilemma concerning our relations to other people.
What is role experimentation?
Period during which emerging adults struggle to find out their identities and life goals
What are moral dilemmas?
Situations in which there are no clear right or wrong answers
What is objective responsibility?
Children in the concrete operations stage will evaluate a person by how much harm they’ve done
What is subjective responsibility?
In the formal operations stage, children tend to evaluate people in terms of their intentions to produce harm
What were Kohlberg’s different levels of morality?
What was the focus for each?
Preconcentional morality - focus on punishment/reward
Conventional morality - focus on societal values
Post-conventional morality - focus on internal moral principles transcending society
Other than chronological age, what are four other indices that can be used?
Briefly describe.
Biological age - based on how well the organs work
Psychological age - capacity to deal with stressors of an ever-changing environment
Functional age - person’s ability to function in given roles in society
Social age - whether people act according to social behaviours typical of their age
