PYB203 STUDY GUIDE

Question 1

Domains of development

Answer 1

Physical –> the growth of the body and its organs, the functioning of the physiological systems, including the brain, physical signs of ageing, changes in motor abilities etc.
Cognitive –> changes and continuities in perception, language, learning, memory, problem solving and other mental processes
Psychosocial –> changes and continuities in personal and interpersonal aspects such as motives, emotion, personality traits, interpersonal skills, relationships and roles played in the family and in society

Question 2

Nature and nurture

Answer 2

Nature –> heredity, maturation, genes, innate predispositions
Nurture –> environment, learning, experience, cultural influences

Question 3

Freud’s psychodynamic theory of development

Answer 3

Postulates that people are driven by motives and emotional conflicts of which they are largely unaware of. People’s lives are shaped by their earliest experiences.

Question 4

Psychodynamic approach: the importance of the unconscious

Answer 4

The structure of personality (Sigmund Freud) is based off of three facets:
ID: pleasure principle
EGO: reality principle
SUPEREGO: conscience

Question 5

Freud’s stages of psychosexual development

Answer 5

Development occurs through a series of psychosexual stages. In each stage, the child focuses on a different area of their body and how they invest their sexual energy into relationships with people and things reflects what stage they are in.
Oral –> Birth – 1 year: the mouth is the focus of stimulation and interaction; feeding and weaning are central.
Anal –> 1-3 years: the anus is the focus of stimulation and interaction; elimination and toilet training are central.
Phallic –> 3-6 years: the genitals are the focus of stimulation; gender role and moral development are central
Latency –> 6-12 years: a period of suspended sexual activity; energies shift to physical and intellectual activities
Genital –> 12-adulthood: the genitals are the focus of stimulation with the onset of puberty; mature sexual relationships develop.

Question 6

Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory

Answer 6

Dialectical conflict is the basic mechanism of development. This theory places a large emphasis on social influences, such as peers, family, school etc.

Question 7

Classical conditioning

Answer 7

Developed by Ivan Pavlov. A conditioned / unconditioned response is elicited by a conditioned / unconditioned stimulus. In infancy, this equates to reflex learning –> the touch of a nipple elicits a sucking reflex

Question 8

Operant conditioning

Answer 8

Developed by B.F. Skinner. Reinforcement strengthens a response and punishment weakens a response. Both reinforcement and punishment can either be positive or negative.
Positive reinforcement –> increases behaviour by delivering a desired stimulus
Positive punishment –> decreases behaviour by delivering an adverse stimulus
Negative reinforcement –> increases behaviour by removing an adverse stimulus
Negative punishment –> decreases behaviour by removing a desired stimulus

Question 9

Piaget’s cognitive theory

Answer 9

Postulates that children actively construct new understandings of the world based on their experiences.
Cognitive stage theory:
Sensorimotor –> birth-2 years: coordination of sensory and motor activity; achievement object permanence
Preoperational –> 2-7 years: use of language and symbolic representation; egocentric view of the world, make-believe play
Concrete operational –> 7-11 years: solution of concrete problems through logical operations; objects are organised into hierarchies and classes and subclasses; thinking is not yet abstract
Formal operational –> 11-adulthood; systematic solutions of actual and hypothetical problems using abstract symbols

Question 10

Piaget’s concepts

Answer 10

Direct learning (schemes)
Assimilation –> new information fits into existing schemes
Accommodation –> changing schemes to incorporate new
information or ideas
Adaptation –> the tendency to adjust to the environment

Question 11

Cognitive-developmental approach (Vygotsky)

Answer 11

This theory argues that cognitive abilities are socially guided and constructed.
Focuses on the cultural nature of human development and postulates that social interaction drives cognitive development

Question 12

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory

Answer 12

Examination of a wider community and individual’s relationship with others - how this explains development.
- microsystem - Face-to-face interactions
- mesosystem - Connections between microsystems
- exosystem - Indirect influences
- macrosystem - General aspects of society

Question 13

Infancy

Answer 13

a period of rapid growth and development in a range of areas:
- Physical
- Perceptual
- Cognitive
- Language
- Social and emotional

Question 14

Infancy motor development

Answer 14

Newborn reflexes - reflexes are unlearned, involuntary responses to stimuli. Survival reflexes are adaptive (e.g., breathing, eye-blink, sucking). Primitive reflexes are less adaptive and typically disappear in early infancy
Infant motor development follows two trends:
1. Cephalocaudal (head to tail) - control of the head occurs first
2. Proximodistal (near to far) - control in the trunk before control in the arms or fingers.
Gross motor skills –> movement of large muscles of arms, legs, and torso
Fine motor skills –> movement of small muscles such as fingers, toes

Question 15

Infant perception

Answer 15

How we know and understand what babies can see/perceive/know.

Question 16

Habituation (infant perception)

Answer 16

The process of learning to be bored with a stimulus. After repeated presentation with the same visual stimulus, the infant becomes bored and looks away. If a different stimulus is presented and the infant regains interest, researchers conclude that the infant has discrimination between the two stimuli.

Question 17

Preferential looking (infant perception)

Answer 17

Researchers present an infant with two stimuli at the same time and measure the length of time the infant spends looking at each. A preference for one over the other indicates that the infant discriminates between the two stimuli.

Question 18

Evoked potentials (infant perception)

Answer 18

Researchers can assess how an infant’s brain responds to stimulation by measuring its electrical conductivity.

Question 19

Infant vision

Answer 19

At birth, infants can have visual abilities, but lack acuity:
–> Can see more clearly about 20—15cm
Vision improves steadily during infancy

Question 20

Infant cognition –> Piaget’s sensorimotor stage

Answer 20

Postulates that the world is understood through the senses and actions. The dominant cognitive structures are the behavioural schemes that develop through coordination of sensory information and motor responses.
There are 6 substages :
1. Reflexes (first month) –> reflexive reaction to internal and external stimulation
2. Primary circular reactions (1-4 months) –> infants repeat actions relating to their own bodies
3. Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months) –> repetitive actions involving something in the infant’s external environment
4. Coordination of secondary schemes (8-12 months) –> secondary actions are coordinated in order to achieve simple goals (i.e., pushing or grasping)
5. Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months) –> experimentation; actions are repeated with variations
6. Beginning of thought: (18 months) –> symbolic thought permits mental representation, imitation, and recall

Question 21

Infant cognition: the development of object permanence

Answer 21

Objective permanence develops during the sensorimotor period.
- From 4-8 months, “out of sight, out of mind”
- By 8-12 months, make the A-not-B error
- By 1 year, the A-not-B error is overcome, but continued
trouble with invisible displacement
- By 18 months, object permanence is mastered

Question 22

Infant psychosocial development: attachment

Answer 22

Attachment is a strong and enduring emotional bond that develops between an infant and a caregiver during the infant’s first year of life. Characterised by reciprocal and shared desire to maintain physical and emotional closeness:
Psychoanalytic - I love you because you feed me
Learning - I love you because you are reinforcing
Cognitive - I love you because I know you
Ethological - I love you because I was born to love

Question 23

4 phases of infant attachment development

Answer 23

1) Birth – 2 months –> indiscriminate sociability
2) 2-7 months –> attachments in the making, increasing preference for familiar cares
3) 7-24 months –> specific, clear-cut attachments, separation, and stranger anxiety
4) 24 months + –> goal-coordination partnerships

Question 24

Separation anxiety

Answer 24

Once attached to a parent, a baby often becomes wary or fretful when separated from that parent. Separation anxiety normally appears when infants are forming their first genuine attachments, peaks between 14 and 18 months, and gradually becomes less frequent and less intense

Question 25

Stranger anxiety

Answer 25

Once attached to a parent, a baby often experiences a wary or fretful reaction to the approach of an unfamiliar person. Anxious reactions to strangers become common between 8 and 10 months, continue through the first year, and gradually decline in intensity over the second year

Question 26

the strange situation

Answer 26

The strange situation is a procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to observe attachment in children, that is relationships between a caregiver and child. It applies to children between the age of nine and 30 months. Broadly speaking, the attachment styles were secure and insecure.

Question 27

secure attachment

Answer 27

Secure attachment is classified by children who show some distress when their caregiver leaves but are able to compose themselves quickly when the caregiver returns. Children with secure attachment feel protected by their caregivers, and they know that they can depend on them to return

Question 28

ambivalent attachment

Answer 28

As the labels suggest, people with this attachment style are often anxious and uncertain, lacking in self-esteem. They crave emotional intimacy but worry that others don’t want to be with them.

Question 29

disorganised attachment

Answer 29

A disorganized / fearful-avoidant attachment style develops when the child’s caregivers – the only source of safety – become a source of fear. In adulthood, people with this attachment style are extremely inconsistent in their behavior and have a hard time trusting others.

Question 30

Early childhood cognition –> Piaget’s pre-operational stage

Answer 30

Argued that infants come into this stage with the capacity for symbolic representations:
- Language
- Pretend play –> can include imaginary companions
- Can refer to the past and future (and thus a capacity to
anticipate)
object permanence is also observed in this stage
Limitations of this stage:
- centration –> focusing on one aspect of a problem or object
- irreversible thought –> cannot mentally undo an action
- static thought –> focusing on the end state rather than the changes that transform one state into another
- difficulty with classification
- egocentrism

Question 31

Egocentrism and theory of mind

Answer 31

The ability to attribute mental states – beliefs, intents, desires, pretending knowledge – to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own

Question 32

False belief tasks

Answer 32

a type of task used in theory of mind studies in which children must infer that another person does not possess knowledge that they possess.
The false-belief task allows researchers to distinguish unambiguously between the child’s (true) belief and the child’s awareness of someone else’s different (false) belief

Question 33

Early childhood play

Answer 33

Saracho and Spodek (1998) define play as:
- Intrinsically, not extrinsically motivated
- Process, not product-oriented
- Creative and non-literal
- Having implicit rules
- Spontaneous and self-initiated
- Free from major emotional distress

Question 34

Mildred Parten’s (1932) theory of early childhood play

Answer 34

Postulates that from age 2 to age 5, play becomes increasingly social and socially skilled.
Parten’s categories of play:
unoccupied play - children stand idly, look around, or engage in apparently aimless activities such as pacing
solitary play - children play alone, typically with objects, and appear to be highly involved in what they are doing
onlooker play - children watch others play, take an active interest, perhaps talk with the players, but do not directly participate
parallel play - children play next to one another, do much of the same thing, but they interact little (for example, two girls might sit near each other in the sandpit but do not talk)
associative play - children interact by swapping materials, conserving, or following each other’s lead, but they are not united by the same goal (for example, the two girls may share sandpit toys and comment on each other’s sand structures)
cooperative play - children join forces to achieve a common goal; they act as a pair or group, dividing their labour and coordinating their activities in a meaningful way (for example, the two girls collaborate to make a sandcastle)

Question 35

Concrete operational stage (middle childhood)

Answer 35

In middle childhood (7-11 years), children move from the preoperational stage to the concrete operational state. Thus, they start to demonstrate the ability to perform operations (mental actions on concrete situations / objects).
In this stage:
Seriation –> the ability to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as weight or height
Transitivity –> the understanding of relationships among elements in a series
Less egocentrism in this stage
Classification abilities improve –> can classify objects by multiple dimensions and can grasp class inclusion

Question 36

Formal operational stage (adolescence)

Answer 36

In adolescence, individuals move from the concrete operational stage to the formal operational stage. This gradually occurs over years. Formal operations are the mental actions on ideas –> they permit systematic and scientific thinking about problems, hypothetical ideas, and abstract concepts.

Question 37

Neurons

Answer 37

the basic functional units of the nervous system. They take in information from other neurons and pass information to other neurons.

Question 38

Glial cells

Answer 38

They protect, nourish and physically support other neurons. One type of glial cell Is the myelin sheath which covers the axons of the neuron

Question 39

Action potential

Answer 39

Occurs when the membrane potential of a specific cell location rapidly rises and falls.

Question 40

Structural brain changes across the lifespan

Answer 40

The volume of the human brain quadruples between birth and adulthood.

Question 41

Development of the prefrontal cortex

Answer 41

Grey matter volume: inverted U (early increases followed by gradual decreases starting in late childhood and continuing into adulthood)
–> white matter volume: myelination - thought to be complete in the early 20s
–> therefore there is relatively ‘late’ maturation of the prefrontal cortex

Question 42

Functions of the prefrontal cortex

Answer 42

• ‘executive’ functions –> e.g., working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control
• reasoning
• problem solving
• planning
• executive attention

Question 43

Executive functions

Answer 43

these cognitive processes are thought to include working memory (the ability to pay attention and remember facts while using them to complete tasks), inhibitory control (the ability to follow rules, modulate emotions, and delay gratification), and cognitive flexibility (the ability to plan, make judgements, and self-correct).
EF in young children can generally be described as comprising a number of cognitive processes that, over time, support children’s ability to increasingly regulate their own behaviour and, in turn, development greater social, emotional, and cognitive competence

Question 44

Moral development

Answer 44

Morality is a sense of behaviour conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong)

Question 45

Moral affect

Answer 45

The affective, or emotional component consists of the feelings (guilt, concern for others’ feelings, and so on) that surround right or wrong actions that motivate moral thoughts and actions

Question 46

Moral reasoning

Answer 46

The cognitive component centres on how we conceptualise right and wrong and make decisions about how to behave

Question 47

Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning

Answer 47

Piaget’s theory of moral development includes three aspects:
1. Premoral period –> during the preschool years, children show little awareness or understanding of rules and cannot be considered moral beings
2. Heteronomous morality –> children aged 6-10 years take rules seriously, believing that they are handed down by parents and other authority figures and are scared and unalterable. They judge rule violations as wrong based on the extent of damage done.
3. Autonomous morality –> at age 10 or 11, most children enter a final stage of moral development in which they begin to appreciate that rules are agreements between individuals – agreements that can be changed through a consensus of those individuals.

Question 48

Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning

Answer 48

Kohlberg argued that moral growth progresses through a universal and invariant sequence of three broad moral levels, each of which is composed of two distinct stages:
Level 1: preconventional morality
- Stage 1 – punishment and obedience orientation
- Stage 2 – ethics
Level 2: conventional morality
- Stage 3 – good boy or good girl morality
- Stage 4 – authority and social order-maintaining morality
Level 3: postconventional morality
- Stage 5 – morality of contract, individual rights, and democratically accepted law
- Stage 6 – morality of individual principles of conscience

Question 49

Moral behaviour

Answer 49

The behavioural components reflect how we behave when, for example, we experience the temptation to cheat or are called upon to help a needy. Moral behaviour is learned in the same way that other social behaviours are learned, through observational learning and reinforcement and punishment principles.

Question 50

Implicit memory

Answer 50

Is apparent when retention is exhibited on a task that does not require intentional remembering. Part of the long-term memory.

Question 51

Parker and Streete’s implicit memory study

Answer 51

Parker and Streete (1988) compared implicit memory in 3, 5 and 7 year old children using a visual priming task. The authors found that irrespective of age, children showed a priming effect indicating comparable implicit memory performance.

Question 52

Explicit memory

Answer 52

volves intentional recollection of previous experiences. The capacity for explicit memory increases from infancy to adulthood. Four major hypotheses are thought to underpin this development:
1. Changes in basic capacities
2. Changes in memory strategies
3. Increased knowledge about memory
4. Increased knowledge about the world

Question 53

Psychosocial development

Answer 53

The development of the personality, and the acquisition of social attitudes and skills, from infancy through maturity

Question 54

The dimensions of parenting styles

Answer 54

Acceptance-responsiveness –> refers to the extent to which parents are supportive, sensitive to their children’s needs, and willing to provide affection and praise when their children meet their expectations
Demandingness-control –> refers to how much control over decisions lies with the parent rather than the child

Question 55

Authoritarian parenting

Answer 55

high demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness
parents impose many rules, expect strict obedience, rarely explain why the child should comply with rules, and often rely on power tactics such as physical punishment to gain compliance

Question 56

Authoritative parenting

Answer 56

high demandingness-control and high-acceptance responsiveness
parents set clear rules and consistently enforce them, but they also explain the rationales for their rules and restrictions, are responsive to their children’s needs and points of view, and involve their children in family decision-making

Question 57

Permissive parenting

Answer 57

high in acceptance-responsiveness but low in demandingness-control
permissive parents are indulgent with few rules and few demands
they encourage children to express their feelings and impulses and rarely exert control over their behaviour

Question 58

Uninvolved parenting

Answer 58

low demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness
they seem not to care much about their children and may even reject them
uninvolved parents may be so overwhelmed by their own problems that they cannot devote sufficient energy to expressive love and setting and enforcing rules

Question 59

Relationships with and without siblings

Answer 59

With siblings –>
Generally close and positive, provides emotional support, older siblings often provide caregiving services for younger siblings, older siblings are serve as teachers, siblings provide social experience.
Without siblings –>
Research suggests higher in self esteem, positive personality, achievement motivation and academic success.

Question 60

Relationships with peers in early childhood

Answer 60

a peer is a social equal, someone who functions at a similar level of behavioural complexity, often someone of similar age
- Peer relationships have developmental value
- Peers help children learn that relationships are reciprocal
- Peers force children to hone their social perspective
taking skills
- Peers contribute to social-cognitive and moral development in ways that parents cannot
- in toddlerhood, about 10% of social interactions are with peers
- in middle childhood, about 30% of social interactions are with peers
- Research indicates that peer groups typically contain children of different levels of competence
- Gender segregation – play with same-sex companions – becomes increasingly strong with age

Question 61

The power of friendship

Answer 61

A friendship is a special form of peer relationship that both voluntary and mutually affirmed, and which is typically characterised by feelings of companionship, affection and intimacy. Having just one good friend in early childhood can buffer the negative effects of rejection, peer victimisation and loneliness

Question 62

Gender-role development

Answer 62

Children first learn to recognise sex differences through perception –> e.g., female voice and female face goes together.
By 2 years, children start to show consistent ‘gender labelling’ of themselves and others, but still lack an understanding of the stability of gender.
By pre-school and early school age, children are very focused on what is ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ behaviour

Question 63

The changing family structure

Answer 63

• pre 1970s the ‘nuclear family’ was the norm
• now more complex structures
  
  • Single-parent families
  • Blended families
  • Extended families
• changes in marriage
  
  • Decease in marriage rate
  • Increase in cohabitation
  • Increase in divorce

Question 64

Changes in the Australian family (1980-

Answer 64

• Increase in cohabitation before marriage
  
  • Increase in divorce rates
  • Strong increase in support for same-sex couple
  • Increase in lone parent families
  • Increase in average age of first parenting
  • Decrease in number of children per woman
  • Increase in number of children born outside marriage
  • Increase in maternal employment

Changing complexity in family structures make the parent-child relationship very complicated

Question 65

Relationships with parents in middle childhood

Answer 65

Children tend to spend less time with parents than during early childhood, but parents are still important sources of practical and emotional support. Parental responsiveness is critical, but so is parental monitoring. Studies show that parental monitoring, especially as children move into early adolescence, is a key protective mechanism.
Conflict may arise from discrepancies between expectations of responsibilities and freedoms, views on appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, everyday issues.

Question 66

Friendships in middle childhood

Answer 66

• Deepening in social understanding
• Consolidation of prosocial and antisocial / withdrawal
  behaviour characteristics in interactions with peers
• Both change and consolidation in friendships, peer status,
  social networks and dominance hierarchies
• Increased gender segregation
• Emergence of problematic patterns of behaviour in relation
  to peers e.g., social withdrawal, aggression, peer
  victimisation and bullying
• Growth in children’s awareness and self-reflection
  regarding peer relations
• Consolidation of links between aspects of peer
  relationships and psychosocial functioning e.g., anxiety,
  depression, conduct disorders
• Established processes of peer influence and socialisation
  emerge and are observable

Question 67

Relationships with peers in adolescence

Answer 67

• Peer influences particularly strong
• Peer status becomes entrenched and has substantial impact on psychosocial adjustment
• Simultaneous increase and reduction in gendered behaviour and gender-specific peer relations
• Simultaneous increase in both intensity of specific peer relationships/friendships and importance of social networks
• Emerging and growing importance of romantic relationships with peers

Question 68

Social media and friendship

Answer 68

Castells: three modes of communication coexist in the social media context:
1. Interpersonal communication – designated senders and receivers and the subjects of communication and communication is interactive (e.g., messages, email)
2. Mass communication – traditionally one-directional sent from one source to many receivers, the context of communication has the potential to be diffused to society at large e.g., youtube
3. Mass self-communication – the message is self generated, the potential receivers is self-directed and the electronic retrieval is self-directed. Mass self-communication combines features of mass communication and interpersonal communication

Question 69

Romantic relationships in adolescence

Answer 69

Dating - recreational fun, tends to follow a dating script, based on gender roles.
–> according to Brown (1999), adolescent relationships evolve through four phases:
1. Initiation – in early adolescence, the focus on the self: to see oneself as a person capable of relating to members of the other sex in a romantic way
2. Status phase – in mid-adolescence, having a romantic relationship with the “right kind” of partner is important for the status it brings in the larger peer group
3. Affecting phase – in late adolescence, the focus is on the relationship – romantic relationships become more personal, caring relationships
4. Bonding phase – in the transition to early adulthood, the emotional intimacy achieved in the affection phase is connected to a long-term commitment to create a lasting attachment bond

Question 70

Attachment theory

Answer 70

attachment theory derives from, and gives meaning to, how infant behaviours are organised (that is, in the service of gaining proximity to attachment figures to feel more secure).
it also suggests that behaviours derive from and inform mental representations that guide an individual’s experience of, and responses to, the attachment figure and later to important others

Question 71

John Bowlby’s theory of attachment

Answer 71

Developed attachment theory alongside Mary Ainsworth.
Bowlby believed that children are born with a biologically programmed tendency to seek and remain close to attachment figures.

Question 72

Care seeking (attachment)

Answer 72

The instinct to seek proximity to a specific person who will comfort, protect, and/or organise one’s feelings. The function attachment, care-seeking behaviour is comfort and protection

Question 73

Caregiving (bonding)

Answer 73

The instinct to monitor a specific person and to comfort, protect, and/organise their feelings when necessary

Question 74

Exploration

Answer 74

The instinct to follow one’s innate curiosity and desire for mastery when it feels safe to do so. The function of exploratory behaviour is learning and mastery