Week 1 Flashcards

Question

An Evolutionary perspective in developmental:

Answer 1

Children develop as a result of interactions btw the environment and the developing child As a result of adaptations that evolved in our ancestral environment - Interact with environment in ways that they are designed to interact - Children a better fit for ancestral environment than modern - some mismatches

Answer 2

1. Promotes research that is consistent with evolution by natural selection 2. Guidance in terms of hypothesis testing - hypotheses that can be tested are infinite - narrows the hypothesis space - don’t test those that are inconsistent with evolutionary theory 3. FRAMES OUR INQUIRY - evolutionary perspective allows us to make sense of the interaction between a developing organism and its environment 4. Functional understanding - To understand a psychological process we need to know what it was designed to do - adaptive problem, how is mind designed, learning mechanisms, environment influence - ev psych lends a coherent framework for answering these questions

Answer 3

Best described in quantitative terms Ex. Older children are bigger, stronger, faster and smarter than a younger child - growth in the form of height Describe the development using numbers

Answer 4

Changes are also qualitative Ex. Older child is smarter not just because they have more experience but also because they can use logical inference to apply knowledge to new situations or can reason about abstract or hypothetical situations - Different kinds of intelligence - more fundamental differences Cannot be described by numbers Piaget - stage theory - move to a fundamentally different way of understanding and thinking about the world - object permanence

Answer 5

3yr cannot understand that another person could have a false belief - thinking your keys are on the table when they're in your bag Cannot use false belief to predict and explain behavior Learned by 4

Answer 6

2yr old children will try to interact with miniature toys as if they were not miniature - slide down a 5 inch slide or get into a toy car - by 2.5 wouldn't do this

Answer 7

functional change that happens by design as a result of factors in the environment or the child's behavior or reparative changes following injury Supposed to happen - will happen as a result of maturation by design - playing violin - improvement in motor abilities or by trauma/injury to the brain

Answer 8

traits and characteristics that don’t change across the lifespan or at least don’t change after some point in development Ex. Learn native language and acquire all grammar - stability doesnt change, Good at processing faces

Answer 9

- norms or averages are computed over a large population - describing the changes one typically sees in children Ex. Age of crawling, lifting head etc - averages

Answer 10

- measuring and characterizing the ways in which development and developmental outcomes differ among children identifying factors that might predict these individual differences - attachment theory Looking at children with diagnosis to no diagnosis, across culture etc

Answer 11

1. Are traits stable or do they change 2. Do the ones that change in a response to environmental cues or because of the maturational process - Depends on the trait - Some traits are designed to be stable, and resilient to information in the environment. Some traits are designed to be plastic, responding to information in the environment. The extent to which a trait is plastic or stable can change during development

Answer 12

Looking at children with diagnosis to no diagnosis, across culture etc Characterize differences, explain differences, may differ by trait, may reflect researcher’s interests 1. Some traits are designed to follow species-typical developmental timelines while some are designed to take info as input that influences development 2. Different approaches reflect the different interests of different researchers

Answer 13

nature and nurture working together in the development of every individual and every trait Developing child interacting with information in the environment, working together to make an adult person Without genes, nothing develops, and without the necessary environmental input, nothing develops. Every person and every trait of every person is a result of genetic and environmental interaction

Answer 14

Function - function is the adaptive problem that is solved in the EEA - the adaptive problem created the selection pressure that led to the selection of genes that support the development of that organ or process during development EX. Baby talk/infant directed speech aids in language development Understanding would be aided greatly by knowing the purpose for which it was designed - George Williams Function of categorization is to allow for inference - allows you to behave reasonably in response to your environment

Answer 15

Inability to appreciate the complexity of our mental processes because they seem automatic and inevitable to us Difficult to appreciate how difficult perception is and hence the complexity of the adaptations underlying vision Ex. fish may never know they are in water ie. take it for granted

Answer 16

Early philosophers did not ground their disagreements in empirical evidence - based it on observation or opinion Became a field grounded in evidence in the late 19th or early 20th century

Answer 17

the conditions under which our ancestors lived and to which our morphological and psychological features are adapted

Answer 18

adapted to respond to warm and cold climates - designed to respond to our current environment Evidence that children are equipped to detect which kind of environment they are born into and adjust their life strategies accordingly