Ch 1 Flashcards
(33 cards)
Continuous
A process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills that were there to begin with
Discontinuous
A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times
Stages
Qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development
Contexts
Unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change
Plasticity
Open to change in response to influential experiences
Tabula rasa
Blank slate
Maturation
Genetically determined, naturally unfolding course of growth
Normative approach
Measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals and age related averages are computed to represent typical development
Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective
Children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflicts are resolved determines the person’s ability to learn, to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety
Id, ego, superego
Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective - psychosexual theory
Emphasizes that how parents manage their child’s sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development
1 oral 2 anal 3 phallic 4 latency 5 genital
Erikson’s psychosocial theory
Emphasized that in addition to mediating between ID impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active, contributing member of society
Behaviorism
Directly observable events - stimuli and responses- are the appropriate focus of study
Classical or operant conditioning
Social learning theory
Devised by Albert Bandura
Emphasizes modeling, aka imitation or observational learning, as a powerful source of development
Applied behavior analysis
Consists of observations of relationships between behavior and environmental events, followed by systemic changes in those events based on procedures of conditioning and modeling. The goal is to eliminate undesirable behaviors and increase desirable responses
Piaget’s Cognitive-Development theory
Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world
Adaptation
Children move through stages
1 sensorimotor
2 preoperational
3 concrete operational
4 formal operational
Information processing
Human mind might also viewed as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows
Ethology
Concerned with the adapative, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history
Sensitive period
Time that is biologically optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences. However, it’s boundaries are less well defined than are those of a critical period. Development can occur later, but it is harder to induce
Evolutionary developmental psychology
It seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as those competencies change with age
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
Culture is important to acquiring ways to think and behave
Depends on adult and experienced peers
Social expectations lead to competency
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory
Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment
Microsystems
Innermost
Activities and interaction patterns in the child’s immediate surroundings
Mesosystem
Encompasses connections between microsystem
Home, school, neighborhood
Exosystem
Social settings that do not contain children but that nevertheless affect children’s experiences in immediate settings
