Chapter 1 Flashcards
The question is whether age-related change is primarily a matter of amount or degree (________) or of changes in type or kind (_________)
- A matter of amount or degree (the continuity side of the debate)
- Changes in type or kind (The discontinuity side)
The continuous aspect of friendship is?
That people of all ages have peer relationships
The discontinuous aspect of friendship is?
That the characteristics of friendship itself vary by age
Another way of approaching the continuity-discontinuity question is to think of it in terms of ______ and ______ change.
Quantitative and qualitative change
A quantitative change is
A change in amount, for instance children get taller as they get older. Their heights increase, but the variable of height itself never changes. In other words, height changes continuously; it has continuity from one age to the next
A qualitative change is?
A change in characteristic, kind, or type. For example puberty is a qualitative change. Prior to puberty, humans are incapable of reproduction. After puberty, they can reproduce. Therefore, postpubescent humans possess a characteristic that prepubescent humans do not; the capacity to reproduce. In other words, postpubescent and prepubescent humans are qualitative different, and changes in the capacity to reproduce are discontinuous in nature. Later in life another qualitative change in reproductive capacity occurs when women go through menopause and lose the capacity for reproduction.
Stages are?
Qualitative distinct periods of development
The Christian doctrine of original sin, often attributed to 4th-century philosopher Augustine of Hippo, taught that?
All humans are born with a selfish nature. To reduce the influence of this inborn tendency toward selfishness, Augustine taught, humans must seek spiritual rebirth and submit themselves to religious training. Thus, from this perspective, developmental outcomes, both good and bad, are the result of each individual’s struggle to overcome an inborn tendency to act immorally when doing so somehow benefits the self.
17th Century English philosopher John Locke drew upon a broad philosophical approach known as empiricism when he claimed that the mind of a child is a blank slate. Empiricism is the view that?
Humans possess no innate tendencies and that all differences among humans are attributable to experience. The blank slate view suggests that adults can mold children into whatever they want them to be. Therefore, differences among adults can be explained in terms of differences in their childhood environments rather than as a result of a struggle to overcome any kind of inborn tendencies, as the original-sin view proposed
The innate-goodness view proposed by 18th-century Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He claimed that?
All human beings are naturally good and seek out experiences that help them grow. Rousseau believed that children need only nurturing and protection to reach their full potential. Developmental outcomes are good when a child’s environment refrains from interfering in her attempts to nurture her own development. In contrast, outcomes are poor when a child experiences frustration in her efforts to express the innate goodness with which she was born. Thus, the innate-goodness and original-sin approaches share the view that development involves a struggle between internal and external forces. In contrast to both, the blank slate view sees the child as a passive recipient of environmental influences
Norms
Average ages at which developmental milestones are reached
Maturation
The gradual unfolding of a genetically programmed sequential pattern of change
Arnold Gesell’s research suggested that existence of a genetically programmed sequential pattern of change. Gesell used the term ________ to describe a pattern of change. He thought that maturationally determined development occurred regardless of?
Maturation.
practice, training, or effort. For example, infants don’t have to be taught how to walk- they begin to walk on their own, once they reach a certain age. Because of this strong belief that many important developmental changes are determined by maturation, Gesell spent decades studying children and developing norms. He pioneered the use of movie cameras and one-way observation devices to study children’s behavior.
This man’s findings became the basis for many norm-referenced tests that are used today to determine whether individual children are developing normally
Arnold Gesell
Standardized tests that compare an individual child’s score to the average score of others her age
Norm-referenced tests
Lifespan perspective
The current view of developmentalists that important changes occur throughout the entire human lifespan and that these changes must be interpreted in terms of the culture and context in which they occur, thus, interdisciplinary research is critical to understanding human development
The debate about the relative contributions of biological processes and experimental factors to development is known as?
Nature-nuture debate
The nature-nuture debate is?
The debate about the relative contributions of biological processes and experimental factors to development
The concept of inborn biases is based on?
The notion that children are born with tendencies to respond in certain ways. Some of these inborn biases are shared by virtually all children. For instance, the sequence in which children acquire spoken language-single words precede two-word sentences, and so on-is virtually identical in all children no matter what language they are learning. Babies seem to be equipped with a set of behaviors that entice others to care for them, including crying, snuggling, and very soon after birth, smiling, and they appear to be delighted when their efforts to arouse interest in others are successful
Other inborn biases may vary from one individual to another. Even in the early days of life, for example, some infants are relatively easy to soothe when they become distressed, while others are more difficult to manage. Whether these inborn patterns are coded in the genes, are created by variations in the prenatal environment, or arise through some combination of the two, the basic point is that?
A baby is not a blank slate at birth. Babies seem to start life prepared to seek out and react to particular kinds of experiences
Modern developmentalists have accepted the concept of internal models of experience. The key element to this concept is?
The idea the effect of an experience depends not on its objective properties but rather on the individual’s interpretation- the meaning the individual attaches to that experience. For instance, suppose a friend says, “Your new haircut looks great; it’s a lot nicer when it’s short like that.” Your friend intends to pay you a compliment, but you also hear an implied criticism, so your reactions, your feelings, and even your relationship with your friend are affected by how you interpret the comment-not by what your friend meant or by the objective qualities of the remark.
