Chapter 10: Motivation across the lifespan Flashcards
(37 cards)
Define developmental psychology.
A field of psychology that studies the growth (early growing), stability (peak in adult years), and change (wear and tear of the body)over the lifespan
Differentiate primary and secondary aging.
Primary aging is the aging that naturally occurs over the lifespan. Secondary Aging is the aging due to our choices such as healthy eating and exercise slowing our decline and drugs and alcohol hastening it.
List the eight developmental periods.
Prenatal Development – Lasts from fertilization of the egg cell up to the birth of the neonate or newborn.
Infancy/Toddlerhood – From birth to about age 3
Preschool Years – From age 3 to 6 years
Middle Childhood – From 6 to 12 years
Adolescence – From 12 to 20 years
Early or Young Adulthood – From 20 to 40 years
Middle Adulthood – From 40 to 65(ish – retirement) years
Late Adulthood – From 65(ish – retirement) to death
List and describe the types of development.
Cognitive Development that focuses on intellectual development and how it affects behavior.
Social/Personal development is how our social interactions interact with the world and change our personality over the lifespan
Outline the four principles of development.
Cephalocaudal principle, Proximodistal principle, Hierarchical integration, Independence of systems
Cephalocaudal principle
States that development proceeds from head (cephalo) to toe or tail (caudal). For example, your nervous system develops before you can walk or run.
Proximodistal principle
States that development proceeds from near (proximo) to far (distal). We used these two terms when we talked about goals so you should know what they mean already. An example in the context of development is gross and fine motor skills. The former represents whole body movements centered on your trunk, and develop before the latter, which can be represented by learning to write (using the hands which are far away from your trunk, or distant).
Hierarchical integration
States that development goes from simple to complex. For example, before you can pick up objects with your hands, you must learn to control individual fingers. And as you will see in Section 10.2, play goes from simple (solitary) to complex (cooperative) with a few other types in the middle.
Independence of systems
States that different systems in the body develop at different rates. For instance, your nervous system develops before your reproductive system, which also represents cephalocaudal principle too
Clarify measures the body takes to maintain the efficiency of the nervous system.
When we are born, we are born with 100-200 billion neurons but we lack connections as we grow. Within the first two years of life, billions of connections will form called synaptogenesis. Of these neurons that do not form connections will eventually die out called synaptic pruning
Describe how reflexes aid in our survival.
All neonates are born with reflexes to help them survive since they don’t have much of an ability for conscious action. Some include the rooting (looking for milk), Moro (like the star sit up), also imitations of authoritative figures
Outline the status of the five sensory systems at birth and how their development proceeds.
Infants have a poor vision which gets better over time, the rooting reflex is connected with touch. Infants have some degree of echolocation and even infants like complex sounds over simple ones. Finally, all infants prefer high calorie sweet foods to anything else
Define depth perception and describe the seminal experiment that elucidated it.
The visual cliff experiment had a perceived drop (there was clear glass over it) and on the other side was the infant’s mom. Infants of four months and under could not perceive it . But depth perception occurred from 6-12 months and they stopped before reaching the perceived cliff.
Describe how infants integrate the information about the world around them.
We all have schemes and we either assimilate (put new information into our existing schema) or accommodate (accommodate our worldview to fit the new information)
Describe how infants learn about the world and clarify key components of Piaget’s theory. (Describe how their exploration develops over time)
0- 2 months: sensorimotor stage: infants are focused on developing their senses (which is why they put everything in their mouths). Object permanence manifests in the first few months
4 months: they learn coordination schemes primary (coordination) and secondary (trial and error) circular reactions.
9-12 months. they focus on exploring the world
12-18 months they begin deferred imitation or the process of imitating their parents as best they can.
Explain the development of language as a way infants are motivated to communicate with others.
First they babble when they can’t use words, then they use holophrases or one word sentences meant to mean something more complex. Then they do telegraphic speech when they form sentences using as few words as possible
Describe changes in sociability and how they affect how we interact with others in our world during the sensorimotor stage
Within 6-9 weeks of life, they smile at things that please them.
6 months they show stranger danger or stranger anxiety.
8-9 months they look to a caregiver for how to react to a new situation called social referencing.
Children usually play by themselves up till about 18 months.
18 months to two years they engage in parallel play or playing next but not with each other.
At 3 years they begin cooperative play
Outline the development of personality during infancy.
Erickson stages of Trust vs Mistrust, and Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Describe physical changes during the preschool years.
Our gross motor skills develop, and we can play more physical games. Our fine motor skills develop as well and we can engage in more precise tasks.
Clarify what occurs during the preoperational stage of cognitive development.
At 2-7 years
Centration (focus on one aspect), Egocentrism, animistic thinking (assigning lifelike qualities to inanimate objects) and having trouble with reversibility (that things can go one way and then backward)
Outline changes in language development during the preschool years.
Fast mapping helps language develop rapidly during preschool years. By age 6 they have a vocabulary of 15,000 words
Describe Erikson’s initiative vs. guilt stage of personality development.
Conflicts to do things on their own and the guilt of the failure that comes when they fail in this endeavor.
Describe changes in the use of aggression during the preschool years.
Aggression gets more sophisticated in these years with the development of language and more sophisticated physical abilities
Describe the development of prosocial behavior over time.
- Prosocial behavior first manifests between 2-3 years.
- Older toddlers tend to share when needs of sharing are verbally expressed by other, younger toddlers do not.
- Girls share more often but share more often with other girls. Boys use the display rule of reciprocity but share with boys and girls equally.
- Sharing was positively correlated with negative mother attributes. This was stronger for boys.
- Children with older siblings are less likely to share
- Preschoolers have a lack of understanding of failure to act prosocial
- With preschoolers, prosocial altruistic behavior is inversely related to aggression. However prosocial non-altruistic behavior is positively related to aggression. Basically, even at this age, children may help than thwart.
- An interesting finding is, Children in Japan tended to be prosocial to other children regardless of friendship status as long as the other children display prosocial behavior.
