History, theory, and research strategies

Question 1

A process of gradually augmenting the same type of skills that were there to begin with:

Answer 1

continuous development

Question 2

A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times:

Answer 2

discontinuous development

Question 3

qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterise specific periods of development:

Answer 3

stages

Question 4

unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change:

Answer 4

contexts

Question 5

Identify three basic issues on which theories of human development take a stand:

Answer 5

continuous / discontinuous process, do we all go through the same changes or does it depend on context, nature/ nurture, are individual differences stable or characterised by substantial plasticity?

Question 6

What is meant by lifespan being multidimensional?

Answer 6

affected by biological, psychological, and social forces

Question 7

What three categories are the interacting forces that influence the life course?

Answer 7

1. age graded influences, 2. history-graded influences, 3. non normative influences

Question 8

What theories influenced human development research in the mid-twentieth century?

Answer 8

Freud’s psychosexual theory and Erikson’s psychosocial theory.

Question 9

What approaches led to behaviour modification?

Answer 9

behaviourism and social learning theory

Question 10

What are the four stages in Piaget’s cognitive development theory?

Answer 10

sensorimotor, pre operational, concrete operational and formal operational

Question 11

What theory views the individual as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple, nested layers of the surrounding environment?

Answer 11

ecological systems theory

Question 12

What are the four parts of the ecological systems theory?

Answer 12

microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem

Question 13

The ______ represents the dynamic, ever-changing nature of individuals and their experiences.

Answer 13

chronosystem

Question 14

What methods are commonly used in research on human development?

Answer 14

naturalistic observation, structured observation, clinical interview, structured interviews, clinical/ case study method

Question 15

Development is what two things?

Answer 15

multi directional and plastic

Question 16

similar biological & environmental influences for individuals at same age (eg. puberty)

Answer 16

normative age-graded influences

Question 17

impacts on a generation

Answer 17

normative history-graded influences

Question 18

unusual occurrences that uniquely impact on the individual, independent of the historical period:

Answer 18

non-normative life events