Psych Exam 2: Development

Question 1

What is Developmental Psychology?

Answer 1

The study of continuity and change across the life span on different dimensions. Tries to find the answer to the question to what processes in thinking and learning start when.

Question 2

What are the major issues in developmental psychology?

Answer 2

• Nature/Nurture- How do genetic inheritance (nature) and experience (Nurture) influence our behavior?
• Continuity/Stages- Is development a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages?
• Stabillity/Change- Do early personality traits remain stables or change through life?

Question 3

What are the four dimensions children develop?

Answer 3

Motor, Social, Cognitive, Linguistic

Question 4

What is the orderly progression of language development?

Answer 4

Cooing, babbling, one word utterance, two word sentences

Question 5

What is maturation and what does it do in development?

Answer 5

Genetic instructions, that causes various bodily and mental functions to occur in sequence. Maturation sets the basic course of development while experience adjusts it. Ex: Learning to talk

Question 6

What is cognitive development and what questions does it attempt to answer?

Answer 6

Cognitive development is the emergence of the ability to think and understand. It answers how the automatic and conscience processes work, how the physical world works, how our mind represents the world and how other minds represent the world.

Question 7

Who created cognitive development and what did he suggest about it?

Answer 7

Piaget, he suggested that cognitive development stems from biological development, that children construct their sense of reality from their experiences, that children use schemas to organize experience, and that people are constantly searching for cognitive equilibrium by keeping our schemas consistent with our experiences.

Question 8

What are the two processes in which children create schemas?

Answer 8

-Assimilation- Child integrates new info with their existing schema
-Accomadation- If the schema can’t absorb the new information, then the existing schemas are altered to fit m=new information
Ex: A family has a cat and dog, so the kid’s schema is of their cat and dog, they go to the zoo and sees different types of animals and must adjust/ accommodate their schema.

Question 9

What were Piagets four stages of Cognitive development?

Answer 9

• Sensory motor intelligence
• Preoperational period
• concrete operational period
• Formal operational period

Question 10

What is the sensory motor period?

Answer 10

Has an emphasis on sensations and causality. LEARNING OBJECT PERMENANCE (understanding that objects continue to exist even if the child is not in sensory contact with them), experiences the world through senses and actions, develop basic schemas, has intentions behind their actions, develops stranger anxiety

Question 11

What is the preoperational stage?

Answer 11

OVEREGULIZING RULES (Ex: when a kid learns that an “s” goes on a plural, they then add an “s” to all words. Child can represent things in words and images. They become more independent and get attached to a toy. The child uses INTUITIVE rather than LOGICAL REASONING LACKS CONSERVATION (the 2 containers have the same amount of liquid. This phases is centered around egocentricim, children start forming theory of the mind (The understanding that other people have different ideas and understanding.

Question 12

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 12

The child can think logically about concrete objects and events, the child understands HOW ACTIONS CAN AFFECT OR TRANSFORM CONCRETE OBJECTS, Understands conservation (the two containers with the same amount of liquid) and reversibility and transformation (ball of clay). At this stage it is hard to do if/thens (what ifs).

Question 13

What is the formal operational stage?

Answer 13

(Puberty) reasoning expands from concrete thinking to abstract thinking. Can think in hypotheticals, can make moral judgements, and has more sophisticated thinking about self and others. In this stage mylenation of the frontal lobes takes place, increasing sophisticated cognition.

Question 14

What is social development?

Answer 14

Developing a more complex sense of self and more complex social relationships

Question 15

What were the problems with Piaget’s theory?

Answer 15

Development is a continuous process, children express their mental abilities and operations and earlier age, formal logic is a smaller part of cognition

Question 16

What was Vygotskys take on cognitive development?

Answer 16

He believed children develop through interactions with members of their own culture and the zone of proximal development

Question 17

What is the zone of proximal development?

Answer 17

The range of accomplishments that are beyond what a child could do alone but can do with help and guidance
It depends upon three factors:
Joint attentive: The ability to focus on what another person is focused on
Social referencing:The ability to use another persons reactions as information about the world
Imitation: The ability to do what another person does

Question 18

What were Piaget’s three shifts of children’s moral thinking?

Answer 18

Realism to relativism, prescription to principles, outcomes to intentions

Question 19

What were Kohlbergs thoughts on Piaget’s theory?

Answer 19

Connected moral reasoning to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. He connected preconventional morality to preoperational thinking, conventional morality to concrete operational thinking, and connected postconventional morality to formal operational thinking.

Question 20

What is preconventional morality?

Answer 20

The child’s assessment of what will happen

Question 21

What is conventional morality?

Answer 21

Extent to which it conforms to social rules morality of an action is primarily to determined by the person (rules outside of you)

Question 22

What is postconventional morality?

Answer 22

The morality of an action is determined by a set of general principles that reflect core values (personal choice)

Question 23

What is internalizing morality?

Answer 23

Your parents beliefs become your beliefs, stems from conventional morality

Question 24

What are the problems with Kohlberg’s theory?

Answer 24

Reasoning may differ based on context, moral thinking may or may not correlate with moral behavior, compassion versus justice, moral reasoning made based on emotional reactions (aka moral intuitionism perspective: perceptions of right and wrong are evolutionary emotional reactions, your gut)

Question 25

What is suggested about moral development?

Answer 25

Physical punishment makes children less likely to develop a conscience and less likely to internalize their parents morality, and children with good relationships with their parents develop a stronger conscience and at an earlier age.

Question 26

What are Ericksons stages of social development?

Answer 26

Infancy, toddlerhood, preschool, elementary school, adolescents, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood

Question 27

What does the infancy stage focus on?

Answer 27

Challenge trust versus mistrust, and based on whether or not a child’s needs are reliably met

Question 28

What does toddlerhood focus on?

Answer 28

Challenge autonomy (independence versus shame/doubt)
Based on whether the child has good experiences attempting to do things independently

Question 29

What does preschool stage focus on?

Answer 29

Challenge initiative versus guilt, based on whether the child can initiate original tasks and carry out personal plans

Question 30

What does the elementary school stage focus on?

Answer 30

Competency (industry) versus inferiority, depends on whether the child can do things well or correctly, compared to others or a standard

Question 31

What does the adolescent stage focus on?

Answer 31

Challenge identity versus role confusion, depends on whether the person can develop a refined sense of self by experimenting with and then integrating different identities

Question 32

What does the young adulthood stage focus on?

Answer 32

Challenge intimacy versus isolation, depends on developing the mature ability to love inform long-term committed relationships

Question 33

What does the middle adulthood stage focus on?

Answer 33

Challenge generativity (finds a way to deal with mid life crisis) versus stagnation (angry with you life), depends on whether the person discovers a sense of value by investing the next generation or something larger than themselves.

Question 34

What is the main focus in the late adulthood stage?

Answer 34

Challenge: integrity versus despair there, depends on whether the person can reflect back on life with the sense of acceptance and satisfaction

Question 35

What are the four types of identities in Ericsson stages of social development?

Answer 35

A realized identity – know who they are
a foreclosed identity – refused to engage in process
mandatorium identity – takes a long time, you choose an identity you like at the time and then choose a different one later
Diffuse identity- doesn’t have a sense of self

Question 36

What did Bowlby’s study?

Answer 36

He studied the effects of Ariel bombings on children in England and observed the behavior of the child’s attachment to the mother. The kids would do either try to stay near her, or distressed by her separation, approached her when upset, easily comforted by her, or did not fear her.

Question 37

What was Ainsworth experiment and what were the results?

Answer 37

Ainsworth put the child and a mom in a room with toys they would play there for a while stranger enters talks to mom approaches the child the mom leaves briefly and then the mom returns. Ainsworth sought to find the answer to the question how does a child react under each of these conditions.

Question 38

What are the four categories that Ainsworth experiment produced?

Answer 38

Securely attached, insecure – anxious resistant, insecure – anxious avoidant, disorganized attachment

Question 39

What are the three patterns of parenting?

Answer 39

Authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative