Week 1

Question 1

Developmental Psychology

Answer 1

The scientific study of how a person’s psychology changes as they grow and develop through their lifespan
-Offers insights into development and contentious issues which can shape services such as education and healthcare

Question 2

What develops?

Answer 2

-Physical body and motor skills
-Cognitive abilities
-Social understanding
-Emotional skills (understanding and regulation)

Question 3

Developmental periods:
Prenatal

Answer 3

Conception to birth

Question 4

Developmental periods:
Infancy

Answer 4

0-2 years
-Major changes

Question 5

Developmental periods:
Early childhood

Answer 5

2-6 years
-Major changes

Question 6

Developmental periods:
Middle childhood

Answer 6

7-10 years
-Major changes

Question 7

Developmental periods:
Adolescence

Answer 7

11-18 years
-Major changes

Question 8

Developmental periods:
Early adulthood

Answer 8

18-24 years

Question 9

Developmental periods:
Middle Adulthood

Answer 9

25-69 years

Question 10

Developmental periods:
Old age

Answer 10

70+ years

Question 11

Considerations when studying children

Answer 11

-Suitability of tasks or language
-Environment
-Test situation
-Ethics such as long-term impact on child

Question 12

Suitable research methods for children

Answer 12

-Observation (faces, crying, looking, sucking)
-Play or disguise the task
-Physiological data collection

Question 13

Child Observation:
Faces

Answer 13

-Conflicting information over whether newborns can copy facial expressions
-Expressions can show how the child feels about

Question 14

Child Observations:
Crying

Answer 14

-Babies have different cries for different situations
-Babies cry in their mothertongue

Question 15

Child Observations:
Looking

Answer 15

-Eye tracking technology can calculate gaze direction, duration, and response time
-Looking time can
->indicate preference (preferential looking paradigm)
->discrimination as babies look longer at new stimuli (habituation to familiar stimuli)
->expectation as babies look longer at unexpected events (violation of expectation paradigm)
->prediction as babies focus on areas they expect something to happen (anticipatory looking paradigm)
-

Question 16

Child Observations:
Sucking

Answer 16

Non-nutritive (high amplitude) sucking can indicate:
-Discrimination, infants suck faster around new stimuli
-Preference, infants suck faster to get a preferred response (preferential operant sucking paradigm)

Question 17

Child Physiological observations:
Heart rate

Answer 17

Changes in heart rate can indicate a child’s response eg. heartrate increase in response to mother’s voice and decreases in response to stranger

Question 18

Child Physiological observations:
EEG

Answer 18

EEGs can show electrical signal in the brain, for instances babies brains respond to their own name

Question 19

Child Physiological observations:
Neuroimaging techniques

Answer 19

Can show brain activity and abnormalities. For example, fcMRI may predict autism spectrum disorder in infants

Question 20

Adult Research methods

Answer 20

-Tasks and tests
-Questionairres

Question 21

Experimental designs:
Longitudinal

Answer 21

Studying the same group as they age

Question 22

Experimental designs:
Cross-sectional

Answer 22

Studying different groups for different ages

Question 23

What is culture?

Answer 23

Culture is the knowledge, beliefs, laws, traditions, and customs of a group; this is dynamic and passed on through generations

Question 24

Cause of different cultures

Answer 24

Migration and settlement cause separate groups of humans which developed to have different cultures

Question 25

Cross-cultural studies

Answer 25

The use of data from many societies and cultures to creat a bigger picture of human behaviour and psychology

Question 26

WEIRD people

Answer 26

Westernised Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic

Question 27

WEIRD Samples in Behavioural sciences

Answer 27

Between 2003 and 2007, 68% of participants in studies across 6 psychology disciplines where from the USA, and 96% were from the Industrialised West Similarly, 99% of the authors were from Western countries. 96%of samples are from 12% of the population

Question 28

Student Samples

Answer 28

Undergraduate students are 4000 times more likely to participate in studies, making them the overwhelming majority of samples

Question 29

The problem with WEIRD and Student samples

Answer 29

This restricted demographic means we are only getting insight into specific cultures, which may not be universal experiences, so the data is biased

Question 30

Universality of expression

Answer 30

There are 6 universal of emotions, which are depicted with similar expressions throughout cultures: -Anger -Disgust -Fear -Sad -Surprise -Happy

Question 31

Cultural differences in development: First words

Answer 31

Uk children say "mama", "dada" ect while hunter-gatherer cultures first communicate about resources eg "take this"

Question 32

Cultural differences in development: Motor skills

Answer 32

Different milestone in Western vs Africa -eg. Uganda children sit, crawl, and walk faster than in the west

Question 33

Cultural differences in development: Sleeping

Answer 33

Separate bedrooms is generally unique to the west, in 2/3 of societies beds are shared, an co-sleeping is common, and shared bedrooms even more so

Question 34

Cultural differences in development: Causes

Answer 34

-Rearing methods -Beliefs -Priorities -Family type (Nuclear vs multigenerational)