Developmental Psychology Quiz

Cross-Sectional Study

• Compares people of different ages at the same time
• Less expensive and easier to conduct
• Limitation: Cohort effect - influences from a specific time period

Longitudinal Study

• Repeatedly tests the same participants over time
• Limitation: Expensive and difficult to retain participants

Sequential Study

• Repeatedly tests many age cohorts over time

Prenatal Development

• Impacts of genes and environment
• Fetus responds to sound at 6 months
• Methods of baby communication: gaze, sucking, turning heads
• Habituation: decrease in response to repeated stimulation

Cognitive Development (Piaget)

• Cognitive development stages
• Lawrence Kohlberg: moral development
• Erik Erikson: psychosocial development
• End of history illusion: people think they haven't changed much (or not at all) during the last decade but can recognize they have in fact changed when they reflect on it

Language Learning in the Womb

• Babies can recognize fake words or sounds repeated in the womb

Teratogens

• Environmental factors (drugs, viruses, etc) that may damage an embryo or fetus
• Teratogens produce epigenetic effects: leave chemical marks on DNA, change gene expression

Habituation

• Decrease in response to repeated stimulation
• Allows researchers to understand how infants perceive and remember information

Brain Development

• Most brain cells are present at birth
• Nervous system immature at birth
• Frontal lobes grow quickly during 3-6 years of age
• Association areas develop last, which is linked to mental abilities

Skills in Babies

• Physical skills like walking are linked to neural network development
• Massage and exercise in babies can accelerate walking

Infant Learning

• Procedural memories and skills can be learned and remembered
• Traces of forgotten childhood languages may exist in unconscious mind

Cognition

• Mental activities related to thinking, knowing, remembering
• communication

Piaget's Core Idea

• Intellectual progression is a continuous struggle to understand experiences
• The brain builds schemas to organize interactions

Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)

• Learning occurs through actions and senses
• Object permanence: understanding that objects continue to exist even when not perceived
• Baby physics (expectation violation): infants stare longer when objects don't behave as anticipated

Preoperational Stage (2-7)

• Symbolic thinking & pretend play; conceptualization of images and words
• Egocentrism: difficulty seeing things from other perspectives
• Conservation: recognizing that certain properties remain the same despite changes in form

Concrete Operational Stage (7-11)

• Understanding basic operations like conservation.
• Grasping the operations of conservation (recognizing that quantity doesn't change with shape)
• Can do abstract thoughts with physical materials

Formal Operational Stage (12-adulthood)

• Abstract thinking and reasoning
• Formal operational thinking: deductive reasoning
• Culture influences cognitive development
• Formal Logic is not crucial to cognitive development like before

Vygotsky's Theory

• Child's mind develops through social interaction.
• Scaffolding: temporary support given to children learning crucial development milestones
• Language assists children in their development

Emotional Attachment & Parenting Styles

• Critical periods for building attachments
• Imprinting = rigid attachment process
• Secure attachment = responsive/sensitive mother
• Insecure attachments (anxious and avoidant) = insensitive unresponsive parents
• Authoritarian = impose rules
• Permissive = few demands
• Neglectful = uninvolved
• Authoritative = set rules but encourage open discussion

Baby Development/Attachment

• Stranger anxiety: distress when encountering strangers (around 8 months)
• Recognizing words or sounds in their mothers tongue/language whilst in the womb

Negative Emotions/Age

• Negative emotions decrease with age
• Older adults process/change negative emotions faster than young adults
• Older adults are more likely to experience mixed emotions
• Changes in aging brain: telomeres shorten, pupils shrink, and less of the brain's light perception

Baby Memory/Brain Training

• Ability to recall new info declines while ability to recognize info remains strong
• Memory regions atrophy, blood brain barrier breaks down in hippocampus during aging
• Brain plasticity/neural networks remain
• Exercise slows aging, maintains telomeres and slows Alzheimer's

Brain, Intelligence & Cognitive Function

• Stroke, brain tumors, alcohol, and smoking cause damages to the brain
• Alzheimers: caused by the deterioration of neurons that produce acetylcholine
• Fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence are important factors in overall intelligence score
• General intelligence is related to high scores in different categories
• Spearman, Thurstone, and Cattell-Hormon-Carroll theories of Intelligence are important

Intelligence/IQ Testing

• IQ tests are commonly standardized, reliable and valid.
• Standardized testing involves a large group of people in similar situations
• Alfred Binet created an IQ test to measure mental age
• Lewis Terman's Stanford-Binet test built on Alfred Binet's work and is the basis of many IQ tests today
• Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) for adults and Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) for younger people, are commonly used tests today.
• Correlations between IQ tests and academic achievement are weaker as education level increases but not totally irrelevant.

Other Important Aspects of Development in Adults

• High-extreme IQs
• Groups of students by aptitude
• Intelligence stability and change across lifespan
• Wisdom and Relationship of Wisdom to age
• Heredity/heritability of intelligence (influence of genetics)
• Intelligence and culture
• Gender intelligence differences
• Epigenetics: how genetic characteristics change due to environment
• Poor environments effect characteristics

Motivation

• Fixed patterns of behaviour (instincts)
• Drive reduction theory: maintain homeostasis
• Optimal arousal theory: moderate arousal is best
• Maslow's hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization
• Motivation continuum: from amotivation to intrinsic motivation
• Expectancy Theory of Motivation
• Social isolation can hurt health

Sex/Sexual Orientation

• Sexual orientation mainly driven by pleasure not reproduction
• Sexual orientation is often stable in one's lifespan and genetically influenced.
• Transgenders are distinct from homosexuals, according to Henry Ellis