Unit 3 AP Pysch

Developental Psychology

the study of both chronological order of development and/or thematic issues in development across the lifespan.
Topiics: nature and nuture, stability and change, and continous and discountinuous stages of development

Chronological Order

how people develop in a sequence as they age; different life estges a person will go through

Thematic Order

specifc themes and topics that span across a person’s life

Rooting Reflex

an automatic, involuntary survival instinct in newborns that helps them locate a breast or bottle to feed

Visual Cliff Apparatus

demonstrates the ability in infants to perceive depth and a way to assess infant responses

Main physical and pschological milestones that occur in adolescence

growth spurt and puberty, in which reproductive abilites develop ( menarche and spemarche)

Adulthood

spanns most of the life, charaterized by leveling off and thhen a vaying decline in reproductive ability, mobility, flexibilty, rection time, visual and auditory sensory acuity

Schemas

mental framework for understanding world; they organize and interpret unfamilar info; they guide our perception

According to Piaget…

children develop schemas via continuous and discontinuous processes such as assimilation and accommodation

Continuity View

Change is gradual

Discontinuity View

the perspective that development occurs in a series of distinct, unique stages rather than a slow, gradual process

• Psychologists believe that people go through the same stages in the same order, but not at the same rate

Developmental Stages

Periods of life initiated by distinct transitions in physical or psychological functioning

Sensorimotor Stage

occurs from infancy through toddlerhood. Object permanence develops during this stage

Object Permanence

the cognitive understanding that objects, people, and events continue to exist even when they cannot be sensed—seen, heard, or touched

Preoperational stage

well developed theory of mind, able to pretend play, and the use of language; cannot perform conversation, egocentrism, animistic thinkking, irreversibility, artificialism

Egocentrism

causes children to see the world in only their terms

Animistic Thinking

elieving inanimate objects have life and mental processes “Bad Table”

centration

inability to understand a event because the child focuses their attention too narrowly,

Irreversibility

can't think through a series of events backwards

artificialism

believing all objects are made by people

Concrete Operational Stage

Children in this stage can generally correct the cognitive errors made in the preoperational stage (irreversibility, conservation and mental operations) and understand the world in logical, realistic, and straightforward ways, but struggle to think systematically.

Formal Operational Stage

occurs from late childhood through adulthood; people in this stage gain ability to think abstractly and hypothetically; Piaget proposed not all people reach this stage

According to Vygotsky, children are…

social learners who learn through interacting with and scaffolding by other people within sociocultural contexts. Ideally, learning occurs while the person is in their zone of proximal development.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Discontinuous model of development which states children will undergo a revolutionary change in thought at each stage; Based on schemas, assimilation and accommodation and stages of cognitive development

Assimilation

Process that modifies new information to fit with existing schemas or with what is already known

Accommodation

process of restructuring or modifying schemas to incorporate new information

Prenatal Period

the 9 month developmental period before birth; One concern are teratogens, which are substances from the environment that can damage the developing baby.

Neonatal Period

Birth to 1 month; babies are capable of responding to stimulation from all senses

Infancy Period

1 month to 24 months; rapid development but is still heavily reliant on reflexive behavior. 

Parenting Styles

authoritarian, authoritative, uninvolved and permissive; cutural differences exist in the ways these parenting styles affect outcomes in caregivers and children

Types of attachment

secure and insecure (avoidant, anxious, and disorganized). Temperament is related to how children attach to caregivers.;Research has identified different attachment styles demonstrated by infants and children, which vary by culture

Separation anxiety

when children express heightened anxiety or fear when away from a caregiver or in the presence of a stranger

Monkey Studies

demonstrates the importance of comfort over food in attachment

Peer Relationships

children enagage with peers via parallel play and pretend; adolescents rely on peer relationships as they age

Adults Social Development

Culture plays a role in determining when adulthood begins and when major life events occur (social clock); Some cultures allow for a time of emerging adulthood as a transition from adolescence to adulthood

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov: association of one stimulus with another stimulus to elicit a response. Learning the association (also known as acquisition) involves a series of steps that demonstrate principles of associative learning.

Stimulus

Event object or thing taht triggers a specfic reaction

Neutral Stimuli

Stimuli that elicits no response from a subject

Unconditioned Stimulus

Stimulus that naturally triggers a response

Unconditioned Response

Natural Response that happens without any learning

Conditioned Stimulus

Previously neutral stimulus is paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus triggering a learned response

Acquisition

The process of developing a connection between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus (NS + US)

Extinction

when the contioned response gradually diminishes; when CS is repeatdly presented without being paired with the UCS, casuing gthe association to weaken (CS alone)

Spontaneous Recovery

reapperance after a pause of an extinguished conditioned response

Stimulus Generalization

Individual responds to stimulus that is similar to the orginal conditioned stimulus

Stimulus Discrimination

An individual learns to differentiate between teh CS ad other stimuli

Higher-Order Conditioining/Second Order Conditioning

when a NS that has become a CS is paired with another UCS

Habiutation

when indiviudals grow accustomed to and exhibit a diminished response to a repeated or enduring stimulus

Taste Aversions

where an individual learns to avoid a particular taste, flavor, or food bc the associate it with illness; only requires one pairing of food and sickness to form assoicaition

Operant Conditioning

behaviors are shaped by their consequences, either through punishment or reinforcement. B.F Skinner

Law of Effect

behaviors resulting in positive outcomes become strengthened while those followed by negative ones are weakened

Positive

Adding something

Negative

Taking something away

Positive Reinforcement

adding something desirable to increase the liklihood of a behavior occuring

Negative Reinforcement

removing something unpleasant to increase the likelihood of a behhavior occuring

Primary Reinforcers

naturally rewarding because they will satisfy basic needs lik food, water, or warmth

Secondary Reinforcers

learned rewards often associated with primary reinforcers (money for example)

Positive Punishement

adding something unpleasant to decrease a certain behavior

Negative Punishment

removing something desirable to decrease a behavior

Discrimination

the individual can tell the difference between which behaviors get rewarded and which don’t

Generalization

individual applies what they learned though conditioning to similar situations

Reinforcement Discrimination

individual learns to respond only to specific cues or signanls that indicate when a behavior will be reinforced

Reinforcement Generalization

response that has been reinforced in the presence of one stimulus lso occurs in the presence of a similar stimuli

Shaping

when reinforcement is used gradually to teach a complex behavior by rewarding small steps that lead towards the final desired behavior

Instinctive Drift

limitation in shaping behaviors is due to the fact that certain natural behaviors are essentially hardwired into an animal

Superstitious behaviors

when people mistakingly believe that an action leads to a certain outcome, even though the two thing are not conected

Contionous Reinforcement

when reinforcement is provided every time a correct behavior is learned; helpful to get behavior going but not resistant to extinction

Partial Reinforcement

when reinforcement does not occur with every correct behavior maing it more resistant to extinction

Fixed Interval

reinforcement is given after a set amount of time has passed (e.g frequency of your salary, scalloped pattern on graph)

Variable Interval

reinforcement is given after an unpredictable amount of time (steady and moderate line but it is the slowest)

Fixed Ratio

when reinforcement if given after a specific number of behaviors (high response rate with short stoping after reward)

Variable Ratio

reinforcement is provided after an unpredictable number of correct behaviors, leads to high and steady response rate, most resistant to extinction

learned helplessness

when n organism believes they cannot influence or change an event in life even when the relality is that they can