PSY - 311 Exam #1

What are the 3 domains of child development?

* Physical development (EX: growth/changes in the body)
* Cognitive development (EX: learning, memory)
* Social-Emotional development (EX: emotions, personality)

What is the Nature/Nurture debate? What is the current scientific consensus regarding this debate?

How much either nature or nurture forms a person’s characteristics.

Nature EX: genetics

Nurture EX: upbringing

What is continuous development?

Gradual change, quantitative

EX: vocabulary

What is discontinuous development?

Stage-like change, qualitative

EX: leaps and bursts in learning

What is meant by both stability and change in development?

Are we basically the same people we were at earlier ages, or do we reinvent ourselves along the way

How are stability and change both expressed in development?

* Young children: hit, kick, or throw things when angry
* School-age children: teasing, name-calling when angry
* Adolescents: spreading rumors, excluding people

Equifinality

Different pathways of development can result in the same outcome

Multifinality

The same pathway can lead to different outcomes

Intersectionality

The interaction of personal characteristics contributes to different experiences and outcomes

Niche picking

a theory that people choose environments that complement their genetic makeup

“Contexts” of development

different settings in which development takes place

what is socialization?

Family (primary source of interaction for kids)

What is socioeconomic status?

(SES)

Income, education, occupation, where you live

In what ways do schools, communities, culture, and historical time influence development?

* Schools: Teach the children
* Communities: affect the range and quality of support services available to children and their families.
* Culture: affects our behavior, and shapes all aspects of daily life

What is a developmental theory?

explaining how humans grow from infants to adolescents to adults to elderly people and the various changes they undergo

What is the main idea of psychoanalytic theories?

unconscious forces shape human thoughts and behavior

What are the main contributions of Fried’s psychoanalytic theory?

* Unconscious mind
* Psychosexual stages of development

How is Erikson’s psychoanalytic theory organized?

Psychosocial stages of development

* Crisis at each stage

What are the major differences between Freud’s theory and Erikson’s theory?

Freud: basic needs and biological forces

Erikson: social and environmental factors

What is behaviorism?

Focuses on environmental control over observable behaviors

Classical Conditioning

Pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditional stimulus to elicit the same response

* EX: Pavlov’s Dog
* Watson and “Little Albert”

Operant Conditioning

Increasing or decreasing the likelihood of a voluntary behavior due to the consequences that follow that behavior

* EX: Use of reinforcement, punishment or extinction

What is social cognitive theory?

Learning by observation and imitation of others

* EX: The “Bobo Doll” experiment

How is social cognitive theory different from traditional behaviorism?

Behaviorism focuses on environmental factors that influence behavior, social cognitive takes into account the cognitive processes and social cues that also play a role in shaping behavior.

What is the main idea behind Piaget’s theory?

Children as “little scientists”

Constructivism

Learning is a process of construction, where the thing being constructed is the child’s internal model of the world or “reality” more generally

What are schemas?

the representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model

Assimilation

the cognitive process of making new information fit into already existing schemas

Accommodation

when you change the schema in order to accommodate the new information

Equilibration

describing how new information is balanced with existing knowledge

What is the main idea behind Vygotsky’s theory?

Importance of the social world and culture in promoting cognitive growth.

What is the zone of proximal development?

the target range for teaching

What is scaffolding?

how we structure the learning

What is the main idea behind evolutionary theories?

Ethology

Based on Darwin’s idea of natural selection

What is the main idea behind information processing theory?

Examines the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information

What is a neutral network model?

a model of the way the human brain processes information

What is ethology?

the study of animal behavior

What is the main idea behind ecological theory?

Individuals grow and develop within a set of 5 rested influences

5 systems of Brofenbrenner’s model

Microsystem

* family, child care centers

Mesosystem

* peers, school

Exosystem

* extended family

Macrosystem

* government

Chronosystem

* environmental changes and transitions over time

What is dynamic systems theory?

all different aspects of development interact and affect each other over time

What is observational research?

when you observe participants and phenomena is their most natural settings

What is naturalistic observation vs systematic observation?

Naturalistic: observing subjects in their natural environment

Systematic: observation and focus on the visible behavior in relation to visible values of the environment

What are self-report measures?

participants’ self-reported experience of emotions rather than behavioral or physiological emotional information

* surveys
* questionnaires
* interviews

What are some potential problems with these measures? (surveys, interviews, questionnaires)

may not be accurate answers

Standardized Tests

when a test is made uniform or set to adhere to a specific standard

* EX: administering and scoring the test the same way for everyone

Norm

rules of a group of people that mark out what is appropriate, allowed and required or forbidden for various members in different situations

Physiological Measures

recording of any of a wide variety of physiological processes

* EX: heart rate, blood pressure

Case Studies

a study of a single person, community or even that relies of observations, facts and experiment to gather information

Ethnography

a qualitative method for collecting data often used in the social and behavioral sciences

* Data collected through observations and interviews

What is an experimental research design? What type of information can this design provide that others cannot?

* to provide definitive conclusions about the casual relationships among the variables in the research hypothesis
* independent variables and dependent variables

What is a natural/quasi-experimental research design? What type of information can this design provide? What is the limitation of this design?

* carried out in a natural setting, the researcher measures the effect of something which is to see the effect of this something on something else
* measuring the effect of something that is already happening
* lack of control, not replicable

What is a correlation research design? What is its major limitation?

* investigates relationships between two (or more) variables without the researcher controlling or manipulating any of them.
* it can determine association between exposure and outcomes but cannot predict causation

Cross-Sectional Design

multiple age groups, studied once

Longitudinal Design

1 age group, followed/studied for a long period of time

Cross-Sequential Design

multiple age groups followed/studied for a long period of time

Genes

the basic physical and functional until of heredity

Fertilization

the fusion of a haploid male gamete and a haploid female gamete to form a diploid cell, the zygote

Zygote

The first diploid cell, resulting in the formation of an embryo

What are chromosomes?

thread-like structures located inside the nucleus of cells. made of protein and a single molecule of DNA (made up of genes)

How many pairs of chromosomes are in most human cells?

23 pairs (23 from mother, 23 from father)

Which human cells have fewer chromosomes? How many do they have?

sex cells, one set of chromosomes

Autosomes

any chromosome that is not the sex chromosome

What are sex chromosomes? How is sex determined? Which parent is responsible for determining sex?

2 sex chromosomes, X and Y, 23rd pair of chromosomes

* XX - Female
* XY - Male

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The male parent chromosome determines the sex

Genotype

Complete genetic makeup of an individual. Some genes are not expressed.

Phenotype

Genetic traits that you display

How are dominant traits passed on? How are recessive traits passed on?

* only one copy of the dominant allele is required to express the trait
* both recessive alleles must be present to express the trait

what is a polygenic inheritance?

many genes interact together to produce a particular trait or behavior.

What are pleiotropic effects?

any single gene can affect many different traits

How are single-gene disorders passed on? What is a carrier?

* 1 gene responsible for the disorder, 2 alleles having it or not
* a person who can pass an inherited (genetic) disease on to their children, but who does NOT have the disease

How are sex-linked disorders passed on? Which sex is most often affected by sex-linked disorders? Why?

* passed down through families through one of the X or Y chromosomes.
* Males because they only have a single copy of the X chromosome

How do chromosomal disorders usually develop?

When there is a missing, extra or damaged chromosome

How do multifactorial genetic disorders develop?

Likely to be influenced by the environment

What is genetic counseling? How is it different from genetic testing?

* a way for people to understand genetic illnesses that can affect them and their family
* gathers and analyzes family history and inheritance patterns

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* Genetic counseling is done BEFORE they decide to get pregnant, genetic testing is done DURING pregnancy

Genetic Testing Measures & Gene Therapy

* bloodwork, ultrasound, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling
* genome editing: looking to see if bad genes can be replaced with good ones (EX: CRISPR)

How are dizygotic (fraternal) and monozygotic (identical) twins formed? What are the differences between these types of twins?

Identical: one fertilized egg splits and develops into 2 babies with exactly the same genetic information

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Fraternal: two eggs are fertilized by two sperm and produce two genetically unique children

What is the field of behavior genetics?

* Heritability: the extent to which genes determine a trait or characteristic
* Concordance: the degree to which a trait or characteristic in one individual is similar to that in another (used to determine heritability)

Types of Behavioral Genetic Studies

Adoption Studies

* Find people who were adopted as babies and compare them to their biological parents and their adoptive parents.

Twin Studies

* Compare groups of identical twins to fraternal twins

Twin Adoption Studies

* Identifying identical twins who were separated at birth and comparing them (same genes, different environments)

What is a canalization? What makes a trait highly canalized?

* the degree to which the expression of genes is influenced by the environment
* Highly canalized = LITTLE environmental influence

What are gene-environment interactions?

a different effect of environmental exposure on disease risk in persons with different genotypes.

* Passive: being put in environments that match their genes, but it isn’t their choice
* Active: chooses to be in environments that match our genes
* Evocative: Individuals’ genetic predisposition causes them to evoke or draw out a particular response from the environment

What is conception?

Ovum, Ovulation, Fertilization

What happens during ovulation?

A mature egg is released from the ovary, moves down the fallopian tube where it can be fertilized

What is fertilization and where does it take place?

when a woman’s egg joins with a man’s sperm. it takes place in a fallopian tube that links an ovary to the uterus.

3 stages of prenatal development

* Germinal
* Embryonic
* Fetal

What happens during the germinal stage? When does it begin and when does it end?

* Begins with fertilization, the zygote moves down the fallopian tube, cell division, blastocyst, implantation
* Conception to 2 weeks

What is the blastocyst?

a cluster of dividing cells made by a fertilized egg

What is the Inner Cell Mass?

a structure in the early development of an embryo.

the mass of cells inside the blastocyst that will eventually give rise to the definitive structures of the fetus.

What is the Trophoblast?

cells forming the outer layer of a blastocyst which provides nutrients to the embryo

becomes a large part of the placenta

What happens during the embryonic stage? When does it begin and when doe sit end?

Trophoblast develops into chorion and amnion, then organ formation takes place.

2 weeks to 2 months

What is the amnion and what is its function?

* The inner wall
* protects the child, allows for nutrients to reach the fetus and wastes to be removed

What is the chorion and what is the placenta and what is its function?

* The outer wall
* provides protection and temperature regulation

3 layers of the inner cell mass and what they develop into

Ectoderm: skin, sense organs, brain and spinal cord

Endoderm: respiratory system, digestive system, liver and pancreas

Mesoderm: muscles, blood, bones, and circulatory system

What happens during the fetal stage? When does it begin and when does it end?

development of genitalia, continued growth, development of senses

2 months to birth

What organs develop during the fetal stage?

Genitalia

What does the age of viability mean? When does the fetus generally reach this point?

the point at which a baby can be resuscitated at delivery and can survive without significant morbidity

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24 weeks

What are some of the major features of events of each trimester?

1st: A fertilized egg develops into a fully formed fetus with a heartbeat and some facial features

2nd: fetus begins to urinate, sex will become apparent in an ultrasound, able to respond to familiar sounds while in the womb

3rd: baby begins to kick, stretch, and grow hair

What is a miscarriage? What are some causes?

* spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks
* irregular genes or chromosomes

What aspects of the maternal diet are particularly important for prenatal development?

* consume lots of healthy fats
* increase calorie intake (300-400 more calories a day)
* nutrients, supplements, vitamins

What are teratogens? When are they most likely to cause prenatal damage? What factors influence the extent of damage that a teratogen might cause?

* External agents that can harm the developing embryo or fetus
* during the embryonic period
* the drug, substance or type of toxin, how long the pregnant person was exposed and the amount of exposure (dosage or quantity)

What is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?

* intellectual disability, emotional problems, cognitive problems