Psych Chapter 1

Develpoment

Systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occurs between conception and death. It encompasses physical, cognitive, and social development across the lifespan.

Growth

Physical changes that occur from conception to death.

Biological Aging

Deterioration of organism

Age Grade

Socially defined categories that reflect the age at which individuals are expected to exhibit certain behaviors or milestones.

Age Norms

Society’s way of telling people to act their age. Influences decisions about how to lead their life.

Social Clock

Person’s sense of when things should be done.

EX. 40 year old in college might feel behind

Socioeconomic status (SES)

Standing based on occupational prestige, education, and income. Mainly income.

Stanley Hall

Founder of developmental psychology. Nurture vs. Nature. Adolescence storm and stress. Actively vs. passive. Continuity discontinuity, universality vs. context specific.

Evolutionary Theory

Looks at the evolution of humans for explantation of why we are like we are and how we develop. Evolutionary theorists ask fundamental questions about how characteristics and behaviors we commonly observe in humans today may have evolved.

Psychoanalytic theory

Frued the freak, focused on development and dynamic of personality (id, ego, super ego),psychosexual development, concept of unconsious motivation, defese mechanism to combat inner anxies/ conflicts. People are motivated by emotional conflicts. Shaped by early childhood.

Jean Piaget

Studied his own kids. Intelligence is a process that helps an organisms adapt to its environment. Developed stages based on his studies.

Social Cognitive Theory

Humans are cognitive beings who’s active processing of info plays a role in their learning, behavior, and development.

Systems Theory

Changes over the life span arise from ongoing transactions. Changing organisms and changing environment affect each other.

Sample

Group of individuals studied.

Population

Well defined group. Ex. American adults

Random Sampling

Sample formed by identifying all members of the larger populations and then randomly selecting.

Verbal Reports

Interviews, Surveys, SAT, personality scale. Can nit be used on babies.

Behavioral Observations

Just watch the people. Problems: some behavior is too infrequent, being observed can change behaviors. Difficult to pinpoint causes.

Structured Observation

Greater control over conditions, has a set stimuli/ task. Will participants react normally? Can this be generalized to the real world?

Physiological measures

fMRI. Difficult to fake, shows what part of the brain is active, study infants, not clear on what is assed.

Cross sectional Design

Age and peers and affect the results. Cohort differences can show difference in generations. Will learn nothing about how people change with age.

Longitudinal Design

A group is assessed repeatedly over time. Age change instead of age differences. Indicates if characteristics and behaviors are consistent or change over time. People can die/ drop out and is very expensive.

Sequential Design

Combo of longitudinal and cross sectional into one. Reveals: age related trends are development in nature, which age trends differ, time of measurement effects. Very complex and expensive.

Baltes’ life span perspective

Development is shaped by its cultural context.

WERID

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic

Ethnocentrism

The idea that your country’s data and standards apply to the entire world.

Protected Groups

Children, pregnant women, and prisoners

Universality Context Specific

Is development similar from person to person and from culture to culture—or do pathways of development vary considerably depending on the social context?

Continuity–discontinuity

Do humans change gradually and in quantitative ways—or do they progress through qualitatively different stages and develop very different competencies and characteristics as they get older?

Eric Erickson

Broadened Freud’s stages of psychosexual development and extended them beyond adolescence into early, middle, and late adulthood. must confront at each of eight phases of life.

B. F. Skinner

Operant condtioning (rewards for good punishment for bad)

Social Learning Theory

Holds that children and adults can learn novel responses merely by observing the behavior of a model, making mental notes on what they have seen, and then using these mental representations to reproduce the model’s behavior; more broadly, a theory emphasizing the importance of cognitive processing of social experiences.

Jean Piaget

Cognative Develpoment Theory how children advance through four stages of thinking: sensorimotor, proportional, concrete operational, and formal operational. Main message: Children think differently than adults do.

Systems Theory

Theories of development holding that changes over the life span arise from the ongoing interrelationships between a changing organism and a changing environment, both of which are part of a larger, dynamic system.

Urie Bronfenbrenne

Bronfenbrenner’s model of development that emphasizes the roles of both nature and nurture as the developing person interacts with a series of environmental systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem) over time (chronosystem).

Case Study

In-depth examination of an individual. Usually are not generalized.