Psychology Unit 1, Area of Study 2

Four areas of Development:

Physical changes, social changes, emotional changes, cognitive changes.

social changes:

Involves changes in an individual's relationship with other people and their skills in interacting with others. The ability to form close relationships.

Physical changes:

Includes changes in the body. For example, weight, height, puberty and menopause.

emotional changes:

Involves changes in how an individual experiences different feelings and how those feelings are expressed.

cognitive changes:

Involves changes in an individual's mental abilities such as reasoning, problem solving, and decision making.

Nature:

The transmission of characteristics from biological parents to their offspring. Examples; hair colour, skin tone. Can also inherit some physical and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, heart disease, breast cancer.

Nurture

Refers to environmental factors that shape our psychological developments. This can be things like the school you attend, the values your parents express, religion, culture, media and stressful events.

Nature vs nurture debate

Both nature and nurture are equally responsible in a person's development.

Sensitive period:

A period during development where an individual is more responsive to certain types of environmental experiences or learning. Example: learning our native language. If we have not acquired language by 12 years of age, we are not going to.

Critical period

A specific period in development during which an organism is most vulnerable to the deprivation or absence of a certain environmental stimuli or experiences. Example: If you are deprived oxygen during/after birth, you may end up with brain damage.

Attachment:

Refers to the emotional bond which forms between an infant and another person. Infants form attachments with those people who regualary acre for and most deeply involved with them.

Strange Situation

A standardised test for measuring the attachment relationship the child has with their parents. It is held when the child is 9-18 months of age. The parent and child go into an unfamiliar room with toys. The infant is exposed to a series of separations and reunions involving the caregiver, infant and stranger.

Three types of attachment.

Secure attachment, insecure avoidant attachment and insecure resistant attachment.

Insecure Avoidant Attachment

The result of abusive or neglectful caregivers where the infant doesn't seek contact with the caregiver and treats them like a stranger.

Insecure Resistant Attachment

The infant is anxious even when the caregiver is near, they cry when they are separated from the caregiver and cries to be picked up, but also fights to free as though they don't really know what they really want and is a result of the caregiver/s not being very responsive to the infant's needs.

Secure Attachment

An infant feels safe and secure with their caregiver, showing a balance between dependence and exploration. The caregiver is a safe place to venture out to unknown environments, but experiences distress when the caregiver departs.

Harlow's Experiment

Removed young monkeys from their natural mothers a few hours after birth and left them to be "raised" by surrogate mothrs, one being a cloth and another a wire with food.

Harlow's Experiment Aim

To find out whether provision of food or contact comfort is more important in the formation of infant-mother attachment

Harlow's Experiment IV

Provision of food by either a cloth or wire surrogate mother.

Harlow's Experiment DV

Amount of contact time spent with cloth and wire surrogate mothers.

Harlow's Experiment Conclusion

That contact comfort is more important than. Feeding in the formation of infant-mother attachment in rhesus monkeys.

Harlow's Experiment Results

That all monkeys in both groups 1 and 2 spent far more time with their cloth surrogate than they did with their wire surrogate, regardless of which provided food.

Three principals of Piaget's Theory

Assimilation, Accommodation and Schema.

Assimilation:

Is the process of taking in new information and fitting it into and making it part of our pre-existing mental ideas. Example: a child may call a car a truck as they have only witnessed cars.

Accommodation

Involves changing a pre-existing mental idea in order to fit in new information.

Schema:

A mental idea of what something is and how to act on it.

Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational.

Sensorimotor

0-2 years, Infants explore and learn about the world through their senses and their motor activities.

Pre-operational:

2-7 years, Marks the end of infancy and is also a time by which a significant amount of language acquisition has occurred.

Concrete operational:

7-12 years, The child is now capable of true logical thoughts and can perform mental 'operations'.

Formal operational:

12+ years, More complex thought processes are evident and their thinking becomes increasingly sophisticated through the combined effects of brain maturation and life experience.

Object permanence:

The understanding that objects still exist even if they cannot be seen, heard or touched. (Sensorimotor stage)

Goal-Directed behaviour:

To perform and successfully complete a sequence of actions with a particular purpose in mind. (Sensorimotor stage)

Egocentrism:

The tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view. (pre-operational)

Conservation of Mass and Volume:

The understanding that certain properties of an object can remain the same even when its appearance changes. (Concrete operational stage)

Abstract Thinking:

A way of thinking that does not rely on being able to see, visualise, experience or manipulate in order to understand something.

Flaws in Piaget's theory

He over estimated young children's ability, leading him to assume where wrong when in fact the didn't have the language to explain their answers clearly. And he only had a small number of participants in the experiments he conducted and involved his own children.

Population:

The entire group of people belonging to a category.

Sample:

A group of participants selected from the population.

IV:

A condition that the experimenter systematically manipulates, changes, or varies in order to gauge its effect on another variable.

DV:

The condition in an experiment that is affected by the IV and is used to measure the IVs effect.

Four things to present in hypothesis:

A prediction, the population, IV and DV.

Experimental group:

The group that is exposed to the IV.

Control group:

The group that is nor exposed to the IV, to compare to the experimental group.

Extraneous variable:

any other variable other than the IV that causes a change in results. Ie motivation, lying, mood, etc

Three types of sampling:

Convivence sampling, random sampling and stratified sampling.

Convivence sampling:

Selecting a sample of people easily available to you. Example: my psychology class. Advantages: convenient, cheap quick. Disadvantages: not representive, results cannot be generalised.

Random sampling:

Every member of the population has equal chance of being selected to be part of the sample. Example: names out of hat. Advantages: not biased, inexpensive, fairly representative. Disadvantages: not completely representative.

Stratified sampling:

Involves dividing the population into different subgroups called strata in the same proportions as they occur in the population of interest. Example: strata could be gender, age, income level. Advantages: representative (proportion), free from bias. Disadvantages: time consuming, expensive (pre testing).

Three experimental research designs:

Independent groups design, matched participants design and repeated measures.

Independent groups design:

Each participant is randomly allocated to one of two (or more) entirely separate conditions (groups).
Advantages: uses random allocation in order to minimise individual participant differences and reduces likelihood of differences so that the effects of the IV and DV can be isolated.
Disadvantages: Needs a larger number of participants and less control over participant variables.

Matched participants design

Each participant in one condition 'matches' a participant in the other condition(s) on one or more participant variables of relevance to the experiment. Advantages: ensures that in every condition there is a participant with very similar or identical scores on the variable(s) the researcher seeks to control and there is not often need to spread out the time period between different conditions.
Disadvantages: Difficult and time consuming to recruit participants who are alike in variables and loss of one participant means the loss of two, or even a group.

Repeated measures:

Each participant is in both the experimental and the control conditions.
Advantages: can compare results easier and requires a smaller number of paticipants.
Disadvantages: creates order effects (increase in performance due to knowledge and experience).

Single-blind procedure:

When participants do not know if they have been placed in the control or experimental group.

Double-blind procedure:

Where both the participant and the experimenter do not know which participants have been allocated to the control and the experimental group.

Placebo:

A 'fake drug' or treatment that is used so that the participants do not know if they are in the experimental or the control group.

7 ethical standards in psychology:

Protection and security of participants' information, confidentiality, voluntary participants, withdrawal rights, informed consent procedures, deception and debriefing.

Protection and security of participants' information:

The researcher must ensure the personal information is secure and protected from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Confidentiality:

Refers to the obligation of the researcher not to use or disclose private information for any purpose other than that for which it was given to them.

Voluntary participants:

The researcher must ensure participants voluntarily consent to be involved in a study.

Withdrawal rights:

Participants have an unconditional right to withdraw from a study at any time without giving reason for doing so.

Informed consent procedures:

Consent is a voluntary choice for participants and must be based on sufficient information and adequate understanding of both the proposed research and the consequences of participation in it.

Deception:

Occurs when participants are deliberately misled or not fully informed about the aim or some other aspect of the research.

Debriefing:

Involves clarifying each participant's understanding of the nature of the research as soon as possible after it has been conducted.