Study Guide for Unit Test: Development & Learning

Development

Thematic Issues in Development

• Stability vs. Change: Do personality traits and cognitive abilities stay the same (stable) or change over time?

• Nature vs. Nurture: Is development influenced more by genetics (nature) or environmental factors (nurture)?

• Continuity vs. Stages: Does development occur in a smooth, continuous progression, or in distinct stages?

Types of Developmental Research

• Cross-sectional: Research comparing different age groups at one point in time.

• Longitudinal: Research that follows and tests the same group of individuals over a long period.

Infant/Child Physical Development

• Teratogens: Environmental agents (like drugs, alcohol) that can cause harm during prenatal development.

• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS): A condition resulting from alcohol exposure during pregnancy, causing physical and cognitive impairments.

• Maturation: Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, mostly uninfluenced by experience.

• Fine Motor Skills: Small muscle movements (e.g., grasping).

• Gross Motor Skills: Large muscle movements (e.g., walking).

• Infant Reflexes: Automatic responses (e.g., rooting, grasping) present at birth.

• Visual Cliff & Depth Perception: A tool used to study infants’ depth perception, often involving a glass-covered drop-off.

• Critical Periods: Specific time frames when certain experiences are most impactful for development (e.g., language acquisition).

Language Development

• Language Stages:

  • Cooing: Vocalizing vowel sounds (~2 months).

  • Babbling: Repetitive consonant-vowel combinations (~6 months).

  • One-word Stage: Single words represent whole phrases (~12 months).

  • Telegraphic Speech: Two-word phrases (e.g., "want cookie").

• Phonemes: The smallest units of sound in language.

• Morphemes: The smallest units of meaning (e.g., prefixes, suffixes).

• Grammar: Rules for combining words:

  • Syntax: Word order.

  • Semantics: Meaning of words.

• Overgeneralization: Applying language rules too broadly (e.g., "goed" instead of "went").

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Schemas: Mental frameworks to organize information.

• Assimilation: Incorporating new information into existing schemas.

• Accommodation: Adjusting schemas for new information.

• Stages of Cognitive Development:

  1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years): Understanding the world through senses and actions. Object permanence develops.

  2. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years): Symbolic thinking, egocentrism, but lacks logical reasoning.

  3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years): Logical thinking about concrete events; conservation develops.

  4. Formal Operational Stage (12+ years): Abstract, hypothetical reasoning.

• Conservation: Understanding that quantity doesn’t change despite changes in shape or appearance.

Psychosocial Development

• Ecological Systems Theory: Focuses on the social environment's impact on development (e.g., family, school).

• Attachment Theory (Harry Harlow): Infants bond with caregivers due to the comfort and security they provide (Harlow’s monkey experiments).

• Strange Situation & Attachment Styles (Mary Ainsworth):

  1. Secure Attachment: Infant feels safe exploring when the caregiver is present.

  2. Insecure Attachment: Can be anxious or avoidant of the caregiver.

• Temperament: A person's characteristic emotional reactivity.

• Parenting Styles (Diana Baumrind):

  1. Authoritarian: Strict rules and expectations.

  2. Permissive: Few rules, indulgent.

  3. Authoritative: Balanced; rules with reasoning.

  4. Uninvolved: Indifferent or neglectful.

• Gender & Sexuality: Concepts of gender identity, gender roles, and sexual orientation.

• James Marcia's Identity Statuses:

  1. Identity Diffusion: No exploration or commitment.

  2. Identity Foreclosure: Commitment without exploration.

  3. Identity Moratorium: Exploration without commitment.

  4. Identity Achievement: Exploration followed by commitment.

• Erikson’s 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development:

  1. Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy): Virtue of Hope.

  2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Toddlerhood): Virtue of Will.

  3. Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool years): Virtue of Purpose.

  4. Industry vs. Inferiority (School age): Virtue of Competence.

  5. Identity vs. Role Confusion (Adolescence): Virtue of Fidelity.

  6. Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adulthood): Virtue of Love.

  7. Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle adulthood): Virtue of Care.

  8. Integrity vs. Despair (Older adulthood): Virtue of Wisdom.

• Social Clock: Culturally preferred timing for major life events (e.g., marriage, parenthood).

Adolescent Physical Development 

• Puberty: Period of sexual maturation.

• Primary Sex Characteristics: Body structures related to reproduction (e.g., ovaries, testes).

• Secondary Sex Characteristics: Non-reproductive traits (e.g., breasts, voice changes).

• Menarche: First menstrual period.

• Spermarche: First ejaculation.

• Synaptic Pruning: Process where unused neurons are eliminated during adolescence.

Adult Physical Development

• Menopause: The end of menstruation and reproductive capacity in women.

• Changes in mobility, flexibility, reaction time: Decrease with age.

• Sensory Changes: Vision and hearing decline.

Cognition in Adulthood

• Crystallized Intelligence: Accumulated knowledge that increases with age.

• Fluid Intelligence: Ability to reason quickly and abstractly; declines in late adulthood.

• Neurocognitive Disorders:

  • Dementia: A broad category of cognitive decline.

  • Alzheimer’s Disease: A specific neurodegenerative disorder causing memory loss and cognitive decline.

Learning

Behaviorism & the Behavioral Perspective

• Focuses on observable behaviors and their environmental causes.

Classical Conditioning

• Associative Learning: Learning that certain events occur together.

• Acquisition: The initial stage of learning/conditioning.

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Naturally triggers a response.

• Unconditioned Response (UCR): Unlearned, natural response to the UCS.

• Neutral Stimulus (NS): A stimulus that initially does not elicit a response.

• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Previously neutral stimulus that triggers a response after association with UCS.

• Conditioned Response (CR): The learned response to the CS.

• Extinction: The diminishing of a conditioned response.

• Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance of a weakened conditioned response after a pause.

• Stimulus Discrimination: Learning to respond only to the original stimulus.

• Stimulus Generalization: The tendency for similar stimuli to elicit the same response.

• Higher-order Conditioning: When a CS is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second CS.

• Aversion: Learning to avoid a certain stimulus after an unpleasant experience.

• Habituation: Decreasing responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

• John Watson’s Research: Founder of behaviorism; famous for the "Little Albert" experiment.

• Ivan Pavlov’s Research: Discovered classical conditioning through experiments with dogs.

Operant Conditioning

• Reinforcement: Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

  • Positive Reinforcement: Adding something desirable (e.g., reward).

  • Negative Reinforcement: Removing something undesirable (e.g., turning off an alarm).

• Punishment: Decreases the likelihood of a behavior.

  • Positive Punishment: Adding something undesirable (e.g., extra chores).

  • Negative Punishment: Removing something desirable (e.g., taking away phone).

• Primary Reinforcer: Naturally satisfying (e.g., food).

• Secondary Reinforcer: Gains power through association with primary reinforcers (e.g., money).

• E.L. Thorndike’s Law of Effect: Behaviors followed by favorable outcomes are more likely to be repeated.

• Shaping: Gradually reinforcing behaviors that lead up to the desired behavior.

• Instinctive Drift: Tendency of an organism to revert to instinctual behaviors.

• Martin Seligman’s Learned Helplessness: When an organism gives up trying to avoid negative stimuli after repeated failure.

• Schedules of Reinforcement: Patterns that define how often a behavior will be reinforced.

  • Fixed-ratio: Reinforcement after a set number of responses.

  • Variable-ratio: Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses.

  • Fixed-interval: Reinforcement after a specific time has passed.

  • Variable-interval: Reinforcement after unpredictable time intervals.

Social Learning Theory & Cognitive Learning

• Observational Learning: Learning by observing others.

• Modeling: Imitating the behavior of others.

• Albert Bandura’s Research: Known for the Bobo Doll experiment, which demonstrated observational learning.

• Vicarious Conditioning: Learning through observing the consequences of another's behavior.

• Latent Learning: Learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it.

• Cognitive Maps: Mental representations of the layout of one’s environment.

• Edward Tolman’s Research: Demonstrated latent learning with rats in mazes.