(2025) U3 AP Psychology Unit 3: Development & Learning

Chapter 11: Developmental Psychology

Nature: Genetic Factors

Nurture: Environmental Factors

Teratogens: Agents or factors that can cause malformations or abnormalities in a developing embryo or fetus during pregnancy which can lead to defects.

Reflexes: specific, inborn automatic responses to specific stimuli.

Rooting reflex: When touched on the cheek, a baby will turn to where they felt the touch and seek to put the object in their mouths.

Sucking reflex: When an object is placed in a baby’s mouth, they will suck on it.

Grasping reflex: When an object is placed in a baby’s palm or foot pad, the baby will try to grasp onto it.

Moro reflex: When startled, baby will fling their limbs outward, then pull them back in to appear as small as possible.

Babinski reflex: When a baby’s foot is stroked, they will spread their toes.

Visual cliff: device used to study depth perception, typically in infants or animals. It has a glass surface with a visible "drop" on one side to test whether subjects perceive depth and avoid crossing the "cliff."

Motor skills: abilities that enable movement and coordination of muscles.

Gross motor skills: Involve large muscle groups and whole-body movements.

Gender schema

Discontinuous: Development is happening irregularly and starts with some rapid periods of development and then some of relatively little change

Growth spurt: period when a child’s height rapidly increases, usually during adolescence.

Zone of proximal development: the range of tasks the child can perform independently and those tasks they need assistance with

Psychosocial stage theory: theory that our personality is profoundly influenced by our experiences with others

Trust versus mistrust: Infants learn to trust that their caregivers will meet their basic needs. If these needs are not consistently met, mistrust, suspicion, and anxiety may develop.

Autonomy versus shame and doubt: the stage in which a child learns to be independent and make their own decisions in life.

Initiative versus guilt: In this stage, children assert themselves and express themselves by leading play and other social interactions. When this stage is successfully completed, the child develops initiative.

Industry versus inferiority: during which the child learns to be productive and to accept evaluation of their efforts or becomes discouraged and feels inferior or incompetent.

Identity versus role confusion: a stage characterized by asking "Who am I," and learning more about your own goals, values, and beliefs.

Intimacy versus isolation: a crucial psychosocial stage in which individuals seek to establish meaningful relationships while grappling with the fear of rejection and loneliness.

Generativity versus stagnation: During this stage, middle-aged adults strive to create or nurture things that will outlast them, often by parenting children or fostering positive changes that benefit others. Contributing to society and doing things to promote future generations are important needs at the

Integrity versus despair: a retrospective accounting of one's life to date; how much one embraces life as having been well lived, as opposed to regretting missed opportunities,

Imaginary audience: Tendency of adolescents to overestimate how much other people are thinking about or focusing on them.

Assimilation: process of incorporating our experiences into existing schemata

Accommodation: the way we modify our cognitive schemas in order to incorporate new information or experiences.

Schemata: Cognitive rules we use to interpret the world that we develop and change as children.

Object permanence: Realizing that objects continue to exist even when out of a sensory range (sensorimotor stage)

Mental symbols: something children use to represent real-world objects as they begin developing language skills.

Egocentric: Children during the preoperational stage, where they believe in their thinking since they cannot look at the world from anyone’s perspective but their own.

Pretend play: the stage of play engaged in by children who are capable of assigning action to symbolic objects.

Theory of mind: the understanding that other individuals have mental states, such as knowledge, intentions, and beliefs

Concepts of conservation: The realization that properties of objects remain the same even when their shapes change

Formal operational stage: Piaget’s stage of development that describes adult reasoning

Abstract reasoning: manipulating objects and contrasting ideas in our mind without physically seeing them or having real-world correlates.

Hypothetical thinking: imagining possibilities and exploring their consequences through a process of mental simulation.

Concrete operational stage: stage of development where a child has difficulty answering a question without any real-world model to fall back on.

Metacognition: the ability to think about the way we think

a belief that they are unique or different from everyone else, or they can develop an attitude of superiority or invulnerability

Phonemes: Smallest units of sound used in a language (English uses 44)

Morphemes: Smallest unit of meaningful sound (a, but, prefixes)

Syntax: Words are spoken in a particular order, each language has it’s own unique version.

Semantics: meanings of words and combination of words in phrases and sentences.

Babbling: Babies’ experimentation with phonemes, learning to know what sounds they can produce.

Holophrastic/one-word stage: The time during which babies speak in single words

Telegraphic speech/two word stage: the time in which toddlers combine words they can say into simple commands.

Overgeneralization: Misapplication of grammar rules, common in children learning how to use the syntax of a language

Critical period: A window of opportunity during which we must learn a skill or our development will permanently suffer.

Attachment parenting: The reciprocal relationship between caregiver and child that affects development

Temperament: our emotional style, or the typical way we react to stressful situations

Secure attachments: infants who confidently explored the novel environment while parents were present, distressed when parents left and came back to the parents when they returned.

Avoidant attachments: infants who resisted being held by the parents and explored the novel environment, didn’t go to parents for comfort when they returned from an absence.

Anxious/ambivalent attachments: Infants may have shown extreme stress when parents left, but resisted being comforted by them upon return.

Separation anxiety: showing extreme stress when being separated from parents or another attachment figure

Microsystem: direct interactions between the child and their immediate surroundings, including caregivers

Mesosystem: acknowledges that each of the 5 ecological systems interact and influence one another.

Exosystem: involves indirect influences on the child’s development

Macrosystem: influences of the cultures a child is immersed in will also influence his or her development.

Chronosystem: times of transition or change that occur over the child’s life influence development such as biological changes.

Authoritarian parents: set strict standards for children’s behavior and apply punishments for violations. Obedience is valued more than discussions about the reason for such standards to which punishment is more often used than reinforcement.

Permissive parents: set unclear standards for their children. Rules are not consistently enforced leading family members to percieve that they can get away with anything.

Authoritative parents: Set consistent standards for behavior which are reasonable and explained, they encourage independence but not past the point of violating rules. Positive reinforcement is used as much as punishments.

Developmental Psych Research Methods

• studies are usually cross-sectional or longitudinal

  • Cross Sectional: Use participants from different ages to compare how certain variables can change over a lifespan

    • Can produce quick results, but researchers must be careful of historical events and cultural trends

  • Longitudinal Research: Takes place over a long period of time of one group of participants

    • Have the advantage of precisely measuring effects of development on a specific group but is quite time consuming

Prenatal Influences

Genetics - developmental psychologists investigate how our genes impact development. Specifically that of identical twins, determining which traits are most influenced genetically.

Teratogens

• Pass through the barrier in the placenta and harm the fetus

• Alcohol is one of the most common

  • Can cause Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) leading to malformed skull and intellectual disabilities

• Other psychoactive drugs like cocaine and heroin are also teratogens and can actually cause newborns to share the drug addiction

Motor/Sensory Development

• reflexes as babies are lost as we grow

Newborn Senses

• Babies can hear before birth

• Are born with specific preferences in place

• Hearing is the dominant sense due to poor eyesight

• Motor control develops as neurons in our brain connect

• babies can roll over at 5-1/2 months, stand at about 8-9 months and walk after 15 months without an impact of environmental factors

Gender & Development

• Culture has a large impact

• Biopsychological Theory:

  • concentrates on the nature (genetic) element in the gender role production

  • Female brains have larger corpus callosums, theoretically it could affect how the right and left hemispheres interact

• Social-Cognitive Theory

  • impacts of society on our own thoughts about gender

  • Ex: Boys are encouraged to engage in more rough physical play than girls

• Stage Theories

  • discontinuous theories of development

  • Lev Vygotsky’s zone of prox development:

    • Teachers/parents provide help for students to accomplish tasks at the upper end of this zone which encourages further cognitive development

8 Psychosocial Stages starting as babies

Trust vs Mistrust

• Babies’ first social experience centered on fullfillment

• They learn to trust the world to provide for their needs (crying, etc)

Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt

• Toddlers begin to exert their will over their own bodies

• Should learn to control temper tantrums during this age

• ‘no’ might be the most popular word, as they attempt to control themselves and environment

• Erikson believes that this stage develops our ability of self control and emotional reactions during social challenges we’ll face

Initiative Vs Guilt

• Natural curiosity about surroundings

• Children in this stae want to understand the world

• Asking many questions

• If those around us scold us for our curiosity, we might learn to feel guilty about asking questions and avoid doing so in future

Industry vs Inferiority

• Beginning of our formal education

• We feel competent if we do things as well as our peers

  • the opposite can cause an inferiority complex causing feelings of anxiety in specific skills/areas

Identity vs Role Confusion

• Adolescence

• Developing your own social identity and trying out different roles to improve on sense of self

• Must find a stable sense of self or risk having an identity crisis later in life

Intimacy vs Isolation

• Young adults who established stable identities must find a balance between work and life

• patterns established here will influence efforts spent on self and others in the future

Generativity vs Stagnation

• Starting to look critically at our life path, making sure we’re creating the path we want for ourselves

• Trying to ensure life is going the way we want, if not we may try to change ourselves or control other people to alter it.

Integrity Vs Despair

• End of life, looking back on accomplishments and evaluating

• If we can see our lives were meaningful, we can leave behind societal pressures and offer more wisdom and insight.

Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget

• Worked for Alfred Binet

• Noted that children of similar age almost always gave similar answers on some questions of an intelligence test

• Described how children viewed the world through schemata

Criticisims of Piaget: Information Processing Model

• many dev psychologists agree he underestimated children

• some children may go through stages faster than predicted

• these errors may be due to the way testing was done

• Information processing model is a better alternative to piaget’s theory

  • points out that our abilities to memorize gradually develop as we age

  • no one has the perfect model to describe cognitive development though

Language Acquisition

• theorized that we learned it through operant conditioning and shaping

  • child uses language right > mom smiles > child say more

• other cognitive psychologists theorize we are born with a language acquisition device

Parenting

Attachment Theory

• relationship between caregiver and child affects development

Contact Comfort

• Physical comfort is essential in forming attachment to parents, deprivation has long term impacts

Chapter 12: Learning

Key Terms

Puberty: the stage of development when the genital organs reach maturity and secondary sex characteristics begin to appear, signaling the start of adolescence.

Menopause: the transitional period in a woman's life when her ovaries start producing less of the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone.

Classical conditioning: People and animals can learn to associate neutral stimuli with stimuli that produce reflexive, involuntary responses ad will learn to respond similarly to new stimulus like they did to old.

Unconditioned stimulus (US or UCS): something that elicits a natural, reflexive response

Unconditioned response (UR or UCR): The natural response to the unconditioned stimulus

Conditioned response (CR): an automatic response established by training to an ordinarily neutral stimulus.

Conditioned stimulus (CS): previously neutral stimulus that eventually triggers a conditioned response.

Acquisition: responding to the conditional stimulus without a presentation of the unconditioned stimulus

Trace conditioning: Presentation of the conditioned stimulus, followed by a short break and presentation of the unconditioned stimulus

Simultaneous conditioning: Presentation of conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus at the same time

Backward conditioning: Presentation of the unconditioned stimulus then the conditioned stimulus

Extinction: the process of unlearning a behavior, when the conditioned stimulus no longer elicits the conditioned response

Spontaneous recovery: when a conditioned response reappears briefly upon presentation of the conditioned stimulus, even if it had previously been extinguished.

Generalization: the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus

Discrimination: to be trained to tell the difference between stimuli that may sound the same, in order to pinpoint the conditioned stimulus

Higher-order conditioning: Using a conditioned stimulus as an unconditioned stimulus to create a conditioned response to a new stimulus.

Taste aversions: ingesting an unusual food or drink leading to nausea and development of a dislike to that food or drink.

One-trial learning: learning to make certain association quicker than others

Biological preparedness: the idea that people and animals are inherently inclined to form associations between certain stimuli and responses. For example: the predisposition to associate nausea with something we ate.

Operant conditioning: learning based on the association of consequences with one’s behaviors.

Law of effect: if the consequences of a behavior are pleasant, the stimulus-response connection will be stronger and the likelihood of the behavior will increase and vice versa.

Reinforcement: anything that makes a behavior more likely to occur

Positive reinforcement: addition of something pleasant to make a behavior more likely to occur

Negative reinforcement: removal of something unpleasant to make a behavior more likely to occur.

Punishment: anything that makes a behavior less likely to occur, often by using unpleasant consequences.

Shaping: reinforces the steps used to reach the desired behavior

Reinforcement discrimination: shaping behavior to access a specific stimulus and a certain time under specific conditions

Discriminative stimulus: Any stimulus that predicts the availability of reinforcement if a response is emitted.

Primary reinforcers: in and of themselves rewarding, such as food, water and rest.

Secondary reinforcers: things we have learned to value such as praise or video games. Can be something of personal value too.

Generalized reinforcer: (Ex. Money) can be traded for virtually anything, which is a strategy used in token economies at schools and prisons.

Continuous reinforcement: process of rewarding a behavior each time it is performed

Partial-reinforcement effect: behaviors will be more resistant to extinction if the animal has not been reinforced continuously.

Fixed-ratio (FR) schedule: provides reinforcement after a set number of responses

Variable-ratio (VR) schedule: a partial schedule of reinforcement in which a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses

Fixed-interval (FI) schedule: requires that a certain amount of time elapses after the behavior to result in reinforcement

Variable-interval (VI) schedule: varies the amount of time required to elapse before a response will result in reinforcement.

Instinctive drift: tendency for animals to forgo rewards to pursue their typical patterns of behavior

Modeling: the process through which children learn a large number of behaviors, skills and, ways of thinking and feeling without direct experience.

Social learning theory: suggests that social behavior is learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others.

Latent learning: learning that becomes obvious only once a reinforcement is given for demonstrating it.

Cognitive map: a mental picture or image of the layout of one's physical environment.

Insight learning: When one suddenly realizes how to solve a problem.

Overview

• Learning is commonly defined as a long-lasting change in behavior from experience

• Most psychologists believe learning can be measured through changes in behavior

• Learning must result from experience rather than biological changes, hence puberty and menopause don’t count

Classical Conditioning

• People and animals can learn to associate neutral stimuli with stimuli that produce reflexive, involuntary responses ad will learn to respond similarly to new stimulus like they did to old.

• Eventually we learn to turn the neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus by associating it with the standard result

  • Ex: Before conditioning:

    1. Dog hears a bell > no salivating

    2. Dog sees the food after the bell > salivates

  • During Conditioning

    1. Dog hears a bell > thinks food is on the way

    2. Dog sees food > salivates

  • After Conditioning:

    1. Dog hears the bell > salivates

• So the bell becomes the conditioned stimulus

Biology and Classical Conditioning

• can only be used when one wants to pair a natural response with something else

• Learned taste aversions can result in powerful avoidance

• Humans and animals tend to associate poor tasting food with feelings of sickness

• This response helps us adapt and avoid dangerous things in the future

• sometimes taste aversions are acquired without a good reason

Operant Conditioning

Edward Thorndike

• Led an experiment with a cat in a puzzle box

• Cat was placed in a cage next to a dish of food

• Over time, the time it took for the cat to get out of the cage and go to the food decreased

• the cat learned the new behavior by simply connecting a stimulus with a response, no mental activity

BF Skinner

• Coined operant conditioning

• created the skinner box

  • animal had to press a disk or pull a lever to recieve food

  • food is the reinforcer as it increases the chance of repetitive behavior

Escape learning: enables one to terminate an aversive stimulus

Avoidance learning: enables one to avoid the unpleasant stimulus altogether

Reinforcement always means doing something to increase the likelihood of a behavior

Punishment always means doing something to decrease the likelihood of a behavior

Positive Punishment: addition of somehting unpleasant to decrease likelihood of a behavior

Negative Punishment: removal of something pleasant:

• Behaviors that are stopped and not reinforced will stop, as they are said to be on an extinction schedule

The Rat Example:

• If the rat starts pressing the button again after the supposed extinction of the behavior, that is spontaneous recovery

• If the rat presses other things or buttons in the skinner box, that’d be generalization

• Discrimination would be teaching the rat to press a specific button and only under specific conditions

• If a tone is sounded when the rat has to press the button, that tone is known as the discriminative stimulus.

UNLESS THE BEHAVIOR IS REINFORCED THE LIKELIHOOD OF THEIR RECURRENCE DECREASES

Premack Principle: whichever of two activities is preferred, can be use to incentivize the one activity/reinforce the one that isn’t preferred

• Ex: extra screen time if the child cleans his room

Reinforcement Schedules:

• The number of responses made or passing of time determines when reinforcement is delivered

• Fixed or variable schedules impact reinforcement

Variable schedules are more resistant to extinction than fixed schedules

• once someone becomes used to the fixed schedule, a break in the pattern can lead to extinction

• compared to if a pattern in variable schedules are broken, it’s hardly noticeable

Cognitive Learning

• Skinner asserts that learning occurs without thought

  • However cognitive theorists argue that classical and operant have cognitive components

Contingency Model of Classical Conditioning

• Postulates that the more time two things are paired, the greater the learning will take place

• Togetherness determines the strength of the response

• Rescorla’s Model reflects a cognitive view of classical conditioning

Observational Learning