Developmental Psychology (AP)

1. What are longitudinal studies and what are the pros and cons?

They follow the same group of people over a period of time to evaluate changes in these individuals. Longitudinal studies are usually very good but they can be very expensive. Because it can take a long time to see results, people also tend to drop out over the course of the study.

2. How are cross sectional studies different from longitudinal studies? What is something that can invalidate them?

Cross sectional studies are less expensive, lose less participants and produce results faster. Instead of following one group over time, these studies look at different age groups at the same time. A cross sectional study can be invalidated if one age group is significantly different from the others in terms of life experiences.

3. What are cohort sequential studies?

They assess cross sectional groups at least twice over a span of months or years rather than just once. Results between the same age groups are compared in search of a cohort effect.

4. What is maturation?

The orderly unfolding of traits as regulated by a genetic code.

5. What are the differences between continuous and discontinuous development? What is a stage?

Continuous development is a cumulative process with gradual changes, whereas discontinuous development sees development as taking place in stages. A stage is a distinct period of life that is qualitatively different from other stages.

6. What happens in the germinal stage of prenatal development?

The zygote divides repeatedly as it travels to the uterus and implants itself into the uterine wall. Cells then separate into groups according to what they will become: the inner cells will become the baby whilst the outer cells will become support structures such as the placenta. 

7. What are cephalocaudal and proximodistal development?

Cephalocaudal development is the top-to-bottom organ development process. Proximodistal development is the bottom-to-top organ development process. 

8. What happens during the fetal stage?

The fetus grows larger, stronger and fatter. It also begins to respond to external stimulation and begins to make its first fetal movements.

9. How can hormones influence fetal development?

If the mother’s thyroid does not produce enough hormones, the fetus risks diminished intellectual development. A mother’s emotional state, such as stress, can also affect the fetus.

10. What are the roles of the placenta, the amniotic sac, and the umbilical cord?

The amniotic sac protects the fetus by acting like an airbag and a temperature regulator. The placenta allows for the exchange of nutrients and wastes with the mother. The umbilical cord connects the fetus with the placenta. 

11. What are teratogens?

They are environmental agents that can harm the embryo or fetus.

12. How can alcohol and opiates affect the fetus?

They can lead to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, newborn withdrawal and sudden infant death. These can cause low birth weight, face/head abnormalities, slight mental retardation and behavioral/cognitive problems. Alcohol interferes with brain development and can cause permanent brain damage, negatively impacting learning, attention, behavior regulation, memory, reasoning and motor performance.

13. What is a reflex and what are the reflexes unique to infancy?

A simple, unlearned stereotypical response to a specific stimulus. Ones unique to infancy are the grasping reflex, rooting reflex, sucking reflex, Moro reflex, Babinski reflex, swimming reflex & stepping reflex. 

14. Describe the dynamic systems theory

It views development as a self-organizing process where new forms of behavior emerge through consistent interactions between a biological being and their cultural/environmental contexts. 

15. What are the two important aspects of early brain development?

Specific areas within the brain mature and become functional. Regions of the brain learn to communicate with each other via synaptic connections.

16. How do dendrites proliferate at birth in the infant brain?

Through myelination and rapid dendrite growth in the frontal lobe.

17. What is synaptic pruning?

When the brain organizes itself in response to environmental experiences, preserving connections it needs in order to function  in a given context.

18. What did Robert Fantz discover about infant vision? What is the visual cliff experiment?

Visual acuity for distant objects is poor at birth but increases rapidly over the first 6 months. The visual cliff experiment proves that depth perception begins to develop between 6 to 8 months.

19. How does oxytocin contribute to attachment?

Oxytocin is released during breastfeeding, when a baby is held or stroked, contributing to attachment.

20. What is socioemotional development?

The process during which children learn to identify, understand, express & manage emotions. 

21. What is emotional regulation?

Expressing and coping with your emotions in a healthy way as well as understanding emotions in others. 

22. What is temperament and what are the two types of temperament infants can display?

The characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. Infants can display a difficult temperament (more irritable, intense, unpredictable) or an easy temperament (cheerful, relaxed, fairly predictable).

23. What is attachment?

The strong, persistent bond between infants and caregivers. 

24. What did John Bowlby say about attachment theory?

Attachment is an adaptive dynamic relationship that facilitates infant survival and parental investment by motivating the two to stay in contact.

25. What is imprinting?

When fledgling chicks become strongly attached to a nearby parent during their sensitive period. 

26. What was the behavioral view of attachment and how did Harry Harlow’s studies refute this?

Infants will form an attachment to the person who feeds them. Harlow used monkeys to prove that physical contact and reassurance are just as important as nourishment in terms of attachment.

27. What is separation anxiety?

An infant’s fear of being separated from their caregiver.

28. What is the strange situation test developed by Mary Salter Ainsworth?

The experiment put a baby with a stranger, and the baby would cry when its mother left. 

29. What does secure attachment look like in a child?

They get more used to the stranger and are happy when the mom returns.

30. What do the different types of insecure attachment look like?

Insecure avoidant attachment occurs when the child has no reaction to the mother leaving or coming back. Insecure anxious/ambivalent attachment is when a child is upset when its mother leaves and when she comes back. Disorganized attachment occurs when no specific pattern is recognized.

31. What is an internal working model of relationships?

A set of beliefs the child has about the self, the caregiver, and the relationship between them.

32. What is an inhibited temperament?

The type of temperament of infants who are quiet and cautious, often choosing to avoid new people/objects/situations.

33. How does the behavior of caregivers affect an infant’s internal working model of relationships?

The way a caregiver treats the infant affects how the infant responds to the caregiver and others around him.

34. Describe the ecological systems theory.

35. For Piaget, what are schemas and what are assimilation and accommodation?

Mental models we use to interpret new information. Through assimilation, we fit new experiences into our existing schemas. Accommodation is when we adjust our schemas or create new ones when new experiences don't fit.

36. What is the sensorimotor stage and how long does it last?

The sensorimotor stage is when the child begins to differentiate themselves from their environment. It usually lasts from birth to age 2.

37. What are object permanence and representational thought?

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when you can’t see them.

The ability to picture objects in one’s mind.

38. How long is the preoperational stage?

From 2 to 7 years old. 

39. What are animism and artificialism? What are egocentrism and centration?

Animism is giving life to inanimate objects. Artificialism is the belief that environmental events are caused by men. Egocentrism is the inability to see other points of view. Centration is only being to focus on one aspect of a problem at a time.

40. What is the law of conservation?

An object does not necessarily change just because its appearance changes.

41. What is the theory of mind?

The understanding that people have different minds that think in different ways.

42. What happens in the concrete operational stage?

A child can decentrate, though their operational thinking is limited to concrete things.

43. What happens in the formal operational stage?

A child can think abstractly and form hypotheses. They have cognitive maturity and can think critically.

44. In what ways have some of Piaget’s ideas come into question?

Piaget has faced criticism for underestimating a child’s abilities and believing that all children use the same kind of logic in each stage. Object permanence actually develops in the first few months, and theory of mind only consolidates at around 3-4 years old. Piaget also saw his stages as grades, believing that you could only be in one grade at a time, which is not actually true. 

45. How did Lev Vygotsky differ from Piaget in terms of what he believed drove cognitive development?

Vygotsky emphasized the role of social/cultural contexts in cognitive development, criticizing Piaget for discounting environmental influences.

46. What is the zone of proximal development?

How long it would take a child to learn a task if given proper instruction.

47. According to Kohlberg, what does moral reasoning look like at the preconventional level? The conventional level? Postconventional?

At the preconventional level, moral reasoning is primarily determined by an action’s consequences for the actor.

At the conventional level, moral reasoning is primarily determined by the extent to which an action conforms with social rules.

At the postconventional level, moral reasoning is primarily determined by a set of principles that reflect one’s core values.

48. What is the moral intuitionist perspective?

Moral judgments are the consequences, not the causes, of emotional reactions.

49. What is socialization?

Learning the rules of behavior of one’s society.

50. Describe the authoritarian, democratic/authoritative, and permissive/laissez-faire parenting styles

The authoritarian parenting style is when kids do not participate in the making of the rules: parents make them, and the kids must obey unquestioningly because the parents don’t feel the need to explain themselves.

The democratic parenting style is when the parents make the rules, but kids participate: parents explain their actions and children get more freedom as they get older.

The permissive parenting style is when the kids make the rules for themselves, and parents act as guides but don’t change the kid’s decision.

51. Describe stages 1-5 of Erikson’s theory. In each stage, what crisis must be faced? What do adequate and inadequate responses look like?

Stage 1 → infants (birth to 1) → trust vs. mistrust

Stage 2 → toddlers (2) → autonomy vs. shame/doubt

Stage 3 → children (3-5) → initiative vs. guilt

Stage 4 → school-age children (6-12) → industry vs. inferiority

Stage 5 → adolescents → identity achievement vs. role confusion

52. What is menarche? Spermarche? Primary sex characteristics? Secondary sex characteristics?

The beginning of menstruation.

The beginning of the capacity for ejaculation.

Maturation of the male and female sex organs.

Other physical characteristics related to a person’s sex (body hair, muscle mass, fat deposits).

53. What changes occur in the teenage brain?

Reorganization occurs: grey matter increases and synaptic connections are refined. The frontal cortex is not yet fully developed, so the limbic system is more active than the frontal cortices, promoting risky behavior.   

54. What is adolescent egocentrism? Personal fables?

The belief that a teenager’s experiences are unique and that their parents or others could not possibly understand what they are going through.

Stories of a teenager’s life that are idealized and special and that make them feel invincible. 

55. Describe stages 6-8 of Erikson’s theory

Stage 6 → adults (20-40) → intimacy vs. isolation

Stage 7 → older adults (40-65) → generativity vs. stagnation

Stage 8 → elderly (65+) → integrity vs. despair

56. How do various physical traits decline as we age? What is menopause?

Slow and steady decline of bone/muscle strength, skin elasticity and fertility. The cessation of menstruation in the late 40s or early 50s. 

57. How does memory decline as we age?

Older adults show a much more pronounced decline on tests of working memory (the ability to hold info in mind) than on long term memory (the ability to retrieve info). There is also a much more pronounced decline on tests of episodic memory than on tests of semantic memory and a much more pronounced decline on tests of retrieval than on tests of recognition.

58. How do older adults compensate for the neural decline in the brain?

They use their cognitive skills more adeptly. When a neural structure declines, they compensate by calling in other neural structures to help out.

59. What is the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence?

Fluid intelligence declines after early adulthood and is the ability to process new general info that requires no prior knowledge. Crystallized intelligence is based on more specific knowledge that must be learned or memorized such as vocabulary and usually increases throughout life.

60. What are dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease?

A brain condition that causes thinking, memory and behavior to deteriorate progressively.

A disease that causes the gradual loss of mental capacities, including memory and language.

61. What is socioemotional selectivity theory?

Younger adults are generally more oriented towards the acquisition of information that will be useful to them in the future (reading the news) whereas older adults are generally more oriented towards info that brings them more emotional satisfaction in the present (reading novels).

62. Macro, meso, micro etc?

63. What is language?

A system of communication using sounds and symbols that are arranged according to grammatical rules.

64. What are morphemes?

The smallest unit of language that carries meaning.

65. What are phonemes?

The basic sounds of speech. 

66. What are the vocal cords and where are they located? What is the oral cavity?

Two bands of muscle tissue located in the larynx (voice box) in the throat.

The cavity of the mouth.

67. What is syntax?

A system of rules that governs how rules are combined into phrases & sentences.

68. What is semantics?

A study of the meanings that underlie words & phrases.

69. What was Benjamin Whorf’s linguistic relativity theory? What is evidence against this theory?

Language determines thought, because we can only think through language. It appears to deny the possibility of a universal groundwork for human cognition. 

70. What is joint attention and how does it promote language development?

Infants & caregivers attend to objects in their environment together.

71. What are the various aspects of the prelinguistic phase?

Cries, gurgles, grunts, breaths (1-2 months). Cooing & laughing (3-5 months). Babbling (5-7 months).

72. What can babies discriminate up to about six months of age? What then happens?

Babies are able to produce every possible phoneme. They then only know how to produce the ones they need to use.

73. What is overextension? What are holophrases?

A known word is used to name things that the baby does not have a word for yet. One word used to express complex meanings.

74. What is telegraphic speech?

Rudimentary sentences that are missing words but follow a syntax and convey meaning.

75. What is overgeneralization/overregularization?

Applying regular grammatical rules to irregular verbs and nouns.

76. What was B.F. Skinner’s theory on language development? What is evidence against this theory?

Children learn language the same way you would teach an animal tricks (reinforcement for correct words and ignoring for wrong words). It does not account for infinite creativity, combining words into original sentences & overgeneralization. Parents do not correct a child’s grammatical errors nor do they repeat things constantly. People also do not need to see/hear language in order to learn it. 

77. What did Chomsky mean about “universal grammar?”

All languages are based on humans’ innate knowledge of a set of universal & specifically linguistic elements.

78. What is the difference between the surface structure and the deep structure of a language?

The sound and order of words vs. their implicit meaning.

79. What is the language acquisition device?

A “device” every baby is born with that contains universal grammar.

80. Do babies exposed to signed languages acquire language differently than babies exposed to spoken language? What does this tell us?

No.

81. What is creole? What is pidgin? What do children do to their parents’ pidgin?

A language that evolves over time from the mixing of existing languages. An informal creole that lacks consistent grammatical rules. Children turn pidgin into creole by creating grammatical rules.

82. What are the two factors critical to developing language?

Children must have someone to communicate with. They must have exposure to language (spoken or signed) during a critical period in development.

83. What is a critical period/sensitive period for language? What happens if a child is not exposed to a spoken or signed language in this period?

Prior to age 7. They won’t be able to go past the 2 year old level in language.

84. What seems to be the major stumbling block for language in non-human animals?

Lack of syntax?

85. What is the difference between the phonics approach and the whole language approach to reading? Which one does the evidence support?

Whole language emphasizes learning words as whole units by using context and visual cues to understand meaning whereas phonics teaches sounds before words. Phonics all the way.