PSYA02 Midterm Test Practice

Lecture 2: Human Development I

January 10, 2025

The study of human development = studying continuity/change across the entire lifespan 

Four main periods of human development 

• Prenatal period and infancy (conception to 2-3 years)

• Childhood (2-3 to 11 years)

• Adolescence (12 – ?? years)

• Adulthood ( ?? years – death)

Early memories are formed at different ages → usually tied to to highly emotional events or physically salient 

• Early memories are often vague or non-existent

Failure of autobiographical memory creates the belief that experiences during infancy are less relevant = FALSE

• Crucial to normal development (language, food, music taste, etc.)

• Gives rise to many of the individual differences are observed across the human population

Earliest experience of the human organism = hearing

• Happens in utero (prior to birth)

• Touch is an additional experience as well; reacting to mother’s movement 

Prenatal Development 

*Beginning of the human experience = conception

• Zygotic/Germinal stage ENDS at implantation (best answer)

  • Germinal (0 - 2 weeks)

  • Embryonic (3 - 8 weeks) → organ development 

  • Fetal (9 weeks - birth) → sensory experiences and learning 

Developmental processes in Brain Development 

• Much of experience and learning occurs during the fetal period

  • Neurogenesis, Myelination, Synaptogenesis, Synaptic pruning 

Fetal Experience and Sensation

• Fetuses experience stimuli in utero (tastes, smells, sounds, tactile sensation)

Fetal Audition

• Fetal heartbeat changes in reaction to external voices being played 

  • Different in reaction to music than to human speech (sound type plays an effect)

• Newborns can recognize their mother’s language and their mother’s voice 

Teratogens 

• External agents that cause damage or death during prenatal development 

  • Most affect fetuses during a series of critical and sensitive periods 

Neonatal period (after birth)

• The average neonate (newborn) spends most of the day sleeping

  • Changes occurring are almost observed during wakefulness

Neonatal sleep

*Figures/Graphs would show up on test/midterm

Perceptual Development

• Begins in utero → perceptual experiences after birth are much richer

  • Due to more exposure to stimuli; rather than experiencing through the mother 

Measuring infants’ perception

Preferential looking = choosing to spend more of their time looking at objects and events that are stimulating

• Tests for discrimination

Visual acuity – relies on the principle that infants would rather look at stripes 

• First month of life = infants’ visual acuity increases from approx. 20/400 to 20/120

• By 6 months = adult-like acuity 

  • Colour perception and depth perception develop in the first 6 months as well

Motor Development in Infancy

Movements develop as perception is developing 

• These two processes are highly related 

Newborn’s motor skills consist predominantly of reflexes 

• Grasping, rooting, sucking, swallowing, tonic neck reflex 

Reflexes that last for the ENTIRE lifespan 

• Coughing, sneezing, blinking, withdrawal from pain

Lecture 3:Human Development II

January 15, 2025 

Motor Development in Infancy

After reflexes, the development of sophisticated moto behaviours follows two rules:

1. Cephalocaudal Rule: ‘Top to bottom’ – describes the tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet

• Children develop more control from the top (head) of their bodies to the bottom

  • Slowly start to gain more control moving downward

2. Proximodistal Rule: ‘Inside-to-outside’ rule that describes the tendency for motor skills to emerge from the center to the periphery 

• Complex movements start from the centre (core) of the body and move outwards → fingers and toes come last 

Motor Development → Visual Development

Children with more advanced motor development have more developed visual development

• Walking sooner = getting more information faster

Cognitive Development 

• At the same time as their perceptual and motor abilities develop, children learn to think about the world around them

  • The ability to think and understand = cognitive development 

Jean Piaget separated child development into 4 different stages:

1. Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

2. Pre-operational stage (2-6 years)

3. Concrete operational stage (6-11 years)

4. Formal operational stage (11 years - adulthood)

Piaget’s Theory

• Believed that children move from one stage to the next as they gain knowledge about the world

1. Children acquire knowledge 

2. Children organize it into a scheme

3. Children acquire new knowledge 

4. Children add this new knowledge to their existing schema (assimilation)

5. Children acquire new knowledge that does not fit into their editing schema

6. Children modify their schema to fit this new knowledge 

Lecture 4: Human Development III

January 17, 2025

Assimilation and accommodation

• As children update their schema, they are assimilating new information into them

  • When it comes to information that drastically changes their schema, accommodation occurs 

• Subtle/minor chang: assimilation

• Major change: accommodation

Piaget’s Stages 

Two of Piaget’s stages occur during infancy and early childhood 

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2 year)

  • Infants rely predominantly on their movements and senses to learn about the world 

• Preoperational stage (2-6 years)

  • Children shift from egocentrism to sociocentrism

    • Children developing a working theory of mind – understanding that human behaviour is guided by mental representations, and that they differ across individuals 

Theory of Mind Tasks

How is theory of mind measured? 

1. One way = false belief tasks 

• “Change of location task” a.k.a “Sally-Anne task” → failed by most 3-year-olds 

2. “Unexpected contents task” – failed by most 3- and 4-year olds 

Social Development 

• Infants are more egocentric than older children 

  • The sociocentrism of humans is one of their most defining features, even from birth

• Like some other animals, human children form bonds with their caregivers → this emotional bond is called attachment 

  • Essential part of healthy human development 

Individual differences in attachment 

All infants require an attachment figure for normal development 

• There are major differences in how infants are attached to their caregiver(s)

• How do we measure such differences? 

  • Using the extent to which an infant uses their caregiver after short separations

  • Mary Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation Procedure to operationalize and measure these variables  

Strange Situation Procedure

Ainsworth proposed that infants can be securely or insecurely attached to their caregivers 

• An infant’s attachment style predicts many outcomes in adulthood

  • Academic achievement 

  • Emotional health

  • Relationship quality

  • Self-esteem 

Identity in Early Childhood

Young children describe themselves in physical terms and almost always positively (positivity bias)

• Positivity bias declines quickly at school age 

Why?

• Social comparison begins

• Cognitive skill increase

  • Perspective-taking increases

• Schools begin objective evaluations 

Self-Esteem Inconsistency

• Young children have high self-esteem

• Adolescents have lower self-esteem 

  • Particularly true for women 

• Adults gain self-esteem slowly throughout development; Elderly adults begins to lose self-esteem (can be caused by health/age-related issues)

Self-esteem Consistency

Compared to other people, an individual’s self-esteem is relatively consistent across the lifespan

• Rank-order stability 

  • Children with lower self-esteem tend to have lower self-esteem as adults 

• Much variability in self-esteem is due to heredity 

  • Identical twins’ self-esteem correlates to a greater degree than non-twin siblings’

  • Physical appearance

  • Physical abilities 

Lecture 5: Intelligence and Language I

January 22, 2025 

From Previous Chapter:

Adolescence 

• The period of development between childhood and adulthood

How do we define this period biologically?

• There are TWO major physiological changes that occur during adolescence 

  • Puberty

  • Increase and refinement of connections in the prefrontal cortex

Major psychological changes also occur:

• Self-esteem

• Identity

• Morality

• Sexuality 

Erik Erikson

One way that adolescents develop socially is via identity formation

• German-American developmental scientist (1902-1994) 

• Developed a theory of conflicts and resolutions 

  • Believed that identity formation was the chief task of adolescence 

    • Conflict: Identity (solid) versus confusion

    • Resolution: Identity formation (remains stable for the remainder of lifespan)

Erikson’s identity theory

Erikson believed that during identity formation, a number of challenges might emerge 

• Identity confusion

  • Incomplete and incoherent sense of self

  • Very common

• Identity foreclosure

  • Premature identity choice 

    • Adolescent goes all in for it; find out later that they want to change their mind

  • Often occurs in later adolescence 

    • E.g., Adolescents in first-year considering medical school compared to fourth year students

• Negative identity*

  • Identity formed in opposition to others/social norms

  • Could appear as a question on midterm/final 

Most individuals, however, emerge from this process with a stable identity

Other challenges & achievements in adolescence

• Emergence of abstract thinking

  • Personality traits become more important 

• Emergence of self-socialization

  • Seeking out your own friends, social partners

  • Friends and social groups become of paramount importance 

• Personal fable 

  • Remnant of egocentrism 

  • Feeling as if you are experiencing something alone/ no one can relate to personal issues

• Imaginary audience

  • Remnant of egocentrism from childhood

  • The idea that everybody is watching you/ centre of attention; everyone is noticing your flaws

Adulthood

Development does not end at age 18

• Adults experience widespread changes to their physiology for the remainder of their lives, including:

  • Changes in sensory systems (e.g., vision, audition)

  • Changes to brain structure (not always loss!)

• These physical changes may induce psychological changes 

  • Changes in memory storage and retrieval

  • Slowing of cognitive process

• However, due to their vast experience, adults employ better cognitive strategies 

  • These strategies help make-up for cognitive decline

Changes in memory

**Memory declines in adulthood, but different types of memory decline at different rates

Episodic memory – the ability to remember past events 

• How did you spend your 16th birthday? (would be easier to answer at 16, rather than 75)

Semantic memory – the ability to remember general information 

• What is the capital city of New Brunswick?

Increase in semantic memory throughout age 

• Slight decline after 60s

Decline in episodic memory 

• Remembering past events becomes more challenging into older adulthood 

Changes in selective attention

• Older adults pay attention to stimuli differently than children and younger adults do

  • Older adults tends to remember positive stimuli better than negative stimuli

  • Older adults’ amygdalae (emotional processing centres) are more activated by positive emotions than by negative ones 

• Older adulthood is one of the most positive, happiest, satisfying periods of life 

  • Older adults experience a decline in negative emotions (stress, worry, anger)

Changes in relationships

Older adults change the way in which they interact with others

• Adolescents and young adults tend to value having large social groups 

  • Older adults value having close social groups 

    • Decline in the number of social partners 

    • Increase in the quality of social relationships 

• This difference may be related to adults’ shorter futures (aware of the limited time they have left)

  • The same patterns are seen in young individuals with terminal medical conditions 

Lecture 6: Intelligence and Language II

January 24, 2025 

Human language 

Symbols 

• Arbitrary pairings → no real-world connection between the idea that the symbol represents (e.g., the word ‘cat’)

  • There are some exceptions! (onomatopoeia)

Generativity

• “Green rabbits hop through the night on their way to school.”

  • E.g., Fictional stories 

Parts of language

• Phonemes 

  • Basic sounds, specific gestures in sign language

  • Smallest units of speech that are recognized as speech rather than random noise 

  • Each of the world’s languages have a unique set of phonemes 

  • Not all languages use all phonemes

• Morphemes

  • Combination of sounds that have meaning (don’t have to be words)

  • Smallest meaningful units of languages 

    • How can you tell whether a group of sounds is a morpheme or not? 

      • Whether it has meaning or not (e.g., texting – 2 morphemes, giraffe – 1 morpheme)

• Semantics

  • Definition of words, what they mean

• Syntax

  • Grammer, rules used to combine words 

  • The rules governing how words are combined to form meaningful phrases and sentences

  • Syntactical rules differ across languages 

• Pragmatics

  • Change meaning of words based on context and tone used 

• Metalinguistics 

  • Talking about language 

Bilingualism 

Types of bilingualism 

• Simultaneous (early) bilingualism 

• Sequential bilingualism (learning one language after the other)

• Heritage bilingualism (understand the language that your family speaks but not speaking it yourself)

• Adult second-language bilingualism (learning a language later on)

Intelligence 

Formal Definitions

• The ability to learn or understand, or deal with new or challenging situations

• The ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment

• The ability to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria 

Kyle’s definition: “A set of abilities that increase an organism’s likelihood of survival and reproduction.”

Modern views of intelligence

Three-tiered model

1. General intelligence (g) — encompasses all forms of intelligence; broad 

2. Basic intelligence – different types of intelligence (e.g., crystallized and fluid intelligence; general memory and learning)

3. A set of specific abilities (testable/measurable)

How do we measure intelligence?

Intelligence itself is not observable but correlates of it are 

Alfred Binet (1957-1911) 

• Developed the first IQ test using trial & error

  • Binet-Simon intelligence test (1904)

  • Puzzles, object naming, counting (testing specific abilities)

Modern IQ tests

• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence (WAIS)

  • Test specific skills that correlate with academic, professional, and social success

IQ Tests*

• Created to produced a standard score in the age group and location in which they are presented 

  • E.g., Tests differ by age and where individuals live 

• Mean score on IQ tests is designed to be 100 

  • Standard deviation is designed to be 15 

• IQ scores follow a normal distribution (a.k.a the bell curve)

  • *Memorize the normal distribution figure (percentages at each deviation)

Intelligence text examples

Intelligence tests are different for different ages 

• Ideational fluency for 7-year-olds:

  • When you see the word PLANT, what else do you think of? Name as many words as you can.

• Naming facility for 5 year-olds:

  • What is going on in this picture?

Lecture 7: Motivation and Emotion I

January 29, 2025 

Continuing on Intelligence…

Why is intelligence important?

• Many humans are not faced with frequent threats to their physical survival on an everyday basis 

  • So why does intelligence matter?

• In humans, intelligence might predict …

  • Academic success

  • Economic success

  • Occupational success

• “Success begets success” and “the rich get richer”

  • The effects of intelligence are self-perpetuating 

  • There may be more opportunities for those who are more intelligent, which allows them to deviate even further from the mean and build more intelligence/more access to certain resources

Why is intelligence important? con’t

• Some older data suggests that wages are directly proportional to intelligence scores …

Does intelligence equal wealth?

• Newer data refute the claim that wages are directly proportional to intelligence scores

  • In a U.S. sample, each additional point in IQ is equal to roughly $202 in additional wages each year, but this effect is not statistically significant 

• Instead, EDUCATION appears to matter more 

Where does intelligence come from?

Genetics

• IQ scores are more similar between identical than between fraternal twins (90% vs 60%)

• IQ scores of adopted children are more similar to their biological parents’ than to their adoptive parents’ scores 

Family environment

• IQ scores are positively correlated with protective factors (high parental involvement, stimulating physical environment, etc.)

• IQ scores negatively correlated with risk factors (low SES, low maternal education, etc.)

Education

• School improves children’s intelligence 

• IQ scores are higher during the school year than in the summer (for some children)

Alternative views of intelligence

• IQ tests do not capture all forms of intelligence 

  • They may underestimate humans’ intelligence in certain domains 

• One solution: Gardner’s alternative theory of multiple intelligences 

  • People have 8 types of intelligence necessary for functioning and survival

  • Not based on aptitude tests 

    • Based on self-report measures and behavioural observation 

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences 

1. Linguistic intelligence

2. Logical math intelligence

3. Spatial intelligence

4. Body-kinesthetic intelligence

5. Musical intelligence

6. Nature intelligence

7. Interpersonal intelligence

8. Intrapersonal intelligence 

Evidence for Gardner’s approach

• These areas for intelligence have different developmental patterns (emerge at different ages)

• Damage to a specific brain areas may impact only one type of intelligence and not others 

Emotional intelligence 

IQ tests only attempt to measure some types of intelligence

Emotional intelligence is NOT tested by traditional IQ tests 

• The ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance reasoning

• Identification of one’s own emotions

• Description of one’s own emotions

• Management of one’s own emotions 

• Detection of other’s emotions 

Individuals have different levels of emotional intelligence 

• Individuals with HIGH emotional intelligence show LESS brain activation when solving emotional problems

Lecture 8:Motivation and Emotion II

January 31, 2025 

What is emotion?

• Neural response 

• Subjective feelings (different people feel differently) 

• Physiological response (e.g, fear – fast heart rate)

• Cognitive response (thoughts associated with emotions)

• Desire to take action 

A positive or negative experience in response to a stimulus and associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity

• Two dimensional 

  • Valence (positive or negative)

  • Psychological arousal (severity)

Major brain structures involved in emotional processing 

• Many neural structures are involved in most brain processes (emotion is no exception)

TWO major neural structures related to emotion are:

• The amygdala

  • Relatively primitive part of the limbic system that quickly processes biologically relevant information

• The prefrontal cortex

  • A relatively advanced part of the brain that slowly processes information rationally 

Why do emotions exist

• Allow us to be more functional in our environmental space

  • Set of behaviours that allows us to survive

Facial expressions

• Charles Darwin argued that facial expressions are evolved and therefore may be somewhat universal in the human population

  • The Universality hypothesis

  • He believed that facial gestures were evolved in order to help us survive 

Universality hypothesis

Support for the universality hypothesis:

• Individuals with visual impairments that have never seen a human face smile similarly to seeing humans 

• 2 day-old infants produce disgusted facial expressions similar to those of adults

• Isolated cultures evaluate facial expressions the same way* that non-isolated cultures do

Arguments against the universality hypothesis

• Different use of eye expression across cultures

• *Many studies have suffered from confirmation bias 

Facial feedback hypothesis

The facial feedback hypothesis argues that emotional facial expressions can cause/change an individual's emotional experience

Deceptive expression

• Many different reasons for which we may want to hide our emotions and there are various strategies in doing so

  • Intensification

  • De-intensification

  • Masking 

  • Neutralizing 

How to catch a fake

• There are a number of ways to determine whether facial expressions are real or not 

  • Morphology – certain facial muscles are RESISTANT to conscious change (the reliable muscles)

  • Symmetry – asymmetric facial gestures are often insincere 

  • Duration – sincere facial gestures last between 0.5 s and 5s 

  • Temporal patterning – microexpressions appear first and are sincere 

    • Sincere facial gestures appear and disappear gradually rather than suddenly

Emotional regulation

As adults, we are quite good at regulating our emotions; but it’s a complex task

There are a lot of factors to deal with while regulating emotion

• Internal feeling states (how we feel)

• Emotion-related cognition

• Emotion-related physiological process

• Emotion-related behaviour

The more emotional we are (particularly for certain emotions), the harder they are to control

Emotional regulation throughout the lifespan

• Emotional regulations involves both instinctive and learned strategies 

  • For the first 6 months:

    • Most regulation comes from the parents

    • Some basic gaze aversion occurs

  • After 6 months, more learned self-regulation appears:

    • Self-soothing

    • Increased gaze aversion

    • Locomotion (moving away from negative stimuli)

Emotional regulation

What emotional regulation strategies are there in adulthood?

• Distraction

• Suppression

• Affect labelling 

• Re-appraisal 

  • Changing the way one thinks about the emotion-inducing stimulus

• Different individuals use different strategies more or less effectively 

Lecture 9: Personality I

February 5, 2025 

Continuing from Motivation and Emotion

Motivation

Motivation is the psychological reason for producing an action

• Mainly driven by emotion 

One of the primary ways that emotion changes our actions is by giving us information about an object, event, or individual

• Even “rational decisions” are emotional ones

  • Brain damage to emotional regions of the brain (e.g., the amygdala) can cause severe indecision in patients

Emotion also provides us with instructions on what to do with new information

Ancient philosophers (including Plato and Aristotle) believed that human motivation is centred on the hedonic principle 

• All motivation extends from attraction to pleasure and avoidance of pain

According to this principle, our primary motivator for everything we do is pleasure

• We can trace even unpleasant activities to this pleasure goal

Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy

• The hedonic principle explains human motivation at a basic level

• Psychologists have attempted to break down human motivation into more specific categories

  • E.g., Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy

Biological Needs

Humans share with other animals the basic needs for nutrition (food) and sex

• These are at the bottom of the needs hierarchy and generally must be satisfied before other needs are even noticed

  • These needs are technically called drives, which are satisfied with incentives 

• Food

  • Drive = hunger; incentive = food

• Sex

  • Drive = reproduction; incentive = sex 

Other human motivations

Another way of understanding motivation is via three psychological dimensions 

• Intrinsic vs. extrinsic (internal vs. external)

• Conscious vs. unconscious 

• Approach vs. avoidance 

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation – a motivation to take actions that are themselves rewarding 

• E.g., eating ice cream

Extrinsic motivation – a motivation to take actions that (eventually) lead to a separate reward

• This reward is often social or monetary 

  • E.g., Attending university to attain a degree → attaina well-paying job

• Extrinsic motivation tends to be relatively weak in early childhood and among non-human animals

Approach vs. avoidance 

Approach motivation – motivation to experience a positive outcome 

Avoidance motivation – motivation to not experience a negative outcome

• Which is stronger? Usually avoidance 

  • But the relative strength of avoidance and approach motivations differs across individuals 

Lecture 10: Personality I

February 7, 2025 

Personality 

• An individual’s characteristics style of:

  • Behaviour

  • Thought

  • Feeling 

The study of personality is the study of both individuals (idiographic approach) and common trends in the population (nomothetic approach)

The study of personality has TWO main components

• Measuring personality

  • What are the characteristics of an individual’s personality?

    • Personality inventories

    • Projective techniques

• Explaining personality 

  • Why does an individual have the personality that they do?

  • How does an individual’s personality affect their behaviour?

    • Personality theories  

How to measure personality?

• Observing the individual’s behaviour 

  • Drawbacks:

    • Resources

    • Biases from the observer

    • Changing behaviour with the knowledge of being watched 

Instead, personality measurements usually take one of two forms:

• Personality inventories (a.k.a. Personality tests/scales)

• Projective techniques (relate to Psychodynamic theory)

Personality inventories

• One of the simplest ways to assess personality

  • Rely on self-report 

    • Subjective answers about one’s own behaviours, thoughts, and feelings

    • Usually administered in an interview or written questionnaire 

• Most online personality tests have very LOW validity and reliability 

  • Validity: a test measures what it says it measures

  • Reliability: a test produces the same results each time 

• Some personality inventories, however, have HIGH validity and reliability 

  • E..g, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a widely reliable, clinically valid personality test 

    • True/false/can’t answer questions 

      • Forces participants to choose a definitive answer; provides more information

    • A lot of questions (many versions of the same question)

Criticisms of personality inventories

• Test taker can be biased 

  • Test takers may report socially desirable traits

    • Tests have ‘validity scale’ questions to ensure validity 

    • E.g., questions that all people should answer “yes” to

• Test taker may not know everything about themselves

Personality theories

• A number of theories have emerged to help psychologists describe and explain personality including:

  • Traits approach (Big Five)

  • Social-cognitive approach

  • Psychodynamic approach

  • Humanist approach

Traits approach

The trait approach to personality attempts to describe personalities as a series of traits 

• A relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way

The list of traits is practically infinite

• Researchers use factor analysis to reduce this list to the lowest possible set of traits

1. Individuals rate themselves on hundreds of traits

2. Traits that are highly correlated are combined into factors

3. Traits with no correlation to one another 

The Big Five (trait approach)

Today, most researchers agree upon a five-factor model of personality

• These Big Five personality traits are not correlated with each other (orthogonal)**

Openness – creative, artistic, curious, imaginative, nonconforming

Conscientiousness – ambitious, organized, reliable

Extraversion – talkative, optimistic, social, affectionate

Agreeableness – good-natured, trusting, supportive 

Neuroticism – worried, insecure, anxiety-prone (propensity for negative emotions)

Personality traits are relatively stable and this stability increases across the lifespan 

• Rank-order stability

  • Our rank-order in personality traits stays mostly the same

  • Especially as we age 

However, SOME change does occur 

• Mean-level changes 

  • Although our rank-order remains fairly consistent … the mean levels of traits in our cohort change 

There can also be intraindividual change 

• Significant changes in a person’s personality from one time to the next

• This is more rare

  • Occurs after life-changing experiences, including trauma

Where do traits come from? (Biological explanation)

Genetics is the largest single factor

• The Big Five traits have a heritability factor of between 0.35 and 0.49

  • A heritability factor of 0.00 means that genetics plays no role in a physical/psychological trait (there are virtually none of these in psychology)

  • A heritability of 1.00 means that genetics is completely responsible for a trait (e.g., eye colour)

• So values between 0.35 and 0.49 are quite HIGH 

  • But ~50% of variability in personality is still due to various life experiences 

• If traits are so informed by genetics, it should not be surprising that we show evidence of our personalities in infancy!

  • Temperament is an infant’s characteristic activity level, mood, attention span, and distractibility

  • Infants’ temperaments are predictive of their adult personalities