AP Psychology Unit 3 Notes

3.1 Themes & Methods in Developmental Psychology

  • Developmental Psychology: Concerned with chronological order and thematic issues in development across the lifespan.
  • Thematic Issues:
    • Stability and change.
    • Nature and nurture.
    • Continuous and discontinuous stages of development.
  • Research Methods:
    • Cross-sectional studies.
    • Longitudinal studies.

3.2 Physical Development Across the Lifespan

Prenatal Development

  • Influences: Teratogens, maternal illness, genetic mutations, hormonal and environmental factors.
  • Impact: Affects major physical and psychological milestones.
  • Exclusion: Stages of prenatal development (zygote, embryo, fetus) are excluded from the AP Psychology Exam.

Infancy and Childhood

  • Order: Physical development follows a generally consistent order, but timing varies.
  • Milestones: Development of fine and gross motor coordination.
  • Skills: Mature physical skills enable greater independence.
  • Reflexes: Infants possess reflexes (e.g., rooting reflex) indicating on-track development.
  • Visual Cliff Apparatus: Demonstrates early depth perception in infants.
  • Critical/Sensitive Periods: Strong developmental effects, especially for language skills.
  • Imprinting: Some non-human animals imprint on the first object they encounter for survival.

Adolescence

  • Milestones: Adolescent growth spurt and puberty (development of reproductive ability).
  • Sex Characteristics: Development of primary and secondary sex characteristics (menarche and spermarche).

Adulthood

  • Characteristics: Leveling off and decline in reproductive ability (menopause), mobility, flexibility, reaction time, and sensory acuity.

3.3 Gender & Sexual Orientation

  • Influence: Sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.

3.4 Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan

Piaget's Theory

  • Schemas: Children develop schemas via assimilation and accommodation.
  • Stages:
    • Sensorimotor Stage: Infancy through toddlerhood.
      • Object Permanence: Develops during this stage.
    • Preoperational Stage: Toddlerhood through early childhood.
      • Mental Symbols: Proficiency in using mental symbols and engaging in pretend play.
      • Limitations: Inability to perform conservation and reversibility tasks.
      • Characteristics: Animism and egocentrism.
      • Theory of Mind: Begins to develop during this stage.
    • Concrete Operational Stage: Early through late childhood.
      • Abilities: Corrects cognitive errors from the preoperational stage; understands the world logically and realistically.
      • Limitations: Struggles to think systematically.
    • Formal Operational Stage: Late childhood through adulthood.
      • Abilities: Abstract and hypothetical thinking.
      • Achievement: Piaget proposed that not all people achieve formal operational thinking.

Vygotsky's Theory

  • Social Learners: Children learn through interaction and scaffolding within sociocultural contexts.
  • Zone of Proximal Development: Learning ideally occurs within this zone.

Cognitive Changes in Adulthood

  • Crystallized Intelligence: Remains relatively stable.
  • Fluid Intelligence: Tends to decline with age.
  • Cognitive Disorders: Dementia affects adults.

3.5 Communication & Language Development

  • Language: Shared system of arbitrary symbols (phonemes, morphemes, semantics) governed by rules (grammar, syntax) to produce ideas.
  • Exclusion: Pragmatics of language are excluded from the AP Psychology Exam.

Language Development

  • Nonverbal Communication: Use of nonverbal manual gestures (e.g., pointing).
  • Stages: Cooing, babbling, one-word stage, and telegraphic speech.
  • Errors: Overgeneralization of language rules.

3.6 Social-Emotional Development Across the Lifespan

Ecological Systems Theory

  • Systems:
    • Microsystem: Direct contact groups.
    • Mesosystem: Relationships between microsystems.
    • Exosystem: Indirect factors.
    • Macrosystem: Cultural events.
    • Chronosystem: Individual’s current life stage.

Parenting Styles

  • Types: Authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive.
  • Cultural Differences: Varying effects on outcomes in caregivers and children.

Attachment Styles

  • Types: Secure and insecure (avoidant, anxious, and disorganized).
  • Temperament: Related to how children attach to caregivers.

Social Development

  • Separation Anxiety: Anxiety when away from a caregiver or in the presence of a stranger.
  • Attachment Research: Studies with monkeys demonstrate the importance of comfort over food.
  • Peer Relationships: Develop over time; children engage via parallel and pretend play; adolescents rely more on peers.
  • Adolescent Egocentrism: Demonstrated via imaginary audience and personal fable.
  • Adulthood: Culture determines when adulthood begins (social clock); emerging adulthood as a transition.
  • Adult Relationships: Forming families or family-like relationships for mutual support.
  • Childhood Attachment: Affects adult attachments.

Psychosocial Development (Erikson)

  • Stage Theory: People must resolve psychosocial conflicts at each stage.
    *Trust vs. Mistrust
    *Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
    *Initiative vs. Guilt
    *Industry vs. Inferiority
    *Identity vs. Role Confusion
    *Intimacy vs. Isolation
    *Generativity vs. Stagnation
    *Integrity vs. Despair
  • Exclusion: Psychosexual stage theory is excluded from the AP Psychology Exam.
  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Effects on relationships; sociocultural differences in what is considered an ACE.
  • Identity Development: Achievement, diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium; development of racial/ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religious, occupational, and familial identities.
  • Possible Selves also contribute to identity development.

3.7 Classical Conditioning

  • Behavioral Perspective: Evolved from theories about learning via conditioning; focuses on observable behavior.
  • Classical Conditioning: Association of one stimulus with another to elicit a response.
  • Acquisition: Learning the association through steps demonstrating associative learning principles.
  • Components:
    • Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Elicits an unconditioned response (UCR).
    • Conditioned Response (CR): Response to the conditioned stimulus (CS).
  • Order of Presentation: CS presented before UCS for successful acquisition.
  • Extinction: CR diminishes when CS is no longer paired with UCS.
  • Spontaneous Recovery: Formerly extinct CR reappears when CS and UCS are paired again.
  • Stimulus Discrimination and Generalization: Demonstrated in studies.
  • Higher-Order Conditioning: CS used as a UCS.
  • Exclusion: Delayed, trace, simultaneous, and backward conditioning are excluded from the AP Psychology Exam.
  • Emotional Responses: Can be classically conditioned; basis for therapeutic interventions like counterconditioning.
  • Exclusion: Expectancy theory is excluded from the AP Psychology Exam.
  • Taste Aversions: Acquired through classical conditioning; demonstrates one-trial conditioning and biological preparedness.
  • One-Trial Learning: Association acquired through one pairing; not strengthened by further pairings.
  • Biological Preparedness: Animals are predisposed to learning certain stimulus-response pairings more quickly.
  • Habituation: Diminished response to repeated stimuli.

3.8 Operant Conditioning

  • Focus: Associating consequences (reinforcement and punishment) with behaviors.
  • Law of Effect: Behaviors with reinforcing consequences are repeated; behaviors with punishing consequences are not.
  • Types: Positive and negative reinforcement and punishment.
  • Reinforcers: Primary and secondary.
  • Discrimination and Generalization: Demonstrated in studies.
  • Shaping: Reinforcing successive approximations of desired behavior.
  • Instinctive Drift: Only certain behaviors can be shaped through reinforcement.
  • Superstitious Behavior: Consequences reinforce unrelated behaviors.
  • Learned Helplessness: Organisms learn they have no control over aversive consequences.
  • Reinforcement Schedules: Determine the strength of association.
    • Types: Continuous and partial.
    • Continuous Reinforcement: Reinforcement for every correct behavior.
    • Partial Reinforcement Schedules:
      • Fixed Interval: Time-based schedule with fixed time intervals
      • Variable Interval: time-based schedule with variable time intervals
      • Fixed Ratio: Reinforcement after a fixed number of behaviors
      • Variable Ratio: Reinforcement after a random number of behaviors
        *Distinctive graph patterns for each schedule.

3.9 Social, Cognitive, & Neurological Factors in Learning

  • Social Learning Theory: Learning occurs by observation (vicarious conditioning); copying behavior of models.
  • Cognitive Factors:
    • Insight Learning: Solution occurs without association, consequence, or model.
    • Latent Learning: Information learned without reinforcement but not immediately evident; often demonstrated by cognitive maps.