Human Development, Exam 1

What is the most recent average life expectancy (years)? (pg. 3)

78

The life expectancy in the United States is currently:

78 years.

Which of the following did Vygotsky call the "buds" or "flowers" of development?

A child's cognitive skills in the process of maturing

This term is used to describe the tendency of infants to reach where and object was located early rather than where the object was last hidden.

A-not-B error

Piagetian concept of adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences

Accommodation

What does it mean that development is contextual?

All development occurs within a context, or setting. Contexts include school, families, peer groups, churches, cities, neighborhoods, university laboratories, countries, and son on. Contexts change. Normative age-graded influences vs. normative history-graded influences. Nonnormative life events.

Theories hold that development can be described in terms of the behaviors learned through interactions with the environment.

Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories

Changes in an individual's physical nature. Brain, height and weight, motor skills, nutrition, exercise, hormonal changes of puberty, and cardiovascular decline.

Biological processes

The nature of development

Biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes

Bronfrenbrenner's environmental systems theory, which focuses on five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, ecosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory.

Four types of age

Chronological age - age by years. Biological age - a person's age in terms of biological health. Psychological age - individual's adaptive compared to other individuals of same chronological age. Social age - connectedness with others and the social roles individuals adopt.

Which of the following babies would appear disoriented in the Strange Situation conducted by Mary Ainsworth?

Clara, who is an insecure disorganized baby

Changes in an individual's though, intelligence, and language.

Cognitive processes

A group of people who are born at a similar point in history and share similar experiences as a result, such as living through the Vietnam war or growing up in the same city around the same time.

Cohort

Effects that are due to a subject's time of birth or generation but not age.

Cohort effects

The setting in which development occurs, which is influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors.

Context

States that the infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems.

Core knowledge approach.

A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables.

Correlation coefficient

Comparisons of one culture with one or more other cultures. These provide information about the degree to which children's development is similar, or universal, across cultures, and to the degree to which it is culture-specific.

Cross-culture studies

A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time.

Cross-sectional approach

Time span of research

Cross-sectional approach, Longitudinal approach, cohort effects.

The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group that are passed on from generation to generation.

Culture

Type of research that aims to observe and record behavior

Descriptive research

Research designs

Descriptive, correlational, experimental.

The pattern of movement or change that starts at conception and continues through the human life span.

Development

What does it mean that development is multidimensional?

Development consists of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional dimensions. Even within those dimensions, there are many components. Changes in one dimension can also affect development in another dimension. Ted Kaczynski (Unabomber) example of not being the same after the hospital stay--biological event.

If you subscribe to Paul Baltes' perspective of life-span development, which of the following statements would you NOT agree with?

Development is unidirectional

The longitudinal method of research consists of studying:

Development is unidirectional

Explores links between development, cognitive processes and the brain.

Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Examines connections between socioemotional processes, development, and the brain.

Developmental social neuroscience

In terms of managing and guiding infants' behavior, which method is MOST common for infants 12 months old?

Diverting attention

The perspective on motor development that seeks to explain how motor behaviors are assembled for perceiving and acting.

Dynamic systems theory

What does it mean that development is lifelong?

Early adulthood is not the endpoint of development; rather, no age period dominates development. Researchers increasingly study the experiences and psychological orientations of adults and different points in their lives.

Emphasizes environmental factors

Ecological theory

The view that perception functions to bring organisms in contact with the environment and increase adaptation.

Ecological view

Which of the following statements about emotions is FALSE?

Embeddedness in relationships prevents diversity in emotional experiences.

A mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children sift from one stage of thought to the next.

Equilibration

One of the differences between Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson is that:

Erikson emphasized the importance of both early and later experiences.

A psychoanalytic theory which eight stages of psychosocial development unfold throughout the human lifespan. Each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be faced.

Erikson's theory

A range of characteristics rooted in cultural heritage, including nationality, race, religion, and language

Ethnicity

An approach that stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, tied to evolution, and characterized by critical or sensitive periods. Stresses biological factors

Ethology

Emphasizes that importance of adaptation, reproduction, and "survival of the fittest" in shaping behavior.

Evolutionary psychology

_____ attention involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Executive

A carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied is manipulated and all other factors are held constant. Experimental research permits the determination of a cause.

Experiment

One study analyzed the exposure to six stressors among poor children and middle-income children. Poor children were much more likely to face each of those stressors

Family turmoil, child separation, exposure to violence, crowding, excessive noise, poor housing quality.

The characteristics of people as males and females

Gender

What are come contemporary concerns in lifespan development?

Health and well-being, parenting and education, sociocultural contexts and diversity, and social policy.

Assertions or predictions, often derived from theories, that can be tested.

Hypotheses

A theory that emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. The processes of memory and thinking are central.

Information- processing Theory.

Conducting ethical research

Informed consent, confidentiality, debriefing, deception.

A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. Language consists of the words used by community and the rules for varying and combining them.

Language

Chomsky's term that describes a biological endowment enabling the child to detect the features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax, and semantics.

Language acquisition device (LAD)

The perspective that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual; that it involves growth, maintenance and regulation; and that it is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together.

Life-span perspective

Research

Methods for collecting data: Observation, Survey and interview, standardized test, case study, psychological measures.

An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move for one activity to another as they desire.

Montessori approach

Observation that occurs in a real-world setting without any attempt to manipulate the situation.

Naturalistic observation

Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on a person's life. The occurrence, pattern, and sequence of these events are not applicable to many individuals.

Nonnormative life events

Biological and environmental influences that are similar for individuals in a particular age group.

Normative age-graded influences

Biological and environmental influences that are associated with history. These influences are common to people of a particular generation.

Normative history-graded influences

The piagetian term for understanding that objects and events continue to exist, even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.

Object permanence

Freud's Theory

Oral Stage - Infant's pleasure centers on the mouth, birth to 1.5 years. Anal Stage - Child's pleasure focuses on the anus, 1.5 to 3 years. Phallic Stage - child's pleasure focuses on the genitals, 3 to 6 years. Latency Stage - Child represses sexual interest and develops social and intellectual skills, 6 yrs to puberty. Genital Stages - a time of sexual reawakening; surge of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside the family, puberty onward.

Piaget's concept of grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system.

Organization.

When NICCEF (2004) surveyed the education that children around the world are receiving, it found that far more girls than boys receive no formal schooling at all.

Percentages of children 7-18 ears around the world who have never been to school of any kind.

The interpretation of what is sensed.

Perception

Why is studying life-span development important?

Perhaps you are, or will be, a parent or teacher. Responsibility for children will be your everyday responsibility. The more you learn about them, the better you can raise them. Also, gain some insight on you own history, the way you grew, the way you will grow in your adult years, middle-adult years, and so on. Lifespan goes from conception till life ends.

Reflexes

Pg 83

Chapter 5

Physical & Cognitive Development in early childhood

Chapter 3

Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy

The theory that children construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development. Sensorimotor stage, pre operational stage, concrete operational stage, formal operational stage.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory.

What are the periods of development?

Prenatal period - time from conception to birth. Infancy - time from birth to 18-24 months. Early childhood- end of infancy to age 5 or 6. Middle and late childhood- from about 6 to 11 years. Adolescence - transition from childhood to early adulthood. Approx. age 10/12 to age 18/22. Early adulthood - begins in late teens or early twenties, last through thirties. Middle adulthood - approx. 40 years to 60 years. Late adulthood - begins in sixties/seventies and ends at death.

The sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves toward the extremities

Proximodistal pattern

Theories holding that development depends primarily on the unconscious mind and is heavily couched in emotion, that behavior is merely a surface characteristic, that it is important to analyze the symbolic meanings of behavior, and that early experiences are important in development.

Psychoanalytic theories, Ex. Freud's and Erikson's.

What does it mean that developmental science is multidisciplinary?

Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and medical researchers all share an interest in unlocking the mysteries of development through the life span. Ex. How do your heredity and health limit your intelligence.

Over the past week, Walter has been trying to learn to tie his shoelaces. Initially, his mother was holding his hands and working his fingers through the process, but now that Walter's gotten better at it, she only guides him verbally. Which of the following is this an example of?

Scaffolding

The product of the interaction between information and the sensory receptors-- the eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin.

Sensation

Sharon, 3, can solve 4-piece jigsaw puzzles on her own, but needs her parents' help to solve 6-piece jigsaw puzzles. Which of the following represents the upper limit of Sharon's zone of proximal development (ZPD) for solving such puzzles?

Sharon solving a 6-piece puzzle on her own

The theory that behavior, environment, and person/cognitive factors are important in understanding development.

Social cognitive theory

A national government's course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.

Social policy

Refers to the conceptual grouping of people with similar occupations, educational, and economic characteristics.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Chapter 4

Socioemotional development in infancy

Changes in an individual's relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.

Socioemotional processes

The debate about the degree to which early traits and characteristics persist though life or change.

Stability-change issue

An observational measure of infant attachment that requires the infant to move through a series of introductions, separations, and reunions with the caregiver and an adult stranger in a prescribed order.

Strange Situation

A condition that occurs when an infant stops breathing, usually during the night, and suddenly dies without an apparent cause.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

What does it mean that development is plastic?

Ted Kaczynski was shy at 10 yrs old. Was he destined to remain forever uncomfortable with people? Developmentalists debate how much plasticity have in various dimensions at different points in their development. Plasticity means the capacity to change. How long can you learn?

A coherent set of ideas that helps to explain data and to make predictions.

Theory

What does it mean that development is multidirectional?

Throughout life, some dimensions or components of a dimension expand and others shrink. Example, one language is learned in early development, the capacity to learn a second or third language decreases with age. Romantic relationships in adolescents and spending less time with friends.

Erikson's stages

Trust vs. mistrust - infancy (first year) Autonomy vs. shame and doubt- infancy (1-3yrs) Initiative vs. guilt - early childhood (preschool yrs 5-5) Industry vs. inferiority - middle and late childhood (elementary school years 6-puberty) Identity vs identity confusion - adolescence (10-20) Intimacy vs isolation - early adulthood (20-30s) Generativity vs. stagnation - middle adulthood (40-50s) Integrity vs despair - late adulthood (60 onward)

A method developed by Frantz to determine whether infants can distinguish one stimulus from another by measuring the length of time they attend to different stimuli

Visual preference method

A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how cultural and social interaction guide cognitive development.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Cognitive Theory

In which of the following situations will 9-month-old Lucy show the LEAST stranger anxiety?

When she meets another 9-month-old baby at her home

a cry similar to the basic cry, with more excess air forced though the vocal cords

anger cry

the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action

animism

Piagetian concept of using existing schemes to deal with new information or experiences

assimilation

a close emotional bond between two people

attachment

The focusing of mental resources on select information

attention

A rhythmic pattern usually consisting of a cry, a briefer silence, a shorter inspiratory whistle that is higher pitched than the main cry, and then a brief rest before the next cry

basic cry

an in-depth examination of and individual

case study

The sequence in which the earliest growth always occurs at the top -- the head -- with physical growth in size, weight, and feature differentiation gradually working from top to bottom.

cephalocaudal pattern

Education that involves the whole child by considering both the child's physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development and the child's needs, interests, and learning styles.

child-centered kindergarten

Language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences

child-directed speech

Cognitive theories

cognitive theories emphasize conscious thoughts. Piaget's cognitive developmental theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory, and information-processing theory. Development of complex thinking skills.

the focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others

concentration

cognitive groupings of similar object, events, people, or ideas.

concepts

In Piaget's theory, awareness that altering an object's or a substance's appearance doesn't change its basic properties

conservation

The debate about the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity)

continuity-discontinuity issue

In considering the big issue of whether nature or nurture plays the more important role in infant development, Elizabeth Spelke endorses a _____ approach, which states that infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems.

core knowledge

A type of research that focuses on describing the strength of the relation between two or more events or characteristics

correlational researche

Imitation that occurs after a delay of hours or days.

deferred imitation.

involves connections across domains over time that influence developmental pathways and outcomes

developmental cascade model

Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (age appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individual appropriateness)

developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)

a child who tends to react negatively and cry frequently, who engages in irregular daily routines, and who is slow to accept new experiences.

difficult child

Recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation

dishabituation

In terms of paternal caregiving, infants who displayed externalizing behaviors at age one had fathers who:

displayed low levels of engagement.

The view of development that sees motor skills developing as a solution to an infant's problems is known as _____ systems theory.

dynamic

a child who is generally in a positive mood, who quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and who adapts easily to new experiences.

easy child

Franz believes that we directly perceive information that exists in the world around us and that perception is designed for action. He is most likely holding an _____ perspective.

ecological

Your professor says that our perception brings us into contact with the environment in order to interact with and adapt to it. This indicates that he holds a(n) _____ view on perceptual development.

ecological

the inability to distinguish one's own perspective and someone else's (salient feature of the first substage of pre operational thought.)

egocentrism

An approach that selects and uses whatever is considered the best in many theories.

electric theoretical orientation.

Feeling, or affect, that occurs when a person is in a state or interaction that is important to them. Emotion is characterized by behavior that reflects (expresses) the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the state a person is in or the transactions being experienced.

emotion

Dr. Alondro is an information-processing psychologist, thus he is most likely to:

emphasize that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it.

When children experience cognitive conflict in trying to understand the world, they shift from one stage of thought to the next. For example, experiencing conflict with peers may lead to an attempt to reduce conflict. The mechanism through which this shift occurs is called _____.

equilibration

A recent television documentary concluded that, from birth, girls are more nurturing than are boys. You agree with this because you believe nurturing is an evolutionary trait passed on through the generations, because females needed to be more nurturing to aid the survival of the species. Your view reflects the _____ perspective of development.

ethological

Involves planning actions, allocating attention to goals, executing and compensating for errors, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

executive attention

An umbrella like concept that consists of a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the rain's prefrontal cortex. Executive function involves managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to use self-control.

executive function

June knows the names of all the states that comprise the United States. The names of the states are a part of June's _____ memory.

explicit

Memory of facts and experiences that individuals consciously know and can state.

explicit memory

Motor skills that involve more finely tuned movements, such as finger dexterity

fine motor skills.

The portion farthest from the spinal cord is known as the _____.

forebrain

Refers to the match between a child's temperament and the environmental demands with which the child must cope

goodness of fit

Motor skills that involve large-muscle activities, such as walking

gross motor skills, pg 84

Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus.

habituation

Jessica, 16, is in the process of deciding what she wants to study in college. She wants to be an engineer one day and a painter the next day. Erik Erikson would say Jessica is in the _____ stage of development.

identity versus identity confusion

Juno is riding a bike. Riding a bike requires Juno to use her memories of skills and routine procedures that are performed automatically, referred to as her _____ memory.

implicit

Memory without conscious recollection; involves skills and routine procedures that are automatically performed.

implicit memory

The ability to produce and endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules

infinite generativity

babies that show insecurity by avoiding their mothers

insecure avoidant babies

babies that show insecurity by being disorganized and disoriented.

insecure disorganized babies

babies often cling to the caregiver, then resist her by fighting against the closeness, perhaps by kicking or pushing away

insecure resistant babies

The ability to relate and integrate information from two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing.

intermodal perception.

Piaget's second substage of pre operational thought, in which children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions (ages 4-7)

intuitive thought substage

Process that occurs when (1) individuals focus on the same object and track each others behavior, (2) one individual directs another's attention, and (3) reciprocal interaction takes place.

joint attention

A controlled setting in which research can take place

laboratory

specialization of function in one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex or the other.

lateralization

Michelle, 4, talks to herself frequently, especially when she is trying to solve a difficult problem. Lev Vygotsky would say that Michelle is:

likely to be socially competent.

A research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over a period of time, usually several years or more.

longitudinal approach

A central feature of cognitive development, pertaining to all situations in which an individual retains information over time

memory

Units of meaning involved in word formation, such as plural and possessive forms.

morphology

the process by which axons are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells, which increases the speed at which info travels through the nervous system

myelination

The debate about the extent to which development is influenced by nature and by nuture. Nature refers to an organism's biological inheritance, nuture to its environmental experiences.

nature-nature issue

Developmental perspective in which biological processes and environmental conditions influence the brain's development; the brain has plasticity and is context dependent; and cognitive development is closely linked with brain development.

neuroconstructivist view

By age 51, most women enter menopause. This is an example of how a biological process can exert a _____ influence on development.

normative age-graded

In a study comparing the memory spans of preschool and elementary school children, the latter group consistently scored better. This apparent increase in memory span with age could be explained partly by how:

older children rehearse the digits more than younger children do.

In Piaget's theory, these are internalized, reversible sets of actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically

operations

Most contemporary psychoanalytic theorists believe that Sigmund Freud:

overemphasized sexual instincts.

a sudden outburst of loud crying without preliminary moaning, filled by breath holding

pain cry

Nadine's doctor is assessing her fine motor skills, thus they are going to look at her ability to:

perform finely tuned movements like using a pencil.

Anthony is just starting to crawl and has taken to following his mother around the house. He also lifts his arms up to her when he wants to be picked up. According to Bowlby's conceptualization of attachment, which phase is Anthony currently in?

phase 3

The sound system of a language, including th sounds used and how they may be combined.

phonology

the appropriate use of language in different contexts

pragmatics

Piaget's second stage, lasting form about 2-7yrs of age, during which children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings, and symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory info and physical action; stable concepts are formed, metal reasoning emerges, egocentrism is present, and magical beliefs are constructed.

pre operational stage

A government funded program that is designed to provide children from low-income families the opportunity to acquire the skills and experiences important for school success.

project head start

Piaget called the second substage in preoperational thought "intuitive" because of the absence of the use of _____ in children in that stage.

rational thinking

socialization that is bidirectional, meaning that children socialize parents just as parents socialize children.

reciprocal socialization

a smile that does not occur in response to external stimuli. it appears during the first month after birth, usually during sleep

reflexive smile

A police officer visits Ben and Heather's class to discuss safety rules. To attract the children's attention, the officer brings colorful balloons and lots of jars of bubbles for the children to blow. Later, Heather tells her parents all about the balloons and bubbles but cannot remember any of the safety rules the officer presented. Heather obviously paid more attention to what was _____.

salient

process in which parents time interactions so that infants experience tune-taking with their parents.

scaffolding

In Piaget's theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.

schemes

babies that use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore their environment

securely attached babies

Most of the _____ emotions occur for the first time at some point in the second half of the first year through the second year.

self-conscious

The meaning of words and sentences

semantics

The first stage of Piaget's stages, which lasts form birth to about 2 years of age; during the stage, infants construct an understanding of the wold by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions.

sensorimotor stage

an infants distressed crying when the caregiver leaves

separation protest

McKenzie, age 2, wants to do everything on her own. Her mother punishes her when she attempts to pour her own milk or tries to answer the phone. Erikson would say that McKenzie is likely to develop a sense of:

shame and doubt.

rene is taking a test where she hears a random list of numbers, which she is then asked to repeat in the right order. Irene is having her _____ memory tested.

short-term

The memory component in which individuals retain info for up to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal of the information.

short-term memory

a child who has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, and displays a low intensity of mood.

slow-to-warm up child

Sakura isn't a particularly active child, and he tends to be wary of new situations and people. Although he doesn't cry, he dislikes dealing with novel situations. According to Thomas and Chess, he would be classified as a(n):

slow-to-warm-up child.

An approach that emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and constructed. Vygotsky's theory reflects this approach.

social constructivist approach

"Reading" emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in a particular situation

social referencing

A smile in response to external stimulus, which, early in development, typically is a face.

social smile

Three-month-old Zoey looks up at her mother and smiles. Researchers call this type of smiling:

social smiling

Vygotsky's view of the importance of _____ on children's development fits with the current belief that it is important to evaluate the contextual factors in learning.

sociocultural influences

A test that is given with uniform procedures for administration and scoring

standardized test

An infant's fear and wariness of strangers that typically appears in the second half of the first year of life

stranger anxiety

Also referred to as vigilance; involves focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect with the environment.

sustained attention

Piaget's first substage of pre operational thought, in which the child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present (this happens between 2 and 4 years of age)

symbolic function substage

The ways words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences

syntax

An individuals behavioral style and characteristic way of responding emotionally.

temperament

Babies have three types of cries. Which of the following is NOT one of them?

the hunger cry

Refers to the awareness of one's own mental process and the mental processes of others.

theory of mind

The sensorimotor stage of development lasts from birth until about:

two years of age.

Vygotsky's term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with assistance

zone of proximal developmental (ZPD)