Psych 19 Ch. 1

A field of study devoted to the study of all changes humans experience throughout the lifespan.

Orderly integrated set of statements that describes, explains, and predicts behavior

A process of gradually adding more to the same types of skills that were there to begin with

A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times

In discontinuous development stages are the qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development

unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change.

Disagreement among theorists about whether genetic or environmental factors are more important influences on development.

Individuals who are high or low in a characteristc that will remain so at later ages emphasizes heredity.

Believe change is possible and even likely if new experiences support it

• Development is...
• 1. Lifelong
• 2. Multi-dimensional and multi-directional
• 3. Highly plastic
• 4. Affected by multiple interacting forces

• Multi-Dimensional:
• intricate blend of biological, psychological and social forces

• Multi-Directional:
• Joint expression of growth and decline

Events that are strongly related to age and therefore predictable in when they occur and how long they last

Explain why people born around the same time (called a cohort) tend to be alike in ways that set them apart from people born at other times

are irregualr events. They happen to just one person or a few people and do not follow a predictable timeline

"survivial of the fittest" its the strong genes that are passed on

a genetically determined series of events that unfold automatically

Measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals, and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development

Provides sores that could successful predict school achievement and individual differences in development

People move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflicts are solved determines the person's ability to learn, to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety.

Freud emphasized that how parents manage their child's sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development

• Id: source of biological needs and desires
• Ego: conscious, rational part of personality
• Superego: conscience

Erikson emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills at each stage that make the individual an active, contributing member of society

Directly observable events-stimuli and responses- are appropriate focus of study

Emphasizes modeling, (aka imitation) or observational learning as a powerful source of development.

Procedures that combine conditioning and modeling to eliminate undesirable behaviors and increase desirable responses

Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world

An approach that views the human mind as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows and that regards cognitive development as a continuous process.

Brings together researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and medicine to study the relationship between changes in the brain and the developing person's cognitive processing and behavior patterns.

concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history.

A time that is optimal for certain capacities to emerge and in which the individual is espiecially responsive to environmental influences.

Seeks to understand the adaptive value of specieswide cognitive, emotional, and social compentences as those competencies change with age.

Theory in which children acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community's culture through cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

• Views the person as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surronding environment.
• Consists of:
• 1. Mircosystem
• 2. Mesosystem
• 3. Exosystem
• 4. Marcosystem
• 5. Chronosystem

Innermost level, consists of activities and interaction patterns in the person's immediate surroundings.

Second level, encompasses connections between microsystems.

consists of social settings that do not contain the developing person but nevertheless affect experiences in immediate settings.

consists of cultural values, laws, customs and resources

Life changes can be imposed externally or alternatively, can arise from within the person, since individuals select, modify, and create many of their own settings and experiences.

One approach is to go into the field, or natural environment, and record the behavior of interest

The investigator sets up a laboratory situation that evokes the behavior of interest so that every participant has an equal opportunity to display the response.

Researchers use a flexible, conversational style to probe for the participants' point of view.

(Including tests and questionnaires), Each participant is asked the same set of questions in the same way.

brings together a wide range of information on one person, including interviews, observations, and sometimes test scores.

A method in which the researcher attempts to understand the unique values and social processes of a culture or a distinct soical group through participant observation - living with its members and taking field notes for an extended time.

Researchers gather information on individuals, generally in natural life circumstances, without altering their experiences. Then they look at relationships between participants' characteristics and their behavior or development

A number that describes how two measures, or variables, are associated with each other.

A research design in which the investigator randomly assigns participants to two or more treatment conditions and studies the effect that manipulating an independent variable has on a dependent variable. Permits inferences about cause and effect.

The variable the investigator expects to cause changes in another variable and that the researcher manipulates by randomly assigning participants to treatment conditions

The variable the researcher expects to be influenced by the independent variable in an experiment.

An evenhanded procedure for assigning participants to treatment conditions in an experiment, such as drawing numbers out of a hat or flipping coin. Increases the chances that participants' characteristics will be equally distributed across treatment groups

Participants are studied repeatedly and changes are noted as they get older

Individuals born in the same time period are influenced by a particular set of historical and cultural conditions. Results based on one cohort may not apply to people developing at other times.

Groups of people differing in age are studied at the same point in time.

Investigators conduct several similar cross-sectional or longitudinal studies (called sequences) at varying times.