Psych Midterm

  1. What is Human development?
    The scientific study of age-related changes in behavior, thinking, emotion, and personality.
  2. What are Norms?
    Average ages at which developmental milestones are reached.
  3. What is Maturation?
    The gradual unfolding of a genetically programmed sequential pattern of change.
  4. What is the Lifespan perspective?
    The current view of developmentalists that important changes occur throughout the entire human lifespan and that these changes must be interpreted in terms of the culture and context in which they occur.
  5. What are physical domains?
    Changes in size, shape, and characteristics of the body.
  6. What is cognitive domain
    Changes in thinking, memory, problem solving, and other intellectual skills
  7. What is social domain?
    Change in variables that are associated with the relationship of an individual to other.
  8. Age of Early Childhood
    2-6
  9. Age of middle childhood
    6-12
  10. Age of adolescence
    12-18
  11. Age of early adulthood
    18-40
  12. What is Plasticity?
    When individuals of all ages possess the capacity for positive change in response to environmental demands.
  13. Nature-Nurture Debate
    The debate about the relative contributions of biological processes and experiential factors to development.
  14. What are stages?
    Qualitatively distinct periods of development.
  15. What are normative age-graded changes?
    Changes that are common to every member of a species.
  16. What are normative history-graded changes?
    Changes that occur in most members of a cohort as a result of factors at work during a specific, well-defined historical period.
  17. What are nonnormative changes?
    Changes that result from unique, unshared events.
  18. Example of nonnormative change?
    Divorce.
  19. What is a cohort?
    A group of individuals who are born within some fairly narrow span of years and thus share the same historical experiences at the same times in their lives.  Successive cohorts may have different life experiences.
  20. Example of vulnerability?
    Tendency toward emotional irritability or alcoholism/allergy/etc.
  21. Resilience
    Protective factors (high intelligence, easy temperament,etc.)
  22. What is Atypical development?
    Development that deviates from the typical developmental pathway in a direction harmful to the individual.
  23. What are the goals of developmental science?
    Describe -> Explain -> Predict ->Influence
  24. What is a naturalistic observation?
    The process of studying people in their normal environments.
  25. What is a Case study?
    An in-depth examination of a single individual.
  26. What is a laboratory observation?
    An observation of behavior under controlled conditions.
  27. What is a variable?
    Characteristics that vary from person to person (size, intelligence, etc.)
  28. What are surveys?
    data-collection method in which participants respond to questions.
  29. What is a population?
    The entire group that is of interest to a researcher.
  30. What is a sample?
    Subset of a group that is of interest to a researcher who participates in a study.
  31. What is a representative sample?
    A sample that has the same characteristics as the population to which a study's findings apply.
  32. What is correlation?
    A relationship between two variables that can be expressed as a number ranging from -1.00 to +1.00
  33. What is social desirability?
    The tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others.
  34. What is an experiment?
    A study that tests a causal hypothesis.
  35. What is an experimental group?
    The group in an experiment that receives the treatment the experimenter thinks will produce a particular effect.
  36. What is a control group?
    The group in an experiment that receives either no special treatment or a neutral treatment.
  37. What is the Independent variable?
    The presumed causal element in an experiment.
  38. What is the Dependent variable?
    The characteristic or behavior that is expected to be affected by the independent variable.
  39. What are cohort effects?
    Findings that are the result of historical factors to which one age group in a cross-sectional study has been exposed.
  40. Major research ethics concerns
    Protection from harm, informed consent, confidentiality, knowledge of results, deception.
  41. Who was John Locke?
    He believed in empiricism (blank slate). View that humans possess no innate tendencies.
  42. Who was Jean-Jacque Rousseau?
    He believed in innate goodness; children are naturally good and seek out experiences that help them grow.
  43. Who was Charles Darwin?
    Believed that the wide variety of life forms that exist on Earth evolved gradually as a result of the interplay between environmental factors/ genetic processes. Studied child's development.
  44. Who was G. Stanley Hall?
    Agreed with Darwin that milestones of childhood were similar to development of human species. Came up with norms.
  45. Who was Arnold Gesell?
    Suggested the existence of a genetically programmed sequential pattern of change. Used the term maturation
  46. Who was Paul Baltes?
    He was devoted to establishing and promoting the life-span orientation of human development. He was also a theorist in the field of the psychology of aging.
  47. What are psychoanalytic theories?
    Established by Sigmund Freud proposing that developmental change happens because of the influence of internal drives and emotions on behavior.
  48. What is the id?
    Part of the personality that comprises a person's basic sexual and aggressive impulses; it contains the libido and motivates a person to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
  49. What is the ego?
    The thinking element of personality.
  50. What is the superego?
    Part of the personality that is the moral judge.
  51. What are the psychosexual stages?
    Determined by maturation/ libido centered in different body part in each stage:

    Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
  52. Characteristics of Freud's Oral stage?
    • Age: Birth to 1 year
    • Focus of Libido: Mouth, lips, tongue
    • Developmental Task: Weaning
    • Fixations as adults: smoking/overeating
  53. Characteristics of Freud's Anal stage?
    • Age: 1-3 years
    • Focus of Libido: Anus
    • Developmental Task: Toilet Training 
    • Fixations as adults: Messiness/ disorganization
  54. Characteristics of Freud's Phallic stage?
    • Age: 3 - 6 years
    • Focus of Libido: Genitals
    • Developmental Task: Resolving Oedipus/ Electra complex
    • Fixations as adults: Vanity, recklessness, sexual dysfunction
  55. Characteristics of Freud's Latency stage?
    • Age: 6 - 12
    • Focus of Libido: None
    • Developmental Task: Developing defense mechanisms
    • Fixations as adults: None
  56. Characteristics of Freud's Genital stage?
    • Age: 12 years
    • Focus of Libido: Genitals
    • Developmental Task: Mature sexual intimacy
    • Fixations as adults: If previous stages successful, develops mature sexuality.
  57. What are fixations?
    Behaviors that reflect unresolved problems and unmet needs.
  58. What is the Oedipus complex?
    Involves a conflict between a boy's affection for his mother and his fear of his father.
  59. What is the Electra complex?
    Pits a girl's bond with her father against her anxiety over the potential loss of her mother's love.
  60. What are the psychosocial stages?
    Erik Erikson's eight stages, or crises, of personality development in which inner instincts interact with outer cultural and social demands to shape personality. Individual must resolve a crisis to achieve a healthy personality.
  61. Trust versus mistrust stage
    (birth to 1 year) depends on the reliability of the care and affection infants receive from their primary caretaker. (Hope)
  62. autonomy versus shame and doubt
    (1-3) (Will) express their independence. To resolve: parent must encourage child to function independently with regard to self-care skills (dress themselves).
  63. Initiative versus guilt
    (3-6) (Purpose) develop a sense of social initiative. Child needs opportunities to interact with peers.
  64. industry versus inferiority
    (6-12) (Competence) child focuses on acquiring culturally valued skills. To resolve: children need support and encouragement from adults.
  65. Identity versus role confusion
    • (12-18) (Fidelity) Transition from childhood to adulthood. To resolve: examine their identity and roles they occupy. 
    • Risk: adolescent will suffer from confusion.
  66. Intimacy versus isolation
    (18-30) (Love) Young adult builds on the identity established in adolescence to confront this crisis. 'Fuse identity'.
  67. Generativity versus stagnation
    (30 - late adulthood) (Care) Shaped by the realization that death is inevitable. Rearing of child can achieve sense of generativity. Failing this may result in sense of stagnation.
  68. Integrity versus despair
    (late adulthood) (wisdom) The goal is acceptance of one's life in preparation for death in order to avoid a sense of despair.
  69. What is behaviorism?
    The view that defines development in terms of behavior changes caused by environmental influences.
  70. What are learning theories?
    Theories asserting that development results from an accumulation of experiences.

    John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, Albert Bandura
  71. What is classical conditioning?
    (Pavlov) learning that results from the association of stimuli.
  72. What is operant conditioning?
    learning to repeat or stop behaviors because of their consequences. (skinner)
  73. What is reinforcement?
    Anything that follows a behavior and causes it to be repeated.
  74. What is punishment?
    Anything that follows a behavior and causes it to stop.
  75. What is extinction?
    The gradual elimination of a behavior through repeated nonreinforcement.
  76. What is observational learning, or modeling?
    Learning that results from seeing a model reinforced or punished for a behavior.
  77. What are Cognitive Theories?
    Theories that emphasize mental processes in development, such as logic and memory.

    Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky.
  78. What is a scheme?
    In Piaget's theory, an internal cognitive structure that provides an individual with a procedure to use in a specific circumstance.
  79. What is assimilation?
    The process of using a scheme to make sense of an event or experience.
  80. What is accommodation?
    Changing a scheme as a result of some new information.
  81. What is equilibration?
    The process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to create schemes that fit the environment.
Author
Whaddapfools
ID
240343
Card Set
Psych Midterm
Description
Midterm
Updated