Psychology Midterm 2

Seite 1

Three perspectives on development:

- ontogenetic

- phylogenetic

- cultural

Ontogenetic:

Development across lifespan

developmental psychology:

cognitive development

social/personality development

Phylogenetic:

Comparative psychology

comparing animals to humans

Evloutionary psychology

mental and psychological traits (memory, perception, language, etc.) as products of natural selection

Cultural:

Primitive vs advanced

anthropological psychology

Cross-cultural comparisons as reasoning to psychological traits

History in regards to psychological traits

Nature vs. Nurture

Corollary

The natural consequence of birth

Nativism

concepts and mental capacities are inherent, not learned

Empiricism

All knowledge is derived from sense experience

Doctrine of Interactionism

How individuals shape their society and are shaped by their society through interactions with others that results in meaning

Human beings are best understood through how they interact with their environment

Piaget:

Two aspects of childrens' learning, assimilation (creating a new method) and accomodation (rearranging an existing method to fit new parameters)

Four stages of development in children

sensorimotor: children can only understand objects that are visible

preoperational: children can associate objects to methods even when not visible (shaking, banging, dropping, etc)

concrete operational: children can associate certain shapes with methods even if an object does not serve that purpose (I.E. a child can pick up a stick and if its in the shape of a sword, will sometimes treat it as a sword even though it is not), althought without understanding of the objects reverse consequences (a ball of call rolled into a sausage shape will cause children to believe there is less clay, even though the object did not lose mass)

formal operational: children capable of understanding the reverse consequences of objects

Probability Case Study:

Piaget was wrong when he said children up to seven years old fail simple probability tests, even infants can understand core physical concepts.

Sally-Anne/false beliefs task

Assessing attachment:

- mother-child interaction

- mother leaves infant alone in the playroom

- friendly stranger enters playroom

- mother returns and greets child

One of three results from assessing attachment:

Secure Attachment: Child shows distress at mother leaving, but is able to regain composure and continue knowing they will return

Insecure Avoidant Attachment: Child does not care for mother, shows little distress when she leaves. does almost no exploring

Insecure anxious resistant attachment: When the child shows distress at the mother leaving but is not comforted by her return

Stay-at-home Dads:

Large increase in recent years, used to be 1/100 stay at home parents, now 1/8. Reason being more women beginning to join workforce, 60% of couples live on dual income

Four styles of parenting:

- Indulgent permissive: high responsiveness with low demandingness

- Indifferent-uninvolved: low demandingness and low responsiveness

- Authoritarian: high demandingness with low responsiveness

- Authorative: high demangingness with high responsiveness

Transitioning to adulthood:

parenting styles: tiger moms (strict or demanding) and helicopter parents (excessive interest in childs life)

peer influence

Four identity statuses:

- Identity moratorium: Status in crisis, commitments are absent, actively exploring alternatives

- Identity foreclosure: Think you have the right identity but have yet to explore options

- Identity diffusion: Have not identified, not looking for options

- Identity achievement: After actively exploring options, has made a strong commitment to their identity

Emerging Adulthood:

Essentially delayed adulthood/extended identity moratorium

Meg Jay's advice to twentysomethings

- claim your adulthood

- get some identity capital

- use your weak ties

- pick your family

Behaviourism:

attempting to understand observable actions within observable stimuli and observable responses

Classical conditioning:

the ability to elicit a reflexive response by pairing neutral stimuli with stimuli that already inherently elicits the same reflexive response. So that when the neutral stimuli is used, it creates a reflexive response.

- discovered with Pavlovs dogs, food causes dog to salivate. by getting the dog to associate the sound of a whistle with food, you are able to elicit salivation in the dog with just the sound of the whistle.

Operant conditioning:

Behavior is controlled by consequences. Positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement. Positive punishment, negative punishment.