Prenatal & Newborn
A branch of psychology that examines our physical, cognitive, and social development across the life span.
Developmental psychology
Developmental psychologists often do cross-sectional studies (comparing people of different ages) and longitudinal studies (studying the same group of people over time). pg 114
the orderly sequence of biological growth.
Maturation
ex: babies first stand then walk.
pg. 120
What values should I live by? Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? Erikson called this quest the adolescent's _____ __ ________
Search for identity
Although it begins in early adulthood, we are not usually aware of what until later in life.
Physical decline
Exercise slows aging, and it also appears to stimulate _______.
Neurogenesis-The development of new brain cells
Kohlberg:_____ development.
Erikson:_________ development.
Piaget:__________ development
Moral development- Preconvential Morality, Conventional morality, Postconventional morality
Psychosocial development- Basic trust, Autonomy, Initiative, Competence, Identity, Intimacy, Generativity, Integrity
Cognitive Development- Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, Formal Operational pg 115
A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. Components of our personalities.
Temperament- difficult babies: irritable, intense
easy babies: relaxed, cheerful, easy on predictable feeding and sleeping schedules
Who developed the levels of moral thinking and what are they?
Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Thinking:
Preconventional morality (before age 9): Self-interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards.
Conventional morality (early adolescence): Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order.
Postconventional morality (adolescence and beyond): actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles.
Brain regions important to ______ begin to _______ during aging.
Memory; Atrophy
What brain-optimizing function partly compensates for what it loses by recruiting and reorganizing neural networks?
Neuroplasticity.
Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. The fetal damage may occur because alcohol has an epigenetic effect: it leaves chemical marks on DNA that switch genes abnormality on or off.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)- 1 in about 130 children worldwide and 1 in 30 children in the U.S.
Smoking cigarettes/ marijuana during pregnancy also leaves epigenetic scars.
pg. 119
A powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close to their caregivers.
Attachment- a secure base pg. 129
Harlow's Monkey Experiment- concluded that humans become attached to parents who are warm, soft, and who rock, feed, and pat.
Group identities are often formed by how we _______ from those around us, and social identity often forms around our ___________.
Differ; Distinctiveness
More education in life predicts better _________ ability late in life.
Cognitive
Two basic aspects dominate adulthood.
Erikson called them _____ and _______.
Freud called them ____ and ______.
Intimacy and generativity
love and work
A fertilized egg called a ______ enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an _______.
Zygote- fewer than half of zygotes survive beyond the first 2 weeks.
Embryo- the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.
Fetus- from 9 weeks after conception to birth.
To explain how we use and adjust our schemas Piaget proposed two concepts. First, we ______ new experiences, we interpret them according to our current schemas (understandings). Then, we adjust or ________, our schemas to incorporate information provided by new experiences.
Assimilate
Accommodate
Ex: Schema for a dog, a child may call all four-legged animals dogs = assimilation
The child soon learns that the dog schema is too broad and Accommodates by refining the category.
pg. 123
Researchers have contended that the key task of adolescence is to ______ _ _______.
Achieve a purpose.
In the last three or four years of life, and especially as death approaches, cognitive decline typically accelerates. This near-death drop is called ________ _______.
Terminal decline
In Canada, Europe, and the US, those who lived together before marriage have had ______ rates of _______ and _______ ___________.
Higher; divorce; marital dysfunction
decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner
Habituation pg. 119
In Piaget's theory, the ____________ stage occurs from birth to nearly 2 years of age, at which infants take in the world through their senses and actions.
The __________ stage is from 2- 6 or 7 years of age, at which a child learns to use language but doesn't understand the mental operations of concrete logic.
The _______stage is from 7 to 11 years of age, children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
The ________ stage is from 12 years of age through adulthood when individuals begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Sensorimotor stage- looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. Goal- object permanence, stranger anxiety pg. 125
Preoperational stage- ex: 5-year-old thinks that too much milk is in a tall glass but it's just right when poured into a short glass. Goal- Pretend play, egocentrism
Concrete operational stage- understanding change in form doesn't mean change in quantity. Goal- Conservation, math transformations.
Formal operational stage- hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences. if this, then that. Goal- abstract logic, potential for more mature moral reasoning
Parenting wields its largest effects at the ________.
Extreme
Example:
-Abused children become abusive
-the deeply loved but firmly handled become self-confident and socially competent.
One study of emotional instability found "___ ___ ________ ________" that distress peaks anywhere in the mid-life range.
"not the slightest evidence"
In older adults, the ________ responds less actively to negative events but still responds to positive events.
Amygdala