THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
Goslings follow the first moving object they encounter shortly after hatching because of this rapid, innate learning process.
What is imprinting?
a characteristic of development which describes the capacity for change
What is Plasticity?
Unlike Piaget's theory, this cognitive theory rejects stage-like development and instead emphasizes learning through social interaction and culture.
What is Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory?
Two children attend different schools because one family has greater educational attainment, occupational prestige, and financial resources. These differences reflect this developmental construct.
What is socioeconomic status (SES)?
A researcher argues that identical twins separated at birth still display remarkable similarities in intelligence and temperament because inherited predispositions outweigh environmental differences.
What is the nature perspective?
I want the cake now."
"I should wait because dinner is in an hour."
"I shouldn't eat it because it belongs to someone else."
These three statements represent these three personality structures, in order.
What are the id, ego, and superego?
Two theories may both emphasize the importance of early experience, yet only one explains development through unconscious conflicts while the other explains it throughevolution.
What are the psychoanalytic and ethological perspectives?
Development is described as quantitative, cumulative, and involving one level building upon the previous one. This developmental pattern is being described.
What is continuous development?
A child's need for immediate gratification is governed entirely by this personality structure and the principle that guides it.
What are the id and the pleasure principle?
A developmental psychologist argues that children's thinking cannot be separated from the language, symbols, and cultural tools available to them. This theory best explains that position.
What is Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory?
When governments create programs for healthcare, education, or poverty reduction to improve citizens' quality of life, they are implementing this.
What is social policy?
A researcher claims that the effects of poverty on academic achievement cannot be understood without considering families, schools, neighbourhoods, culture, and public policy simultaneously. This perspective best explains that argument.
What is the ecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner)?
Two children belong to the same ethnic group, have similar family incomes, and attend the same school. One grows up in rural Japan and the other in urban Brazil. Which sociocultural variable most directly distinguishes their developmental experiences?
What is culture?
A researcher finds that shy preschoolers tend to remain shy into adulthood despite major life experiences. This finding provides evidence for this side of the developmental debate.
What is stability?
According to this psychologist, modifying environmental consequences is sufficient to change behaviour, making thoughts and feelings secondary.
Who is B. F. Skinner?
A person's physical health, cognitive abilities, emotional well-being, and social relationships do not develop independently. This characteristic of development describes their constant interaction across the lifespan.
What is multidimensional development?
Among the major lifespan perspectives, this one is least concerned with continuity versus discontinuity and instead focuses on how multiple environmental systems interact to influence development.
What is the ecological perspective?
Which developmental issue is illustrated by the question, "Are adult personality traits largely predetermined by heredity and early experiences, or can later experiences substantially alter them?"
What is change versus stability?
This theorist applied ethological principles to human development by arguing that secure attachment in infancy influences relationships throughout life.
Who is John Bowlby?
A child watches an older sibling solve a puzzle, receives encouragement from a parent, uses culturally familiar counting tools, becomes more confident after succeeding, and eventually develops a new strategy for solving similar puzzles independently. Which four developmental theories together provide the most complete explanation of this scenario?
What are Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, Bandura's social cognitive theory, information-processing theory, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory?
Three siblings all experienced puberty at roughly the same age, all lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, but only one sustained a life-changing spinal injury in adolescence. A lifespan developmental psychologist would classify these three experiences using these three categories of influence.
What is normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, and nonnormative life events?
Three perspectives reject the idea that the environment alone determines development, but they differ fundamentally in why: one emphasizes active construction of knowledge, one evolved biological mechanisms acting during sensitive periods, and one reciprocal interactions across nested systems.
What are the cognitive, ethological, and ecological perspectives?
Ted Kaczynski's exceptional intellectual abilities remained relatively constant throughout life, while his behaviour became increasingly violent. This case is frequently used to illustrate both sides of this developmental issue.
What is change versus stability?
Four psychologists offer explanations for why a child becomes aggressive:
rewards for aggression,
imitation of aggressive models,
insecure attachment in infancy,
interactions among family, school, and culture.
Who are Skinner, Bandura, Bowlby, and Bronfenbrenner?