FAD3220 - Study Guide for Exam 1•Social Construction: division of the life span into periods; a concept or practice that may appear natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention of a particular culture or society.•EX: there is no objectively definable moment when a child becomes an adult or a young person becomes old•There are three different domains of development: •physical development: growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health•cognitive development: learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity•psychosocial development: emotions, personality, and social relationships•Hereditary : inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents•EX: intelligence, height, strength•Environment: the world outside of the self, beginning in the womb, and learning that comes from that experience•EX: influences from peers or education (also factors into intelligence)•SES (Socioeconomic Status): combination of economic and social factors describing an individual or family, including income, education, and occupation•SES can indirectly affect developmental processes (a mother’s interaction with her children) and developmental outcomes (health and cognitive performance)•Normative Influences: biological or environmental events that may affect many or most people in a society in similar ways and events that touch only certain individuals•normative age-graded influences: highly similar for people in a particular age group; the timing of biological events is fairly predictable within a normal range•EX: people don’t experience puberty at 35, or menopause at 12.•normative history-graded influences: significant events (such as Great Depression) that shape the behavior and attitudes of a historical generation: a group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives.•EX: the generations that came from WWII and the Depression tend to show a strong sense of social interdependence and trust that has decline among recent generations•Nonnormative influences: unusual events that have a major impact on the individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle; either typical events that happen at an atypical time of life (death of a parent while child is young) or atypical events (surviving a plane crash)•Sometimes people bring nonnormative influences upon themselves, such as having a babe in your 50’s or taking up skydiving as a hobby•Critical Period: specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development - if a necessary event does not occur during a critical period of maturation, normal development will not occur•Sensitive Period: times in development when a person is particularly open to certain kinds of experiences (less controversial concept than critical periods because many aspects of development show plasticity)•Continuous development: gradual and incremental•mechanistic theorists see development as continuous•quantitative change is continuous - changes in height, weight, vocabulary size, etc...•Discontinuous development: abrupt and uneven•organismic theorists emphasize discontinuous and qualitative•qualitative change is changes in kind, structure, organization, etc...•Psychoanalytic Perspective: •Freud’s psychosexual theory: behavior is controlled by powerful unconscious urges; used clinical observation; Freud based his theories about normal development on a clientele of upper-middle class adults, mostly women, in therapy•Erikson’s psychosocial theory: eight-stage theory that personality is influenced by society and develops through a series of crises; used clinical observation; advantageous because of its emphasis on social and cultural influences and development beyond adolescence (“identity crisis”)•Learning Perspective: maintains that development results from learning, a long lasting change in behavior based on experience or adaptation to the environment•Behaviorism (traditional learning theory): people are responders - the environment controls behavior; Pavlov showed this by getting dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell that rang at feeding time; Watson claimed he could mold any infant in any way he chose; Skinner found that an organism will tend to repeat a response that has been reinforce by desirable consequences and will suppress a response that has been punished; All three used rigorous scientific (experimental) procedures; advantageous because it gave rise to behavior modification (deliberate form of conditioning used to eliminate undesirable behavior), but disadvantageous because behavior modification only tends to learned associations, rather than individual, social and cultural differences.•Social Learning (social cognitive theory): behaviors are learned by observing and imitating models - children are active contributors to learning; used rigorous experimental procedures; developed by Bandura; advantageous because children become more selective in choosing role models, and helps them develop a sense of self-efficacy.•Cognitive Perspective: thought processes are central to development•Piaget’s cognitive stage theory states qualitative changes in thought occur between infancy and adolescence; Piaget used flexible interviews and meticulous observation•Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory states that social interaction is central to cognitive development; Vygotsky used cross-cultural research and observations of children interacting with more competent people•Information-processing theory states that human beings are processors of symbols; used laboratory research and technological monitoring of physiologic responses;•Contextual Perspective: view of human development that sees the individual as inseparable from the social context•Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory states that development occurs through interaction between a developing person and the five surrounding, interlocking contextual systems of influences, from microsystem to chronosystem; used naturalistic observation and analysis; advantageous because helps us to see the variety of influences on development•Evolutionary/Sociobiological Perspective : focuses on evolutionary and biological bases of behavior•Bowlby’s attachment theory states that human beings have the adaptive mechanisms to survive;
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