Jong Moon Study Guide Midterm 2 book or lecture only central topics in bold This guide is meant to help orient your studying efforts to the topics that are MOST LIKELY to be covered on Midterm 2 Any materials from assigned lectures required media or readings can potentially be covered on the exam I Child Development a What skills preferences are newborns born with Newborns have reflexes an unlearned automatic response to a sensory stimulus They can search out sights and sounds linked with other humans They can distinguish their mother s sound smell in a crowd They can imitate and cry Preferential attention Speech over non speech sounds Native mom s language mom s voice face or face like stimuli b Cognitive Development Piaget s stages o Sensorimotor stage From birth to 2 years old Babies take in the world through their senses actions Children younger than 6 months can t grasp object permanence objects that are out of sight are also out of mind Criticism Children in this stage understand basic physics and can count o Preoperational stage From 2 to 6 7 years old Too young to perform mental operations such as Conservation The principle that properties such as mass volume and number remain the same despite changes in shapes Think in symbols and enjoy pretend play Egocentrism Preoperational stage kids are egocentric The preoperational child s difficulty taking another s point of view o Concrete operations stage From 7 to 11 They begin to grasp conservation and can think logically about concrete events Can also transform mathematical functions o Formal operations stage From 11 and on Stage of cognitive development during which people began to think logically about abstract concepts Can use symbols and imagined realities to systematically reason Criticism Some are able to perform such thinking earlier in age Assimilation Accommodation o Assimilation Adapt to a new concept Process for trying to understand and incorporate something new in terms of one s preexisting knowledge You see something as familiar and apply it to something new o Accommodation Adding a new information to a concept you already know Change what you already know as a result of new experiences Theory of mind People s ideas about their own and others mental states Autism and mind blindness o Autism a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication social interaction and understanding of others state of mind o Mind Blindness can be described as a cognitive disorder where an individual is unable to attribute mental states to the self and others c Social Development Attachment The first emotion infants learn is trust as they learn to trust that their caregiver will meet their needs Based on physical comforting Attachment bonds is a powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close to their caregivers Stranger anxiety The fear of strangers Develops at 8 months old This is the age at which infants form schemas for familiar faces and don t assimilate a new face Separation anxiety peaks at 13 months of age 60 of children express secure attachment they explore their environment happily in the presence of their mother When their mother leave they show distress The other 40 show insecure attachment These children cling to their mothers or caregivers and are less likely to explore the environment Marked by anxiety or avoidance of relationship Deprivation of Attachment Children become withdrawn frightened and unable to develop speech when child can t form attachments Sensitive responsive mother securely attached infant Vice versa II Nature vs Nurture a Twin and adoption studies Identical twins Nature s clones They share same genes conception and uterus and usually the same birth date and cultural history Fraternal twins developed from separate eggs They share same prenatal environment but not genes What can we learn about nature versus nurture from these types of studies o Identical vs Fraternal twins Do the shared genes in identical twins mean that identical twins also behave more similarly than fraternal twins Identical twins are more similar than fraternal in their abilities personal traits and interests Criticism Such similarities found in the twins can be found between strangers o Separated Twins Separated twins had alike personality intelligence heart rate brainwaves Shows that genes matter o Biological vs Adoptive relatives Adoption creates two groups genetic relatives and environmental relatives We can ask three questions How much do adopted children resemble their biological parents who contributed their genes environment How much do they resemble their adoptive parents who contribute a home While sharing a home environment do adopted siblings also come to share traits By providing children with loving nurturing homes adoption matters Non twin siblings who grow up together whether biologically related or not don t resemble one another in personality In traits such as outgoingness and agreeableness adoptees are more similar to their biological parents Environments of adoptive families tend to be more similar than random sample of families Large differences between siblings and fraternal twins raised together b Heritability c Gender Heritability of a trait is the proportion of observable difference in trait between individuals within a population that is due to genetic differences We study heritability to study the effects of nature versus nurture Environment is important What you inherit is often an ability to react to the environment in a certain way Gender Combination of biologically and social cultural definitions of what it means to be male or female Sex Purely biological definition Nature vs nurture in gender development o Nature testosterone o Nurture The nature of gender Our Biology Biology influences gender in two ways Genetically through differing sex chromosomes Your sex is determined by your father s contribution of the 23rd pair of chromosomes X chromosomes found in both men and women Women have two male have an X and a Y Y chromosomes are only found in males At 7th week after conception the Y chromosome causes the testes to develop and produce testosterone Physiologically from different concentrations of sex hormones Main women sex hormone estrogen Main men sex hormone Sexual differentiation is not only biological but also psychological and social Gender roles a set of expected behaviors for males or for females Our culture shapes our gender roles Can smooth social relationships and