Chapter 9: Lifespan Development.
Likely fill in the blank questions:
- What do the developmental psychologists study? What are the three domains that are studied?
Developmental psychologist analyses human’s growth from childhood through adulthood and death. The three domains studied include psychosocial, cognitive, and physical development.
- What is a longitudinal study? Cross-sectional study? What is the difference between them?
The longitudinal study refers to the continuous data collection on observational research. The contrary, cross-sectional analysis integrates using a distinct group of people with various features in assessing developmental psychology. Therefore, cross-sectional and longitudinal study differ in sampling and points in time.
- What reflexes and abilities are babies born with? Describe them.
Human babies are born with sucking, rooting, and grasping reflexes. Also, human babies have sensory abilities. Babies are born knowing how to suck, and whenever anything touches their cheeks, they respond by sucking. Sometimes, when anything contacts their palm, they grasp and suck. Besides, babies have a sense of smell and could, therefore, distinguish their mother’s scent and strangers’.
- What methods are used to study young infants’ abilities and thoughts considered? Give examples of how this is done.
In studying young infants, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are applicable. For example, cross-sectional assess and compare an infant’s behaviour and age of a group of children.
- What are the three main changes in the brain of a baby that allow them to learn so much in such a short time?
A toddler’s brain change in size, neural growth, and neural connection, thus enabling them to learn a lot in a short time.
Possible essay topics:
- Piaget: Children develop in four stages, understand what these stages mean and what children can do/not do at the end of each stage. Describe examples. You do not need to memorize the exact age of each stage as long as you know the order of the stages and
Related to these stages: Write about what these terms mean and give an example: object permanence, conservation, egocentric thinking, and reversibility
Children development stages according to Piaget include sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational and they incorporate the development of senses, irrational adoption of words and images in representing things, carrying out the arithmetic exercise, and application of legal reasoning. For example, babies smiling when they perceive something is hilarious.
Object permanence combines the understanding of the continued existence of an object, although hidden. Conservation refers to the constant maintenance of an object’s size despite the alteration of appearance. Egocentric thinking involves children’s ignorance of others viewpoint. For example, a father calls her daughter to ask if she is okay and her daughter nods on the phone assuming that her father could understand on the other end that it means yes. Reversibility is the ability of a child to know that an object can restore its original form after the alteration. For example, children covering their eyes while playing to blind from something then uncover their eyes to see the object again.
- What is attachment?
Attachment incorporates an emotional connection with others.
- Describe Harlow’s monkey study and what it shows.
The study involves two baby monkeys separated from their mother and presented with two distinct proxy mothers; one made of wire and provides milk, and the other made of cloth and does not give milk. The newborn monkeys preferred the cloth surrogate mother despite its inability to provide them with milk. The study emphasizes the significance of the connection between a child and a caregiver.
- What happens when an infant receives very little physical contact (touching/cuddles)?
It is worth noting that physical contact is essential in the development of a child’s psychosocial wellbeing. Minimal physical contact can lead to illness and abnormal child development.
- What is separation anxiety, and how is it studied?
Separation anxiety incorporates the children fear of separation from attached parent and caregivers
- Describe the different types of attachment?
Distinct forms of attachment include a secure, resistant, and avoidant attachment. Secure attachment involves children’s preference for their parents to strangers. Conversely, Avoidant attachment comprises the children’s identical reaction on parents and strangers. Resistant enclosure integrates children’s clingy behaviour to their parents and caregivers.
Chapter 12 – Social Psychology
Likely fill in the blank questions:
- What is social psychology?
Social psychology is a branch of psychology that examines the influence people have on each other.
- What is conformity?
Conformity refers to the alteration of an individual’s behaviour to fit in a group.
- What is situationism, and what is dispositionism? Give an example of both.
Situationism suggests that an individual’s actions and behaviour are due to influence from the surrounding. Dispositions argue that internal factors influence an individual’s behaviour.
- Describe what the fundamental attribution error is. Describe an example of a fundamental attribution error?
Fundamental attribution error associates the habit of an individual’s assumption and ignorance of circumstantial factors in identifying other’s behaviour, for example, the tendency of individuals featuring success to themselves and failures to others.
- What is the actor-observer bias?
Actor-observer bias suggests that individuals behaviour is the outcome of situational factors. Conversely, other individuals habits are due to internal factors.
- What is a social role? Social norm? What is a script?
A social role is the expectation of an individual’s behavioural order in a given context.
Social norms include the group ethical expectations from its members.
Scripts are the relevant knowledge on the expectation of events in a specific context.
- Describe the prison study by Zimbardo
The Zimbardo prison study emphasizes the significance of social norm, social roles, and script.
- What was it? What did they do in the experiment? What did the results show?
The prison experiment integrated volunteers who assisted in determining the influence of prison to an individual’s life. In the operations, they assigned the volunteers the prisoner and guard roles. The prisoners, according to the experiment, could not afford privacy, comfort, and threatened by guards when they did not comply with the prison’s policy. Therefore, the result of operations showed that the prisoners developed anxiety and lost hope hence accepting the guard’s exploitation.
- What is Altruism? Recognize an example.
Altruism involves empathetic assistance of others despite the outweighing conditions. For example, individuals offering their lunch to hungry street children.’
Possible essay topics:
- What is the bystander effect? Describe and give an example.
The bystander effect is the inability of a witness to enlist themselves in assisting a victim in distress. According to social psychologists, individuals may experience the bystander effect due to social positions. For example, assault of Catherine “Kitty”, she did not receive help from bystanders despite calling for help.
- Describe the two theories as to why the bystander effect occurs (Diffusion of responsibility & Collective Ignorance).
Diffusion of responsibility integrates the inability of an individual to intervene in crisis because the trust distributes among the group members. For example, the occurrence of an accident along the highway; every witness will assume there is an individual who has called the ambulance. Collective ignorance associates disregarding a situation with the incorrect assumption that several individuals can accept responsibility.
Obedience (conforming to authority) study from Milgram
According to Milgram, obedience refers to the alteration of a person’s behaviour due to appeal by the authoritative figure. Describe what they did in the experiment and what the results were.
- The experiment involved 40 men who believed they were cooperating in research that was to assist in enhancing memory and learning. They used a device that delivered electric shock on those who failed the test. The result of the experiments was a notable decrease in obedience, contrary to the increase in shocking.
- How many participants give the highest amount of shock?
The participants giving the highest shock decreased to 30%.
- What is cognitive dissonance? Describe an example?
Cognitive dissonance incorporates the situational involvement of contradictory ethics, attitude, and behaviour. For example, being fond of animals, yet you love meat.
- Describe the difference between stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination and recognize the difference between examples of each.
Stereotype integrates particular assumption of a person on the essence of their background regardless of their characteristics, for example, the belief of females being weak. Prejudice involves a spiteful attitude towards a member of a particular gender, race, and social class. Discrimination includes adverse action towards individuals from a specific social class, gender, and race; for example, failure of a corporation to hire women based on their gender.
Describe what it means to say that stereotypes lead to:
- Exaggerating differences between groups
Stereotyping features the perception of a specific group there exaggerates the group differences through regression mean.
- Produces selective perception
Stereotyping integrates prejudice based on class. Therefore, it produces a systemic disqualification of information an individual is not interested in hence, provides selective perception.
- Underestimates differences in traits within the stereotyped group.
Stereotype incorporates an individual’s expectations on certain behavioural traits. Therefore, if a group links to ambiguous information, they experience underestimation.
- What is the difference between implicit and explicit stereotype? Related to this, what does the Implicit Association Test measure? Give an example of an implicit stereotype (make sure that your example is a stereotype – not a prejudice)?
Implicit stereotype features unmanageable and unconscious attitudes, whereas explicit stereotype incorporates bias controllable and conscious perspective, for example, on implicit stereotype, an individual developing fear of eating crabs unconsciously.
Implicit association test integrates identification of mental interpretation of objects and their association with the unconscious.