Developmental Psychology: UvA Practice Questions

Questions

Question 1

Which of the following statements about development in puberty is true?

  1. in girls, the first menstruation always occurs before the peak in height growth.
  2. in girls, puberty development is entirely controlled by estrogens ('estrogens') and in boys by androgens (androgens)
  3. the secondary sex characteristics develop after the primary sex characteristics.
  4. Girls reach their adult height rather than boys.

Question 2

A developmental psychologist carries out research into the development of aggression in children. She registers the same group of children at several moments and has chosen a research design in which she can both identify possible cohort effects and correct them in her analyzes. What is the design of this researcher?

  1. cross-sectional design
  2. cross-cultural design
  3. longitudinal-sequential design
  4. microgenetic design

Question 3

Berk typifies developmental psychological theories as theories that view development as discontinuous or continuous. In which following combination of two developmental psychological theories is first called a discontinuous development theory and then a continuous development theory?

  1. Piaget's cognitive development theory - taking Selman's theory of perspective
  2. Kohlberg's moral development theory - Bandura's social learning theory
  3. Take Selman's theory of perspective - Erikon's theory of identity development
  4. Siegler's model of strategy choice - Kohlberg's theory of moral development

Question 4

Jorrin is 3 years old and is asked to arrange a group of 7 blocks from small to large. Completing this task requires __________ and Jorrin will probably _________ be able to complete the task.

  1. seriation; not
  2. transitive inference; well
  3. classification; not
  4. compensation; well

Question 5

In developmental psychology, a "sensitive period" refers to:

  1. a temporary situation in which the child is biologically mature to acquire certain adaptive behavior with the support of a stimulating environment
  2. the period in which children begin to apply the strategies of emotional self-regulation
  3. the period in which children become susceptible to the development of attachment because they begin to distinguish between the primary caregiver (s) and relative strangers
  4. a period that is optimal for the creation of certain capacities because in that period the individual is extra sensitive to environmental influences in that area

Question 6

The neo-Piagetan approach combines:

  1. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the core knowledge perspective
  2. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the information processing approach
  3. principles of Piaget's theory with those of Galperin's system theoretical instruction
  4. principles of Piaget's theory with those of evolutionary developmental psychology

Question 7

Camille says to her father on the other side of the room: "Look, Daddy, an elephant!" Camille keeps the book up without turning it over so that her father can also see the picture. The behavior of Camille is characteristic of _________ thinking.

  1. sensorimotor
  2. presymbolic
  3. transductive
  4. self-centered

Question 8

Siegler's strategy choice model is similar to thinking in urban models because:

  1. both strategies and stages follow each other in development
  2. children use both strategies and stages of thinking fairly consistently
  3. every strategy or stage is a qualitatively different way of thinking
  4. both a), b) and c)

Question 9

Transitions in behavior and cognition are often linked to changes in the nervous system. Most of these developments after the second year of life are related to:

  1. growth in the number of neurons
  2. growth in the number of axons
  3. growth in the number of synapses
  4. myelination of axons

Question 10

Which of the following developments are an example of a so-called proximodistal trend?

  1. The phenomenon that babies have a relatively larger head than adults.
  2. The phenomenon that the motor control of the trunk develops earlier than that of the arms and hands.
  3. The phenomenon that the growth of the limbs and hands and feet in puberty precedes the development of the body.
  4. The phenomenon that children today become larger than 100 years ago.

Question 11

At which flow the following assumptions are best:

  • A continuous development process
  • Various possible development paths
  • Especially experiential (ie, environmental) -controlled

 

  1. psychoanalytic approach
  2. social learning theory
  3. information processing approach
  4. ethological approach

Question 12

The approach whereby development is typically seen as a web of possible branches in different directions is the

  1. behaviorist approach
  2. evolutionary approach
  3. socio-cultural approach
  4. dynamic system approach

Question 13

The 'false-belief' task is a test for

  1. Theory of Mind
  2. Moral development
  3. Empathy
  4. Social problem solving

Question 14

In the development of aggressive behavior, two trajectories can be distinguished: early starters and late starters ("early onset" and "late onset"). Important differences between these two groups are that:

  1. children in the first group when adults have more problems.
  2. children in the last group if adults have more problems.
  3. aggression in the first group is fully biologically determined and in the second group it is not.
  4. aggression in the second group is fully biologically determined and not in the first group.

Question 15

In the neo-Piagetian theory of Robbie Case, cognitive development is mainly due to

  1. increasing capacity of working memory
  2. connectionist networks
  3. social interaction and social knowledge
  4. maturation of the brain

Question 16

At the clinic, a mother tells her that she is worried about the loneliness of her 16-month-old daughter. Her daughter wants to be comforted only by her. When a mother is there, the child plays nicely and she is free to others. But as soon as mother leaves, there is no longer any land with the child to sail. How would you explain the behavior of this child?

  1. As behavior that results from an unsafe attachment to the father.
  2. As behavior that results from safe attachment to the mother.
  3. As behavior that results from a delayed attachment development to the mother.
  4. As behavior that comes from a difficult temperament of the child.

Question 17

From a developmental psychological perspective, conflicts between children should be considered as:

  1. an early indication of antisocial behavior;
  2. an indication of development problems of one of the children involved;
  3. a sign that the children need the help of an adult in resolving their conflict;
  4. as a condition for the development of skills to coordinate actions and intentions.

Question 18

A 4-year-old falls with her knees on the gravel path. She looks at her mother, pulls her mouth for a moment, stands up and continues to run. This behavior indicates:

  1. anxious attachment to the mother
  2. social referencing
  3. internalization of mother's standards
  4. emotional inhibition

Question 19

In different cultures children learn how and in which situations they should / should not express their emotions. According to the functional emotion theory, they learn:

  1. emotional display rules
  2. social referencing
  3. role behavior
  4. all the above alternatives are true

Question 20

Which of the following factors is not a source of healthy self-esteem?

  1. social comparison
  2. actual performance
  3. unconditional support
  4. unconditional approval

Question 21

What is not a good method for teachers to ensure that children take on a challenge?

  1. to convey the message that everyone can learn
  2. prizes for the best performance
  3. emphasize individual progress
  4. let children work together and let each other help

Question 22

Cognitive self-regulation

  1. is already present from birth
  2. is reached during the toddler years
  3. is still difficult for children in primary school
  4. is not present for adolescence

Question 23

Sarah (10 years old) gives up her schoolwork quickly because she can not do it anyway. It is likely that Sarah is task-orientated

  1. performance oriented (performance orientation)
  2. investment oriented ("investment orientation")
  3. learning orientation (learning orientation)
  4. self-protection oriented ("self-protective orientation")

Question 24

James (18 years old) has broken with his parents and has become a member of an extremist group. He is one of the most dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant members of his group. In case of a classification by identity status, James would probably be assigned to the youngsters with / in one

  1. " Diffused identity"
  2. " Foreclosed identity"
  3. " Moratorium"
  4. " Achieved identity"

Question 25

In the ecological system theory of Bronfenbrenner, the environmental influence he situates in the outer ring, and which influences all other environmental levels, consists of:

  1. values, laws and customs of culture
  2. the direct social environment, such as parents, school and playgrounds
  3. social environments to which the child does not directly belong, but which indirectly influence the child, such as the work of the parents, friends and neighbors
  4. the social environments in which the child does not participate frequently, such as the health center

Question 26

Amina (6 years old) has 'Infantile amnesia.' This means that she

  1. suffers from a rare memory disorder that mainly occurs in Asian countries
  2. suffers from a memory condition that usually disappears with the onset of puberty
  3. remembers little or nothing from before her third year of life
  4. can store little implicit memories in her long-term memory

Question 27

Which set of theoretical concepts fits entirely in the culture-historical approach of Vygotsky?

  1. mediation, constructivism, intersubjectivity, zone of the immediate development,
  2. scaffolding, zone of the immediate development, schemata, cognitive conflict
  3. mediation, cognitive tools, scaffolding, internalization
  4. zone of the immediate development, internalization, reflective abstraction, cooperative learning

Question 28

The language acquisition device (LAD) from Chomsky relates to

  1. A biological program for language acquisition that develops independently of the language supply of the environment
  2. The innate information about the universal grammar of languages
  3. The universal mechanisms for communication between adult and child
  4. The cognitive skills to discover patterns and systematics of the language

Question 29

Tanisha sees that her 5-year-old son and his boyfriend talk to themselves while they are playing. According to Vygotsky, this is language

  1. functional because it gives direction to action
  2. functional for practicing and strengthening representative schemes
  3. a manifestation of the inability of young children to think about the perspective of the other
  4. an inevitable step towards social language use

Question 30

Kate says she thinks croquettes are 'romantic' and thereby attracts a salacious look. This use of 'romantic' is an example of

  1. overextension
  2. underextension
  3. over-regularization
  4. fast mapping

Answers

1 D

2 C

3 B

4 A

5 D

6 B

7 D

8 D

9 D

10 B

11 B

12 D

13 A

14 A

15 A

16 B

17 D

18 B

19 A

20 D

21 B

22 C

23 A

24 B

25 A

26 C

27 C

28 B

29 A

30 A

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An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - a summary

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 1 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 1 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 1
The scope and Methods of Developmental psychology

Introduction

Developmental psychology: the discipline that attempts to describe and explain the changes that occur over time in the thought, behavior, reasoning and functioning of a person due biological, individual and environmental influences.

Studying changes with age

Maturation: aspects of development that are largely under genetic control, and hence largely uninfluenced by environmental factors.

Developmental psychologist study age-related changes in behavior and development.

Age itself causes nothing. So we need to look for the many factors that cause development to take place.

Concepts of human development

The assumptions and ideas we have about human nature will affect how we rear our own children and how we interpret the findings from studies of children.

‘Folk’ theories of development: ideas held about development that are not based upon scientific investigation.
Often reflect the issues that psychologists investigate, with aim of putting our understanding on a firmer, more scientific footing.

Defining development according to world views

The manner in which development is defined, and the areas of development that are of interest to individual researchers, will lead them to use different methods of studying development.

Two paradigms:

Organismic world view

The idea that people are inherently active and continually interacting with the environment, and therefore helping to shape their own development.
Emphasizes the interaction between maturation and experience that leads to the development of new internal, psychological structures for processing environmental input.

Each new stage in development represents an advance on the preceding stage and the individual does not regress to former stages.
Each new stage presents new characteristics not present in the previous stage.

Mechanistic world view

The idea that a person can be represented as being like a machine, which is inherently passive until stimulated by the environment.
Ultimately, human behavior is reducible to the operation of fundamental behavioral units that are acquired in a gradual, cumulative manner.
The frequency of behaviors can increase with age due to various learning processes and they can decrease with age when they no longer have any functional consequence, or lead to negative consequences.
Development is reflected by a more continuous growth function, rather than occurring in qualitatively different stages, and the child is passive rather than active in shaping its own development.
Behaviorists represent this world view.

Ways of studying development

Designs for studying age-related changes

Two general developmental designs

Cross-sectional designs

A study where children of different

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 2 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 2 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 2
Theories and issues in child development

Introduction

Theory of development: a scheme or system of ideas that is based on evidence and attempts to explain, describe and predict behavior and development.
Two types of theory:

  • Minor: those which deal with very specific, narrow areas of development.
  • Major: those which attempt to explain large areas of development.

Motor development

Motor milestones: the basic motor skills acquired in infancy and early childhood, such as sitting unaided, standing, crawling and walking.
The development of motor skills has very important implications for other aspects of development.
The ability to act on the world affects all other aspects of development, and each accomplishment brings with it an increasing degree of independence.

Maturational theories

Motor development proceeded from the global to the specific in two directions.

  • Cephalocaudal trend: development that proceeds from head to foot along the length of the body.
  • Proximodistal trend: the development of motor control in infancy which is from the center of the body outwards to more peripheral segments.

Development is controlled by a maturational timetable linked particularly to the central nervous system and also to muscular development.

Dynamic systems theory

A theoretical approach applied to many areas of development which views the individual as interacting dynamically in a complex system in which all parts interact.
Not all infants go through the same motor developmental stages.

Infants’ acquisition of a new motor skill is much the same as that of adults learning a new motor skill. The beginnings are usually fumbling and poor. There is trial and error learning and great concentration, all gradually leading to the accomplished skillful activity, which then is usually used in the development of yet new motor skills.

All new motor development is the result of a dynamic and continual interaction of three factors:

  • Nervous system development
  • The capabilities and biomechanics of the body
  • Environmental constrains and support.

Cognitive development

Piaget’s theory of development

Developmental psychology before Piaget

Behaviorism and psychoanalysis.
The child is seen as the passive recipient of their upbringing. Development results from such things as the rewards and punishments.

Fundamental aspects of human development according to Piaget

Children are active agents in shaping their own development, they are not simply blank slates who passively and unthinkingly respond to whatever the environment offers them.
Children’s development and behavior is motivated largely intrinsically.
Children learn to adapt to their environments and as a result of their cognitive adaptations they become better able to

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 3 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 3 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 3
The nature-nurture debate

Introduction

Precocial and altricial species

Precocial species: they young are physically mobile and able from the moment of birth or hatching.
Altricial species: are helpless and do not have this capacity at birth.

Nativism and empiricism

Nativism: the view that many skills or abilities are ‘native’ or hard wired into the brain at birth, the result of genetic inheritance.
Empiricism: the view that humans are not born with built-in ‘core-knowledge’ or mental content and that all knowledge results form learning and experience.

Cognitive development

Cognition: mental activity.

Mental age and intelligence quotient (IQ)

Chronological age (CA): a person’s actual age
Mental age (MA): an individual’s level of mental ability relative to others.
Intelligence quotient (IQ): a measure of a person’s level of intelligence compared to a population of individuals of approximately the same age.
Originally (MA/CA)*100

Intelligence tests

Four important notes about IQ:

  • The simple MA/CA*100 is no longer used
  • The average IQ given is always 100. tests are always standardized once a few years.
  • Children’s and adult’s raw scores tend to increase from one generation to the next.
  • The items on IQ tests invariably proceed from the simple to the complex, so that an individuals raw score is derived from the number of items passed before they make mistakes.

What is intelligence, on ability or several?

To a large extent how intelligence is defined determiners how it is measured.
There are those who argue that a general intelligence ability underlies performance on all intelligence tests.
Others suggest that intelligence is made up of a number of specific abilities or subskills.
Still others have argued that performance on intelligence tests is unrelated to our ability to ‘live our lives intelligently’.

Intelligence test items

Many test divide intelligence into two broad abilities.

Verbal subscales

Similarities: the child is asked in what way things might be similar.
Comprehension: measures the child’s common sense and understanding.
Recall of digits

Performance subscales

Block design: This child is given a set of blocks with colored patterns on them, and asked to use them to make patterns that the tester knows.
Copying: the child is shown a drawing and asked to copy it on a sheet of paper. The drawings are initially simple and become progressively more complex geometric shapes.

Controversies and issues in intelligence

Heriability: a statistical measure that describes how much of the variation of a trait in a population is due to genetic differences in that population.

Heritability

Heritability estimates

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 4 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 4 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 4
Prenatal development

Introduction

Prenatal development: the development of human individuals before they are born.
Foetus: (by humans) the organism 12 weeks after conception until birth.

Embryo: the developing organism during the period when organs are forming. In human from first cell divisions until about 10 weeks.
Neonate: an infant less than a month old.
Postnatal development: the development of a human individual after he or she is born, particularly during early infancy.
Organogenesis: the process of organ formation in very early development. In humans this is from fist cell division until about 10 weeks.

Throughout life, normal development demands constant and complex interactions between genes, environment and the emerging organism.

The impact of prenatal experience occurs on multiple levels. From biochemical factors influencing gene expression, in the foetus’s neuronal circuitry to characteristics of the mother’s lifestyle affecting the foetal environment.
Exquisitely timed, complex interactions between the genes and environmental input affect acquisition of neuronal identity, guidance of axons to target, induction of connections between cells or synaptogenesis, and also programmed cell death or apoptosis.

The brain, the spinal cord and the emergence of mind

Processes and sequencing of brain development

Ectoderm: the outermost of the three primary germ layers of an embryo. The central nervous system and skin, among other structures, develop from ectodrem.
The other two are endoderm and mesoderm.

During he embryonic period, the central nervous system brings as cells of ectoderm, one of three germ layers. The germ layers are the foundation for organ formation.
The endoderm thickens and becomes the neural plate by day 18 of gestation. By then it is already differentiated into cells that will become forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain.

The neural plate folds to become the neural tube, and by the end of the first month the embryonic body has the basic cranial-caudal (head to feed) organization.
Cells are born, and begin extensive migration to their eventual location where the will become their final forms.
Neurogenesis and migration continue right up to about the sixth month of pregnancy, and are followed by extensive changes in individual cells that program them for the myriad tasks awaiting the emerging brain.
Despite their ultimate high level of specialization, the 1010 nerve cells that will comprise the brain originate from one single layer of identical cells in the wall of the neural tube.

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 5 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 5 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 5
Perception, knowledge and action in infancy

Introduction

Cognitive development: the development of behaviors that relate to perception, attention, thinking, remembering and problem-solving.

Mental representation: an internal description of aspects of reality that persists in the absence of these aspects of reality.
Traditionally a key aspect of the distinction between perception and cognition.

But, its applicatoin to infancy has not been so productive as once seemed likely.

  • Prior to gaining the ability to reflect on absent environments, infants have to learn how to perceive and act appropriately in their here-and-now environment.

Right from birth, infants perceive the world in a sophisticated way, and in the early months they develop perceptual abilities that ‘fill in the gasp’ in perception so that invisible parts of objects are perceived, and that are temporarily hidden are treated as continuing in existence.

Visual perception from birth to six months

Early limitations in vision; are they really a problem?

Visual acuity: the ability to make fine discrimination between the elements in the visual array.

Newborns’ vision is significantly poorer than that of older individuals.
Visual acuity is probably around 1/30th the level of perfect adult acuity.

Young infants have poor control over focusing the eyes (visual accommodation).
These limitations are short lived, both acuity and accommodation improve rapidly during the first 6 months.
Although much of the detail of the visual world may be not available to young infants, these limitations should not affect perception of the larger scale structure of objects.

How can we investigate infant perception?

The visual preference method

Visual preference method to determine whether infants have preferences for certain stimuli. They are shown two objects side by side, and the amount of time they spend looking at each one is then compared.
Such looking time difference is defined as a visual preference. Such a preference implies discrimination, otherwise there would be no basis for preference.

The two stimuli are presented over a series of trials in which left-right associations are systematically varied.

Habituation techniques

If the infant looks for shorter periods over trials, this implies that progressively more of the stimulus has been committed to memory. This if infants habituate they must have form of visual memory.
To investigate visual discrimination.

Shape perception in newborns

Even newborns are capable of perceiving differences between simple shapes such as crosses, triangles, squares and circles.

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 6 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 6 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 6
Emotional development and attachment relationships

Introduction

Emotional development underlies many other aspects of development, and has serious implications for how we conduct research with children.

Emotional development

Children’s emotional development can broadly be divided into three areas.

  • Young children’s ability to recognize different facial expressions and to convey their own emotions.
  • Children’s understanding of emotions.
  • Children’s ability to regulate their emotions.

Expressing and recognizing emotional expressions

Are expressions of emotions innate?

Cross-cultural evidence

There is good evidence for the universality of human facial expressions of emotion.
Understanding of how emotions are conveyed through facial expressions is universal, but does not necessarily mean that understanding emotional expressions is innate.

Expressions of emotion in infancy

Infants from birth spontaneously display a wide repertoire of emotions though their facial expressions.

Basic emotions: happiness, interest, surprise, disgust, sadness, distress, anger, fear.
Complex emotions: pride, shyness, jealousy, guilt, shame, embarrassment.

Adults are skillful in accurately reading infants’ expressions.
However, adults are less accurate in discriminating infant’s negative facial expressions indicative of fear, anger, sadness or disgust. This appears not to be due to a lack of subtlety in young infants’ expression, but to the fact that the facial expressions arising from these different emotions are quite similar.

There is a biological basis for infant’s emotional facial expressions.
Multiple facial cues are used to signal emotion and the ability to convey and accurately interpret emotional expressions is impressively robust.

Infants indisputably display basic emotions very early in life. But there is considerable debate about when complex emotions emerge.

Infant discrimination of facial expressions

3-month-olds can distinguish between photographs of people smiling and frowning.
4- to 7-month-olds can distinguish between expressions of happiness and surprise.

Can young infants empathize with others’ emotions?

Very young infants may be emphasizing with the emotion they see portrayed.
But we cannot be sure.

Social referencing

Social referencing: infants and young children look at their caregiver for ‘advice’ when faced with an difficult or uncertain situation and seek social cures to guide their actions.
This provides and excellent way to assess infants’ understanding of other people’s emotional expressions.

Emotion understanding

Children begin to talk about emotions at a surprisingly young age, and parents readily give anecdotal accounts of their children using emotion words in the second year of life.

There are differences between emotional responses of infants and young children and those of older children and adults.

Emotional ambiguity: the realization that a person’s feelings may not be clear-cut or match your own emotional response.

Emotion understanding tasks

There are links between young children’s task-based

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 9 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 9 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 9
Cognitive development

Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory

Epistemology: the study of the origins of knowledge and how we know what we know.

Two important findings of Piaget:

  • Children of the same age made similar errors
  • These errors differed from those of older and younger children

According to Piaget, everything that we know and understand is filtered through our current frame of reference. We construct new understandings of the world based on what we already know.
Constructivist.

Underlying structures and processes

Schemes

The basic unit of understanding is a scheme.
This is a cognitive structure that forms the basis of organizing actions and mental representations so that we can understand and act upon the environment.

This makes up our frames of reference through which we filter new information. Everything we know starts with the schemes we are born with.

Three of the basic schemes we are born with are reflexive actions that can be performed on objects: sucking, looking and grasping.
As children grow older they begin to use schemes based on internal mental representations rather than using schemes based on physical activity.

These schemes are operations.

Processes: organization and adaptation

Two innate processes to explain how children modify their schemes:

  • Organization
    The predisposition to group particular observations into coherent knowledge. It occurs both within and across stages of development.
  • Adaptation
    Composed of two processes:
    • Assimilation: incorporating the information into existing schemes
    • Accommodation: adjusting existing concepts or generate new schemes

Through the processes of accommodation and assimilation we adjust to reality.

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

Equilibration: in Piagetian theory, a state in which children’s schemes are in balance and undisturbed by conflict.
The processes of assimilation and accommodation comprise the equilibration process.

We are, by nature, constantly motivated to be able to fully assimilate and accommodate to objects and situations in our environment, to reach the state of cognitive equilibration.
At times, so many new levels of understanding converge that we reach a major reorganization in the structure of thinking.
These new levels of thinking are states. Qualitative shifts in a child’s way of thinking.
The ages at which they are achieved vary from one child to another. But, the order of progressing through stages is invariant.

Piaget believed his stages were universal:

  • All people would develop through the same sequences of stages
  • For any given stage children would be in that stage for all
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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 10 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 10 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 10
The development of language

What is human language?

A communication system

Human language is primarily a communication system, a means for speakers of a language to communicate with one another.
This ability is not unique to the human species.

But non of the communication systems of other species have been found to possess all of he characteristics found in human communication.
Human language is a symbolic, rule-governed system that is both abstract and productive, characteristics that enable its speakers to produce and comprehend a wide range of utterances.
It evolved from multiple abilities.

A symbolic system

Words and parts of words represent meanings.
These symbols refer to things other than themselves. They are conventional because speakers of a language use the same word to express the same meanings. This makes communication possible.
Language symbols are arbitrary, there is no necessary relation between sound and meaning.

A rule-governed system

Each human language is constrained by a set of rules that reflects the regularities of the language.
The rule system is abstract, it goes beyond the simple association of individual words and instead involves the manipulation of abstract classes of words.

Articles precede nouns.
The abstract classes and rules enable a languages productivity.

Language is productive

A finite number of linguistic units and a finite number of rules are capable of yielding an infinite number of grammatical utterances.
Speakers may produce and comprehend novel utterances.

Language also makes it possible to discuss fantasies and hypothetical situations and events.

The development of the pragmatic system

Turn-taking

Conversations take place when participants take turns responding to each other’s queries or statements.

Mother-infant interactions

Turn-taking behavior makes its first appearance in the earliest interaction between mothers and infants.
Nursing sometimes involves an early non-verbal type of turn-taking.

Touching and vocalizations are two modalities in which exchanges between mothers and their infants takes turns.

Proto-conversations: interactions between adults and infants in which the adults tend to vocalize when the infants are not vocalizing, or after the infant has finished vocalizing.

Between 8 and 12 months, infants begin to take a more active role in turn-taking.
The dyadic proto-conversations evolve into triadic interactions

Proto-imperatives: when infants point to an object and then alternate

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 11 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 11 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 11
Acquiring a theory of mind

Introduction

Unlike other creatures, humans are able to marshal vast intellectual resources in an effort to connect with other people.
In non-humans, social behavior might have a great deal to do with instinct.

Early attunement to others’ minds

The ability to connect with other minds is present early in development.
Before long, the relationship is cemented when the baby shows a range of social responses.

Intuitive psychology: the awareness some people have regarding other’s desires, motives and beliefs, they appear able to anticipate others’ reactions and behavior.

Focusing on false beliefs: the unexpected transfer test

If we ask a participant to make judgments about another person’s true beliefs, they would respond correctly even in the absence of knowing anything about other minds.

Unexpected transfer test: a measure of theory of mind in which a child sees an object put in one place and it is later moved to another location without the child being aware of it. The theory-of-mind question is ‘where will the child look for the object when they want to find it?’

A reason for focusing on false beliefs is because it is important for children to be attuned to false as opposed to true beliefs.

When do children begin to understand that people hold beliefs?

Piaget characterized children below 7 years as egocentric.

But,
Wimmer found that from about 4 or 5 years, children set aside their own knowledge in making correct attributions of other people’s false beliefs.
Children negotiate a radical conceptual shift around the time of their fourth birthday, which equips them with a representational theory of mind that allows them to acknowledge false belief.

Do children acquire a theory of mind?

Children rapidly develop in their understanding of the mind at about 4 years of age.

The deceptive box test

According to Gopnik, understanding other minds by a process of simulation is implausible.
Being able to find out what someone else thinks by working out what you yourself would think in that situation depends on having reflective access to your own states of mind.

Meta-cognition:

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 12 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 12 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 12
Reading and mathematics in developmental psychology

Introduction

Cultural tools: any tools that help us to calculate, produce models, make predictions and understand the word more fully.

Reading and writing

One characteristic of cultural tools is that they can vary from culture to culture.

Orthography: a writing system. Orthography is used to describe any aspect of print, or, the spelling

Alphabetic script: a writing system in which written symbols (letters) correspond to spoken sounds. Individual phonemes represent the individual letters of an alphabetic script.
There are several different alphabetic scrips, and there are radical differences among orthographies that use exactly the same script.

Morpheme: a unit of meaning.
In some scripts, each character signals a morpheme.

Syllabary: the name given to a language that relies heavily on syllables for meaning.

Mora: a rhythmic unit in languages like Japanese that can be either a syllable or part of a syllable.

Syllable: the smallest unit of a word whose pronunciation forms a rhythmic break when spoken.

The difficulty of alphabetic scripts

Represents speech at the level of phonemes.
No language has many phonemes in it and thus one does not need many letters to represent them.

The problem

  • Phonemes pose an enormous problem to young children. The is hard at first for children to realize that letters represent phonemes.
  • We have to learn how individual words can be broken down into phonemes and assembled from them

Phonemic awareness and learning to read

Children get better with phonemes as they grow older.
This has to do with instruction.
Experience of learning to read an alphabetic script does make people aware of phonemes. Children need this form of awareness to become successful readers.

Rhymes and rimes

Some research suggests that children’s awareness of other phonological units, beside phoneme, plays a part in learning to read.
Between the levels of the syllable and the phoneme lies a set of phonological units which is called intrasyllabic. These are usually smaller in size than the syllable and larger than the phoneme. (like onset and rime).

Onset: of a syllable is the consonant, cluster of consonants, or vowel at the beginning of a syllable.

Rime: the vowel sound of a syllable plus any consonants that follow.

Monosyllabic words rhyme because they have a rime in common. (cat and hat).
Most children are aware of rimes from an early age and often actively and spontaneously create, and play with, rhymes.

Children’s scores in rhyme oddity tasks predicted their success

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 15 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 15 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 15
Moral reasoning

Reasoning and judgment

Every discussion of the development of prosocial and antisocial behavior must cover the work of Piagent and Kohlberg.

Piaget

The first to study in a systematic way the moral judgments of children.
Piaget presented them with hypothetical moral dilemmas and then asked the children to make judgments.
From responses to dilemmas and to queries concerning the rules of games, Piaget concluded that younger children’s moral judgment was governed by unilateral respect for adult and adults’ rules, with little understanding of reciprocity or the intentions of others.
Young children children judge that the greater damage constitutes a larger moral violation, because the intentions will not be salient.
With age children develop a morality of cooperation and social exchange.
Children come to understand that intentions matter, that roles can be reversed, and that moral conflicts must be resolved through discussion and compromise with peers.
Age 10.

Kohlberg

Moral dilemmas to elicit moral reasoning.
Five stages of judgment

1. Heteronomous morality

  • Children believe that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are determined by powerful adult figures.
  • To act morally is to follow the rules laid down by authorities.
  • Little consideration is given to the intentions or desires of individuals other than the self when making moral judgments.

2. Instrumental morality

  • Individuals become aware that other people have intentions and desires, and that there are two sides to every argument.
  • This awareness influences moral judgment only when others’ desires affect the pursuit of one’s instrumental goals.

3. Interpersonal normative morality

  • Individuals in this stage seek to be viewed as ‘good’ and feel guilt when it is likely that others will condemn their behavior.
  • An emergent concern for the perspectives of others toward the self.

4. Social system morality

  • Individuals recognize that all members of society have intentions and pursue goals, but they understand that rules and laws are necessary in order for society to function and prevent anarchy.
  • Moral judgment focuses on the congruence of an individual’s actions with the rules and laws necessary to preserve social harmony.

5. Human rights and social welfare morality

  • Individuals make use of ethical principles to guide moral judgments.

Age and stage

Kohlberg claimed that development across childhood and adolescence is characterized by sequential passage through the stages.
Stages 1 and 2 are most characteristic of children

Stage 3 emerging among adolescents.
Stage 4 increases in salience across adolescence
Stage 5 appears in adulthood although even then it remains fairly rare.

Longitudinal research indicates

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 16 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 16 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 16
Cognitive development in adolescence

Perception and attention

Perception

Perception is one of the cognitive abilities that develop earliest in life.
Children’s perception becomes increasingly flexible.

Ambiguous figures.
Increased flexibility of thought in adolescence allows alternations between the different perspecitves to be easily accomplished in ambiguous figures.
Adolescents can identify both components and wholes.

Selective attention

Development is evident in the adolescent’s superior ability to allocate attentional resources.
Selective attention.

Speed of processing

the time it takes for the brain to either receive or output information.
It develops rapidly during childhood and continues to develop during the adolescent years so that older adolescents show faster speed of processing compared to younger adolescents.

This development is at least partially driven by the maturation of white matter in the brain.

Memory

By early adulthood memory can be quite remarkable.
There is a rapid development in face processing abilities during childhood and adolescence, with adult-level recognition reached by about 16 years of age.

Is there a qualitative change in face processing between childhood and adolescence?
Proposal

Encoding switch hypothesis: different information abut faces is represented in memory by children at different ages. Young children rely on information about individual features, whereas older children and adults use information bout the configuration of the features.

Face processing emphasizing features is referred to as featural processing.
Face processing emphasizing configuration is configural processing.

Children younger than 10 years of age make identifications largely on the basis of parahernalia items such as hat or glasses.
Younger children’s failure in recognizing the right person may be because they encoded non-essential information for determining identity.

Even face-processing abilities during adolescence are still developing considering their less than adult like levels in face recognition memory.

There is a drop in performance on face recognition tasks occuring at about 11 years of age.
This appears to be influenced by factors such as children’s level of familiarity with the type of face stimuli used and the difficulty of the recognition task.

Hormonal influence?

Short-term memory

Short-term memory increases steadily throughout childhood and into adolescence.
Possible explanations:

  • As children grown the capacity of short-term memory increases as a result of neurological changes
  • Older children have a greater familiarity and experience with words and numbers as
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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 18 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 18 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 18
Educational implications

Child-centered psychology and education

Pedagogy: an aspect of theory or practice related to learning.
Curriculum: the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university.

Social interaction, learning and development

The effects of peer interaction

Piaget’s interest in interaction was predominantly in the importance of interaction with the physical rather than interpersonal environment.
In his earlier work, Piaget outlined a case for the importance of social interaction not only as a means to encourage learning, but also as a direct cause of development itself.

The primary intellectual deficit of the preoperational child, is the child’s inability to decentre or take account of alternative perspectives on the world to their own. However, this egocentrism could be overcome by peer interaction.

  • Peers provide the ideal potential source of sociocognitive conflict, the two may each hold opposing egocentric views on a situation.

Through interaction with peers the child questions their own understanding, leading to a resolution of the conflict and a cognitive advantage.

Working in pairs can promote performance on Piagetian tasks

Peer facilitation effects: pairing of two children can have a positive impact on children’s later individual performance.

Bad performing children benefit from interaction.

Peer effects are persistent

The effects of paired interaction improve children’s performance are relatively long-lasting.

The changes in thinking promoted by sociocognitive conflict help children to benefit from subsequent learning experiences.

The positive and persistent effects of peer interaction extend beyond advances in cognitive development to advances in social development.
There is also concomitant development in social skills, communication, self-esteem, perspective-taking and social-emotional competence.

These positive effects on social skills are themselves a separate product of peer collaboration.

Peer effects in older children: Computer-based tasks

Much of the experimental work on the effects of peer interaction on children’s learning in middle school has centered on computer-based tasks.

7- 9 year olds benefit from interacting with other child when working on the Tower of Hanoi problem-solving task.

Peer interaction not only improved how quickly children arrived at the correct solution, but also positively affects the kind of strategies these children use.
Positive peer interaction effects are not restricted to very young children.

Constructing effective peer pairings

Positive effects of the efficacy of peer collaboration are not certain to arise.
Whilst a more developmentally advanced peer can likely benefit form collaboration in the form crystallizing and communicating their own thinking, it is not always the case that the

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 19 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 19 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 19
Risk and resilience in development

Resilience: occurs when children experience positive outcomes despite experiencing significant risk.

Historical background

The historical roots of resilience can be traced to research on individuals with psychopathology.
Many of the children with mental illness were doing well.

Risk factors

Risk factors includes:

  • Catastrophic events
  • Family adversities
  • Economic conditions
  • Exposure to negative environments

Protective factor: anything that prevents or reduces vulnerability for the development of a disorder.

Vulnerability factors: those attributes of the individual that contribute to maladjustment under conditions of adversity.

Children’s exposure to risk varies according to age.
Children in the first few years of live are highly dependent on their families.

Adolescents have larger and more varied social communities and therefore may have access to supportive environments other than family. But they are more influenced by the loss and devastation involved with war and natural disasters.

Parental bereavement

One of the most immediately traumatizing events for children and adolescents is the death of a parent.
Parental bereavement represents a permanent loss and separation from a primary caregiver.

Can be aggraveted by additional stressors.
There is evidence that parental death typically has a smaller effect on children than the effect of parental divorce.

Parental separation/divorce and inter-parental conflict

Family dissolution from parental divorce increases children’s risk for psychological, behavioral, social and academic problems.
Children who grow up in single-parent homes are less successful on average.

These differences have been found to relate to a broad range of outcomes.
Risk is the greatest for children of divorced parents who experience:

  • High inter-parental conflict
  • Loss of contact with one parent
  • Problems with mental health of parents
  • Less economic stability
  • Whose parents have multiple martial transitions

Although the intensity diminishes over time, offspring of divorced and remarried families experience difficulties that extend into adolescence and young adulthood.

  • Intergenerational cycle of difficulties: the various implicit and explicit non-verbal and verbal ways parents communicate their traumatic experiences and their experiences of shared events traumatically.

Children of divorced parents are more likely to have problems with family members, in intimate relations, in marriage, and in the workplace.
The divorce rate is higher and reports of general well-being and life satisfaction are lower.

Resilience is the normative outcome for children who are faced

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 20 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 20 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 20
Social problems in schools

The school context

Social pressures in the classroom

One key factor is he process of social comparison whereby the child compares his or her performance with classmates.
Comparison is usually upward, with students who perform better than themselves but who seem similar to them on a rage of related and unrelated attributes.

Such comparison can raise the child’s level of academic performance but can also result in negative self-perceptions.

Self-worth protection: the tendency of some students to reduce their levels of effort so that any subsequent poor academic performance will be attributed to low motivation rather than a lack of ability.

Peer pressure to work, or not!

An important social factor in school concerns pressure to work, or not to work, hard in class and on homework.
There is a very different nature of peer pressure in Eastern and Western cultures.

In eastern cultures, striving is typically seen as praiseworthy.
Children in US and UK often discourage any overt display of academic engagement by their classmates. Academic success in itself is not necessarily problematic for acceptance. Effortless success is generally admired.

As high stakes testing in many countries increasingly lead teachers, parents and students focus upon success on a variety of externally regulated tests and examinations, it is not surprising that student stress levels on relation to academic performance can often be high.

Victimization and bullying in school

Bullying is usually taken to be a subset of aggressive behavior, characterized by repetition and an imbalance of power.
The behavior is repetitive and the victim cannot defend him/herself easily, for one or more reasons.

Bullying is likely to have particular characteristics and particular outcomes.
The relative defenselessness of the victim implies an obligation on others to intervene.

How do we find out about bullying?

The main methods are:

  • Teacher and parent reports
  • Self-report by pupils as whether they have been bullied, or taken part in bullying others.
    • Olweus questionnaire
    • Life in school questionnaire.
  • Peer nomination, in which classmates are asked who is a bully, or a victim.
  • Direct observations of behaviors
  • Interviews with individuals, focus groups with 4-8 pupils, and incident reports kept by school

Incidence figures for bullying

Incidence figures for bullying vary greatly depending on measurement criteria.
Broadly speaking, in Western industrialized countries, some 5 per cent of children might be seen as regular or severe bullies, and some 10 per cent

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Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 21 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

Developmental psychology - summary of chapter 21 of an Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)

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Developmental psychology
Chapter 21
Atypical development

Two ways in which development can be atypical

  • Development can be exceptionally advanced or exceptionally low. The extremes of individual differences in development
  • Development may be qualitatively different from typical development

Williams syndrome: a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion of about 26 genes from the long arm of chromosome 7.

What is atypical development?

Considering whether a child development is

  • Delayed: a delayed but normal path of development
  • Different: a qualitatively different path of development

Quantifying delay

  • Looking at achievements in a time frame
  • Looking at the extent to which individual children perform relative to a level expected for their chronological age on standardized tests.
  • The size of difference between the child’s score and the norms established for the population

Types of delay

  • A particular aspect of development is delayed tells the researchers little about what underlies the delay.
  • The predominantly descriptive use of the term is relatively unhelpful, what is needed is an explanatory account of delay that identifies the various possible causes of delay in specific domains.

Assessment of delay is not confined exclusively to norms for atypical development. Standardized assessment scales have been designed for use with specific exceptional populations.

Why study atypical development?

The study of atypically developing children provides a profile of the main behaviors associated with a condition withing the context of development across the human lifespan.
This profile has the potential to generate a new knowledge base from which to design and deliver interventions.

Unfortunately, in the context of a relatively young field, there remains insufficient description of the atypical trajectories associated with particular disorders to warrant a sufficiently robust evidence base to inform the design and delivery of interventions fit-for-purpose.
Studying development that is considered atypical can inform us about development that is typical and vice versa.

Methodological approaches used in the study of atypical development

  • Make a comparison between the performance of the atypical sample and the performance of the relevant control group sample.
  • The false belief task is frequently used to assess atypically developing children’s
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Developmental Psychology: UvA Practice Questions

Developmental Psychology: UvA Practice Questions

Practice Questions

Questions

Question 1

Which of the following statements about development in puberty is true?

  1. in girls, the first menstruation always occurs before the peak in height growth.
  2. in girls, puberty development is entirely controlled by estrogens ('estrogens') and in boys by androgens (androgens)
  3. the secondary sex characteristics develop after the primary sex characteristics.
  4. Girls reach their adult height rather than boys.

Question 2

A developmental psychologist carries out research into the development of aggression in children. She registers the same group of children at several moments and has chosen a research design in which she can both identify possible cohort effects and correct them in her analyzes. What is the design of this researcher?

  1. cross-sectional design
  2. cross-cultural design
  3. longitudinal-sequential design
  4. microgenetic design

Question 3

Berk typifies developmental psychological theories as theories that view development as discontinuous or continuous. In which following combination of two developmental psychological theories is first called a discontinuous development theory and then a continuous development theory?

  1. Piaget's cognitive development theory - taking Selman's theory of perspective
  2. Kohlberg's moral development theory - Bandura's social learning theory
  3. Take Selman's theory of perspective - Erikon's theory of identity development
  4. Siegler's model of strategy choice - Kohlberg's theory of moral development

Question 4

Jorrin is 3 years old and is asked to arrange a group of 7 blocks from small to large. Completing this task requires __________ and Jorrin will probably _________ be able to complete the task.

  1. seriation; not
  2. transitive inference; well
  3. classification; not
  4. compensation; well

Question 5

In developmental psychology, a "sensitive period" refers to:

  1. a temporary situation in which the child is biologically mature to acquire certain adaptive behavior with the support of a stimulating environment
  2. the period in which children begin to apply the strategies of emotional self-regulation
  3. the period in which children become susceptible to the development of attachment because they begin to distinguish between the primary caregiver (s) and relative strangers
  4. a period that is optimal for the creation of certain capacities because in that period the individual is extra sensitive to environmental influences in that area

Question 6

The neo-Piagetan approach combines:

  1. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the core knowledge perspective
  2. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the information processing approach
  3. principles of Piaget's theory with those of Galperin's system theoretical instruction
  4. principles of Piaget's theory with those of evolutionary developmental psychology

Question 7

Camille says to her father on the other side of the room: "Look, Daddy, an elephant!" Camille keeps the book up without turning it over so that her father can also see the picture. The behavior of Camille is characteristic of _________ thinking.

  1. sensorimotor
  2. presymbolic
  3. transductive
  4. self-centered

Question 8

Siegler's

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Introduction to developmental psychology

Developmental Psychology: Summaries, Study Notes & Practice Exams - UvA

An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - Summary [EXAM UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]

An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - Summary [EXAM UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM]

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This bundle contains a summary for the course "Developmental Psychology" taught at the University of Amsterdam. This contains the book: "An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition)" and several articles.

The following chapters of the book are used:

- 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 , 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21

The following articles are used:

- Kensinger (2009). Cognition in aging and age related disease

- Somerville (2013). The teenage brain. 

- Wiers & Stacy (2006). Implicit cognition and addiction.

References:

Kensinger EA. Cognition in aging and age related disease.

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An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - a summary

An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition) - a summary

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This bundle contains a summary of the book An Introduction to Developmental psychology by A. Slater and G. Bremner (third edition). The book is about development from fetus to elderly. Only the chapters needed in the course 'Developmental psychology' in the first year of psychology at the Uva are present.

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Developmental Psychology: UvA Practice Questions

Developmental Psychology: UvA Practice Questions

Practice Questions

Questions

Question 1

Which of the following statements about development in puberty is true?

  1. in girls, the first menstruation always occurs before the peak in height growth.
  2. in girls, puberty development is entirely controlled by estrogens ('estrogens') and in boys by androgens (androgens)
  3. the secondary sex characteristics develop after the primary sex characteristics.
  4. Girls reach their adult height rather than boys.

Question 2

A developmental psychologist carries out research into the development of aggression in children. She registers the same group of children at several moments and has chosen a research design in which she can both identify possible cohort effects and correct them in her analyzes. What is the design of this researcher?

  1. cross-sectional design
  2. cross-cultural design
  3. longitudinal-sequential design
  4. microgenetic design

Question 3

Berk typifies developmental psychological theories as theories that view development as discontinuous or continuous. In which following combination of two developmental psychological theories is first called a discontinuous development theory and then a continuous development theory?

  1. Piaget's cognitive development theory - taking Selman's theory of perspective
  2. Kohlberg's moral development theory - Bandura's social learning theory
  3. Take Selman's theory of perspective - Erikon's theory of identity development
  4. Siegler's model of strategy choice - Kohlberg's theory of moral development

Question 4

Jorrin is 3 years old and is asked to arrange a group of 7 blocks from small to large. Completing this task requires __________ and Jorrin will probably _________ be able to complete the task.

  1. seriation; not
  2. transitive inference; well
  3. classification; not
  4. compensation; well

Question 5

In developmental psychology, a "sensitive period" refers to:

  1. a temporary situation in which the child is biologically mature to acquire certain adaptive behavior with the support of a stimulating environment
  2. the period in which children begin to apply the strategies of emotional self-regulation
  3. the period in which children become susceptible to the development of attachment because they begin to distinguish between the primary caregiver (s) and relative strangers
  4. a period that is optimal for the creation of certain capacities because in that period the individual is extra sensitive to environmental influences in that area

Question 6

The neo-Piagetan approach combines:

  1. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the core knowledge perspective
  2. principles of Piaget's theory with those of the information processing approach
  3. principles of Piaget's theory with those of Galperin's system theoretical instruction
  4. principles of Piaget's theory with those of evolutionary developmental psychology

Question 7

Camille says to her father on the other side of the room: "Look, Daddy, an elephant!" Camille keeps the book up without turning it over so that her father can also see the picture. The behavior of Camille is characteristic of _________ thinking.

  1. sensorimotor
  2. presymbolic
  3. transductive
  4. self-centered

Question 8

Siegler's

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Collegeaantekeningen Ontwikkelingspsychologie UVA jaar 1

Collegeaantekeningen Ontwikkelingspsychologie UVA jaar 1

College 2: Methodologie en perceptuele ontwikkeling

(Hoofdstuk 1 en 5 van Slater&Bremner)

Hoofdstuk 1 – Methodologie bij ontwikkelingspsychologie

Het is moeilijk om goed onderzoek te doen binnen ontwikkelingspsychologie. Je kan baby's bijvoorbeeld geen vragen stellen waar ze antwoord op kunnen geven. In dit college gaan we het hebben over verschillende onderzoek designs, namelijk cross-sectionieel, longitudinaal en sequentieel.

Cross-sectionieel onderzoeksdesign

Aan de hand van de gevolgen van te vroeg geboren kinderen worden hier verschillende methodologische deisgns behandeld. In 2006 waren zo'n 7%-8% van de kinderen te vroeg geboren. Om inzicht te krijgen in de psychologische ontwikkeling van te vroeg geboren kinderen moet eerst bedacht worden welke onderzoeksvragen hierop van toepassing zijn. Zo'n vraag kan bijvoorbeeld zijn: 'Wat zijn de gevolgen voor het verdere leven?' Of 'kunnen interventieprogramma's eventuele negatieve gevolgen verkleinen?'

Het blijkt dat te vroeg geboren kinderen vaker in het speciaal onderwijs terecht komen. Om dit te onderzoeken gaan we eerst naar een cross-sectioneel design kijken. Voor dit design worden kinderen in 3 groepen verdeeld. Een groep met kinderen van 1 jaar, een groep met kinderen van 8 jaar en een groep met kinderen van 12 jaar. Vervolgens worden er twee vragen gesteld:

  • Wijken prematuur geboren kinderen af van A-term kinderen?

  • Zijn eventuele effecten even groot voor verschillende leeftijden?

Er zijn inderdaad verschillen tussen prematuur geboren kinderen en A-term kinderen. De verschillen worden groter bij kinderen van 8 jaar. Een verklaring hiervoor kunnen individuele verschillen zijn.

Longitudinaal en sequentieel design

Bij een longitudinaal design worden kinderen van één jaar langere tijd bestudeerd. Bij een sequentieel design worden het cross-sectioneel en longitudinaal design gecombineerd. Er worden dus bijvoorbeeld groepen van kinderen van 1 jaar, 2 jaar en 3 jaar genomen en deze worden over tijd gevolgd. Vervolgens wordt de samenhang tussen de meetmomenten bekeken. Er wordt gekeken of bijvoorbeeld de IQ score op vroegere leeftijd een goede voorspeller is voor IQ score op latere leeftijd. Als er geen samenhang gevonden wordt moet nagegaan worden wat er verkeerd gaat. Het kan zijn dat er geen meet-equivalentie is. Dit is het gevolg van dat we op verschillende leeftijden ook verschillende vermogens meten. We kunnen 1 jarigen niet dezelfde IQ test geven als 8 jarigen. Deze testen moeten dus wel equivalent zijn. Daarnaast kan er teveel ruis in de metingen zitten, bijvoorbeeld individuele verschillen. Ook kan het zijn dat er.....read more

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Q&A Developmental Psychology [Universiteit van Amsterdam]

Q&A Developmental Psychology [Universiteit van Amsterdam]

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What?

  • On this page we discuss questions students have with the 2022/2023 course "Developmental Psychology" at the University of Amsterdam
  • You have the opportunity to ask any questions you might have and I will try and answer them
  • On 30/1/2023 you can ask questions!
  • I will be online during that day and will try to answer all your questions as soon as possible!
  • If for some reason I need some more time to prepare an answer, I will make sure to answer in the couple of days following the questions, so you still have plenty of time to prepare for the exam afterwards
  • Please be nice :). I have put in a lot of effort in this

Where?

  • You can ask your questions, read other's and view the answers in the comment section on this page, below
  • I am looking forward to your questions!

 

Questions and answers are in the comment section below! ↓

Why?

You might ask: why should I trust JesperN with my questions? I will give some bullet points as to why it might be useful:

  • I have made the same exam you are going to make and have passed the course with a 9.5.
  • I have specialized in Developmental Psychology.
  • I am doing the Clinical Developmental Psychology Master's degree at the University of Amsterdam.
  • I work as a psychologist in a school setting, meaning I am actively applying all the knowledge from the course in the field.

Who?

  • When you want to optimally prepare for your exam, it can be very useful to ask questions about the literature.
  • Formulating these questions, reading the answers to your own questions and the questions that others posed make your learning process more active which, in turn, enhances your ability to remember the material.
  • It is thus super useful to ask as many questions as you might have, not just for yourself, but also for others!

Alternatively, you can check out my:

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JoHo can really use your help!  Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world

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Check how to use summaries on WorldSupporter.org

Online access to all summaries, study notes en practice exams

How and why would you use WorldSupporter.org for your summaries and study assistance?

  • For free use of many of the summaries and study aids provided or collected by your fellow students.
  • For free use of many of the lecture and study group notes, exam questions and practice questions.
  • For use of all exclusive summaries and study assistance for those who are member with JoHo WorldSupporter with online access
  • For compiling your own materials and contributions with relevant study help
  • For sharing and finding relevant and interesting summaries, documents, notes, blogs, tips, videos, discussions, activities, recipes, side jobs and more.

Using and finding summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter

There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.

  1. Use the menu above every page to go to one of the main starting pages
    • Starting pages: for some fields of study and some university curricula editors have created (start) magazines where customised selections of summaries are put together to smoothen navigation. When you have found a magazine of your likings, add that page to your favorites so you can easily go to that starting point directly from your profile during future visits. Below you will find some start magazines per field of study
  2. Use the topics and taxonomy terms
    • The topics and taxonomy of the study and working fields gives you insight in the amount of summaries that are tagged by authors on specific subjects. This type of navigation can help find summaries that you could have missed when just using the search tools. Tags are organised per field of study and per study institution. Note: not all content is tagged thoroughly, so when this approach doesn't give the results you were looking for, please check the search tool as back up
  3. Check or follow your (study) organizations:
    • by checking or using your study organizations you are likely to discover all relevant study materials.
    • this option is only available trough partner organizations
  4. Check or follow authors or other WorldSupporters
    • by following individual users, authors  you are likely to discover more relevant study materials.
  5. Use the Search tools
    • 'Quick & Easy'- not very elegant but the fastest way to find a specific summary of a book or study assistance with a specific course or subject.
    • The search tool is also available at the bottom of most pages

Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?

Quicklinks to fields of study for summaries and study assistance

Field of study

Check the related and most recent topics and summaries:
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