Developmental Psych Exam 2

• Different types of Play

  parallel play, simple social play, cooperative play, make believe, solitary play
• Parallel Play


  when children play alone, but are aware of and interested in what another child is doing
• Simple Social Play


  play that begins at about 15 to 18 months of age; toddlers engage in similar activities as well as talk and smile at each other
• Cooperative Play


  play that is organized around a theme, with each child taking on a different role; begins at about 2 years of age
• Make Believe


  during the preschool years, cooperative play often takes the form of make-believe with realistic props (pretending to have a phone call with imaginary partners or drinking imaginary juice)
• Solitary Play


  some children are not sociable and enjoy solitary activities such as coloring, puzzles, and assembling legos. it is no cause for concern when children enjoy playing alone, but it can be worrisome when they play alone to escape interacting with their peers.
• Gender Differences in Play

  • between 2-3 years of age, children begin to prepare playing with same-sex peers
  • segregation of playmates by sex occurs spontaneously (children often resist playing with members of the opposite sex)
  • by age 10-11, most peer activity is with the same genders
  • boys and girls want to play with others like themselves, regardless of gender (boys usually prefer rough and tumble play while girls prefer cooperative and conversation-oriented play)
• Enabling


  when actions and remarks tend to support others, and sustain an interaction (more common with girls)
• Constricting 


  when one person tries to emerge as the victor by threatening or contradicting another (more common in boys)
• Playmate


  another individual which a child plays with (Ex: a toddler stacking blocks and a parent helping them)
• Social Director


  someone who is in charge of social interactions and oversees activities that children partake in (Ex: a parent creating opportunities for children to interact with other children)
• Coach


  someone who gives children instruction and direction (Ex: parents helping children acquire skills such as resolving conflict, making decisions, and initiating social interaction)
• Mediator


  someone who deviates things between children that may have had a disagreement and guides them into a resolution
• Prosocial Behavior


  any behavior that benefits another person (Ex: cooperation working together toward a common goal)
• Empathy


  the act of experiencing another person’s feelings
• Situational Influences


  feelings of responsibility, feelings of competence, mood, group membership, costs of prosocial behavior
• Feelings of Responsibility


  children will act prosocially when they feel responsible for the person in need
• Feelings of Competency


  children will act prosocially when they believe that they have the skills to help the person in need
• Mood

  children act prosocially when they are happy or when they are feeling successful but not when they’re feeling sad or feeling as if they have failed
• Group Membership


  children typically share more with children who are members of their own group rather than with children who are not (they also share more when being watched by a group member to appear generous)
• Costs of Prosocial Behavior


  children act prosocially when such actions entail few or modest sacrifices (Ex: sharing a snack they don’t like rather than one that is their favorite)
• Evolutionary Adaption


  people who help others are more likely to be helped themselves and are more likely to survive
• Oxytocin


  a hormone that influences many social behaviors (nurturance, empathy, affiliation, and cooperation) and that’s been linked to a few specific genes
• Socialization of Prosocial Behavior includes…


  modeling, disciplinary practices, and opportunities to behave prosocially
• Modeling


  when children see adults helping and caring for others, they often imitate such prosocial behavior
• Disciplinary Practices


  Children behave prosocially more often when their parents are warm and supportive, set guidelines, and provide feedback and vice versa. when parents are negative and opposite of those things, their children tend to imitate the negative behaviors
• Opportunities to Behave Prosocially


  a person needs to practice to improve skills, and prosocial behaviors are not an exception, children and adolescents are more likely to act prosocially when they are routinely given the opportunity to help and cooperate with others
• Mental Operations


  Cognitive actions that can be performed on objects or ideas
• Concrete-Operational Thinking


  7-11 years; limited to the tangible and real, to the here and now. these children do not yet think abstractly and hypothetically; these skills are acquired in the formal operational period
• Formal-Operational Thinking


  11-adulthood; children and adolescents apply psychological operations to abstract entities, they are able to think hypothetically and reason abstractly
• Deductive Reasoning


  drawing conclusions from facts; characteristic of formal operational thought
• Working Memory


  type of memory in which a small number of items can be stored briefly
• Long-Term Memory


  permanent storehouse for memories that has unlimited capacity
• Memory Strategies include…


  rehearsal, organization, elaboration
• Rehearsal


  7-8 year olds used rehearsal, a strategy of repetitively naming information that is to be remembered
• Organization

  structuring information to be remembered so that related information is placed together (Ex: a sixth grader trying to remember major battles of the American Civil War could organize them geographically)
• Elaboration

  embellishing information to be remembered to make it more memorable (Ex: imagine a child who can never remember if the second syllable of rehearsal is spelled exactly how it sounds: “her”)
• Metacognition includes…

  metamemory, metacognitive knowledge, congnitive self regulation
• Metamemory

  a person’s informal understanding of memory includes the ability to diagnose memory problems accurately and to monitor the effectiveness of memory strategies
• Metacognitive Knowledge

  a person’s knowledge and awareness of cognitive processes; grows rapidly during the elementary school years. children come to know about perception, attention, intentions, knowledge and thinking