DEVPSY - Aly's Reviewer

• Developmental Psychology
• Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018), Sigelman-Rider (2012)
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• Human Development


  Focuses on the scientific study of the systematic processes of change and stability in people
• Life-Span Development


  Concept of human development as lifelong process, which can be studied scientifically
• Life-Span Perspective


  Views development as lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual
• Physical Development


  Growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health
• Cognitive Development


  Learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity
• Psychosocial Development


  Emotions, personality, and social relationships
• Social Construction


  A concept or practice that is an invention of a particular culture or society
• Stability-Change Issue


  Degree to which early traits and characteristics persist through life or change
• Continuity-Discontinuity


  Degree to which development involves either gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity)
• Growth


  Physical changes - quantitative
• Maturation


  Transitional state that tells a person is fully functional
• Development


  Functional changes encompassing physical, mental, and social aspects
• Learning


  How a person adapts to the environment
• Behavioral Genetics


  Scientific study of the extent to which genetic and environmental differences among people and animals are responsible for differences in their traits
• Heritability


  Proportion of all the variability in the trait within a large sample of people that can be linked to genetic differences among those individuals
• Gregor Mendel studied the heredity in plants
• Selective Breeding


  Involves attempting to breed animals for a particular trait to determine whether the trait is heritable
• Attributes genes contribute to

  • Activity level
  • Emotionality
  • Aggressiveness
  • Sex drive
• Gene-Environment Correlations


  1. Passive Gene-Environment

  2. Evocative Gene-Environment

  3. Active Gene-Environment
• Passive Gene-Environment


  Parent provide for their children influenced partly by the parents’ genotypes
• Evocative Gene-Environment


  Child’s genotype evokes certain kind of reactions from other people
• Active Gene-Environment


  Children’s genotype influence the kinds of environment they seek
• Factors contributing to individual differences in emotionality

  • Genes
  • Shared Environmental Influences
  • Nonshared Environmental Influences
• Shared Environmental Influences


  Common experiences that work to make them similar (e.g., parenting style)
• Nonshared Environmental Influences


  Unique experiences to the individual not shared with other family members (e.g., parental favoritism)
• Context of Development


  Family<|>Socioeconomic Status<|>Culture<|>Gender<|>History
• Normative Influences


  Biological or environmental events that affect many or most people in a society in similar ways
• Types of Normative Influences

  • Normative Age-Graded Influences
  • Normative History-Graded Influences
• Historical Generation


  Group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives
• Age Cohort


  Group of people born at about the same time
• Nonnormative


  Unusual events that have major impact on individual lives
• Imprinting


  Instinctively follow the first moving object they see
• Critical Period


  Specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development
• Sensitive Periods


  When developing person is especially responsive to certain kind of experience