ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔expand theories within cognitive perspective - ✔✔Theory of Cognitive Development
(Piaget): suggests that growth in children's understanding of the world could be
explained by assimilation [people understanding new experience in terms of current
stage of cognitive development] and accommodation [changes in existing ways of
thinking in response to encounters with new stimuli or events]
✔✔concepts of psychoanalytic theory - ✔✔- psychosexual development: occurs as
children pass through distinct changes in which pleasure, or gratification, is focused on
a particular biological function and body part
- psychosocial development: refers to change in interactions and understandings of one
another
✔✔concepts of behavioral theory (social-cognitive learning theory) - ✔✔- classical
conditioning: type of learning that occurs when organism learns to respond in particular
way to neutral stimulus
- operant conditioning: a form of learning in which a voluntary response is strengthened
or weakened by its association with positive or negative consequences
- behavior modification: formal technique for promoting the frequency of desirable
behaviors and decreasing the incidence of unwanted ones
- reinforcement: process in which behavior is followed by stimulus that increases
probability that the behavior will be repeated
✔✔concepts within Piaget's Theory - ✔✔- assimilation: process in which people
understand a new experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development
- accommodation: refers to changes in existing ways of thinking in response to
encounters with new stimuli or events
- information-processing approach: the model that seeks to identify the ways individuals
take in, use, and store information
- neo-Piagetian theory: considers cognition as made up of different types of individual
skills
- cognitive neuroscience approaches: looks at cognitive development through the lens
of brain processes
,✔✔name the main theorists and their contributions - ✔✔- Freud (psychoanalytic theory):
states the unconscious is part of the personality [id: pleasure principle, ego: reality
principle, superego: conscious]
- Freud (psychosexual development): pleasure shifts from mouth -> anus -> genitals
- Erikson (psychosocial theory): says growth and change continue throughout the
lifespan unlike Freud
- Bandura (social-cognitive learning theory): proposes learning is best done through
imitation
- Piaget (cognitive development theory): discusses increase of quality and quantity of
information in a series of stages
✔✔humanistic perspective - ✔✔- contends that people have a natural capacity to make
decisions abt their lives & to control their behavior; emphasizes free will
- Carl Rogers says a major proponent is people's need for positive regard
✔✔contextual perspective - ✔✔- considers the relationship between individuals and
their physical, cognitive, personality, and social worlds
- bioecological approach (Bronfenbrenner): suggests there are 5 levels of the
environment that simultaneously influence individuals; emphasizes interconnectedness
of the influences on development
- sociocultural theory (Vygotsky): emphasizes how cognitive development proceeds as
a result of social interactions between members of a culture; emphasizes development
of reciprocal transaction b/w the child and the people in its environment
✔✔evolutionary perspective - ✔✔- the theory that seeks to identify behavior that is a
result of our genetic inheritance from our ancestors; Darwin
- ethology: examines way in which our biological makeup influences our behavior
- behavioral genetics: studies effects of heredity on behavior
✔✔basic neuroscience concepts - ✔✔- consider internal, mental process, but
specifically on neurological activity that underlies thinking, problem solving, and other
cognitive behavior
- explore actual locations and functions within brain that're related to different types of
cognitive development
, ✔✔Race vs. Ethnicity - ✔✔race is visible genetic differences; ethnicity deals more with
cultural identity
✔✔Scientific Method - ✔✔process of posing and answering questions using careful,
controlled techniques that include systematic, orderly observation and the collection of
data
1) identify questions of interest
2) form an explanation
3) research (confirm or deny)
theories: explanation/prediction concerning phenomena of interest; provides framework
for understanding relationship among an organized set of principles
hypothesis: prediction posed in a way that permits it to be tested
✔✔different types of research strategies - ✔✔- correlational research: research to
identify whether an association or relationship b/w two factors exist
- experimental research: research designed to discover causal relationships b/w various
factors
- naturalistic observation: correlational study in which some naturally occurring behavior
is observed without intervention in the situation; employs ethnography and qualitative
research
- ethnography: method that borrows from anthropology and is used to investigate
cultural questions
- qualitative research: researchers choose particular settings of interest and seek to
carefully describe what and why something is occurring; generates hypotheses tested
w/ quantitative methods
- case study: involve extensive, in-depth interviews with a particular individual or small
group of individuals
- survey research: group of people chosen to rep. larger population are asked questions
about attitude, behavior, or thoughts, etc
- psychophysiological methods: focuses on relationship b/w physiological processes
and behavior (EEG, CT, fMRI)
✔✔expand on the psychophysiological methods - ✔✔- electroencephalogram (EEG):
uses electrodes to record electrical activity in brain; pictorial representation of brain
activity