Test yourself repeatedly throughout your studies. This will not only help you figure out what you know and don’t know; the testing itself will help you learn and remember the information more effectively thanks to the testing effect.
The three major issues that interest developmental psychologists are nature/nurture, stability/change, and ______/________.
continuity/stages
Body organs first begin to form and function during the period of the ______; within 6 months, during the period of the ______, the organs are sufficiently functional to allow a good chance of survival.
c
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Chemicals that pass through the placenta’s screen and may harm an embryo or fetus are called ______.
teratogens
Stroke a newborn’s cheek and the infant will root for a nipple. This illustrates
a
Between ages 3 and 6, the human brain experiences the greatest growth in the _____ lobes, which we use for rational planning, and which continue developing at least into adolescence.
frontal
Which of the following is true of motor-skill development?
b
Why can’t we consciously recall how we learned to walk when we were infants?
We have little conscious memory of events occurring before age 4, in part because major brain areas have not yet matured.
Use Piaget’s first three stages of cognitive development to explain why young children are not just miniature adults in the way they think.
Infants in Piaget’s sensorimotor stage tend to be focused only on their own perceptions of the world and may, for example, be unaware that objects continue to exist when unseen. A child in the preoperational stage is still egocentric and incapable of appreciating simple logic, such as the reversibility of operations. A preteen in the concrete operational stage is beginning to think logically about concrete events but not about abstract concepts.
Although Piaget’s stage theory continues to inform our understanding of children’s thinking, many researchers believe that
a
An 8-month-old infant who reacts to a new babysitter by crying and clinging to his father’s shoulder is showing _______ _______.
stranger anxiety
In a series of experiments, the Harlows found that monkeys raised with artificial mothers tended, when afraid, to cling to their cloth mother, rather than to a wire mother holding the feeding bottle. Why was this finding important?
Before these studies, many psychologists believed that infants became attached to those who nourished them.
From the very first weeks of life, infants differ in their characteristic emotional reactions, with some infants being intense and anxious, while others are easygoing and relaxed. These differences are usually explained as differences in ______.
temperament
Adolescence is marked by the onset of
b
According to Piaget, a person who can think logically about abstractions is in the_______ _______ stage.
formal operations
In Erikson’s stages, the primary task during adolescence is
b
Some developmental psychologists now refer to the period that occurs in some Western cultures from age 18 to the mid-twenties and beyond (up to the time of social independence) as _______ _____.
emerging adulthood
Developmental researchers who emphasize learning and experience are supporting ______; those who emphasize biological maturation are supporting ______.
b
By age 65, a person would be most likely to experience a cognitive decline in the ability to
a
Freud defined the healthy adult as one who is able to love and work. Erikson agreed, observing that the adult struggles to attain intimacy and _____.
generativity
Contrary to what many people assume,
c
Although development is lifelong, there is stability of personality over time. For example,
b
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Answering these questions will help you make these concepts more personally meaningful, and therefore more memorable.
What impresses you the most about infants’ abilities, and why?
What do you think about the idea that, genetically speaking, we are all nearly identical twins?
What kinds of mistakes do you think parents of the past made? What mistakes do you think today’s parents might be making?
What skills did you practice the most as a child? Which have you continued to use? How do you think this affected your brain development?
Imagine your friend says, “Personality (or intelligence) is in the genes.” How would you respond?
What are the most positive or most negative things you remember about your own adolescence? Who do you credit or blame more—your parents or your peers?
Think about a difficult decision you had to make as a teenager. What did you do? Would you do things differently now?
What do you think makes a person an adult? Do you feel like an adult? Why or why not?
Imagining the future, how do you think you might change? How might you stay the same?
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