đź“š Unit 3:Â Development & Learning đź“š
College Board Expects Students To...
Explain how enduring themes inform developmental psychology.
Describe ways cross-sectional and longitudinal research design methods used in developmental psychology inform understanding about behavior and mental processes.
Explain how physical development before birth applies to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how physical development in infancy and childhood apply to behavior and mental processes.Â
Explain how physical development in adolescence applies to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how physical development in adulthood applies to behavior and mental processes.
Describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.
Explain how theories of cognitive development apply to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how key components of language and communication apply to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how language develops in humans.
Explain how social development relates to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how classical conditioning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how operant conditioning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how social learning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Explain how cognitive factors in learning apply to behavior and mental processes.
Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan.
In developmental psychology, we see major issues that are continually debated:
Nature vs. nurture: How does our genetic inheritance (our nature) interact with our experiences (our nurture) to influence our development?
Continuity vs. stages: What parts of development are gradual and continuous, like riding an escalator? What parts change abruptly in separate stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder?
Stability vs. change: Which of our traits persist through life? How do we change as we age?
How do we study it?
Longitudinal Studies: research that follows and retests the same people over time
Cross-Sectional Studies: research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time
Physical DevelopmentÂ
Prenatal Development
Note: Because pinpointing the moment of conception is nearly impossible, prenatal development is measured based on the date of the last menstrual cycle.
Stages of Prenatal Development:
Conception → one of several million sperm cells penetrate a mature egg creating a fertilized egg or zygote
Zygotes enter a 2-week period of rapid cell division as it travels to the uterus and develops into an embryo.
Embryos (the developing human organism from about 2 weeks to 2 months) are protected by the placenta - a specialized organ that transmits nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the embryo. During this stage, organs and nerves begin to form and function.
From around nine weeks after conception until birth, the developing human organism is known as a fetus. At 22-23 weeks, the fetus reaches the threshold of viability, meaning it has developed enough and is likely to survive if born prematurely.
Influences on Prenatal Development
A growing human is fully dependent on the human it inhabits, and the life they lead and the choices they make can have a huge impact on the development of their baby. Teratogens are agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause potential harm:
Environment →
Stress → Stress hormones can cause early delivery.
Diet → Pregnant people are encouraged to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and discouraged from deli meats, soft cheeses, fish, raw meat/eggs, sugar, spicy food, and fast food.
Medicine →
Illness → While you cannot always prevent yourself from getting sick, certain illnesses should be avoided at all costs while pregnant, as they can affect the development of a fetus (ex. Zika virus).
Drugs → Drugs and alcohol should be strictly avoided during pregnancy. Fetuses exposed to certain drugs may experience withdrawal after birth, as well as, serious health complications and physical abnormalities.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by excessive drinking during pregnancy
Influences on Fertility & Birthrates
The current birth rate for the world is 17.299 births per 1000 people, a 0.94% decline from 2023.
One in four women will experience a miscarriage.Â
At least 10 to 15% of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage, but experts say the actual rate of miscarriage is probably greater because some miscarriages occur before women even realize they are pregnant.
Around 17.5% of the adult population – roughly 1 in 6 worldwide – experience infertility.
Factors that Increase Infertility:
Stress
Diet/Weight
Genes
Environmental factors (drug use, exposure to chemicals/heat, etc.)
Age
Egg/Sperm quantity/quality
Additionally, cultural and generational changes also contribute to the declining birthrate. Fewer adults today have the desire to have children, whether it be for financial reasons (cost of daycare, healthcare, college, etc.), people waiting until they're older to get married (thus starting a family later in life), increased educational/career opportunities, expanded education on birth control, or personal preference.Â
Newborns
Having survived prenatal hazards, we as newborns came equipped with automatic reflex responses ideally suited for our survival. We withdrew our limbs to escape pain. If a cloth over our face interfered with our breathing, we turned our head from side to side and swiped at it. New parents are often in awe of the coordinated sequence of reflexes by which their baby gets food. When something touches their cheek, babies turn toward that touch, open their mouth, and vigorously root for a nipple. Finding one, they automatically close on it and begin sucking. Other adaptive reflexes include the startle reflex (when arms and legs spring out, quickly followed by fist clenching and loud crying) and the surprisingly strong grasping reflex, both of which may have helped infants stay close to their caregivers.
Habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation → similar to sensory adaptation
Maturation is the biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience. In other words, regardless of environment, as long as a baby is alive, it will continue to grow and develop, though the extent of that development depends on exterior factors.Â
A critical period is a time during someone's development in which a particular skill or characteristic is believed to be most readily acquired, and if not acquired by a certain time, it may be impossible to learn.
Brain Development
In the womb, your developing brain formed nerve cells at the explosive rate of nearly one-quarter million per minute. From infancy on, brain and mind—neural hardware and cognitive software—develop together. On the day you were born, you had most of the brain cells you would ever have. However, your nervous system was immature: After birth, the brain’s branching neural networks that eventually enabled you to walk, talk, and remember had a wild growth spurt. This rapid development helps explain why infant brain size increases rapidly in the early days after birth. The brain’s association areas—those linked with thinking, memory, and language—were the last cortical areas to develop. As they did, your mental abilities surged.Â
Developing neural connections prepare our brain for thought, language, and other later experiences. Mark Rosenzweig, David Krech, and their colleagues raised rats either alone in an environment without playthings, or with other rats in an environment enriched with playthings that changed daily. In 14 of 16 repetitions of this basic experiment, rats in the enriched environment developed significantly more cerebral cortex (relative to the rest of the brain’s tissue) than did those in the impoverished environment.
Studies suggest that we consciously recall little from before age 3. But as children mature, this infantile amnesia wanes, and they become increasingly capable of remembering experiences, even for a year or more. The brain areas underlying memory, such as the hippocampus and frontal lobes, continue to mature during and after adolescence.
Motor Development
The developing brain enables physical coordination. Skills emerge as infants exercise their maturing muscles and nervous system. With occasional exceptions, the motor development sequence is universal. Babies roll over before they sit unsupported, and they usually crawl before they walk. Most toddlers have learned to walk by the time they’re 15 months old.
Physical Development in Teens & Adults
A flood of hormones, primarily estrogen (main female sex hormone) & testosterone (main male sex hormone), triggers another period of dramatic physical change during adolescence, when boys and girls enter puberty. Girls’ slightly earlier entry into puberty can at first propel them to greater height than boys of the same age. But boys catch up when they begin puberty, and by age 14, they are usually taller than girls.Â
During these growth spurts, the primary sex characteristics—the reproductive organs and external genitalia—develop dramatically. So do the nonreproductive secondary sex characteristics. Girls develop breasts and larger hips. Boys’ facial hair begins growing and their voices deepen. Pubic and underarm hair emerges in both girls and boys.
Primary sex characteristics include the body structures (ovaries, testes, etc.) that make reproduction possible.
Secondary sex characteristics are the non-reproductive sexual traits → side effects of puberty (breast growth, widening of hips, deepening of voice, body hair, etc.)
For boys, early maturation has mixed effects. Boys who are stronger and more athletic during their early teen years tend to be more popular, self-assured, and independent, though also more at risk for alcohol use, delinquency, and premature sexual activity.
For girls, early maturation can be a challenge. If a young girl’s body and hormone-fed feelings are out of sync with her emotional maturity and her friends’ physical development and experiences, she may begin associating with older adolescents, suffer teasing or sexual harassment, and experience increased rumination with anxiety or depression.
Adulthood begins sometime after a person’s mid-twenties, however, defining adulthood into stages is more difficult than defining stages during childhood or adolescence. Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory abilities and cardiac output begin to decline after the mid-twenties. Around age 50, women go through menopause (the time of natural cessation of menstruation), and men experience decreased levels of hormones and fertility. With age, sexual activity lessens. Nevertheless, most men and women remain capable of satisfying sexual activity, and most express satisfaction with their sex life.
In late adulthood, the immune system weakens, increasing susceptibility to life-threatening illnesses. Chromosome tips (telomeres) wear down, reducing the chances of normal genetic replication. But for some, longevity-supporting genes, low stress, and good health habits enable better health in later life.
Although physical decline begins in early adulthood, we are not usually acutely aware of it until later in life, when the stairs get steeper, the print gets smaller, and other people seem to mumble more. Visual sharpness diminishes, as does distance perception and adaptation to light-level changes. Muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina also diminish, as do smell, hearing, and touch.Â
Elements of Aging
Life expectancy keeps increasing (now about 79). Women outlive men by about 4 years and outnumber them at most ages.
The body’s disease-fighting immune system weakens, making older adults more susceptible to life-threatening ailments such as cancer and pneumonia.
Older people take a bit more time to react, to solve perceptual puzzles, and to remember names. Brain regions important to memory begin to atrophy during aging.Â
Exercise slows aging. Active older adults tend to be mentally quick older adults. Physical exercise not only enhances muscles, bones, and energy and helps prevent obesity and heart disease, it maintains the telomeres that protect the chromosome ends and even appears to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease
Gender & Sexual Orientation
Sex vs. Gender
Humans share an irresistible urge to organize our worlds into simple categories. Immediately after your birth (or before), everyone wanted to know, “Boy or girl?” Your parents may have offered clues with pink or blue clothing. The answer describes your sex, your biological status defined by your chromosomes and anatomy. For most people, those biological traits help define their assigned gender, the socially influenced characteristics by which people define boy, girl, man, and woman.Â
Simply said, your body defines your sex. Your mind defines your gender. But your mind’s understanding of gender arises from the interplay between your biology and your experiences.Â
Nature may blur the biological line between males and females. Intersex individuals are born with unusual combinations of male and female chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. For example, a genetic male may be born with normal male hormones and testes but no penis or a micropenis. Such individuals may struggle with their gender identity.
Biological Differences
In two ways, biology influences our gender psychology:
Genetically—males and females have differing sex chromosomes.
Females: XX
Males: XY
Physiologically—males and females have differing concentrations of sex hormones, which trigger other anatomical differences.
Six weeks after you were conceived, you and someone of the other sex looked much the same. Then, as your genes kicked in, your biological sex—determined by your twenty-third pair of chromosomes (the two sex chromosomes)—became more apparent. Whether you are male or female, your mother’s contribution to that chromosome pair was an X chromosome. From your father, you received the 1 chromosome out of 46 that is not unisex—either another X chromosome, making you female, or a Y chromosome, making you male.
Forming Gender
Gender Role: a set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and traits for males and females.
Men go to work. Women keep house and raise children.
Gender Identity is our sense of being male, female, or some combination of the two. In other words, how do you show the world your gender?
Social Learning Theory:Â
Gender Typing: the acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role
How did you learn about what it means to be male or female?
Androgyny: displaying both traditional masculine and feminine physiological characteristics → nonbinary
Transgender: an umbrella term describing people whose gender identity or expression differs from that associated with their sex designated at birth
Sexual Orientation
We express the direction of our sexual interest in our sexual orientation—which usually is our enduring sexual attraction toward members of our own sex (homosexual) or the other sex (heterosexual). Other variations include an attraction to both sexes (bisexual) or no sexual attraction at all (asexual). We experience our sexual orientation in our interests, thoughts, and fantasies.Â
Due to the controversy surrounding differing sexual orientation, research has been done in regards to how it develops and have found the following:
Sexual orientation as neither willfully chosen nor willfully changed.Â
There is no evidence that environmental influences determine sexual orientation.
Evidence for biological influences includes the presence of same-sex attraction in many animal species, straight-gay differences in body and brain characteristics, higher rates of homosexuality in certain families and in identical twins, the effect of exposure to certain hormones during critical periods of prenatal development, and the fraternal birth-order effect.Â
Studies of Human Sexuality
Dr. Alfred Kinsey became the founding director of the new Institute for Sex Research and published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and the complementary work, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, in 1953. Both works were based on over 100,000 interviews he conducted on participants’ sexual history. His research concluded that there is more to sex than physical attraction and that human sexuality is a spectrum (known as the Kinsey Scale).Â
Let's Talk About Sex!
Among the forces driving sexual behavior are the sex hormones. The main male sex hormone is testosterone. The main female sex hormones are the estrogens, such as estradiol. Both males and females have testosterone and estrogen, though at differing levels. Sex hormones influence us at many points in the life span:
During the prenatal period, they direct our development as males or females.
During puberty, a sex hormone surge ushers us into adolescence.
After puberty and well into the late adult years, sex hormones facilitate sexual behavior.
When a female enters the fertile window (ovulation), their estrogen levels rise, often causing a rise in testosterone levels of the men nearby.Â
Every day, more than 1 million people worldwide acquire a sexually transmitted infection (STI; also called STD, for sexually transmitted disease). Condoms offer only limited protection against certain skin-to-skin STIs, such as herpes, but they do reduce other risks. When used by people with an infected partner, condoms also have been 80 percent effective in preventing transmission of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that causes AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Although HIV can be transmitted by other means, such as needle sharing during drug use, its sexual transmission is most common. AIDS is a life-threatening, sexually transmitted infection that depletes the immune system, leaving the person vulnerable to infections.Â
Sexual attitudes and behaviors vary dramatically across cultures and eras. So, what produces variations in teen sexuality? Twin studies show that genes influence teen sexual behavior—by influencing pubertal development and hormone levels. But what environmental factors contribute?
Communication about contraception & birth control → knowledge is power
Impulsivity → frontal lobe is not fully developed yet
Alcohol Use → decreased inhibition and poor judgement
Mass Media → Social scripts can pressure teens into engaging in sexual activities to feel normal or fit in.
Factors that increase abstinence (not having sex):
High Intelligence: Teens with high rather than average intelligence test scores more often delayed sex, partly because they considered possible negative consequences and were more focused on future achievement than on here-and-now pleasures.
Religious Affiliation & Engagement: Actively religious teens more often reserve sexual activity for adulthood or long-term relationships.
Presence of Father: Close family attachments—as in families that eat together and where parents know their teens’ activities and friends— predict later sexual initiation.
Service Learning Participation: Several experiments have found that teens volunteering as tutors or teachers’ aides, or participating in community projects, had lower pregnancy rates than did comparable teens randomly assigned to control conditions.Â
Cognitive DevelopmentÂ
Jean Piaget
Once conscious, how did your mind grow? Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget spent his life searching for the answer. He studied children’s cognition—all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. His interest in children’s cognitive development began in 1920, when he was in Paris developing questions for children’s intelligence tests. While administering the tests, Piaget became intrigued by children’s wrong answers, which were often strikingly similar among same-age children. Where others saw childish mistakes, Piaget saw intelligence at work. Such accidental discoveries are among the fruits of psychological science.
Piaget’s core idea was that our intellectual progression reflects an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences. To this end, the maturing brain builds schemas, concepts or mental molds into which we pour our experiences.
To explain how we use and adjust our schemas, Piaget proposed two more concepts. First, we assimilate new experiences—we interpret them in terms of our current understandings (schemas). Having a simple schema for dog, for example, a toddler may call all four-legged animals dogs. But as we interact with the world, we also adjust, or accommodate, our schemas to incorporate information provided by new experiences. Thus, the child soon learns that the original dog schema is too broad and accommodates by refining the category. By adulthood we have built countless schemas, ranging from cats and dogs to our concept of love.
In other words, assimilation is forcing a new experience to fit into an existing box, accommodation is altering the box to fit the new experience.Â
Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting with it. Their minds experience spurts of change, followed by greater stability as they move from one cognitive plateau to the next, each with distinctive characteristics that permit specific kinds of thinking. In Piaget’s view, cognitive development consisted of four major stages:
Sensorimotor
In the sensorimotor stage, from birth to nearly age 2, babies take in the world through their senses and actions—through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. As their hands and limbs begin to move, they learn to make things happen.
Sensorimotor → senses & movement
Lack of object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived (gained around 6-8 months)
Stranger anxiety: fear and apprehension infants commonly display around those unfamiliar to them (starts at around 8 months of age)
Preoperational
Piaget believed that until about age 6 or 7, children are in a preoperational stage—able to represent things with words and images but too young to perform mental operations (such as imagining an action and mentally reversing it).
Preop → like before a surgery, you have to have the knowledge to continue
Pretend play
Egocentrism: a child’s difficulty in seeing another’s point of view (not the same as egotistical)
Lack of conservation: the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in form (mastered around age 6)
Concrete Operational
By about age 7, said Piaget, children enter the concrete operational stage. Given concrete (physical) materials, they begin to grasp operations such as conservation. Understanding that change in form does not mean change in quantity, they can mentally pour milk back and forth between glasses of different shapes.Â
Concrete → hardening, concepts get harder
Mathematical formulas & transformations → 1 + 3 = 3 + 1 (a.k.a. reversibility)Â
Start to understand puns and elements of sarcasm
Formal Operational
By age 12, our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving actual experience) to encompass abstract thinking (involving imagined realities and symbols). As children approach adolescence, said Piaget, they can ponder hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences: If this, then that. Systematic reasoning, what Piaget called formal operational thinking, is now within their grasp. Although full-blown logic and reasoning await adolescence, the rudiments of formal operational thinking begin earlier than Piaget realized.Â
Formal → like a formal dance, those only start in middle school
Abstract thought
Potential for moral & logical reasoning
Evaluating Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory:
He underestimates the abilities of children.
Information-Processing Model says children do not learn in stages but rather a gradual continuous growth.
Studies show that our attention span grows gradually over time
Piaget’s stage theory has been influential globally, validating a number of ideas regarding growth and development in many cultures and societies. However, today’s researchers believe the following:
Development is a continuous process.
Children express their mental abilities and operations at an earlier age.
Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition.
Lev Vygotsky's Social Learning Theory
As Piaget was forming his theory of cognitive development, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky was also studying how children think and learn. Where Piaget emphasized how the child’s mind grows through interaction with the physical environment, Vygotsky emphasized how the child’s mind grows through interaction with the social environment. By giving children new words and mentoring them, parents and teachers provide what we now call a temporary scaffold (a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking) from which children can step to higher levels of thinking.
Theory of Mind: people’s ideas about their own and other’s mental states (feelings, perceptions, thoughts, etc.) and the behaviors these might predict
Moral Intuition
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes that much of our morality is rooted in moral intuitions—“quick gut feelings, or affectively laden intuitions.” According to this intuitionist view, the mind makes moral judgments in much the same way that it makes aesthetic judgments—quickly and automatically. Feelings of disgust or of elation trigger moral reasoning, says Haidt.
Our moral thinking and feeling surely affect our moral talk. But sometimes talk is cheap and emotions are fleeting. Morality involves doing the right thing, and what we do also depends on social influences. A big part of moral development is the self-discipline needed to restrain one’s own impulses—to delay small gratifications now to enable bigger rewards later. Our capacity to delay gratification—to decline small rewards now for bigger rewards later—is basic to our future academic, vocational, and social success.Â
Cognitive Decline
As the years pass, recall begins to decline, especially for meaningless information, but recognition memory remains strong. Crystallized intelligence increases with age while fluid intelligence peaks in our 20s and then starts to decline. “Terminal decline” describes the cognitive decline in the final few years of life.Â
Neurocognitive disorders (NCDs), formerly called dementia in older adults, are marked by cognitive deficits. Alzheimer’s disease causes the deterioration of memory, then reasoning.Â
Neurocognitive disorders are those marked by cognitive deficits, often related to Alzheimer’s disease, brain injury or disease, or substance abuse.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques and entailing a progressive decline in memory and cognitive abilities.Â
Developing Language
What is language?
Language is our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. Language serves a variety of purposes:
Form bonds
Promote cooperation
Record history
Represent complex ideas
Theories of Language Development:
Noam Chomsky - Nativist Theory
Universal grammar
Believed we are naturally equipped with a “language acquisition device” that helps us acquire language easily and rapidly but if language acquisition does not occur by a certain time, it may be impossible
B.F. Skinner - Behaviorist Theory
Believed we learned language through imitation & reinforcement
Lev Vygotsky - Sociocultural Theory
Believed we learned language through social interaction
Learning Language
While we are not born with language skills, we slowly acquire them over time. In our first months, we experience receptive language, where we focus on those that are speaking to us and try to respond.Â
At 4 months, we begin babbling - uttering sounds. At 10 months, the babbles sound more like our household’s language. By a year, we know words, and by 2, we can talk in simple two-word phrases (telegraphic speech). From there, our vocabulary rapidly develops.Â
Case Study: "Genie"
Childhood is a critical period for mastering certain aspects of language before the language-learning window gradually closes. Lack of exposure to either spoken or signed language by about age 7, can cause them to lose their ability to master any language. Children exposed to low-quality language—such as 4-year-olds in classrooms with 3-year-olds, or some children from impoverished homes—often display less language skill. We know this because of the case of “feral children” like Genie.
“Genie” was a teen girl discovered in Los Angeles in 1970 who became a crucial case study in linguistics and psychology. After being severely abused and isolated by her father, Genie had minimal human interaction and almost no exposure to language. Upon her discovery, Genie was malnourished and displayed developmental delays, was unable to speak beyond a few simple words and phrases, had a strange, bunny-like walk, and showed signs of profound psychological trauma. After her rescue, Genie became the subject of intense study by psychologists and linguists, particularly to understand the critical period hypothesis in language development—the idea that there is a window in early childhood when the human brain is particularly receptive to acquiring language.
Loss of Language
As previously discussed, there are two specialized regions for language in the brain - Broca’s area & Wernicke’s area. If either of these is damaged, it cause cause aphasia - the impairment of language.Â
Broca’s Aphasia - difficulty with speech production and/or difficulty in putting words together in sentences or even speaking single words, although a person can sing a song
Wernicke’s Aphasia - difficulty with language comprehension; may struggle putting words into meaningful sentences → word salad
Linguistic Determinism
Thinking and language - which comes first? Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed the idea of linguistic determinism - the theory that our language influences the nature of our thought and how we interpret the world around us. If your language doesn’t have a word for something, it is hard for you to think about it. The Hopi tribe do not have a past tense, thus they don’t think about the past. While we have only one word for snow, Eskimo have dozens of different words for snow. Additionally, multilingual speakers report having a different sense of self depending on the language they are using.
Social-Emotional Development
Attachment
One-year-olds typically cling tightly to a parent when they are frightened or expect separation. Reunited after being apart, they often shower the parent with smiles and hugs. This striking parent-infant attachment (an emotional tie with another person, shown in children by seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress on separation) bond is a powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close to their caregivers. Infants normally become attached to those—typically their parents—who they are comfortable and familiar with.Â
Three key studies helped researchers understand the importance of attachment:
Harry Harlow’s Monkey Experiment
Konrad Lorenz’s Imprinting Geese
Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure
Harlow's Monkeys
Harry Harlow, like many other researchers, believed that attachment came from nourishment, believing that we only bond with the caregivers that feed us because they keep us alive. To test this, Harlow designed an experiment in which he took newborn monkeys and placed them with two artificial mothers - one made of wire and one made of cloth. Some monkeys were fed from the cloth mother and some from the wire mother.Â
To Harlow’s surprise, the newborn monkeys favored the cloth mother and when frightened, they always went to the cloth mother, regardless of whether they were fed from it or not. His experiment proved the importance of contact comfort in attachment. Furthermore, when these monkeys were reintroduced to their troop, they struggled to form bonds and were often neglectful and abusive parents, proving deprivation of attachment as a newborn led to problems with relationships later on.Â
Lorenz's Imprinting
In many animals, attachments based on familiarity form during a critical period—an optimal period when certain events must take place to facilitate proper development. For goslings, ducklings, or chicks, that period falls in the hours shortly after hatching, when the first moving object they see is normally their mother. From then on, the young fowl follow her, and her alone.
Konrad Lorenz explored this rigid attachment process, called imprinting (the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life). He wondered: What would ducklings do if he was the first moving creature they observed? What they did was follow him around: Everywhere that Konrad went, the ducks were sure to go. Although baby birds imprint best to their own species, they also will imprint to a variety of moving objects—an animal of another species, a box on wheels, a bouncing ball. Once formed, this attachment is difficult to reverse.
Mary Ainsworth & the Strange Situation
 What accounts for children’s attachment differences? To answer this question, Mary Ainsworth designed the “strange situation” experiment. She observed 1-year-old infants in a strange situation (usually a laboratory playroom) with and without their mothers. Such research has shown that about 60% of infants and young children display secure attachment where, in their mother’s presence they play comfortably, happily exploring their new environment. When she leaves, they become distressed; when she returns, they seek contact with her. Other infants show insecure attachment, marked either by anxiety or by avoidance of trusting relationships. These infants are less likely to explore their surroundings; they may even cling to their mother. When she leaves, they either cry loudly and remain upset or seem indifferent to her departure and return.Â
Like Harlow, Ainsworth’s findings also had implications for future social behavior. Infants with insecure attachment often struggle to form meaningful relationships as adults.Â
Ainsworth and others found that sensitive, responsive mothers—those who noticed what their babies were doing and responded appropriately—had infants who exhibited secure attachment. Insensitive, unresponsive mothers—mothers who attended to their babies when they felt like doing so but ignored them at other times—often had infants who were insecurely attached.
Strange situation: a procedure for studying child-caregiver attachment; a child is placed in an unfamiliar environment while their caregiver leaves and the returns, and the child’s reactions are observed
Secure attachment: demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver, show only temporary distress in their absence, and find comfort in their return
Insecure attachment: demonstrated by infants who display either a clinging, anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment that resists closeness
Temperament: a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity
Attachment & Future Relationships
Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson believed that securely attached children approach life with a sense of basic trust—a sense that the world is predictable and reliable. He attributed basic trust not to environment or inborn temperament, but to early parenting. He theorized that infants blessed with sensitive, loving caregivers form a lifelong attitude of trust rather than fear. Therefore, infancy’s major social achievement is attachment.Â
Formation of the Self
Childhood’s major social achievement is a positive sense of self. By the end of childhood, at about age 12, most children have developed a self-concept—an understanding and assessment of who they are. Their self-esteem is how they feel about who they are. Children’s views of themselves affect their actions. Children who form a positive self-concept are more confident, independent, optimistic, assertive, and sociable.
To refine their sense of identity, adolescents in individualist cultures usually try out different “selves” in different situations. They may act out one self at home, another with friends, and still another at school or online. If two situations overlap—as when a teenager brings new friends home—the discomfort can be considerable.. The teen often wonders, “Which self should I be? Which is the real me?” The eventual resolution is a self-definition that unifies the various selves into a consistent and comfortable sense of who one is—an identity.Â
Identity: our sense of self gained through testing and integrating various roles as an adolescent
Social Identity: our sense of self in relation to our group memberships; the “we” aspect of our self-concept
Parenting Styles
Parents do matter. But parenting wields its largest effects at the extremes: the abused children who become abusive, the deeply loved but firmly handled who become self-confident and socially competent. As children mature, what other experiences do the work of nurturing? At all ages, but especially during childhood and adolescence, we seek to fit in with our groups.
Family environment and parental expectations can affect children’s motivation and future success. Personality, however, is mostly not attributable to the effects of nurture.
As children attempt to fit in with their peers, they tend to adopt their culture—habits, accents, and slang, for example.
By choosing their children’s neighborhoods and schools, parents exert some influence over peer group culture.
Some parents spank, others reason. Some are strict, others are lax. Some show little affection, others liberally hug and kiss. How do parenting-style differences affect children? The most heavily researched aspect of parenting has been how, and to what extent, parents seek to control their children. Parenting styles can be described as a combination of two traits: how responsive and how demanding parents are. Investigators like Diana Baumrind have identified four parenting styles:
Authoritarian parents are coercive. They impose rules and expect obedience.
“Don’t interrupt.” “Keep your room clean.” “Don’t stay out late or you’ll be grounded.” “Why? Because I said so.”
Permissive parents are un-restraining. They make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment.
Negligent parents are uninvolved. They are neither demanding nor responsive. They are careless, inattentive, and do not seek to have a close relationship with their children.
Authoritative parents are confrontive. They are both demanding and responsive. They exert control by setting rules, but, especially with older children, they encourage open discussion and allow exceptions.
Although teens become independent of their parents as they grow older, they nevertheless relate to their parents on a number of things, including religion and career choices. For a some parents and their adolescents, differences lead to real splits and great stress. But most disagreements are at the level of harmless bickering. With sons, the issues often are behavior problems, such as acting out or hygiene; for daughters, the issues commonly involve relationships, such as dating and friendships.Â
Peer approval and relationships are also very important. Adolescence is typically a time of diminishing parental influence and growing peer influence. As they are finding their identity, they want to fit in, and this requires peer approval.Â
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson contended that each stage of life has its own psychosocial task, a crisis that needs resolution. Young children wrestle with issues of trust, then autonomy (independence), then initiative. School-age children strive for competence, feeling able and productive. But for teenagers, the task is to synthesize past, present, and future possibilities into a clearer sense of self. Young adults mature and develop capacity for intimacy (the ability to form close loving relationships), while those in the later stages of adulthood look back on their life and wonder if things could be different.Â
According to Erikson, each stage of life adds a new layer to our personality.Â
Stage One: Trust vs Mistrust - Is my world supportive or unpredictable? → attachment to caregiver
Stage Two: Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt - Can I do things for myself or must I rely on others? → potty training
Stage Three: Initiative vs Guilt - Am I good or bad? → preschool
Stage Four: Competence vs. Inferiority - Am I capable of success? → elementary school
Stage Five: Identity vs Role Confusion - Who am I? → high school
Stage Six: Intimacy vs Isolation - Will I go through my life alone or share it with others? → college, independence, marriage, children
Stage Seven: Generativity vs Stagnation - What do I want to do before I die? → middle adulthood, possibly midlife crisis
Stage Eight: Integrity vs Despair - Have I lived a good life? → retirement
Emerging Adulthood
Our concept our adulthood has shifted through the centuries. In the Middle Ages, it was not uncommon to be married and on your own at 14, while today that’s unthinkable. Then again, when your life expectancy was much shorter, it makes sense to become independent at a younger age. Due to improvements in medicine, nutrition, and understanding of development, we are living longer and have a different idea of what it means to be a teenager or adult.Â
Emerging Adulthood: a period from about age 18 to the mid-20s when many in Western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults
Adults do not progress through an orderly sequence of age-related social stages. Chance events can determine life choices. Evidence does not indicate that adults experience a “midlife crisis” or that distress peaks in midlife. The social clock is a culture’s preferred timing for social events, such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement. Adulthood’s dominant themes are love and work, which Erikson called intimacy and generativity.
Types of Learning
What is learning?
Learning is the process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information or behaviors. As humans, we have to learn to adapt to our environments- knowing when to expect pain, knowing how to act in certain social situations, knowing what behaviors will be rewarded and which will be punished, etc. Both humans and animals learn through association or associative learning - realizing that certain events occur together.Â
Elements of Learning
Stimulus: any event or situation that evokes a response (cause of an action)
Respondent Behavior: behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulusÂ
Operant Behavior: behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences (learning through reinforcement & punishment)
Cognitive Learning: the acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events/others or through language
Acquisition: the initial stage of learning in which one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so the neutral stimulus triggers the unconditioned response
Bell = food
Extinction: the diminishing of a conditioned responseÂ
Pavlov’s dogs are freed from the lab, adopted by nice families, and don’t drool every time a bell rings.
Spontaneous recovery: the reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response
Pavlov’s dogs are living happily on a lovely farm, and find themselves drooling randomly when the farmer rings the dinner bell.Â
Higher-order conditioning: a procedure in which the conditioned stimulus is paired with a new neutral stimulus (as if it were the unconditioned stimulus) creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus
If bell = food, and bell is with light, then light = food
Classical Conditioning
Classical Conditioning
Dr. Ivan Pavlov was a physician studying digestion in dogs who noticed that these dogs would start drooling at the sight of his lab assistants, despite the absence of food. Because they associated food with these assistants, the dogs knew food was coming and responded accordingly. Pavlov found this curious and decided to change his experiments to test the theory of what he called “psychic reflexes”.
Dogs were harnessed and equipped with a mechanism to collect saliva, then presented with a neutral external stimulus (bell/tone), followed immediately by the unconditioned stimulus (food/meat powder). After several repetitions, the dogs were presented with the external stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus to see if there was a response. If there was, the neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus, and their reaction is a conditioned response.Â
His work and findings became the basis for classical conditioning - a type of passive learning in which we link two or more stimuli. It also encouraged the growth of behaviorism - the view that psychology should be an objective science that studies observable actions without reference to internal mental processes.Â
Elements of Classical Conditioning
Unconditioned Stimulus (US): unlearned, naturally occurring cause of behavior
Neutral Stimulus (NS): elicits no response before conditioning
Unconditioned Response (UR): unlearned, naturally occurring behavior
Conditioned Stimulus (CS): learned cause of behavior
Conditioned Response (CR): learned behavior
Examples of Classical Conditioning
"Welcome to Moe's"
When you walk into Moe’s, you are greeted by the phrase “Welcome to Moe’s!”, then hit with the sights, sounds, and smells of food. Later, watching TV at home, you see a commercial where they say “Welcome to Moe’s” and suddenly you’re craving Mexican.Â
Shower Surprise
One day, while taking a shower, someone flushes a toilet, causing the water to become scorching hot. Next time you shower and hear a toilet flush, you quickly hop aside to to avoid the hot spray.Â
More Classical Conditioning
Generalization vs. Discrimination
Stimulus generalization is the tendency for stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit a similar response.
Pavlov’s dogs drooling to all bell-like sounds - telephones, door bells, dinner bells, etc.
Stimulus discrimination is the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.
Pigeons trained to respond to a red light will not respond to a green light.
The Case of Little Albert
John B. Watson, a behaviorist, wanted to study if specific fears could be conditioned. In his experiment, Watson took the infant child of his graduate student nicknamed “Little Albert” and placed a white rat in his lap. Like most infants, Albert was amused by the creature. Watson then took it away, and when Little Albert reached for it, Watson struck a hammer against a steel bar, creating a loud noise that scared Little Albert (as it would most infants), who burst into tears. After a few rounds of this, Little Albert would cry at the sight of the rat, but also all things white and fuzzy - rabbits, dogs, coats, even Santa Claus. This experiment proved that fear can indeed be conditioned. This type of classical conditioning is also known as aversive conditioning.
Biological ConstraintsÂ
More than the early behaviorists realized, an animal’s capacity for conditioning is limited by biological constraints. For example, each species’ predispositions prepare it to learn the associations that enhance its survival—a phenomenon called preparedness. Environments are not the whole story. Biology matters.
John Garcia was among those who challenged the prevailing idea that all associations can be learned equally well. While researching the effects of radiation on laboratory animals, Garcia and Robert Koelling noticed that rats began to avoid drinking water from the plastic bottles in radiation chambers because it made them sick. Their findings came to be known as taste aversion - when exposed to the sight or smell of something that is associated with nausea or vomiting, one feels ill and is unlikely to expose themselves to it again.
Operant Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which a behavior becomes more likely to recur if followed by a reinforcer or less likely to recur if followed by a punisher.
This is based on Edward Thorndike’s law of effect - the principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner, the “Father of Behaviorism” or “Father of Operant Conditioning”, elaborated on the law of effect, studying how pigeons and rats learn through reinforcement. Â
He crafted an operant chamber, or Skinner box, which contained a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain food or water.Â
Reinforcement
In operant conditioning, reinforcement is any event that strengthens (or increases the likelihood) the behavior that follows.
positive reinforcement: increasing behaviors by presenting rewarding stimuli
Getting good grades encourages you to study, getting complimented on your looks encourages you to dress a certain way
negative reinforcement: increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing aversive stimuli
Putting on a coat to stop feeling cold, cleaning your room to get rid of the mess/smell
NOT THE SAME AS PUNISHMENT
Primary Reinforcers are innately rewarding by satisfying a biological need (food, water, shelter, etc.).
Conditioned (Secondary) Reinforcers are those that gain power through association with a primary reinforcer (money to buy food, water, shelter, etc.).
Reinforcement Schedules are patterns that define how often a desired response will be reinforced.
Continuous reinforcement - the desired behavior is reinforced every time
Used in the acquisition stage
Learning occurs faster, but doesn’t last as long
Partial or intermittent reinforcement - the desired behavior is reinforced only some of the time
Used once behavior is mastered
Learning occurs slowly, but lasts longer
Token economy: a system in which the learner earns tokens by engaging in a targeted behavior and those tokens can be exchanged for a reward.
Schedules of Reinforcement
Fixed means a set number, variable means a random or changing number. Interval requires time to pass, ratio requires actions to be taken.
Fixed ratio - a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a desired behavior only after a specific number of actions have been completed (ex. Getting a bonus for every three cars sold)
Fixed interval - a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a desired behavior only after a specific amount of time has passed (ex. Getting a paycheck every week)
Variable ratio - a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a desired behavior only after a specific number of actions have been completed (ex. Slot machines)
Variable interval - a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a desired behavior only after a unpredictable amount of time has passed (ex. Cooking times)
Punishment
Reinforcement increases the likelihood that a response will happen, while punishment decreases it. Punishment is any event that tends to decrease the behavior that it follows.
Positive punishment - administration of an aversive stimulus
Traffic tickets, given extra chores
Negative punishment - removal of a pleasant/rewarding stimulus
Fines (losing money), losing car/phone privileges, getting grounded (losing freedom)
Shaping
Shaping is the process in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer (successive approximations) to the desired behavior (a.k.a. training).
For example, we you teach a puppy to sit, first they get a treat just for coming to you when called. When that is mastered, they get a treat for standing still. Finally, after a few times repeating the word “sit” and pushing their bottom down, they finally master the desired behavior of sitting when told to do so.Â
To signal a response will be reinforced, discriminative stimuli (a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement) are often used in the shaping process. In later versions of Skinner’s operant chambers, an electrified grid was added to elicit a light shock to the animals as an aversive stimulus. To warn the rats of the impending shock, a tone or light would come on. The shock would stop if a button was pressed. Soon the rats learned to press the button as soon as the light came on to avoid the shock.Â
Escape learning: a type of negative reinforcement in which a behavior that removes an unpleasant stimulus is increased
Faking sick to leave a social gathering, sneaking out the back of the restaurant to get away from a bad date
Avoidance learning: a type of negative reinforcement in which a behavior that prevents removes an unpleasant stimulus is increased
Claiming your parents won’t allow you to attend the social gathering, ghosting people you are not interested in
Beyond instinct, we cannot dismiss all cognition from the learning process, as there is evidence that mental processes play a huge role in acquisition of knowledge.
Latent learning: learning that occurs but is not apparent until there is an incentive to demonstrate it → Edward Tolman’s Maze Study
Cognitive map - a mental representation of the layout of one’s environment
If you were blindfolded, you could easily navigate through your home. You never studied the blueprints, but you know the layout of your house.Â
Insight learning: a sudden realization of a problem’s solution
Observational Learning
What is observational learning?
Observational learning is the acquisition of knowledge through watching others. Children often mimic the actions of their family members and peers, who act as models. Modeling is the process of observing and imitating a specific behavior. This process is accomplished through the use of mirror neurons, which fire when we observe an action and/or attempt to perform it. This is how we learn to perform certain tasks, but also how we learn things like empathy.
Albert Bandura
To test the effectiveness of observational learning, Albert Bandura devised an experiment in which children watched adults play with various toys in a room, one of which was an inflatable clown doll named Bobo. If the children witnessed the adults playing nicely with Bobo, they would do so when they entered the toy room. If the children witnessed the adults beating, kicking, and mistreating Bobo, they would mimic those actions as well. Bandura’s studies proved that much of the behavior we learn, good and bad, is learned through observation and imitation.
The good news is that people’s modeling of prosocial (positive, helpful) behaviors can have prosocial effects. Many business organizations effectively use behavior modeling to help new employees learn communications, sales, and customer service skills. Trainees gain these skills faster when they are able to observe the skills being modeled effectively by experienced workers (or actors simulating them).
The bad news is that observational learning may also have antisocial effects. This helps us understand why abusive parents might have aggressive children, why children who are lied to become more likely to cheat and lie, and why many men who beat their wives had wife-battering fathers. Critics note that such aggressiveness could be genetic. But with monkeys, we know it can be environmental. In study after study, young monkeys separated from their mothers and subjected to high levels of aggression grew up to be aggressive themselves. The lessons we learn as children are not easily replaced as adults, and they are sometimes visited on future generations.
Unit 3 Vocab
accommodation: in the context of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the process of modifying existing cognitive schemas (mental structures) or creating new ones to incorporate new information or experiences.
acquisition: the initial stage of learning when a response is first established and gradually strengthened through reinforcement
adolescence: the transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the teenage years, marked by puberty, identity exploration, and increased autonomy.
adulthood: the stage of life after adolescence, characterized by full development and maturity, typically defined by milestones such as career establishment and family formation.
adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): Potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood, such as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction.
aggression: behavior that is intended to cause harm or injury to another person or object
Albert Bandura: a psychologist known for his contributions to social learning theory and the concept of self-efficacy; conducted the famous Bobo doll experiment, which demonstrated observational learning and the influence of role models on behavior.
Alfred Kinsey: a biologist and sexologist known for his pioneering research on human sexuality; provided extensive data on sexual behavior in American men and women.
Alice Eagly: a psychologist known for her research on gender roles and social psychology. She has contributed to the understanding of gender stereotypes and the role of socialization in shaping behavior.
animism: the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action, common in young children.
androgyny: the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics or qualities in an individual, challenging traditional gender roles and stereotypes.
antisocial behavior: actions that violate social norms, disregard the rights of others, and often involve aggression, deceit, or rule-breaking.
aphasia: a language disorder caused by damage to the brain, typically resulting in difficulty with language production, comprehension, or both.
asexual: a lack of sexual attraction to others or a lack of interest in sexual activity.
assimilation: the process of incorporating new information or experiences into existing cognitive schemas or mental structures
associative learning: a type of learning that involves forming associations or connections between stimuli and responses, such as classical and operant conditioning
attachment: the emotional bond that forms between an infant and their primary caregiver, typically characterized by proximity seeking, distress upon separation, and a sense of security.
authoritarian parenting: strict parenting style characterized by high demands and low responsiveness; parents expect obedience and use punishment.
authoritative parenting: a parenting style characterized by high demands and high responsiveness; parents set clear standards and are supportive.
B. F. Skinner: a psychologist known for his work in behaviorism and operant conditioning; developed the operant chamber, a controlled environment for studying behavior, and introduced concepts such as reinforcement and schedules of reinforcement.
babbling stage: a developmental milestone in infancy when infants produce repetitive, nonsensical sounds as they experiment with vocalizations
basic trust: according to Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory, the sense of security and confidence in the world that develops during infancy through consistent and nurturing caregiving
behaviorism: a psychological approach that emphasizes the study of observable behavior and the role of environmental stimuli in shaping behavior, while often disregarding internal mental processes
Benjamin Lee Whorf: a linguist known for his hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which suggests that the structure of language influences the way individuals perceive and think about the world
biological preparedness: the idea that people and animals are inherently inclined to form associations between certain stimuli and responses.
Broca's area: a region of the brain located in the frontal lobe, responsible for speech production and language processing
Carl Wernicke: a neurologist known for identifying Wernicke's area, a brain region associated with language comprehension and processing
Carol Gilligan: a psychologist known for her work on gender and moral development. She criticized Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development for its focus on justice and argued for a more relational approach to ethics
chronosystem: the pattern of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as socio-historical circumstances.
classical conditioning: a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response
conditioning: the process of learning associations between environmental events and behavioral responses.
cognition: mental processes such as perception, thinking, memory, and problem-solving
cognitive map: a mental representation of one's spatial environment, including landmarks, routes, and relationships between locations
cognitive learning: learning that involves mental processes such as attention, perception, memory, and problem-solving, as opposed to purely behavioral responses
concrete operational stage: in Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the third stage, occurring from about 7 to 11 years old, characterized by the ability to think logically about concrete events and grasp concrete analogies.
conditioned reinforcer: a previously neutral stimulus that becomes reinforcing through its association with a primary reinforcer.
conditioned response: a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus, acquired through classical conditioning
conditioned stimulus: a previously neutral stimulus that, after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus, elicits a conditioned response.
conservation: the understanding that certain properties of objects, such as quantity, volume, or number, remain constant despite changes in their physical appearance.
continuous reinforcement schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which every occurrence of the desired behavior is reinforced
critical period: a developmental stage during which an organism is particularly sensitive to environmental influences and experiences, which are necessary for the normal development of certain abilities or behaviors
cross-sectional study: a research method that compares individuals of different ages or developmental stages at a single point in time to examine age-related differences
crystallized intelligence: the ability to use learned knowledge and experience.
dementia: group of symptoms affecting memory, thinking, and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily functioning.
developmental psychology: the branch of psychology that studies the physical, cognitive, and social changes that occur throughout the lifespan, from infancy to old age
Diana Baumrind: a psychologist known for her research on parenting styles. She identified three main parenting styles -authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive.
discrimination: the ability to respond differently to similar but distinct stimuli, or to treat individuals or groups differently based on prejudiced beliefs or attitudes
discriminative stimulus: a cue or signal that indicates the presence of reinforcement for a particular behavior
ecological systems theory: proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner, this theory emphasizes the influence of various environmental systems (such as family, school, community) on individual development
Edward C. Tolman: a psychologist known for his research on cognitive maps and latent learning, which demonstrated that learning can occur without reinforcement and may not be immediately evident in behavior.
Edward L. Thorndike: a psychologist known for his research on animal learning and the law of effect, which states that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to be repeated.
egocentrism: the inability to take another person's perspective or understand that others may have different thoughts, feelings, or beliefs.
emerging adulthood: a developmental stage proposed by Jeffrey Arnett, characterized by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, and possibilities, typically occurring in the late teens and early twenties.
Erik Erikson: a psychologist known for his theory of psychosocial development, which describes eight stages of development spanning from infancy to old age, each characterized by a unique psychosocial crisis or challenge.
estrogen: a hormone primarily associated with the development of female secondary sexual characteristics and the regulation of the menstrual cycle.
exosystem: the larger social system in which the individual does not function directly but which affects the person's microsystem, such as a parent's workplace.
extinction: the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the unconditioned stimulus.
fetal alcohol syndrome: a group of physical and mental birth defects that occur in children whose mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy.
fixed-interval schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which the first response is rewarded only after a specified time interval has elapsed.
fixed-ratio schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which reinforcement is delivered after a fixed number of responses.
fixed schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where rewards are given after a fixed number of responses or a fixed amount of time.
fluid intelligence: the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge.
formal operational stage: In Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the fourth stage, occurring from about age 12 through adulthood, characterized by the ability to think abstractly, reason logically, and engage in hypothetical thinking.
gender: the socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities associated with being male or female, which can vary across different cultures and societies.
gender identity: an individual's personal sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with the sex assigned to them at birth.
gender role: the set of societal expectations, norms, and behaviors that are typically associated with being male or female in a particular culture or society.
gender typing: the process by which individuals acquire behaviors, preferences, and roles that are typically associated with their gender, often through socialization and reinforcement.
generalization: the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to a conditioned stimulus, even if they have not been explicitly paired with the unconditioned stimulus.
grammar: the set of rules and principles that govern the structure, composition, and use of language, including syntax, morphology, and semantics.
habituation: a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated or prolonged exposure, reflecting a form of learning in which the stimulus becomes less novel or salient over time.
Harry Harlow: a psychologist known for his research on attachment and social isolation in rhesus monkeys, particularly his experiments with surrogate mothers made of wire or cloth.
higher-order conditioning: a form of classical conditioning in which a conditioned stimulus is paired with a new neutral stimulus, leading the new stimulus to elicit a conditioned response.
identity: the distinct characteristics, beliefs, values, and experiences that define an individual's sense of self and contribute to their understanding of who they are.
identity achievement: the status of individuals who have explored various identities and made a commitment to one.
identity diffusion: the status of individuals who have neither explored nor made a commitment to any identity.
identity foreclosure: the status of individuals who have made a commitment to an identity without having explored options.
identity moratorium: the status of individuals who are currently exploring various identities but have not yet made a commitment.
imaginary audience: the belief, often held by adolescents, that they are the focus of everyone else's attention and concern.
imprinting: a form of rapid and irreversible learning that occurs during a critical period, typically in young animals, in which they form strong attachments to a specific individual or object.
insight: sudden realization of a problem's solution; a form of problem-solving where the answer seems to pop into the mind.
insecure attachment: a pattern of attachment behavior characterized by anxiety, avoidance, or ambivalence in the relationship between an infant and their caregiver.
instinctive drift: the tendency of animals to revert to innate, instinctual behaviors that interfere with operant conditioning, despite training to the contrary.
intersex: a term used to describe individuals born with variations in sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions of male or female.
interval schedule: schedule of reinforcement where the first response is rewarded after a certain amount of time has passed
intimacy: a close, interpersonal connection characterized by emotional closeness, trust, and vulnerability.
Ivan Pavlov: a Russian physiologist known for his research on classical conditioning, particularly his experiments with dogs, which demonstrated the conditioning of involuntary responses such as salivation.
Jean Piaget: a Swiss psychologist known for his theory of cognitive development, which describes how children actively construct their understanding of the world through a series of developmental stages.
John B. Watson: an American psychologist known as the founder of behaviorism and for his famous Little Albert experiment, which demonstrated classical conditioning in humans.
John Garcia: a psychologist known for his research on taste aversion learning, which showed that animals are more likely to associate illness with tastes that are novel or unusual.
Konrad Lorenz: an Austrian ethologist known for his research on imprinting and animal behavior, particularly with geese and ducks.
language: a system of communication consisting of symbols, such as words and gestures, that convey meaning and allow for the expression of thoughts, ideas, and emotions.
latent learning: a form of learning that occurs without reinforcement and may not be immediately evident in behavior, but becomes apparent when there is an incentive or motivation to demonstrate it.
law of effect: proposed by Edward L. Thorndike, this states that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to be repeated, while behaviors followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.
learned helplessness: condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed.
learning: the process of acquiring new knowledge, skills, behaviors, or attitudes through experience, instruction, or observation.
Lev Vygotsky: Soviet psychologist known for his sociocultural theory of cognitive development, which emphasizes the role of social interaction and cultural context in shaping cognitive growth.
linguistic determinism: the hypothesis that the structure of language influences or determines the way individuals perceive and think about the world.
linguistic relativism: the idea that differences in language structure or vocabulary can lead to differences in thought and perception across cultures.
longitudinal study: a research method that follows the same group of individuals over an extended period of time to examine developmental changes and continuity across the lifespan.
Margaret Harlow: a psychologist known for her research on attachment and maternal deprivation, conducted in collaboration with her husband, Harry.
Mary Ainsworth: a psychologist known for her research on attachment theory and the development of the "Strange Situation" procedure to assess attachment styles in infants.
macrosystem: the broader cultural context, including societal values, laws, and customs.
maturation: the biologically programmed process of growth and development that unfolds over time, leading to changes in physical, cognitive, and social functioning.
menarche: the first occurrence of menstruation in females, typically occurring during puberty.
menopause: the natural cessation of menstruation and reproductive function in females, typically occurring around middle age.
mesosystem: the interconnections between the microsystems, such as the relationship between family experiences and school experiences.
microsystem: the immediate environment in which a person interacts, such as family, school, and peers.
mirror neurons: neurons that fire both when an individual performs an action and when they observe someone else performing the same action, suggesting a role in empathy, imitation, and social learning.
modeling: a form of observational learning in which individuals learn by observing and imitating the behaviors of others.
morpheme: the smallest unit of language that carries meaning, such as words, prefixes, suffixes, or grammatical markers.
negative punishment: the removal of a desired stimulus after a behavior to decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.
negative reinforcement: the removal or avoidance of an aversive stimulus, which increases the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
neutral stimulus: a stimulus that initially does not elicit a response, but can become a conditioned stimulus through association with an unconditioned stimulus.
Noam Chomsky: a linguist, philosopher, and cognitive scientist known for his theories of generative grammar and universal grammar, which propose innate linguistic structures and rules underlying all human languages.
object permanence: the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched, typically developed during the sensorimotor stage of Piaget's theory.
observational learning: a form of learning in which individuals acquire new behaviors or information by observing and imitating others, without direct reinforcement.
one-word stage: the one-word stage, also known as the holophrastic stage, is a developmental stage in language acquisition during which children typically use single words to convey entire meanings or concepts.
operant behavior: behavior that operates on the environment to produce consequences, which in turn affect the likelihood of the behavior occurring again in the future.
operant chamber: also known as a Skinner box, a controlled environment used in operant conditioning experiments to study animal behavior, typically equipped with levers or buttons for the animal to press in order to receive reinforcement.
operant conditioning: a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened or weakened by the consequences that follow it, such as reinforcement or punishment.
overgeneralization: the application of a grammatical rule in cases where it doesn't apply, often seen in children's language development.
partial (intermittent) reinforcement schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which only some occurrences of the desired behavior are reinforced, leading to slower extinction but greater resistance to extinction over time.
Paul Broca: French neurologist known for his discovery of Broca's area in the brain, which is associated with language production and speech.
permissive parenting: lenient parenting style characterized by low demands and high responsiveness; parents are indulgent and may avoid confrontation.
personal fable: the belief held by many adolescents that they are unique and invincible.
phoneme the smallest distinctive sound unit in a language, which can differentiate words and change their meanings.
positive punishment: the presentation of an aversive stimulus after a behavior to decrease the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.
positive reinforcement: the presentation of a desirable stimulus following a behavior, which increases the likelihood of that behavior being repeated in the future.
preoperational stage: in Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the second stage, occurring from about 2 to 7 years old, characterized by symbolic thought, egocentrism, and the use of language and imagination.
preparedness: the biological predisposition to learn certain associations more easily than others due to their relevance to survival or evolutionary significance.
primary reinforcer: a stimulus that is inherently rewarding or satisfying, such as food, water, or relief from pain, without the need for learning.
primary sex characteristics: the physical structures and organs directly involved in reproduction, such as the reproductive organs and genitalia.
prosocial behavior: actions that benefit others or society as a whole, such as helping, sharing, and cooperation.
psychosocial development: Erikson's theory that personality develops in a series of stages, each involving a specific crisis that must be resolved.
puberty: the period of physical and sexual maturation during adolescence, marked by the development of secondary sex characteristics and reproductive capability.
punishment: a consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behavior recurring, typically by presenting an aversive stimulus or removing a desirable one.
ratio schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after a specific number of responses.
reflex: an automatic, involuntary response to a stimulus.
reinforcement: a consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior recurring, either by presenting a desirable stimulus (positive reinforcement) or removing an aversive one (negative reinforcement).
reinforcement schedule: determines how and when reinforcement is delivered following a behavior, such as fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, or variable interval.
relational aggression: a form of aggression that involves damaging or manipulating social relationships, such as spreading rumors or social exclusion.
respondent behavior: behavior that is automatically elicited by a stimulus, such as reflexes or physiological responses.
reversibility: the understanding that objects can be changed and then returned back to their original form or condition, an important concept in Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
Robert Rescorla: a psychologist known for his research on classical conditioning and the contingency model of conditioning, which emphasizes the importance of the predictive relationship between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.
role: a set of expected behaviors, obligations, and responsibilities associated with a particular status or position in society.
rooting reflex: a newborn's built-in reaction that occurs when the infant's cheek is stroked, resulting in the baby turning its head toward the touch, looking for something to suck.
scaffold: the support or guidance provided to learners to help them acquire new skills or knowledge, gradually reducing as the learner becomes more competent.
schema: a mental framework or organized pattern of thought that helps individuals interpret and understand information about the world.
secondary sex characteristics: physical features that develop during puberty but are not directly involved in reproduction, such as body hair, breast development, and voice changes.
secure attachment: a healthy and positive emotional bond between an infant and their primary caregiver, characterized by trust, comfort, and a sense of security.
self-concept: an individual's perception and evaluation of themselves, including beliefs, attitudes, and self-awareness.
semantics: the meaning of words and sentences; the aspect of language concerned with meaning.
sensorimotor stage: the first stage of cognitive development in Jean Piaget's theory, occurring from birth to about 2 years old, characterized by the infant's exploration of the world through sensory experiences and motor actions.
separation anxiety: distress shown by infants when a primary caregiver leaves, reflecting attachment bonds.
sex: biological characteristics that distinguish males and females, typically based on anatomy, chromosomes, and reproductive organs
sexual aggression: behavior that involves using coercion, force, or manipulation to engage in unwanted sexual activity with another person.
sexual orientation: an individual's enduring pattern of romantic, emotional, and sexual attractions to others, which may be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, among other identities.
sexuality: a person's sexual orientation, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and values related to sex and intimacy.
shaping: a technique used in operant conditioning to gradually modify behavior by reinforcing successive approximations toward a desired behavior.
social clock: the culturally prescribed timeline for major life events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement, which influences individuals' expectations and judgments about the timing of these events.
social identity: the part of an individual's self-concept that is based on their identification with a particular social group, such as ethnicity, nationality, religion, or occupation.
social learning theory: proposed by Albert Bandura, this idea emphasizes the role of observation, imitation, and modeling in learning, suggesting that individuals learn through observing others' behavior and its consequences.
social script: a set of expected behaviors, actions, and responses that guide interactions in specific social situations, such as greetings, conversations, or dating rituals.
spermarche: the onset of sperm production and ejaculation in males during puberty.
spontaneous recovery: the reappearance of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a period of time without reinforcement.
stimulus: any object, event, or experience that evokes a response from an organism, whether it's biological or psychological.
strange situation: a laboratory procedure developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess the quality of attachment between an infant and their caregiver, based on the infant's reactions to separations and reunions with the caregiver in a novel environment.
stranger anxiety: the fear or wariness that infants typically display when encountering unfamiliar people, usually beginning around 6 to 8 months of age.
superstition: a behavior that is repeated because it appears to produce reinforcement, even though it is actually unnecessary.
syntax: the set of rules that governs the structure of sentences in a language.
taste aversion: a learned avoidance of a particular food that develops after a negative experience, such as illness, associated with that food.
telegraphic speech: a stage of language development in which young children speak using short, simple sentences that mainly consist of nouns and verbs, omitting articles, prepositions, and other grammatical elements.
temperament: an individual's characteristic patterns of mood, activity level, emotional reactivity, and attention span, which are relatively stable over time and across situations.
teratogens: substances or environmental factors that can cause birth defects or developmental abnormalities in the embryo or fetus, such as drugs, alcohol, or certain medications.
testosterone: a hormone primarily associated with male development and reproductive functions, such as the development of secondary sex characteristics and sperm production.
theory of mind: the ability to understand and attribute mental states, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, to oneself and others, which is crucial for social cognition and perspective-taking.
two-word stage: a developmental milestone in language acquisition during which children begin to combine two words to form simple phrases or sentences, typically occurring around 18 to 24 months of age.
unconditioned response: an automatic and unlearned response to a stimulus, such as a reflex, that occurs naturally without prior conditioning.
variable schedule: a schedule of reinforcement where rewards are given after an unpredictable number of responses or an unpredictable amount of time.
visual cliff: an experiment designed to assess an infant's depth perception by using a glass-covered platform that appears to drop off sharply.
unconditioned stimulus: a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response without prior learning or conditioning.
universal grammar: a theory proposed by Noam Chomsky, suggesting that all human languages share a common underlying structure and set of principles, which are innate and genetically programmed.
variable-interval schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which reinforcement is delivered after varying time intervals, with the average time between reinforcements remaining consistent.
variable-ratio schedule: a reinforcement schedule in which reinforcement is delivered after a variable number of responses, with the average number of responses required for reinforcement remaining consistent.
Wernicke's area: a region of the brain located in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and processing.
X chromosome: one of the two sex chromosomes, typically found in pairs in females and singly in males, carrying genes that determine various traits and characteristics.
Y chromosome: one of the two sex chromosomes, typically found singly in males and absent in females, carrying genes related to male development and sex determination.
zone of proximal development (ZPD): Vygotsky's concept of the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can do with help.