Developmental Psychology
Exam 1 Review
Life-Span Perspective
• Continuity: growth is gradual
o How people change over life span
o Developmental change not discrete
o Lifelong
• Multidirectional: some traits appear
...
Developmental Psychology
Exam 1 Review
Life-Span Perspective
• Continuity: growth is gradual
o How people change over life span
o Developmental change not discrete
o Lifelong
• Multidirectional: some traits appear and disappear
o Simple growth, radical transformation, improvement decline
o Stability, stages and continuity-day to day, year to year, generation to generation
o Direction of life and characteristics follows distinct pattern
o Loss/abilities of skills (ex. Babies begin talking, lose ability to distinguish sound,
adults retire
o Growth, maintenance, regulation of loss
• Multicontextual
o Physical surrounding (climate, noise, pop, density)
o Family configurations (marries, single)
o Ecological systems approach; affected by many social contexts and interpersonal interactions
o Immediate surroundings (family, peers) microsystems
o Ecosystems (school/church)
o Microsystems (larger social setting, cultural values, econ/politics)
o Socioeconomic and historical explanation now
• Plasticity
o Change can Occur @ any time but to varying degrees
Developmental Research Methods
– Longitudinal Design (adv. and disadvantages)
▪ Advantages: follow same S’s over time, no worry about inter-subject variability
▪ Disadvantages: takes a long time
▪ Same people over time
▪ May have other interests so they stop doing it
▪ Whether its possible or not
▪ Attrition= people disappear, draws problems and skew results
– Cross-sectional Design
▪ Advantages: less time, get done without attrition
▪ Disadvantages: worry about differences between the groups
▪ Cohort effect (pre existing differences due to age differences e.g. generation gap)
▪ Things happen outside of experiment
▪ Randomization
▪ External historical event that others didn't’t experience
– Sequential design hybrid of first 2
▪ Get advantages of both
▪ Follow one group over time
▪ Compare this group to another age group
– Non-experimental designs
▪ Research without proper controls or an independent variable
▪ Correlation
• Measure of the strength of the relationship between 2 or more variables
• E.g. strong correlation between ice creams sales and violent crime
• Cant infer any causality
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