Psychology 47.260

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT I

Fall  2003

Study Guide for material covered by Exam I

 

Use these questions in addition to the online quizzes to guide your studying.  The material covered in class should be used to focus your reading and studying of the material in the text.  

  1. What are the major historical antecedents of modern developmental psychology?  What were the differences between Locke's and Rousseau's views of the child?  How did Darwin contribute to moving the field out of philosophy and into science?  

  2. What are the major methods of study in developmental psychology?  Be able to distinguish experimental from non-experimental methods and the types of conclusions supported by these approaches.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional, longitudinal and cohort sequential designs?

  3. What are the major theoretical approaches to developmental psychology and who are the major theorists associated with them (e.g., Piaget, Freud, Erikson, Skinner, Bronfenbrenner).  Know the key concepts in each of these theories, including:  id, ego, superego, assimilation, accommodation, positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, bidirectional influence, microsystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and mesosystem.

  4. What are the characteristics of stage theories that are common to stage theories across different domains of development (e.g., Piaget's cognitive theory,  Erikson's psychosocial theory, and Freud's psychosexual theory).

  5. What is the difference between a sensitive and critical period?

  6. What are the major principles and stages of prenatal development?  What have we learned about development from studies of prenatal teratogens?  How does prenatal gender development illustrate the complexity of genetic and environmental contributions to phenotype (note:  to be covered in class lecture, not book)?

  7. What have we learned about the contributions of biology and environment to development from studies of twins and of children who have been adopted into families to whom they are not biologically related?  What are types of gene-environment interaction? How do the X and Y genes on the sex chromosome differ and what are the implications?

9/22/04