Exam #4 Study Guide

Study Guide Chapter 12

• Describe four broad issues that guide developmental research.
• Explain how cross-sectional, longitudinal, and sequential designs differ.
• What determines the sex of a child? How do STDs, alcohol, and other drugs affect prenatal development? Identify other broad classes of teratogens.
• Describe the three cognitive processes and four stages of cognitive development outlined by Piaget, and describe research that supports and contradicts these ideas. Describe assimilation and accommodation. How are they related to cognitive development? How do infants develop cognitively during the sensorimotor stage? Identify some achievements and limitations of the preoperational stage. How does thinking change during the concrete and formal operational stages? In what major ways does research support and contradict Piaget’s basic ideas?
• Describe how Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and information-processing approaches challenge Piaget’s views. What is the so-called zone of proximal development, and why is it important?
• Describe the various types of temperament and discuss whether infant temperament predicts behaviors observed in later childhood and adulthood.
• What does Erikson’s model of psychosocial development imply regarding the stability of personality?
• How did Harlow demonstrate the importance of contact comfort? Differentiate between stranger and separation anxiety. What is the “strange situation”? Describe the types of attachments identified by this procedure. Does day care impair infants’ attachment? Does it seem to have any long-term effects on children?
• In the short and long term, how do children generally respond to parental divorce? What factors enhance their adjustment to divorce and remarriage?
• Outline parenting styles associated with the most and least positive child outcomes What parenting styles are associated with the most and least positive child outcomes?
• How do the preconventional, conventional, and postconventional stages of moral reasoning differ? What aspects of Kohlberg’s model have been supported? What are its limitations?
• Discuss how adolescents’ reasoning abilities change, and the ways in which their thinking is egocentric. Identify some of the different ways that adolescents approach the challenge of establishing an identity. To what extent are parent–teen relationships characterized by Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”)? Does this seem to hold true across different ethnic groups?
• Discuss some of the factors people consider in defining themselves as adults.
• Describe the cognitive and emotional changes associated with various forms of dementia.
• According to Erikson, what are the three major developmental challenges of adulthood?
• How does marital satisfaction typically change over time? What major events are associated with these changes?
• Why is it incorrect to say that there is a “normal” or “proper” way to confront death?

Study Guide Chapter 13

• Describe Freud’s structures of personality, their operating principles, and how they interact with one another.
• Describe Freud’s structures of personality, their operating principles, and how they interact with one another. How and why do defense mechanisms develop? What specific forms do they take? How does each of Freud’s psychosexual stages contribute to adult personality? hat are the major difficulties in testing psychoanalytic theory? What is the current status of unconscious processes and psychosexual development?
• What is meant by self-actualization? How does this concept conflict with Freud’s conception of human nature? Describe the roles of self-consistency and congruence in Rogers’s self-theory. How do these concepts relate to adjustment? How do conditions of worth develop, and how can they hinder adjustment?
• How do differences in self-esteem affect behavior? What conditions affect self-esteem development? According to research by Josephs, Bosson, and Jacobs (2003), how is low self-esteem maintained over time?
• List the strengths and weaknesses of the phenomenological and humanistic approaches to personality.
• What is factor analysis, and how is it used to identify personality traits? Describe Cattell’s factor-analytic approach to measuring personality traits. What does “OCEAN” stand for in the Five Factor model?
• What does research show regarding the assumption of stability of the personality across time and in various situations? What do studies of twins suggest about the respective roles of (a) genetic factors; (b) the family environment; and (c) the individual environment in personality traits?
• Describe the major distinction between behavioral theories of personality and the psychodynamic, humanistic, and trait theories of personality.
• Describe Rotter’s concept of the locus of control and how it affects behavior.
• What is self-efficacy? What four sources of information influence one’s efficacy beliefs?
• How do the personality perspectives differ in terms of (a) the structure of personality; (b) major personality processes; (c) personality development; and (d) the roots of maladjustment?
• Outline the various dimensions of culture that can affect personality development.
• Describe the two characteristics that personality measures must have in order to be scientifically useful. Compare the rational-theoretical and empirical approaches to developing personality roles. What are the assumptions underlying projective tests? Describe two personality scales and two projective tests that are widely used.