AP PSYCH REVIEW
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
2013-2014
(7 – 9 %)
 Key Names
Konrad Lorenz
Harry Harlow
Mary Ainsworth
Diana Baumrind
Lev Vygotsky
Sigmund Freud
Erik Erikson
Jean Piaget
Alfred Binet
Lawrence Kohlberg
Carol Gilligan
 The Basics
o Developmental psychology focuses on how our behaviors and thoughts
change throughout ones lifespan
o The nature v. nurture debate is a BIG concept here
o Research methods
 Cross-sectional  participants of different age groups are
compared to see how certain variables change over a lifespan
 Produce quick results
 Must take in to account historical events that can account
for change in the results
 Longitudinal research
 Takes place over a long period of time
 Looks at one group of participants over time
 Advantageous as it looks the development of a specific
group
 Prenatal influences
o Teratogens
 Harmful chemical agents to the developing fetus
 The most common is alcohol
 Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) results from the mother
heavily drinking during pregnancy
o Children of with FAS can have small or malformed
skulls, and mental retardation
 Fetal alcohol effect (FAE)  results from the mother
moderately drinking during pregnancy
o No symptoms of FAS
o May develop learning disabilities later in life
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 Motor/Sensory Development (Reflexes)
 The Newborn Senses
o Babies can hear before birth
o Babies prefer sweet tasting foods
o Babies can see 8-12 inches away from birth; everything else is a blur
o By 12 months a baby has the visual acuity of an adult
o Babies prefer to look at symmetrical human-like objects and faces
 Motor Development
o Develops as neurons in our brain connect with one another and become
myelinated
 Roll over 5 ½ months
 Stand 8 months
 Walk  about 15 months
 Parenting
o Attachment Theory
 Konrad Lorenz baby geese and imprinting
 Baby geese will imprint (attach) to their mother or
caregiver immediately after hatching critical period
 Harry Harlow
 Raised baby monkeys with two artificial wire frame figures
made to resemble mother monkey
 One figure was fitted with a bottle the baby monkey could
eat from and the other was wrapped in soft cloth
 When frightened the baby monkeys went to the soft cloth
“mother”
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
Harlow’s study highlighted the importance of contact
during times of fright or distress
 Those “raised” by the wire frame mother alone, became
stressed and frightened when placed into novel situations
 Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Paradigm
 Placed infants in novel (strange) situations
o Secure attachment  66% of cases
 Explored their surroundings with confidence
while the parent was present
 Distressed when the parent left
 Returned to the parent upon their return
o Avoidant attachment  21% of cases
 Resisted being held by the parents and
explored their surroundings
 Did NOT go to their parents for comfort upon
their return
o Anxious/Ambivalent 12% of cases
 May show extreme stress when the parents
left
 Resisted comforting when the parents
returned
o Parenting Styles (Diana Baumrind)
 Authoritarian parents
 Set strict standards for their children
 Obedient attitudes are preferred
 Punishment is used often
 Children of these tend to be distrustful of others
 Permissive parents
 Do not set clear guidelines for their children
 Existing rules are constantly changing or rarely enforced
 Children of these tend to have emotional control issues and
dependency issues
 Authoritative parents
 Have set and consistent standards for behavior
 These standards are reasonable and explained
 Rationales for family rules are discussed
 Encourage the child’s independence, but not violation of the
rules
 These children tend to be more socially capable and then to
perform better academically
 Stage Theories of Development
o Continuity v. discontinuity
 Do we develop continuously from stage to stage, OR do we have
rapid periods of development followed by periods of relatively
little change?
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Biologically our growth is discontinuous
 As infants and adolescents we grow exponentially
 But what about in other periods of our lives?
o Lev Vygotsky’s work answers how we develop cognitively
 Zone of proximal development
 Defined as the range of tasks a child can perform independently
and those they cannot
 Teachers/parents provide “scaffolds” for students to help them
accomplish higher level tasks
 Freud’s Psychosexual Development

o Fixation = a preoccupation with the behaviors associated with any single
stage
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 Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development
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 Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
o Concepts associated with Piaget
o Assimilation  the child encounters new situations and tries to
make them similar to information already stored
o Accommodation the child encounters new information and
creates a new category or schema for that information
 Ex: all four legged creatures are NOT dogs
o Criticism’s of Piaget
o Some children go faster through the stages than Piaget anticipated
o Information processing  states development in children is more
continuous than Piaget estimated
 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral Development
o Sought to describe how our ability to reason ethical situations
changes over our lifetime
o Heinz dilemma
 A man named Heinz makes a moral choice about whether to
steal a drug he cannot afford to save his wife’s life
o The Stages of Moral Development
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o Criticisms of Kohlberg
o Carol Gilligan  pointed out how Kohlberg only studied boys
 Theorized gender-based development creates
differences in our moral views
 Boys have more absolute views of right and wrong
 Girls pay more attention to the situation
 Gender and Development
o Biopsychological (neuropsychological)
 Concentrates on the nature element that produces our gender
role
 Women have larger corpus callosum’s than men
 This difference impacts how left and right hemisphere’s
communicate and coordinate tasks
o Psychodynamic theory
 Gender development is reduced to a competition
 Young boys unconsciously compete with their fathers for the
attention of the mothers
 Girls similarly compete for the attention of the father
 Proper gender development occurs once the same sex child
realizes they cannot compete with their same sex parent
o Social Cognitive Theory
 Concentrate on the effects society and our own thoughts about
gender have on role development
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Look at how we react to boys and girls differently
Boys are encouraged to engage in rough play
Gender schemas are organized so that each gender is
represented by “appropriate” behaviors
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