

Lifespan Development Psychology
Lifespan Development Psychology:
DANTES Final Exam Outline
Each topic will be covered in class.
The Study of Lifespan Development (11% - 13%)
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Models and theories: Lifespan Approach is the study of behaviors, dispositions, skills and traits over substantial period of the life span.
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Methods of studies: Research design, data collection methods, measurement issues, and drawing samples are all considerations.
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Ethical issues: The Society for Research in Child Development and the American Psychological Association created ethical guidelines for researchers.
Biological Development (17% - 19%)
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Genetic factors (including counseling): Genetics represents one of nature’s key control mechanisms for directing the kinds and amounts of cells needed for effective adaptation.
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Prenatal Development and Birth: Whatever the mother eats, drinks, sniffs, or inhales is passed on to the developing fetus.
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Physical Development (nutrition, health): Diet during this period of rapid brain growth is important and takes a substantial amount of high-quality protein to sustain a rate of growth of 1.7 grams per day.
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Motor Development: As the brain develops, motor development follows through myelinization.
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Sexual Development: Children are curious about their own bodies and may quickly discover that touching certain body parts feel nice.
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Neurological Development: At birth, neurons and synapses are formed. As the neurons mature, more synapses are made.
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Sensory Development: Experiences evoke consistent auditory, visual and kinesthetic responses, stimulate cortical and brain stem electrical activity and fine-tune brain circuitry.
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Aging Process: Aging means physical decline, some of which may be a result of lifestyle (poor diet and lack of exercise) and illness.
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Dying and Death: The process people experience and how they come to terms with it.
Perception. Learning, and Memory (14% - 16%)
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Perceptual Development: Sensory Stimuli is the medium that babies learn about the world and its operation.
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Learning, Conditioning, and Modeling: Learning is a change in behavior or in potential behavior that occurs as a result of experience and continuous reinforcement.
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Memory Development: The retention of information over a period of time.
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Defining Executive Functioning: Skills developed to organize and act on information.
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Attention and information processing: This process enables the brain to attend to, and process information.
Cognition and Language (19% - 21%)
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Cognitive-developmental theory: Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development is characterized by 4 stages.
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Problem solving: The active attempt that individuals make to achieve goals that cannot be easily attained.
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Mental abilities: A person’s intelligence.
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Intelligence and Intelligence Testing: The ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt to environment and to learn from experience
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Language Development and Theories: Theorist B.F. Skinner proposed that the emergence of language is the result of imitation and reinforcement.
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Social Cognition: Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory is base on three core concepts.
Social, Emotional, and Personality Development (34% - 36%)
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Personality Development: Development task and life stage theories, attachment and emotional development, gender role development, and stability and change in personality.
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Social behaviors: Peer relationships, aggressive behavior, pro-social behavior, moral development, and sexual attitudes and behavior.
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Family Life Cycle: Courtship and marriage, parenting, siblings, abuse, etc.
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Extra-familial settings (e.g., day-care, school, nursing home, hospice, college): Quality and extent of childcare is dependent on how long a child spends at a facility.
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Singlehood, Cohabitation, and Marriage: Living alone and the adjustment made to live with another person.
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Occupational Development and Retirement: Stages and phases one goes through finding a career path leading to the eventual stage of retirement.
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Adjustment and life stresses: Stress is the internal or external force that causes a person to become tense, upset or anxious.
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Bereavement and loss: Coping with the loss of a loved one.