TEST BANK FOR EXPLORING LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT 4TH EDITION BY BERK

122.Describe the role that Arnold Gesell played in the study of human development. Answer:Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, Arnold Gesell and his mentor, G. Stanley Hall, devised theories based on evolutionary ideas. They regarded development as a maturational process—a genetically determined series of events that unfold automatically, much like a flower. Hall and Gesell are remembered for their intensive efforts to describe all aspects of development. They launched the normative approach, in which measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals, and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development. Gesell collected detailed normative information on the motor achievements, social behaviors, and personality characteristics of infants and children. He was also among the first to make knowledge about child development meaningful to parents. His books became central to a rapidly expanding child development literature for parents. Page Ref: 11 123.Describe the criticisms of Jean Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory. Answer:Despite Jean Piaget’s overwhelming contributions to the field of human development, his cognitive-developmental theory has been challenged. Research indicates that Piaget underestimated the competencies of infants and preschoolers. When young children are given tasks scaled down in difficulty and relevant to their everyday experiences, their understanding appears closer to that of the older child and adult than Piaget assumed. Furthermore, children’s performance on Piagetian problems can be improved with training—findings that call into question Piaget’s assumption that discovery learning rather than adult teaching is the best way to foster development. Critics also point out that Piaget’s stagewise account pays insufficient attention to social and cultural influences on development. Finally, lifespan theorists— challenging Piaget’s conclusion that no new stages occur after adolescence—have proposed important transformations in adulthood. Page Ref: 14–15 124.Describe the exosystem as it exists in Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. Answer:According to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory,human development takes place within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment. Bronfenbrenner envisioned the environment as a series of nested structures, including but also extending beyond the home, school, neighborhood, and workplace settings in which people spend their everyday lives. Each layer joins with the others to powerfully affect development. The exosystem consists of social settings that do not contain the developing person but nevertheless affect experiences in immediate settings. These can be formal organizations, such as the management in the individual’s workplace, religious institution, or community health and welfare services. Flexible work schedules, paid maternity and paternity leave, and sick leave for parents whose children are ill are examples of ways that work settings can support child rearing and, indirectly, enhance the development of both adult and child. Exosystem supports can also be informal. Children are affected by their parents’ social networks—friends and extended-family members who provide advice, companionship, and even financial assistance. Page Ref: 19–21 125.Compare and contrast naturalistic and structured observations. Answer:Observations of the behavior of children and adults can be made in different ways. One approach is to go into the field, or natural environment, and record the behavior of interest—a method called naturalistic observation. The great strength of naturalistic observation is that investigators can see directly the everyday behaviors they hope to explain. Naturalistic observation also has a major limitation: Not all individuals have the same opportunity to display a particular behavior in everyday life. Researchers commonly deal with this difficulty by making structured observations, in which the investigator sets up a laboratory situation that evokes the behavior of interest so that every participant has equal opportunity to display the response. Systematic observation provides invaluable information on how children and adults actually behave, but it tells us little about the reasoning behind their responses. For that information, researchers must turn to self-report techniques. Page Ref:21 23 ‒ 126.Describe longitudinal design, and explain its strengths and weaknesses. Answer:In a longitudinal design, participants are studied repeatedly, and changes are noted as they get older. The time spanned may be relatively short (a few months to several years) or very long (a decade or even a lifetime). The longitudinal approach has two major strengths. First, because it tracks the performance of each person over time, researchers can identify common patterns as well as individual differences in development. Second, longitudinal studies permit investigators to examine relationships between early and later events and behaviors. Despite their strengths, longitudinal investigations pose a number of problems. For example, participants may move away or drop out of the research for other reasons. This biases the sample so that it no longer represents the population to whom researchers would like to generalize their findings. Also, from repeated study, people may become more aware of their own thoughts, feelings, and actions and revise them in ways that have little to do with age-related change. In addition, their performance may improve as a result of practice effects—better test-taking skills and increased familiarity with the test—not because of factors commonly associated with development.The most widely discussed threat to the accuracy of longitudinal findings is cohort effects: Individuals born in the same time period are influenced by a particular set of historical and cultural conditions. Results based on one cohort may not apply to people developing at other times. But cohort effects do not just operate broadly on an entire generation. They also occur when specific experiences influence some groups of individuals but not others in the same generation. Page Ref: 28–29