Review Guide

You should be able to speak to:

The three debates within developmental psychology

Nature vs nurture
Continuity of growth versus stages
Stability versus change

Evolutionary psychology – tenets and criticisms

Early human development

Physical (conception, zygotes, embryos, fetuses)
Reflexes, Preferences, Infant cognitive abilities

Attachment Theory
-The Harlows and their wire/cloth monkey mum experiment
-Mary Ainsworth and the strange situation
- Types of attachment (secure, insecure avoidant, insecure ambivalent) and
how attachment is formed
-How temperament and attachment interact
Parenting styles
Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, neglectful

Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development

-be able to differentiate between them
-Schemas (what they are and how they change
-Adaptation (Assimilation & Accommodation) and Organization
-Sensormimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational stages

Moral development
Lawrence Kholberg and Carol Gilligan’s theories of moral development (including
examples of reasoning at those stages)
Criticisms of these stage theories

Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development

Adolescence and aging

Alzheimer’s disease, brain changes as you get older, Kubler Ross’s stages of grief

Gender and sexuality

Environmental influences on gender, gender-based research, theories of sexuality

Note: You should be able to apply your understanding of the theories more so than simply
regurgitate facts!