Psychology · Study Guide

Exam 5 Study Guide

This guide covers two chapters. Chapter 9 follows a human life from one cell to old age. Chapter 10 asks what pushes us to act and what we feel along the way. Work one chapter at a time. Read the "what to know" part first. Then cover the right side of each table and rebuild it from memory. Say each sequence out loud, in order. End each chapter with its ten self-test items. The cram sheet at the end puts every name, date, and stage in one place.

Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Cram sheet Read Chapter 9 Read Chapter 10

What this guide covers

Chapter 9 · nature and nurture, study designs and cohort effects, the prenatal stages and teratogens, newborn reflexes and motor growth, Piaget and Vygotsky, attachment, Erikson's eight stages, puberty and identity, adulthood, aging, and Kübler-Ross.
Chapter 10 · theories of motivation, the Yerkes-Dodson law, Maslow's hierarchy, the biology and psychology of hunger, eating disorders, three theories of emotion, facial expressions and display rules, the limbic system, and fight-or-flight.

Chapter 9Lifespan Development

What to know

Developmental psychology studies how people change from conception to death. Three big questions run through the whole chapter. Is it nature or nurture? Is change smooth like a ramp, or in stages like a staircase? Do early traits stay stable, or can they change? For the first question, the answer is almost always "both, working together." Epigenetics shows how experience can turn genes on and off without changing the DNA itself.

Twin studies and adoption studies pull genes and experience apart. Identical twins share almost all their genes. Fraternal twins share about half. When identical twins are more alike, genes likely play a part. Still, no trait comes from genes alone.

To study change, researchers use two main designs. A cross-sectional study tests different ages at one time. It is fast, but it can be fooled by a cohort effect. That means the groups differ because they grew up in different times, not because of age. A longitudinal study follows the same people for years. It shows true aging, but it is slow and loses people to attrition. A sequential design combines both.

Before birth there are three stages. The germinal stage is about the first two weeks. The zygote divides and implants in the uterus. The embryonic stage runs from about week 3 to week 8. The organs and limbs form, so this is when teratogens do the most harm. A teratogen is anything that crosses the placenta and harms development. The fetal stage runs from week 9 to birth. The fetus grows and its organs mature. Each organ has a critical period when it is most easily harmed. Alcohol can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), and no safe amount is known.

Newborns come with reflexes: rooting, sucking, grasping, and the Moro startle. They prefer faces and their mother's voice. Researchers measure what babies notice using habituation. Looking drops with repeats and bounces back for something new. Motor skills unfold through maturation. They go cephalocaudal (head to toe) and proximodistal (center outward).

Jean Piaget said children build knowledge with schemas. They use assimilation to fit new things into old schemas. They use accommodation to change schemas. His four stages are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Later research found he underestimated young children. Lev Vygotsky stressed social learning. His zone of proximal development is what a child can do with help but not yet alone. Help that fades as the child improves is called scaffolding. Theory of mind, knowing that others have different beliefs, appears around age 4 or 5.

Attachment is the bond between baby and caregiver. Harlow's monkeys showed it rests on contact comfort, not food. Bowlby called the caregiver a secure base. Ainsworth's Strange Situation sorts babies by how they act at reunion: secure, avoidant, anxious/resistant, and later disorganized. Caregiver responsiveness and the baby's temperament both matter.

Erik Erikson gave eight psychosocial stages, each a crisis between two paths. They run from trust vs mistrust in infancy to integrity vs despair in old age. Teens face identity vs role confusion. James Marcia added four identity statuses. Puberty brings sex characteristics, menarche, and spermarche. The teen brain matures its emotional parts before its self-control parts.

In adulthood, fluid intelligence tends to decline while crystallized intelligence holds. Older adults often report high well-being, which socioemotional selectivity theory helps explain. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five reactions to dying. They are common feelings, not a fixed order.

Lock these in

Nature and nurture interact. Neither one wins alone.
Cross-sectional: fast, but cohort effects. Longitudinal: true aging, but attrition.
Germinal (0 to 2 weeks), embryonic (3 to 8), fetal (9 to birth). The embryonic stage is the riskiest.
Assimilation fits in. Accommodation changes the folder.
Sensorimotor: object permanence. Preoperational: egocentrism, no conservation. Concrete: conservation. Formal: abstract thinking.
Attachment is coded at the reunion.
Erikson's crises go in a set order across all of life.
Kübler-Ross's five reactions are not a schedule.

Figure 9.1. Prenatal stages with critical periods, in weeks after conception. A teratogen does the most harm when it lands inside an organ's dark window. The brain stays at some risk through the whole pregnancy, which is why alcohol is never safe.

Study designs compared

Design	Who is tested, and when	Strength	Main problem
Cross-sectional	Different age groups, one time	Fast and cheap	Cohort effect mixes age with generation
Longitudinal	Same people, many times	Shows true aging in each person	Slow, costly, attrition, practice effects
Sequential	Several birth groups, each followed over time	Separates age, cohort, and test year	Complex and still slow
Twin study	Identical vs fraternal twins	Estimates the role of genes	Twins often share homes too
Adoption study	Adopted children vs birth and adoptive parents	Pulls genes apart from home	Adoptive homes may be alike

Piaget's stages at a glance

Figure 9.2. Piaget's four stages as a staircase. Later research suggests the steps are smoother than a staircase and that babies can do more than Piaget thought, but the order still holds.

Stage	Ages	Can do	Classic test
Sensorimotor	Birth to 2	Learns by senses and action; gains object permanence	Hide a toy under a cloth
Preoperational	2 to 7	Words, symbols, pretend play; shows egocentrism	Pour juice into a taller glass (fails)
Concrete operational	7 to 11	Conservation, reversibility, logic about real things	Same pour (passes)
Formal operational	12 and up	Abstract and hypothetical reasoning	Pendulum problem

Attachment styles compared

Style	When caregiver leaves	At reunion	Care often linked to it
Secure	Usually upset	Comforted quickly, goes back to play	Sensitive, responsive
Avoidant	Little upset	Ignores or turns away	Unresponsive, rejecting
Anxious / resistant	Very upset	Clings and pushes away, stays upset	Inconsistent
Disorganized	Varies	Freezes, dazed, mixed-up behavior	Frightening or very neglectful

Sequences, in order

Erikson's eight crises go in a fixed order. Learn them as a chain from cradle to old age.

Trust vs mistrust · infancy · can I trust the world? Virtue: hope.
Autonomy vs shame and doubt · toddler · can I do it myself? Virtue: will.
Initiative vs guilt · preschool · is it okay to act and lead? Virtue: purpose.
Industry vs inferiority · school age · am I capable? Virtue: competence.
Identity vs role confusion · adolescence · who am I? Virtue: fidelity.
Intimacy vs isolation · young adult · can I love? Virtue: love.
Generativity vs stagnation · middle adult · can I make my life count? Virtue: care.
Integrity vs despair · older adult · did my life have meaning? Virtue: wisdom.

Marcia's identity statuses come from two yes-or-no questions: did the person explore, and did she commit?

Status	Explored?	Committed?	Example
Diffusion	No	No	"I don't know and I'm not looking."
Foreclosure	No	Yes	Takes a parent's career plan without looking at others
Moratorium	Yes	Not yet	Trying out majors and jobs
Achievement	Yes	Yes	Chose a path after real exploring

How to reason through the question types

Question type 1 · name the study design and its flaw

A question describes a study and asks what kind it is, or what could go wrong.

Step 1 · count the test timesOne test session for everyone means cross-sectional. Many sessions with the same people means longitudinal.

Step 2 · check for several birth groups followed over timeIf yes, it is sequential.

Step 3 · match the flawCross-sectional goes with cohort effects. Longitudinal goes with attrition and practice effects.

Step 4 · test the conclusionIf older people score lower in a one-time study, ask: could the era they grew up in explain it?

Question type 2 · place a child in Piaget's stages

A question describes what a child says or does and asks for the stage.

Step 1 · look for the key skill or the key mistakeForgets a hidden toy means no object permanence. "The tall glass has more" means no conservation. Testing one thing at a time means formal thought.

Step 2 · match it to the stageUse the table above. A mistake points to the stage before the skill is mastered.

Step 3 · check the ageAges are rough guides. Trust the behavior over the age if they seem to clash.

Question type 3 · code an attachment style

Step 1 · go straight to the reunionThat is where coders look hardest.

Step 2 · match the reunionComforted and plays again: secure. Ignores: avoidant. Clings and pushes away: anxious/resistant. Freezes or seems dazed: disorganized.

Step 3 · use the rest as a checkExploring freely and being upset at separation fit secure. Little upset at separation fits avoidant.

Traps people fall into

Picking "nature" or "nurture" as the answer. The modern answer is that they interact.
Thinking the fetal stage is the riskiest. The embryonic stage is, because organs are forming.
Mixing up assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation squeezes new things into an old schema. Accommodation changes the schema.
Calling egocentrism selfishness. It is a thinking limit, not a moral flaw.
Thinking secure babies never cry. Most cry when the caregiver leaves. The key is quick comfort at reunion.
Mixing up Harlow and Ainsworth. Harlow studied monkeys and contact comfort. Ainsworth built the Strange Situation.
Thinking development stops at 18. Erikson's last three stages are all adult.
Treating Kübler-Ross's stages as fixed steps. People skip, repeat, and reorder them.

Chapter 9 self-test · ten items

1. Why is a cross-sectional study of 20- and 80-year-olds risky for drawing conclusions about aging?

Because of cohort effects. The groups grew up in different eras with different schooling and technology. So a gap may come from generation, not from age.

2. Name the three prenatal stages in order, with rough timing.

Germinal (weeks 1 to 2), embryonic (weeks 3 to 8), fetal (week 9 to birth). The embryonic stage is the most easily harmed by teratogens.

3. What is a critical period, and why does it matter for teratogens?

A window when a body system is forming and is most easily harmed. A teratogen hurts whatever organ is forming at that moment. The same exposure later may do little.

4. How do researchers use habituation to learn what babies can tell apart?

They repeat a picture until looking drops, then show a new one. If looking time jumps back up, the baby noticed the difference.

5. A baby controls her shoulders before her fingers. Name the pattern.

Proximodistal, center outward. Head before legs would be cephalocaudal. Both come from maturation.

6. A 5-year-old says a flattened ball of clay has more clay than a round one. Which stage, and what is missing?

Preoperational. She lacks conservation. She focuses on one feature, size or shape, and cannot picture the change in reverse.

7. What does Vygotsky's zone of proximal development describe?

The gap between what a child can do alone and with skilled help. Scaffolding is the help that fits inside this zone and fades as the child improves.

8. What did Harlow's monkeys show about attachment?

That it rests on contact comfort, not food. The monkeys clung to a soft cloth mother instead of a wire mother that gave milk.

9. A teen never explores career options and takes the job her parents chose. What is her identity status?

Foreclosure. She committed without exploring. Moratorium is exploring without committing yet.

10. Which kind of intelligence tends to hold up best in old age?

Crystallized intelligence. Built-up knowledge and vocabulary hold or grow. Fluid intelligence, like speed and solving new problems, tends to decline.

Chapter 10Motivation and Emotion

What to know

Motivation is what gives behavior energy and points it at a goal. The first theory was instinct theory. It failed because naming an instinct does not explain anything. Drive-reduction theory, from Clark Hull, came next. A body need creates a drive, and we act to reduce it and get back to homeostasis, a steady inner state. Primary drives like hunger are unlearned. Secondary drives like the pull of money are learned.

Drive reduction cannot explain why people ride roller coasters. Arousal theory can. It says we seek a best level of stimulation. The Yerkes-Dodson law (1908) adds that performance peaks at medium arousal. The best level is lower for hard tasks than for easy ones. It is a rough rule, not an exact law. Incentive theory adds the pull of outside rewards like pay and praise.

Abraham Maslow (1943) stacked needs in a hierarchy: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Prepotency means lower needs usually come first. Later he added self-transcendence. The order is a tendency, not a rule, and Maslow never drew the pyramid himself.

Hunger is run by the brain, not the stomach. Cannon and Washburn linked stomach squeezes to hunger pangs. But people without stomachs still get hungry. The hypothalamus is the control center. The lateral hypothalamus is the on switch. The ventromedial hypothalamus is the off switch. Falling glucose and the hormone ghrelin raise hunger. Leptin from fat cells, insulin, and PYY lower it. The old idea of a fixed set point has been challenged by the idea of a settling point. Learning, culture, plate size, and company all shape what we eat. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder are serious, treatable conditions.

An emotion has three parts: body arousal, expression, and felt experience. The theories argue about order. James-Lange: the body reacts first and the feeling follows. Cannon-Bard: body and feeling happen at the same time. Schachter-Singer: arousal plus a label from the situation make the emotion. Their 1962 study has been hard to repeat. Lazarus said an appraisal always comes first. Zajonc and LeDoux said some fear can come before thought.

Darwin said expressions are inborn. Ekman and Friesen found six basic emotions recognized across cultures, including by the remote Fore of New Guinea. Children born blind make the same faces. Debate continues about how universal they are. The facial feedback hypothesis says faces can shape feelings, but the famous pen study did not replicate. Display rules are cultural norms for when to show emotions.

The limbic system holds the emotional brain. The amygdala detects threat. Damage dulls fear, as in Klüver-Bucy syndrome. LeDoux's low road runs fast from thalamus to amygdala. The high road goes through the cortex and is slower but accurate. The sympathetic nervous system launches fight-or-flight with epinephrine. The parasympathetic system brings back calm. A polygraph measures arousal, so it cannot reliably detect lies.

Lock these in

Instinct, drive reduction, arousal, incentive: four theories, each explaining a different slice.
Yerkes-Dodson: medium arousal is best, and lower is better for hard tasks.
Maslow bottom to top: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, self-actualization.
Lateral hypothalamus on, ventromedial off. Ghrelin up, leptin down.
James-Lange body first. Cannon-Bard same time. Schachter-Singer arousal plus label.
Faces are widely shared. Display rules are local.
Amygdala is the alarm. Low road fast, high road accurate.
Sympathetic speeds up. Parasympathetic calms down.

Figure 10.1. The inverted U. Too little arousal leaves you unfocused. Too much narrows attention and crowds working memory. A hard task needs more careful thought, so it falls apart sooner.

Motivation theories compared

Theory	Key name	Main idea	Explains well	Misses
Instinct	James, McDougall	Inborn, species-wide patterns	Fixed animal behaviors	Labels are not explanations
Drive-reduction	Clark Hull	Needs create drives; reduce them to restore homeostasis	Hunger, thirst, warmth	Why we seek thrills
Arousal	Yerkes and Dodson	Seek a best level of stimulation	Curiosity, boredom, thrill-seeking	Basic body needs
Incentive		Outside rewards pull behavior	Pay, grades, praise	Inner states
Hierarchy of needs	Abraham Maslow	Lower needs usually come first (prepotency)	Why survival comes before esteem	People who break the order

Hunger signals

Signal	Comes from	Effect	Time scale
Ghrelin	Empty stomach	Raises hunger	Before meals
Falling glucose	Bloodstream	Raises hunger	Short-term
Stomach stretch, CCK	Stomach, small intestine	Lowers hunger	During the meal
Insulin, PYY	Pancreas, gut	Lowers hunger	After eating
Leptin	Fat cells	Lowers hunger	Long-term
Lateral hypothalamus	Brain	On switch	Damage: may starve
Ventromedial hypothalamus	Brain	Off switch	Damage: overeats

Three theories of emotion, side by side

Figure 10.2. The theories share the same parts but put them in a different order. Modern research suggests each one captures part of the truth.

Figure 10.3. LeDoux's two routes. The low road makes you flinch before you know why. The high road checks the details and can cancel a false alarm, such as a stick that looked like a snake.

Emotional brain parts

Structure	Job in emotion	Memory hook
Amygdala	Detects threat; fear and aggression	Amygdala, alarm
Thalamus	Relays sense signals	Switchboard
Hippocampus	Emotional memories with context	Where and when
Hypothalamus	Starts body arousal (and runs hunger)	Body boss
Prefrontal cortex	Makes sense of emotion, keeps it in check	The brakes
Insula	Disgust; sensing the body	Yuck center

Sequences, in order

Maslow's hierarchy, bottom to top. A memory hook: Please Stop Lying, Eat Spinach.

Physiological · food, water, sleep, warmth.
Safety · security, health, shelter, a steady income.
Love and belonging · friends, family, community.
Esteem · achievement, self-respect, respect from others.
Self-actualization · reaching your full potential. (Later: self-transcendence above it.)

A scare, step by step.

The eyes send a signal to the thalamus.
The low road carries a rough copy straight to the amygdala. You flinch.
The high road carries a sharp copy through the cortex. It confirms the threat or cancels it.
If the threat is real, the amygdala tells the hypothalamus to start sympathetic fight-or-flight.
When it passes, the parasympathetic system brings back calm.

How to reason through the question types

Question type 1 · which motivation theory fits?

Step 1 · is there a body need?Thirst, hunger, or cold point to drive reduction.

Step 2 · is the person raising stimulation on purpose?Thrills or boredom point to arousal theory.

Step 3 · is an outside reward doing the pulling?Pay, grades, or prizes point to incentive theory.

Step 4 · is the question about which need comes first?That points to Maslow and prepotency.

Question type 2 · which emotion theory fits?

Step 1 · find what comes firstIf the body changes before the feeling, it is James-Lange.

Step 2 · look for "at the same time"Body and feeling together, with the thalamus, is Cannon-Bard.

Step 3 · look for a label from the settingIf unclear arousal gets named by reading the situation, it is Schachter-Singer.

Step 4 · look for a quick judgment"Is this good or bad for me?" first points to Lazarus's appraisal.

Question type 3 · Yerkes-Dodson scenarios

Step 1 · decide if the task is easy or hardSimple, well-practiced tasks are easy. New or complex tasks are hard.

Step 2 · place the arousalIs the person sleepy, alert, keyed up, or panicked?

Step 3 · predictMedium arousal is best. For a hard task, the best level is lower, so a keyed-up person may do worse on it than on an easy task.

Traps people fall into

Swapping the hypothalamus parts. Lateral is on. Ventromedial is off. Damage to the off switch causes overeating.
Swapping ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin makes you growl. Leptin says "enough stored."
Thinking the stomach controls hunger. People without stomachs still feel hungry.
Reversing Yerkes-Dodson. Hard tasks need less arousal, not more.
Mixing up James-Lange and Cannon-Bard. James-Lange is body first. Cannon-Bard is at the same time.
Treating the pen study as solid proof. It did not replicate.
Thinking universal faces mean every culture shows emotion the same way. Display rules differ.
Calling an eating disorder a willpower problem. These are serious mental health conditions with many causes, and they can be treated.
Trusting a polygraph. It measures arousal, not lies.

Chapter 10 self-test · ten items

1. Why did instinct theory fail?

Naming an instinct only renamed the behavior. It did not explain it, and true instincts turned out to be rare in humans.

2. What does drive-reduction theory say we are trying to restore?

Homeostasis, a steady inner state. A need creates a drive, and acting on it brings the body back to balance.

3. A student is very keyed up. Will that help more on an easy quiz or a hard exam?

The easy quiz. By the Yerkes-Dodson law, the best arousal level is lower for hard tasks. High arousal hurts hard tasks first.

4. List Maslow's needs from bottom to top.

Physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualization. Lower needs usually come first, which Maslow called prepotency.

5. A rat has its lateral hypothalamus destroyed. What happens to its eating?

It stops eating and may starve. The lateral hypothalamus is the on switch. Damage to the ventromedial off switch causes overeating.

6. Which hormone is made by fat cells, and what does it do?

Leptin. It signals stored energy and lowers appetite. Ghrelin, from the stomach, does the opposite.

7. Which theory says emotion is arousal plus a label from the situation?

The Schachter-Singer two-factor theory. Its original study has been hard to repeat, but the labeling idea is still influential.

8. What are display rules?

Cultural norms about which emotions may be shown, to whom, and how strongly. Japanese students hid disgust with smiles when an authority figure was present.

9. Why can you jump away from a snake-shaped stick before you know what it is?

LeDoux's low road. It sends a rough signal from the thalamus straight to the amygdala, skipping the cortex.

10. Which branch of the nervous system restores calm after a scare?

The parasympathetic branch. The sympathetic branch launched fight-or-flight in the first place.

One pageCram sheet

Everything from chapters 9 and 10 in one place. Cover the right columns and rebuild each row from the left.

Numbers and dates to know

Item	Value	Note
Germinal stage	About weeks 1 to 2	Zygote divides and implants
Embryonic stage	About weeks 3 to 8	Organs form; riskiest time
Fetal stage	About week 9 to birth	Growth; viability near 24 weeks
Walking	Around the first birthday	Order is fixed; ages vary
Piaget's ages	0 to 2, 2 to 7, 7 to 11, 12 and up	Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, formal
Theory of mind	About age 4 to 5	Knowing others can hold different beliefs
Menopause	Around age 50	End of menstrual periods
Cannon and Washburn	1912	Swallowed balloon, stomach squeezes
Yerkes-Dodson law	1908	First seen in mice
Maslow's hierarchy	1943	"A Theory of Human Motivation"
Schachter-Singer	1962	Epinephrine study; hard to repeat
Darwin on expressions	1872	Expressions are inborn
Pen-in-teeth study	1988; repeat in 2016	17 labs, almost 2,000 people, almost no effect

People named in these chapters

Person	What to say about them
Jean Piaget	Four stages of thinking; schemas, assimilation, accommodation
Lev Vygotsky	Social learning; zone of proximal development; scaffolding
Harry Harlow	Monkeys chose a cloth mother; contact comfort
John Bowlby	Attachment as an evolved system; secure base
Mary Ainsworth	Strange Situation; secure, avoidant, anxious/resistant
Main and Solomon	Added disorganized attachment
Thomas and Chess	Temperament: easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up
Erik Erikson	Eight psychosocial stages across the whole life
James Marcia	Four identity statuses
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross	Five reactions to dying; not a fixed order
William James, William McDougall	Instinct theory
Clark Hull	Drive-reduction theory
Robert Yerkes, John Dodson	Medium arousal is best; lower for hard tasks
Abraham Maslow	Hierarchy of needs; prepotency; self-actualization
Walter Cannon	Stomach and hunger study; Cannon-Bard theory
William James, Carl Lange	Body first, then feeling
Stanley Schachter, Jerome Singer	Two-factor theory: arousal plus label
Richard Lazarus	Appraisal comes first
Robert Zajonc, Joseph LeDoux	Some emotion comes before thought; low road and high road
Charles Darwin	Expressions are inborn and shared
Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen	Basic emotions; the Fore; display rules

Words to know

Term	Meaning
Cohort effect	A group difference caused by the era people grew up in
Attrition	People dropping out of a long study
Teratogen	Anything that crosses the placenta and harms development
Critical period	A window when a system is forming and easily harmed
Habituation	Looking less at something shown again and again
Maturation	Growth that biology has planned out
Object permanence	Knowing things exist when out of sight
Conservation	Knowing amount stays the same when shape changes
Egocentrism	Trouble seeing another person's view
Attachment	The lasting emotional bond between baby and caregiver
Temperament	A baby's inborn emotional style
Generativity	Giving to the next generation
Fluid vs crystallized intelligence	Speed and new problems vs built-up knowledge
Homeostasis	The body's steady inner state
Prepotency	Lower needs usually come first
Settling point	Weight that settles where habits and surroundings keep it
Display rules	Cultural norms for showing emotion
Facial feedback hypothesis	Making a face may shape the feeling
Limbic system	Amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, thalamus
Sympathetic vs parasympathetic	Fight-or-flight vs calm down