PSYCH101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Reinforcement, Mary Ainsworth, Ejaculation

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Richard Ennis

Document Summary

Developmental psychology is the study of human physical, cognitive, social, and behavioral. A cross- sectional design - is used to measure and compare samples of people at different ages at a given point in time. For example, to study cognition from infancy to adulthood, you could compare people of different age groups. Cross-sectional designs are relatively cheap and easy to administer. They can suffer from cohort effects, which are differences between people that result from being born in different time periods. Longitudinal design - follows the development of the same set of individuals through time. Single group of people for a long period of time can be very costly and time-consuming. Longitudinal designs often suffer from the problem of attrition, which occurs when participants drop out of a study for some reason. A sensitive period - window of time during which exposure to a specific type of environmental stimulation is needed for normal development.