(2) Chapter 1 - Lifespan development Flashcards
Internal influences
Potential influences on development that are part of the individual, such as physical or psychological variables.
External influences
Potential influences on development that are not part of the individual, such as the immediate context, culture or history.
Horizontal relationship
A relationship between people of equal status and/or power.
Reciprocity
Refers to the principle of ‘give and take’ – that if one person ‘gives’ in some way, there will be a similar gesture made by the recipient at some point.
Vertical relationship
A relationship which involves one person who has more knowledge or power than the other person in the relationship.
Pretend play
Refers to play that involves the use of imagination where a person ‘pretends’ to be someone or something else, or uses an object as something else for the purposes of play.
Symbolic interactionism
A theoretical approach which emphasizes the significance of social interaction and the use of ‘symbols’ within these interactions.
I
A theoretical construct which refers to the conscious, decision- making part of a person’s self-concept.
Me
A theoretical construct which refers to knowledge about oneself, and is suggested to be another part of the self- concept which can reflect the views of others.
Socio-cognitive conflict
The experience of being aware of conflicting ideas held by peers, which forces a re-examination of one’s own understanding of that idea.
Attachment theory
Bowlby’s theory that children have a drive to feel secure by forming an emotional bond with a primary care giver.
Continuities
Connections between experiences at one point in life and behaviour at some later time.
Deterministic
An approach that assumes that a particular outcome is fixed and inevitable.
Probabilistic
An approach that assumes that outcomes are more or less likely to occur.
Transaction
Refers to the idea that individuals affect their environments, that environments can affect individuals and that the combination of these influences affects development.
Attachment
A strong, ongoing emotional bond between two people.
Self-report measure
A measure that relies on the participant in the research making judgements about him or herself.
Primary attachment relationship
An attachment to another person, normally a parent or other caregiver, formed by a child during early infancy. Is also used to refer to an older child’s or adult’s close relationship(s).
Internal working model
A set of expectations for how oneself and another person will relate to each other. According to attachment theory, this is established during childhood and affects later adult relationships.
Reunion
An episode in the Strange Situation when a child and mother (caregiver) are reunited after a brief separation.
Strange Situation
A standardized set of episodes involving a child, their mother and a stranger in a laboratory in a sequence of separations and reunions. A way of assessing attachment security.
Effect size
How strongly two variables are associated. Often assessed by a beta coefficient, which can range from -1 to 1.
Relatedness
The capacities a person has to relate to another; the qualities of their approach to a relationship.
Culturally specific
Something that is relevant to one specific culture.
Ribot’s Law
The idea that older people remember past events better than recent ones.
Crystallized intelligence
Abilities that are the product of experience (e.g. vocabulary, general knowledge).
Fluid intelligence
Abilities that reflect efficient information processing (e.g. speed of processing).
Cross-sectional design
A research design that compares the performance of different age groups.
Cohort differences
Differences that occur between different groups because of changes in external factors across time (e.g. improvements in state education).
Functionalism
The idea that changes occur in people and their behaviour because they serve a new and adaptive function.
Stage theory
A theory that proposes that development occurs in a sequence of fixed order stages.
Genetic epistemology
Coined by Piaget, this phrase refers to the study of intelligence as a form of adaptation to one’s environment.
Developmental contexualism
An approach to studying development by examining the interactions between the person and their environmental and historical contexts.
Dynamic interactionism
Used to describe the multiple interactions that can occur between different variables and different levels of explanation.
Embeddedness
Refers to the way development is ‘rooted’ in multiple contexts.
Microsystem
The social, symbolic and physical characteristics of a person’s immediate environment.
Mesosystem
Two or more environmental microsystems inhabited by the same person.
Exosystem
The links that occur between two or more environmental settings, where at least one of these settings is inhabited by the developing individual in question.
Macrosystem
The patterns of environmental systems that characterize any given culture or society.2
