Ch 09: Human Development Flashcards

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1
Q

developmental psychology

A

the study of how behavior changes over the life span

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2
Q

gene-environment interaction

A

situation in which the effects of genes depend on the environment in which they are expressed

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3
Q

gene expression

A

activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development

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3
Q

nature via nurture

A

tendency of individuals with certain genetic predispositions to seek out and create environments that permit the expression of those predispositions

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3
Q

epigenetics

A

a field that examines how environmental influences affect the expression of genes

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4
Q

cross-sectional design

A

research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time

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5
Q
  • cohort effect
A

effect observed in a sample of participants that results from individuals in the same sample growing up at the same time

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6
Q
  • longitudinal design
A

research design that examines development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over time

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7
Q
  • zygote
A

fertilized egg

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8
Q
  • prenatal
A

prior to birth

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8
Q
  • post hoc fallacy
A

(“after this”), dales assumption that because one even occurred before another event, it must have caused that event; within the context of psychology, refers to the reciprocal relationship between two variables or factors

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9
Q
  • embryo
A

2nd to 8th week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs of the body take form

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9
Q
  • blastocyte
A

ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven’t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part

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10
Q
  • fetus
A

an animal embryo in the later stages of development. In humans, the fetal period is from the end of the 8th week after fertilization until birth

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11
Q
  • teratogens
A

an environmental factor that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development

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12
Q
  • fetal alcohol syndrome
A

condition resulting from high levels of prenatal alcohol exposure, causing learning disabilities, physical growth retardation, facial malformations, and behavioral disorders; a disorder that can occur when a fetus is exposed to alcohol, and it’s caused by alcohol’s teratogenic effects

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13
Q
  • motor behavior
A

bodily motion that occurs as result of self-initiated force that moves the bones and muscles

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14
Q
  • Michael Hermanussen
A

“mini growth spurts” occur every 30-55 days in children ages 3 to 16, followed by lulls during which growth was much slower

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15
Q
  • puberty
A

(also, sexual maturation): the achievement of sexual maturation resulting in the potential to reproduce

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16
Q
  • primary sex characteristics
A

a physical feature, such as the reproductive organs and genitals, that distinguishes sexes

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17
Q
  • secondary sex characteristics
A

a sex-differentiating characteristic that does not relate directly to reproduction, such as breast enlargement in women and deepening voices in men

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18
Q
  • menarche
A

start of menstruation

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19
Q
  • spermarche
A

boys’ first ejaculation

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20
Q
  • menopause
A

the termination of menstruation, marking the end of a woman’s reproduction potential

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21
Q
  • Sensorimotor
A

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by a focus on the here and now without the ability to represent experiences mentally (birth-2yo)

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22
Q
  • cognitive development
A

study of how children acquire the ability to learn, think, communicate, and remember

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23
Q
  • Preoperational
A

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized the ability to construct mental representations of experience but not yet perform operations with them

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24
Q

Concrete Operations

A

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to perform mental operations on physical events only

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25
Q

Formal Operations

A

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to perform hypothetical reasoning beyond the here and now

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26
Q
  • assimilation
A

Piagetian process of absorbing new experience into current knowledge structures; Fitting new information into existing mental schemas

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27
Q
  • accommodation (cognitive)
A

Piagetian process of altering a belief to make it more compatible with experience; already existing structures (schema) are changed to accommodate new information

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28
Q

Vygotsky’s social development theory

A

asserts that a child’s cognitive development and learning ability can be guided and mediated by their social interactions. His theory (also called Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory) states that learning is a crucially social process as opposed to an independent journey of discovery.

29
Q
  • scaffolding
A

Vygotskian learning mechanism in which parents provide initial assistance in children’s learning but gradually remove structure as children become more competent

30
Q
  • zone of proximal development
A

a phase of learning during which children can benefit from instruction (Vygotsky)

31
Q
  • Renee Baillargeon
A

object permanence; critic of Piaget; infants display object permanence around 4-5 months evidenced by eye tracking

31
Q
  • theory of mind
A

ability to reason about what other people know or believe (coined by Premack and Woodruff, 1978)

32
Q
  • operant conditioning
A

(also, operant learning) the process in which behavioral change (i.e., learning) occurs as a function of the consequences of behavior. Examples are teaching a dog to do tricks and rewarding behavioral change in a misbehaving child (see behavior therapy).

33
Q
  • babbling
A

intentional vocalization that lacks specific meaning

34
Q
  • one-word stage
A

early period of language development when children use single-word phrases to convey an entire thought

35
Q
  • homesign
A

system of signs invented by children who are deaf and born of hearing parents and therefore receive no language input; the gestures created by deaf children who have not been exposed to sign language (Susan Goldin-Meadow)

35
Q
  • Susan Goldin-Meadow
A

research primarily focuses on the role of hand gestures in thought and communication, particularly exploring how people, even those born blind, naturally use gestures to convey meaning beyond spoken language, revealing insights into their cognitive processes, and demonstrating that gestures can even actively shape our thinking; her key findings include the creation of “homesigns” by deaf children without exposure to sign language and the presence of gesturing in blind individuals who have never seen gestures being made

36
Q

Elissa Newport

A

Less is More Hypothesis–children are better able to learn languages than adults because they have fewer cognitive resources available to them

37
Q

Betty Hart and Todd Risley

A

study result “30 Million Word Gap”

38
Q
  • generative
A

allowing an infinite number of unique sentences to be created by combining words in novel ways; idea that humans can create an infinite number of sentences and phrases from a finite amount of grammatical or linguistic knowledge

39
Q
  • nativist
A

account of language acquisition that suggests children are born with some basic knowledge of how language works

40
Q
  • Noam Chomsky (re: language)
A

theory of universal grammar; linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology; proposed that linguistics, or the study of language, should be included in the field of cognitive psychology since it involves mental processes

41
Q

language acquisition device

A

hypothetical organ in the brain in which nativist believe knowledge of syntax resides

42
Q
  • Kelly Mix
A

researcher primarily focused on the development of number concepts and mathematical reasoning in young children, particularly investigating how infants and preschoolers begin to understand quantity and numerical concepts before formal instruction, often studying the role of spatial reasoning and visual cues in early math development; her research highlights the importance of cognitive science principles in improving children’s learning in mathematics ; research on number concepts, mathematical reasoning, and symbol grounding

43
Q
  • stranger anxiety
A

a fear of strangers developing at 8 or 9 months of age (continues to increase, then declines b/t 12-15 months)

44
Q
  • temperament
A

basic emotional style that appears early in development and is largely genetic in origin (in infancy 40% easy, 10% difficult, 15% slow-to-warm-up Thomas & Chess 1977)

45
Q

Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (1977):

A

3 major temperament styles; temperament is influenced by nine temperament traits: activity, regularity, initial reaction, adaptability, intensity, mood, distractibility, persistence-attention span, and sensory threshold

46
Q
  • Jerome Kagan
A

behavioral inhibition—a temperamental predisposition characterized by restraint in engaging with the world combined with a tendency to scrutinize the environment for potential threats and to avoid or withdraw from unfamiliar situations or people. (10% behaviorally inhibited/ 20% uninhibited/ 70% Middling.) It is often related to social anxiety and a predisposition for greater physiological reactivity to novel situations. [first described by U.S. psychologists Jerome Kagan and J. Steven Reznick

47
Q
  • attachment
A

the emotional bond between a human infant or a young nonhuman animal and its parent figure or caregiver; it is developed as a step in establishing a feeling of security and demonstrated by calmness while in the parent’s or caregiver’s presence. Attachment also denotes the tendency to form such bonds with certain other individuals in infancy as well as the tendency in adulthood to seek emotionally supportive social relationships.

48
Q
  • Konrad Lorenz
A

Nobel prize; term “imprinting”— Imprinting: a simple yet profound and highly effective learning process that occurs during a critical period in the life of some animals; newly hatched chicks tended to follow the first moving object, human or animal, that caught their attention. Observed by Spalding. Term introduced by Konrad Lorenz.

49
Q
  • John Bowlby
A

psychiatrist, psychoanalyst; Bowlby’s Evolutionary Theory of Attachment Bowlby defined attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.” His ethological theory of attachment suggests that infants have an innate need to form an attachment bond with a caregiver

50
Q
  • Harry Harlow
A

“contact comfort”; American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development

51
Q
  • contact comfort
A

positive emotions afforded by touch; the positive effects experienced by infants or young animals when in close contact with soft materials. (originates from Harry Harlow’s rhesus monkeys experiments)

52
Q
  • Mary Ainsworth
A

developmental psychologist; Strange Situation; development of attachment theory

53
Q
  • Dr. Benjamin Spock
A

a pediatrician and author who is best known for his book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. His theories on child-rearing influenced generations of parents and are considered to have revolutionized child-rearing practices; first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis in an effort to understand children’s needs and family dynamics

53
Q
  • Strange Situation
A

(textbook: “Not especially reliable”): both the mother and a stranger are present before the mother leaves the child with a stranger. The child’s response to the mother’s departure and reaction when she returns are used to determine the child’s attachment style

53
Q

Diana Baumrind

A

developmental and clinical psychologist; Pillar Theory: classifications of 3 parenting styles; two key dimensions: parental responsiveness and parental demandingness; theorized that children’s behavior can be attributed to the specific parenting style they experienced in their homes

54
Q
  • Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin
A

added neglectful parenting style; aka uninvolved, aka rejecting—neglecting

55
Q
  • Heinz Hartmann
A

psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; average expectable environment; founder/principal representative of ego psychology

56
Q

o average expectable environment

A

environment that provides children with basic needs for affection and discipline; a range of environmental conditions that are expected to promote normal development in a species

57
Q
  • self-control
A

ability to inhibit an impulse to act

58
Q

o Donald Winnicott (1958)—

A

pediatrician and psychoanalyst; Winnicott believed one of the developmental hurdles for an infant to pass is the risk of being traumatized by being too aware too soon of how small and helpless they really are. A baby who is too aware of real-world dangers will be too anxious to learn optimally. A good-enough parent is well enough attuned and responsive to protect the baby with an illusion of omnipotence, or being all-powerful. For example, a well-cared-for baby usually does not feel hungry for very long before being fed. Winnicott thought the parents’ quick response of feeding the baby gives the baby a sense that whenever she’s hungry, food appears as if by magic, as if the baby herself makes food appear just by being hungry. To feel this powerful, Winnicott thought, allowed a baby to feel confident, calm and curious, and able to learn without having to invest a lot of energy into defenses

59
Q
  • Walter Mischel
A

psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology; Theory of Personality—an individual’s behavior is influenced by two things- the specific attributes of a given situation and the manner in which he perceives the situation

59
Q
  • gender identity
A

individual’s sense of being male, female, or another gender

60
Q
  • gender role
A

a set of behaviors that tend to be associated with being male or female

61
Q
  • Bullying
A

social or physical aggression that is perpetuated repeatedly over time by individuals with greater power or status on individuals with less power or status

62
Q
  • identity
A

our sense of who we are, as well as our life goals and priorities; an individual’s sense of self defined by (a) a set of physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics that is not wholly shared with any other person and (b) a range of affiliations (e.g., ethnicity) and social roles. Identity involves a sense of continuity, or the feeling that one is the same person today that one was yesterday or last year (despite physical or other changes). Such a sense is derived from one’s body sensations; one’s body image; and the feeling that one’s memories, goals, values, expectations, and beliefs belong to the self. Also called personal identity

63
Q
  • Erik Erikson
A

psychoanalyst; 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development; Theory of Psychosocial Development; “identity crisis”=5th stage: identity vs role confusion; each stage a confrontation; psychosocial crisis

64
Q
  • Freud (re: identity):
A

theory of personality is based on the idea that human identity is made up of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud believed that most of what drives people is in their subconscious minds, and that a healthy personality is achieved when these three parts are in balance

65
Q
  • emerging adulthood
A

period of life b/t the ages of 18-25 when many aspects of emotional development, identity, and personality become solidified

66
Q
  • Lawrence Kohlberg
A

theory of moral development: 3 levels–preconventional, conventional, and postconventional /6 stages– Obedience and punishment, Self-interest, Interpersonal accord and conformity, Authority and maintaining social order, Social contract, Universal ethical principle

66
Q

Piaget (theory of moral development):

A

suggested two main types of moral thinking: Heteronomous morality: rules as unchangeable and imposed by authorities (moral realism) Autonomous morality: rules are created by people and can be negotiated (moral relativism)

67
Q
  • Carol Gilligan (1982)
A

feminist, ethicist, and psychologist, best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships; accused Kohlberg of Sex Bias

68
Q
  • Midlife crisis
A

supposed phase of adulthood characterized by emotional distress about the aging process and an attempt to regain youth

69
Q
  • Empty Nest Syndrome
A

alleged period of depression in mothers following the departure of their grown children from the home; actual increase in life satisfaction after empty nest