Ch. 1 Definitions Flashcards
Development
Pattern of movement or change beginning at conception and continuing through human life span
Life expectancy
Average number of years a person born in a particular year can expect to live
Life-span perspective
Development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary and contextual; involving growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss constructed through biological sociocultural and individual factors working together
Lifelong
No age period dominates development
Multidimensional
Body, mind, emotions, relationships including many components
Multidirectional
Dimensions/components expand and shrink
Plasticity
Capacity for change
Multidisciplinary
Developmental science involves professionals from various disciplines
Contextual
Development occurs within contextual setting, influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors
Normative age-graded influences
Similar for individuals in a particular age group
Normative history-graded influences
Similar for people of a particular generation due to historical circumstances
Nonnormative life events
Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individual’s life
Culture
Behavior, patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group of people passed from generation to generation
Cross-cultural studies
Comparisons of one culture with one or more other cultures (assessing similarity or universality across cultures)
Ethnicity
Characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, language
Socioeconomic status
Person’s position within society based on occupational, educational, economic characteristics
Gender
Characteristics of people as males or females
Social policy
Government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens
Biological processes
Processes that produce changes in an individual’s physical nature
Cognitive processes
Processes that involve changes in thought, intelligence, language
Socioemotional processes
Processes that involve changes in relationships with other people, emotions, and personality
Developmental period
Timeframe in a person’s life characterized by certain features
Prenatal period
Conception to birth
Infancy
Birth to 18/24 months
Early childhood
18/24 months through age 5/6 (also called preschool years)
Middle and late childhood
6 to 11 years
Adolescence
Transition from childhood to early adulthood, from approximately 10/12 through 18/21
Emerging adulthood
18 to 25 years; transitional period characterized by experimentation and exploration
Identity exploration
Characteristic of emerging adulthood especially in love and work
Instability
Characteristic of emerging adulthood in residence, love, work, education
Self-focused
Little social obligation, duties and commitments to others, lots of autonomy
Feeling in-between
Not adolescents and not full adults
Age of possibilities
The sense of opportunity to transform life, optimistic and seizing a positive future
Early adulthood
From late teens/early 20s through 30s
Middle adulthood
Approximately 40 to 60 years old
Late adulthood
Approximately 60s/70s through death; divided between young old 65-84 and oldest old 85+
Chronological age
Number of years elapsed since birth
Biological age
Age in terms of physical health and capacity of functional organs
Psychological age
Adaptive capacities compared to others of same chronological age
Social age
Connectedness with others and social roles
Normal aging
Psychological functioning peaks in early middle age, remains stable, then declines
Pathological aging
Greater than average declines in aging
Successful aging
Positive physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development maintained longer
Nature-nurture issue
Debate about primary influence between biological inheritance vs. environmental experiences
Stability-change issue
Debate about whether and to what degree we become older renditions of our earlier selves or develop into someone different from who we were
Continuity-discontinuity issue
Debate that focuses on development as gradual, continual change vs. distinct changes
Scientific method
1) conceptualize a process or problem
2) collect data
3) analyze data
4) draw conclusions
Theory
An interrelated coherent set of ideas that helps explain phenomena and make predictions
Hypotheses
Specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine accuracy
Psychoanalytic theories
Development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion; behavior is surface characteristic to be understood through analyzing symbolic workings of the mind. Emphasis on early experiences with parents
Freud’s theory
Psychosexual development in stages
Erikson’s theory
Proposes 8 psychosocial stages of tasks with crises that must be resolved
Trust vs. mistrust,
Autonomy vs. shame/doubt
Initiative vs. guilt
Industry vs. inferiority
Identity vs. identity confusion
Intimacy vs. isolation
Generativity vs. stagnation
Integrity vs. despair
Cognitive theories
Emphasis on conscious thought
Piaget’s theory
4 stages of cognitive development to construct understanding of the world
Sensorimotor (birth-2)
Preoperational (2-7)
Concrete operational (7-11)
Formal operational (11+)
Vygotsky’s theory
Sociocultural cognitive theory emphasizing culture and social interaction guiding development
Information-processing theory
Emphasizing that individuals manipulate, monitor, and strategize about information (memory and thinking are central)
Operant conditioning
Consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence (Skinner)
Social cognitive theory
View that behavior, environment, and cognition key factors in development (Bandura)
Observational learning
Imitation/modeling; learning that occurs through observing what others do
Ethology
Behavior strongly influenced by biology, tied to evolution, characterized by critical/sensitive periods (Lorenz)
Imprinting
Rapid, innate learning involving attachment to first moving object seen (Lorenz)
Ecological theory
Environmental systems theory that focuses on five environmental systems:
Microsystem (immediate context),
Mesosystem (relationships between Microsystems),
Exosystem (links between immediate context and ones removed),
Macrosystem (broader culture),
chronosystem (patterning and transition over time)
(Bronfenbrenner)
Eclectic theoretical orientation
Does not follow any one approach but selects from each theory what is considered best
Laboratory
Controlled setting from which complex factors of “real world” have been removed
Naturalistic observation
Observing behavior in real-world settings
Standardized test
Test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring (allowing comparison)
Case study
In-depth look at a single individual
fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
EEG
Electroencephalography
Descriptive research
Aims to observe and record behavior
Correlational research
Strives to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics
Correlation coefficient
Number based on a statistical analysis used to describe degree of association between two variables
Experiment
Carefully regulated procedure in which one or more factors are manipulated while all other factors are held constant
Independent variable
Manipulated, influential, experimental factor
Dependent variable
Factor that can change in an experiment
Random assignment
Participants assigned to research groups by chance
Control group
Comparison group that resembles experimental group as closely as possible
Cross-sectional approach
Research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time
Longitudinal approach
Research strategy in which individuals are studied over a period of time
Cohort effects
Characteristics attributable to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation (not actual age)
Ethical research
Informed consent, confidentiality, debriefing, deception
Ethnic gloss
Use of an ethnic label in a superficial way that portrays an ethnic group as being more homogenous than it is
