Chapter 1 - Introduction Flashcards
Context
Refers to the settings in which development occurs.
Culture
Encompasses the behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a specific group of people that are passed on from generation to generation.
Cross-cultural studies
Compare aspects of two or more cultures.
Ethnicity
Is rooted in cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language.
Socioeconomic status (SES)
Refers to a person’s position within society based on occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
Gender
Is another key dimension of children’s development; refers to the characteristics of people as males and females.
Social policy
Is a government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.
Biological processes
Produce changes in an individual’s body.
Cognitive processes
Refer to changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language.
Socioemotional processes
Involve changes in an individual’s relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality.
Prenatal period
Is the time from conception to birth, roughly a nine-month period.
Infancy
Is the development period that extends from birth to about 18-24 months of age.
Early childhood
Is the development period that extends from the end of infancy to about 5 or 6 years of age; preschool years.
Middle and late childhood
Is the development period that extends between about 6 and 11 years of age; elementary school years.
Adolescence
Is the developmental period of transition from childhood to early adulthood, entered at approximately 10 to 12 years of age and ending at about 18 to 19 years of age.
Cohort effects
Are due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation but not to actual age.
Millennials
Referring to the generation born after 1980 - the first to come of age and enter emerging adulthood in the new millennium.
Nature-nurture issue
Involves the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or by nurture.
Continuity-discontinuity issue
Focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).
Early-later experience issue
Focuses on the degree to which early experiences of later experiences are they key determinants of the child’s development.
Scientific method
A four step process: 1) conceptualize a process or problem to be studied, 2) collect data, 3) analyze data, 4) draw conclusions.
Theory
Is an interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain and to make predictions.
Hypothesis
Is a specific, testable assumption or prediction.
Psychoanalytic theories
Describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion.
Development
The pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life span.
Piaget’s theory
States that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development.
Vygotsky’s theory
Is a sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.
Information-processing theory
Which emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, strategize about it.
Social cognitive theory
Holds that behavior, environment and cognition are the key factors in development.
Ethology
Stresses that behavior is strongly influenced my biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
Holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems.
Eclectic theoretical orientation
Which does not follow any one theoretical approach but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered its best aspects.
Laboratory
A controlled setting from which many of the complex factors of the “real world” have been removed.
Naturalistic observation
Behavioral observation that takes place in real-world settings.
Standardized test
Has uniform procedures for administration and scoring.
Case study
Is an in-depth look at a single individual.
Descriptive research
Research that involves observing and recording behavior.
Correlational research
Research in which the goal is to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics.
Correlation coefficient
A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables.
Experiment
A carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant.
Cross-sectional approach
A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at the same point in time.
Longitudinal approach
A research strategy in which the same individuals or studied over a period of time, usually several years.
Ethnic gloss
Use of an ethnic label such as African-American or Latino in a superficial way that portrays an ethnic group as being more homogeneous than it really is.
Erikson’s theory
Description of eight stages of human development. Each stage consist of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals of the crisis that must be resolved.
