Chapter 2: There's of development Flashcards
Parsimony
a criterion for evaluating the scientific merit of theories
- a parsimonious theory is one that uses relatively few explanatory principles to explain a broad set of observations.
Falsifiability
a criterion for evaluating the scientific merit of theories; a parsimonious theory is one that uses relatively few explanatory principles to explain a broad set of observations.
Heuristic value
a criterion for evaluating the scientific merit of theories. A heuristic theory is one that continues to stimulate new research and discoveries
Psychosexual Theory
Freud’s theory states maturation of the sex instinct underlies stages of personality development, and that the manner in which parents manage children’s instinctual impulses determines the traits that children display.
repression
a type of motivated forgetting in which anxiety-provoking thoughts and conflicts are forced out of conscious awareness
ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
ID: psychoanalytic term for the inborn component of the personality that is compelled by the drives
EGO: psychoanalytic term for the rational component of the personality.
Superego: psychoanalytic term for the component of personality that consists of one’s internalized moral standards.
Fixation
arrested development at a particular psychosexual stage that can prevent movement to higher stages
Psychosocial Theory
Erikson’s revision of Freud’s theory, which emphasizes sociocultural (rather than sexual) determinants of development and posits a series of eight psychosocial conflicts that people must resolve successfully to display healthy psychological adjustments.
behaviourism
a school of thinking in psychology that holds that conclusions about human development should be based on controlled observations of overt behaviour
cognitive development
age-related changes that occur in mental activities such as attending, perceiving, learning, thinking, and remembering
Scheme
an organized pattern of thought or action that a child constructs to make sense of some aspect of his or her experience
assimilation
Piaget’s term for the process by which children interpret new experiences by incorporating them into their existing schemes
Accommodation
Piaget’s term for the process by which children modify their existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new experiences
disequilibrium
imbalances or contradictions between an individual’s thought processes and environmental events.
Sociocultural Theory
Vygotsky’s perspective on development, in which children acquire their culture’s values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.