Chapter 4 - Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Developmental Psychology
a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
Zygote
The fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.
Embryo
The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.
Fetus
The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.
Teratogens
Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions.
Rooting Reflex
A baby’s tendency, when touched on the cheek to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple.
Habituation
Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.
Maturation
Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
Jean Piaget
Revolutionized our understanding of children’s minds. Until Piaget, most people–forgetting their own preschool days–assumed children ‘simply knew less, not differently, than adults.’ Thanks partly to his work, we now understand that ‘children reason in wildly illogical ways about problems whose solutions are self-evident to adults’.
Schema
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation
Interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas.
Accommodation
Adapting one’s current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information.
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Sensorimotor Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
Object Permanence
The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
Preoperational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
Conservation
The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
Egocentrism
in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.
Theory of Mind
People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states–about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.
Autism
A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others’ states of mind.
Concrete Operational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
Formal Operational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning at age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Stranger Anxiety
The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.
Attachment
An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.
Harry Harlow
Showed that infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact and not because of nourishment.
Mary Ainsworth
Studied attachment differences by observing mother-infant pairs at home during their first 6 months. Later, she observes the 1-year-old in a strange situation without their mothers. (secure attachment/insecure attachment)
Secure Attachment
Children play and explore comfortably in the mother’s presence, are distressed when she leaves, and seek contact when she returns.
Insecure Attachment
Children explore less in the mother’s pretense and may cling to her, cry loudly when she leaves, and remain upset or act indifferent when she returns.
Critical Period
An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.
Imprinting
The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.
Basic Trust
according to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
Self-concept
A sense of one’s identity and personal worth.
Adolescence
The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.
Puberty
The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
Primary Sex Traits
The body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.
Secondary Sex Traits
Nonreproductive sexual characteristics such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality and body hair.
Lawrence Kohlberg
Sought to describe the development of moral reasoning, the thinking that occurs as we consider right and wrong. Kohlberg posted moral dilemmas (for example: whether a person should steal medicine to save a love one’s life) and asked children, adolescents and adults if the action was right or wrong. He then analyzed their answers for evidence of stages of moral thinking.
Preconventional Morality
Before age 9, most children have a pre conventional morality of self-interest: They obey either to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards.
Conventional Morality
By early adolescence, morality usually evolves to a more conventional level that cares for others and upholds laws and social rules simply because they are the laws and rules.
Postconventional Morality
Some of those who develop the abstract reasoning of formal operational thought may come to a third level. Post conventional morality affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows what one personality perceives as basic ethical principles.
Menarche
The first menstrual period.
Erik Erikson
Theorist that contended that each stage of life has its own psychosocial task, a crisis that needs resolution.
Identity
One’s sense of self; according to Erickson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.
Intimacy
In Erickson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood.
Menopause
The time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences her ability to reproduce declines
Alzheimer’s Disease
A progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language and finally, physical functioning.
Cross-Sectional Study
A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.
Longitudinal Study
Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.
Crystallized Intelligence
One’s accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Fluid Intelligence
One’s ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
Social Clock
The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.
