Chapter 5 Flashcards
Developmental Psychology
A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social development throughout the lifespan.
Cross-Sectional Studies
Research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.
Longitudinal Studies
Research that follows and retests the same people over time.
Zygote
The fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo. The inner cell clump become the embryo while the outer cell clump becomes the placenta.
Embryo
The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month of pregnancy.
Fetus
The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth. During the 6th month, organs develop enough for the fetus to survive on its own and the fetus is responsive to sound.
Tetratogens
Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and can cause harm. No drinking or smoking while pregnant.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small and out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features.
Newborn Reflexes
- The startle reflex is an adaptive reflex characterized by the arms and legs spreading out, quickly followed by fist clenching and loud crying.
- The grasping reflex is when babies strongly clench something in their hands.
Habituation
Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation.
Maturation
Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
Infancy and Childhood Brain Development
There is rapid development of branching neural networks after birth, which causes the infant brain size to increase rapidly and increases control in attention and behavior. The brain’s association areas are the last to develop.
Infancy and Childhood Motor Development
The sequence is universal, and caused by the rapid growth of the cerebellum that creates the readiness to learn physical skills.
Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development
The rapid neuron growth disrupts stored memories, which is why people don’t remember early life, and memory gets better as we age due to the development of the hippocampus and the frontal lobes. The two-track mind stores unconscious memories from our childhood.
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Schema
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation
Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
Accommodation
Adapting our current schemas to incorporate new information.
Sensorimotor Stage
(0-2) The stage at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. Around 8 months, children develop object permanence and stranger anxiety.
Object Permanence
The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
Preoperational Stage
(2-7) The stage at which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. Children this age display egocentrism. Around 6 years, children develop the concept of conservation.
Conservation
The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
Egocentrism
Difficulty of taking another’s point of view.
Concrete Operational Stage
(7-11) The stage at which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. Children begin to grasp conservation and mathematical transformations.
Formal Operational Stage
The stage at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. Children can ponder hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences.
Lev Vygotsky’s Thinking
Emphasized how a child’s mind grows through a social environment rather than a physical one.
Theory of Mind
Ideas about one’s own and others’ mental states. Children tend to learn this over time.
Stranger Anxiety
The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age. If a child can’t fit a face into a pre-existing schema, they become distressed.
Attachment
An emotional tie with others; shown in young children by seeking their closeness to a caregiver and showing distress on separation. This is a great survival impulse.
Critical Period
An optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.
Secure Attachment
When a caregiver is present, they comfortably do things on their own. When their caregiver is gone, they become distressed.
Insecure Attachment
When an infant/child is extremely attached to their caregiver or is indifferent about their presence.
Basic Trust
A sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
Avoidant Attachment
Discomfort getting close to others.
Anxious Attachment
Constantly crave acceptance.
Deprivation of Attachment
In general, abused children are at higher risk for health problems, psychological disorders, substance abuse, criminality, and in women, earlier death.
Self-Concept
All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer to “Who am I?”. Children with a positive self-concept grow to be confident, independent, optimistic, assertive, and sociable.
Parenting Styles
- Authoritarian: parents are coercive. They impose rules and expect obedience.
- Permissive: parents are unrestricting. They make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment.
- Neglectful: parents are uninvolved, neither demanding nor responsive. They are careless, inattentive, and don’t set out to form a close relationship with their child.
- Authoritative: parents are confrontative. They set rules but allow open discussion and exceptions.
Adolescence
The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence. This is a time of diminishing parental control, craving social acceptance, and feeling socially disconnected.
Adolescence Cognitive Development
The frontal lobe lags the limbic system in relation to development, which can cause impulsive decisions, risky behaviors, and emotional storms. This wrongdoing is not completely their fault. Teens also experience egotistical thoughts, but it is different from childhood because it has to do with what others think about them. They tend to believe that what has happened to others won’t happen to them as well.
Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Thinking
- Preconventional Morality (before age 9): self-interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards.
- Conventional Morality (early adolescence): uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order.
- Postconventional Morality (adolescence and beyond): actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-directed ethical principles.
Moral Reasoning
Describes the thinking that occurs as we consider right and wrong. To be a moral person, you must think AND act moral.
Moral Intuition
Quick, gut feelings that trigger moral reasoning. Moral reasoning can be overridden by moral emotion.
Moral Action
Taking action to do the right or moral thing.
Delaying Gratification
Maturity and life success grow form the ability to spurn small pleasures now in favor of greater pleasers later. Delaying gratification fosters flourishing.
Identity
Our sense of self; the adolescents’ task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.
Social Identity
The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships. This often forms around distinctiveness.
Intimacy
The ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary development task in young adulthood.
Emerging Adulthood
A period from about age 18 to the mid-twenties, when many in Western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults.
Menopause
Usually around 50, the time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines.
Plasticity in the Aging Brain
Though the frontal lobes, memory regions, and the blood-brain barrier break down, there is still plasticity in the brain, which continues to recruit and reorganize new info.
Exercise in the Aging Body
Exercise slows aging.
Neurocognitive Disorders
Acquired disorders marked by cognitive deficits; often related to Alzheimer’s Disease, brain injury or disease, or substance abuse. Also called dementia.
Alzheimer’s Disease
A neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques, often with onset after age 80, and entailing a progressive decline in other cognitive abilities and memory. Starts with deterioration of memory, then the person becomes emotionally flat, then disoriented and disinhibited, then incontinent, and finally mentally vacant.
Social Clock
The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement. Mid-life crisis is only cause by major events, not age.
Love
Bonds of love are most satisfying when marked by a similarity of interests and values, a sharing of emotional and marital support, and intimate self-disclosure.
Work
Happiness is about having work that fits your interests and provides you with a sense of competence and accomplishment.
Death and Dying
Cultures encourage different kinds of grief.
There are no set stages to grief.
Any type of grief is okay, there is not one best way to grieve.
