Chapter 5- Developing Through the Life Span 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
“monster maker” 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 cause by a pregnant women’s heavy drinking
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 process that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
Schema
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information
Assimilation
Adopting our current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information
Sensorimotor Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about age 2) 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
Egocentrism
In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another point of view
Preoperational Stage
In Piaget’s theory (from age 2-6/7) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete language
Conservation
The principal (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
Theory of Mind
Peoples ideas about their own and others mental states- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict
Concrete Operational Stage
In Piagets theory, the stage of cognitive development (from 6/7 to 11) during which children gain the mental operations that enable to think logically about concrete events
Formal Operational Stage
In Piagets theory, the stage of cognitive development ( normally beginning about age of 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts
