Chapter 5- Developing Through the Life Span

Question 1

Developmental Psychology

Answer 1

A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Question 2

Zygote

Answer 2

The fertilized egg; it enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo

Question 3

Embryo

Answer 3

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month

Question 4

Fetus

Answer 4

The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth

Question 5

Teratogens

Answer 5

“monster maker” agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm

Question 6

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Answer 6

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children cause by a pregnant women’s heavy drinking

Question 7

Habituation

Answer 7

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner

Question 8

Maturation

Answer 8

Biological growth process that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

Question 9

Cognition

Answer 9

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 10

Schema

Answer 10

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Question 11

Assimilation

Answer 11

Adopting our current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information

Question 12

Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Object Permanence

Answer 13

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Question 14

Egocentrism

Answer 14

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another point of view

Question 15

Preoperational Stage

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Conservation

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Theory of Mind

Answer 17

Peoples ideas about their own and others mental states- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict

Question 18

Concrete Operational Stage

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Formal Operational Stage

Answer 19

In Piagets theory, the stage of cognitive development ( normally beginning about age of 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts