Developmental Flashcards
altricial species
in which the young are incapable of moving around on their own and are dependent on their parent(s) for food and safety for some period of time after hatching/birth
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
a collection of lung disorders such as emphysema and bronchitis and airflow obstruction. People with COPD have difficulty breathing.
chronological age (CA)
a person’s actual age, as opposed to their mental age.
cognition
mental activity, such as attention, memory, problem-solving, thinking and intelligence.
compensatory education
offers supplementary programs or services designed to help children at risk of cognitive impairment and low educational achievement succeed.
deprivation-specific patterns
four types of deficit associated with those children who were over 6 months at the time of adoption: (1) quasi-autistic symptoms, characterised by “intense circumscribed interests and abnormal preoccupations”; (2) disinhibited social engagement, characterised by a marked disregard for social boundaries, together with an undue familiarity with strangers and a willingness to walk off with strangers and/or to walk away from the caregiver, and to ask inappropriate questions of strangers; (3) inattention/overactivity, which shares many features with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); (4) cognitive impairment.
developmental catch-up
improvement in aspects of development following the introduction of positive environments.
dizygotic (fraternal) twins
individuals who are conceived at the same time but result from two eggs being fertilised by different sperm. Thus, they are like regular siblings and share half of their genes.
empiricism
the view that humans are not born with built-in ‘core knowledge’ or mental content and that all knowledge results from learning and experience.
environmental drift
changes in developmental functions that result from and are in the direction of changing environments.
environmentalism
the hypothesis that people become who they are as a consequence of the learning and experiences they have had throughout life.
environmentality
the extent to which variations in a population are caused by environmental factors. Often expressed as e2.
familial resemblance
the resemblance between relatives whose genetic relationship to each other is known.
Flynn effect
an increase in the average intelligence quotient (IQ) test scores over generations.
g
the term used to denote general intelligence. N.b.: it is always written as g and never G.
genetic determinism
the hypothesis that people become who they are as a consequence of their genetic inheritance.
Gene X environmental interaction
the ways in which children’s genetic inheritance affects the environment they experience, and vice versa (also known as environment-gene correlation).
genome
an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.
genotype
an individual’s inherited genetic make-up.
heritability
a statistical measure that describes how much of the variation of a trait in a population is due to genetic differences (rather than environmental differences) in that population.
innate
a mechanism or ability that exists naturally or by heredity rather than being learned through experience.
intelligence quotient (IQ)
a measure of a person’s level of intelligence compared to a population of individuals of approximately the same age. A score of around 100 indicates average intelligence, scores above and below 100 indicate, respectively, above and below average intelligence.
maturation
aspects of development that are largely under genetic control, and hence largely uninfluenced by environmental factors. Not to be confused with maturing, which means development into the mature or adult state, however caused.
mental age (MA)
the level of mental skills that is average for a particular age group. If a child has a developmental delay, then their mental age will be lower than their chronological age, and vice versa for bright children.
