Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Developmental Psychology
The scientific study of how people change physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally from infancy through old age.
Stages
Distinct segments of an organism’s life with sharp differences or discontinuities between them.
Qualitative Development
As a person develops, their psychology changes abruptly from one stage to the next and they seem to have very different characteristics than they had before.
Quantitative Development
As a person develops, they change gradually and continually across time.
Maturation
A series of biological growth processes that enable orderly growth relatively independently of experience.
Cross-Sectional Design
A methodological approach to studying development that compares participants of different age groups to one another.
Cohort Effect
An effect or difference due to the members of an age group (or age cohort) sharing a common set of life experiences. Is a key disadvantage for cross-sectional research studies.
Longitudinal Design
A methodological approach to studying development that tracks participants across time and compares each participant at different time points. Key disadvantage is that it requires a lot of time and resources.
Attrition
When participants withdraw from a study before it has finished. Is a key disadvantage for longitudinal research studies.
Sequential Design
A methodological approach to studying development that tracks multiple age groups across time and compares different age groups to one another as well as compares participants to themselves at different time points.
Cognitive Development
Changes in all of the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Schemas
Concepts or mental models that represent our experiences. A flexible concept or framework that helps us to make sense of information by organizing and interpreting it.
Assimilation
In Piaget’s theory, the process of using an existing schema to interpret a new experience.
Accommodation
In Piaget’s theory, the process of revising existing schemas to incorporate information from a new experience.
Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to 2 years. Children develop knowledge through their senses and actions but cannot yet think using symbols, namely language. During this stage, children learn that objects continue to exist even when the objects are hidden. World is taken in through sensations and motor experience (no symbolic thought).
Preoperational Stage
2 to 7 years. Children master the use of symbols but struggle to see situations from multiple perspectives or to imagine how situations can change. During this stage, children classify objects, but only according to a single feature, such as colour or shape. The development of capacity for symbolic thought, the world is represented with words, sounds, gestures, and images. Language develops. Imaginative/pretend play. Unable to manipulate symbolic schemas (perform operations) ex. difficulty with understanding conservation.
Concrete Operational Stage
7 to 12 years. Children become capable of using multiple perspectives and their imagination to solve complex problems, but they are able to apply this thinking only to concrete objects or events.
Formal Operational Stage
12 years and up. Adolescents become able to reason about abstract problems and hypothetical propositions.
Object Permanence
The awareness that objects continue to exist even when they are temporarily out of sight. Piaget believed that infants can only think about the physical world and object permanence doesn’t develop until 8-12 months. Current understanding, it develops as early as 3.5 months.
Violation-of-Expectation Method (VOE)
Takes advantage of the fact that people are surprised by things they don’t expect. Measures how long infants will look at something that is unexpected.
Neural Proliferation
The creation of new synaptic connections.
Synaptic Pruning
The trimming back of unnecessary synapses according to a “use it or lose it” principle (connections that get used are maintained and unused connections are eliminated).
Myelination of Axons
The process of insulating axons in myelin which speeds their conductivity and allows information to move more rapidly through the brain and body.
Social Referencing
A process of using others’ facial expressions for information about how to react to a situation.