DevPsy Shaffer: M-O Flashcards
detailed knowledge or plans of action that enable a person to perform gender-consistent activities and to enact his or her gender role.
own-sex schema
the overgeneralization of grammatical rules to irregular cases where the rules do not apply (for example, saying mouses rather than mice).
overregularization
the young child’s tendency to use rela
tively specific words to refer to a broader set of objects,
actions, or events than adults do (e.g., using the word
car to refer to all motor vehicles).
overextension
common bacterial infection of the middle
ear that produces mild to moderate hearing loss.
otitis media
an inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into coherent systems
or bodies of knowledge.
organization in infancy
a strategy for remembering that involves
grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful (or
manageable) clusters that are easier to retain.
organization
a form of learning in which
freely emitted acts (or operants) become either more
or less probable depending on the consequences they
produce.
operant conditioning
development of the individual
over his or her lifetime.
ontogenetic development
activity when children linger around other
children, watching them play, but making no attempts
to join in the play.
onlooker play
Freud’s term for the conflict
that 3- to 6-year-old boys were said to experience
when they develop an incestuous desire for their
mothers and a jealous and hostile rivalry with their
fathers.
Oedipus complex
the tendency of participants to react
to an observer’s presence by behaving in unnatural
ways.
observer influence
learning that results from observing the behavior of others.
observational learning
the notion that young children
will assume that a new word applied to an object refers
to the whole object rather than to parts of the object or
to object attributes (e.g., its color).
object scope constraint
the realization that objects continue
to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable
through the other senses.
object permanence
a medical term describing individuals who are at
least 20 percent above the ideal weight for their height,
age, and sex.
obese
developmental changes that
characterize most or all members of a species; typical
patterns of development.
normative development
a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve
that describes the variability of certain characteristics
within a population; most people fall at or near the
average score, with relatively few at the extremes of the
distribution.
normal distribution
onlooker behavior and solitary play.
nonsocial activity
an environmental influence that people living together do not
share that should make these individuals different from
one another.
nonshared environmental influence (NSE)
a subgroup that differs in
important ways from the larger group (or population)
to which it belongs.
nonrepresentative sample
an infant growth disorder,
caused by lack of attention and affection, that causes
growth to slow dramatically or stop.
nonorganic failure to thrive
an irrational pattern of thinking or
behavior that a person may use to contend with stress
or to avoid anxiety.
neurotic disorder
nerve cells that receive and transmit neural
impulses.
neurons
the primitive spinal cord that develops from
the ectoderm and becomes the central nervous system
neural tube
the idea that much cognitive knowledge,
such as object concept, is innate, requiring little in the
way of specific experiences to be expressed, and that
there are biological constraints, in that the mind/brain
is designed to process certain types of information in
certain ways.
neo-nativism
a newborn infant from birth to approximately 1
month of age.
neonate
a test that
assesses a neonate’s neurological integrity and responsiveness to environmental stimuli.
Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale (NBAS)
children who receive few nominations
as either a liked or a disliked individual from members
of their peer group.
neglected children
any stimulus whose removal or termination as the consequence of an act will increase the probability that the act will recur.
negative reinforcer
the debate among developmental
theorists about the relative importance of biological
predispositions (nature) and environmental influences
(nurture) as determinants of human development.
nature/nurture issue
an evolutionary process, proposed by Charles Darwin, stating that individuals with characteristics that promote adaptation to the environment will survive, reproduce, and pass these adaptive characteristics to offspring; those lacking these adaptive characteristics will eventually die out.
natural selection
a delivery in which physical and psychological preparations for the birth are
stressed and medical assistance is minimized.
natural (prepared) childbirth
a study in which the
investigator measures the impact of some naturally
occurring event that is assumed to affect people’s
lives.
natural (or quasi-) experiment
a method in which the scientist
tests hypotheses by observing people as they engage in
everyday activities in their natural habitats (for example,
at home, at school, or on the playground).
naturalistic observation
the term used to describe the dramatic
increase in the pace at which infants acquire new words
in the latter half of the 2nd year; so named because
many of the new words acquired are the names of
objects.
naming explosion
the process by which neurons are enclosed
in waxy myelin sheaths that will facilitate the transmission of neural impulses.
myelinization
a parent–child relation
ship characterized by mutual responsiveness to each
other’s needs and goals and shared positive affect.
mutually responsive relationship
notion that young children
will assume that each object has but one label and that
different words refer to separate and nonoverlapping
categories
mutual exclusivity constraint
a change in the chemical structure or arrangement of one or more genes that has the effect of producing a new phenotype.
mutation
an information-processing model that
depicts information as flowing through three processing
units (or stores): the sensory store, the short-term store
(STS), and the long-term store (LTS).
multistore model
older companion’s use of information that is exaggerated and synchronized across
two or more senses to call an infant’s attention to the
referent of a spoken word.
multimodal motherese
the short, simple, high-pitched (and often
repetitive) sentences that adults use when talking with
young children (also called child-directed speech).
motherese
rules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds.
morphology
one’s knowledge of the
meaning of morphemes that make up words.
morphological knowledge
smallest meaningful language units.
morphemes
the cognitive component of morality;
the thinking that people display when deciding whether
various acts are right or wrong.
moral reasoning
Gilligan’s term for what she presumes to be the dominant moral orientation of males, focusing more on socially defined justice as administered through
law than on compassionate concerns for human welfare.
morality of justice
Gilligan’s term for what she presumes
to be the dominant moral orientation of females—an
orientation focusing more on compassionate concerns
for human welfare than on socially defined justice as
administered through law.
morality of care
a set of principles or ideals that help the individual to distinguish right from wrong, to act on this
distinction, and to feel pride in virtuous conduct and
guilt (or other unpleasant emotions) for conduct that
violates one’s standards.
morality
the behavioral component of morality;
actions that are consistent with one’s moral standards in
situations in which one is tempted to violate them.
moral behavior
the emotional component of morality,
including feelings such as guilt, shame, and pride in
ethical conduct.
moral affect
twins who develop from a
single zygote that later divides to form two genetically
identical individuals.
monozygotic (identical) twins
the study of the bioevolutionary basis of behavior and development with a focus
on survival of the genes.
modern evolutionary theory
effortful techniques
used to improve memory, including rehearsal, organiza
tion, and elaboration.
mnemonics (memory strategies)
the process in which a cell duplicates its chromosomes and then divides into two genetically identical
daughter cells.
mitosis
the immediate settings (including role
relationships and activities) that the person actually
encounters; the innermost of Bronfenbrenner’s environmental layers or contexts.
microsystem
changes that occur over
relatively brief periods of time, in seconds, minutes, or
days, as opposed to larger-scale changes, as convention
ally studied in ontogenetic development.
microgenetic development
a research design in which partici
pants are studied intensively over a short period of time
as developmental changes occur; attempts to specify
how or why those changes occur.
microgenetic design
one’s knowledge about memory and
memory processes.
metamemory
a knowledge of language and
its properties; an understanding that language can be
used for purposes other than communicating.
metalinguistic awareness
one’s knowledge about cognition and
about the regulation of cognitive activities
metacognition
the interconnections among an individual’s
immediate settings or microsystems; the second of
Bronfenbrenner’s environmental layers or contexts.
mesosystem
a cognitive operation that allows one
to mentally order a set of stimuli along a quantifiable
dimension such as height or weight.
mental seriation
significant subaverage intellectual functioning associated with impairments in adaptive behavior in everyday life.
mental retardation
a measure of intellectual development
that reflects the level of age-graded problems a child is
able to solve.
mental age (MA)
the first occurrence of menstruation.
menarche
a general measure of the amount of information that can be held in the short-term store.
memory span
the process by which a germ cell divides, producing gametes (sperm or ova) that each contain half of the parent cell’s original complement of chromosomes; in humans, the products of meiosis contain 23 chromosomes.
meiosis
a belief, fostered by televised violence,
that the world is a more dangerous and frightening
place than is actually the case.
mean-world belief
developmental changes in the body or
behavior that result from the aging process rather
than from learning, injury, illness, or some other life
experience.
maturation
a tendency to persist at challeng
ing tasks because of a belief that one has high ability
and/or that earlier failures can be overcome by trying
harder.
mastery orientation
a tendency to persist at challeng
ing tasks because of a belief that one has high ability
and/or that earlier failures can be overcome by trying
mastery orientation
an inborn motive to explore, under
stand, and control one’s environment.
mastery motivation
a growth-retarding disease affecting infants
who receive insufficient protein and too few calories.
marasmus
the larger cultural or subcultural context
in which development occurs; Bronfenbrenner’s outer
most environmental layer or context.
