Early Childhood

Question 1

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action

Answer 1

Animism

Question 2

Focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others

Answer 2

Centration

Question 3

Education that involves the whole child considering both the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development and the child’s needs, interests, and learning styles

Answer 3

Child-centered kindergarten

Question 4

Awareness that altering an object’s or a substance’s appearance does not change its basic properties (number, matter, length)

Answer 4

Conservation

Question 5

Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (age-appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individual-appropriateness)

Answer 5

Developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)

Question 6

The inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s (salient feature of the first substage of preoperational thought)

Answer 6

Egocentrism

Question 7

Involves action planning, allocating to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances

Answer 7

Executive attention

Question 8

An umbrella-like concept that consists of a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Involves managing one’s thought to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-control

Answer 8

Executive function

Question 9

A process that helps to explain how young children learn the connection between a word and its referent so quickly

Answer 9

Fast mapping

Question 10

Absence of deficiency of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland to stimulate the body to grow

Answer 10

Growth hormone deficiency

Question 11

Piaget’s second substage of preoperational thought, in which children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions (between 4 to 7 years of age)

Answer 11

Intuitive thought substage

Question 12

An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire

Answer 12

Montessori approach

Question 13

The process by which the nerve cells are covered and insulated with a later of fat cells, which increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous

Answer 13

Myelination

Question 14

Reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically.

Answer 14

Operations

Question 15

Piaget’s second stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age, during which the children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings, and symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory information and physical action; stable concepts are formed, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism is present, and magical beliefs are constructed

Answer 15

Preoperational stage

Question 16

A government-funded program that is designed to provide children from low-income families with the opportunity to acquire the skills and experiences important for school success.

Answer 16

Project Head Start

Question 17

The memory component in which individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal of the information

Answer 17

Short-term memory

Question 18

An approach that emphasizes the social contexts of learning and asserts that knowledge is mutually built and constructed.

Answer 18

Social constructivist approach

Question 19

Focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment

Answer 19

Sustained attention

Question 20

Piaget’s first substage of preoperational thought, in which the child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present (between 2 to 4 years of age)

Answer 20

Symbolic function substage

Question 21

Awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others

Answer 21

Theory of mind

Question 22

Vygotsky’s term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with the assistance of adults or more-skilled children

Answer 22

Zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Question 23

A restrictive, punitive style in which parents exhort the child to follow their directions and respect their work and effort. The parent places firm limits and control on the child and allows little verbal exchange. It is associated with children’s social incompetence.

Answer 23

Authoritarian parenting

Question 24

A parenting style in which parents encourage their children to be independent but still place limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturing toward the child. This parenting is associated with children’s social competence.

Answer 24

Authoritative parenting

Question 25

Older children become aware the rules and laws are created by people and that in judging an action, one should consider the actor’s intentions as well as the consequences

Answer 25

Autonomous morality

Question 26

Physical abuse, child neglect, sexual abuse, emotional abuse

Answer 26

Child maltreatments

Question 27

An internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves integrating moral thought, feeling, and behavior

Answer 27

Conscience

Question 28

Play that combines sensorimotor and repetitive activity with symbolic representation of ideas. It occurs when children engage in self-regulated creation or construction of a product or a solution

Answer 28

Constructive play

Question 29

Support parents provide for each other in jointly raising their children

Answer 29

Coparenting

Question 30

Activities engaged in for pleasure that include rules and often involve competition with one or more individuals

Answer 30

Games

Question 31

The sense of being male or female, which most children acquire by the time they are 3 years old

Answer 31

Gender identity

Question 32

A set of expectations that prescribes how females or males should think, act, and feel

Answer 32

Gender role

Question 33

The theory that gender typing emerges as children develop gender schemas of their culture’s gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behaviorder typing

Answer 33

Gender schema theory

Question 34

Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role

Answer 34

Gender typing

Question 35

The first stage of moral development in Piaget’s theory, occurring from approximately 4 to 7 years of age. Justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people

Answer 35

Heteronomous morality

Question 36

The concept that if a rule is broken, punishment will be meted out immediately

Answer 36

Immanent justice

Question 37

A style of parenting in which parents are highly involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them. This parenting is associated with children’s social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control

Answer 37

Indulgent parenting

Question 38

A style of parenting in which parents are highly uninvolved in the child’s life; this style is associate with children’s social incompetence, especially lack of self-control

Answer 38

Neglectful parenting

Question 39

Play that involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for game or sports

Answer 39

Practice play

Question 40

The preschool child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent, by approximately 5 or 6 years of age renounces this attraction because of anxious feelings, and subsequently identifies with the same-sex parent, unconsciously adopting their characteristics

Answer 40

Psychoanalytic theory of gender

Question 41

Play in which the child transforms the physical environment into a symbol

Answer 41

Pretense/symbolic play

Question 42

The child’s cognitive representation of self, the substance and content of the child’s self-conceptions

Answer 42

Self-understanding

Question 43

Play/behavior engaged in by infants that lets them derive pleasure from exercising their existing sensorimotor schemas

Answer 43

Sensorimotor play

Question 44

A theory emphasizing that children’s gender development occurs through the observation and imitation of gender behavior and through the rewards and punishments children experience for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior

Answer 44

Social cognitive theory of gender

Question 45

Play that involves social interaction with peers

Answer 45

Social play

Question 46

A theory that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women

Answer 46

Social role theory