Final Exam Flashcards
An area of study devoted to understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence.
Child Development
All changes we experience throughout the lifespan.
Developmental Science
Changes in body size, proportions, appearance, functioning of body systems, perceptual and motor capacities, and physical health.
Physical Development
Changes in intellectual abilities, including attention, memory, academic and everyday knowledge, problem solving, imagination, creativity, and language.
Cognitive Development
Changes in emotional communication, self-understanding, knowledge about other people, interpersonal skills, friendships, intimate relationships, and moral reasoning and behaviour.
Emotional and Social Development
Major domains of Development
Physical, cognitive, and emotional and social development
A process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills that were there to begin with.
Continuous Development
A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times.
Discontinuous Development
Qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development.
Stages
Unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change.
Contexts
Blank Slate, continuous, nurture.
John Locke
Noble Savages, maturation.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Natural Selection, survival of the fittest.
Charles Darwin
Maturational Process, normative approach.
Hall and Gesell
First Intelligence Test, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
Binet and Simon
Psychosexual theory, id/ego/super ego.
Sigmund Freud
Psychosocial Theory.
Erik Erikson
Behaviourism
John Watson
Operant Conditioning Theory
B. F. Skinner
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura
Cognitive-developmental Theory.
Jean Piaget
Sociocultural Theory
Lev Vygotsky
Ecological Systems Theory, bioecological model.
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Measures of behaviour are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development.
Normative Approach
Children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflicts are resolved determines the persons ability to learn, to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
How parents manage their child’s sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development.
Psychosexual Theory
In addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active, contributing member of society.
Psychosocial Theory
Directly observable events - stimuli and responses - are the appropriate focus of study.
Behaviourism
Modeling, also known as Imitation or Observational Learning, as a powerful source of development.
Social Learning Theory
Observations of relationships between behaviour and environmental events, followed by systematic changes in those events based on procedures of conditioning and modeling. The goal is to eliminate undesirable behaviours and increase desirable responses.
Applied Behaviour Analysis
Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world.
Cognitive-developmental Theory
The human mind might also be viewed as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows.
Information Processing
Researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and medicine study the relationship between changes in the brain and the developing child’s cognitive processing and behaviour patterns.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Devoted to studying the relationship between changes in the brain and emotional and social development.
Developmental Social Neuroscience
The adaptive, or survival, value of behaviour and it’s evolutionary history.
Ethology
A time that is biologically optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences.
A Sensitive Period
Seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as those competencies change with age.
Evolutionary Developmental Psychology
How culture is transmitted to the next generation.
Sociocultural Theory
Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment.
Ecological Systems Theory
Innermost level of the environment. Consists of activities and interaction patterns in the child’s immediate surroundings.
The Microsystem
Encompasses connections between microsystems.
The Mesosystem
Consists of social settings that do not contain children but that nevertheless affect children’s experiences in immediate settings.
The Exosystem
Cultural values, laws, customs, and resources.
The Macrosystem
The child’s mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides the mastery of new skills.
Dynamic Systems Perspective
Go into the field, or natural environment, and observe the behaviour of interest.
Naturalistic Observation
Laboratory situations that evoke the behaviour of interest so that every participant has an equal opportunity to display the result.
Structured Observations
Directly observable characteristics.
Phenotype
The complex blend of genetic information that determines our species and influences all our unique characteristics.
Genotype
Three variables of socioeconomic status.
- Years of education,
- The prestige of ones job and the skill it requires,
- Income.
A field devoted to uncovering the contributions of nature and nurture to the diversity in human traits and abilities.
Behavioural Genetics
Because of their genetic makeup, individuals differ in their responsiveness to qualities of the environment.
Gene-environment Interaction
Our genes influence the environments to which we are exposed.
Gene-environment Correlation
Development resulting from ongoing, bidirectional exchanges between heredity and all levels of the environment.
Epigenesis
A biochemical process triggered by certain experiences, in which a set of chemical compounds lands on top of a gene and changes its impact, reducing or silencing its expression.
Methylation
Any environmental agent that causes damage during the prenatal period.
Teratogen
Used to assess the newborns physical condition quickly.
The Apgar Scale
Inadequate oxygen supply.
Anoxia
An automatic response to a particular form of stimulation.
Reflex
Degrees of sleep and wakefulness.
States of Arousal
Evaluates the baby’s reflexes, muscle tone, state changes, responsiveness to physical and social stimuli, and other reactions.
Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale (NBAS)
When the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body.
Cephalocaudal Trend
When growth proceeds from the centre of the body outward.
Proximodistal Trend
A form of learning where a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response.
Classical Conditioning
As infants act on their environment, the stimuli that follow their behaviour change the probability that their behaviour will occur again.
Operant Conditioning
Poorly coordinated swipes.
Prereaching
Clumsy motion of the fingers closing against the palm.
Ulnar Grasp
Well-coordinated use of the thumb and index finger.
Pincer Grasp
Early pattern preferences.
Contrast Sensitivity
Searching for invariant features of the environment in a constantly changing perceptual world.
Differentiation Theory
The action possibilities that a situation offers an organism with certain motor capabilities.
Affordances
The stage that spans the first two years of life.
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
Building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
Adaptation
Using current schemes to interpret the external world.
Assimilation
Creating new schemes or adjusting old ones after noticing that the current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely.
Accommodation
Words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present.
Displayed Reference
The strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals.
Emotional Self-regulation
The capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response.
Effortful Control
The make-believe with others that is underway by the end of the second year and that increases rapidly in complexity during early childhood.
Sociodramatic Play
Failure to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from ones own.
Egocentrism
The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities.
Animistic Thinking
The idea that certain physical characteristics of an object remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes.
Conservation
Focusing on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features.
Centration
An inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point.
Irreversibility
The organization of objects into classes on the basis of similarities and differences.
Hierarchical Classification
Adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child’s current level of performance.
Scaffolding
The ability to reflect on and manipulate the sound structures of spoken language.
Phonological Awareness
The process of continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful efforts.
Cognitive Self-Regulation
Triarchic Theory of successful intelligence.
- Analytical Intelligence
- Creative Intelligence
- Practical Intelligence
