Introduction Flashcards
Systematic changes in the individual occurring between conception and death; such changes can be positive, negative, or neutral.
development
The physical changes that occur from conception to maturity.
growth
The deterioration of organisms that leads inevitably to their death.
biological aging
To most developmentalists, positive, negative, and neutral changes in the mature organism; different from biological aging.
aging
Socially defined age groups or strata, each with different statuses, roles, privileges, and responsibilities in society.
age grades
A ritual that marks a person’s “passage” from one status to another, usually in reference to rituals marking the transition from childhood to adulthood.
rite of passage
Expectations about what people should be doing or how they should behave at different points in the life span.
age norms
A personal sense of when things should be done in life and when the individual is ahead of or behind the schedule dictated by age norms.
social clock
A person’s classification in or affiliation with a group based on common heritage or traditions.
ethnicity
The position people hold in society based on such factors as income, education, occupational status, and the prestige of their neighborhoods.
socioeconomic status (SES)
The transitional period between childhood and adulthood that begins with puberty and ends when the individual has acquired adult competencies and responsibilities.
adolescence
Newly identified period of the life span extending from about age 18 to age 25, when young people are neither adolescents nor adults and are exploring their identities, careers, and relationships.
emerging adulthood
The average number of years a newborn baby can be expected to live; now almost 78 years in the United States.
life expectancy
The debate over the relative importance of biological predispositions (nature) and environmental influences (nurture) as determinants of human development.
nature–nurture issue
Developmental changes that are biologically programmed by genes rather than caused primarily by learning, injury, illness, or some other life experience.
maturation
A functional unit of heredity made up of DNA and transmitted from generation to generation.
gene
Events or conditions outside the person that are presumed to influence and be influenced by the individual.
environment
A relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavioral potential) that results from a person’s experiences or practice.
learning
Bronfenbrenner’s model of development that emphasizes the roles of both nature and nurture as the developing person interacts with a series of environmental systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem).
bioecological model
In Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, the immediate settings in which the person functions (for example, the family).
microsystem
In Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, interrelationships between microsystems or immediate environments (ways in which events in the family affect a child’s interactions at a day care center).
mesosystem
In Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, settings not experienced directly by individuals still influence their development (for example, effects of events at a parent’s workplace on children’s development).
exosystem
In Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, the larger cultural or subcultural context of development.
macrosystem
A system of meanings shared by a population of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
culture
In Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach, the system that captures the way changes in environmental systems, such as social trends and life events, are patterned over a person’s lifetime.
chronosystem
Grounding what they do in research and ensuring that the curricula and treatments they provide have been demonstrated to be effective.
evidence-based practice
Carefully recorded observations of the growth and development of children by their parents over a period; the first scientific investigations of development.
baby biographies
Hall’s term for the emotional ups and downs and rapid changes that he believed characterize adolescence.
storm and stress
The study of aging and old age.
gerontology
A perspective that views development as a lifelong, multi directional process that involves gain and loss, is characterized by considerable plasticity, is shaped by its historical-cultural context, has many causes, and is best viewed from a multidisciplinary
perspective.
life-span perspective
An openness of the brain cells (or of the organism as a whole) to positive and negative environmental influence; a capacity to change in response to experience.
plasticity
The brain’s remarkable ability to change in response to experience throughout the life span, as when it recovers from injury or benefits from stimulating learning experiences.
neuroplasticity
An attitude or value about the pursuit of knowledge that dictates that investigators must be objective and must allow their data to decide the merits of their theorizing.
scientific method
A set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain a set of observations.
theory
A theoretical prediction about what will hold true if we observe a phenomenon.
hypothesis
The group of individuals chosen to be the subjects of a study.
sample
A well-defined group that a researcher who studies a sample of individuals is interested in drawing conclusions about.
population
A sample formed by identifying all members of the larger population of interest and then selecting a portion of them in an unbiased or random way to participate in the study; a technique to ensure that the sample studied is representative or typical of the larger population of interest.
random sample
A research method in which the scientist observes people as they engage in common everyday activities in their natural habitats.
naturalistic observation
A research method in which scientists create special conditions designed to elicit the behavior of interest to achieve greater control over the conditions under which they gather behavioral data.
structured observation
A brain-scanning technique that uses magnetic forces to measure the increase in blood flow to an area of the brain that occurs when that brain area is active.
functional magnetic resonance imaging
fMRI
An in-depth examination of an individual (or a small number of individuals), typically carried out by compiling and analyzing information from a variety of sources such as observing, testing, and interviewing the person or people who know the individual.
case study
A research strategy in which the investigator manipulates or alters some aspect of a person’s environment to measure its effect on the individual’s behavior or development.
experiment
A technique in which research participants are placed in experimental conditions in an unbiased or random way so that the resulting groups are not systematically different.
random assignment
The holding of all other factors besides the independent variable in an experiment constant so that any changes in the dependent variable can be said to be caused by the manipulation of the independent variable.
experimental control
An experiment-like study that evaluates the effects of different treatments but does not randomly assign individuals to treatment groups.
quasi experiment
A research technique that involves determining whether two or more variables are related. It cannot indicate that one thing caused another, but it can suggest that a causal relationship exists or allow us to predict one characteristic from our knowledge of
another.
correlational method
A measure, ranging from 11.00 to 21.00, of the extent to which two variables or attributes are systematically related to each other in either a positive or a negative way.
correlation coefficient
A research method in which the results of multiple studies addressing the same question are synthesized to produce overall conclusions.
meta-analysis
A developmental research design in which different age groups are studied at the same point and compared.
cross-sectional design
A group of people born at the same time; a particular generation of people.
cohort
In cross-sectional research, the effects on findings that the different age groups(cohorts) being compared were born at different times and had different formative experiences.
cohort effects
In developmental research, the effects of getting older or of developing.
age effects
The huge generation of people born between 1946 (the close of World War II) and 1964.
baby boom generation
A developmental research design in which one group of subjects is studied repeatedly over months or years.
longitudinal design
In developmental research, the effects on findings of historical events occurring when the data for a study are being collected (for example, psychological
changes brought about by an economic depression
rather than as a function of aging).
time of measurement effects
A developmental research design that combines the cross-sectional approach and the longitudinal approach in a single study to compensate for the weaknesses of each.
sequential design
The belief that one’s own cultural or ethnic group is superior to others.
ethnocentrism
Standards of conduct that investigators are ethically bound to honor to protect their research participants from physical or psychological harm.
research ethics
