Lifespan Development: Chapter 1 Flashcards
Normative Age-Graded Influences
These are influences that are similar for individuals in a particular age group.
Normative History-Graded Influences
Influences that are common to people of a particular generation because of historical circumstances.
Nonnormative Life Events
Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individual’s life.
Culture
The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group that are passed on from generation to generation.
Cross-Cultural Studies
Comparison of one culture with one or more other cultures. These provide information about the degree to which development is similar, or universal, across cultures, and the degree to which it is culture-specific.
Ethnicity
A characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language.
Socioeconomic Status
Refers to the grouping of people with similar occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
Gender
The characteristics of people as males or females.
Social Policy
A national government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.
Biological Processes
Changes in an individual’s physical nature.
Cognitive Processes
Changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language.
Socioemotional Processes
Changes in an individual’s relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.
First Age
Childhood & adolescence.
Second Age
Prime adulthood, 20s through 50s.
Third Age
Approximately 60 to 79 years of age.
Fourth Age
Approximately 80 years and older.
Nature-Nurture Issue
Refers to the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or nurture. Nature refers to an organism’s biological inheritance, nurture to its environmental experiences. The “nature proponents” claim biological inheritance is the most important influence on development; the “nurture proponents” claim that environmental experiences are the most important.
Stability-Change Issue
Involves the degree to which we become older renditions of our early experience (stability) or whether we develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier point in development (change).
Continuity-Discontinuity Issue
Focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).
Scientific Method
An approach that can be used to obtain accurate information. It includes these steps: (1) conceptualize the problem,
(2) collect data, (3) draw conclusions, and
(4) revise research conclusions and theory.
Theory
An interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain and make predictions.
Hypotheses
Specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine their accuracy.
Psychoanalytic Theories
Describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored
by emotion. Behavior is merely a surface characteristic, and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior. Early experiences with parents are emphasized.
Erikson’s Theory
Includes eight stages of human development. Each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved.
Piaget’s Theory
States that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development.
Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to 2 years of age. The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions. An infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.
Preoperational Stage
2 to 7 years of age. The child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action.
Concrete Operational Stage
7 to 11 years of age. The child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets.
Formal Operational Stage
11 years of age through adulthood. The adolescent reasons
in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways.
Vygotsky’s Theory
A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.
Information-Processing Theory
Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Central to this theory are the processes of memory and thinking.
Social Cognitive Theory
The view of psychologists who emphasize behavior, environment, and cognition as the key factors in development.
Ethology
Stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory
Bronfenbrenner’s environmental systems theory that focuses on five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
Eclectic Theoretical Orientation
An orientation that does not follow any one theoretical approach, but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered the best in it.
Laboratory
A controlled setting in which many of the complex factors of the “real world” are removed.
Naturalistic Observation
Observing behavior in real-world settings.
Standardized Test
A test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring. Many standardized tests allow a person’s performance to be compared with the performance of other individuals.
Case Study
An in-depth look at a single individual.
Descriptive Research
Has the purpose of observing and recording behavior.
Correlational Research
The goal is to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics.
Correlation Coefficient
A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables.
Experiment
A carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant.
Cross-Sectional Approach
A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time.
Longitudinal Approach
A research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over a period of time, usually several years or more.
Cohort Effects
Effects due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation but not to actual age.
Ethnic Gloss
Using an ethnic label such as African American or Latino in a superficial way that portrays an ethnic group as being more homogeneous than it really is.
Paul Baltes
The life-span perspective views development as lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual.
Marian Wright Edelman
Children’s rights advocate who, using statistics, indicated that the United States was at or near the lowest rank for industrialized nations in the treatment of children.
Bernice Neugarten
In U.S. society, chronological age is irrelevant.
Sigmund Freud
There are five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
Erik Erikson
Humans develop in eight psychosocial stages.
Jean Piaget
Children actively construct their understanding of the world in four stages.
Lev Vygotsky
A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.
Robert Siegler
An important aspect of development is learning good strategies for processing information.
B.F. Skinner
Rewards and punishments shape individuals’ development.
Albert Bandura
Behavior, environment, and cognition are the key factors in development.
Konrad Lorenz
Behavior is strongly influenced by biology. It is characterized by critical or sensitive periods.
John Bowlby
Attachment to a caregiver over the first year of life has important consequences throughout the life span.
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Development reflects the influence of five environmental systems.
Ross Parke and Raymond Buriel
Research on ethnic minority children and their families has not been given adequate attention.
