Psych Chapter 9

Question 1

maturation

Answer 1

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Question 2

schema

Answer 2

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Question 3

assimilation

Answer 3

interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas.

Question 4

accommodation

Answer 4

adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Question 5

cognition

Answer 5

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Question 6

sensorimotor stage

Answer 6

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Question 7

object permanence

Answer 7

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

Question 8

preoperational stage

Answer 8

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Question 9

conservation

Answer 9

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Question 10

egocentrism

Answer 10

in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty in taking another’s point of view.

Question 11

theory of mind

Answer 11

people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.

Question 12

autism

Answer 12

a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others’ states of mind.

Question 13

concrete operational stage

Answer 13

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Question 14

formal operational stage

Answer 14

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Question 15

stranger anxiety

Answer 15

the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.

Question 16

attachment

Answer 16

an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Question 17

critical period

Answer 17

an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.

Question 18

imprinting

Answer 18

the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Question 19

basic trust

Answer 19

according to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.

Question 20

self-concept

Answer 20

(1) a sense of one’s identity and personal worth. (2) all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”