Psychology Supplemental Vocab Flashcards
Empirical methods
Approaches to inquiry that are tied to actual measurement and observation
Ethics
Professional guidelines that offer researchers a template for making decisions that protect research participants from potential harm and that help steer scientists away from conflicts of interest or other situations that might compromise the integrity of their research
Hypotheses
A logical idea that can be tested
Systematic observation
The careful observation of the natural world with the aim of better understanding it. Observations provide the basic data that allow scientists to track, tally, or otherwise organize information about the natural world
Theories
Groups of closely related phenomena or observations
Chutes and Ladders
A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge
Concrete operations stage
Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning
Conservation problems
Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about
Continuous development
Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps
Depth perception
The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment
Discontinuous development
Discontinuous development
Formal operations stage
Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults
Information processing theories
Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time
Nature
The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development
Numerical magnitudes
The sizes of numbers
Nurture
The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development
Object permanence task
The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist
Phonemic awareness
Awareness of the component sounds within words
Piaget’s theory
Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages
Preoperational reasoning stage
Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems
Qualitative changes
Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages
Quantitative changes
Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth
Sensorimotor stage
Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects
Sociocultural theories
Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development
