Theories

Question 1

A reluctance or refusal to go to school or to remain there, sometimes called school phobia because it often involves intense anxiety.

Answer 1

school refusal behavior

Question 2

The idea that the mind of an infant is a “blank slate” and that all knowledge, abilities, behaviors, and motives are acquired through experience.

Answer 2

tabula rasa

Question 3

The issue in developmental theory centering on whether humans are active contributors to their own development or are passively shaped by forces beyond their control.

Answer 3

activity–passivity issue

Question 4

The debate about whether human development is best characterized as gradual and continuous or abrupt and stagelike.

Answer 4

continuity–discontinuity issue

Question 5

A distinct phase within a larger sequence of development; a period characterized by a particular set of abilities, motives, behaviors, or emotions that occur together and form a coherent pattern.

Answer 5

developmental stage

Question 6

The debate over the extent to which developmental changes are common to everyone (universal, as in most stage theories) or different from person to person (particularistic).

Answer 6

universality–context-specificity issue

Question 7

The theoretical perspective associated with Freud and his followers that emphasizes unconscious motivations for behavior, conflicts within the personality, and stages of psychosexual development.

Answer 7

psychoanalytic theory

Question 8

An inborn biological force assumed to motivate a particular response or class of responses.

Answer 8

instinct

Question 9

Freud’s term for feelings, experiences, and conflicts that influence a person’s thinking and behavior even though they cannot be recalled.

Answer 9

unconscious motivation

Question 10

A psychoanalytic term for the inborn component of the personality that is driven by the instincts or selfish urges.

Answer 10

id

Question 11

Psychoanalytic term for the rational component of the personality.

Answer 11

ego

Question 12

The psychoanalytic term for the component of the personality that consists of the individual’s internalized moral standards.

Answer 12

superego

Question 13

Freud’s term for the biological energy of the sex instinct.

Answer 13

libido

Question 14

Freud’s five stages of development, associated with biological maturation and shifts in the libido: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

Answer 14

psychosexual stages

Question 15

In psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism in which development is arrested and part of the libido remains tied to an early stage of development.

Answer 15

fixation

Question 16

Freud’s term for the conflict that 4- to 6-year-old boys experience when they develop an incestuous desire for their mothers and a jealous and hostile rivalry with their fathers.

Answer 16

Oedipus complex

Question 17

Freud’s term for the individual’s tendency to emulate, or adopt the attitudes and behaviors of, another person, particularly the same-sex parent.

Answer 17

identification

Question 18

Complex, in which a 4- to 6-year-old girl is said to envy her father for possessing a penis and would choose him as a sex object in the hope of sharing this valuable organ that she lacks.

Answer 18

Electra complex

Question 19

Mechanisms used by the ego to defend itself against anxiety caused by conflict between the id’s impulses and social demands.

Answer 19

defense mechanisms

Question 20

Defense mechanism that involves removing unacceptable thoughts or traumatic memories from consciousness

Answer 20

repression

Question 21

A defense mechanism that involves retreating to an earlier, less traumatic stage of development.

Answer 21

regression

Question 22

Defense mechanism that involves seeing in others the motives we fear we possess, as when a husband charges his wife with being the one who is jealous and insecure, not he.

Answer 22

projection

Question 23

Defense mechanism that involves expressing motives that are just the opposite of one’s real motives

Answer 23

reaction formation

Question 24

Erikson’s eight stages of development (trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity), emphasizing social influences more and biological urges less than Freud’s psychosexual stages.

Answer 24

psychosocial stages

Question 25

A school of tought that conclusions about human development should be based on controlled observations of overt behavior rather than on speculation about unconscious motives or other unobservable phenomena; the philosophical underpinning of early theories of learning.

Answer 25

behaviorism

Question 26

A type of learning in which a stimulus that initially had no effect on the individual comes to elicit a response because of its association with a stimulus that already elicits the response.

Answer 26

classical conditioning

Question 27

A stimulus that elicits a particular response without prior learning.

Answer 27

unconditioned stimulus (UCS)

Question 28

The unlearned response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.

Answer 28

unconditioned response (UCR)

Question 29

An initially neutral stimulus that elicits a particular response after it is paired with an unconditioned stimulus that always elicits the response.

Answer 29

conditioned stimulus (CS)

Question 30

A learned response to a stimulus that was not originally capable of producing the response.

Answer 30

conditioned response (CR)

Question 31

Form of learning in which freely emitted acts (aka ?) become more or less probable depending on the consequences they produce.

Answer 31

operant conditioning also called instrumental conditioning aka operants

Question 32

The process in operant conditioning whereby a response is weakened when its consequence is an unpleasant event.

Answer 32

positive punishment | something added = +

Question 33

The process in operant conditioning whereby a response is strengthened when its consequence is a pleasant event.

Answer 33

positive reinforcement | something added = +

Question 34

The process in operant conditioning in which a response is weakened or made less probable when its consequence is the removal of a pleasant stimulus from the situation.

Answer 34

``` negative punishment (something removed = neg) ```

Question 35

The process in operant conditioning in which a response is strengthened or made more probable when its consequence is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus from the situation.

Answer 35

``` negative reinforcement (something removed = neg) ```

Question 36

The gradual weakening and disappearance of a learned response when it is no longer reinforced.

Answer 36

extinction

Question 37

Bandura’s social learning theory

Answer 37

social cognitive theory

Question 38

Theory that children and adults can learn novel responses merely by observing the behavior of a model, making mental notes on what they have seen, and then using these mental representations to reproduce the model’s behavior.

Answer 38

social cognitive theory

Question 39

Social learning theory emphasizing the importance of cognitive processing of social experiences.

Answer 39

social cognitive theory

Question 40

Learning that results from observing the behavior of other people; emphasized in Bandura’s social cognitive theory.

Answer 40

observational learning

Question 41

Learning occurs but is not evident in behavior; children can learn from observation even though they do not imitate (perform) the learned responses.

Answer 41

latent learning

Question 42

In observational learning, the consequences experienced by models, because of their behavior, that affect the learner’s likelihood of engaging in the behavior.

Answer 42

vicarious reinforcement

Question 43

Ways in which humans deliberately exercise cognitive control over their environments and lives, according to Bandura.

Answer 43

human agency

Question 44

The belief that one can effectively produce desired outcomes in a particular area of life.

Answer 44

self-efficacy

Question 45

The notion in social cognitive theory that the flow of influence between people and their environments is a two-way street; the environment may affect the person, but the person’s characteristics and behavior will also influence the environment.

Answer 45

reciprocal determinism

Question 46

The position taken by Piaget and others that humans actively create their own understandings of the world from their experiences, as opposed to being born with innate ideas or being programmed by the environment.

Answer 46

constructivism

Question 47

Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, spanning the first 2 years of life, in which infants rely on their senses and motor behaviors in adapting to the world around them.

Answer 47

sensorimotor stage

Question 48

Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development, lasting from about age 2 to age 7, when children think at a symbolic level but have not yet mastered logical operations.

Answer 48

preoperational stage

Question 49

Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development, lasting from about age 7 to age 11, when children are acquiring logical operations and can reason effectively about real objects and experiences.

Answer 49

concrete operations stage

Question 50

Piaget’s fourth and final stage of cognitive development (from age 11 or 12), when the individual begins to think more rationally and systematically about abstract concepts and hypothetical ideas.

Answer 50

formal operations stage

Question 51

Vygotsky’s contextual theory of development, which maintains that cognitive development is shaped by the sociocultural context in which it occurs and grows out of children’s social interactions with members of their culture.

Answer 51

sociocultural perspective

Question 52

An approach to cognition that emphasizes the fundamental mental processes involved in attention, perception, memory, and decision making.

Answer 52

information-processing approach

Question 53

Theories of development holding that changes over the life span arise from the ongoing interrelationships between a changing organism and a changing environment, both of which are part of a larger, dynamic system.

Answer 53

systems theories

Question 54

A discipline and theoretical perspective that focuses on the evolved behavior of different species in their natural environments.

Answer 54

ethology

Question 55

The application of evolutionary theory and its concept of natural selection to understanding why humans think and behave as they do.

Answer 55

evolutionary psychology

Question 56

Gilbert Gottlieb’s view that development is the product of interacting biological and environmental forces that form a larger, dynamic system, both over the course of evolution and during the individual’s life.

Answer 56

epigenetic psychobiological systems perspective

Question 57

The process through which nature and nurture, genes and environment, jointly bring forth development in ways that are difficult to predict at the outset; ways in which environmental influences alter gene expression.

Answer 57

epigenesis

Question 58

An individual who recognizes that no single theory can explain everything but that each has something to contribute to our understanding.

Answer 58

eclectic