Theory Flashcards
1
Q
Theory
A
- coherent set of logically related concepts that seeks to organize, explain, and predict data, the information gathered by research.
2
Q
Hypotheses
A
- possible explanations for phenomena, used to predict the outcome of research.
3
Q
Mechanistic model
A
- model that views human development as a series of predictable responses to stimuli.
4
Q
Organismic model
A
- model that views human development as internally initiated by an active organism and as occurring in a sequence of qualitatively different stages.
5
Q
Quantitative change
A
- changes in number or amount, such as in height, weight, size of vocabulary, or frequency of communication.
6
Q
Qualitative change
A
- discontinuous changes in kind, structure, or organization.
7
Q
Five major perspectives of human development
A
- Psychoanalytic, Learning, Cognitive, Contextual, and Evolutionary/sociobiological.
8
Q
Psychoanalytic
A
- a view of human development as shaped by unconscious forces that motivate human behavior.
9
Q
Psychosexual development
A
- in Freudian theory, an unvarying sequence of stages of childhood personality development in which gratification shifts from the mouth to the anus and then to the genitals.
10
Q
Psychosocial development
A
- in Erikson’s eight-stage theory, the socially and culturally influenced process of development of the ego, or self.
11
Q
Learning perspective
A
- view of human development that holds that changes in behavior result from experience or from adaptation to the environment.
12
Q
Behaviorism
A
- learning theory that emphasizes the predictable role of environment in causing observable behavior.
13
Q
Classical Conditioning
A
- learning based on associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a response with another stimulus that does elicit the response.
14
Q
Operant Conditioning
A
- learning based on association of behavior with its consequences (reinforcement/punishment).
15
Q
Social Learning Theory
A
- theory that behaviors are learned by observing and imitating models.
16
Q
Reciprocal determinism
A
- Albert Bandura’s term for bidirectional forces that affect development.
17
Q
Observational learning
A
- learning through watching the behavior of others.
18
Q
Cognitive Stage theory
A
- Piaget’s theory that children’s cognitive development advances in a series of four stages involving qualitatively distinct types of mental operations.
19
Q
Jean Piaget
A
adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium
20
Q
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory
A
- how contextual factors affect children’s development.
21
Q
Contextual theory
A
- view of human development that sees the individual as inseparable from the social context.
22
Q
Bioecological Theory
A
- Urie Bronfenbrenner’s approach to understanding processes and contexts of human development that identifies five levels of environmental influence.
23
Q
Evolutionary/sociobiological perspective
A
- view of human development that focuses on evolutionary and biological bases of behavior.
24
Q
Ethology
A
- study of distinctive adaptive behaviors of species of animals that have evolved to increase survival of the species.
25
Q
Evolutionary psychology
A
- application of Darwinian principles of natural selection and survival of the fittest to individual behavior.
