Unit 1 Flashcards
Human Development
The multidisciplinary study of how people change and how they remain the same over time.
Nature-Nurture Issue
The degree to which genetic or hereditary influences (nature) and experiential or environmental influences (nurture) determine the kind of person you are.
Continuity-Discontinuity Issue
Concerns whether a particular developmental phenomenon represents a smooth progression throughout the life span (continuity) or a series of abrupt shifts (discontinuity).
Stability-Change Issue
Concerns whether there is one path of development or several.
Biopsychosocial Framework
Useful way to organize the biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces on human development.
Biological Forces
All genetic and health-related factors that affect development (eg. prenatal development, puberty, physical aging).
Psychological Forces
All internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors that affect development.
Sociocultural Forces
Interpersonal, societal, cultural, and ethnic factors that affect development.
Life-Cycle Forces
Differences in how the same event affects people of different ages.
Neuroscience
The study of the brain and the nervous system, especially in terms of brain-behavior relationships.
Methods may consist of using molecular analyses of individual brain cells to sophisticated techniques that yield images of brain activity
(Developmental) Theory
An organized set of ideas that explains development.
Psychodynamic Theories
Hold that development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they face at different ages.
Psychosocial Theory (Erik Erikson)
Erikson’s theory that personality development is determined by the interaction of an internal maturational plan and external societal demands.
Composed of 8 stages.
Epigenetic Principle
Means by which each psychosocial strength has its own special period of particular importance.
Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
Occurs from birth to 1 year. To develop a sense that the world is safe, a “good place.”
Autonomy vs. Shame
1 to 3 years. To realize that one is an independent person who can make decisions and doubt.
Initiative vs. Guilt
3 to 6 years. To develop the ability to try new things and to handle failure.
Industry vs. Inferiority
6 years to adolescence. To learn basic skills and to work with others.
Identity vs. Role Confusion
Adolescence. To develop a lasting, integrated sense of self.
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Young adulthood. To commit to another in a loving relationship.
Generativity vs. Stagnation
Middle adulthood. To contribute to younger people through child rearing, child care, or other productive work.
Integrity vs. Despair
Late life. To view one’s life as satisfactory and worth living.
Operant Conditioning
Technique in which the consequences of a behavior determine whether a behavior is repeated in the future.
Reinforcement
A consequence that increases the likelihood of the behavior that it follows.
Positive Reinforcement
Reinforcement that consists of giving a reward to increase the likelihood of a behavior recurring.
Negative Reinforcement
Reinforcement that consists of rewarding people by taking away things that are unpleasant.
Punishment
A consequence that decreases the likelihood of the behavior that follows.
Observational Learning (Imitation)
Learning by simply watching those around them.
Self-Efficacy
People’s beliefs about their own abilities and talents.
Classical Conditioning
A learning process by which two stimuli are repeatedly paired: an automatic conditioned response is paired with a specific stimulus, encouraging a certain behavior.
Assimilation
When a person treats a new event in a way similar to a previous event; to incorporate new information into an existing schema.
Accommodation
When a person must change or adapt to an event in the environment; to change an existing schema to incorporate the new information.
Schema
A representation of a mental concept.
Microsystem
The people and objects in an individual’s immediate environment.
Mesosystem
Provides connections across microsystems because what happens in one microsystem is likely to influence others.
Exosystem
Social settings that a person may not experience firsthand but that still influence development.
Macrosystem
The cultures and subcultures in which the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem are embedded.
Competence
A person’s abilities.
Environmental Press
The demands put on people by the environment.
Life-Span Perspective
View that human development is multiply determined and cannot be understood within the scope of a single framework.
Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC) Model
View that selection, optimization, and compensation form a system of behavioral action that generates and regulates development and aging.
Systematic Observation
Watching people and carefully recording what they do or say.
Naturalistic Observation
Observing people as they behave spontaneously in a real-life situation.
Structured Observation
Method in which the researcher creates a setting that is likely to bring out the behavior of interest.
Self-Reports
People’s answers to questions about the topic of interest.
Reliability
The extent to which a measure provides a consistent index of a characteristic.
Validity
Whether a measure actually measures what researchers think it measures.
Populations
Broad groups of people that are of interest to researchers.
Sample
A subset of the population.
Correlational Study
Investigation looking at relations between variables as they exist naturally in the world.
Correlation Coefficient
An expression of the strength and direction of a relation between two variables.
Non-Experimental Designs
Naturalistic observations, case studies, surveys.
Experimental Designs
Subjects (or participants) are randomly assigned to the experimental and control conditions; tries to avoid confounding variables.
Quasi-Experimental Design
Studies that aim to evaluate interventions without random assignment. Aims to demonstrate causality between an intervention and an outcome.
Experiment
A systematic way of manipulating the key factor(s) that the investigator thinks causes a particular behavior.
Independent Variable
The factor manipulated in an experiment.
Dependent Variable
The behavior being observed in an experiment, used to evaluate the impact of the independent variable.
Qualitative Research
Method that involves gaining in-depth understanding of human behavior and what governs it. May require smaller but focused samples rather than large random samples.
Longitudinal Study
A research design in which the same individuals are observed or tested repeatedly at different points in their lives.
Cross-Sectional Study
Study in which developmental differences are identified by testing people of different ages.
Cohort Effects
A problem with cross-sectional designs in which differences between age groups (cohorts) may result from environmental events, not from developmental processes.
Sequential Design
Developmental research design based on cross-sectional and longitudinal designs (starts with one of the designs and adds more on top of it).
Meta-analysis
A tool that enables researchers to synthesize the results of many studies to estimate relations between variables.
