Unit 4 -Infancy and Development Flashcards
What is developmental psychology?
It examines our physical, cognitive, and social development across the life span
What does developmental psychology focus on?
1.) Nature vs nurture
2.) Continuity vs stages
3.) Stability vs change
What is assimilation?
- We assimilate new experiences, interpreting them in terms of our current schema
- Ex: A child learning the schema for dogs and calling a cat a dog and the mother corrects the child
What is accommodation?
- We accommodate our schemas to incorporate information from new experiences
- Ex: A child who previously learned the schema for dogs and called a cat a dog and the mother corrected her (assimilation) —> A child accommodating her schema by distinguishing the pets of family vs. friends by name
What was the 4 major stages of cognitive, development according to Piaget?
-Sensorimotor
- Preoperqtional
-Concrete information
- Formal operational
What is the sensorimotor stage?
- Birth to about 2 years old
-Experiencing the world thought their senses - Have stranger anxiety and lacks object permanence
What is the preoperational stage?
- 2 years - 6 or 7 years
- Representing things with words and images (symbolic thinking)
- Using intuitive rather than thinking
- Pretend play and egocentrism
What is concrete operational?
- 6 or 7 to 11 years
- Thinking logically,about concrete events
- Performing math
-Conservation and math
What is the rooting reflex?
- Helps newborns find food
- Stroke an infants cheek with your finger and they would turn their heads toward it and start sucking
What is the babinski reflex?
- Occurs when a person strokes a neonate’s food and they will fan the toes, then curl them back in
What is stepping?
- Occurs when a person holds a newborn up so the feet dangle and the child will make stepping-like motions
- Aids in motor development
What is the moro reflex?
- AKA, the startle reflex
- When startled, the newborn will extend all the limbs, then pull back and quiver
What is imprinting?
- Involving attachment and an emotional bond
- Formed during an early and critical stage of their development
- Occurs
What is identity?
- The process of defining oneself within a particular social category or group
What is habituation?
- A part of the learning process during which an organism learns to ignore a stimulus due to repeated exposure to it
What is egocentrism?
- The challenge that children have in considering another person’s viewpoint
- Occurs in Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development - the preoperational stage
What is the correct order of gestation (prenatal period)?
1.) Zygote (First two weeks)
2.) Embryo (when the zygote attaches to the uterine wall and lasts 2-8 weeks)
3.) Fetus (developing person)
What is a teratogen?
- ANYTHING that negatively affects the development of the embryo or fetus
What are some examples of teratogens?
- Drugs
- Mercury
- A serious illness
- Radiation
- Extremely hot water
What is maturation?
- An orderly sequence of biological growth that will unfold in its time unless under extreme conditions
- Has to be biologically based and it has to be universal
What does existing findings say about an infant’s motor development?
- Major milestones, such as crawling and walking, are thought to be sequentially universal and predominantly genetic
What is a heritability ratio?
- An estimate of the influence of genetics on the expression of a train as opposed to the influence of the environment
- Examines the influence of nature AND nurture
- Ex: Height (genetics and environmental factor of nutrition)
What is the nature-nurture controversy?
- Debate as to whether genes or environment play the biggest role in human development