Unit 9

Question 1

Zygotes

Answer 1

The fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo

Question 2

Embryo

Answer 2

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month

Question 3

Fetus

Answer 3

The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth

Question 4

Teratogens

Answer 4

Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm

Question 5

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Answer 5

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking. In sever cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions

Question 6

Habituation

Answer 6

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner

Question 7

Maturation

Answer 7

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

Question 8

Cognition

Answer 8

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Question 9

Schema

Answer 9

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Question 10

Assimilation

Answer 10

Interpreting our new experience in terms of our existing schemas

Question 11

Accommodation

Answer 11

Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

Question 12

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 12

In piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Question 13

Object permanence

Answer 13

We awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Question 14

Preoperational stage

Answer 14

In piaget’s theory, the stage (from 2 to about 6 or 7) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

Question 15

Conservation

Answer 15

The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of object

Question 16

Egocentrism

Answer 16

In piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view

Question 17

Theory of Mind

Answer 17

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and, the behaviors these might predict

Question 18

Concrete Operational Stage

Answer 18

In piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts