Psych Midterm

The scientific study of age-related changes in behavior, thinking, emotion, and personality

Average ages at which developmental milestones are reached

Gradual unfolding of a genetically programmed sequential pattern of change.

The current veiw of of developmentalists that important changes occur throughout the entire lifespan and that these changes must be interpreted in terms of the culture and context in which they occur; thus, interdisciplinary research is critical to understand human development.

Changes in size, shape, and characteristics of the body

Changes in thinking, memory, problem solving, and other intellectual skills

Changes in variables that are associated with the relationship of an individual to others

Individuals of all ages possess the capacity for positive change in response to environmental demands

The debate about the relative contributions of biological processes and experimental factors to development

Changes that are common to every member of a species

Changes that occur in most member s of a cohort as a result of factors at work during a specific, well defined historical period

Result from unique, unshared events.

Development that deviates from the typical developmental pathway in a direction harmful to the individual

The process of studying people in their normal environments

presumed casual element in an experiment

the characteristic or behavior that is expected to be affected by the independent variable

The tendency for observers to ignore details that do not favor their preconceived view

An in-depth examination of a single individual

Observation of behavior under controlled conditions

Data-collection method in which participants responded to questions

The entire group that is of interest to a researcher

Subset of a group that is of interest to a researcher who participates in a study

a sample that has the same characteristics as the population to which a study's findings apply

A child's level of development that an adult must develop their scaffolding strategy off of.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Stage:
*Birth till 18 months.
*Baby understands the world through her senses and motor actions.
*Begins to use simple symbols, single words, and pretend play towards the end

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Stage:
18 months to six years
By age 2, the child can use symbols both to think and to communicate. 
by the end of this stage children begin to classify objects, use logic, and take other's points of veiw

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Stage:
6-12 years
Logic takes great leaps forward with the development of new internal operations, such as conservation and class inclusion, but is still tied to the known world. By the end, can reason about simple "what if" questions

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Stage
12 years. child begins to maipulate ideas as well as objects; thinks hypothetically and, by adulthood, can easily manage a variety of "what if" questions; greatly improves her ability to organize ideas and objects mentally.

Bronfenbrenner's theory that explains development in terms of relationships between individuals and their environments, or interconnected contexts

Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological context:
Cultural Level
universal beliefs and values

Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological context:Cultural Level
Socioeconomic  Context

Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological context:
Immediate context (Microsystem)
(includes family, school, and religion and community)

Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological context:Cultural Level
Biological Context

17th century philosopher
developed empiricism which claims that the mind of a child is a blank slate.

18th century philosipher
Believed in innate goodness, and all a child needs is love and nurturing is needed.

19th century scientist
Believed that life forms on earth evolved gradually as a result of the interplay between environmental factors and genetic processes.

Scientist that conducted first objective study of development using questionnaires and interviews to study a large number of children.

Conducted research  that suggested the existence of genetically programmed sequential pattern of change. coined the term maturation.

First to develop a comprehensive theory of lifespan development. Conducted studies on the positive aspects of advanced age.

system of age related categories used by developmental scientists

First Period of development
spans from conception till birth

Second Period of Development
first two years after birth

Third Period of Development
Years 2-6

Fourth Period of Development
ages 6-12

Fifth Period of Development
Ages 12-18

Sixth Period of Development
Ages 18-40

Negative characteristics that a person brings to an interaction: bad temperament, alcoholism, physical abnormality, allergy

Positive characteristics that an individual poses that aid them in stress. Good temperament, good physical coordination, high intelligence, physical attractiveness.

Guidelines researchers follow to protect the rights of people and animals that participate in studies.

One of Freud's elements of personality. It operates at an unconscious level and contains the libido, or a persons sexual and aggressive impulses.

one of Freud's elements of personality. A conscious, thinking element formed to keep the id satisfied.

One of Freud's elements of personality. The portion that acts as the moral judge.

Neo Freudian theorist, who developed the psychosocial stages.

Erickson's First Psychosocial stage
birth to 1 year
a positive characteristic obtained. Hope; trust in primary caregiver and own ability to make things happen

Erickson's Second Psychosocial stage
1-3 years
Positive characteristics gained are Will; new physical skills led to demand for more choices, most often seen as saying "no" to caregivers; child learns self-care skills such as toileting

Eriksons third Psychosocial stage
3-6 years
Characteristics gained incude:
Purpose; ability to organize activities around some goal; more assertiveness and aggressiveness. (Oedipus conflict with parent of same sex may lead to guilt)

Erikson's Fourth Psychosocial stage
6-12 years
Competence; cultural skills and norms, including school skills and tool use (failure to master these leads to sense of inferiority)

Erikson's Fifth Psychosocial stage
12-18 Fidelity; adaptation of sense of self to pubertal changes, consideration of future choices, achievement of more mature sexual identity, and search for new values

Erikson's sixth Psychosocial Stage
18-30
Love; Persons develop intimate relationships beyond adolescent love; many become parents

Erikson's seventh Psychosocial stage
30 to late adulthood
Care; people rear children, focus on occupational achievement or creativity, and train the next generation; turn outward from the self towards others

Erikson's 8th Psychosocial stage
Late adulthood
Wisdom; person conducts a life review, integrates earlier stages and comes to terms with basic identity; develops self acceptance

Psychologist who coined the term behaviorism, which defines development in terms of behavior changes caused by environmental influences.

Physiologist and Nobel Prize winner that discovered that organisms can acquire new signals for existing responses, or classical conditioning.

Psychologist that coined the term operant conditioning which involves learning to repeat or stop behaviors because of their consequences.

Psychologist that asserted that learning does not always have to be reinforced, and that it can result from modeling.

Psychologist who discovered that cognitive development occurs in a sequence, and make the same mistakes and arrive at the same conclusions.

Psychologist that developed the sociocultural theory that states that forms of thinking originate from social interactions. Learning of new cognitive skills is guided by an adult or more skilled child.

Strings of genetic material in the nuclei of cells

Diseases caused by harmful genes or errors in the process of early development that have altered a child's chromosomal makeup

Growth that proceeds from the head downward

Growth that proceeds from the middle of the body outward

Substances such as viruses and drugs that cause birth defects

Term for babies between birth and one month of age

Effects of pregnancy in older women

Last Menstrual period (LMP) to 12 weeks
Morning Sickness may begin

12-24 weeks
Increased appetite, mother begins to "show"; risk of miscarriage declines

25 weeks till Labor

Connections between neurons

Reflexes such as sucking that help newborns survive

Reflexes controlled by primitive parts of the brain that disappear during the first years of life

theorists who claim that perceptual abilities are inborn

theorists who argue that perceptual abilities are learned

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: Stepping reflex; lifts head slightly
Fine: Holds object if placed in hand

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: lifts head up to 90 degree angle when lying on stomach
Fine: Begins to swipe at objects in sight

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: Rolls over; sits with support; moves on hands and knees. Holds head erect while sitting
Fine: Reaches for and grasps objects

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: Sits without support; crawls
Fine: Transfers objects from one hand to the other

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: pulls self up and walks grasping furniture; then walks alone; squats and stoops; plays pat-a-cake
Fine: Shows some signs of hand preference; grasps a spoon across palm but has poor aim when moving food to mouth

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross:Walks backward and sideways. Runs and rolls ball to adult
Fine:Stacks 2 blocks, puts objects into smaller container and dumps them out

Milestones of Motor Development
Gross: Walks up and down stairs, two feet per step; jumps with both feet off the ground
Fine:uses spoon to feed self; stacks 4 to ten blocks

The understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen

Piaget's first stage of development, in which infants use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world

The understanding of incoming information to the limited array of schemes it is born with

manipulating schemes based on experience

an infants tendency to look for an object in the place where it was last seen rather than in the place where they saw the researcher move it

imitation that occurs in the absence of the model who first demonstrated it

an infant's understanding of the nature of objects and how they behave

organization of experiences into expectancies, called schemas, which enable infants to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli

An innate language processor theorized by Chomsky that contains the basic grammatical structure of all human language

the making of repetitive vowel sounds particularly the uuuu sound

the repetitive vocalizations of constant-vowel combinations by an infant

Comprehension of spoken language

The ability to use sounds signs or symbols to communicate meaning

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage
Primary Technique: Reflexes
Characteristics: use of built in schemes or reflexes such as sucking

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Primary Technique: Primary circular reactions
Characteristics: further accommodation of basic schemes as the baby practices them endlessly

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Primary Technique: Secondary Circular Reactions
Characteristics: Baby becomes more aware of events outside of self, and makes them happen again trial and error learning.

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Primary Technique: Coordination of secondary schemes
Characteristics: Clear intentional means-end behavior. The baby no only goes after what it wants, but may combine two schemes to do so

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Primary Technique: Tertiary Circular reactions
Characteristics: Experimentation begins in which the infant tries out new ways of playing with or manipulating objects

Subsets of Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Primary Technique: Beginning of mental representation
Characteristics: Development of use of symbols to represent object or events. The child understand s that the symbol is separate from the object

the view that infants are biologically predisposed to form emotional bonds with caregivers and that the characteristics of those bonds shape later social and personality development

the emotional tie to a parent experience by an infant from which the child derives security

Expressions of discomfort in the presence of strangers

expressions of discomfort when separated from an attachment figure

a pattern of attachment in which an infant readily separates from the parent seeking proximity when stressed,an uses the parent as a safe base for exploration

a pattern of attachment in which an infant avoids contact with the parent and shows no preference for that parent over other people

a pattern of attachment in which the infant shows little exploratory behavior, is greatly upset when separated from the mother, and is not reassured by her return or efforts to comfort

a pattern of attachment in which an infant seems confused or apprehensive and shows contradictory behavior, such as moving toward the mother while looking away from her

a pattern of responding to people and objects in the enviornment

inborn predispositions, such as an activity level, that forms the foundations of personality

the degree to which an infant's temperament is adaptable to his or her environment, and vice versa

an infants awareness that she or he is a separate person who endures through time and space and can act on the enviornment

the toddler's understanding that he or she is defined by various categories such as gender or qualities

the membrane that connects the right and left hemispheres of the cerebral cortex

the process  through which brain functions are divided between the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex

the brain structure that is important in learning

the preference for using on hand or the other. develops between ages 3 and five

the young child's belief that everyone sees and experiences the world the way it does

physical or psychological injury that results  from an adults intentional exposure of a child to potentially harmful physical stimuli, sxual acts, or neglect

the failure of caregivers to provide emotional and physical support for a child

Piaget's second stage of cognitive development in which a child becomes proficient in the use of symbols in thinking and communicating, but still have difficulty thinking logically

a child's tendency to think of the world in terms of one variable at a time

the understanding that matter can change in appearance without changing in quantity

A set of ideas constructed by a child or adult to explain other people's ideas, beliefs, desires, and behavior

cognitive structures that underlie behaviors that are often repeated

the use of language as a guide to solving problems

The ability to categorically link new words to real-world referents

the period during which the grammatical features of children's speech become more similar to those of adult speech

The ratio of mental age to chronological age; also, a general term for any kind of score derived from an intelligence test.

a range, established by one's genes, between upper and lower boundaries for traits such as intelligence; one's environment determines where, within those limits, one will be

the theoretical perspective that asserts that social and personality development in early childhood is related to improvements in cognitive domain

the ability to classify others according to categorise such as age, gender, and race

the ability to control emotional states and emotion-related behavior

the ability to correctly label oneself and others as male or female

the understanding that gender does not change

the understanding that gender is a component of the self that is not altered by external appearance

information processing approach to gender concept development, asserting that people use a schema for each gender to process information about themselves and others

a style of parenting that is high in nurturance and low in maturity demands, control, and communication

a style of parenting that is low in nurturance and communication, but high in control and maturity demands

a style of parenting that is high in nurturance, maturity demands, control and communication

a style of parenting that is low in nurturance, maturity demands, control, and communication

a set of behaviors that usually lead to being accepted as a play partner or friend by peers

behavior intended to harm another person or object

aggression used to gain or damage an object

aggression used to hurt another person or gain an advantage

behavior intended to help another person

language
logic
analysis
math

Intuition
creativity
Art/Music
Spatial Perception