Psychology Exam 2.txt

fertilized egg

Study of how behavior changes over time

false assumption that because one event occurred before another event, it must have caused that event

Children's experiences influence their development, but their development also influences their experiences.

research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time

effects observed in a sample of participants that result from individuals in the sample growing up at the same time

research design that examines development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over time

Infant determinism and childhood fragility

the widespread assumption that extremely early experiences are almost always more influential than later experiences in shaping us as adults

Children are delicate little creatures who are easily damaged

• Nature: our genetic endowment
• Nurture: the environments we encounter

situation in which the effects of genes depend on the environment in which they are expressed

• 1. Blastocyst
• 2. Embryo
• 3. Fetus

ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven't yet begun to take any specific function in a body part

Happens in the first week and a half or so after fertilization

Second to eigth week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs of the body take form

Eighteen Days after fertilization, the brain begins to develop.

Period of prenatal development from the ninth week until birth after all major organs are established and physical maturation is the primary change

At the ninth week the heart begins to beat

Environmental factors that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development

Examples: Drugs, alcohol, chicken pox, x-rays, anxiety, and depression

study of how children learn, think, reason, communicate, and remember

Piagetian process of absorbing new experience into current knowledge structures

Piagetian process of altering a belief to make it more compatible with experience

• Sensorimotor
• Preoperational
• concrete operations
• Formal operations

• 4 stages of devlopment
• IV: task given to the children
• DV: performance of the children
• Mostly in the self quadrant (2)

Stage in Piaget's theory characterized by focus on the here and now without the ability to represent experiences mentally

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of view

Stage in Piaget's theroy characterized by the ability to construct mental representations of experience, but not yet perform on them

Inability to see the world from others' perspectices

Piagetian task requiring children to understand that despite a transformation in thw physical presentation of an amount, the amount remains the same

Watched a video where the guy was asking the children about the "rocket fuel"

Stage in Piaget's theory characterized by the ability to perform mental operations on phyaical events only

Stage in Piaget's theory characterized by the ability to perform hypothetical reasoning beyond the here and now

Social and cultural influences on learning

• Believed learning was gradual
• Mostly in the learning quadrant (4) but goes to quadrants 1 and 2 as well

Vygotskian learning process in which parents provide initial assistance in children's learning but gradually remove structure as children become more competent

Phase of learning during which children can benefit from instruction

The Mozart effect: supposed enhancement in intelligence after listening to classical music

Ability to reason about what other people know or believe

False-belief task: test children's ability to understand that someone else believes something they know to be wrong

• Imprinting of geese: they tend to follow around the first large, moving object they see after hatching
• IV: time it took for the goslings to follow, and what they followed.
• DV: the following behavior
• Mostly in biological quadrant (3)

Phenomenon observed in which baby birds begin to follow around and attach themselves to any large moving object they see in the hours immediately after hatching

• Contact comfort: positive emotions resulting from touch
• When frightened by an object, infant monkeys almost always prefer the terry cloth mother over the wire mother, who had nourishment.

• Strange situation
• Separation from mother. Mother and a stranger are present, then the mother leaves the child with the stranger

the transition between childhood and adulthood commonly associated with the teenage years.

the reproductive organs and genitals that distinguish the sexes

sex-differentiating characteristics that don't relate directly to reproduction, such as breast enlargement in women and deeping voices in men

start of menstruation

boys' first ejaculation

our sense of who we are and our life goals and priorities