Developing through Lifespan Units 3.1 -3.4

Self-concept

Our understanding and evaluation of who we are.

Adolescence

The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.

Puberty

The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.

Primary Sex Characteristics

The body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.

Secondary Sex Characteristics

Non-reproductive sexual characteristics, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.

Menarche

The first menstrual period.

Menopause

The time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines.

Cross-Sectional Study

A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.

Longitudinal Study

Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.

Crystallized Intelligence

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence

One's ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Zygote

A fertilized egg.

Embryo

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

Fetus

The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Teratogens

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

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking.

Maturation

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

Cognition

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

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experience in terms of our existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Sensorimotor Stage

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.

Object Permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

Preoperational Stage

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

Conservation

The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Egocentrism

In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view.

Theory of Mind

People's ideas about their own and others' mental states -- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.

Concrete Operational Stage

In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

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

Stranger Anxiety

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.

Critical Period

An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.

Imprinting

The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Temperament

A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

developmental psychology

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Jean Piaget

Known for his theory of cognitive development in children

spermarche

boys' first ejaculation

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects have human like qualities

conservation

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 objects