midterm 1 textbook terms

Development

Systematic continuities and changes in the individual occurring between conception and death.

Developmental Continuities

Ways in which individuals remain stable over time or continue to reflect their past.

Developmental Psychology

The branch of psychology devoted to identifying and explaining developmental continuities and changes over time.

Developmentalist

Any scholar across disciplines who seeks to understand the developmental process.

Maturation

Developmental changes in the body or behaviour that result from biological aging rather than experience or learning.

Learning

Relatively permanent changes in behaviour (or behavioral potential) resulting from experience or practice.

Normative Development

Typical patterns of developmental change characterizing all or most members of a species.

Ideographic Development

Individual variations in patterns of developmental change.

Holistic Perspective

A unified view of development emphasizing interrelationships among physical, mental, social, and emotional aspects.

Plasticity

Capacity for change in response to positive or negative life experiences.

Scientific Method

Objective and replicable procedures used to gather data to test theories or hypotheses.

Theory

A set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain an existing set of observations.

Hypothesis

A theoretical prediction about an aspect of experience that can be tested.

Reliability

The extent to which a measuring instrument yields consistent results over time and across observers.

Validity

The extent to which a measuring instrument accurately reflects what it was intended to measure.

Structured Interview / Questionnaire

A technique where all participants are asked the exact same questions in precisely the same order.

Clinical Method

A flexible interview technique where follow-up questions are tailored to the participant's individual responses.

Naturalistic Observation

Observing individuals in their natural environments without experimenter intervention.

Structured Observation

Observing participants in a standardized laboratory setting designed to cue specific behaviors.

Case Study

An in-depth investigation of a single individual or small group.

Ethnography

In-depth study of a culture or subculture through extensive observation and participation.

Psychophysiological Methods

Measures of physiological responses (e.g., heart rate, brain activity) used to infer mental or emotional states.

Correlational Design

A research design indicating the strength of associations among naturally occurring variables.

Correlation Coefficient

A numerical index (-1.00 to +1.00) estimating the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables.

Experimental Design

A research design manipulating an independent variable under controlled conditions to determine cause-and-effect relationships.

Independent Variable

The environmental aspect manipulated by an experimenter.

Dependent Variable

The behavior measured in an experiment to assess the impact of the independent variable.

Confounding Variable

An uncontrolled factor that could explain differences across experimental treatments.

Experimental Control

Steps taken to hold extraneous factors constant across experimental conditions.

Random Assignment

Assigning participants to experimental conditions through an unbiased procedure so groups are equivalent.

Ecological Validity

The degree to which research findings accurately represent processes in natural environments.

Field Experiment

An experiment taking place in a naturalistic setting.

Natural (Quasi-) Experiment

A study observing the consequences of natural events experienced by participants.

Cross-Sectional Design

Comparing people of different ages at the same point in time.

Cohort

A group of people of the same age exposed to similar cultural and historical environments.

Longitudinal Design

Observing the same group of participants repeatedly over a period of time.

Practice Effects

Changes in performance resulting from repeated testing.

Selective Attrition/participant mortality

Nonrandom loss of participants over the course of a longitudinal study.

Nonrepresentative Sample

A subgroup differing systematically from the larger population.

Sequential Design

Combining cross-sectional and longitudinal features by studying multiple cohorts repeatedly.

Microgenetic Studies

Studying participants intensively over a short period as developmental changes occur.

Cross-Cultural Comparison

Comparing individuals from different cultural backgrounds to determine universality vs. cultural specificity.

Informed Consent

Agreement to participate based on clear understanding of research goals and procedures.

Protection from Harm

The right of participants to be protected from physical or psychological harm.

Minimal Risk

Risks no greater than those encountered in daily life.

Benefits-to-Risks Ratio

Weighing potential scientific and societal benefits against costs to participants.

Theory

A set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain observations.

Parsimony

Evaluating theories based on using relatively few explanatory principles to explain broad phenomena.

Falsifiability

The criterion that a good theory must generate explicit predictions that can be disconfirmed.

Heuristic Value

The ability of a theory to continue generating testable hypotheses and new discoveries.

Psychosexual Theory

Freud's stage theory proposing that unconscious drives guide development through five psychosexual stages.

• Freud’s theory states maturation of the sex instinct underlies stages of personality development, and that the manner in which parents manage children’s instinctual impulses determines the traits that children display

Unconscious Motives

Feelings, experiences, and drives that influence behavior without conscious awareness.

Repression

Motivated forgetting of anxiety-provoking thoughts and conflicts.

Drives

Inborn biological forces motivating specific responses.

Id

The psychoanalytic component of personality driven by inborn biological impulses.

Ego

The rational, realistic component of personality.

Superego

The component of personality consisting of internalized moral standards.

Psychosocial Theory

Erikson's revision of Freudian theory emphasizing social and cultural conflicts across eight developmental crises.

• Erikson’s revision of Freud’s theory, which emphasizes sociocultural (rather than sexual) determinants of development and posits a series of eight psychosocial conflicts that people must resolve successfully to display healthy psychological adjustments

Behaviourism

A theoretical perspective emphasizing the scientific study of observable behavior.

• a school of thinking in psychology that holds that conclusions about human development should be based on controlled observations of overt behaviour rather than speculation about unconscious motives or other unobservable phenomena; the philosophical underpinning for the early theories of learning

Habits

Watson: Learned associations between stimuli and responses.

• well-learned associations between stimuli and responses that represent the stable aspects of one’s personality

Reinforcer

Skinner: Any consequence of an act that strengthens the response and increases its future probability.

Punisher

Skinner: Any consequence of an act that suppresses the response and decreases its future probability.

Operant Learning

Skinner: Learning in which voluntary behaviors become more or less probable depending on their consequences.

Observational Learning

Bandura’s learning resulting from watching the behavior of others.

Cognitive Development

Age-related changes that occur in mental activities such as attending, perceiving, learning, thinking, and remembering

Scheme

an organized pattern of thought or action that a child constructs to make sense of some aspect of his or her experience; Piaget sometimes used the term cognitive structures as a synonym for scheme

Assimilation

Piaget: Interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into existing schemes.

Accommodation

Piaget: Modifying existing schemes to incorporate or adapt to new experiences.

Disequilibriums

Piaget: Imbalances between an individual's cognitive structures and environmental events.

Invariant Developmental Sequence

Piaget: A series of developments occurring in a fixed order because each is a prerequisite for the next

• fixed, non-reversible order of stages or milestones that individuals pass through in the exact same sequence without skipping any steps.

Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky's perspective that cognitive development is mediated by collaborative interactions and cultural tools.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The range of tasks too complex to master alone but doable with expert guidance.

Information-Processing Theory

a perspective that views the human mind as a continuously developing symbol-manipulating system, similar to a computer, into which information flows, is operated on, and is converted into output (answers, inferences, or solutions to problems)

Ethology

The study of the bio-evolutionary bases of behavior and development in natural environments.

• the scientific study of animal and human behavior rooted in evolution, biology, and natural selection

Natural Selection

an evolutionary process, proposed by Charles Darwin, stating that individuals with characteristics that promote adaptation to the environment will survive, reproduce, and pass these adaptive characteristics to offspring; those lacking these adaptive characteristics will eventually die out.

Sensitive Period

An optimal period for the development of specific capacities, during which the individual is especially responsive to environmental input.

Ecological Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner’s model emphasizing that the developing person is embedded in a series of environmental systems that interact with one another and with the person to influence development

Microsystem

1) The immediate settings directly encountered by the developing person.

Mesosystem

2) Interconnections among an individual's immediate settings or microsystems.

Exosystem

3) Social settings that the child does not directly experience but that influence development.

• ex: does their parent have a good work life

Macrosystem

4)The overarching cultural or subcultural context, including laws and values.

Chronosystem

5) Changes in the individual or environment occurring over time.

• the fifth and outermost level of Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory. It introduces the dimension of time and socio-historical context to human development, showing that a person's growth is not static but shaped by changing events and life transitions across their lifespan

Active/Passive Issue

Debate regarding whether children actively shape their development or passively receive environmental influences.

Continuity/Discontinuity Issue

Debate over whether developmental changes are quantitative and continuous or qualitative and stagelike.

Positional Stability

stability of an individual’s relative position in a group of people with regard to a psychological characteristic

Absolute Stability

Lack of change in the absolute amount of an attribute over development.

Quantitative Change

Incremental changes in degree or amount.

Qualitative Change

Fundamental changes in kind or form that make an individual different.

Developmental Stage

A distinct phase within a larger sequence of development characterized by a coherent pattern of abilities.

Holistic Nature of Development

Awareness that physical, cognitive, social, and emotional aspects of development are interconnected.

Mechanistic Model

World view depicting humans as machine-like entities governed by external influences.

Organismic Model

World view depicting humans as active, living organisms evolving through distinct stages.

Contextual Model

World view depicting development as a continuous dynamic interplay between person and environment.

Developmental Systems View

View that development results from ongoing bidirectional interactions among biological, psychological, and social factors.

Prenatal Development

Development occurring between conception and birth.

Period of the Zygote (Germinal Period)

First phase of prenatal development, lasting from conception through uterine implantation (10–14 days).

Family social system

the complex network of relationships, interactions, and patterns of influence that characterize a family with three or more members

Blastocyst

Ball of cells formed as the fertilized egg begins to divide.

Embryo

Name given to the prenatal organism from the 3rd through 8th week post-conception.

Implantation

The burrowing of the blastocyst into the uterine wall.