AP psychology Module 3

Development psychology

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

Teratogens

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

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by heavy drinking during pregnancy. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features.

Habituation

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

Maturation

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

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.

Menopause

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

Sex

In psychology, the biologically influenced characteristics by which people define male and female.

Gender

In psychology, the socially influenced characteristic by which people define boy, man, girl and woman.

Intersex

Possessing male and female biological sexual characteristics at birth.

Aggression

A physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone physically or emotionally.

Relative aggression

An act of aggression intended to harm a person’s relationship or social standing.

X chromosome

Y chromosome

Testosterone

Estrogens

Sex hormones, that contributes to female sex characteristic and are secreted in greater amount by females than by males. Estrogen levels peak during ovulation. In nonhuman mammals, this promotes sexual receptivity.

First sex characteristics

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

Secondary sex characteristics

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

Spermarche

The first ejaculation.

Menarche

The first menstrual period.

Role

A set of expectation about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.

Gender role

A set of expected behavior, attitudes, and traits for males or for females.

Gender identity

Our sense of being a male, female or some combination of the two.

Social learning theory

The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished.

Sexual aggression

Any physical or verbal behavior of a sexual nature that is unwanted or intended to harm someone physically or emotionally. Can be expressed as either sexual harassment or sexual adult.

Gender typing

The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine in role.

Androgyny

Displaying both tradition masculine and feminine psychological characteristics.

Sexuality

Our thought, feeling, and actions related our physical attraction to another.

Asexual

Having no sexual attraction to other.

Social script

A culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations.

Sexual orientation

Our enduring sexual attraction, usually toward member of our own sex (homosexual), or other sex (heterosexual); variations include attractions toward both sexes (bisexual)

Cognition

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

Schema

A concept or framework that organized and interprets information.

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Sensorimotor stage

On Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 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 thing continue to exist even when not perceived. This concept develops during the sensorimotor stage, typically around 8 to 12 months of age.

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 (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.

Egocentrism

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

Concrete operational

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operation 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 bout abstract concepts

Scaffold

A framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher level of thinking.

Theory of mind

People’s ideas about their own and others’s mental states about their feeling and thoughts, including the understanding that others can have beliefs, desires, and intentions different from one's own.

Language

Our spoken, signed, or written words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phoneme

In a language, the smaller distinctive sound unit

Morpheme

In language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word.

Grammar

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the rules for combining words into sentences.

Universal Grammar

Humans’ innate predisposition to understand principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages.

Babbling stage

Beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are unrelated to the household language.

One-word stage

The stage in speech development, from about 1 to 2 years, during which a child speaks mostly in single words to convey whole ideas.

Two-word stage

Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.

Telegraphic speech

Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram “go car” using mostly nouns and verbs.

Aphasia

Impairment of language, usually caused by let hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding)

Broca’s area

Helps control language expression- an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke’s area

A brain are involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe, it plays a crucial role in understanding spoken and written language.

Linguistic determinism

The strong form of Whorf’s hypothesis- that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us

Linguistic influences

The weaker form of “linguistic relativity” the idea that language affect thought (thus our thinking and world view is “relative to” or cultural language)

Ecological system theory

A theory of the social environment’s influence on human development using five nested systems (microsystem, mesosystem, ecosystem, microsystem and chronosystem) Ranging from direct to indirect influences.

Stranger anxiety

The fear of strangers that infants typically develop around 8 months of age, often resulting in distress when they encounter unfamiliar people.

Attachment

An emotional tie with another person, shown in young children by their seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Imprinting

The process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life.

Stranger situation

A procedure for studying child-caregiver attachment; a child is observed in an unfamiliar environment while the caregiver leaves and returns, assessing the child's reactions.

Secure attachment

Demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver, show only temporary distress when the caregiver leaves, and find comfort in the caregiver’s return

Insecure attachment

Demonstrated by infants who display either a clinging anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment that resists closeness

Temperament

A person’s characteristic emotional, reactivity and intensity.

Basic trust

According to Erik Erickson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropiate experiences with responsive caregivers

Self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question, “who am I?”

Identity

Our sense of self; according to Ericson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of sense by testing and integrating various roles.

Social identity

The “we” aspect of your self-concept; the part of our answer to “who am I?" that comes from our group memberships.

Intimacy

In Erikson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in young adulthood.

Emerging adulthood

A period from about 18 to mid-twenties, when many in Western cultures are no longer adolescent but have not yet achieved full independence as adults. It is characterized by exploration and opportunity in various life domains.

Social clock

The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Learning

The process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information or behaviors.

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated exposure to a stimulus.

Associative learning

Learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (operant conditioning)

Stimulus

Any event or situation that evokes a response.

Respondent behavior

Behavior that occurs as an automatic response to a stimulus.

Operant behavior

Behavior that operates on the environment, producing consequences.

Cognitive learning

The acquisition of mental information, whether by observing events, by watching others, or through language.

Classical conditioning

A type of learning in which we link two or more stimuli; as a result, to illustrate with Pavlov’s classical experiment, the 1st stimulus (a tone) comes to elicit behavior (drooling) in anticipation of the second stimulus (food)

Behaviorism

A perspective that explain behavior as a result of environmental interaction, specially through classical and operant conditioning.

Neutral stimulus (NS)

In classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditions.

Unconditioned response (UR)

In classical conditioning, the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the unconditioned stimulus, such as salivation when food is presented.

Unconditioned stimulus (US)

In classical conditioning, a stimulus that unconditionally triggers a response, such as food causing salivation.

Conditioned response (CR)

In classical conditioning, a learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has become conditioned.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

In classical conditioning, an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (US), comes to trigger a conditioned response. (CR)

Acquisition

In classical conditioning, the initial stage, when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins triggering the conditioned response.

In operant conditioning, the strengthening of a reinforced response.

Higher-order conditioning/ second order conditioning

A procedure in which the conditioned stimuli in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus.

F.e: An animal that has learned that a tone predict food might then learn that a light predicts the tone ad begin responding to the light alone.

Extinction

The diminishing of a conditioned response; occurs in classical conditioning when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus (CS);

occurs in operant conditioning when a response is no longer reinforced.

Spontaneous recovery

The reappearance, after a pause, of an extinguished conditioned response.

Generalization

The tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for a stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.

In operant conditioning, occurs when responses learned in one situation occur in different but similar situations.

Discrimination

In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli that do not signal an unconditioned stimulus.

In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish responses that are reinforced from similar responses that are not reinforced

Preparedness

A biological predisposition to learn associations, that have survival value.

Operant conditioning

A type of learning in which a behavior becomes more likely to recur if followed a reinforcer or less likely to occur if followed by a punisher. It emphasizes the role of consequences in shaping behavior.

Law of effect

Thorndike’s principle that behavior followed by favorable consequences become more likely, and that behavior followed y unfavorable consequences become less likely.

Operant chamber

In operant conditioning research, a chamber containing a bar that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food or water reinforcer, attached devices to record the animal's rate of bar pressing.

Reinforcement

In operant conditioning, any event that strengthens the behavior it follows

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximation of the desired behavior