Prenatal and Childhood Development Lecture Notes

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering prenatal development, Piaget's stages of cognitive development, parenting styles, and social development based on the lecture transcript.

Prenatal

A term defined as "before birth."

Zygote

A fertilized egg that undergoes a period of rapid cell division during the first $2$ weeks and attaches to the mother’s uterine wall.

Embryo

The developing human organism from about $2$ weeks after fertilization until the end of the eighth week, during which most major organs like the Placenta and Heart are formed.

Fetus

The developing human organism from $9$ weeks after conception to birth, characterized by developing a human look and neural connections.

Placenta

A cushion of cells in the mother by which the fetus receives oxygen and nutrition while acting as a filter for harmful substances.

Teratogens

Substances like radiation, toxic chemicals, viruses, drugs, alcohol, and nicotine that cross the placental barrier and prevent normal fetal development.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a mother consuming large amounts of alcohol while pregnant.

Temperament

A person's characteristic emotional excitability, often categorized in infancy as "easy" or "difficult," which typically carries through a person’s life.

Infant

A child during their first year of life.

Toddler

A child from about age $1$ to $3$ years.

Maturation

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior.

Motor Development

The development of all physical skills and muscular coordination.

Jean Piaget

A pioneer in developmental psychology who introduced a four-stage theory of cognitive development.

Cognition

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

Schemas

Concepts or mental frameworks, described as a person's "picture of the world," used to organize and interpret information.

Assimilation

The process of interpreting a new experience within the context of existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting current schemas to incorporate new information that is too novel to fit existing frameworks.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, from birth to about age $2$, where children learn through sensory impressions and motor activities.

Object Permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen or heard.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget’s second stage, from about age $2$ to age $6$ or $7$, where children learn language but cannot yet think logically.

Egocentrism

The inability of a child in the preoperational stage to take another person’s point of view.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget’s third stage, from about age $6$ or $7$ to $11$, where children gain mental skills to think logically about concrete events.

Conservation

The understanding that properties such as mass, volume, and numbers remain constant despite changes in form.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget’s final stage, from about age $12$ up, characterized by logical thinking about abstract concepts and hypothetical problems.

Stranger Anxiety

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display beginning around $8$ months of age.

Attachment

An emotional tie with another person shown by seeking closeness to a caregiver and showing distress upon separation.

Securely Attached

A condition where children will explore their environment when a primary caregiver is present.

Insecurely Attached

A condition where children appear distressed and cling to caregivers or cry when they leave and return.

Harry Harlow

A researcher who studied infant monkeys and found they preferred a cloth mother over a wire mother that provided food, highlighting the role of body contact in attachment.

Critical Period

An optimal period shortly after birth when exposure to certain stimuli produces proper development.

Authoritarian Parenting

A parenting style marked by imposing rules, expecting obedience, low warmth, and high maturity expectations.

Permissive Parenting

A parenting style marked by submitting to children’s desires, making few demands, high warmth, and low expectations of maturity.

Authoritative Parenting

A parenting style marked by making demands and setting rules but being responsive, discussing reasons, and maintaining high warmth.