Developmental Theories Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key cognitive, behavioral, social cognitive, ethological, and ecological theories of human development.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory

A theory stating that children actively construct their understanding of the world as they go through four distinct stages of cognitive development.

Sensorimotor Stage

The first of Piaget's cognitive development stages, lasting from birth to 2 years of age, where infants construct understanding through sensory experiences and physical actions.

Preoperational Stage

The second of Piaget's cognitive development stages, lasting from 2 to 7 years of age, where children represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

Concrete Operational Stage

The third of Piaget's cognitive development stages, lasting from 7 to 11 years of age, where children can reason logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

The fourth of Piaget's cognitive development stages, lasting from 11 years of age through adulthood, where individuals develop abstract, ideal, and logical thinking.

Organization and Adaptation

The two key cognitive processes central to Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Cognitive Theory

A cognitive theory emphasizing how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.

Information Processing Theory

A theory emphasizing that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about central cognitive processes such as memory, thinking, problem solving, reasoning, and consciousness.

Skinner's Behavioral Tradition

A perspective holding that development consists of the pattern of behavioral changes brought about by environmental conditions, such as rewards and punishments.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

A theory emphasizing that behavior, environment, and person/cognitive factors interact reciprocally to drive development, highlighting forethought, goal formulation, and self-motivation.

Ethology

A perspective stressing that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, tied to evolution, and characterized by critical or sensitive periods.

Konrad Lorenz

An ethologist who brought ethology to prominence by demonstrating the developmental importance of imprinting behavior in geese.

John Bowlby

A researcher who applied ethological principles to human development, proposing that attachment to a caregiver over the first year of life has major consequences across the lifespan.

Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory

A theory holding that development reflects the influence of five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Microsystem

In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the immediate setting in which an individual lives and actively helps construct.

Mesosystem

In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the relations between microsystems or connections between different contexts.

Exosystem

In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the links between a social setting in which the individual plays a passive role and their immediate context.

Macrosystem

In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the overarching culture in which individuals live.

Chronosystem

In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the course of time and sociohistorical circumstances.