Unit 3 Psych- Development & Learning

AP Psych Mr. Kim

Developmental psychology

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan.

Cross-sectional study

research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.

Longitudinal study

research that follows and retests the same people over time.

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 function deficits in children caused by their birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy. In severe cases, symptoms include a small, out-of-proportion head and distinct facial features.

Habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation

Maturation

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

Critical period

an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

Adolescence

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

Puberty

the period of sexual maturation, during which a person usually 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 reproduce declines.

Sex

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

Gender

in psychology, the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. (See also gender identity.)

Aggression

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

Relational aggression

an act of aggression (physical or verbal) intended to harm a person’s relationship or social standing.

X chromosome

the sex chromosome found in females and males. Females typically have two X chromosomes; males typically have one. An X chromosome from each parent produces a female child.

Y chromosome

the sex chromosome typically found only in males. When paired with an X chromosome from the mother, it produces a male child.

Testosterone

the most important male sex hormone. Males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs during the fetal period and the development of male sex characteristics during puberty.

Estrogen

sex hormones, such as estradiol, that contribute to female sex characteristics and are secreted in greater amounts by females than by males.

Primary sex characteristics

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

Secondary sex characteristics

nonreproductive sexual traits, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.

Role

a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave.

Gender role

a set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and traits for men and for women.

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 assault.

Gender identity

our personal sense of being male, female, neither, or some combination of male and female, regardless of whether this identity matches our sex assigned at birth, and the social affiliation that may result from this identity.

Social learning theory

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

Gender typing

the acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

Androgyny

displaying traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine psychological characteristics.

Sexuality

our thoughts, feelings, and actions related to our physical attraction to another.

Asexual

having no sexual attraction toward others.

Social script

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

Sexual orientation

“a person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction.”

Jean Piaget

Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget [pee-ah-ZHAY] spent his life searching for the answers. He studied children’s developing cognition

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 experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accommodation

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

Sensorimotor stage

age 0-2. babies take in the world through their senses and actions. No object permanence.

Object permanence

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

Preoperational stage

Age 2-6/7. Child begins to use language, no simple logic, egocentric.

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

difficulty perceiving things from another’s perspective

Concrete operational stage

7-12, understands conservation, can think logically about concrete (actual, physical) events

Formal operational stage

12+, people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. reason systemically, foundation of moral judgement

Lev Vygotsky

child’s mind grows through social interactions

Scaffold

in Vygotsky’s theory, teachers/parents/peers guide children to higher levels of thinking

Theory of mind

ideas about our own and others mental states

Language

our agreed-upon systems of spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Noam Chomsky

argued that language is an unlearned human trait, separate from other parts of human cognition. We are born with a language acquisition device, which allows us to learn any human language

Phoneme

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.(To say that, English speakers utter the phonemes th, a, and t.)

Morpheme

the smallest language units that carry meaning. (The word readers contains three morphemes

Universal grammar

we are born with a built-in predisposition to learn grammar.

Babbling stage

beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language.

One-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Two-word stage

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

Telegraphic speech

the 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 left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

Paul Broca

after damage to an area of the left frontal lobe (later called Broca’s area) a person would struggle to speak words, yet could still sing familiar songs and comprehend speech.

Broca’s area

PHYSICALLY HELPS YOU SPEAK. a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, Controls muscles for speech

Carl Wernicke

after damage to a specific area of the left temporal lobe ( Wernicke’s area), people could not understand others’ sentences and could speak only meaningless sentences.

Wernicke’s area

HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND SPEECH/SPEAK LOGICALLY. a brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression.

Stranger anxiety

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

Attachment

an emotional tie with others; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to caregivers and showing distress on separation.

Harlow’s experiment

When raised with both artificial mothers, the monkeys overwhelmingly preferred the comfy cloth mother (Figure 3.6-2). Like other infants clinging to their live mothers, anxious monkey babies would cling to their cloth mothers, soothed by this contact comfort. When exploring their environment, they used her as a secure base, as if attached to her by an invisible elastic band that stretched only so far before pulling them back.

Imprinting

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

Mary Ainsworth

Mary Ainsworth (1979) designed the strange situation.

Strange situation

a procedure for studying child-caregiver attachment; a child is placed in an unfamiliar environment while their caregiver leaves and then returns, and the child’s reactions are observed.

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.

• Anxious-Avoidant: The child ignores the caregiver, shows little emotion upon separation/reunion, and explores freely without checking in.

• Anxious-Attachment (Ambivalent): The child is clingy, does not explore, is extremely distressed when left, and behaves ambivalently (seeking and rejecting comfort) upon return.

Temperament

a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

Erik Erikson

believed that securely attached children approach life with a sense of basic trust — a sense that the world is predictable and reliable

Basic trust

a sense that the world is predictable and reliable.

Self-concept

an understanding and assessment of who they are.

Identity

consistent and comfortable sense of who one is

Social identity

the “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships. For international students, for those of a minority ethnic or religious group, for gay and transgender people, or for people with a disability, a social identity often forms around their distinctiveness

Intimacy

the ability to form emotionally close relationships.

Emerging adulthood

​​ No longer adolescents, these emerging adults — having not yet assumed full adult responsibilities and independence — feel somewhere “in between.”

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.

Associative learning

we learn that certain events occur together

Stimulus

any event or situation that evokes a response

Respondent behavior

automatically responding to stimuli, don’t control it

Operant behavior

we learn to associate a response and its consequence. These associations produce operant behaviors

Cognitive learning

we acquire mental information that guides our behavior

Ivan Pavlov

psychological phenomena can be studied objectively. classical conditioning is a basic form of learning that applies to all species.

Classical conditioning

a type of learning in which we link two or more stimuli

John Watson

founded behaviorism

Behaviorism

the view that psychology should study behavior, not mental processes. Believed the basic laws of learning are the same for all animals, including humans.

Neutral stimulus

in classical conditioning, a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.

Unconditioned response

an event that occurs naturally (such as salivation), in response to some stimulus.

Unconditioned stimulus

something that naturally and automatically (without learning) triggers the unlearned response (for example, food in the mouth triggers salivation).

Conditioned response

the learned response (salivating) to the originally neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus.

Conditioned stimulus

originally an NS (neutral stimulus, such as a tone) that, after association with a UCS (such as food) comes to trigger a CR

Acquisition

first stage of classical conditioning. associating an NS with the UCS so that the NS begins triggering the CR.

Higher-order conditioning

occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a previously conditioned stimulus.

Extinction

diminished responding that occurs when the CS (tone) no longer signals an impending UCS (food)

Spontaneous recovery

the reappearance of a (weakened) CR after a pause

Generalization

the tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to a CS.

Discrimination

the learned ability to distinguish between a CS and other irrelevant stimuli.

Preparedness

a biological predisposition to learn associations, such as between taste and nausea, that have survival value.