Chapter 1: The Study of Human Development

Flashcards for vocabulary review of Chapter 1: The Study of Human Development

Human Development

The multidisciplinary study of how people change and how they remain the same over time.

Nature–Nurture Issue

The degree to which genetic or hereditary influences and experiential or environmental influences determine the kind of person you are.

Continuity–Discontinuity Issue

Whether a particular developmental phenomenon represents a smooth progression throughout the life span or a series of abrupt shifts.

Universal Versus Context-Specific Development Issue

Whether there is just one path of development or several paths.

Biopsychosocial Framework

A useful way to organize the biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces on human development.

Neuroscience

The study of the brain and nervous system, especially in terms of brain–behavior relationships.

Theory

An organized set of ideas that is designed to explain development.

Psychodynamic Theories

Theories proposing that development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they face at different ages.

Psychosocial Theory

Erikson’s proposal that personality development is determined by the interaction of an internal maturational plan and external societal demands.

Epigenetic Principle

In Erikson’s theory, the idea that each psychosocial strength has its own period of particular importance.

Reinforcement

A consequence that increases the future likelihood of the behavior that it follows.

Punishment

A consequence that decreases the future likelihood of the behavior that it follows.

Imitation or Observational Learning

Learning that occurs by simply watching how others behave.

Self-Efficacy

People’s beliefs about their own abilities and talents.

Information-Processing Theory

A theory proposing that human cognition consists of mental hardware and mental software.

Ecological Theory

A theory based on the idea that human development is inseparable from the environmental contexts in which a person develops.

Microsystem

The people and objects in an individual’s immediate environment.

Exosystem

The social settings that a person may not experience firsthand but that still influence development.

Macrosystem

The cultures and subcultures in which the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem are embedded.

Competence

A person’s abilities.

Environmental Press

The demands put on an individual by the environment.

Life-Span Perspective

The view that human development is multiply determined and cannot be understood within the scope of a single framework.

Selective Optimization with Compensation Model

The model in which three processes (selection, optimization, and compensation) form a system of behavioral action that generates and regulates development and aging.

Life-Course Perspective

The ways in which various generations experience the biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces of development in their respective historical contexts.

Systematic Observation

Watching people and carefully recording what they do or say.

Naturalistic Observation

A technique in which people are observed as they behave spontaneously in some real-life situation.

Structured Observations

The researcher creates a setting that is likely to elicit the behavior of interest.

Self-Reports

People’s answers to questions about the topic of interest.

Reliability

The extent to which a measure provides a consistent index of a characteristic.

Validity

Extent to which a measure actually assesses what researchers think it assesses.

Populations

Broad groups of people that are of interest to researchers.

Sample

A subset of the population.

Correlational Study

An investigation that looks at relations between variables as they exist naturally in the world.

Correlation Coefficient

An expression of the strength and direction of a relation between two variables.

Experiment

A systematic way of manipulating the key factor or factors that the investigator thinks causes a particular behavior.

Independent Variable

The factor being manipulated.

Dependent Variable

The behavior being observed.

Qualitative Research

A method that involves gaining in-depth understanding of human behavior and what governs it.

Longitudinal Study

A research design in which the same individuals are observed or tested repeatedly at different points in their lives.

Cross-Sectional Study

A study in which developmental differences are identified by testing people of different ages.

Cohort Effects

Problems with cross-sectional designs in which differences between age groups (cohorts) may result as easily from environmental events as from developmental processes.

Sequential Design

A developmental research design based on cross-sectional and longitudinal designs.