"Life-span Development" by John W. Santrock (chapters 8,9,10)

Growth hormone deficiency

Absence or deficiency of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland to stimulate the body to grow.

Myelination

The process by which the nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells, which increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous system.

Piaget's second stage

The preoperational stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age.

The preoperational stage

Piaget's second stage

The sensorimotor stage

Piaget's first stage

Preoperational stage

Piaget's second stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age, during which children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings, and symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory information and physical action; stable concepts are formed, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism is present, and magical beliefs are constructed.

Operations

In Piaget's theory, these are reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically.

Symbolic function substage

Piaget's first substage of preoperational thought, in which the child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present (between about 2 and 4 years of age.

Piaget's first substage of preoperational thought

Symbolic function substage

Egocentrism

The inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's (salient feature of the first substage of preoperational thought).

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.

Intuitive thought substage

Piaget's second substage of preoperational thought, in which children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions (between 4 and 7 years of age).

Piaget's second substage of preoperational thought

Intuitive thought substage

Centration

Focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

Conservation

In Piaget's theory, awareness that altering an object's or a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with the assistance of adults or more-skilled children.

Social constructivist approach

An approach that emphasizes the social contexts of learning and asserts that knowledge is mutually built and constructed. Vygotsky's theory reflects this approach.

Executive attention

Involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and comprehension, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Sustained attention

Focused and extended engagement with an object, task, event, or other aspect of the environment.

Short-term memory

The memory component in which individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal of the information.

Executive functioning

An umbrella-like concept that consists of a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex. The concept involves managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and self-control.

Theory of mind

Awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others.

Child-centered kindergarten

Education that involves the whole child by considering both the child's physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development and the child's needs, interests, and learning styles.

Montessori approach

An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in choosing activities and are allowed to move from one activity to another as they desire.

Developmentally appropriate practice

Education that focuses on the typical developmental patterns of children (age-appropriateness) and the uniqueness of each child (individual-appropriateness).

Project Head Start

A government-funded program that is designed to provide children from low-income families with the opportunity to acquire the skills and experiences important for school success.

Self-understanding

The child's cognitive representation of self, the substance and content of the child's self-conceptions.

Moral development

Development that involves thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people.

Heteronomous morality

The first stage of moral development in Piaget's theory, occurring from approximately 4 to 7 years of age. Justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people.

Autonomous morality

In Piaget's theory, older children (about 10 years of age and older) become aware that rules and laws are created by people and that in judging an action one should consider the actor's intentions as well as the consequences.

Immanent justice

The concept that if a rule is broken, punishment will be meted out immediately.

Conscience

An internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves integrating moral thought, feeling, and behavior.

Gender identity

The sense of being male or female, which most children acquire by the time they are 3 years old.

Gender role

A set of expectations that prescribes how females or males should think, act, and feel.

Gender typing

Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

Social role theory

A theory that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women.

Psychoanalytic theory of gender

A theory deriving from Freud's view that the preschool child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent, by approximately 5 or 6 years of age renounces this attraction because of anxious feelings, and subsequently identifies with the same-sex parent, unconsciously adopting the same-sex parent's characteristics.

Social cognitive theory of gender

A theory emphasizing that children's gender development occurs through the observation and imitation of gender behavior and through rewards and punishments children experience for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.

Gender schema theory

The theory that gender typing emerges as children develop gender schemas of their culture's gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.

Authoritarian parenting

A restrictive, punitive style in which parents exhort the child to follow their directions and to respect their work and effort. This type of parent places firm limits and controls on the child and allows little verbal exchange. The parenting style is associated with children's social incompetence.

Authoritative parenting

A parenting style in which parents encourage their children to be independent but still place limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturing toward the child. The parenting style is associated with children's social competence.

Neglectful parenting

A style of parenting in which the parent is uninvolved in the child's life; it is associated with children's social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control.

Indulgent parenting

A style of parenting in which parents are highly involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them. This style of parenting is associated with children's social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control.

Coparenting

Support parents provide for each other in jointly raising their children.

Sensorimotor play

Behavior engaged in by infants that lets them derive pleasure from exercising their existing sensorimotor schemes.

Practice play

Play that involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports.

Pretense/symbolic play

Play in which the child transforms the physical environment into a symbol.

Social play

Play that involves social interactions with peers.

Constructive play

Play that combines sensorimotor and repetitive activity with symbolic representation of ideas. This type of play occurs when children engage in self-regulated creation or construction of product or a solution.

Games

Activities engaged in for pleasure that include rules and often involve competition with one or more individual.

Nonnormative life events

Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individual's life.

Learning disability

Difficulty in understanding or using spoken or written language or in doing mathematics. To be classified as a learning disability, the learning problem is not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; mental retardation; emotional disorders; or due to environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

Dyslexia

A category of learning disabilities involving a severe impairment in the ability to read and spell.

Dysgraphia

A learning disability that involves difficulty in handwriting.

Dyscalculia

Also known as developmental arithmetic disorder; a learning disability that involves difficulty in math computation.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

A disability in which children consistently show one or more of the following characteristics: (1) inattention, (2) hyperactivity, and (3) impulsivity.

Emotional and behavioral disorders

Serious persistent problems that involve relationships, aggression, depression, fears associated with personal or school matters, as well as other inappropriate socioemotional characteristics.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD)

Also called pervasive developmental disorders, they range from the severe disorder labeled autistic disorder to the milder disorder called Asperger Syndrome. Children with these disorders are characterized by problems in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors.

Autistic disorder

A severe autism spectrum disorder that has its onset in the first three years of life and includes deficiencies in social relationships, abnormalities in communication, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior.

Asperger syndrome

A relatively mild autism spectrum disorder in which the child has relatively good verbal language skills, milder nonverbal language problems, and a restricted range of interests and relationships.

Individualized education plan (IEP)

A written statement that spells out a program specifically tailored to a child with a disability.

Least restrictive environment (LRE)

A setting that is as similar as possible to one in which children who do not have a disability are educated.

Inclusion

Educating a child with special education needs full-time in the regular classroom.

Seriation

The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).

Transitivity

The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.

Neo-Piagetians

Developmentalists who argue that Piaget got some things right but that his theory needs considerable revision. They have elaborated on Piaget's theory, giving more emphasis to information processing, strategies, and precise cognitive steps.

Long-term memory

A relatively permanent type of memory that holds huge amounts of information for a long period of time.

Working memory

A mental "workbench" where individuals manipulate and assemble information when making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language.

Strategies

Deliberate mental activities that improve the processing of information.

Elaboration

An important strategy for remembering that involves engaging in more extensive processing of information.

Critical thinking

Thinking reflectively and productively, as well as evaluating the evidence.

Mindfulness

Being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks.

Creative thinking

The ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems.

Convergent thinking

Thinking that produces one correct answer and is characteristic of the kind of thinking tested by standardized intelligence tests.

Divergent thinking

Thinking that produces many answers to the same question and is characteristic of creativity.

Brainstorming

A technique in which individuals are encouraged to come up with creative ideas in a group, play off each other's ideas, and say almost anything that comes to mind.

Metacognition

Cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing.

Intelligence

Problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to the experiences of everyday life.

Individual differences

The stable, consistent ways in which people differ from each other.

Mental age (MA)

Binet's measure of an individual's level of mental development, compared with that of others.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

A person's mental age dividend by chronological age, multiplied by 100.

Normal distribution

A symmetrical distribution with most scores falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and a few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.

Triarchic theory of intelligence

Sternberg's theory that intelligence consists of analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.

Culture-fair tests

Tests of intelligence that are designed to be free of cultural bias.

Mental retardation

A condition of limited mental ability in which an individual has a low IQ, usually below 70 on a traditional test of intelligence, and has difficulty adapting to everyday life.

Organic retardation

Mental retardation that is caused by a genetic disorder or brain damage.

Cultural-familial retardation

Retardation in which there is no evidence of organic brain damage, but the individual's IQ is generally between 50 and 70.

Gifted

Having above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent for something.

Self-esteem

The global evaluative dimension on the self. It's also referred to as self-worth or self-image.

Self-concept

Domain-specific evaluations of the self.

Self-efficiency

The belief that one can master a situation and produce favorable outcomes.

Preconventional reasoning

The lowest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. The individual's moral reasoning is controlled primarily by external rewards and punishments.

Heteronomous morality

Kohlberg's first stage of preconventional reasoning in which moral thinking is tied to punishment.

Domain theory of moral development

States that there are different domains of social knowledge and reasoning, including moral, social conventional, and personal domains. These domains arise from children's and adolescents' attempts to understand and deal with different forms of social experience.

Social conventional reasoning

Thoughts about social consensus and convention, in contrast with moral reasoning, which stresses ethical issues.

Gender stereotypes

Broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about females and males.

Popular children

Children who are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers.

Average children

Children who receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations from peers.

Neglected children

Children who are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers.

Rejected children

Children who are infrequently nominated as a best friend and are actively disliked by their peers.