hi

Nature/Nurture

How do our genetic inheritance (our nature) and our experience in our environment (the nurture we receive) affect our development?

Continuity/Stages

Is development a gradual continuous process like riding an escalator, or does it proceed through a sequence of separate stages, like climbing a staircase?

Stability/Change

Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do they change significantly as we age?

Zygote

the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.

Embryo

the developing person from about 2 weeks following conception through the 2nd month.

Fetus

the developing person from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Teratogens

chemicals or viruses that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's drinking.

Reflexes

sucking, grasping, & rooting (a baby's tendency when touched on the cheek, to open its mouth and search for a nipple).

Maturation

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relative uninfluenced by the environment.

Cognition

refers to all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Schema

according to Piaget, a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. The lens through which we see and interpret the world around us.

Assimilation

Interpreting one's new experiences in terms of one's existing schemas.

Accommodation

changing or adapting one's current schemas to incorporate new information and experiences.

Habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure of a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner

ACEs

Stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences - traumatic experiences that impact development

Sensorimotor Stage (2)

• Object permanence

• Stranger anxiety

Sensorimotor Stage

(birth to 2 yrs) stage during which infants know the world through their senses and motor activities.

Object Permanance

the awareness that things continue to exist even when they cannot be perceived.

Stranger Anxiety

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

Preoperational Stage

(2-7 yrs) stage during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend concrete logic.

Egocentrism

the inability of the preoperational child to take another person's perspective or point of view.

Preoperational Stage (2)

• Egocentrism

• Theory of Mind