PSYCH 3002: Life Span Development Exam 2 Study Guide

Vocabulary study cards covering early childhood, middle childhood, developmental settings, and adolescent development based on the PSYCH 3002 Exam 2 Study Guide.

Gross Motor Skills

Large muscle movements such as running, climbing, and jumping, which are typically superior in boys.

Fine Motor Skills

Small, coordinated movements such as writing and drawing, which are typically superior in girls.

Preoperational Thinking

The lack of ability to step back from immediate perceptions and think conceptually, characteristic of Piaget's stage from ages 2 to 7.

Piaget’s Three Mountain Problem

An experiment that tests whether a child can understand that a different perspective from their own is possible.

Reversibility

The concrete operational knowledge that a specific change in the way something looks can be reversed.

Centering

The preoperational tendency to fix on the most visually striking feature of something without considering other dimensions.

Decentering

The concrete operational ability to take into consideration several dimensions of an object or substance.

Class Inclusion

The concrete operational understanding that a general category can contain several subordinate elements.

Identity Constancy

The preoperational inability to grasp that a person's core "self" stays the same despite external appearances.

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's concept of the gap between children's ability to solve a problem completely by themselves and their potential knowledge gained if taught by someone else who is better.

Scaffolding

The process of teaching skills by entering a child's zone of proximal development and tailoring one's efforts to that child's confidence level.

Theory of Mind

A child's first conception that other people have different beliefs and perspectives than their own, typically occurring around age 4.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

Conditions characterized by persistent social and conversational deficits and repetitive restricted behavior patterns.

Gender Schema Theory

The idea that once children understand their gender label, they will model that gender.

Gender-Segregated Play

The phenomenon of children spending large amounts of time playing with same-sex peers and less time playing with peers of the other sex.

Working Memory

A form of memory that allows us to temporarily hold a limited amount of information for immediate use, whose storage capacity enlarges most dramatically from kindergarten to second grade.

Executive Functions

Abilities that allow us to plan and direct our thinking and control our immediate impulses.

Information Rehearsal

A learning strategy in which people repeat information to embed it into memory.

Selective Attention

A learning strategy in which people manage their awareness so they can retain relevant information and filter out unnecessary information.

Inhibition

The ability to control impulsive responses and use reasoning to respond instead.

Externalizing Tendencies

An emotional regulation issue involving acting on immediate impulses and behaving disruptively.

Internalizing Tendencies

An emotional regulation issue involving intense fear, social inhibition, and often depression.

Proactive Aggression

Acts of aggression that are actively instigated to achieve a goal.

Reactive Aggression

Acts of aggression that occur in response to being frustrated or hurt.

Direct Aggression

Acts of aggression that are obvious and that everyone could easily see.

Relational Aggression

Acts of aggression that are carried out indirectly by damaging or destroying the victim's relationships.

Authoritative Parenting

A Baumrind parenting style characterized by high discipline (rules and structure) and high love (child-center focus).

Authoritarian Parenting

A Baumrind parenting style characterized by high discipline (rules and structure) and low love.

Permissive Parenting

A Baumrind parenting style characterized by low discipline and high love (child-center focus).

Rejecting-Neglecting Parenting

A Baumrind parenting style characterized by low discipline and low love.

Collective Efficacy

Communities defined by strong cohesion, a commitment to helping neighbors, and shared prosocial values.

Resilient Children

Children who rebound from serious early life traumas to construct successful adult lives.

Spearman G Factor

A statistical construct that represents general intelligence.

Intrinsic Motivation

The drive to act based on the satisfaction of taking that action itself, not for an external reward.

Extrinsic Motivation

The drive to act based on getting external reinforcement like praise, money, a good grade, or some other type of external reward.

Primary Sexual Characteristics

Body changes directly involved in reproduction, such as penis growth and beginning menstruation.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics

Body changes in puberty that are not directly involved in reproduction, such as growth of pubic hair and changes in the vocal cords.

Hall “Storm and Stress”

The intense moodiness, emotional sensitivity, and risk-taking tendencies adolescents often display.

Formal Operations Stage

Piaget's cognitive development stage starting at 12+ years old characterized by the ability to reason at a hypothetical level of thought.

Preconventional Thought

Kohlberg's level of moral reasoning in which people reason according to reward and punishment.

Conventional Thought

Kohlberg's level of moral reasoning in which reasoning centers on the need to obey society's rules.

Postconventional Thought

Kohlberg's level of moral reasoning in which reasoning is based on a personal moral code that transcends society's rules.

Imaginary Audience

Elkind's concept describing the tendency for young teenagers to feel that everyone is watching their every action.

Personal Fable

Elkind's concept describing the belief that one's own story is unique and heroic and that they are naturally special.