AP Psychology Unit IX: Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology

Branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social changes throughout life.

Zygote

Fertilized egg, enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division into an embryo.

Embryo

Developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Fetus

Developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Teratogens

Agents such as chemicals and viruses can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

Fetal alcohol syndrome

Physical and cognitive abnormalities that are caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking.

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness to repeated visual stimulation.

Maturation

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

Schemas

Concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilate

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accomadation

Adapting our current schemas to incorporate new information.

Jean Piaget

Believed that children construct their view/understanding of the world while interacting with it. Cognitive development consists of 4 major stages.

Sensorimotor stage

Piaget’s stage from birth to 2 during which infants know the world mostly through their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Object permanence

Awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. Develop more gradually than Piaget thought.

Preoperational stage

Piaget’s stage from 2 to 6/7 where a child learns to use language but does not comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Conservation

Principle during the concrete operational, reasoning that properties such as mass, volume, and number retain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Judy Delouche

Dog experiment, showed that symbolic thinking occurs earlier than Piaget thought.

Egocentric

Preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.

Theory of mind

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states, and the behaviors they might predict.

Autism spectrum disorder

Disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

Concrete operational stage

Stage from 6/7 to 11 where children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal operational stage

Stage beginning at 12 during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Scaffolding

Lev Vygotsy, the child’s mind grows through interaction with others. By mentoring children, parents can provide a temporary scaffold that helps children reach higher levels of thinking.

Zone of proximal development

What a child can do with help, Lev Vygotsy.

Stranger anxiety

The fear of strangers infants commonly display starting at 8 months, after object permanence appears.

Attachment

Emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress upon separation.

Harlow

Wire mother and cloth mother experiments, revealed that close contact with caregivers is important.

Critical period

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

Lorenz

Explored rigid attachment process of imprinting: certain animals form strong attachments early in life.

Sensitivity period

Period when children become most attached.

Ainsworth

Designed strange situation experiment, discovered 60% securely attached and 40% insecurely attached.

Secure attachment

Feels distressed in absence of parents, feels comforted upon their return.

Insecure attachment

Anxiety surrounding of avoidance of trusting relationships. Upset when mother leaves, indifferent when she comes back.

Temperment

A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity.

Basic trust

Basic trust in the world, believed by Erikson to be held by securely attached infants.

Scarr

Studied effectiveness of daycare.

Self-concept

All of our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question “who am I?” Has developed by age 12.

Gender

Socially constructed roles and characteristics by which a culture defines male and female.

Social learning theory

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

Gender typing

Acquisition of traditional masculine or feminine roles.

Rosenzweig and Krech

Impoverished environment = impoverished neuron, enriched environment = enriched neuron.

Preconventional morality

Self-interest, obeys rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards.

Conventional morality

Upholds laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social status.

Postconventional morality

Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principals.

Identity

Our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of identity by testing and integrating various roles.

Social identity

The “we” aspect of our self-concept. Comes from group memberships.

Intimacy

In Erikson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence.

Emerging adulthood

For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid-twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood.

Primary sex characteristics

Body structures that make reproduction possible.

Secondary sex characteristics

Non-reproductive sexual traits.

Menopause

Time of natural cessation of menstruation; biological changes women experience as their ability to reproduce declines.

Cross-sectional studies

A study in which people of different ages are compared to one another.

Longitudal studies

Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period of time.

Social clock

Culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Baurmind

Categorized the three parenting styles (permissive, authoritarian, authoritative), decided authoritative was best.

Gilligan

Discovered that we reason morally based on relationships and caring.

Rooting reflex

An infant turns his head when his cheek is stroked and begins sucking.

Fluid intelligence

A person’s general ability to think abstractly. Decreases with age.

Crystallized intelligence

A person’s accumulation of stored information. Increases with age.