Myers' Psychology Modules 3.1-3.9

Longitudinal Studies

Type of research that examines how individuals develop by testing the same sample over a long period of time.

Cross-sectional Studies

Type of research that examines many different age groups at a single point, no re-testing.

Developmental Psychology’s Major Themes

Nature vs. Nurture

Continuity vs. Stages

Stability vs. Change

Zygote

Fertilized egg that rapidly divides over a 2 week period to become an embryo.

Embryo

The developing human from 2 weeks post-conception to 2 months. Detectable on an ultrasound. The placenta connects the mother’s nutrients to this.

Fetus

Developing human from 9 weeks post-conception to birth. It begins to look more human-like, and develops vital organs.

Teratogens

Chemical or viral agents that can reach the embryo or fetus and cause harm.

Ex: alcohol, drugs

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated simulation.

Maturation

Biological growth process that enable orderly changes in behavior.

Synaptic Pruning

A process in which unused neural pathways are eliminated to improve efficiency of neural transmissions; “use it or lose it”

Critical Period

An optimal period early in life when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

Gender

Attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a culture associates with a person’s biological sex.

Sex

External characteristics that determine if a person is male, female, or intersex at birth.

Intersex

Possessing both male and female sex characteristics at birth.

Aggression

Any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm a person physically or emotionally.

Typically used more by men.

Relational Aggression

Acts of aggression intended to harm a person’s relationships or social standing.

Typically used more by women.

Testosterone

Main male hormone; the Y chromosome activates increased testosterone levels, which triggers male sex organs to develop. Also contributes to male secondary sex characteristics during puberty.

Estrogens

Sex hormones including estradiol and progesterone; conributes to female secondary sex characteristics during puberty. Secrets in greater amounts in females than in males, but still present in both sexes.

Primary sex characteristics

Body structures that make sexual reproduction possible.

Secondary sex characteristics

Females: breast growth, widening hips

Males: Voice drops, body hair

Gender roles

Sets of expected behaviors and traits for men and women. Differs between cultures.

Gender identity

Personal sense of gender, whether male, female, a mixture of the two, or non-binary. Develops independently from biological sex.

Gender typing

The acquisition of a traditionally masculine or feminine role.

Ex: A girl acting nuturing towards a doll, a boy telling himself that crying is weak, etc.

Sexual orientation

A person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person.

Jean Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.

Sensorimotor Stage

(Birth to 2 years) Infants know the world in terms of sensory inputs and motor activities.

Preoperational Stage

(2 years to 7 years) A child learns to use language but does not yet comphrehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Concrete Operational Stage

(7 years to 11 years) Children can perform the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

(Begins at 12 years) People begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Object Permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived/visually shown.

Conservation

The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Egocentrism

The preoperational child’s difficulty taking another's point of view.

Zone of proximal development

Lev Vygotsky’s idea that there is a zone between what a child can and can’t do; the things a child can do only with help.

Scaffold

In Vygotsky’s theory, a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking.

Theory of mind

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors these might predict.

Language

Our agreed-upon systems of spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phoneme

In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

Morpheme

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word.

Grammar

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate and understand others.

Semantics

A language’s set of rules for driving meaning from sounds.

Syntax

A language’s set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Universal grammar

Coined by linguist Noam Chomsky; humans’ innate predisposition to understand the principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages.

Babbling stage

Stage of speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utter various sounds that are not all related to the household language. By 10 months though, the babbling has a distinct accent.

One-word stage

Stage in speach development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

Two-word stage

Child speaks in only two-word sentences.

Broca’s area

An area in the left frontal lobe that helps control language expression by controlling muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke’s area

An area in the left temporal lobe that is involved in language comprehension.

Linguistic Determinism

Hypothesis by Benjamin Whorf that language determines the way we think.

Ex: People who speak languages with no past tense cannot think in the past tense.

Linguistic Relativism

The idea that language structure influences the way we think and how we perceive the world, suggesting that speakers of different languages may experience reality differently.

Ecological Systems Theory

A theory of the social environment’s influence on human behavior, using five nested systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Stranger anxiety

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

Strange situation

A procedure developed by Mary Ainsworth to observe child-caregiver attachment. A child is placed in an unfamiliar environment and observed while the caregiver leaves and returns.

Secure attachment

Relative to Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure: the child is happy and curious in the caregiver’s presence, distressed when they leave, and comforted when they return.

Insecure Attachment

Relative to Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure: the child is anxious and avoids or resists the caregiver, showing little distress upon separation or ambivalence upon reunion.

Temperament

A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

Basic Trust

A sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.

Self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question, “Who am I?” It encompasses our self-image, beliefs, and values, shaping how we view our identity and interactions with others.

Authoritarian parenting style

Characterized by high expectations of obedience with no input from the child.

Ex: “Why? Because I said so.”

Permissive parenting style

Characterized by few limits and little punishments, and very little restraint on any of the child’s behavior.

Neglectful parenting style

Characterized by uninvolved and unresponsive parents that do not seek a relationship with the child.

Authoritative parenting style

Characterized by high expectations, but with responsiveness and openness for communication, especially for older children.

Identity

Our sense of self. As adolescents we solidify a sense of self by experimenting with various roles/personalities.

Social identity

The “we” aspect of self-concept. Comes from our group memberships and who we are in relation to the group.

Intimacy

The ability to form close, loving relationships.

Associative learning

Learning that certain events occur together. The events may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or a response and its consequence (as in operant conditioning).

Cognitive learning

The acquisition of mental information, where by observing events, by watching others, or through language.

Stimulus

Any event or situation that evokes a response.

Classical conditioning

A typing of learning in which we link two or more stimuli together, so the the response to the individual stimuli are the same.

Behaviorism

The view that psychology should be an objective science that studies observable behavior without reference to mental processes.

Neutral stimulus

A stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning.

Unconditioned stimulus

A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response.

Unconditioned response

An unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned stimulus

An originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.

Conditioned response

A learned response to a previously neutral, but now conditioned, stimulus. It is the same as the unconditioned response, but the difference is in the stimulus that elicits it.

Acquisition

In classical conditioned, the initial stage - when one links a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus begins eliciting the conditioned response.

In operant conditioning, it is the strengthening of a reinforced response.

Higher-order conditioning

Procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus. Also called second-order conditioning.

Extinction

In classical conditioning, it’s the diminishing of a conditioned response when an unconditioned stimulus does not follow a conditioned stimulus.

In operant conditioning, it’s when a response is no longer reinforced.

Spontaneous recovery

The reappearance of a (weakened) conditioned response after it was extinguished.

Generalization

In classical conditioning, the tendency , once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus to elicit similar responses.

In operant conditioning, when responses learned in one situation occur in similar, other situations.

Discrimination

In classical conditioning, the learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that haven’t been associated to the conditioned stimulus.

In operant conditioning, the ability to distinguish response that are reinforced from similar, not reinforced responses.

Biological preparedness

A biological predispositions to learn associations that have survival value.

One-trial conditioning

Association is built between a stimulus and response after only one exposure.

Operant Conditioning

Type of learning in which a behavior becomes more likely to recur if followed by a reinforcer or less likely to recur if followed by a punisher.

Law of Effect

Edward Thorndike’s principle that behaviors followed by favorable consequences become more likely , and that behaviors followed by unfavorable consequences become less likely.

Operant Chamber

A chamber containing a bar or key that an animal can manipulate to obtain a food/water reinforcer; attached devices record the animal’s rate of bar-pressing or key-pecking. Also called a Skinner Box because it was developed first by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner.

Reinforcement

Any event that strengthens the behavior it follows.

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.

Discriminative stimulus

In operant conditioning, a stimulus that elicits a response after association with reinforcement (in contrast to related stimuli not associated with reinforcement).

Positive reinforcement

A stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response.

Negative reinforcement

A stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response.

Primary reinforcer

A stimulus that is innately reinforcing because it satisfies a biological need like hunger or removing pain.

Secondary reinforcer

A stimulus that gains reinforcement power through association with a primary reinforcer.

Ex: Money (secondary reinforcer) is associated with more food and water.

Partial reinforcement schedule

Reinforcing a response only part of the time; learning is slower, but the resistance to extinction is greater.

Continuous reinforcement schedule

Reinforcing a desired response every time it occurs; learning occurs rapidly, but extinction also happens rapidly after reinforcement stops.

Fixed-Ratio

Reinforces a behavior after a set number of responses.

Ex: One free coffee after 10 previous coffee purchases.

Fixed-Interval

Reinforces response after a fixed time period.

Ex: Getting paid every two weeks.

Variable-Ratio

Reinforces behavior after an unpredictable number of responses.

Ex: Slot machines, fishing.

Variable-Interval

Reinforces first response after varying time intervals.

Ex: Checking your phone periodically for texts.

Positive punishment

Uses an aversive stimulus to decrease a behavior. Also called punishment by application.

Negative punishment

Removes a pleasurable stimulus to decrease behavior. Also called punishment by withdrawl.