AP Psychology - Unit 3 Vocabulary - Vocab #2

Vocab Quiz - 1/21/25

Sexual orientation

according to the APA (2015), “a person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction”

Cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilation

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodation

in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information

Sensorimotor stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Object permanence

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Preoperational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6-7 years of age) at which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

Conservation

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

Egocentrism

in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view

Concrete operational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7-11 years of age) at which children can perform the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete (actual, physical) events

Formal operational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

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, and thoughts, and the 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 part of a word (such as a prefix)

Grammar

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. semantics is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Universal grammar (UG)

humans’ innate predisposition to understand the principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages

Babbling stage

the stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not at all related to the household language

One-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1-2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Two-word stage

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Telegraphic speech

the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram — “go car” — using mostly nouns and verbs

Aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding)

Broca’s area

a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech

Wernicke’s area

a brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression

Linguistic determinism

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Linguistic relativism

the idea that language influences the way we think

Ecological systems theory

a theory of the social environment’s influence on human development, using five nested systems (microsystem; mesosystem; exosystem; macrosystem; chronosystem)

Stranger anxiety

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

Attachment

an emotional tie with others; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to caregivers and showing distress on separation

Imprinting

the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life

Strange situation

a procedure for studying child-caregiver attachment; a child is placed in an unfamiliar environment while their caregiver leaves and then returns, and the child’s reactions are observed

Secure attachment

demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver, show only temporary distress when the caregiver leaves, and find comfort in the caregiver’s return

Insecure attachment

demonstrated by infants who display either a clinging, anxious attachment, or an avoidant attachment that resists closeness

Temperament

a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity

Basic trust

according to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsible caregivers

Self-concept

all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question, “Who am I?”

Identity

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