Human Growth and Development Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards generated from the Human Growth and Development lecture transcripts covering key terms, developmental theories, and major concepts across all five source documents.

Lifespan Development

The scientific study of growth, change, and stability in behavior throughout the entire lifespan, from conception through old age.

Growth

Increases or improvements in an individual or system over time.

Stability

The developmental aspect in which characteristics or traits remain relatively consistent over time.

Change

The developmental process through which an individual's characteristics or abilities become different over time.

Physical Development

Developmental changes involving the body, brain, nervous system, motor abilities, physical health, puberty, and aging.

Cognitive Development

Developmental changes in thinking, memory, intelligence, language, problem solving, attention, and reasoning.

Social / Personality Development

Developmental changes in relationships, emotions, identity, personality, self-concept, and social behavior.

Multidirectional Development

A dimension of lifespan development where some abilities increase while others decrease across the lifespan.

Plasticity

The capacity of individuals to change throughout their lifespan.

Nature

Biological and genetic influences on development, including genes, heredity, brain development, hormones, and biological characteristics.

Nurture

Environmental influences on development, including parenting, education, culture, friends, nutrition, and personal experiences.

Continuous Development

The view that development occurs gradually over time rather than in sudden shifts.

Discontinuous Development

The view that development occurs in distinct, qualitative stages.

Age-Graded Influences

Environmental or biological events that are associated with a particular age group.

History-Graded Influences

Biological and environmental influences associated with a particular historical period that affect people living at that time.

Non-Normative Influences

Unexpected or unusual events that occur in a person's life and do not happen to everyone.

Theory

A set of ideas used to explain and predict behavior or development, helping researchers organize information and formulate questions.

Psychodynamic Perspective

An approach emphasizing that behavior is motivated by inner forces, memories, and conflicts that are generally beyond people's awareness and control.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Sigmund Frued's theory proposing that unconscious forces act to determine personality and behavior.

ID

The raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality present at birth that contains hunger, anger, aggression, and irrational impulses. (freud)

Ego

The part of personality that is rational and reasonable.

Super Ego

The aspect of personality that represents distinctions between right and wrong.

Psychosexual Development

According to Sigmund Frued, a series of stages that children pass through in which pleasure or gratification focuses on a particular biological function and body part.

Psychosocial Development

Erikson's theory of development encompassing changes in our interactions with and understandings of one another, as well as in our knowledge and understanding of ourselves as members of society.

Behavioral Perspective

An approach suggesting that keys to understanding development are observable behavior and outside stimuli in the environment.

Classical Conditioning

A type of learning studied by Wasson in which an organism learns to respond in a particular way to a neutral stimulus that normally does not evoke that kind of response.

Operant Conditioning

Skinner's learning model in which a voluntary response is strengthened or weakened by its associations with positive and negative consequences.

Behavior Modification

A formal technique for promoting the frequency of desirable behaviors and decreasing the incidence of unwanted ones.

Social Cognitive Learning Theory

Bandura's approach emphasizing that behavior is learned primarily through observing the behavior of another person.

Cognitive Perspective

The approach that focuses on the processes that allow people to know, understand, and think about the world.

Schemes

Organized mental structures and patterns through which human thinking is arranged, according to Pigat.

Assimilation

The process through which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and ways of thinking.

Accomidation

Changes in existing ways of thinking in response to encounters with new stimuli or events.

Information Processing Approaches

Cognitive models that seek to identify the ways individuals store and process information.

Cognitive Neurosciences Approaches

Approaches that examine cognitive development through the lens of brain processes.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

A developmental disability that can produce profound language deficits and self-injurious behavior in children.

Humanistic Perspectives

An approach, associated with Carl Rogers, asserting that people have a natural capacity to make decisions about their lives and control their behavior through free will.

Self-Actualization

A state of self-fulfillment in which people achieve their highest potential in their own unique way.

Contextual Perspective

An approach considering the relationship between individuals and their physical, cognitive, personality, and social worlds.

Bioecological Approach

A perspective proposing that 5 levels of the environment (Micro, Meso, Exo, Macro, Chrono) simultaneously influence individuals.

Sociocultural Theory

Vygotsky's approach emphasizing that cognitive development is a result of social interactions with members of a culture.

Evolutionary Perspective

An approach that seeks to identify behavior that is the result of genetic inheritance from ancestors, rooted in Darwin's theories.

Ethology

The study examining ways in which our biological makeup influences our behavior, associated with Konrad Corenz.