Human Development: Lifespan Chapters 10–13

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering Human Development Lifespan Chapters 10 through 13: Emerging and Young Adulthood, Relationships and Family, Careers and Leisure, and Middle Adulthood.

Emerging Adulthood

The developmental period between the late teens and the mid-to-late twenties (extending to the early thirties) when individuals are no longer adolescents but have not yet fully achieved adult status.

Role Transitions

New responsibilities and duties that mark movement into the next developmental stage, such as entering marriage or taking on full-time employment.

Rites of Passage

Important rituals that mark initiation into adulthood, which frequently take the form of religious ceremonies such as bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs across various cultures.

Returning Adult Students

College students who are over the age of $25$.

Edgework

Living on the boundary between life and death in physically or psychologically risky situations; men typically do not rehearse beforehand and exhibit high confidence, whereas women rehearse to manage lower initial confidence.

Intimacy vs. Isolation

Erikson's sixth psychosocial stage occurring during young adulthood, where the major conflict centers on establishing close, meaningful relationships and a shared identity with another person without losing one's own identity.

Financial Independence

A major marker of becoming an adult, gained earlier by approximately one-third of high school graduates or non-completers via jobs or military service, but often delayed for college graduates who move back home.

Quarterlife Crisis

A period of self-exploration, searching for meaning, and adjusting to daily hassles and life challenges that occurs during an individual's twenties.

Body Mass Index (BMI)

The ratio of body weight to height that correlates with total body fat, where a value of $\le 25$ is considered healthy and higher scores indicate increased health risks.

Metabolism

The amount of energy required by the body, which naturally slows down as an individual ages.

Postformal Thinking

A cognitive style where decision-making and problem-solving emphasize change, context-dependent principles, the pragmatics of the situation, emotion, and social facets rather than context-free logic and conformity alone.

Fluid Intelligence

Flexible and adaptive thinking that involves making inferences and understanding abstract relationships between concepts; it reflects the mind's neurophysiological architecture (mechanics) and declines throughout adulthood.

Crystallized Intelligence

Knowledge acquired through experience and education, consisting of facts, definitions, language, and cultural information; it reflects pragmatics and improves throughout adulthood.

Life-Span Construct

An individual's unified, integrated sense of their past, present, and future.

Scenario

Expectations regarding how one's future life will unfold, used to formulate a plan and monitor developmental progress.

Social Clock

A personal timetable tagging the specific age or time by which future life goals, milestones, or events should be achieved.

Possible Selves

Representations of what individuals envision themselves becoming, consisting of hoped-for selves and feared-for selves.

Personal Control Beliefs

The degree to which individuals believe that their performance and life outcomes depend on their own efforts and abilities rather than external forces.

Themes of Friendship

The three core dimensions characterizing adult friendships: the affective or emotional theme (intimacy, trust, support), the shared/communal theme (mutual activities/interests), and sociability/compatibility (fun and entertainment).

Stages of Adult Friendships

The developmental trajectory of friendships through adulthood, comprising acquaintanceship, buildup, continuation, deterioration, and ending.

Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg's framework identifying three basic components of love relationships: passion (physical attraction), intimacy (emotional closeness), and commitment (the decision to maintain the relationship).

Infatuation

An early phase of romantic relationship where passion is high, but intimacy and commitment remain low; marriages based primarily on infatuation have higher divorce rates.

Assortative Mating

The process by which individuals select romantic partners based on shared similarities across many dimensions, including values, physical traits, and social background.

Homogamy

The degree of similarity between two partners in a relationship, which tends to be higher when couples meet through educational or religious contexts.

Battered Woman Syndrome

A condition in which a woman believes she is powerless to leave an abusive situation, which may escalate to the point where she acts to kill her abuser.

Cohabitation

Two people living together in a committed relationship without legal marriage, chosen for convenience and expense sharing, avoiding long-term commitment, or as a trial marriage.

Exchange Theory

A marital relationship theory stating that marriage is likelier to succeed and remain stable when both partners perceive an equitable balance of contributions.

Vulnerability-Stress Adaptation Model

A model stating that marital quality and satisfaction depend on a couple's capacity to handle stressful events relative to their individual vulnerabilities and available resources.

Nuclear Family

A household unit consisting solely of parents and their children, common primarily in Western societies.

Extended Family

A family structure in which parents, children, grandparents, and other relatives reside together, common globally and especially prominent in Latino cultures.

Familism

A cultural value—particularly strong in Latino families—where the needs and well-being of the family take precedence over individual desires and concerns.

Covenant Marriage

A legally distinct marriage contract that establishes a lifelong commitment requiring premarital counseling and strictly limits the grounds for divorce.

Collaborative Divorce

A voluntary dispute resolution process where divorcing spouses negotiate the terms of their dissolution cooperatively rather than submitting to a court judgment.

Healthy Marriage Initiative

A program emphasizing marital education and highlighting the positive, protective aspects of stable marriages.

Meaning-Mission Fit

The degree of alignment between an employee's personal philosophy and view of work and the overarching mission of their organization.

Career Construction Theory

A theoretical framework positing that people build and author their careers through personal agency arising from the intersection of individual traits and social context.

Holland's Six Personality Types

John Holland's vocational model proposing that individuals choose jobs aligned with their abilities and interests, organized into six types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.

Super's Career Stages

Donald Super's model of vocational development progressing through distinct phases: Exploratory ($15\text{--}24$), Establishment ($24\text{--}44$), Maintenance ($45\text{--}64$), and Decline ($65+$), alongside tasks of implementation, stabilization, and consolidation.

Reality Shock

The sudden realization that what a worker learned during school, training, or classroom instruction does not directly match the practical demands and expectations of the workplace.

Kram's Mentoring Phases

The four developmental stages that define a mentoring relationship: initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition.

Alienation

A psychological state in which workers feel disconnected from their labor, perceiving their work as devalued and inherently meaningless.

Burnout

A condition characterized by complete physical and emotional energy depletion alongside feelings of exploitation, caused by chronic workplace stress.

Glass Ceiling

An invisible, promotional barrier within an organization above which qualified women are prevented from advancing.

Glass Cliff

The organizational phenomenon in which women are appointed to leadership or executive roles during precarious, high-risk situations or organizational crises.

Boomerang Employees

Employees who voluntarily or involuntarily leave a company and subsequently return to work for the same organization at a later point in time.

Career Plateauing

A point in a worker's professional career where further promotional advancement is either unavailable or no longer pursued.

Emotion-Focused Coping

A coping mechanism centered on managing one's feelings regarding a stressor or denying negative emotions; associated with elevated levels of perceived stress.

Problem-Focused Coping

An active, problem-solving coping strategy that focuses directly on diagnosing and taking concrete steps to resolve the source of stress.

Leisure

Discretionary, freely chosen activities engaged in for relaxation, enjoyment, personal transformation, or creative satisfaction.

Skeletal Maturity

The developmental point where bone mass and skeletal growth reach peak density, typically occurring around age $19$ for females and age $20$ for males.

Osteoporosis

A skeletal disorder characterized by weakened bone matrix and porous, fragile bones that fracture easily; it disproportionately affects postmenopausal women, especially non-Latina white and Asian women.

Osteoarthritis

A degenerative wear-and-tear joint disorder caused by gradual cartilage breakdown from injury or overuse, predominantly impacting weight-bearing joints including the spine, hips, knees, and hands.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

A chronic, incurable, and destructive autoimmune joint disease that develops slowly and causes persistent inflammation, swelling, and severe pain.

Climacteric

The major biological transition during middle adulthood when women shift from their reproductive to nonreproductive years.

Perimenopause

The transitional phase preceding menopause marked by fluctuating and declining estrogen and progesterone levels, irregular menstrual cycles, and vasomotor symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats.

Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT)

A treatment using low doses of estrogen (sometimes combined with progestin) to relieve menopausal symptoms; it reduces fractures and colorectal cancer risk but increases risks for heart attack, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer.

Practical Intelligence

A broad set of cognitive skills related to adapting to daily social and physical environments and successfully solving real-world, ill-structured problems.

Encapsulation

The cognitive process by which specialized, domain-specific knowledge and expertise become automated and implicit, allowing expert adults to compensate for normative declines in fluid intelligence.

Five Factor Trait Model

A personality taxonomy conceptualizing human personality across five fundamental dimensions: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Generativity

Erikson's seventh psychosocial stage characterizing middle adulthood, defined by productivity and a commitment to nurturing, guiding, and mentoring the next generation through parenting, teaching, and volunteering.

Stagnation

The negative outcome of Erikson's seventh psychosocial stage, characterized by self-absorption and an inability to contribute meaningfully to younger adults or one's community.

Ego-Resilience

A personality asset reflecting the adaptive capacity to cope effectively with stress, unexpected transitions, and adversity; it strongly predicts the attainment of generativity in midlife.

Midlife Correction

The process of reevaluating one's personal aspirations, life roles, and values in middle adulthood and making deliberate changes to align future goals with reality.

Kinkeeper

The family member—most commonly a mother or grandmother—who takes responsibility for maintaining communication among relatives and organizing family gatherings and celebrations.

Sandwich Generation

A cohort of middle-aged adults simultaneously confronted with the responsibilities of caring for their aging parents while providing support to their dependent children.

Boomerang Kids

Adult children who return to reside in their parents' household after a period of independent living; approximately $50\%$ of young adults in the U.S. do this at least once.

Fictive Grandparenting

A practice seen in cultures such as Native American communities where unrelated older adults step in to perform surrogate grandparenting roles for children lacking grandparents.

Cultural Conservator

A grandparenting style where grandchildren reside with their grandparents specifically to be taught tribal language, history, cultural traditions, and customs.