human development exam 2 wenting sun

Frontal lobe

Area of the brain that undergoes rapid growth in early childhood, aiding in planning, maintaining attention, and controlling impulses.

Gross motor skills & fine motor skills

Gross motor skills involve large muscle groups (running, jumping); fine motor skills involve precise hand-eye coordination (drawing, buttoning).

Preoperational stage

Piaget's second stage (ages 2–7) where children represent the world with words, images, and drawings, but lack operations.

Symbolic function

The first substage of preoperational thought (ages 2–4) where the child gains the ability to mentally represent an absent object.

Egocentrism

The inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective (a hallmark of preoperational thought).

Centration

Focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.

Conservation

The awareness that altering an object's or substance's appearance does not change its basic properties.

Scaffolding

Vygotsky's term for changing the level of support provided over the course of a teaching session, fitting the child's current performance level.

Private speech

Executive attention

Action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Theory of mind

Awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others.

Initiative vs. guilt

Erikson's third psychosocial stage, where children face a world made wider and wider by new skills and must take responsibility for their bodies, behavior, and toys.

Conscience

An internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves integrating moral values and emotional responses.

Self-understanding

The child's cognitive representation of self, substance, and content of the child's self-conceptions.

Emotion regulation

The capacity to manage emotional states, physiological responses, and associated behaviors in adaptive ways.

Emotion-coaching parenting vs. Emotion-dismissing parenting

Coaching involves monitoring and viewing negative emotions as a coaching opportunity; dismissing involves denying, ignoring, or changing negative emotions.

Self-control

The ability to override or change one's inner responses, as well as to interrupt undesired behavioral tendencies.

Delayed gratification

Resisting an immediate reward for a more valuable reward later (closely tied to self-control).

Four parenting styles

Authoritative (warm + demanding), Authoritarian (low warmth + high demanding), Indulgent/Permissive (high warmth + low demanding), and Neglectful (low warmth + low demanding).

Sensorimotor play

Behavior by infants derived from Piaget's sensorimotor stage, engaging in exploratory schemes with objects.

Myelination

The process where nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of myelin cells, increasing the speed and efficiency of information processing.

Seriation

The ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).

Transitivity

The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions (e.g., if A > B and B > C, then A > C).

Classification

The ability to classify or divide things into sets or subsets and to consider their interrelationships.

Short-term memory, long-term memory, and working memory

Short-term holds info for ~30 seconds; long-term is a relatively permanent and unlimited store; working memory is a mental "workbench" for manipulating and assembling information.

Intelligence

Problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to the experiences of everyday life.

Self-understanding (self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy)

Self-concept refers to domain-specific evaluations; self-esteem is global evaluations of the self (self-worth); self-efficacy is the belief that one can master a situation and produce favorable outcomes.

Social comparison

Evaluating one's own thoughts, feelings, abilities, and actions in relation to others.

Perspective taking

The social cognitive process involved in assuming the perspective of others and understanding their thoughts and feelings.

Prosocial behavior & antisocial behavior

Prosocial involves altruistic, helpful actions; antisocial involves disruptive, hostile, or aggressive behaviors that violate social norms.

Fixed mindset vs. Growth mindset

Fixed mindset believes qualities are carved in stone; growth mindset believes qualities can change and improve through effort.

Parent-child relationships

Characterized by less physical monitoring, parents acting more as managers/guides, and coregulation of behavior.

Attachment

Secure or insecure bonds persisting into middle childhood, providing an internal working model for relationships.

Peer status

Classification of peer acceptance (Popular, Average, Neglected, Rejected, Controversial).

Friendships

Characterized by similarity, mutual companionship, intimacy, and social support.

Puberty

A brain-neuroendocrine process occurring primarily in early adolescence that provides rapid physical maturation involving hormonal and bodily changes.

Early maturation and late maturation

Corpus callosum

The location where nerve fibers connect the brain's left and right hemispheres, thickening in adolescence and improving information processing.

Formal operational stage

Piaget's fourth stage (ages 11+), characterized by abstract, systematic, and logical thinking.

Abstract thinking

Thinking beyond concrete realities to hypothetical propositions and possibilities.

Idealism

Thinking about ideal characteristics for themselves and the world, often comparing current imperfect realities to utopian visions.

Hypothetical-deductive reasoning

Piaget's formal operational concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best guesses, about ways to solve problems.

Adolescent egocentrism

The heightened self-consciousness of adolescents, characterized by the belief that others are as interested in them as they are themselves.

Differences between personal fable, false lead, new look

Personal fable involves a sense of uniqueness and invincibility; (Note: false lead / new look refer to specific textbook distinctions on adolescent self-focus and cognitive biases—keep your lecture notes handy for these specifics!).

Sleep pattern & perfect storm

Biological shift toward delayed sleep phase preference colliding with early school start times, creating chronic sleep deprivation.

Identity vs. identity confusion

Erikson's fifth stage, where adolescents face the task of figuring out who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life.

Four identity statuses

"MAMA" cycles

Moratorium-Achievement-Moratorium-Achievement cycles representing identity shifting and maintenance throughout adulthood.

Ethnic identity

An enduring, basic aspect of the self that includes a sense of membership in an ethnic group and the attitudes and feelings associated with that membership.

Parent-adolescent conflict

Increases in early adolescence, usually centering on everyday mundane details (curfews, room cleaning, dress) rather than major values.

Adolescent autonomy

Parent-adolescent attachment

Cliques vs. Crowds

Cliques are small groups (2–12 individuals) based on friendship/interaction; crowds are larger, reputation-based groups (jocks, nerds) where individuals may not know everyone.

Peer stigmatization

Negative labeling or social exclusion by peers, impacting self-esteem and social standing.

Rites of passage

Ceremonies or rituals that mark an individual's transition from one status to another (often childhood to adulthood).