Experiencing the Lifespan: Chapter 1 - The People and the Field

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts, theoretical frameworks, developmental contexts, stages, and research methodologies from Chapter 1 of Janet Belsky's Experiencing the Lifespan.

Developmental scientists

Researchers and practitioners who study the human lifespan.

Child development

The scientific study of development from birth through adolescence.

Gerontology

The scientific study of the aging process and older adults.

Adult development

The scientific study of adult life.

Lifespan development

A multidisciplinary discipline that explores predictable milestones, individual variations, and the impact of life transitions across human growth.

Contexts of development

Fundamental markers—including cohort, social class, cultural background, and sex—that shape how we develop throughout the lifespan.

Normative transitions

Predictable life changes that occur during development.

Non-normative transitions

Unpredictable or atypical life changes that occur during development.

Cohort

The birth or age group with whom we travel through life.

Baby boom cohort

The cohort of people born from 1946 to 1964.

Maximum lifespan

The biological limit of human life, estimated to be about 105 years.

Tabula rasa

John Locke's conception of the newborn mind as a blank slate, upon which life experiences are written.

Emerging adulthood

A phase of life that begins after high school, lasts through the late twenties, and is devoted to constructing an adult life.

Twentieth-century life expectancy revolution

The dramatic increase in average life expectancy during the twentieth century, which shifted death from primarily infectious diseases to chronic diseases.

Socioeconomic status (SES)

A person's standing on the education and income rungs.

Developed-world nations

Nations defined by their affluence, or high median per-person incomes, with broad access to education and medical care.

Developing-world countries

Nations characterized by lower median per-person incomes that stand in sharp contrast to the most privileged, affluent nations.

Collectivist cultures

Societies that place a premium on social harmony.

Individualistic cultures

Societies that emphasize independence, competition, and personal success.

Theory

Any perspective explaining why people act the way they do, which allows behavioral prediction and suggests interventions to improve behavior.

Nature

Biological or genetic causes of development.

Nurture

Environmental causes of development.

Operant conditioning

According to traditional behaviorists (such as B. F. Skinner), the law of learning that determines any voluntary response through reinforcement.

Reinforcement

The behavioral term for a reward that strengthens or encourages a response.

Extinction

In behaviorism, the process where unreinforced responses drop out or diminish over time.

Cognitive behaviorism (social learning theory)

A theory formulated by Albert Bandura emphasizing that children learn by watching others and that thoughts about reinforcers determine behavior.

Modeling

A learning process that occurs by watching and imitating others.

Self-efficacy

An internal belief in one's competence that predicts whether a person initiates activities or persists in the face of failure.

Attachment theory

A theory formulated by John Bowlby centered on the crucial survival importance to our species of being closely connected with a caregiver during early childhood.

Evolutionary psychology

A theory or worldview highlighting the role that inborn, species-specific behaviors built into the human genetic code play in human development and life.

Behavioral genetics

The field devoted to scientifically determining the role that hereditary forces play in determining individual differences.

Evocative forces

Inborn genetic tendencies that evoke specific environmental responses and bidirectional relationships from other people.

Active forces

Genetic tendencies that lead people to actively select specific environments and experiences matching their nature.

Person–environment fit

The degree to which the life environment or nurture matches an individual's inborn genetic talents and nature.

Epigenetics

A research field exploring how early life events alter the outer cover of our DNA, producing lifelong changes in health and behavior.

Erikson's psychosocial theory

An age-linked theory positing that human development centers on becoming an independent self and relating to others across eight distinct life challenges.

Basic trust versus mistrust

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during infancy (birth to 1 year).

Autonomy versus shame and doubt

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during toddlerhood (1 to 2 years).

Initiative versus guilt

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during early childhood (3 to 6 years).

Industry versus inferiority

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during middle childhood (7 to 12 years).

Identity versus role confusion

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during adolescence and emerging adulthood (teens into twenties).

Intimacy versus isolation

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during early adulthood (twenties to early forties).

Generativity versus stagnation

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during middle adulthood (forties to sixties).

Integrity versus despair

Erik Erikson's primary psychosocial task during late adulthood (late sixties and beyond).

Piaget's cognitive developmental theory

The principle that from infancy to adolescence, children progress through four qualitatively different stages of intellectual growth.

Sensorimotor stage

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development (ages 0–2), during which babies manipulate objects to pin down physical reality, ending with language development.

Preoperations stage

Piaget's second stage of cognitive development (ages 2–7), in which children's perceptions are captured by immediate appearances and they believe inanimate objects are alive.

Concrete operations stage

Piaget's third stage of cognitive development (ages 8–12), where children reason conceptually about concrete objects but cannot yet think abstractly in a scientific way.

Formal operations stage

Piaget's fourth stage of cognitive development (ages 12+), characterized by hypothetical, scientific, flexible, and adult-level reasoning.

Developmental systems approach

An all-encompassing perspective on development that stresses embracing multiple theoretical frameworks and examining how various processes interact.

Correlational study

A research strategy that involves relating two or more variables to examine their association.

Representative sample

A research group that reflects the characteristics of the overall population being studied.

Naturalistic observation

A measurement strategy that involves directly watching and coding behaviors, either in real life or in the laboratory.

Self-report strategy

A measurement technique in which individuals report on their own feelings, interests, attitudes, and activities through questionnaires.

Observer evaluation

A measurement strategy in which a knowledgeable person (such as a parent, teacher, or trained observer) completes scales evaluating a person.

True experiment

A research design utilizing random assignment to different conditions that can rule out alternative explanations and determine causality.

Cross-sectional study

A developmental research method that compares different age groups at a single point in time to measure group differences.

Longitudinal study

A developmental research strategy that involves testing the same group repeatedly over years to trace developmental changes.

Quantitative research

The standard data-collection strategy in developmental science that involves testing groups using numerical scales and statistics.

Qualitative research

A developmental science data-collection strategy that involves personal interviews to gather descriptive, non-numerical insights.