Basic Theoretical Issues and Perspectives in Human Development

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering theoretical issues, psychoanalytic stages, psychosocial crises, learning theories, cognitive development, and bioecological perspectives.

Theory

A set of logically related concepts or statements that seek to describe and explain development and to predict behavior that might occur under certain conditions.

Hypotheses

Explanations or predictions that can be tested by further research.

Mechanistic Model

A model viewing people as reactive, like machines that react automatically to physical forces or environmental inputs through biological parts.

Organismic Model

A model seeing people as active, growing organisms who initiate events and set their own development in motion through internal driving forces.

Quantitative Change

Continuous change in number or amount, such as height, weight, or vocabulary size.

Qualitative Change

Discontinuous change in kind, structure, or organization, marked by the emergence of new phenomena not easily predicted by past functioning.

Id

The province of the mind that operates under the pleasure principle and governs newborns; when gratification is delayed, they begin to see themselves as separate from the outside world.

Ego

Developing gradually during the first year or so of life, it operates under the reality principle and aims to find realistic ways to gratify the id that are acceptable to the superego.

Superego

Developing at about age $5$ or $6$, it involves the moral principle, including the conscience and socially approved values.

Fixation

An arrest in development that can show up in adult personality, caused by receiving too little or too much gratification in the first three psychosexual stages.

Oral Stage

Occurring from birth to $12-18$ months, where the erogenous zone is the mouth and activities center on sucking and feeding.

Anal Stage

Occurring from $12-18$ months to $3$ years, where gratification is derived from withholding and expelling feces; toilet training is a key activity.

Phallic Stage

Occurring from $3-6$ years, where the erogenous zone is the genitals and children experience the Oedipus or Electra complex.

Oedipus Complex

A stage where boys develop sexual attachment to their mothers and castration anxiety, eventually identifying with their father to resolve it.

Latency Stage

Occurring from age $6$ to puberty, a time of relative calm with no specific erogenous zone.

Genital Stage

Spanning from puberty through adulthood, where sexual impulses reemerge and are channeled into mature adult sexuality.

Syntonic

A harmonious trait that should dominate in Erikson's psychosocial stages for optimal development.

Dystonic

A disruptive trait that, while necessary in some degree, can lead to malignancy if it dominates a psychosocial stage.

Social Clock

The conventional, culturally preferred timing of important life events.

Basic Trust vs. Mistrust

Erikson's stage from birth to $12-18$ months where the baby develops a sense of whether the world is safe; the virtue is hope.

Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

Erikson's stage from $12-18$ months to $3$ years where the child balances independence and self-sufficiency; the virtue is will.

Initiative vs. Guilt

Erikson's stage from $3-6$ years where the child develops initiative trying new activities without being overwhelmed by guilt; the virtue is purpose.

Industry vs. Inferiority

Erikson's stage from $6$ years to puberty where the child must learn skills of the culture or feel incompetent; the virtue is skill.

Identity vs. Identity Confusion

Erikson's stage from puberty to young adulthood where the adolescent determines their own sense of self; the virtue is fidelity.

Intimacy vs. Isolation

Erikson's stage in young adulthood where the person seeks to make commitments; the virtue is love.

Generativity vs. Stagnation

Erikson's stage in middle adulthood focused on establishing and guiding the next generation; the virtue is care.

Integrity vs. Despair

Erikson's stage in late adulthood where the older adult achieves acceptance of their life and death; the virtue is wisdom.

Tabula Rasa

The belief that all individuals are born as a 'blank slate' and everything they become depends upon experience.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process described by Ivan Pavlov where a response to a stimulus is elicited after repeated association with a stimulus that normally elicits the response.

Operant Conditioning

A learning process described by B.F. Skinner where an individual learns from the consequences of operating on the environment through reinforcement or punishment.

Reinforcement

The process by which a behavior is strengthened, increasing the likelihood of repetition; it can be positive (adding stimulus) or negative (removing stimulus).

Punishment

The process by which a behavior is weakened, decreasing the likelihood of repetition; it can be positive (adding undesirable stimulus) or negative (removing desirable stimulus).

Reciprocal Determinism

Albert Bandura's concept that the person acts on the world as the world acts on the person in a bidirectional way.

Self-efficacy

Confidence in one’s own abilities.

Schemes

Complex cognitive structures that can be motor or mental in nature, used to organize information about the world.

Assimilation

Taking in new information and incorporating it into existing cognitive structures.

Accommodation

Adjusting one’s cognitive structures to fit new information.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's stage from birth to $2$ years where infants organize activities in relation to the environment through sensory and motor activity.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget's stage from $2-7$ years where children use symbols to represent people and events, though thinking is not yet logical.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's stage from $7-11$ years where children can solve problems logically if focused on the here and now, but cannot think abstractly.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's stage from $11$ years through adulthood where the person can think abstractly and deal with hypothetical situations.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The gap between what a child can do alone and what they can accomplish with assistance.

Scaffolding

Supportive assistance given to a child for a task, which should be aimed at the ZPD.

Microsystem

The innermost level of Bronfenbrenner's theory involving face-to-face interactions with people the child directly interacts with, such as home or school.

Mesosystem

The interaction between two different microsystems, such as interactions between home and school.

Exosystem

Interactions between a microsystem and an outside system or institution that the child does not interact with directly but is still affected by.

Macrosystem

Overarching cultural patterns, dominant beliefs, ideologies, and economic or political systems.

Chronosystem

The dimension of time as it relates to a person's development.

Theory of Natural Selection

Darwin's principle involving the differential survival and reproduction of different variants of members of a species based on adaptive traits.

Ethology

The study of the adaptive behaviors of animal species in natural contexts.