AP PSYCH - Unit 3 Vocabulary

Developmental Psychology

Examines how individuals grow, change, and stay the same over the course of their lives

Continuous Development

Views growth as a gradual, incremental process without distinct stages.

Discontinuous Development

Proposes that individuals progress through discrete, qualitatively different stages.

Prenatal

The period of development that occurs before birth. Typically includes the nine months of pregnancy, beginning from fertilization and ending with childbirth.

Teratogens

Substances that can harm the developing fetus and lead to birth defects or developmental issues

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Group of conditions resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure, which can affect physical, behavioral, and cognitive development.

Rooting Reflex

Causes infants to turn their head toward a touch on the cheek and begin sucking. Helps with lactation.

Critical Period

Specific time windows during development when the brain is highly sensitive to certain experiences

Imprinting

Rapid, instinctive learning process that occurs during a critical period in some animal species.

Mere Exposure Effect

The psychological phenomenon where repeated exposure to a stimulus increases an individual's preference for it.

Puberty

The period of physical and hormonal changes during adolescence when an individual becomes capable of sexual reproduction.

Menarche

The first menstrual period in females, marking the onset of reproductive capability.

Spermarche

The first occurrence of sperm production in males, signifying the start of reproductive maturity.

Menopause

The natural cessation of menstruation in females, typically occurring in middle age, signaling the end of reproductive capability.

Gender Roles

Societal expectations about how males and females should think, act, and feel.

Gender Identity

A person's inner sense of being male, female, or another gender.

Stereotype Threat

The fear of confirming negative stereotypes about one's group, which can impair test performance.

Sensorimotor Stage

Occurs from birth to around 2 years old, when infants learn through their senses and motor actions.

Preoperational Stage

Occurs from about 2 to 7 years old, when children begin to represent the world with words, images and symbols.

Concrete Operational Stage

Occurs from around 7 to 11 years old, when children think logically about concrete events.

Formal Operational Stage

Emerges around age 12 and continues through adulthood, when abstract and hypothetical thinking develops.

Pre-Conventional Child

Moral development stage where children base moral decisions on avoiding punishment or seeking personal gain.

Conventional Child

Moral development stage where moral decisions are guided by social rules, expectations, and a desire to maintain social order.

Post-Conventional Child

Moral development stage where morality is guided by abstract principles and individual rights, often questioning societal norms.

Conservation

The understanding that quantity remains the same even when the shape or appearance of objects changes.

Reversibility

The ability to mentally reverse a sequence of events or logical operations.

Animism

A belief, typically in young children, that inanimate objects have feelings, thoughts, or life-like qualities.

Egocentrism

The inability of a young child to see a situation from another person's perspective, common in the preoperational stage.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible.

Zone of Proximal Development

The range of tasks a child can perform with the help of a more knowledgeable other, but cannot yet perform independently.

Phonemes

The smallest units of sound in a language that distinguish one word from another

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in a language, including roots, prefixes, and suffixes

Semantics

The aspect of language concerned with meaning, including how words, phrases, and sentences convey ideas and concepts.

One-Word Stage

A stage in language development, around 12-18 months, when children communicate using single words to represent entire thoughts or requests.

Telegraphic Speech

Early speech stage where children use short, simple sentences with essential content words, omitting smaller or less critical words.

Holophrases

Single words used by children to express entire ideas or sentences, relying on context and tone for meaning.

Overextension

A language error where a child applies a word too broadly to objects or concepts.

Underextension

A language error where a child applies a word too narrowly, using it only for specific items or contexts.

Overregularization

A grammatical error where children apply regular language rules to irregular words.

Ecological Systems Theory

Explores how an individual's social environment shapes their development through five interconnected systems.

Microsystem

Consists of groups that directly interact with the individual: family, friends, and teachers.

Mesosystem

Encompasses the relationships and interactions between the various groups in the microsystem: parent-teacher communication and peer group dynamics.

Exosystem

Includes indirect factors that still impact the individual's life: parent's workplace and local government policies.

Macrosystem

Represents the broader cultural context that affects the individual and those around them: societal values and economic conditions.

Chronosystem

Considers the individual's current life stage and how historical events shape their development: growing up during a recession and experiencing a major world event.

Authoritarian Parenting

Characterized by strict rules, limited warmth, and high expectations of obedience.

Authoritative Parenting

Balances clear boundaries with emotional responsiveness and encouragement of independence.

Permissive Parenting

Involves few rules, high warmth, and minimal expectations for behavior.

Uninvolved Parenting

Characterized by low responsiveness and low demands. Parents provide little support and may be neglectful of their child's needs.

Secure Attachment

Develops when caregivers consistently respond to a child's needs, fostering a sense of safety and trust.

Insecure Attachment

Occurs when caregivers are inconsistent, unresponsive, or frightening, leading to three subtypes.

Avoidant Attachment

Child appears indifferent to caregiver's presence or absence.

Anxious Attachment

Child becomes highly distressed when separated from caregiver and difficult to soothe.

Disorganized Attachment

Child displays contradictory behaviors, often due to a history of abuse or neglect.

Temperament

Innate personality traits that can influence how easily a child forms secure attachments.

Separation Anxiety

A normal developmental stage that peaks between 8-18 months as children fear being away from caregivers or around strangers.

Parallel Play

Playing alongside peers without interaction; common in toddlers but gradually shifts to cooperative play.

Pretend Play

Emerges in preschool years; allowing children to explore social roles and develop perspective-taking skills.

Adolescent Egocentrism

Manifests as the imaginary audience, a belief that one is constantly being observed a judged, and the personal fable, the belief in one's own uniqueness and invincibility.

Erikson's Stage Theory

Proposes that individuals navigate psychosocial conflicts at each stage of life.

Social Clock

The culturally preferred timing of major life events such as marriage, having children, and retirement.

Primary Aging

Universal, normal changes that occur through time.

Secondary Aging

Changes that are caused by disease and environment.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Events including abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction that can have lasting impacts on relationships.

Identity Achievement

Occurs when adolescents actively explore options and commit to a sense of self.

Identity Diffusion

Involves a lack of exploration and commitment, leading to a poorly defined sense of self.

Identity Foreclosure

Happens when adolescents prematurely commit to an identity without exploration, often based on parental expectations.

Identity Moratorium

A period of active exploration without commitment, allowing for experimentation with different roles and values.

Classical Conditioning

Involves learning to associate one stimulus with another stimulus, which then triggers a specific response.

Unconditioned Stimulus

A stimulus that will almost always cause an organism to respond in a specific way.

Unconditioned Response

A response that will almost always result from the presence of the unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus

An originally neutral stimulus that is paired up enough with the original unconditioned stimulus that it too will allow for the same response.

Conditioned Response

The response one has, after conditioning has taken place, to the conditioned stimulus alone.

Acquisition

The process of learning the association between stimuli.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after a period of time has passed without exposure to the conditioned stimulus.

Stimulus Discrimination

The ability to distinguish between similar stimuli and respond differently to each one.

Stimulus Generalization

Occurs when an organism responds to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus, even if they are not identical.

Higher-Order Conditioning

Involves using an established conditioned stimulus as an unconditioned stimulus to condition a new neural stimulus.

Forward Conditioning

When the conditioned stimulus is presented before the unconditioned stimulus.

Extinction

The gradual weakening and disappearance of the conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

Habituation

A decrease in an innate response to a frequently repeated stimulus. Results in a decrease in responsiveness.

Sensitization

The increased reaction to a stimulus after repeated exposure. Results in an increase in responsiveness.

Taste Aversion

A learned response that occurs when a person or animal associates a taste with a negative experience, such as eating spoiled food or becoming ill.

Sight Illness

A conditioned aversion or avoidance response related to visual stimuli associated with a negative experience.

Desensitization Theory

A conditioning technique designed to gradually reduce anxiety about something.

Operant Conditioning

Shapes behavior through consequences. It uses reinforcement to increase desired actions and punishment to decrease unwanted ones.

Positive Reinforcement

Involves adding a pleasant stimulus to increase the likelihood of a behavior.

Negative Reinforcement

Removes an unpleasant stimulus to increase the likelihood of a behavior.

Positive Punishment

Introduces an unpleasant stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behavior.

Negative Punishment

Removes a pleasant stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behavior.

Over-Justification Effect

Occurs when an external reward reduces a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task they previously enjoyed.

Reinforcement Discrimination

Occurs when an organism learns to respond only to specific stimuli.

Reinforcement Generalization

Happens when an organism responds to stimuli similar to the original reinforced stimulus.

Avoidance Training

When one continues a particular behavior after having been punished, but now do the poor behavior in a different way in order to not get caught again.

Shaping

Gradually molds behavior by rewarding successive approximations of the desired outcome

Instinctive Drift

Demonstrates that only behaviors within an animal's natural repertoire can be shaped through reinforcement.

Superstitious Behavior

Develops when unrelated behaviors are accidentally reinforced.

Learned Helplessness

Arises when an organism learns it has no control over aversive consequences in a situation.

Continuous Reinforcement

Schedules that provide reinforcement for every correct behavior.

Partial Reinforcement

Schedules that deliver reinforcement intermittently based on time or number of behaviors. Results in a slower acquisition of a response but much greater resistance to extinction