Developmental Psychology: Language, Cognition, Intelligence, Social & Emotional Development

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering language development, conceptual categorization, theories of intelligence, social development paradigms, and emotional maturation from Lessons 8 through 14.

Language

A structured, rule-based system of communication using symbols to communicate meaning.

Syntax

A system of rules specifying how words are arranged into sentences in a way that can be understood by others speaking the same language.

Receptive vocabulary

The words an individual would understand if encountered in speech, sign, or writing.

Productive vocabulary

The words an individual can spontaneously produce and use themselves.

Generativity

The capacity for language to generate an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas.

Universal grammar

A set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all human languages.

Infant-directed speech (IDS)

The distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children.

Phonemes

The smallest units of speech perceived by speakers of a given language.

Categorical perception

The perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories.

Voice onset time (VOT)

The length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating.

Perceptual narrowing

The developmental process wherein individuals learn important sound categories in their language, lump sounds together within a category, and lose the ability to detect subtler distinctions.

Phonological development

The acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language.

Prosody

The characteristic rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns, etc., with which a language is spoken.

Word segmentation

The process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech.

Distributional properties

The phenomenon that, in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than are others.

Babbling

The repetitive production of speech or signs early in language development, characterized by consonant-vowel sequences.

Holophrastic period

The stage of language acquisition where children use single words to communicate whole ideas.

Overextension

A common language error where a child uses a newly learned word more generally than is appropriate.

Underextension

A common language error where a child uses a newly learned word less generally than is appropriate.

Fast mapping

Rapidly learning a new word from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and an unfamiliar word.

Syntactic bootstrapping

Using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to deduce the meaning of novel words.

Cross-situational word learning

Using repeated co-occurrences of words and referents across multiple situations to map new words to their meanings.

Mutual exclusivity

A word learning bias where a child assumes that an entity can have only one name.

Whole-object assumption

The expectation that a novel word refers to a complete object rather than to a part, property, or other aspect.

Telegraphic speech

Early sentences, often consisting of only two words, that feature only the core elements of the intended communication while omitting nonessential elements.

Overregularization

The application of newly learned grammatical rules or modifiers to irregular words or circumstances where they do not properly apply.

Pragmatics

The study of how language is used in context, including social rules and conversational conventions beyond literal word meanings.

Egocentric conversations

Conversations among preschoolers in which conversational turns are unrelated to what the conversational partner said.

Turn-taking

Alternating speaking roles so that each person in a conversation has an opportunity to contribute.

Topic initiation & maintenance

The conversational skill of starting a conversational topic and keeping the ongoing discussion on track.

Repair strategies

Conversational behaviors used to fix misunderstandings or clarify speech that was unclear.

Affirmations

Short verbal or nonverbal cues (such as nodding, smiling, or saying "mhmm") used to demonstrate attention and understanding during conversation.

Alignment

The tendency of individuals to adjust their behaviour, speech, or word choice to match the partner or group they are interacting with.

Concepts

Ideas or understandings that can be used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that share similarities.

Category hierarchy

Layers or levels that divide general sets into subsets and progressively smaller subsets.

Perceptual categorization

The grouping together of objects based on perceptual similarities such as physical appearance.

Characteristic features

Common or stereotypical traits of members of a category that are not strictly necessary for category membership.

Defining features

Traits that define membership in a category, without which an entity cannot be considered part of that category.

Naive psychology

A baseline, commonsense understanding of how humans and other living beings behave in the world, organized around intentions, desires, and beliefs.

Agency

The ability to monitor and act on one’s environment in accordance with one’s will or intentions.

Theory of mind

An organized understanding of how mental processes—including intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions, and emotions—influence behaviour.

Theory of mind module

A hypothesized cognitive system in the brain devoted specifically to understanding mental states in others.

One-to-one correspondence

A counting principle requiring that each object in a set must be labelled by a single, unique number word.

Stable order

A counting principle stating that numbers must always be recited in the same consistent sequence.

Cardinality

A counting principle stating that the total number of objects in a set corresponds to the final number word stated.

Order irrelevance

A counting principle stating that objects in a set can be counted in any order (e.g., left to right, right to left) and the total remains the same.

Abstraction (counting principle)

A counting principle stating that any set of discrete objects or events can be counted.

General intelligence ($g$)

A single broad mental capacity reflecting the generalized ability to think and learn in every context.

Crystallized intelligence

Mental ability involving working with prior knowledge and associations with known concepts; it is experience-dependent, relies on long-term memory and verbal ability, and increases across the lifespan.

Fluid intelligence

The ability to think on the spot to solve novel problems and content without relying on prior experience; relies on working memory, peaks in early adulthood, and decreases thereafter.

Carroll’s Three-Stratum Theory

A hierarchical model of intelligence with general intelligence ($g$) at the top, eight correlated domains in the middle, and numerous specific cognitive processes at the bottom.

Emotional intelligence

The ability to perceive, express, understand, reason with, and regulate emotions in oneself and others.

Passive effects (gene-environment)

Gene-environment interactions arising because biological parents and children share genotypes, causing the home environment to naturally reflect the parents' genotypes.

Evocative effects (gene-environment)

Gene-environment interactions in which a child's genotype or phenotype influences the behaviours that the child elicits from those around them.

Active effects (gene-environment)

Gene-environment interactions in which a child's genotype influences the specific environments they actively choose to seek out and engage with.

Id

In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious personality structure driven by basic pleasure-seeking drives.

Ego

In psychoanalytic theory, the conscious, rational, problem-solving component of personality.

Superego

In psychoanalytic theory, the personality component representing internalized moral standards.

Erogenous zones

In Freud's theory, erotically sensitive areas of the body from which children seek pleasure as they progress through developmental stages.

Classical conditioning

A form of learning involving the formation of an association between two previously unrelated stimuli.

Stimulus generalization

The process by which a conditioned response extends to other stimuli that are similar to the original conditioned stimulus.

Other-oriented induction

A parenting and disciplinary practice of explicitly highlighting how a child's behaviour affects the feelings of others.

Vicarious reinforcement

Learning by observing another person experience rewards or punishments for their actions, which subsequently alters the observer's own behavior.

Hostile attribution bias (HAB)

The tendency to assume that people's ambiguous actions are rooted in hostile intentions.

Entity theory of intelligence

The belief that intelligence is an innate, fixed, and unchangeable personal trait.

Incremental theory of intelligence

The belief that intelligence grows and develops through practice, effort, and experience.

Bioecological model

Bronfenbrenner's framework describing human development as embedded in a series of nested environmental contexts: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

Discrete emotion theory

The theory proposing that basic emotions and their facial expressions are innate products of evolution, each with a distinct psychobiological basis.

Self-conscious emotions

Emotions related to one’s sensitivity to the perceptions and reactions of others as well as one’s perceptions of oneself, such as guilt and shame.

Guilt

A self-conscious emotion focused specifically on one's actions and their consequences for others, typically motivating amends and remediation.

Shame

A self-conscious emotion focused broadly on negative evaluations of one's overall self-worth and inherent value, typically associated with social avoidance and withdrawal.

Social referencing

The practice of using the facial expressions and vocal cues of others to guide one's response to novel, ambiguous, or potentially threatening situations.

Emotion regulation

A set of conscious and unconscious processes used to monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions.

Co-regulation

The process of emotion regulation facilitated through dynamic, supportive interactions with a caregiver.

Self-soothing behaviour

Repetitive physical actions (such as sucking) that regulate emotional arousal by providing a mildly positive tactile sensation.

Self-distraction

The regulatory strategy of looking away from upsetting stimuli to reduce and modulate emotional arousal.

Delay of gratification

The capacity and choice to resist the temptation of an immediate reward in order to obtain a larger or more desirable delayed reward.