AP Psychology Unit 3-Vocab

favorite the topic you wanna study (units are apparently different now since the structure changed-- think this is unit 9?)

3.1

Developmental Psychology

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Stability

traits and behaviors that are consistent over time (ex: temperament, characteristic mood, activity level)

Change

traits and behaviors that evolve as people grow (ex: cognitive abilities improves thru education and experience)

Nature

innate biological factors that influence development and personality

Nurture

external and environmental factors that influence development and personality

Continuous Stages of Development

development occurs in a gradual and cumulative process

Discontinuous Stages of Development

development occurs in distinct stages

Cross-Sectional Research

research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time

Longitudinal Research

research that follows and retests the same people over time to observe changes and developments.

3.2

Teratogens

agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm

Maternal Illnesses

diseases that can affect the health of the mother and fetus during pregnancy, potentially leading to complications (ie. rubella, HIV)

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

physical and cognitive abnormalities/impairments in children caused by a pregnant women’s heavy drinking

Genetic Mutations

changes in DNA sequences that can lead to various genetic disorders or traits

Rooting

A reflexive action in infants that causes them to turn their head and open their mouth in response to a touch on the cheek, facilitating breastfeeding

Visual Cliff

an experimental tool used to assess depth perception in infants by observing their willingness to cross a perceived drop-off

Critical Periods

specific windows of time during development when certain skills or abilities are most easily learned or acquired

Imprinting

a rapid learning process occurring during a specific time frame, where young animals form attachments to their caregivers or environment

Habituation

a psychological phenomenon where an organism reduces its response to a stimulus after repeated exposure, allowing it to focus on more relevant stimuli

Maturation

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

Adolescence

the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extended from puberty to independence

Puberty

the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing

Primary Sex Characteristics

the body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible

Secondary Sex Characteristics

nonproductive sexual traits (female: breasts, hips; male: voice quality, body hair)

Menarche

the first menstrual period

Spermarche

the first ejaculation

Menopause

the time of natural cessation of menstruation; or also the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines

3.3

Sex

the biologically influenced characteristics by which people define male and female

Gender

the socially characteristics by which people define boy, girl, man, and women

Sexual Orientation

an enduring attraction towards members of one’s own sex (homosexual orientation), the other sex ( heterosexual orientation), or both sexes (bisexual orientation)

Role

a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the position ought to behave

Gender Role

a set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and traits for males or for females

Gender Identity

our sense of being male, female, or some combination of the two

Social Learning Theory

the theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

Gender Typing

the acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role

Androgyny

displaying both traditional masculine and feminine psychological characteristics

Social Script

a culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations

3.4

Cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development; proposed the theory of cognitive development (explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world

Schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilation

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodation

adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

Sensorimotor Stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (birth to 2 yrs old) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Object Permanence

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Preoperational Stage

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from 2-7 yrs old) during which a child learns to use language but does not comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

Conservation

the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

Reversibility

a mental operations that reverses a sequence of events or restores a changed state of affairs to the original condition

Egocentrism

in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view

Theory of Mind

people’s ideas about their own and others; mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict

Concrete Operational Stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from 7-11 yrs old) during which children gain the mental operations that enable to think logically about concrete events

Formal Operational Stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from 12 yrs old) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

Lev Vygotsky

a Russian psychologist who developed the Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development; emphasized how social interactions influence cognitive development

Scaffold

in Vygotsky’s theory, a framework that offers children temporary support as the develop higher levels of thinking

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

the range of abilities an individual can perform with the guidance of an expert, but cannot yet perform on their own

Crystallized Intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Dementia

a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning

3.5

Language

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Phonemes

the smallest distinctive sound unit

Morphemes

the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Cooing

a stage of early language development that typically occurs between 6 to 8 weeks of age, characterized by the production of soft vowel-like sounds (coo or goo)

Babbling

beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

One-Word Stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1-2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Two-Word Stage

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements

Telegraphic Speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram, using mostly nouns and verbs

Overgeneralization

in language, the tendency when children apply grammar rules too broadly; resulting in errors or inconsistencies in their speech

Semantics

the language’s set of rules for derived meaning from sounds

Grammar

a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others

Syntax

a language’s set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Universal Grammar (UG)

a linguistic concept that suggest humans are born with an innate ability to acquire language based on a set of universal grammatical rules

Aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by dmg by left hemisphere to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding)

Broca’s Area

located in the left hemisphere in the frontal lobe; responsible for speech production and language comprehension

Wernicke’s Area

located in the back of the temporal lobe; involved in understanding written and spoken language

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Linguistic Relativity

the proposal that the particular language we speak influences the way we think about reality

3.6 (there’s a lot)

Ecological Systems Theory

a theory that holds that we encounter different environments throughout our lifespan that may influence our behavior in varying degrees (micro system, meso system, ecosystem, macro system, chronosystem)

Microsystem

The system closest to the person and the one in which they have direct contact (family, siblings, peers, school, work)

Mesosystem

the connections and interactions between the various microsystems in an individual’s life (relationships btwn family, teachers, peers, social groups)

Exosystem

the broader social systems that indirectly influence an individual’s development by affecting their immediate environment (mass media, school policy, family friends, parents’ workplace)

Macrosystem

the values, traditions, and sociocultural characteristics of the broad cultural components that influence a developing child’s Identity, values, and perceptions

Chronosystem

events and transitions over time that affect individual development; includes experiences that occur over the course of life, various life transitions that people experience, historical events, and societal changes

Attachment

an emotional tie w/ another person

Authoritarian Parenting

a parenting style is characterized by strict rules, high demands and little room for flexibility

Authoritative Parenting

a parenting style in which parents are nurturing, responsive, and supportive, yet set firm limits for their children

Permissive Parenting

a parenting style in which parents are nurturing and warm and reluctant to impose limits on children

Neglectful Parenting

a parenting style where parents are unresponsive, unavailable and rejecting

Secure Parenting

a parenting style when their caregivers consistently fulfill a baby’s physical and emotional needs

Insecure Attachment

a type of emotional bond where children do not trust their caregivers consistently and may show various degrees of resistance or avoidance towards them

Avoidant Attachment

an insecure attachment style where individuals tend to avoid closeness or emotional connections with others

Anxious Attachment

anxiety and uncertainty about the caregiver’s availability

Disorganized Attachment

a form of insecure attachment in which infants show no coherent or consistent behavior during separation from and reunion with their parents

Strange Situation

an experiment Ainsworth designed to test children’s separation anxiety when isolated from their parents and their stranger anxiety when introduced to someone new

Separation Anxiety

heightened anxiety or fear when away from a caregiver or in the presence of a stranger

Stranger Anxiety

the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age

Basic Trust

a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy

Temperament

a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity