psy chap 1

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards generated from chapters 1 through 5 of child development lectures, covering major history, lifespan perspectives, psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, and research methodology terms.

Developmental Psychology

The scientific study of how people change over time, including physical growth, cognition, emotional control, and moral foundations, as well as what remains relatively constant across the lifespan.

Lifespan Perspective (Baltes)

A theoretical view established by Paul Baltes asserting that development is a lifelong, multi-directional, and multi-dimensional process.

Multi-directional Development

The concept that human development involves both gains and losses across various capacities throughout life rather than simple linear growth.

Multi-dimensional Development

The principle that development occurs across multiple distinct domains, primarily physical, cognitive, and psychosocial.

Biosocial / Physical Development

The domain of development encompassing physical growth, biological processes, motor skills, genetics, and health factors such as diet.

Cognitive Development

The domain of development involving mental processes used to obtain and apply knowledge, including perception, judgment, memory, language, and education.

Psychosocial Development

The domain of development focusing on emotional responses, temperament, self-control, and the skills needed to interact within social structures.

Normative Life Influences

Developmental changes experienced in roughly the same way at roughly the same time by almost all individuals, such as learning to talk or hitting puberty.

Non-normative Life Influences

Individualized developmental influences and experiences that do not occur in a predictable or universal pattern, such as specific illnesses or unique cultural experiences.

Culture

The totality of shared language, knowledge, material objects, behaviors, social norms, and ideas of success learned within a specific society.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture is superior to others, which can lead to flawed and biased outcomes in scientific research.

Cultural Relativity

The scientific perspective that a culture and its practices are best understood from the point of view of that specific culture rather than an outside standard.

Emerging Adulthood

A newly recognized stage of development spanning from age $18$ to roughly the mid-twenties, where individuals are no longer children but are not yet expected to function at a fully independent adult level.

Quantitative Change

Changes in amount or degree that are continuous and easily measured, such as increases in height or weight.

Qualitative Change

Changes in underlying nature, structure, or organization that can be difficult to explicitly define or measure, such as emotional regulation.

Age of Reason

Historically recognized in Western society around age $7$, marking the point when children were considered capable of rational thought and treated as small adults responsible for their actions.

Tabula Rasa

John Locke's concept that a child is born as a blank slate, with personality and behavior shaped entirely by environmental experiences and social feedback.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

An $18\text{th}$-century philosopher who argued that children are inherently good and biologically driven, proposing that allowing children to express natural impulses leads to healthy adult development.

G. Stanley Hall

A pioneer in psychology who established child development as a formal, rigorous academic discipline in higher education.

Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon

Researchers who developed the first formal intelligence test in $1904$ to measure cognitive capacities in children.

Maturational Theory (Gesell)

Arnold Gesell's biological theory asserting that development is sequentially activated by genes and unfolds in fixed sequences regardless of culture.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Sigmund Freud's overarching theoretical framework proposing that personality and behavior are driven by dynamic interactions and conflicts between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Preconscious Mind

In Freudian theory, the area of the mind serving as a mental storage pocket holding knowledge and experiences that can be easily retrieved into conscious awareness.

Id

The primitive, instinctive component of personality residing entirely within the unconscious mind that operates on basic drives and desires.

Ego

The rational, decision-making structure of personality residing across conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels that balances internal id drives with external reality.

Superego

The moral branch of personality representing an individual's conscience and internalized cultural standards of right and wrong.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Freud's developmental model asserting that children progress through five stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) centered on conflicts related to specific erogenous zones.

Fixation / Arrested Development

In psychoanalytic theory, the state of remaining stuck at a particular developmental stage due to unresolved unconscious conflict between innate drives and societal limits.

Psychosocial Stages of Development

Erik Erikson's lifespan framework consisting of eight stages, each defined by a specific social crisis that shapes self-identity and conscious development.

Behaviorism

A scientific perspective rejecting psychoanalytic internal states, arguing that psychology must strictly focus on observable, measurable behavior and external environmental stimuli.

Conditioning

The learning process through which an association or pairing is formed between a stimulus and a response.

Classical Conditioning

An unconscious form of learning, discovered by Ivan Pavlov, where an automatic biological response becomes paired with a previously neutral stimulus.

John B. Watson

A prominent behaviorist who demonstrated that human emotional responses can be classically conditioned in children through observable behavioral experiments.

Operant Conditioning

A conscious form of learning, championed by B.F. Skinner, in which voluntary behaviors are modified based on the positive or negative consequences that follow them.

Reinforcement

In operant conditioning, any consequence following a behavior that increases the probability of that behavior occurring again.

Positive Reinforcement

Increasing the frequency of a behavior by applying or adding a desirable stimulus following the action.

Negative Reinforcement

Increasing the frequency of a behavior by removing or subtracting an unpleasant stimulus following the action.

Punishment

In operant conditioning, any consequence following a behavior that decreases the probability of that behavior occurring again.

Positive Punishment

Decreasing the frequency of a behavior by applying or adding an unpleasant stimulus following the action.

Negative Punishment

Decreasing the frequency of a behavior by removing or subtracting a pleasant stimulus following the action.

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure of building complex actions by reinforcing successive approximations toward a target behavior step by step.

Social Cognitive Theory

Albert Bandura's observational learning theory asserting that children are active learners who observe, imitate, and creatively expand upon behaviors modeled by adults.

Bobo Doll Experiments

A landmark study by Albert Bandura proving that children exposed to aggressive adult models imitate aggression and invent novel aggressive behaviors.

Schema

Jean Piaget's concept of a foundational cognitive mental structure or pattern of action used to acquire, categorize, and store information.

Assimilation

In Piagetian theory, the cognitive process of integrating new information into pre-existing schema.

Accommodation

In Piagetian theory, the cognitive process of altering existing schema or creating new ones when encountered information does not fit existing frameworks.

Equilibration

The state of cognitive balance achieved when assimilation and accommodation are combined to create a comprehensive understanding of the world.

Object Permanence

The cognitive realization achieved near the end of Piaget's sensorimotor stage that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.

Theory of Mind

The cognitive capability overcome during early childhood enabling an individual to understand that other people possess thoughts, perspectives, and mental states different from their own.

Conservation

The cognitive milestone achieved during Piaget's concrete operational stage recognizing that basic physical properties (such as mass or volume) remain unchanged despite changes in outward appearance.

Information Processing Theory (IPT)

A cognitive approach that models human mental development on computer operation, comparing mental processes to software and central nervous system structures to hardware.

Developmental Neuroscience

A modern multidisciplinary field studying the precise links between biological brain development, neural activity, and observable cognitive or social behavior using advanced imaging technologies.

Ethology

The study of evolutionary behaviors and species-specific traits that contribute directly to survival within an environmental context.

Ecological Systems Theory

Urie Bronfenbrenner's model positing that development is shaped by reciprocal interactions within nested environmental systems ranging from immediate microsystems to historical chronosystems.

Microsystem

In Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, the innermost environment with which a child has direct, face-to-face contact, including family, peers, and school.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Lev Vygotsky's concept defining the range of tasks a learner cannot yet perform independently, but can master with guidance and scaffolding from a more knowledgeable peer or adult.

Scaffolding

Temporary support given by a teacher or peer tailored to a child's current ability level within their Zone of Proximal Development.

Cohort Effect

The developmental impact observed when comparing groups of individuals born in different historical time periods due to shared cultural and historical events.

Eclectic Approach

An integrative research strategy in modern psychology that selects and applies elements from multiple theoretical perspectives rather than adhering strictly to one.

Nature Perspective

The viewpoint that human traits, abilities, and development are primarily determined by genetics and inherited biological factors.

Nurture Perspective

The viewpoint that human traits and development are primarily shaped by environmental contexts, external experiences, and learning.

Plasticity

The capacity of the brain and human characteristics to adapt, modify structure, and change in response to environmental conditions and experience.

Resiliency

The capacity of an individual to adapt effectively, rebound quickly from adversity or failure, and manage environmental stress.

Scientific Method

A systematic five-step research tool consisting of posing a question, forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, analyzing results, and reporting findings truthfully.

Replication

The repetition of a scientific study using similar methods to verify whether the original findings hold true across different trials and populations.

Correlation Coefficient

A statistical index ranging from $-1.0$ to $+1.0$ that quantifies the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables.

Positive Correlation

A statistical relationship in which two variables move in the same direction simultaneously; as one variable increases, the other increases.

Negative Correlation

A statistical relationship in which two variables move in opposite directions; as one variable increases, the other decreases.

Independent Variable

The factor in an experimental study that is deliberately manipulated or controlled by the researcher to observe its effect.

Dependent Variable

The outcome factor measured in an experiment that is hypothesized to change in response to the manipulation of the independent variable.

Experimental Group

The group of participants in an experiment who receive the specific treatment or manipulation being tested.

Control Group

The baseline comparison group in an experiment that does not receive the experimental treatment or manipulation.

Cross-Sectional Research

A study design comparing different age groups of participants at one single point in time to observe age-related differences.

Longitudinal Research

A study design that repeatedly tracks and tests the same cohort of participants over an extended timeframe.

Falsifiability

The fundamental scientific requirement that a hypothesis must be formulated in a way that allows it to be proven false or unsupported by empirical evidence.