PSYC 2103: Human Growth and Development - Early and Middle Childhood

Vocabulary flashcards generated from PSYC 2103 lecture slides covering physical, cognitive, socioemotional, and contextual development in early and middle childhood.

Early Childhood

The first stage of childhood, spanning ages 3 to 6, characterized as a unique period of exploration.

Initiative

In Erikson's psychosocial theory, the exuberant testing of skills during early childhood.

Guilt

In Erikson's psychosocial theory, the fear of trying new things and feeling that an inability to initiate actions means something is wrong.

Cephalocaudal Principle

The directional pattern of physical growth in which limbs lengthen, bodies thin out, and body proportions change, leaving young children with larger heads and longer bodies.

Gross Motor Skills

Physical abilities involving large muscle movements.

Fine Motor Skills

Physical abilities involving small, coordinated movements, such as detailed drawing.

Preoperational Stage

The second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development (ages 2 to 6), during which children begin to represent the world symbolically and perceptions are captured by immediate appearance.

Conservation Tasks

Piagetian problems evaluating a child's understanding that the amount of a substance remains identical despite changes in its shape or visual appearance.

Reversibility

The understanding that a process or operation can be repeated or reversed in the opposite direction.

Centering

The preoperational tendency to fixate on a single visually striking feature of an object while failing to consider multiple dimensions.

Class Inclusion

The cognitive realization that a general category can encompass several subordinate elements, an ability impaired by centering in preoperational children.

Identity Constancy

The understanding that a person's core self remains the same despite superficial changes in outward appearance, such as hair length or clothing.

Animism

The preoperational belief that inanimate objects are alive and possess lifelike qualities.

Artificialism

The preoperational belief that human beings have created and hold power over natural phenomena in nature.

Egocentrism

The preoperational inability or difficulty in understanding that other people have different points of view from one's own.

Sociocultural Perspective

Vygotsky's view of psychology emphasizing that learning is a social process facilitated through social interaction, rather than a strictly maturational process.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The gap between a child's current independent knowledge and potential knowledge, representing skills too difficult to master alone but achievable with guidance from a more advanced individual.

Scaffolding

The process where a more knowledgeable individual provides structured support and guidance to help a learner progress within their Zone of Proximal Development.

Inner Speech

Self-directed speech (also called private speech or self-talk) that children use to internalize language, guide thought processes, and assist in self-regulation.

Phoneme

Word sounds that convey meaning in language.

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in a language.

Overregularization

A syntax error in language development where regular grammatical rules for past tense or plurals are incorrectly applied to irregular words.

Overextension

A language error where verbal labels are applied too broadly to inappropriate objects or concepts.

Autobiographical Memories

Enduring memories of one's own past personal experiences that contribute to an enduring sense of self, constructed through past-talk conversations with caregivers.

Theory of Mind (ToM)

The cognitive understanding that other people have perspectives, beliefs, and feelings different from one's own, typically evaluated using false-belief tasks around age 4.

False-Belief Tasks

Experimental procedures used to test whether a child understands that another person can hold a belief about the world that is incorrect.

Rough-and-Tumble Play

Physical, active, and competitive play fighting or wrestling, which is more common among males.

Parallel Play

Play behavior emerging around age 2 where children play side by side with similar toys without interacting or collaborating.

Collaborative Pretend Play

Pretend play emerging around age 4 where children actively cooperate to build imaginary plots and roles together.

Gender Schema Theory

A cognitive model proposing that once children comprehend their gender around age 2.5, they selectively attend to and model activities associated with their own sex.

Middle Childhood

The second phase of childhood, spanning ages 7 to 12, characterized by the emergence of concrete operational thinking and early abstract thought.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third stage of cognitive development (ages 7 to 11) in which children can think logically about concrete events and master arithmetical operations and conservation.

Industry vs. Inferiority

Erikson's fourth psychosocial stage in middle childhood, in which children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks or risk feeling inferior.

Helicopter Parenting

A hyper-parenting style defined by a parent's constant involvement, problem-solving on behalf of the child, and protection from all perceived dangers.

Little Emperor Parenting

A hyper-parenting style in which the household structures itself around the child's desires and strives to grant all material wishes.

Tiger Mom Parenting

A hyper-parenting style characterized by extremely high expectations, strict discipline, and an unwillingness to accept anything less than exceptional performance.

Concerted Cultivation Parenting

A hyper-parenting style characterized by scheduling children into numerous extracurricular activities with very little unstructured free time.

Information-Processing Theory

A cognitive framework that analyzes human thought into sequential steps, focusing on attention mechanisms, working memory, and long-term memory.

Working Memory

A memory structure limited in capacity that keeps incoming information actively held in awareness for processing or manipulation.

Rehearsal

An executive function memory strategy that involves repeating information repeatedly to embed it into long-term memory.

Selective Attention

The executive ability to focus awareness on relevant stimuli while inhibiting attention toward irrelevant distractions.

Inhibition

An executive function that involves suppressing immediate urges, impulses, or automatic behaviors.

Externalizing Tendencies

Behavioral tendencies characterized by acting on immediate impulses through disruptive, aggressive, or acting-out actions.

Internalizing Tendencies

Emotional tendencies characterized by turning distress inward, leading to fearfulness, self-consciousness, and anxiety.

Self-Esteem

An individual's subjective evaluation of their own self-worth, which typically declines during elementary school as self-awareness and peer comparisons increase.

Learned Helplessness

A state associated with internalizing tendencies where an individual believes failure is inevitable, leading them to give up trying entirely.

Prosocial Behavior

Voluntary actions intended to help, share with, care for, or comfort other individuals.

Proactive Aggression

Goal-oriented or means-ended aggressive behavior initiated to achieve a specific personal outcome.

Reactive Aggression

Aggressive behavior performed in response to a perceived threat, insult, or social rejection.

Relational Aggression

Aggressive behavior designed to damage an individual's social relationships, reputation, or group standing.

Authoritative Parenting

A parenting style high in warmth and high in structure, characterized by high expectations, explicit rules, and open verbal dialogue.

Authoritarian Parenting

A parenting style low in flexibility and high in strict structure, placing primary value on obedience and punitive control.

Permissive Parenting

A parenting style high in warmth but low in structure, placing few demands or boundaries on a child's behavior.

Rejecting-Neglecting Parenting

A parenting style low in both warmth and structure, resulting in emotional detachment and minimal caregiving.

Corporal Punishment

The use of physical force intended to cause pain or discomfort for discipline or behavioral modification.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

An individually administered intelligence test evaluating general cognitive potential across verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, processing speed, and working memory.

Reliability

A test property measuring the consistency and stability of test scores over time.

Validity

A test property measuring whether a test accurately measures the specific construct it is intended to assess.

Successful Intelligence

Sternberg's theory that real-world success requires a balanced blend of analytic, creative, and practical intelligence.

Multiple Intelligences Theory

Gardner's developmental theory proposing that human intelligence consists of eight or more distinct domains, including interpersonal, spatial, kinesthetic, and musical abilities.