Human Development

Developmental psychology

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

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Maturation

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

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accomodation

Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Object permanence

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

Conservation

The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the form of objects.

Egocentrism

In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another 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.

Autism

A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind.

Stranger anxiety

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

Attachment

An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

Critical period

An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.

Imprinting

The process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.

Temperament

A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

Menarche

The first menstrual period.

Social identity

The "we" aspects of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "Who am I?" that comes from our group memberships.

Crystallized intelligence

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid intelligence

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Social clock

Culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Gender typing

The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.