Edexcel IAL Psychology Unit 3: Developmental Psychology Practice Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts of Developmental Psychology from the Unit 3 specification, including attachment theories, cognitive stages, social development, and research methodologies.

Developmental Psychology

The scientific study of cognitive, emotional, social, and biological changes in humans that occur from before birth, through infancy, childhood, adolescence and into adulthood, encompassing various theories and stages of development, including key developmental milestones and influences of nature versus nurture.

Attachment

An emotional, loving and reciprocal (two-way) tie between a child and caregiver involving seeking to maintain proximity and feeling distressed upon separation, crucial for emotional development, and impacting later relationships and mental health.

Deprivation

The disruption or loss of an attachment during the sensitive period ($1-3$ years old) after an attachment has already been formed, leading to potential psychological issues, such as anxiety and insecurity in adulthood.

Privation

The failure to ever form an attachment, which can lead to delayed physical, emotional, and intellectual development, or attachment disorders, highlighting the importance of early relationships and their long-term effects on behavior and development.

Classical Conditioning of Attachment

The process of learning through association where a baby associates the primary caregiver ($Neutral Stimulus$) with food ($Unconditioned Stimulus$) until the caregiver becomes a $Conditioned Stimulus$ producing a $Conditioned Response$ of pleasure, illustrating how emotional bonds can be developed through learned experiences.

Operant Conditioning of Attachment

The process of learning through consequences where a baby's crying is rewarded with food (positive reinforcement); the caregiver becomes a secondary reinforcer by alleviating hunger, which contributes to forming a bond based on mutual dependency and learned behaviors.

Social Learning Theory (SLT)

The theory that attachments are formed by children observing and imitating the sensitive, caring, or neglectful behaviors of adult role models, indicating the influence of environmental factors on attachment styles and the importance of positive role models in social development.

Tactile Comfort

The innate biological need to touch and cling to something for emotional comfort, as demonstrated by Harlow ($1962$) in his rhesus monkey study, revealing the significance of contact comfort over food in attachment, emphasizing the role of physical touch in emotional security.

Critical Period

A biological window identified by Bowlby (originally birth to $30$ months) during which a secure attachment must be formed for healthy development, emphasizing the consequences of lack of attachment during this vital time on emotional well-being.

Imprinting

An innate biological instinct to follow the first moving object an animal meets during its critical period, as studied by Lorenz ($1952$), illustrating the importance of early experiences in attachment formation and facilitating survival by ensuring closeness to the caregiver.

Social Releasers

Genetically programmed infant behaviors such as cooing, smiling, and crying that stimulate caregiving emotions in adults to ensure proximity, reflecting the biological basis of attachment and the evolutionary advantages of forming bonds between infants and caregivers.

Monotropy

Bowlby’s argument that infants need to form a single special bond with one primary attachment figure, usually the mother, to ensure normal development and emotional security, stressing the importance of a strong, consistent attachment figure.

Internal Working Model

A mental representation of how relationships work based on early infant attachment that guides the child's future relationships in adulthood, influencing expectations and interactions in later social situations, and informing personal relationship dynamics.

Continuity Hypothesis

The idea that the quality of infant attachment relationships is crucial for helping children develop successful adult relationships, highlighting how early experiences shape emotional intelligence and capacity for intimacy in adulthood.

Affectionless Psychopathy

An inability to show affection or concern for others, often characterized by a lack of guilt for aggressive antisocial behavior, linked by Bowlby to early maternal deprivation, raising concerns about emotional health and behavioral outcomes in affected individuals.

Strange Situation

A structured observation procedure developed by Mary Ainsworth to test the quality of a child's attachment based on exploration, separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, and reunion behavior, providing insights into attachment styles and their implications for later developmental outcomes.

Secure Attachment ($Type B$)

Found in approximately $66\\%$ of children; they use the caregiver as a secure base for exploration, show moderate separation anxiety, and are easily soothed upon reunion, indicative of a healthy attachment style leading to positive outcomes in relationships.

Insecure-Avoidant Attachment ($Type A$)

Found in approximately $22\\%$ of children; they show little separation anxiety, ignore the caregiver upon reunion, and display low levels of stranger anxiety, often linked to less sensitive caregiving, leading to difficulties in forming future relationships.

Insecure-Resistant Attachment ($Type C$)

Found in approximately $12\\%$ of children; they are extremely distressed by separation but resist comfort or show anger toward the caregiver upon reunion, reflecting inconsistent caregiving which can cause anxiety and ambivalence in relationships.

Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis

The claim that attachment types develop based on how effectively and sensitively the mother responds to her child's signals (Nurture), emphasizing the role of parenting style in emotional development and attachment security.

Temperament Hypothesis

Kagan's ($1984$) view that an infant’s inborn genetic personality determines their behavior in the Strange Situation rather than the mother's care (Nature), suggesting a biological component to attachment and varying responses to caregiving.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to use one’s own culture as the benchmark for judging the behavior of people from other cultures, often leading to biased interpretations of attachment behaviors and child-rearing practices across different societies.

Imposed Etic

When a psychologist uses a research tool (like the Strange Situation) designed for their culture and applies it to other cultures without appropriate adaptation, potentially misrepresenting findings and leading to misunderstanding of diverse attachment behaviors.

Meta-analysis

A research method where researchers combine findings from multiple studies to draw one overall conclusion, gaining higher confidence due to larger participant pools and improved generalizability of results, which can provide robust insights into attachment theories.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage ($0-2$ years) where infants explore via senses and motor skills and develop object permanence, highlighting cognitive development and the transition from reflexive responses to meaningful interactions with the environment.

Object Permanence

The cognitive understanding developed in infancy that an object continues to exist even if it is no longer visible, marking a critical milestone in cognitive development and reflecting infants' growing understanding of the world around them.

Pre-operational Stage

Piaget's second stage ($2-7$ years) involving pretend play and the use of symbols, characterized by egocentrism, where children struggle to see perspectives other than their own, influencing their social interactions and communication skills.

Egocentrism

The cognitive difficulty children have in understanding that other people do not see, think, or feel things in the same way they do, illustrating limitations in young children's perspective-taking and its implications for social development.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget's third stage ($7-11$ years) where children can decentre and conserve but require the physical presence of objects for thinking, demonstrating advances in logical thought processes and the ability to perform operations mentally rather than through active manipulation.

Conservation

The realization that properties such as volume or number remain constant despite changes in the appearance or arrangement of objects, a key element in understanding physical properties and advancing cognitive reasoning in children.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget's final stage ($11+$ years) where individuals can manipulate abstract concepts, solve hypothetical problems, and think systematically, indicating maturation of cognitive functions and the ability to engage in deductive reasoning.

Accommodation

The cognitive process of modifying an existing schema to fit a new experience that does not match current understanding, crucial for effective learning and adaptability in various contexts throughout development.

Assimilation

The cognitive process whereby a new experience is understood in terms of an existing schema, facilitating the integration of new knowledge and reinforcing established understandings in a coherent way.

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

Vygotsky’s term for anyone with more knowledge than the child (like a parent or teacher) who facilitates learning through interaction, highlighting the social nature of learning and the importance of collaborative growth in cognitive skills.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The difference between what a child can achieve independently and what they can achieve with the guidance and encouragement of an MKO, emphasizing tailored educational approaches that scaffold learning effectively.

Scaffolding

Adjusted support provided by an MKO that helps a child learn a new skill within their ZPD, such as breaking a task into manageable steps, illustrating effective teaching strategies that promote independence and confidence in learners.

Private Speech

Talking out loud to oneself, typically around age $3$, used by children to organize thoughts and solve difficult problems before internalizing it into silent inner speech, reflecting cognitive processes and the development of self-regulation.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Chomsky’s term for the innate biological capacity in humans that facilitates the instinctive learning of language without formal instruction, underpinning theories of language development and the universal grammar hypothesis.

Holophrastic Stage

The 'one-word' stage of language acquisition (approx. $1$ year old) where a child uses a single word to convey the meaning of a whole sentence, representing early language development and initial attempts at communication.

Telegraphic Stage

The 'multi-word' stage ($2-5$ years) where children produce mini-sentences with simple semantic relations, often omitting connectives, demonstrating progress in language skills and the beginnings of grammatical understanding.

Epigenetic Theory

A theory, such as Erik Erikson's stages of development, based on non-genetic influences on gene expression that proceed in a predetermined order, integrating nature and nurture and highlighting the role of environmental factors in psychological development.

Psychosocial Crisis

A conflict occurring at each of Erikson's $8$ stages between the psychological needs of the individual and the needs of society, guiding identity development and influencing personality formation across the lifespan.

Industry vs. Inferiority

Erikson’s fourth stage ($6-12$ years) where children strive to win approval by demonstrating specific competencies valued by society to gain the virtue of competence, impacting self-esteem and leading to motivation or feelings of inadequacy.

Mindfulness

Paying attention to current thoughts and feelings without judgment, staying in the present moment often by using the breath as an anchor, increasingly recognized for its psychological benefits such as reducing stress and enhancing emotional regulation.

Longitudinal Research

A research design where the same group of participants is tested multiple times over the course of weeks, months, or years to track development and observe changes over time, providing insights into developmental trajectories.

Cross-Sectional Research

A research design where different participants of different age groups are tested concurrently to examine differences in development, useful for comparing cohorts and providing snapshots of development at various stages.

Ethnographic Field Work

A long-term qualitative method where the researcher embeds themselves into the natural setting of a culture to observe routines and interactions, providing rich contextual data that can enhance understanding of cultural practices.

Triangulation

The process of checking the validity of research by comparing multiple sources of data, such as interviews with parents, teachers, and child observations, enhancing reliability of findings and offering a comprehensive view of the researched phenomenon.

Reflexivity

A vital part of ethnographic research where the researcher reflects on how their personal characteristics and values might influence data interpretation, promoting transparency and reducing potential biases in research findings.

UNCRC (1989)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which outlines the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights all children are entitled to, emphasizing the need for protection and support for children worldwide, influencing policy and practice in child advocacy.