Developmental Psychology Practice Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering developmental psychology topics including delay of gratification cohort effects, Erikson's psychosocial theory, parenting styles, Piagetian and Vygotskian cognitive development, attachment, brain development, and early language acquisition.

Delay of Gratification

The postponing of an immediate, smaller reward to attain a delayed, more valuable reward.

Marshmallow Test

A classic laboratory paradigm created by Walter Mischel and colleagues to measure self-control by offering children a choice between one small immediate treat or two delayed treats.

Executive Function

The goal-directed conscious control of thoughts, actions, and emotions, encompassing working memory, cognitive inhibition, and mental flexibility.

Flynn Effect

The long-term secular trend showing an average increase in absolute IQ test scores of approximately 3 points per decade across generations.

Batman Effect

A psychological phenomenon where young children display increased perseverance, self-control, and executive function when pretending to be a competent, superhero-like character.

Trust versus Mistrust

Erikson's first psychosocial stage occurring in the first year of life, in which infants develop a sense of safety when caregivers meet their needs in a warm, consistent way.

Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt

Erikson's second psychosocial stage (ages 1 to 3 years), where toddlers develop independence if caregivers support exploration, or self-doubt if caregivers are overly critical or protective.

Initiative versus Guilt

Erikson's third psychosocial stage (ages 3 to 5 years), during which children eagerly initiate their own ideas and activities, but may develop guilt if their self-initiated actions are criticized or discouraged.

Emotion-Coaching Parents

Caregivers who monitor their children's emotions, view negative feelings as teaching opportunities, assist in labeling emotions, and coach effective emotional coping strategies.

Authoritarian Parenting

A restrictive and punitive parenting style that demands strict obedience to rules, offers little verbal give-and-take, and is associated with child social incompetence and higher aggression.

Authoritative Parenting

A parenting style that encourages children to be independent while placing clear limits and controls on their actions, allowing extensive verbal give-and-take.

Neglectful Parenting

A parenting style characterized by an absence of parental involvement in the child's life, leading to social incompetence, poor self-control, and low self-esteem.

Indulgent Parenting

A parenting style where caregivers are highly involved with their children but place few demands or behavioral controls, resulting in noncompliant and self-regulation difficulties.

Co-parenting

The mutual support, coordination, and cooperation that parents provide to one another while raising a child.

Operations

In Piagetian theory, reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously could accomplish only physically.

Symbolic Function Substage

The first substage of Piaget's preoperational thought (ages 2 to 4), where children gain the ability to mentally represent an object that is not physically present.

Egocentrism

The inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's perspective.

Animism

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.

Centration

The centering of attention on one single characteristic of an object or situation to the exclusion of all others.

Conservation

The awareness that altering the visual appearance of an object or substance does not change its basic quantitative properties.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to master alone but can be learned with the guidance and assistance of a more-skilled instructor.

Scaffolding

The process of changing the level of instructional support over the course of a teaching session to fit the child's current performance level.

Private Speech

The use of spoken language by young children for self-regulation, planning, and monitoring behavior before it becomes internalized as inner speech.

Theory of Mind

An awareness of one's own mental processes and the understanding that other people have their own distinct mental states, beliefs, and desires.

Sally-Anne Task

A classic false-belief scenario used to evaluate whether a child understands that another person can hold a belief about the world that is not true.

Division of Responsibility in Feeding

Ellyn Satter's feeding model stating that parents are responsible for what, when, and where food is offered, while children are responsible for how much and whether they eat.

Primary Emotions

Emotions present in humans and animals that emerge in the first 6 months of life, including joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Emotions requiring self-awareness and a sense of consciousness that emerge between 6 and 18 months of age, such as guilt, pride, jealousy, empathy, and embarrassment.

Social Smile

A smile that occurs in response to an external stimulus, typically appearing as early as 2 months of age in response to a human face.

Temperament

Individual differences in behavioral styles, emotional reactivity, and characteristic ways of responding.

Goodness of Fit

The match between a child's temperament and the environmental demands and expectations with which the child must cope.

Imprinting

Rapid, innate learning during a critical period that involves attachment to the first moving object seen, as identified by Konrad Lorenz.

Harlow's Contact Comfort Study

Harry Harlow's research with infant monkeys demonstrating that contact comfort and warmth are preferred over food when forming attachment.

Strange Situation

An observational measure created by Mary Ainsworth involving a series of separations and reunions with a caregiver to determine infant attachment quality.

Securely Attached Babies

Infants who use their caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment and show positive interaction upon reunion.

Cephalocaudal Pattern

The sequence of physical growth in which the earliest growth always occurs at the top—the head—and works its way down.

Proximodistal Pattern

The sequence of physical growth that starts at the center of the body and moves outward toward the extremities.

Neuron

A nerve cell in the brain that handles information processing at the cellular level through dendrites, an axon, and terminal buttons.

Brain Lobes

The four main functional divisions of each cerebral hemisphere: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes.

Early Brain Deprivation PET Scan

Positron emission tomography imaging demonstrating significantly lower brain metabolic activity in institutionalized orphans who experienced severe early deprivation.

Moro Reflex

A neonatal startle response to a sudden noise or movement where the infant arches their back, throws back their head, flings out arms and legs, and then rapidly contracts them.

Pincer Grip

A fine motor skill involving the grasping of small objects precisely between the thumb and forefinger.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.

Joint Attention

A state where two or more individuals focus on the same object or event, requiring gaze tracking, direction of attention, and reciprocal interaction.

Infinite Generativity

The ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.

Telegraphic Speech

The use of short and precise words without grammatical markers such as articles or auxiliary verbs.

Overextension

The tendency to apply a word to inappropriate objects that share similar characteristics, such as using 'dog' for all four-legged animals.

Hart and Risley (1995) Study

A study demonstrating that parents from professional families speak significantly more utterances to their children than parents on welfare, leading to substantial vocabulary differences by age 3.

Child-Directed Speech

Language spoken in a higher pitch and slower speed than normal, with simple words and sentences, used by adults when speaking to infants.

Recasting

A language development technique where an adult rephrases something a child has said into a fully grammatical sentence.