Unit 4 Terms

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/.

Teratogens - agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm  

Motor/Sensory Development- the gradual process by which a child gains use and coordination of the large muscles of the legs, trunk, and arms, and the smaller muscles of the hands.

Cognition- all the mental activities associated with thinking , knowing, remembering, and communicating. 

Temperament- a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity

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

Secure attachment- 

Insecure attachment

Anxious/avoidant attachment

Puberty - the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing 

Identity -  our sense of self; according to erikson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. 

Social clock - the culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Menopause - the time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines. 

Sensorimotor- in Piaget's theory, the stage (birth to 2yo) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of sensory impressions and motor activities. 

Object Permanence- the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. 

Preoperational- second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage begins around age two and lasts until approximately age seven. During this period, children are thinking at a symbolic level but are not yet using cognitive operations.

Concepts of conservation- a logical thinking ability that allows a person to determine that a certain quantity will remain the same despite adjustment of the container, shape, or apparent size,

Concrete operations- in Piaget’s theory , the stage of cognitive development (6yo - 11yo) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. 

Formal operations- in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. 

Scheme- concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. 

Assimilation- interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas. 

Conservation- the principle (a part of concrete operational) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. 

Preconventional moral reasoning- A moral sense. …the early level, that of preconventional moral reasoning, the child uses external and physical events (such as pleasure or pain) as the source for decisions about moral rightness or wrongness; his standards are based strictly on what will avoid punishment or bring pleasure.

Conventional moral reasoning-  the second of three levels of moral reasoning in Kohlberg's Structural Theory of Moral Development, where people have internalized the rules and expectations of those closest to them and generally make moral judgments based on the norms and expectations of their reference group

Postconventional moral reasoning- Postconventional reasoning is the final stage of Kohlberg's model of moral reasoning, in which an individual makes choices based on their own personal beliefs, even if those beliefs are not in accordance with laws or social convention