AP Psychology Final 3.1 - 3.5

developmental psychology a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan.

cross-sectional study research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time.

longitudinal study research that follows and retests the same people over time.

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

fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) physical and cognitive function deficits in children caused by their birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy. In severe cases, symptoms include a small, out-of-proportion head and distinct facial features.

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

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

critical period an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

adolescence the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence.

puberty the period of sexual maturation, during which a person usually becomes capable of reproducing.

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

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

schema a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

assimilation interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

accommodation adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information.

sensorimotor stage in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

object permanence the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

preoperational stage in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) at which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

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 forms of objects.

egocentrism in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.

concrete operational stage in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) at which children can perform the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete (actual, physical) events.

formal operational stage in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

scaffold in Vygotsky’s theory, a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking.

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.

language our agreed-upon systems of spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

phoneme in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

morpheme in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).

grammar in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

universal grammar humans’ innate predisposition to understand the principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages.

babbling stage the stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds that are not all related to the household language.

one-word stage the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

two-word stage beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.

telegraphic speech the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram — “go car” — using mostly nouns and verbs.

aphasia impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

Broca’s area a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke’s area a brain area, usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression.

linguistic determinism Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

linguistic relativism the idea that language influences the way we think.