Unit 6: Developmental Psychology

Nature versus nurture controversy

dealing with the extent to which heredity and the environment each influences behavior.

Maturation

biological growth processes that bring about orderly changes in behavior, thought, or physical growth, relatively unaffected by experience.

Continuity versus discontinuity

deals with the question of whether development is gradual, cumulative change from conception to death (continuity), or a sequence of distinct stages (discontinuity).

Stability versus change

deals with the issue of whether or not personality traits present during infancy endure throughout the lifespan.

Longitudinal Studies

follows the same group of people over a period from months to many years in order to evaluate changes in those individuals.

Cross-sectional study

researchers assess developmental changes with respect to a particular factor by evaluating different age groups of people at the same time. Cross-sectional studies can be invalid if a cohort, group of people in one age group, is significantly different in their experiences from other age groups, resulting in the cohort effect, differences in the experiences of each age group as a result of growing up in different historical times.

Cohort-sequential studies

cross-sectional groups are assessed at least two times over a span of months or years, rather than just once.

Biographical or retrospective studies

are case studies that investigate development in one person at a time.

Physical development

focuses on maturation and critical periods.

Critical period

is a time interval during which specific stimuli have a major effect on development that the stimuli do not produce at other times.

Fetus

the developing human organism from about 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Teratogens

Chemicals such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco ingredients, mercury, lead, cadmium, and other poisons or infectious agents, such as viruses, that cause birth defects

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

is a cluster of abnormalities that occurs in babies of mothers who drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy.

Neonates

or newborn babies, are equipped with basic reflexes that increase their chances of survival.

Rooting

is the neonate’s response of turning his or her head when touched on the cheek and then trying to put the stimulus into his or her mouth.

Sucking

is the automatic response of drawing in anything at the mouth.

Swallowing

is a contraction of throat muscles that enables food to pass into the esophagus without the neonate choking.

Grasping reflex

when the infant closes his or her fingers tightly around an object put in his or her hand.

Moro or startle reflex

in which a loud noise or sudden drop causes the neonate to automatically arch his or her back, fling his/her limbs out, and quickly retract them.

Habituation

is decreasing responsiveness with repeated presentation of the same stimulus.

Puberty

is sexual maturation, marked by the onset of the ability to reproduce.

Primary sex characteristics

reproductive organs (ovaries and testes) start producing mature sex cells, and external genitals (vulva and penis) grow.

Secondary sex characteristics

nonreproductive features associated with sexual maturity—such as widening of hips and breast development in females; growth of facial hair, muscular growth, development of the “Adam’s apple,” and deepening of the voice in males; and growth of pubic hair and underarm hair in both.

Stranger anxiety

fear of unfamiliar people, indicating that they can differentiate among people they know and people they don’t know.

Egocentrism

is consistent with a belief called animism, that all things are living just like him or her and the belief, called artificialism, that all objects are made by people.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD)

the range between the level at which a child can solve a problem working alone with difficulty and the level at which a child can solve a problem with the assistance of adults or more-skilled children.

Fluid intelligence

those abilities requiring speed or rapid learning—generally diminishes with aging

crystallized intelligence

learned knowledge and skills such as vocabulary—generally improves with age (at least through the 60s).

Lawrence Kohlberg

like Piaget, thought that moral thinking develops sequentially in stages as cognitive abilities develop.

Preconventional level of morality

in which they do the right thing to avoid punishment (stage 1) or to further their self-interests (stage 2).

Conventional level of morality

in which they follow rules to live up to the expectations of others, “good boy/nice girl” (stage 3), or to maintain “law and order” and do their duty (stage 4).

Postconventional level of morality

in which they evidence a social contract orientation that promotes the society’s welfare (stage 5) or evidence an ethical principle orientation that promotes justice and avoids self-condemnation (stage 6).

Carol Gilligan

found that women rarely reach the highest stages of morality, because they think more about the caring thing to do or following an ethic of care, rather than what the rules allow or following an ethic of justice.

Bonding

is the creation of a close emotional relationship between the mother (or parents) and baby shortly after birth.

Attachment

As the mother (or other caregiver) bonds with the infant, through frequent interactions, the infant gradually forms a close emotional relationship with his or her mother (or other caregivers)

Harry Harlow’s

experimental research with monkeys disproved that belief when he found that baby monkeys separated from their mothers preferred to spend time with and sought comfort from a soft cloth-covered substitute (surrogate) rather than a bare wire substitute with a feeding bottle.

Mary Ainsworth

studied attachment using a “strange situation” where a mother and baby play in an unfamiliar room, the baby interacts with the mother and an unfamiliar woman, the mother leaves the baby with the other woman briefly, the baby is left alone briefly, and then the mother returns to the room.

Temperament

or natural disposition to show a particular mood  at a particular intensity for a specific period, affects his or her behavior.

Self-awareness

consciousness of oneself as a person, and social referencing, observing the behavior of others in social situations to obtain information or guidance, both develop between ages 1 and 2.

Diana Baumrind

studied how parenting styles affect the emotional growth of children.

Authoritarian

parents set up strict rules, expect children to follow them, and punish wrongdoing.

Authoritative

parents set limits but explain the reasons for rules with their children and make exceptions when appropriate.

Permissive

parents tend not to set firm guidelines, if they set any at all.

Uninvolved

parents make few demands, show low responsiveness, and communicate little with their children.

Erik Erikson

was an influential theorist partly because he examined development across the life span in a social context, rather than just during childhood, recognizing that we continue to grow beyond our teenage years, and our growth is influenced by others.

Daniel Levinson

described a midlife transition period at about age 40, seen by some as a last chance to achieve their goals.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s

studies of death and dying have focused attention on the end of life, encouraging further studies of death and dying and the growth of the hospice movement that treats terminal patients and their families to alleviate physical and emotional pain.

Gender

is the sociocultural dimension of being biologically male or female.

Gender roles

are sets of expectations that prescribe how males and females should act, think, and feel.

Gender identity

is our sense of being male or female, usually linked to our anatomy and physiology.

Biopsychosocial model

ascribes gender, gender roles, and gender identity to the interaction of heredity (biology) and environment (including psychological and social-cultural factors).

Biological Perspective

attributes differences between the sexes to heredity.

Evolutionary Perspective

our behavioral tendencies prepare us to survive and reproduce.

Psychoanalytic Perspective

young girls learn to act feminine from their mothers, and young boys learn to act masculine from their fathers when they identify with their same-sex parent as a result of resolving either the Electra or Oedipal complex at about age 5.

Behavioral Perspective

social learning theory, children respond to rewards and punishments for their behavior, and they observe and imitate significant role models, such as their parents, to acquire their gender identity.

Cognitive Perspective

children actively engage in making meaning out of information they learn about gender.

Gender role stereotypes

which are broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about males and females, have typically classified instrumental traits, such as self-reliance and leadership ability, as masculine and expressive traits, such as warmth and understanding, as feminine.

Androgyny

the presence of desirable masculine and feminine characteristics in the same individual.

Meta-analysis

of research on gender comparisons indicates that, for cognitive skills, the differences within either gender are larger than the differences between the two genders.

Stereotype threat

anxiety that influences members of a group concerned that their performance will confirm a negative stereotype.