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| Developmental Psychologists | study physical, cognitive, and social changes throughout the human life cycle |
| Nature-Nurture Issue | the longstanding controversy of the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors; How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the nurture we receive) influence our development? |
| Fetal Alcohol Syndrome | physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant womans heavy drinking. Marked by small, misporotioned head and lifelong brain abnormalities. FAS is now the leading causes of mental retardation. |
| Rooting Reflex | a baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple |
| 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, seeming bored. |
| Maturation | biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience; standing before walking-nouns before adjectives |
| Schema | a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. By adulthood we have built countless schemas, ranging from cats and dogs to our concept of love. |
| Assimilation | interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schemas. Having a scimple schema for dog, for example, a toddler may call all four-legged animals doggies. |
| Accommodation | adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information. As children interact with the world, they construct and modify their schemas. |
| Cognition | all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. Stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. |
| Sensorimotor Stage | in Piaget's theory, the state (from birth to about two years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. Looking, touching, mouthign, and grasping |
| 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) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. Representing things with words and images; use intuitive rather than 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 |
| Theory of Mind | people's ideas abut their own and others' mental states--about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict. |
| Autism | a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind. |
| Concrete Operational Stage | in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events; conservation and mathematical transformations |
| Formal Operational Stage | in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts; abstract reasoning. Potential for mature moral reasoning |
| Stranger Anxiety | the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginnig by about 8 months of age |
| Attachment | an emotional tie with another person' shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.- infants become close to those, typically their parents, who are comfortable and familiar |
| Critical Period | optimal period right after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli/experiences produces proper development-the 1st moving object a gosling, or chick sees during the hours right after hatching is norm. its mother.From then on, it follows her |
| Imprinting | the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life |
| Self-concept | a sense of one's identity and personal worth.-By the end of childhood at about age 12, most children have developed this. |
| Authoritarian parents | impose rules and expect obedience: "Don't interrupt." "Keep your room clean." "Don't stay out late or you'll be grounded." "Why? Because I said so." |
| Permissive parents | submit to their children's desires, make few demands, and use little punishment |
| Authoritative parents | are both demanding and responsive.They exert control not only by setting rules and enforcing them but also by explaining the reasons and, especially with older children, encouraging open discussion and allowing exceptions when making the rules. |
| Adolescence | the transition period from cihldhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence |
| Identity | one's sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. |
| Intimacy | in Erikson's theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood |
| Cross-sectional Study | a study in which people of different ages are compared with one another |
| Longitudinal study | research in which the same people are studied and retested over a long period |
| Social Clock | the culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement- "the right time" to leave home, get a job, marry, have children, and retire varies from culture to culture. |
