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Definition
| After age 65, most individuals experience visual changes that interfere with reading, driving, and other aspects of daily life. In addition to presbyopia (loss of near vision), common changes include loss of visual acuity, reduced perception of depth and color, increased light sensitivity, and dificits in visual search, dynamic vision (perceivign the details of moving objects), and speed in processing what is seen. |
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Term
| Assimilation and Accommodation |
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Definition
(Piaget) Cognitive development occurs when a state of disequilibrium brought on by a discrepancy betwen the person's current understanding of the world and reality is resolved through adaptation, which entails two complementary processes: Assimilation is the incorporation of new knowledge into existing cognitive schemas (structures), while accommodation is the modicfication of existing schemas to incorporate new knowledge. |
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Definition
Elkind Adolescent egocentrism appears at the beginning of the formal operational stage. Its characteristics include the personal fable and the imaginary audience. |
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Term
Adult Attachment Interview |
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Definition
| Research has confirmed a relationship between parents' own attachment experiences and the attachment patterns of their children. For example, children of adults classified as dismissing on the AAI often exhibit an avoidant attachment pattern in the STrange Situation. |
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Definition
The ability to orient toward the direction of a sound. Some is evident shortly after birth, and seems to disappear between 2 and 4 months, and then reappears and improves during the rest of the first year. |
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Definition
| Kagan. Found evidence of both a biological contribution and stability for the temperament trait known as behavioral inhibition. His study demonstrated that children identified as either inhibited or uninhibited at 21 months of age can be similarly categorized at 5 1/2 and 7 1/2 years and that level of inhibition is related to physiological responsivity. |
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Term
| Bilingualism and Bilingual Education |
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Definition
| Has been linked with several benefits including greater cognitive flexibility and nonverbal skils. When language-monority children participate in high-quality bilingual programs, they do as well as or beter than peers who participate in all English programs in terms of academic English and knowledge of subject matter. |
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Term
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Definition
| Causes of birth defects include genetic factors, exposure to teratogens, poor maternal health, and complications during the birth process. Alcohol consumption by a woman during pregnancy can produce fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in her infant. Cocaine use increases the risk for spontaneous abortion and stillbirth. Malnutrition is associated with miscarriage, stillbirth, and low birth weight, mental retardation, and other serious problems. Severe malnutrition in the 3rd trimester, especially protein deficiency) is particularly detrimental for the developing brain. During the birth process, prologned anoxia (oxygen shortage) can be caused by several factors including a twisted umbilical cord or the sedatives given to the mother. Potential consequences of anoxia include delayed motor and cognitive development, mental retardation, and , in severe cases, cerebral palsy. |
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Term
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Definition
| The cerebral cortex is largely undeveloped at birth but shows dramatic growth during the first two years of life as the result of an increase in the size of existing neurons, more extensive dendritic branching, and increasing myelinization. The frontal lobes continue to mature into adolescence and the early 20s. |
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Term
| Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model |
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Definition
| Distinguished between four levels of environmental influence on development - microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. |
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Term
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Definition
| Outcome studies have found no consistent gender differences. But, when differences are found, the outcomes are worse for females than for males. The research has also found that the effects of sexual abuse tend to be less severe when the abuse was committed by a stranger rather than by a family member or other familiar person. |
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Term
| Coercive Family Interaction Model |
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Definition
| Patterson et al's model proposes that children initially learn aggressive behaviors from their parents who rarely reinforce prosocial behaviors, use harsh discipline, and reward their children's aggressiveness with approval and attention and that, over time, aggressive parent-child interactions escalate. They developed a parent intervention that is designed to stop this coercive cycle by teaching parents child management skills and providing them with therapy to help them cope more effectively with stress. |
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Term
| Compensatory Preschool Programs |
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Definition
| Research evaluating the effects of Head Start and other compensatory preschool programs has found that, while initial IQ test score gains produced by these programs are often not maintained, children who attend these programs tend to obtain higher scores on achievement tests, have better attitudes toward school, and are less likely to be retained in a grade, be placed in special education classes, and drop out of high school than their peers who do not attend such programs. |
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Term
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Definition
| Research by Harlow with rhesus monkeys indicated that a baby's attachment to her mother is due, in part, to contact comfort, or the pleasant tactile sensation that is provided by a soft, cuddly parent. |
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Term
| Critical vs Sensitive Perios |
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Definition
| A critical period is a time during which an organism is especially susceptible to positive and negative environmental influences. A sensitive period is more flexible than a critical period and is not limited to a specific chronological age. Some aspects of human development may depend on critical periods, but, for many human characteristics and behaviors, sensitive periods are probably more applicable. |
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Term
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Definition
| Reflexes are unlearned responses to particular stimuli in the environment. Early reflexes include the Babinski reflex and the Moro reflex (flings arms and legs outward and then toward the body in response to a loud noise or sudden loss of physical support.) |
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Term
| Effects of Divorce on Children |
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Definition
| Sleeper Effect, Conflict between parents. Effects are moderated by child's age, gender, and custody arrangements. Preschool children exhibit the most problems immediately after the divorce, but long-term consequences may be worse for children who were in elementary school at the time of the divorce. Boys excibit more problems than girls initially, but there may be a sleeper effect for girls who may develop symptoms in adolescence. Overall, children do best when they reside with the same-sex paretn. Negative consequences are reduced when the conflict between parents is minimized. |
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Term
| Effects of Increasing age on Memory |
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Definition
| Deficits in recent long-term (secondary) memory are believed to be due primarily to a reduced spontaneous use of encoding strategies. |
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Term
| Effects of Maternal Employment |
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Definition
| Research investigating the effects of maternal empoyment has found it to be associated with greater personal satisfaction for the working mother (especially when she wants to work) and, in terms of the children, with fewer sex-role stereotypes and greater independence. For lower-SES boys, maternal employment is associated with better performance on measures of cognitive development; but for uper SES boys, it may result in lower scores on IQ and achievement tests. |
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Term
| Erikdon's Stages Of Psychosocial Development |
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Definition
| The individual faces different social crises at different points throughout the life span. These are: trust vs. mistrust; autonomy vs. shame and doubt; initiative vs. guilt; industry vs. inferiority; identity vs role confusion; intimacy vs. isolation; generativity vs. stagnation; and integrity vs despair. |
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Term
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Definition
| Exposure to alcohol during prenatal development may produce a variety of physical, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms depending on the amount consumed by the pregnant women. They symptoms of FAS are largely irreversible and include facial deformities, hyperactivity, and mental retardation. |
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Term
| Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development |
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Definition
| Proposes that development involves five invariant stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital), in which the libido shifts from one area of the body to another. |
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Term
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Definition
| Kohlberg's cognitive developmental theory says that gender role development involves a sequence of stages that parallels cognitive development: By 2 or 3 they acquire a gender identity-they recognize that they are either male or female. Gender stability-they realize that gender is stable over time. By 6 or 7 they understand that gender is constant over situations and that they can't change by alterning their external appearance. |
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Term
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Definition
| Genotype refers to a person's genetic make-up: phenotype refers to observable characteristics, which are due to a combination af genetic and environmental factors. |
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Term
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Definition
| Thomas and Chess. Behavioral and adjustment outcomes are best for children when parents' caregivign behaviors match the child's temperament. |
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Term
| Piaget's Stages of Moral Development |
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Definition
| Heteronomous and Autonomous |
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Term
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Definition
| Morality of constraint, extends from about age 7 through 10. Children believe that rules are set by authority figures and are unalterable. When judging whether an act is right or wrong, they consider whether a rule has been violated and what the consequences of the act are. |
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Term
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Definition
| Morality of cooperation. Children in this stage view rules as being arbitrary and alterable when the people who are governed by them agree to change them. When judging an act, they focus more on the intention of the actor than on the act's consequences. |
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Term
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Definition
| Marcia proposes that the achievement of an identity (including values, beliefs, and goals) involves four stages that take place primarily during adolescence and young adulthood. ie. diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement. |
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Term
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Definition
| Bowlby applied the notion of the critical period to human attachment and proposed that exposure of an invant to his or her mother during this period results in a bond between them. |
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Term
| Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Development |
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Definition
| Says that moral development coincides with changes in logical reasoning and social perspective-taking and involves three levels that each include two stages: preconventional (punishment and obedience; instrumental hedonism); conventional (good boy/good girl; law and order); and postconventional (morality of contract, individual rights, and democraticaly-accepted laws; morality of individual principles of conscious). |
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Term
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Definition
| Children of depressed mothers are at higher risk for emotional and behavioral problems, although the exact nature and severity of the problems depend on several factors including genetic predisposition and the quality of early mother-child interactions. |
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Term
| Memory Strategies of Children |
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Definition
| Preschoolers sometimes use non deliberate memory strategies (incidental mnemonics) but do so in an ineffective way, and children in the early elementary school years use somewhat more effective techniques but are often distracted by irrelevant information. in addition, when taught rehearsal or other memory strategies, young children may apply them to the immediate situation but do not subsequently use them in new situations. By age 9 or 10, children begin to regularly use rehearsal, elaboration,a dn organization, and in adolescence, these strategies are fine tuned and used more deliberately and selectively. |
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Term
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Definition
| An approach to education that emphasizes child-cnered, experiential learning and sense discrimination (learning through seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching). |
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Term
| Nativist Approach to Language Acquisition |
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Definition
| Chomsky stresses the role of biological mechanisms (Chomsky's language acquisition device) and universal patterns of development. |
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Term
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Definition
| Baumrind distinguishes between four styles that reflect various combinatins of responsivity and demandingness: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and refecting-neglecting. High parental responsivity mixed wiht moderate control (an authoritative style) is associated with the best outcomes including greater self-confidence and self-reliance, achievement-orientation, and social responisbility. |
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Term
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Definition
| Ainsworth. 4 patterns of attachment: secure, insecure/ambivalent, insecure/avoidant, and disorganized/disoriented. Each is associated with different caregiver behaviors and different personality and behavioral outcomes. |
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Term
| Phenylketonuria (PKU) and Down Syndrome |
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Definition
| PKU is a disorder caused by a pair of recessive genes that causes mental retardation unless the infant is placed on a special diet very soon after birth. Down Syndrome is caused by an extra #21 chromosome. It is characterized by mental retardation, retarded physical growth and motor development, distinctive pysical characteristics, and increased susceptibility to Alzheimer's dementia, leukemia, and heart defects. |
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Term
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Definition
| Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that are understood in a language. The English language has 45 phonemes-for example, b, p, f, v, and th. Morphemes (eg. un and ing) are the smallest units of sound that convey meaning. Morphemes are made up of one or more phonemes. |
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Term
| Physical Maturation in Adolescence |
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Definition
| Research comparing the effects of early versus late physical maturation on adolescents has found that early maturation has a number of benefits for boys but may have negative consequences for girls. |
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Term
| Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development |
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Definition
| Proposes that knowledge is actively constructed by the individual from elements provided by both maturation and experience. Cognitive development involves 4 universal and invariant stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Object permanence, an accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage, involves the ability to recognize that people, objects, etc. still exist even when they are not detectable. Magical thinking, or the belief that thinking about something will actually cause it to occur, is characteristic of the preoperational stage along with centration, which is the tendency to focus on the most noticeable features of objects. The ability to conserve (conservation) develops during the concrete operational stage and is due to the emergence of decentration and reversibility. |
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Term
| Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development |
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Definition
| Proposes that knowledge is actively constructed by the individual from elements provided by both maturation and experience. Cognitive development involves 4 universal and invariant stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Object permanence, an accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage, involves the ability to recognize that people, objects, etc. still exist even when they are not detectable. Magical thinking, or the belief that thinking about something will actually cause it to occur, is characteristic of the preoperational stage along with centration, which is the tendency to focus on the most noticeable features of objects. The ability to conserve (conservation) develops during the concrete operational stage and is due to the emergence of decentration and reversibility. |
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Term
| Rejected Vs. Neglected Children |
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Definition
| In recent literature, a distinction is made between rejected and neglected children; and the studies have found that, overall, outcomes are worse for children who are actively rejected by their peers: Rejected children express greater loneliness and peer dissatisfaction and are less likely to experience an improvement in peer status when they change social groups. |
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Term
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Definition
| Gilligan proposes that, in early adolescence, girls experience a relational crisis due to pressures to conform to cultural stereotypes of femininity. As a result, they become disconnected from themselves (eg. experience a "loss of voice"). |
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Term
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Definition
| Werner and Smits suggest that exposure to early prenatal and perinatal stress may be ameliorated when the baby experiences fewer stressors following birth, exhibits good communicatin skills and social responsiveness, and receives stable support from a parent or other caregiver. |
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Term
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Definition
| Rutter argues that the greater the number of risk factors a baby is exposed to, the greater the risk for negative outcomes. In one study, he found that psychiatric risk for children increased from 2% for those with one or no risk to 21% for those with four or more risks. He concludes that the follwoing six family risk factors are particularly accurate predictors of child psychopathology: severe marital discord, low socioeconomic status, overcrwoding or large family size, parental criminality, maternal psychopathology, and the placement of a child outside the home. |
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Term
| Self-Fulfiling Prophecy Effect |
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Definition
| Research on teacher expectations suggests that they have a "self-fulfilling prophecy effect: on teh academic performance, motivation, and self-esteem of students. |
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Term
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Definition
| Obvious signs of attachment to a primary caregiver are usually not apparent until about 6 months of age. These include social referencing, separation anxiety, and stranger anxiety. |
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Term
| Social-Cognitive Factors and Aggression |
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Definition
| Perry, and Rasmussen found that aggressive children differ from their less aggressive peers in terms of 2 beliefs (1) self-efficacy beliefs (they are more likely to say that it is easy to perform aggressive acts but difficult to inhibit aggressive impulses), and (2) beliefs about the outcomes of their behaviors (they expect that aggression will be followed by positive consequences including reduced aversive treatment by others). Other studies have linked aggression to a tendency to misinterpret the postive or ambiguous acts of tothers as intentionally hostile. |
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Term
| Stages of Language Acquisition |
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Definition
| Language development occurs in a predictable sequence of stages. Infants initially produce 3 distinct patterns of crying: a basic hunger cry, an anger cry, and a pain cry. Cooing and babbling (6-8 weeks and 4 months, respectively); echolalia and expressive jargon (9 months); holophrastic speech (1 to 2 years); telegraphic speech (19 to 24 months); and grammatically correct sentences (beginning at about 2-1/2 years). |
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Term
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Definition
| Girls, especially those in the middle schol years, seem to have more trouble than boys in accepting a stepfather, while the addition of a stepfather may have benefits for preadolescent boys. Over time, these boys often develop close relationships with their stepfathers and become fairly indistinguishable from boys in nondivorced families in terms of behavioral problems. The best general conclusion that can be drawn about stepfather sis that they are less authoritative and more disengaged than biological fathers. |
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Term
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Definition
| The research indicates that teachers tend to respond differently to boys and girls. Boys generally receive more correction, criticism, praise and help than girls do. Moreover, the nature of the feedback is gender-related; eg. boys are more often criticized for sloppiness and inattention, girls for inadequate intellectual performance. |
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Term
| Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory |
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Definition
| Proposes that cognitive development is always first interpersonal (when the child interacts with an adult) and then intrapersonal (when the child internalizes what she has learned). The zone of proximal development is a basic concept in Vygotsky's theory - cognitive development is fostered when instructin targets the zone of proximal development which is defined by what a child can currently do alone and what she can accomplish wiht assistance from a parent, teacher, or more experienced peer. |
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