Psychology 206 Chapter 1 Terms

Structured Intervew

(Includes Tests and Questionnaires) Each participant is asked the same questions in every way

Clinical Interview

A flexible, conversational style is used to probe for the participant's point of view

Correlation Coefficient

A number that describes how two measures, or variables are associated with one another

Discontinuous

A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times

Continuous

A process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills that were there to begin with

Psychosocio Theory

Erikson emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active, contributing member of society

Random Assignment

Random assignment to participants to treatment conditions. By using an unbiased procedure such as drawing numbers out of a hot, investigators increase the chances that participants' characteristics will be equally distributed across treatment groups

Maturation

Refers to a genetically determined, naturally unfolding course of growth

Sequential Design

Researchers conduct several similar cross-sectional or longitudinal studies (sequences) at varying times

Correlational Design

Researchers gather information on individuals, generally in natural life circumstances, and make no effort to alter their experiences Then they look at relationships between participants' characteristics and their behavior or development

Developmental Science

Includes all changes we experience throughout the lifespan

Stages

Qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development

Microgenetic Design

An adaption of the longitudinal approach, presents children with a novel task and follows their mastery over a series of closely spaced session. Researchers observe how change occurs

Nature-Nurture Controversy

Are genetic or environmental factors more important in influencing development.

Child Development

Area of study devoted to understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence

Case Study

Brings together a wide range of information on one child, including interviews, observations, and sometimes test scores

Cognitive Developmental Theory

Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world

Mesosystem

Encompasses connections between microsystems, such as home, school, neighborhood, and child-care center

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflict are resolved determines the person's ability to learn, to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety.

Ethology

Concerned with the adaptive, or survival value of behavior and it's evolutionary history.

Microsystem

Consists of activities and interactions patterns in the child's immediate surroundings

Macrosystem

Consists of cultural values, laws, customs, and resources

Applied Behavior Analysis

Consists of observation of relationships between behavior and environmental events, followed by systematic changes in those events based on procedures of conditioning and modeling. The goal is to eliminate undesirable behaviors

Exosystem

Consists of social settings that do not contain children but that nevertheless affect children's experiences in immediate settings

Plasticity

Development as having substantial plasticity throughout life - as open to change in response to influential experiences

Developmental Social Neuroscience

Devoted to studying the relationship between changes in the brain and emotional and social development

Behaviorism

Directly obserable events - stimuli and responses - are the appropriate focus of study

Psychosexual Theory

Emphasizes that how parents manage their child's sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development

Sociocultural Theory

Focuses on how culture - the values, beliefs, cutsoms, and skills of a social group - is transmitted to the next generation. According to Vygotsky, social interaction - in particular, cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society - is necessary for children to acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community's culture.

Structured Observation

Investigator set ups a lab situation that evokes the behavior of interest so that every participant has an equal opportunity to display the response

Sensitive Period

Is a time that is biologically optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences. However, its boundaries are less well-defined than are those of a critical period. Development can occur later, but it is harder to induce

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

It brings together researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and medicine to study the relationship between changes in the brain and the developing child's cognitive processing and behavior patterns

Evolutionary Developmental Psychology

It seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as those competencies changes with age

Chronosystem

Life changes can be imposed on the child, as in the examples just given. Alternatively, they can arise from within the child, since as children get older they select, modify, and create many of their own settings and experiences

Cohorts Effects

Longitudinal studies examine the development of cohorts - children born at the same time, who are influenced by particular cultural and historical conditions. Results based on one cohort may not apply to children developing at other time

Normative Approach

Measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development

Longitudinal Design

Participants are studied repeatedly, and changes are noted as they get older

Experimental Design

Permits inferences about cause and effect because researchers use an evenhanded procedure to assign people to two or more treatment conditions

Ethnography

Similar to a case study, but instead of an individual, it is directed towards understanding a culture or distinct social group through participant observation

Resilence

The ability to adapt effectively in the face of threats to development

Dynamic System Perspective

The child's mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills. The system is dynamic, or constantly in motion. A change in any part of it - from brain growth to physical or social surroundings - disrupts the current organism - environment relationship. When this happens, the child actively reorganizes his or her behavior so that the various components of the system work together again but in a more complex, effective way

Information Processing

The human mind might also be viewed as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows

Social Learning Theory

The most influential, devised by Albert Bandura, Emphasizes modeling, also known as imitation or observational learning, as a powerful source of development

Contexts

Unique combinations of personal environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change

Ecological Systems Theory

Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment

Naturalistic Observation

a method where reseracher goes into the field or natural environment, and observe the behavior of interest

Cross-Sectional Design

groups of people differing in age are studied at the same point in same

Theory

is an orderly, integrated set of statements that describes, explains and predicts behavior