Week 4/ Chapter 9

• Developmental psychology is the study of how behavior changes over the lifespan.
• Nature via nurture is the tendency of individuals with certain genetic predispositions to seek out and create environments that permit the expression of those predispositions.
• Gene expression (SCN) is the activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development.
• Cross-sectional design is a research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time.
• Cohort effect is an effect observed in a sample of participants that results from individuals in the sample growing up at the same time.
• Longitudinal design is a research design that examines the development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over a period of time.
• Post hoc fallacy is a false assumption that because one event occurred before another event it must have caused the event.
• Prenatal refers to the period prior to birth.
• Zygote is a fertilized egg.
• Blastocyst is a ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven’t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part.
• Embryo is the second to eighth week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs of the body take form.
• Fetus is the period of prenatal development from ninth week until birth after all major organs are established and physical maturation is the primary change.
• Teratogen is an environmental factor that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development.
• Fetal alcohol syndrome is a condition resulting from high levels of prenatal alcohol exposure, causing learning disabilities, physical growth retardation, facial malformations, and behavioral disorders.
• Motor behavior is bodily motion that occurs as a result of self-initiated force that moves the bones and muscles.
• Puberty is the achievement of sexual maturation resulting in the potential to reproduce.
• Primary sex characteristic is a physical feature such as the reproductive organs and genitals that distinguish the sexes.
• Secondary sex characteristic is a sex-differentiating characteristic that doesn’t relate directly to reproduction, such as breast enlargement in women and deepening voices in men.
• Menarch is the start of menstruation.
• Spermarche is boys’ first ejaculation.
• Menopause is the termination of menstruation, marking the end of a woman’s reproductive potential.
• Cognitive development is the study of how children acquire the ability to learn, think, reason, communicate, and remember.
• Scaffolding is a Vygotskian learning mechanism in which parents provide initial assistance in children’s learning but gradually remove structure as children become more competent.
• Zone of proximal development is a phase of learning during which children can benefit from instruction.
• Theory of mind is the ability to reason about what other people know and believe.
• Babbling is intentional vocalization that lacks specific meaning.
• One-word stage is an early period of language development when children use single words to convey an entire thought.
• Homesign is a system of home developed by children who are deaf and born of hearing parents and therefore receive no language input.
• Generative is allowing an infinite number of unique sentences to be created by combining words in novel ways.
• Genetics and environment both shape development.
• Social-intuitive model of moral emotions (Haidt)
• Development influences experiences, but experiences also influence development.
• The impact of genes on behavior depends on the environment.
• Genetics influences the choice of environments.
• Those growing up during the same time period can differ systematically from others living during a different period.
• To stop cohort effects, requires study of the same people over time (not different age)- longitudinal method.
• Cognitive development is the process of acquiring the ability to learn, think, communicate, and remember over time.
• Piaget is a Swiss psychologist who presented the first complete account of cognitive development.
• Stage theorists believed skills were domain-general.
• The end point of cognitive development is the ability to reason logically about hypotheticals- abstract thought.