devpsy

• Human development is a lifelong process that can be studied scientifically from "womb to tomb", encompassing the entire human life span from conception to death.
• The goals of human development are to describe, explain, predict, and intervene.
• Domains of development include physical development (growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, health), cognitive development (mental abilities), and psychosocial development (emotions, personality, social relationships).
• Sequential design requires a large amount of time and effort and analysis of very complex data.
• Sequential data are collected on successive cross-sectional or longitudinal samples.
• Sequential design can avoid the drawbacks of both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs.
• Each domain/aspect/area of development affects the others, with development in one area sending ripples through all other areas.
• Division of life span into periods is a social construct.
• Typical major developments in eight periods of human development include physical developments, cognitive developments, and psychosocial developments.
• Prenatal period (conception to birth) includes normal fertilization or other means, genetic endowment interacts with environmental influences from the start, and basic body structures and organs form.
• Infancy and toddlerhood (birth to age 3) include all senses and body systems operating at birth to varying degrees, the brain growing in complexity and being highly sensitive to environmental influence, and physical growth and development of motor skills being rapid.
• Early childhood (ages 3 - 6) include steady growth, appearance becoming more slender and proportions more adultlike, appetite diminishing, and sleep increasing.
• Middle childhood (ages 6 - 11) include slowing of growth, strength and athletic skills improving, and respiratory illnesses being common, but health generally being better than at any other time in the life span.
• Adolescence (ages 11 - 20) include rapid and profound physical growth and other changes, reproductive maturity occurring, and major health risks arising from behavioral issues, such as eating disorders and drug abuse.
• Development shows plasticity, with many abilities, such as memory, strength, and endurance, can be improved significantly with training and practice, even late in life.
• Normative Age-Graded Influences are highly similar for people in a particular age group and the timing of biological events is fairly predictable within a normal range.
• Race is a grouping of humans distinguished by their outward physical characteristics or social qualities from other groups and is not a biological construct.
• Ethnic Group is a group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, or national origins, which contribute to a sense of shared identity.
• Historical Generation is a group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives.
• Imprinting (Konrad Lorenz) is an instinctive form of learning in which, during a critical period in early development, a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees, usually the mother.
• Ethnic Minorities are ethnic groups with national or cultural traditions different from the majority of the population and are often affected by prejudice and discrimination.
• Critical Period is a specific time when a given event or its absence has a specific impact on development.
• Nonnormative Influences are unusual events that have a major impact on individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle or are atypical events that happen at an atypical time of life.
• Sensitive Period is a time in development when a person is particularly open to certain kinds of experiences.
• Normative History-Graded Influences are significant events that shape the behavior and attitudes of a historical generation.
• Life-Span Developmental Approach views development as a lifelong process of change, occurring along multiple interacting dimensions — biological, psychological, and social — each of which may develop at varying rates.
• Collectivistic Cultures prioritize collaborative social goals ahead of individual goals and view themselves in the context of their social relationships.
• Development involves changing resource allocations, with individuals choosing to invest their resources of time, energy, talent, money, and social support in varying ways.
• Cohort is a group of people born at about the same time.
• Development is influenced by the historical and cultural context.
• Concrete Operational Stage (~7 years old to 11 years old) is when children can perform operations that involve objects, and they can reason logically when the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples.
• Cognitive Developmental Theory (Jean Piaget) views development organismically and emphasizes mental aspects of developments such as logic and memory.
• Preoperational Stage (~2 years old to 7 years old) is when children represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
• Reciprocal Determinism is Bandura’s term for bidirectional forces that affect development.
• Information-Processing Theory helps explain how much information people of different ages can manage at one time and how they process it; provides a useful framework for studying individual differences in people of the same age.
• Social Learning Theory/Social Cognitive Theory (Albert Bandura) suggests that behavior, environment, and cognition are the key factors in development.
• The child is not seen as just an outcome of development; the child is an active shaper of development in Ecological Theory (Urie Bronfenbrenner).
• Scaffolding is the supportive assistance with a task that parents, teachers, or others give a child.
• Attrition is the loss of study units from a sample.
• Formal Operational Stage (11 - 15 years and through adulthood) is when individuals begin to think in abstract and more logical terms.