Devpsych

• Human development


  The scientific study of processes of change and stability throughout the human life span
• Goals of the study of human development

  • Description
  • Explanation
  • Prediction
  • Intervention
• Life-span development


  From "womb to tomb", comprising the entire human life span from conception to death
• Domains of development


  • Physical development
  • Cognitive development
  • Psychosocial development
• Social construction


  A concept or practice that is an invention of a particular culture or society
• Chippewa Indians - concept of adolescence still does not exist
• Periods of the life span

  • From birth until the child walks
  • From walking to puberty
• Heredity


  Inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents
• Environment


  Totality of nonhereditary, or experiential, influences on development, starting at conception with the prenatal environment in the womb and continuing throughout life
• Maturation


  The unfolding of a natural sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns
• Contexts of development


  • Family
  • Socioeconomic status
  • Risk factors
  • Culture and race/ethnicity
  • Historical context
• Nuclear family


  Two-generational kinship, economic, and household unit consisting of one or two parents and their biological children, adopted children, or stepchildren
• Extended family


  Multigenerational kinship network of parents, children, and other relatives, sometimes living together in an extended-family household
• Socioeconomic status (SES)


  Combination of economic and social factors describing an individual or family, including income, education, and occupation
• Risk factors


  Conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative developmental outcome
• Culture


  A society's or group's total way of life, including its customs, traditions, laws, knowledge, beliefs, values, language, and physical products —all of the behavior and attitudes that are learned, shared, and transmitted among members of a social group
• Ethnic group


  A group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, or national origins, which contribute to a sense of shared identity
• Ethnic gloss


  Overgeneralization about an ethnic or cultural group that obscures differences within the group
• Historical context


  The time in which people live, and how certain experiences, tied to time and place, affect the course of people's lives
• Normative influences


  Characteristic of an event that occurs in a similar way for most people in a group
• Types of normative influences

  • Normative age-graded influences
  • Normative history-graded influences
• Normative age-graded influences


  Highly similar for people in a particular age group
• Normative history-graded influences


  Significant events (such as the Great Depression or World War II) that shape the behavior and attitudes of a historical generation
• Historical generation


  A group of people who experience a major, shaping historical event at a formative time in their lives
• Cohort


  A group of people born at about the same time
• Nonnormative influences


  Characteristic of an unusual event that happens to a particular person or a typical event that happens at an unusual time of life
• Imprinting


  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
• Critical period


  A specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development
• Sensitive period


  Times in development when a person is particularly open to certain kinds of experiences
• Plasticity


  Range of modifiability of performance
• Key principles of a life-span developmental approach

  • Development is lifelong
  • Development is multidimensional
  • Development is multidirectional
  • Relative influences of biology and culture shift over the life span
  • Development involves changing resource allocations
  • Development shows plasticity
  • Development is influenced by the historical and cultural context
• Theory


  Coherent set of logically related concepts that seeks to organize, explain, and predict data
• Hypothesis


  Possible explanations for phenomena, used to predict the outcome of research
• Tabula rasa


  A "blank slate" - the child developed, in either positive or negative ways, depended entirely on experiences
• Reactive development


  The developing child as a hungry sponge that soaks up experiences and is shaped by this input over time
• Active development


  People create experiences for themselves and are motivated to learn about the world around them
• Mechanistic model


  People are like machines that react to environmental input
• Organismic model


  Sees people as active, growing organisms that set their own development in motion
• Continuous development


  Gradual and incremental, governed by the same processes and involves the gradual refinement and extension of early skills into later abilities
• Discontinuous development


  Abrupt or uneven, marked by the emergence of new phenomena that could not be easily predicted on the basis of past functioning