Developmental Psychology

Cards (1036)

  • Human Development
    Focuses on the scientific study of the systematic processes of change and stability in people
  • Life-Span Development
    Concept of human development as lifelong process, which can be studied scientifically
  • Life-Span Perspective
    Views development as lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual, and as a process that involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss
  • Domains of Development
    • Physical Development
    • Cognitive Development
    • Psychosocial Development
  • Physical Development
    Growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health
  • Cognitive Development
    Learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity
  • Psychosocial Development

    Emotions, personality, and social relationships
  • Social Construction
    A concept or practice that is an invention of a particular culture or society
  • Stability-Change Issue
    Degree to which early traits and characteristics persists through life or change
  • Continuity-Discontinuity
    Degree to which development involves either gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity)
  • Growth
    Physical changes, quantitative
  • Maturation
    Transitional state that tells a person is fully functional, the unfolding of natural sequence of physical change and behavior patterns
  • Development
    Functional changes, encompasses physical, mental, and social aspects, progressive
  • Learning
    How a person adapt to the environment
  • Behavioral Genetics
    Scientific study of the extent to which genetic and environmental differences among people and animals are responsible for differences in their traits
  • Heritability
    Proportion of all the variability in the trait within a large sample of people that can be linked to genetic differences among those individuals
  • Gregor Mendel studied the heredity in plants
  • Selective Breeding
    Involves attempting to breed animals for a particular trait to determine whether the trait is heritable
  • Genes contribute to such attributes as activity level, emotionality, aggressiveness, and sex drive in rats mice, and chickens
  • Methods to study heredity
    • Twin Studies
    • Adoption Studies
    • Family Studies
  • Concordance Rate

    The percentage of pairs of people studied in which if one member of a pair displays the trait, the other does too
  • Reaction Range
    Wide range of possibility that it might exhibit differently
  • Canalized Range
    Limited possible changes of changing (fixed), e.g., motor and language development
  • Genes turn on and off in patterned ways throughout the lifespan (Epigenetics)
  • Gene-Environment Interaction
    The effects of genes depend on what kind of environment we experiences, and how we respond to the environment depends on what genes we gave
  • Intelligence is strongly influenced by heredity, but it is also affected by parental stimulation, education, peer influence, and others
  • Factors that contribute to individual differences in emotionality
    • Genes
    • Shared Environmental Influences
    • Nonshared Environmental Influences
  • Types of Gene-Environment Correlations
    • Passive Gene-Environment
    • Evocative Gene-Environment
    • Active Gene-Environment
  • Heredity
    Consists of inborn traits and characteristics provided by the child's parents (Nature)
  • Environment
    Influences stems from the outside body, starting from conception throughout life (Nurture)
  • Individual Differences
    People differ in gender, height, weight, and body build; in health and energy level, etc.
  • Context of Development
    • Family
    • Socioeconomic Status
    • Culture
    • Gender
    • History
  • Socioeconomic Status
    Combination of economic and social factors describing an individual or family, including income, education, and occupation
  • Culture
    Society's or group's total way of life
  • Ethnic Gloss
    Overgeneralization that obscures or blurs variations
  • Race
    Identifiable biological category, is more accurately defined social construct
  • Normative Influences

    Biological or environmental events that affect many or most people in a society in a similar ways and events that touch only certain individuals
  • Types of Normative Influences
    • Normative Age-Graded Influences
    • Normative History-Graded Influences
  • Historical Generation

    Group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives
  • Age Cohort
    Group of people born at about the same time