Developmental Psychology PDF

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This document contains information on developmental psychology, ranging from infancy to adulthood. It includes the stages of cognitive, social, and physical development. It also goes into detail about parenting styes and prenatal development....

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Development  Developmental psychology: a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span o Prenatal development  Zygote: the fertilized egg; enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo  Embryo: the developing human organism fromm about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month  Fetus: the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth  Teratogens: agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm  Fetal alcohol syndrome: physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking; signs include a small head and abnormal face features o Habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation; as infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner  Infancy and childhood o Maturation: biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience o In humans, the brain is immature at birth, but neural networks grow more complex as the child matures o Physical development: sit-crawl-walk-run; the sequence of these milestones is the same worldwide o Cognitive development  Cognition: all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating  Schema: a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information  Assimilation: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas  Accommodation: adapting our current understandings to incorporate new information  Stages of cognitive development (Piaget’s theory)

 Sensorimotor stage: the stage from birth to nearly two years during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities o Object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived o Baby physics: infants look longer at unexpected and unfamiliar scenes o Baby math: infants respond to greater or smaller mass of objects rather than a change in number  Preoperational stage: the stage from about two years to about six or seven years during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend mental operations of concrete logic o Conservation: the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects o Egocentricism: the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view o Theory of mind: people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict  Concrete operational stage: the stage from about seven years to eleven years during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events  Formal operational events: the stage from twelve years during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts  Autism spectrum disorder: a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communcation and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors  Social development  Stranger anxiety: the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age  Human bonding o Attachment: an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking

closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation  Familiarity o Critical period: an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development o Imprinting: the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life  Basic trust: a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers  Self concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question “who am I”  Parenting styles  Authoritarian: parents are coercive and impose rules and expect obedience  Permissive: parents are unrestraining and make few demands and use little punishments; may be indifferent, unresponsive, or unwilling to set limits  Authoritative: parents are confrontive; are demanding and responsive but encourage open discussion and allow exceptions o Adolescence: the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence  Puberty: the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing  Early vs late maturing: sequence of changes is predictable, but timing is not  The teenage brain: a work in progress; hormonal surges explain occasional impulsiveness and risk behavior  Cognitive development  Reasoning: they apply their new abstract reasoning tools to the world around them  Morality: crucial task of discerning right from wrong and developing character—psychological muscles for controlling impulses o Moral reasoning: the thinking that occurs as we consider right from wrong

o Moral intuition: quick gut feelings or affectively laden intuitions o Moral action: doing the right thing  Social development  Identity: our sense of self; adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testingand integrating various roles  Social identities: the “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer for “who am I” that comes from our group memberships  Intimacy: the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in young adulthood  Emerging adulthood: a period from abut age 18 to mid-twenties when many are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults...