Theories of Development

Key Terms: Child Development

• Amygdala processes emotions like fear and pleasure.
• Clinical interview involves open-ended questions to gather in-depth information.
• Cognitive development is how children think, learn, and understand.
• Continuous development describes gradual development with small changes.
• Control group is the group in an experiment that does not receive treatment, used for comparison.
• Correlation is a relationship between two variables that change together.
• Correlational designs look for relationships between variables, without cause and effect.
• Cross-sectional design compares different groups of people at one point in time.
• Cumulative risk involves multiple risks or negative factors increasing problems.
• Dependent variable is measured or tested in an experiment.
• Direction-of-causation problem is the issue of unclear variable causation in correlation.
• Discontinuous development is when development happens in distinct stages.
• Epigenetics is the study of how environment changes gene expression without altering DNA.
• Experimental control maintains consistent factors, except for what's being tested.
• Experimental designs involve a researcher manipulating to see its effect on another variable.
• Experimental group receives the treatment or intervention in an experiment.
• External validity describes the extent to which study findings can be generalized.
• Genome is the complete set of genes or DNA in an organism.
• Hypotheses are testable predictions about what will happen in an experiment.
• Independent variable is what's manipulated or changed in an experiment.
• Internal validity is whether results are due to the independent variable and not other factors.
• Interrater reliability describes the consistency of measurements between researchers.
• Longitudinal design studies the same group of people over a long period.
• Meta-analysis combines results of multiple studies to draw overall conclusions.
• Methylation is the process of environmental influences turning genes on or off.
• Microgenetic design looks at small changes in development over a short time.
• Naturalistic observation is when behavior is observed in its natural environment.
• Nature refers to genetic or biological influences on development.
• Neurotransmitters are the chemicals in the brain that transmit signals.
• Nurture refers to the environmental influences, such as upbringing and culture.
• Prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision-making, planning, and behavior control.
• Questionnaire collects data through self-answered written questions.
• Random assignment assigns participants randomly to avoid bias.
• Reliability is the consistency of a measure over time.
• Replicability refers to the ability for a study's results to be repeatable.
• Scientific method involves systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation.
• Sociocultural context is the social and cultural environment a person grows up in.
• Socioeconomic status (SES) refers to a person's social and economic standing.
• Stage theories suggest development occurs in distinct stages.
• Structured interview uses a set of pre-determined questions in a specific order.
• Structured observation involves observing people in a controlled setting.
• Test-retest reliability describes the consistency of a test's results over time.
• Third-variable problem is the issue in correlational studies where a third factor influences variables.
• Validity refers to the extent to which a test measures what it's supposed to.
• Variables are factors that can change or vary in a study.

Key Terms (cont.): Child Development

• Achievement motivation is the desire to achieve goals and be successful.
• Anal stage, in Freud's theory, is when children focus on controlling their bladder/bowel.
• Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) indicates difficulty paying attention and controlling impulses.
• Behavior modification uses reinforcement/punishment to change behavior.
• Chronosystem includes changes over the life course and historical events, in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.
• Ego, in Freud's theory, deals with reality and satisfies the id in an acceptable way.
• Entity theory describes the belief that abilities are fixed.
• Entity/helpless orientation means individuals attribute success/failure to fixed abilities, leading to helplessness.
• Erogenous zones are areas of the body sensitive to stimulation, playing a key role in sexual development.
• Ethology is the study of animal behavior in natural environments, influencing understanding of human development.
• Exosystem is the larger social system that indirectly influences the child, in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.
• Genital stage, in Freud's theory, is the final stage of development focused on mature sexual relationships.
• Hostile attributional bias is the tendency to see others' actions as hostile.
• Id, in Freud's theory, is driven by basic instincts, especially for pleasure.
• Imprinting is a form of learning where animals attach to the first moving object observed.
• Incremental theory describes the belief that abilities can grow and improve with effort and practice.
• Incremental/mastery orientation means individuals believe abilities can improve and view challenges as learning.
• Intermittent reinforcement involves rewards at irregular intervals, making behaviors more resistant to extinction.
• Latency period, in Freud's theory, is when sexual development is less prominent, and social skills are developed.
• Macrosystem includes cultural, societal, and institutional influences, in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.
• Mesosystem includes interactions between different parts of a child's environment, in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.
• Microsystem is the immediate environment in which a child lives, in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory.
• Oral stage, in Freud's theory, is when the mouth is the primary focus.
• Parental-investment theory suggests parents invest resources in offspring to ensure their survival.
• Phallic stage, in Freud's theory, is when children focus on genitals and attraction to the opposite-sex parent.
• Reciprocal determinism means a child's behavior, environment, and personal factors all influence each other.
• Role-taking refers to the ability to understand the perspective of others.
• Self-socialization means children actively shape their own social development.
• Superego, in Freud's theory, holds moral standards and acts as a conscience.
• Vicarious reinforcement is learning through observing the consequences of others' behavior.

Key Terms(cont.): Child Development

• A-not-B error: The infant searches for the object where it was first found and not where they last saw it.
• Accommodation adjusts existing knowledge to incorporate new information
• Assimilation integrates new information into existing knowledge without changing them
• Basic processes: Simple mental operations like encoding, remembering, and retrieving information
• Centration : The tendency to focus on one aspect of a problem, ignoring others, common in the preoperational stage.
• Computer simulation: Modeling human cognition using a software program to replicate information processing
• Concrete operational stage: Piaget's third stage (7–11) where children develop logical thinking about events
• Conservation concept: Quantity remains the same even when its appearance changes
• Constructivism: The theory that children actively construct their own understanding of the world through experiences.
• Core-knowledge theories: Theories that children are born with innate knowledge in specific domains.
• Cultural tools: Physical/psychological tools that help people interact with the world.
• Deferred imitation: Reproducing an action observed earlier.
• Domain specific: Relating to knowledge or skills that apply to a particular area.
• Dynamic-systems theories: Focus on how factors interact over time to shape development.
• Egocentrism: Inability to see things from another's perspective, of the preoperational stage.
• Encoding: Converting information into a form that can be stored.
• Equilibration: Balancing assimilation and accommodation to achieve cognitive stability.
• Formal operational stage: Piaget's fourth stage (12+) when individuals develop abstract reasoning skills.
• Guided participation: Process where knowledgeable individuals help children through interactions.
• Information-processing theories: Compare the mind to a computer to focus on processing information.
• Intersubjectivity: Shared understanding between people during communication.
• Joint attention: Focusing on the same object/event as another person.
• Long-term memory: The extended storage of information.
• Nativism: The idea that certain abilities are innate.
• Object permanence: Understanding objects exist even when they cannot be seen/heard.
• Overlapping waves theory: the ideas that children use multiple strategies to solve problems, and these coexist/change
• Piaget's theory - cognitive development occurs in four stages constructed.
• Preoperational stage: Language/symbols are used, but there are limitations in logical thinking (2–7).

Key Terms (cont.): Child Development

• Private speech is self-directed to guide behavior and thinking.
• Problems solving is the process of complex solutions
• Rehearsal improves retention using repetition.
• Selective attention is focusing while ignoring others.
• Sensorimotor stage occurs from birth – 2 years - learning via senses/actions.
• Social scaffolding involves support to help accomplish tasks.
• Sociocultural theories focus on social interaction/culture in cognitive development.
• Symbolic representation uses symbols to represent objects, ideas
• Task analysis means breaking down complex tasks to better understand it.
• Working memory temporarily holds/manipulates information to perform tasks like reasoning.

Key Terms (cont.): Language Acquisition

• Babbling is an early stage of speech development in infants.
• Bilingualism is the ability to speak and understand two languages.
• Categorical perception means distinguishing speech sounds into categories.
• Connectionism: Suggests learning occurs through creating connections.
• Cross-situational word learning means learning word meanings by observation in different contexts and situations.
• Dialect is a language variation spoken in a particular area.
• Distributional properties of speech describes patterns in words that occur in speech.
• Dual representation means understanding that objects have two meanings.
• Generative refers to the process of language using rules and allowing the formation of an unlimited number of sentences.
• Infant-directed speech (IDS) describes the way adults speak to infants.
• Language comprehension refers to the ability to understand language.
• Language production refers to the ability to produce language.
• Morphemes describes the smallest unit of meaning in a language.
• Narratives are stories with events and sequences of actions and occurrences.
• Overextension refers to when a word is applied too broadly; under extension is the opposite
• Overregularization refers to applying grammar rules too rigidly.
• Phonemes describes the smallest unit of sound.
• Pragmatic cues are social/contextual hints to understand meaning.
• Pragmatics: The study of language in social contexts (sarcasm / politeness).
• Prosody helps communication with emotion, rhythm, and emphasis.
• Symbols stand for something else.
• Syntactic bootstrapping occurs when the grammatical structure assists recognition of unknown values/terms.
• Syntax describes the rules/structure of words in sentences.
• Telegraphic speech includes short sentences with the omission of non-essential words.
• Universal Grammar assumes babies are born being able to understand that all languages are shared by common structure.
• Voice onset time is between the release of a word and vocal cord.
• Word segmentation breaks up speech into individual words.

Psychoanalytic Theories

• Freud emphasizes early experience, unconscious motivation, and relationships in developmental psychology.
• Erikson extended Freud's theory by identifying eight psychosocial stages, each defined by a crisis.

Learning Theories

• Watson believed in environmental factors, especially reinforcement, to influence children's development heavily.
• Skinner discovered intermittent reinforcement and attention powerfully influence behavior.
• Bandura emphasized the importance of observational learning and cognition in social learning.

Theories of Social Cognition

• Social cognitive theories believe children's knowledge and beliefs are important in development.
• Selman proposed that children progressively develop the ability to take on another person's perspective.
• Social information-processing emphasizes children's attributions regarding behavior.
• Dweck's theory of self-attribution focuses on how self-attribution influences their motivation.

Ecological Theories

• Ethological theories analyze behavior in its evolutionary context to understand its value.
• Evolutionary psychologists use Darwinian concepts of natural selection to explain human behavior.
• Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model organizes the environment as systems around the child.

Key Terms: Biological Development

• Alleles are different forms of a gene that can exist.
• Arborization occurs when branching out of dendrites in neurons forms connections.
• Association areas controls higher-level brain functions thinking, memory, and decision-making.
• Axons transmit signals between neurons.
• Behavior genetics: The study of how genetics influences behavior.
• Carrier genetic testing is the act of testing for possible recessive genetic disorders.
• Cell body is the central part of a neuron.
• Cerebral cortex: The outer layer of the brain involved in functions including thinking, memory etc.
• Cerebral hemispheres are the two halves of the brain.

Key Terms (cont): Cellular and Genetic Development

• Cerebral lateralization is when certain brain functions become more specialized within cerebral hemispheres.
• Chromosomes are the structures made of DNA, and humans have 23 pairs.
• Corpus callosum consists of nerve fibers connecting hemispheres.
• Crossing over describes how chromosomes exchanges segments.
• Dendrites consists of branch structures of neurons that receive signals.
• DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): Carries genetic information.
• Dominant allele means an allele that expresses its trait even when only one copy is present.
• Endophenotypes are internal characteristics that relate to genetic traits.
• Environment consists of all external factors, including family and culture.
• Epigenetics describes the study of changes in gene expression through environmental factors.
• Experience-dependent plasticity creates organizational ability based on experiences.
• Experience-expectant plasticity brain ability that responds to sensory stimuli.
• Frontal lobe regulates problem-solving, voluntary movement, and decision-making.
• Genes are the units of heredity that influence traits.
• Genome is the complete set of genes or genetic material.
• Genotype: The genetic makeup.
• Glial cells protect and support neurons.
• Heritability explains how much genetic factors contribute to varying a triat.
• Heritable: Can be passed down through genetics.
• Heterozygous: Having two different alleles for a gene.
• Homozygous: Having two identical alleles for a gene.
• Mutation: A change within the DNA sequence.
• Myelin sheath insulates axons and speeds up transmission.
• Myelination improves efficiency of axons through sheath production.
• Neurogenesis: The formation of new brain neurons.
• Neurons: Nerve cells that are able to transmit signals.
• Newborn screening tests for genetic/metabolic disorders for enabling early intervention.
• Occipital lobe controls visual processes information.
• Parietal lobe controls temperature, touch and pain.
• Phenotype: Is affected by gentics or surrounding enironment.
• Phenylketonuria (PKU) occurs when brain is damaged and the body cant break anmino acid.
• Plasticity refers to brains ability to change and adapting
• Polygenic inheritance: Inherited through different combined effected genes.
• Prenatal testing: Tests during pregnancy to check for possible health/gene issues.
• Recessive allele: Only expresses when copies are present.
• Regulator genes regulate or control other gene.
• Secular trends involves long tern physical changes caused by health enviroment.
• Sex chromosomes determine biological factors X and Y in humans.

Key Terms: Neurons and Genetics

• Spines are small protrusions where synapses form with connections.
• Synapses are gaps where signals are transmitted.
• Synaptic pruning eliminates unused synapses to improve efficiency.
• Synaptogenesis describes the formation of new synapses.
• Temporal lobe processes sounds through memory and information.
• The starting point of all development is all inherited through ones parent through conceptiom through genotypes and gene.
• Environmental outcomes varies on how outcomes are developed through people, experiences.
• Childrens development is influneces their envrioment.
• Epigenetics describes gene switches/off that happens during developmental and is known as a factor for individual genetic traits.

Behavior Genetics

• Behavior genetics: Genetic and environmental have a joint influnece when talking about envriomental factors.
• Quantitive geneticist help heritability estimates.
• Molecular genetics permits family move along the field to move beyond family genetics.
• Neurons transmits signals, units of the brains system via electrical signals.
• The cotext is made major areas lobes, specialzed for different function.
• Brain develops in the brain has numerous process, like nuerons development. Synaptogenesis = is generates of among neirons through genrarting after years.
• Myelination which is imprtant to the brian before and after burth.

Plasticity in Brain Development

-Plasticity is one way possible for the brain to rewrites depending on the person in repsonse damages.

• Sensitve periods of stimulation happens for the brain is is able to recover during childhood development depending on children.
• During peiord of growth and the body undergoes more adolecsen and unevely with physical growth during period.
• Nutritional valaue are important for babies.
• Public health effort and eduction are important/advocacy to encourage it.
• Food prefernce starts by inate through the body basic tastes as well as develop through the body experein.
• Inadaquet nutritional are related to poverty Vaccinces helps with disase protectes against vulnerabilties that occur in the body.

Questions covering the psychoanalytic theory of Freud with emphasis on Watson and Skinner's approaches. Furthermore, explore the role of the superego in Freud's theory of personality development. Additionally, the questions touch on reciprocal determinism in child development.