Developmental Psych Exam I
Terms
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- continuous development
- idea that changes occur gradually
- discontinuous development
- idea that changes include occassional large shifts
- stage theories
- proposes development involves series of discontinuous, age-related phases
- sociocultural context
- physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances=environment
- interrater reliability
- amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behavior
- test-retest reliability
- degree of similarity of a child's performance on two or more occasions
- validity
- degree to which a test measures what it is intended to
- internal validity
- degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the variables that researcher manipulated
- external validity
- degree to which results can be generalized beyond particulars of research
- structured interview
- same questions to all participants
- clinical interview
- interview specific questions
- structured observation
- identical situation to all participants
- direction-of-causation problem
- concept that a correlation between two variables does not indicate which variable is the cause of the other
- third-variable problem
- correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable
- cross-sectional design
- research method in which children of different ages are compared on a given behavior or characteristic over a short period of time
- microgenetic design
- same children are studied repeatedly over a short period of time
- epigenesis
- emergence of new structures and functions in the course of development
- embryology
- study of prenatal development
- gametes (germ cells)
- egg and sperm
- zygote
- fertilized egg cell
- embryo
- 3rd to 8th week of prenatal development
- fetus
- 9th week to birth
- phylogenic continuity
- common evolutionary history humans share with other animals
- apoptosis
- genetically programmed cell death
- placenta
- support organ for fetus
- cephalocaudal development
- pattern of growth in which head develops earlier than areas farther from the head
- sensitive period
- developing organism is most sensitive to the effects of external factors
- dose-response relation
- effect of exposure to an element increases with the extent of exposure
- swaddling
- soothing technique, tightly wrapping bathing in cloths/blankets
- colic
- excessive, inconsolable crying
- low birth weight
- less than 5.5 pounds
- premature
- 35 weeks or earlier (3 weeks early)
- small for gestational age
- babies that weigh less than normal for gestational age
- developmental resilience
- successful development in spite of multiple developmental hazards
- phenotype
- observable expression of the genotype, body characteristics, and behavior
- crossing over
- sections of DNA switch from one chromosome to the other
- regulator genes
- control activity of other genes
- alleles
- two or more different forms of a gene
- polygenic inheritance
- inheritance in which traits are governed by more than one gene
- norm of reaction
- all the phenotypes that can theoretically result from a given genotype
- phenylketonuria
- disorder related to defective recessive gene on chromosome 12 that prevents metabolism of phenylalanine
- temporal lobe
- associated with memory, visual recognition, emotion and auditory info
- parietal lobe
- spatial processing, integrating sensory input with information stored in memory
- frontal lobe
- organizing behavior, planning ahead
- association areas
- between major sensory and motor areas that process and integrate input from those areas
- cerebral hemisphere
- sensory input from one side of the brain to the opposite hemisphere of the brain
- cerebral lateralization
- phenomenon that each hemisphere of the brain is specialized for different modes of processing
- neurogenesis
- proliferation of neurons through cell division
- experience-expectant plasticity
- normal wiring of the brain occurs in part as a result of the kinds of general experiences that every human who inhabits any reasonably normal environment will have
- experience-dependant plasticity
- neural connections created and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individual's experiences
- secular trends
- marked changes in physical development that have occured over generations
- failure-to-thrive (nonorganic) (FTT)
- condition in which infants become malnourished and fail to grow or gain weight for no obvious medical reason
- marasmus
- malnutrition brought about by ingestion of too few calories
- kwashiorkor
- malnutrition brought about by inadequate protein