Human Dev. Definitions Test 1

Front 1

What is the normative approach?

Back 1

An approach in which measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals, and age related averages are computed to represent typical dev.

Front 2

What is the psychoanalytic perspective?

Back 2

A perspective where people move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflicts are resolved determines the person's ability to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety.

Front 3

Psychosexual theory?

Back 3

A theory which emphasizes that how parents manage their child's sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality dev.

Front 4

Psychosocial theory?

Back 4

Erikson, emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to dev., acquiring attitudes and skills at each stage that make the individual an active, contributing member of society.

Front 5

Behaviorism?

Back 5

Directly observable events-stimuli and responses-are the appropriate focus of study.

Front 6

Social learning theory?

Back 6

A theory devised by Albert Bandura and emphasizes modeling, also known as imitation or observational learning, as a powerful sources of dev.

Front 7

Behavior modification?

Back 7

Consists of procedures that combine conditioning modeling to eliminate undesirable behaviors and increase desirable responses.

Front 8

Cognitive Developmental theory?

Back 8

A theory that argues that children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world.

Front 9

Information processing?

Back 9

An perspective that suggests that the human mind might also be viewed as a symbol-manipulating system through which info flows

Front 10

Developmental cognitive neuroscience?

Back 10

A new area of investigation that brings together researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and medicine to study the relationship changes in the brain and dev. person's cognitive processing and behavior patterns.

Front 11

Ethology?

Back 11

Is concerned with the adaptive or survival value of behavior and its evolutionary history.

Front 12

Sensitive period?

Back 12

Is a time that is optimal for certain capacities to emerge and in which the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences. However it boundaries are less well defined than those of a critical period. Dev. can occur later but its harder to induce.

Front 13

Evolutionary dev. psychology?

Back 13

It seeks to understand the adaptive value of specieswide cognitive, emotional and social competencies as those competencies change with age.

Front 14

Sociocultural theory?

Back 14

Focuses on how culture, the values, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group-is transmitted to the next generation. According to Vygotsky social interaction is particular cooperative dialogues with the more knowledgeable members of society -is necessary for children to acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community's culture.

Front 15

Ecological systems theory?

Back 15

view the person developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of surrounding environment.

Front 16

Microsystem? (Bronfenbrenner)

Back 16

The innermost level of the environment consists of activities and interaction patterns in the person's immediate surroundings.

Front 17

Mesosystem?

Back 17

The second level of Bronfenbrenner's model, that encompasses connections between the microsystems.

Front 18

Exosystem?

Back 18

Consists of social settings that do not contain the developing person but nevertheless affect experiences in immediate settings.

Front 19

macrosystem?

Back 19

consists of cultural values, laws, customs, and resources.

Front 20

Chronosystem?

Back 20

The temporal dimension of his model; Life changes can be imposed externally or can arise from within the person, since individuals shape many of their own settings and experiences.

Front 21

Naturalistic observation?

Back 21

An approach where individuals go in to the field, or natural environment, and record the behavior of interest.

Front 22

Structured observations?

Back 22

Observations in which the investigator sets up a laboratory situation that evokes that behavior of interest so that every participant has an equal opportunity to display the response.

Front 23

Clinical interview?

Back 23

Researchers use flexible conversational style to probe for participants point of view.

Front 24

Structured interview?

Back 24

An interview that includes tests and questionnaires in which each participant is asked the same set of questions in the same way.

Front 25

Clinical or case study method?

Back 25

A method that brings together a wide range of information on one person, including interviews, observations, and sometimes test scores.