Psychology Chapter 4

Front 1

developmental psychology

Back 1

a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

Front 2

zygote

Back 2

the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.

Front 3

embryo

Back 3

the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilisation through the second month.

Front 4

fetus

Back 4

the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Front 5

fetus

Back 5

the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Front 6

teratogens

Back 6

agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

Front 7

fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

Back 7

physical and cognitive abnormalitites in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions.

Front 8

rooting reflex

Back 8

a baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to open the mouth and search for the nipple.

Front 9

habituation

Back 9

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeted exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Front 10

maturatoin

Back 10

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Front 11

maturatoin

Back 11

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Front 12

schema

Back 12

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Front 13

assimilation

Back 13

interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schemas.

Front 14

accomodation

Back 14

adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Front 15

cognition

Back 15

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Front 16

object prmanence

Back 16

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Front 17

sensorimotor stage

Back 17

in piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressiions and motor activities.

Front 18

preoperational stage

Back 18

in piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet compreend the mental operations of concrete logic.

Front 19

conservation

Back 19

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Front 20

egocentrism

Back 20

in Piaget's theory, the inability of the preoperational child to take another's point of view.

Front 21

theory of mind

Back 21

people's ideas about their own and others' mental states- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.

Front 22

autism

Back 22

a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind.

Front 23

concrete operational stage

Back 23

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

Front 24

formal operational stage

Back 24

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.