Research Methods
This research method, which can be administered orally or in written form, allows researchers to efficiently collect data from many participants at once about children’s emotions, beliefs, and behaviors.
What is a questionnaire?
This research design involves intensive, repeated observations over a short period to closely examine processes of change as they occur.
What is a microgenetic design?
This term refers to the social, cultural, historical, and environmental factors that shape individuals’ beliefs, behaviors, and development.
What is sociocultural context?
This set of cognitive processes includes skills such as planning, working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility that help individuals regulate behavior and achieve goals.
Correct response: What is executive functioning?
This is the tendency to focus on one salient aspect of a situation and neglect other aspects.
What is centration?
The genes are found on these structures.
These two broad concepts influence developmental outcomes and are said to have a bidirectional relationship, starting in pre-natal development and continuing throughout the lifespan.
This genetic term describes an individual who has two identical alleles for a particular gene.
What is homozygous?
This research method involves in-depth, one-on-one conversations conducted by a trained professional to explore an individual child’s thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
What is a clinical interview?
This concept refers to the consistency of a measurement tool, indicating whether it produces stable, repeatable results over time or across conditions.
What is reliability?
Thiscultural tool is being used when a more knowledgeable person organizes an activity in ways that allow the other to learn.
A child calls all four-legged animals “dogs,” fitting new experiences into an existing mental category, illustrating this Piagetian process.
What is assimilation?
This is the representation in memory of specific features of objects and events
What is encoding?
This neural process involves the formation of a fatty sheath around axons, increasing the speed and efficiency of neural communication?
What is myelination?
Newborns spend most of their time doing this activity.
This region of the brain is primarily responsible for processing auditory information and is closely involved in emotion and memory.
What is the temporal lobe?
This research method uses a standardized set of predetermined questions administered consistently across participants, allowing for systematic comparison of responses
What are structured interviews?
This form of reliability assesses whether a measurement produces similar results when administered to the same individuals at different points in time.
What is test-retest reliability?
According to the constructivist view, children organize their understandings into informal domains of physics, biology, and this domain.
What is psychology?
In Piaget’s theory, this process drives cognitive development by restoring balance between existing knowledge and new experiences when a child encounters information that does not fit their current understanding.
What is equilibration?
This classic error occurs when an infant repeatedly searches for an object in its original hiding place even after seeing it moved to a new location.
What is the A-not-B error?
This developmental process strengthens frequently used neural connections while eliminating weaker or unused ones, increasing the efficiency of the brain.
What is synaptic pruning?
This prenatal structure functions as the fetus’s personal life-support system, managing nutrients, oxygen, and waste throughout pregnancy.
What is the placenta?
This genetic term describes an individual who has two different alleles for a particular gene.
What is heterozygous?
This research method involves systematically observing and recording behavior in real-world settings without manipulating the environment or directly interacting with participants.
What are naturalistic observations?
This concept refers to the extent to which a test or measure accurately assesses what it is intended to measure.
What is validity?
This theoretical perspective argues that children have significant innate knowledge that is present at birth, but that they also rapidly gain more in important domains.
After learning that cats and dogs are different animals, a child creates a new mental category to distinguish between them, demonstrating this Piagetian process.
What is accommodation?
According to Piaget, symbolic representation emerges during this stage of development.
What is the preoperational stage?
This lobe of the cerebral cortex is important for foresight and goal-directed behavior, as indicated by the Phineas Gage case study.
What is the frontal lobe?
This prenatal structure acts like a built-in shock absorber, surrounding the fetus in fluid, providing cushioning and a stable environment during pregnancy.
What is the amniotic sac?
This view of development describes change as gradual, smooth, and cumulative, with skills and abilities increasing incrementally over time.
This research method synthesizes findings from multiple independent studies to draw conclusions based on the combined evidence.
What is a meta-analysis?
This type of relationship occurs when increases in one variable are associated with increases in another, and decreases in one are associated with decreases in the other.
What is a positive correlation?
These theories propose that humans are born with specialized, domain-specific systems of knowledge that provide a foundation for later learning.
What are core-knowledge theories?
A caregiver provides temporary, tailored support to help a child master a new skill by helping with the parts that are too difficult for the child’s developmental level and then slowly withdraws assistance as the child becomes more capable.
What is social scaffolding?
This early social skill involves two individuals coordinating their attention toward the same object or event, often through eye gaze, pointing, or gestures
What is joint attention?
This property of the brain refers to its ability to change in response to experience, learning, or injury across development.
What is plasticity?
This thing has 3 layers and develops into the body parts of the fetus.
What is the inner cell mass?
These branch-like extensions of neurons receive signals from other cells and help transmit information within the nervous system.
What are dendrites?
This research design examines different individuals grouped by age at a single point in time to compare characteristics or outcomes.
What is cross-sectional design?
This type of correlation is illustrated in a study that finds that as children’s daily screen time increases, the number of hours they sleep decreases.
What is a negative correlation?
According to dynamic systems theory, this mechanism of change refers to the presence of multiple possible behaviors or strategies that can be used to achieve the same goal.
What is variation?
This type of memory involves the durable storage of information, experiences, and skills over extended periods of time, ranging from hours to a lifetime.
What is long term memory?
A child assumes that everyone else can see exactly what they see and knows what they know, illustrating this Piagetian concept.
What is egocentrism?
Unlike epigenetic changes, this type of genetic alteration permanently changes the DNA sequence itself and can arise during prenatal development.
What is a mutation?
These environmental agents can disrupt prenatal development, causing physical or cognitive harm—making pregnancy the one time “exposure” really means exposure.
What are teratogens?
When children move from not understanding object permanence to reliably searching for hidden objects as they enter a new cognitive stage, this pattern reflects this type of development.
What is discontinuity?
This research design follows the same individuals over a long period to observe changes and developmental trends.
What is a longitudinal design?
Researchers find that ice cream sales and drowning incidents rise together in the summer, but this important principle reminds us that one does not cause the other.
What is correlation is NOT causation?
This theory of cognitive development proposes that children actively construct knowledge through interaction with their environment and progress through a series of distinct stages.
A student keeps a phone number in mind just long enough to dial it, but forgets it shortly afterward, illustrating the temporary storage and manipulation of information handled by this type of memory.
Correct response: What is working memory?
In Piaget’s theory, this stage is marked by logical thinking about concrete objects and events, including mastery of conservation, classification, and reversibility, typically occurring between ages 7 and 11.
What is the Concrete Operational Stage?
This process involves the formation of new neurons in the brain, occurring primarily during prenatal development and in limited regions later in life.
This developmental principle explains why babies begin life looking slightly top-heavy, as if their heads got a head start and the rest of the body is still catching up.
This philosopher introduced the idea of the mind as a “blank slate,” arguing that knowledge comes from experience rather than innate ideas.
Who is John Locke?
This type of validity refers to the extent to which the results of a study can be generalized to other populations, settings, or situations.
What is external validity?
This issue arises when an observed relationship between two variables is actually explained by an unmeasured factor influencing both.
What is the third variable problem?
This cognitive theory is illustrated when a child uses counting on fingers, mental math, and memorized facts at the same time, with efficient strategies becoming more common over time.
What is overlapping waves theory?
This sociocultural theory of cognitive development emphasizes the role of social interaction, language, and cultural tools in shaping children’s thinking and learning.
What is Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development?
In Piaget’s theory, children in this stage typically struggle with the pendulum task because they cannot systematically isolate and test one variable at a time
What is the concrete operational stage?
During the formation of eggs or sperm, sections of DNA are swapped between homologous chromosomes, illustrating this source of genetic diversity.
What is crossing over?
During prenatal development, this concept refers to specific windows when certain organs or structures are especially vulnerable to environmental influences, as illustrated by historical medication-related birth defects.
What is a sensitive period of development?
According to this ancient philosopher, prenatal development involved progressive “ensoulment,” with different capacities emerging at different stages.
Who is Aristotle?
This type of research method is not great for studying behaviors that don't occur frequently.
What is naturalistic observation?
This concept addresses whether one variable influences another, the reverse is true, or if the relationship between them operates in both directions.
What is direction of causation?
This theory of development explains cognition as emerging from the continuous, nonlinear interaction of multiple systems—such as brain, body, and environment—over time.
What is a dynamic systems theory of development?
A researcher explains children’s learning by examining how quickly they process information, how much they can hold in working memory, and how efficiently they use strategies over time, reflecting this theoretical approach.
What are information-processing theories of cognitive development?
This concept refers to the mutual sharing of emotions, intentions, or understanding between individuals, forming the foundation for shared meaning and social connection.
What is intersubjectivity?
Early stress or environmental experiences alter how certain genes are turned on or off through this epigenetic mechanism.
This theory suggested babies begin as itty-bitty humans already assembled, proving that even scientists once believed in biological shrink-wrapping
What is preformationism?
This philosopher believed children should be given as much freedom as possible and that formal education should be delayed until they were at least 12.
Who was Rousseau?
Although high experimental control strengthens internal validity, it often reduces this type of validity by limiting how well findings generalize to real-world settings.
A caregiver provides temporary, tailored support to help a child master a new skill by helping with the parts that are too difficult for the child’s developmental level and then slowly withdraws assistance as the child becomes more capable.
What is social scaffolding?
This type of brain plasticity relies on experiences that are common to nearly all members of a species and must occur during sensitive periods for typical development to proceed.
What is Experience-Expectant Plasticity?
In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, this earliest stage is characterized by learning through sensory experiences and motor actions, including the development of object permanence, from birth to about age 2.
What is the Sensorimotor Stage?
This process involves newly formed cells moving to their proper locations in the developing brain to form organized structures.
What is cell migration?
This learning process is demonstrated when a fetus shows decreased response to a repeated sound or stimulus over time.
What is habituation?
This term refers to the single-cell formed when a sperm fertilizes an egg, marking the beginning of prenatal development.
What is a zygote?
This part of the scientific process asks what relationship or phenomenon will be examined, while a hypothesis specifies the expected result.
What is a research question?
THis is the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing (tightly controlled)
What is internal validity?
The repetition of other people’s behavior after it occurred (e.g., imitating stomping feet) is known as this.
What is deferred imitation?
According to this concept, changing the appearance or arrangement of objects does not necessarily change other key properties.
This type of brain plasticity reflects learning from individual, unique experiences and leads to neural changes that vary from person to person across the lifespan.
What is experience dependent plasticity?
This type of gene is expressed only when two copies are present, with its effects hidden when paired with a dominant allele.
What is are recessive genes?
This developmental process occurs when cells become specialized in structure and function, such as forming muscle, nerve, or blood cells.
This sleep stage, which occurs more frequently in infants than adults, is associated with brain development and neural growth
What is REM sleep?