Development Basics
This field studies how people change and remain the same throughout their lives.
What is lifespan development?
This theorist proposed five psychosexual stages, beginning with the oral stage.
Who is Sigmund Freud?
This one-cell structure forms when a sperm fertilizes an egg.
What is a zygote?
This psychologist proposed the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Who is Jean Piaget?
This term describes a lasting emotional bond with another person.
What is attachment?
Learning, memory, language, and reasoning belong to this domain of development.
What is cognitive development?
Unlike Freud’s emphasis on childhood, this theorist proposed eight psychosocial stages extending across the lifespan.
Who is Erik Erikson?
When someone touches a newborn’s cheek, the baby turns toward the touch.
What is the rooting reflex?
A baby searches for a toy hidden under a blanket because the baby understands that the toy still exists.
What is object permanence?
Mary Ainsworth used this procedure involving a caregiver leaving and returning to examine infant attachment.
What is the Strange Situation?
A researcher studies hundreds of children to identify the average age when children begin walking. This approach establishes typical developmental milestones.
What is the normative approach?
A teenager explores different beliefs, career goals, and peer groups while deciding who they want to become. This is Erikson’s corresponding developmental conflict.
What is identity vs. role confusion?
These are the three prenatal stages, in order from conception to birth.
What are the germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages?
A preschooler assumes that everyone sees and understands the world exactly as they do.
What is egocentrism?
A parent sets reasonable limits, shows affection, and listens to the child’s perspective.
What is authoritative parenting?
One psychologist describes development as gradual improvements in existing skills. Another describes development as movement through distinct stages. Identify both views, in order.
What are continuous development and discontinuous development?
A child calls a zebra a “horse,” then creates a separate category for zebras after learning the difference. Identify the first process
What is assimilation?
An environmental substance crosses from a pregnant person to the developing fetus and causes developmental damage. This is the general term for such an agent.
What is a teratogen?
An older child can reason about abstract ideas and hypothetical situations. What stage is this according to Piaget?
What is the formal operational stage?
An infant is upset when the caregiver leaves but comforted when the caregiver returns.
What are secure attachment?
Identical twins inherit the same genes but develop different interests after growing up in different households. Explain how this example illustrates both nature and nurture.
What is nature providing shared genetic influences, while nurture provides different environmental experiences that shape development?
An older adult reflects on whether their life was meaningful. Identify the Erikson conflict illustrated
What is integrity vs. despair, respectively?
During early development, the brain forms thousands of new neural connections. Later, it reduces some connections to operate more efficiently. Name both processes; the latter process.
What is pruning?
A child watches juice being poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin glass and insists the taller glass now holds more. The child has not yet mastered this concept.
What is conservation?
Harlow’s infant monkeys preferred a cloth surrogate even though a wire surrogate provided milk. Explain what this finding suggested about the basis of attachment.
What is contact comfort and security being important to attachment beyond the provision of food?