Swarthmore College Psychology Midterm Developing Through the Life Span
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zygote
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the fertilized egg; it enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo
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embryo
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the developing organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month
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fetus
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the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth
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teratogens
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aka monster maker agents, such as chemicals and viruses that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and causes harm
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fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
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Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features
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habituation
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decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. as infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner
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maturation
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biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience
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cognition
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all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating
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schema
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a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information
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assimilation
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interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schema
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accommodation
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adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
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sensorimotor stage
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in piaget's theory, this is the stage from birth to nearly 2 years of age in which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities
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object permanence
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the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived
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preoperational stage
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in piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to about 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
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conservation
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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
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egocentrism
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in piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view
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theory of mind
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people's ideas about their own and other's mental states--about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict
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concrete operational stage
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in piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development between 7 to 11 years of age during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events
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formal operational stage
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in piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development about beginning of age 12 during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts
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stranger anxiety
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the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age
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attachment
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an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation
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critical period
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an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development
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imprinting
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the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life
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basic trust
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according to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers
