CHAPTER 5 Terms Developmental Psychology a branch of psychology that studies physical cognitive and social change throughout the life span Teratogens agents such as chemicals and viruses that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm Schema a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information Assimilation interpreting our new experience in terms of our existing schemas Accommodation adapting our current understandings schemas to incorporate new information Object Permanence the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived Conservation 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 Imprinting the process by which certain animals form attachment during a critical period very early in life Egocentrism In Piaget s theory the preoperational child s difficulty taking another s point of view Self Concept our understanding and evaluation of whom we are Adolescence the transition period from childhood to adulthood extending from puberty to independence Fluid intelligence Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly tends to decrease during late adulthood Crystallized intelligence our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills tends to increase with age Information processing speed Primary Sex Characteristics the body structures ovaries testes and external genitalia that make sexual reproduction possible Secondary Sex characteristics non reproductive sexual characteristics such as female breasts and hips male voice quality and body hair Concepts Piaget s Stages Of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Stage o Birth 2 years old o Infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities o Experiences world through senses and actions looking hearing touching mouthing and grasping o Out of sight out of mind o Object permanence the awareness that objects continue to exist when not perceived o Stranger anxiety Preoperational Stage o 2 6 7 years old o Children learn to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic o Too young to perform mental operations o Representing things with words and images o Using intuitive rather than logical reasoning o Conservation the principle that the quantity remains the same despite o Egocentrism children have difficulty perceiving things from another changes in shape person s point of view o Develop theory of mind idea about your own and other s mental state Concrete Operational Stage o 7 11 years old o The state of cognitive development during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events o Begin to grasp conversation o Ability to comprehend mathematical transformations and conservation Formal Operational Stage o 12 adulthood o Begin to think logically about abstract concepts o If this then that Baby Reflexes Theory Of Mind Peoples ideas about their own and others mental states about their feelings perceptions and thoughts and these behaviors these might predict Attachment an emotional tie with another person shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation Developmental psychologists reasoned that infants became attached to those who satisfied their need with nourishment Body Contact more attached to parents who are soft and warm and who rock feed and pat Familiarity Secure attachment In their mother s presence they play comfortably happily exploring their new environment When she leaves they are distressed When she returns they seek contact with her Sensitive responsive mother those who noticed what their babies were doing and responded appropriately had infants who exhibited secure attachment Insecure attachment Avoid attachment Less likely to explore their surroundings they may even cling to their mothers When she leaves they cry they either cry loudly and remain upset or seem indifferent to her departure and return Insensitive unresponsive mothers mothers who attended to their babies when they felt like doing so but ignored them at other times had infants who often became insecurely attached Kohlberg s Morality stages Preconventional morality o Before age 9 most children s morality focuses on self interest They obey rules either to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards Conventional morality o By early adolescence morality focuses on caring for others and on upholding laws and social rules simply because they are the laws and rules Postconventional morality o Actions are judged right because they flow from people s rights or from self defined basic ethical principles o Appears mostly in the European and North American educated middle class which prizes individualism giving priority to one s own goals rather than to group goals CHAPTER 6 Terms Sensation the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment Perception the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events Psychophysics the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli such as their intensity and our psychological experience of them Sensory interaction the principle that one sense may influence another as when the smell of food influences its taste Blind Spot the point at which the optic nerve leaves the ye creating a blind spot because no receptor cells are located there Photoreceptor Cones Feature detector nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus such as shape angle or movement Rods retinal receptors that detect black white and gray necessary for peripheral and twilight vision when cones don t respond Afterimage Perceptual Set a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another Accommodation the process by which the eye s lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina Parallel Processing the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously the brain s neural mode of information processing for many functions including vision Contrasts with the step by step serial processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving Retinal Disparity a binocular cue for perceiving depth By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes the brain computes distance the greater the disparity difference between
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