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| an area of study devoted to understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence |
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| includes all changes we experience throughout the lifespan |
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| an orderly, integrated set of statements that describes, explains, and predicts behavior. |
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| a process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills that were there to begin with. |
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| a process in which new ways of under- standing and responding to the world emerge at specific times. |
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| qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development. |
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| unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change. |
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| nature–nurture controversy |
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| Are genetic or environmental factors more important in influencing development? |
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| open to change in response to influential experiences |
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| the ability to adapt effectively in the face of threats to development |
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| a genetically determined, naturally unfolding course of growth. |
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| measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development |
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| psychoanalytic perspective |
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| children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. How these conflicts are resolved determines the person’s ability to learn, to get along with others, and to cope with anxiety. |
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| Emphasizes that how parents manage their child’s sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years is crucial for healthy personality development . |
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| Erikson emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands, the ego makes a positive contribution to development, acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active, contributing member of society. |
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| directly observable events—stimuli and responses—are the appropriate focus of study. |
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| The most influential, devised by Albert Bandura (1977), emphasized modeling, otherwise known as imitation or observational learning, as a powerful source of development . |
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| cognitive-developmental theory |
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| children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world. |
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| human mind is viewed as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows |
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| developmental cognitive neuroscience |
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| brings together researchers from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and medicine to study the relationship between changes in the brain and the developing child’s cognitive processing and behavior patterns |
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| concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history. |
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| a time that is optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences. However, its boundaries are less well-defined than those of a critical period. Development can occur later, but it is harder to induce. |
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| evolutionary developmental psychology |
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| seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as those competencies change with age |
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| focuses on how culture—the values, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group—is transmitted to the next generation. According to Vygotsky, social interaction—in particular, cooperative dialogues between children and more knowledgeable members of society—is necessary for children to acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community’s culture. |
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| Ecological systems theory |
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| views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment (Urie Bronfenbrenner) |
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| The inner most level of the environment, consists of activities and interaction patterns in the child’s immediate surroundings . |
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| The second level of Bronfenbrenner’s model, encompasses connections between microsystems |
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| consists of social settings that do not contain children but that nevertheless affect children’s experiences in immediate settings. |
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| The outermost level of Bronfenbrenner’s model, consists of cultural values, laws, customs, and resources. |
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| Bronfenbrenner's temporal dimension of his model, (the prefix chrono- means “time”). Life changes can be imposed on the child. Alternatively, they can arise from within the child, since as children get older they select, modify, and create many of their own settings and experiences . |
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| dynamic systems perspective |
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| the child’s mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills. The system is dynamic, or constantly in motion. A change in any part of it—from brain growth to physical and social surroundings—disrupts the current organism–environment relationship. When this happens, the child actively reorganizes her behavior so the components of the system work together again but in a more complex, effective way |
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| is any planned set of actions by a group, institution, or governing body directed at attaining a social goal |
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| laws and government programs designed to improve current conditions |
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