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| A field of study devoted to understanding all aspects of human consistancy and change from conception through adolescence. |
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| An interdisciplinary field devoted to the study of 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 view that regards development as a cumulative process of gradually augmenting the same types of skills that were there to begin with. |
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| Discontinuous development |
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| A view of development as a process in which new ways of understanding and responding the world emerge at specific times. |
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| A qualitative change in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterizes a specific period of development. |
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| Unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in markedly different paths of change. |
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| Nature-Nurture controversy |
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| Debate among theorists about whether genetic or environmental factors are more important in development. |
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| The ability to adapt effectively in the face of threats to development. |
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| Locke's view of the child as a "blank slate" whose character is shaped entirely by experience |
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| Rousseau's view of the child as naturally endowed with a sense of right and wrong and an innate plan for orderly, healthy growth. |
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| A genetically determined, naturally unfolding course of growth. |
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| An approach in which age-related averages are computed to represent typical development. |
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| Psychoanalytic perspective |
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| Freud's view of personality development, in which children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. The way these conflicts are resolved determines psychological adjustments. |
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| Freud's theory, which emphasizes that how parents manage children's sexual and aggressive drives in the first few years of life is crucial for healthy personality development. |
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| Erickson's theory, which emphasizes that at each Freudian stage, individuals not only develop a unique personality but also acquire attitudes and skills that help them become active, contributing members of their society. |
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| An approach that regards directly observable events - stimuli and responses - as the appropriate focus of study and that views the development of behavior as taking place through classical and operant conditioning. |
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| An approach that emphasizes the role of modeling, or observational learning, in the development of behavior. |
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| Procedures that combine conditioning and modeling to eliminate undesirable behaviors and increase desirable responses. |
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| Cognitive-developmental theory |
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| An approach introduced by Piaget that views children as actively constructing knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world and that regards cognitive development as taking place in stages. |
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| An approach that views the human mind as a symbol-manipulating system through which information flows and that regards cognitive development as a continuous process. |
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| Developmental cognitive neuroscience |
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| An area of investigation that 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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| An approach 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 and in which the individual is espcially responsive to environmental influences. |
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| Evolutionary developmental psychology |
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| An approach that seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as those competencies change with age. |
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| Vygotsky's theory, in which children acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community's culture through cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of their society. |
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| Ecological systems theory |
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| Bronfenbrenner's approach, which views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values and programs. |
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| In ecological systems theory, the innermost level of the environment, consisting of activities and interaction patterns in the child's immediate surroundings. |
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| In ecological systems theory, connections between children's immediate settings. |
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| In ecological systems theory, social settings that do not contain children but that affect children's experiences in immediate settings. Examples are parents' workplace, health and welfare services available in the community, and parents' social networks. |
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| In ecological systems theory, cultural values, laws, customs, and resources that influence experiences and interactions at inner levels of the environment. |
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| In ecological systems theory, temporal changes in children's environments, which produce new conditions that affect development. These changes can be imposed externally or arise from within the child. |
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| Dynamic systems perspective |
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| A view that regards the child's mind, body, and physical and social worlds as a dynamic, integrated system. A change in any part of the system leads the child to reorganize his behavior so the various components of the system work together again but in a more complex and effective way. |
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| A method in which the researcher goes into the natural environment to observe the behavior of interest. |
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| A method in which the investigator sets up a laboratory situation that evokes the behavior of interest so that every participant has an equal opportunity to display the response. |
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| An interview method in which the researcher uses a flexiable, converstional style to probe for the participant's point of view. |
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| An interview method in which each participant is asked the same questions in the same way. |
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| Clinical, or case-study, method |
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| A method in which the researcher attempts to understand an individual child by combining interview data, observations, and sometimes test scores. |
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| A method in which the researcher attempts to understand the unique values and social processes of a culture or a distinct social group through participant observation - living with its members and taking field notes over an extended period of time. |
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| A researcher design in which the researcher gathers information on individuals without altering participants' experiences and then examines relationships between variables. Does not permit inferences about cause and effect. |
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| A number, ranging from +1.00 to -1.00, that describes the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables. |
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| A research design in which the investigator randomly assigns participants to treatment conditions. Permits inferences about cause and effect. |
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| The variable the researcher expects to cause changes in another variable in an experiment. |
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| The variable the investigator expects to be influenced by the independent variable in an experiment. |
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| An unbiased procedure for assigning participants to treatment groups, which increases the chances that participants' characteristics will be equally distributed across treatment conditions in an experiment. |
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| A research design in which participants are studied repeatedly at different ages. |
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| The effects of cultural-historical change on the accuracy of longitudinal and cross-sectional findings. Children born in a particular time period are influenced by a particular set of cultural and historical conditions. |
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| A research design in which groups of people differing in age are studied at the same point in time. |
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| A research design in which similar cross-sectional or longitudinal studies (called sequences) are conducted at varying times. |
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| A research design in which investigators present children with a novel task and follow their mastery over a series of closely spaced sessions. |
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| The individual's physical and behavioral characteristics, which are determined by both genetic and environmental factors. |
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| An individual's genetic makeup. |
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| Rodlike strucutres in the cell nucleus that store and transmit genetic information. |
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| Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) |
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| Long, double-stranded molecules that make up chromosomes |
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| A segment of a DNA molecule that contains hereditary instructions |
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| The process of cell duplication, in which each new cell receives an exact copy of the original chromosomes. |
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| Human sperm and ova, which contain half as many chromosomes as regular body cells. |
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| The process of cell dividion through which gametes are formed and in which the number of chromosomes in each cell is halved. |
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| The newly fertilized cell formed by the union of sperm and ovum at conception |
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| A pattern of inheritance in which alleles are imprinted, or chemically marked, in such a way that one pair memeber is activated, regardless of its makeup. |
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| A sudden but permanent change in a segment of DNA |
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| The twenty-third pair of chromosomes, which determines the sex of the child - in females, called XX; in males, called XY. |
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| Fraternal, or dizygotic, twins |
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| Twins resulting from the release and fertilization of two ova. They are gentically no more alike than ordinary siblings. |
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| Identical, or monozygotic, twins |
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| Twins that result when a zygote, during the early stages of cell duplication, divids in two. They have the same genetic makeup. |
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| Each of two forms of a gene located at the same place on the autosomes. |
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| Having two identical alleles at the same place on a pair of chromosomes. |
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| Having two different alleles at the same place on a pair of chromosomes. |
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| Dominant-recessive inheritance. |
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| A pattern of inheritance in which, under heterozygous conditions, the influence of only one allele is apparent. |
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| A heterozygous individual who can pass a recessive trait to his or her children. |
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| Genes that can enhance or dilute the effects of other genes. |
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| A pattern of inheritance in which both alleles are expressed in the phenotype, resulting in a combined trait, or one that is intermediate between the two. |
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| A pattern of inheritance in which a recessive gene is carried on the X chromosome, so that males are more likely to be affected. |
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| A pattern of inheritance in which many genes affect the characteristic in question. |
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| A communication process designed to help couples assess their chances of giving birth to a baby with a hereditary disorder and choose the best course of action in view of risks and family goals. |
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| Prenatal diagnostic methods |
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| Medical procedures that permit detection of developmental problems before birth. |
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| Socioeconomic status (SES) |
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| A measure of a family's social position and economic well-being that combines three related variables: years of education, the prestige of and skill required by one's job, and income. |
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| A group of people with beliefs and customs that differ from those of the larger culture. |
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| Extended-family household |
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| A household in which parent and child live with one of more adult relatives. |
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| Societies in which people define themselves as part of a group and stress group over individual goals. |
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| Individualistic societies |
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| Societies in which people think of themselves as separate entities and are largely concerned with their own personal needs. |
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| Laws and government programs designed to improve current conditions. |
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| A field devoted to uncovering the contributions of nature and nurture to the diversity in human traits and abilities. |
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| A statistic that measures the extent to which individual differences in complex traits in a specific population are due to genetic factors. |
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| Studies comparing the characteristics of family members to determine the importance of heredity in complex human characteristics. |
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| The percentage of instances in which both members of a twin pair show a trait when it is present in one pair member, used to study the contribution of heredity to emotional and behavior disorders. |
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| Each person's unique, genetically determined response to a range of environmental conditions. |
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| The tendency of heredity to restrict the development of some characteristics to just one or a few outcomes. |
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| Genetic-environmental correlation |
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| The idea that heredity influences the environments to which individuals are exposed. |
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| A type of genetic-environmental correlation in which individuals actively choose environments that complement their heredity. |
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| Development of the individual resulting from ongoing, bidirectional exchanges between heredity and all levels of the environment. |
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| The zygote 4 days after fertilization, when the tiny mass of cells forms a hollow, fluid-filled ball. |
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| A small cluster of cells on the inside of the blastocyst, from which the new organism will develop. |
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| The thin outer ring of cells of the blastocyst, which will become the structures that provide protective covering and nourishment to the new organism. |
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| Attachment of the blastocyst to the uterine lining, which occurs 7 to 9 days after fertilization |
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| The inner membrane that encloses the prenatal organism |
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| The fluid that fills the amnion, helping to keep temperature constant and to provide a cushion against jolts caused by the mother's movement. |
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| The outer membrane that surrounds the amnion and sends out tiny, fingerlike villi, from which the placenta begins to develop. |
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| The organ that permits exchange of nutrients and waste products between the bloodstreams of the mother and the embryo, while also preventing the mother's and embryo's blood from mixing directly. |
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