Chapter 4 Vocab Part 1

Question 0

Zygote

Answer 0

The fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.

Question 1

Developmental Psychology

Answer 1

A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

Question 2

Embryo

Answer 2

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month.

Question 3

Fetus

Answer 3

The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth.

Question 4

Teratogens

Answer 4

Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

Question 5

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Answer 5

Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking. Symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions.

Question 6

Rooting Reflex

Answer 6

A baby’s tendency, when touched on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth, and search for the nipple.

Question 7

Habituation

Answer 7

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Question 8

Maturation

Answer 8

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Question 9

Jean Piaget

Answer 9

Revolutionized our understanding of children’s minds.

Question 10

Schemas

Answer 10

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Question 11

Assimilation

Answer 11

Interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas.

Question 12

Accommodation

Answer 12

Adapting one’s current understanding (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Question 13

Cognition

Answer 13

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Question 14

Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 14

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Question 15

Object Permanence

Answer 15

The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.

Question 16

Preoperational Stage

Answer 16

In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 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.

Question 17

Conservation

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Egocentrism

Answer 18

In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.

Question 19

Theory of Mind

Answer 19

People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict.

Question 20

Autism

Answer 20

A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others’ state of mind.

Question 21

Concrete Operational Stage

Answer 21

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about cognitive events.

Question 22

Formal Operational Stage

Answer 22

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

Question 23

Stranger Anxiety

Answer 23

The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.

Question 24

Attachment

Answer 24

An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.