DevPsy Shaffer: M-O

Question 1

detailed knowledge or plans of action that enable a person to perform gender-consistent activities and to enact his or her gender role.

Answer 1

own-sex schema

Question 2

the overgeneralization of grammatical rules to irregular cases where the rules do not apply (for example, saying mouses rather than mice).

Answer 2

overregularization

Question 3

the young child’s tendency to use rela
tively specific words to refer to a broader set of objects,
actions, or events than adults do (e.g., using the word
car to refer to all motor vehicles).

Answer 3

overextension

Question 4

common bacterial infection of the middle
ear that produces mild to moderate hearing loss.

Answer 4

otitis media

Question 5

an inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into coherent systems
or bodies of knowledge.

Answer 5

organization in infancy

Question 6

a strategy for remembering that involves
grouping or classifying stimuli into meaningful (or
manageable) clusters that are easier to retain.

Answer 6

organization

Question 7

a form of learning in which
freely emitted acts (or operants) become either more
or less probable depending on the consequences they
produce.

Answer 7

operant conditioning

Question 8

development of the individual
over his or her lifetime.

Answer 8

ontogenetic development

Question 9

activity when children linger around other
children, watching them play, but making no attempts
to join in the play.

Answer 9

onlooker play

Question 10

Freud’s term for the conflict
that 3- to 6-year-old boys were said to experience
when they develop an incestuous desire for their
mothers and a jealous and hostile rivalry with their
fathers.

Answer 10

Oedipus complex

Question 11

the tendency of participants to react
to an observer’s presence by behaving in unnatural
ways.

Answer 11

observer influence

Question 12

learning that results from observing the behavior of others.

Answer 12

observational learning

Question 13

the notion that young children
will assume that a new word applied to an object refers
to the whole object rather than to parts of the object or
to object attributes (e.g., its color).

Answer 13

object scope constraint

Question 14

the realization that objects continue
to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable
through the other senses.

Answer 14

object permanence

Question 15

a medical term describing individuals who are at
least 20 percent above the ideal weight for their height,
age, and sex.

Answer 15

obese

Question 16

developmental changes that
characterize most or all members of a species; typical
patterns of development.

Answer 16

normative development

Question 17

a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve
that describes the variability of certain characteristics
within a population; most people fall at or near the
average score, with relatively few at the extremes of the
distribution.

Answer 17

normal distribution

Question 18

onlooker behavior and solitary play.

Answer 18

nonsocial activity

Question 19

an environmental influence that people living together do not
share that should make these individuals different from
one another.

Answer 19

nonshared environmental influence (NSE)

Question 20

a subgroup that differs in
important ways from the larger group (or population)
to which it belongs.

Answer 20

nonrepresentative sample

Question 21

an infant growth disorder,
caused by lack of attention and affection, that causes
growth to slow dramatically or stop.

Answer 21

nonorganic failure to thrive

Question 22

an irrational pattern of thinking or
behavior that a person may use to contend with stress
or to avoid anxiety.

Answer 22

neurotic disorder

Question 23

nerve cells that receive and transmit neural
impulses.

Answer 23

neurons

Question 24

the primitive spinal cord that develops from
the ectoderm and becomes the central nervous system

Answer 24

neural tube

Question 25

the idea that much cognitive knowledge, such as object concept, is innate, requiring little in the way of specific experiences to be expressed, and that there are biological constraints, in that the mind/brain is designed to process certain types of information in certain ways.

Answer 25

neo-nativism

Question 26

a newborn infant from birth to approximately 1 month of age.

Answer 26

neonate

Question 27

a test that assesses a neonate’s neurological integrity and responsiveness to environmental stimuli.

Answer 27

Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale (NBAS)

Question 28

children who receive few nominations as either a liked or a disliked individual from members of their peer group.

Answer 28

neglected children

Question 29

any stimulus whose removal or termination as the consequence of an act will increase the probability that the act will recur.

Answer 29

negative reinforcer

Question 30

the debate among developmental theorists about the relative importance of biological predispositions (nature) and environmental influences (nurture) as determinants of human development.

Answer 30

nature/nurture issue

Question 31

an evolutionary process, proposed by Charles Darwin, stating that individuals with characteristics that promote adaptation to the environment will survive, reproduce, and pass these adaptive characteristics to offspring; those lacking these adaptive characteristics will eventually die out.

Answer 31

natural selection

Question 32

a delivery in which physical and psychological preparations for the birth are stressed and medical assistance is minimized.

Answer 32

natural (prepared) childbirth

Question 33

a study in which the investigator measures the impact of some naturally occurring event that is assumed to affect people’s lives.

Answer 33

natural (or quasi-) experiment

Question 34

a method in which the scientist tests hypotheses by observing people as they engage in everyday activities in their natural habitats (for example, at home, at school, or on the playground).

Answer 34

naturalistic observation

Question 35

the term used to describe the dramatic increase in the pace at which infants acquire new words in the latter half of the 2nd year; so named because many of the new words acquired are the names of objects.

Answer 35

naming explosion

Question 36

the process by which neurons are enclosed in waxy myelin sheaths that will facilitate the transmission of neural impulses.

Answer 36

myelinization

Question 37

a parent–child relation ship characterized by mutual responsiveness to each other’s needs and goals and shared positive affect.

Answer 37

mutually responsive relationship

Question 38

notion that young children will assume that each object has but one label and that different words refer to separate and nonoverlapping categories

Answer 38

mutual exclusivity constraint

Question 39

a change in the chemical structure or arrangement of one or more genes that has the effect of producing a new phenotype.

Answer 39

mutation

Question 40

an information-processing model that depicts information as flowing through three processing units (or stores): the sensory store, the short-term store (STS), and the long-term store (LTS).

Answer 40

multistore model

Question 41

older companion’s use of information that is exaggerated and synchronized across two or more senses to call an infant’s attention to the referent of a spoken word.

Answer 41

multimodal motherese

Question 42

the short, simple, high-pitched (and often repetitive) sentences that adults use when talking with young children (also called child-directed speech).

Answer 42

motherese

Question 43

rules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds.

Answer 43

morphology

Question 44

one’s knowledge of the meaning of morphemes that make up words.

Answer 44

morphological knowledge

Question 45

smallest meaningful language units.

Answer 45

morphemes

Question 46

the cognitive component of morality; the thinking that people display when deciding whether various acts are right or wrong.

Answer 46

moral reasoning

Question 47

Gilligan’s term for what she presumes to be the dominant moral orientation of males, focusing more on socially defined justice as administered through law than on compassionate concerns for human welfare.

Answer 47

morality of justice

Question 48

Gilligan’s term for what she presumes to be the dominant moral orientation of females—an orientation focusing more on compassionate concerns for human welfare than on socially defined justice as administered through law.

Answer 48

morality of care

Question 49

a set of principles or ideals that help the individual to distinguish right from wrong, to act on this distinction, and to feel pride in virtuous conduct and guilt (or other unpleasant emotions) for conduct that violates one’s standards.

Answer 49

morality

Question 50

the behavioral component of morality; actions that are consistent with one’s moral standards in situations in which one is tempted to violate them.

Answer 50

moral behavior

Question 51

the emotional component of morality, including feelings such as guilt, shame, and pride in ethical conduct.

Answer 51

moral affect

Question 52

twins who develop from a single zygote that later divides to form two genetically identical individuals.

Answer 52

monozygotic (identical) twins

Question 53

the study of the bioevolutionary basis of behavior and development with a focus on survival of the genes.

Answer 53

modern evolutionary theory

Question 54

effortful techniques used to improve memory, including rehearsal, organiza tion, and elaboration.

Answer 54

mnemonics (memory strategies)

Question 55

the process in which a cell duplicates its chromosomes and then divides into two genetically identical daughter cells.

Answer 55

mitosis

Question 56

the immediate settings (including role relationships and activities) that the person actually encounters; the innermost of Bronfenbrenner’s environmental layers or contexts.

Answer 56

microsystem

Question 57

changes that occur over relatively brief periods of time, in seconds, minutes, or days, as opposed to larger-scale changes, as convention ally studied in ontogenetic development.

Answer 57

microgenetic development

Question 58

a research design in which partici pants are studied intensively over a short period of time as developmental changes occur; attempts to specify how or why those changes occur.

Answer 58

microgenetic design

Question 59

one’s knowledge about memory and memory processes.

Answer 59

metamemory

Question 60

a knowledge of language and its properties; an understanding that language can be used for purposes other than communicating.

Answer 60

metalinguistic awareness

Question 61

one’s knowledge about cognition and about the regulation of cognitive activities

Answer 61

metacognition

Question 62

the interconnections among an individual’s immediate settings or microsystems; the second of Bronfenbrenner’s environmental layers or contexts.

Answer 62

mesosystem

Question 63

a cognitive operation that allows one to mentally order a set of stimuli along a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight.

Answer 63

mental seriation

Question 64

significant subaverage intellectual functioning associated with impairments in adaptive behavior in everyday life.

Answer 64

mental retardation

Question 65

a measure of intellectual development that reflects the level of age-graded problems a child is able to solve.

Answer 65

mental age (MA)

Question 66

the first occurrence of menstruation.

Answer 66

menarche

Question 67

a general measure of the amount of information that can be held in the short-term store.

Answer 67

memory span

Question 68

the process by which a germ cell divides, producing gametes (sperm or ova) that each contain half of the parent cell’s original complement of chromosomes; in humans, the products of meiosis contain 23 chromosomes.

Answer 68

meiosis

Question 69

a belief, fostered by televised violence, that the world is a more dangerous and frightening place than is actually the case.

Answer 69

mean-world belief

Question 70

developmental changes in the body or behavior that result from the aging process rather than from learning, injury, illness, or some other life experience.

Answer 70

maturation

Question 71

a tendency to persist at challeng ing tasks because of a belief that one has high ability and/or that earlier failures can be overcome by trying harder.

Answer 71

mastery orientation

Question 72

a tendency to persist at challeng ing tasks because of a belief that one has high ability and/or that earlier failures can be overcome by trying

Answer 72

mastery orientation

Question 73

an inborn motive to explore, under stand, and control one’s environment.

Answer 73

mastery motivation

Question 74

a growth-retarding disease affecting infants who receive insufficient protein and too few calories.

Answer 74

marasmus

Question 75

the larger cultural or subcultural context in which development occurs; Bronfenbrenner’s outer most environmental layer or context.