Exam 1 (Ch. 1 - Ch. 6) Flashcards
(85 cards)
Plasticity
An openness of the brain cells (or of
the organism as a whole) to positive and negative
environmental influence; a capacity to
change in response to experience.
Cohort
A group of people born at the same
time; a particular generation of people.
Age Norms
Expectations about what people
should be doing or how they should behave at
different points in the life span.
Age Grades
Socially defined age groups or
strata, each with different statuses, roles, privileges,
and responsibilities in society
Social Clock
A personal sense of when things
should be done in life and when the individual
is ahead of or behind the schedule dictated by
age norms
Experimental Design
The holding of all other factors besides the independent variable in an experiment constant so that any changes in the dependent variable can be said to be caused by the manipulation of the independent variable
Independent Variable
The aspect of the
environment that a researcher deliberately
changes or manipulates in an experiment to see
its effect on behavior; a causal variable.
Dependent Variable
The aspect of behavior
measured in an experiment and assumed to be
under the control of, or dependent on, the independent
variable
Correlational Method
A research technique
that involves determining whether two or more
variables are related. It cannot indicate that one
thing caused another, but it can suggest that a
causal relationship exists or allow us to predict
one characteristic from our knowledge of
another.
Cross-Sectional Design
A developmental research
design in which different age groups are
studied at the same point and compared.
Longitudinal Design
A developmental research
design in which one group of subjects is studied
repeatedly over months or years.
Sequential Design
A developmental research
design that combines the cross-sectional approach
and the longitudinal approach in a single study to compensate for the weaknesses
of each
Time of Measurement Effects
In developmental
research, the effects on findings of historical
events occurring when the data for a study are
being collected (for example, psychological
changes brought about by an economic depression
rather than as a function of aging)
Cohort Effects
In cross-sectional research, the
effects on findings that the different age groups (cohorts) being compared were born at different
times and had different formative experiences.
Age Effects
In developmental research, the effects
of getting older or of developing
Practice Effects
People may come to know what researcher expects, or may become more aware of their thoughts, feelings, actions, and change behavior
Psychoanalytic Theory
The theoretical perspective
associated with Freud and his followers that
emphasizes unconscious motivations for behavior,
confl icts within the personality, and stages
of psychosexual development
Systems Theories
Theories of development
holding that changes over the life span arise
from the ongoing interrelationships between a
changing organism and a changing environment,
both of which are part of a larger,
dynamic system
Cognitive Development Theory
Well- established
psychotherapy approach that involves identifying
and changing distorted thinking and maladaptive
emotions and behavior associated
with it.
Id
A psychoanalytic term for the inborn component
of the personality that is driven by the instincts
or selfish urges.
Ego
Psychoanalytic term for the rational component
of the personality
Superego
The psychoanalytic term for the component of the personality that consists of the
individual’s internalized moral standards
Psychosexual Theory
Freud’s five stages of
development, associated with biological maturation
and shifts in the libido: oral, anal, phallic,
latency, and genital.
Repression
Removing unacceptable thoughts or
traumatic memories from consciousness, as
when a young woman who was raped has no
memory at all of having been raped (or less
drastically, engages in denial, knowing deep
down that she was raped but not accepting the
reality of it).
