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CH 1 Sigelman &Rider
Life-Span Human Development 9th Edition: Intro to Dev Psy
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| development | Systematic changes in the individual occurring between conception and death; such changes can be positive, negative, or neutral. |
| growth | The physical changes that occur from conception to maturity. |
| biological aging | The deterioration of organisms that leads inevitably to their death. |
| aging | To most developmentalists, positive, negative, and neutral changes in the mature organism; different from biological aging. |
| emerging adulthood | Newly identified period of the life span extending from about age 18 to age 25 or even later, when young people are neither adolescents nor adults and are exploring their identities, careers, and relationships. |
| culture | A system of meanings shared by a population of people and transmitted from one generation to the next. |
| age grade | Socially defined age groups or strata, each with different statuses, roles, privileges, and responsibilities in society. |
| rite of passage | A ritual that marks a person’s “passage” from one status to another, usually in reference to rituals marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. |
| age norms | Expectations about what people should be doing or how they should behave at different points in the life span. |
| 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. |
| ethnicity | A person’s classification in or affiliation with a group based on common heritage or traditions. |
| socioeconomic status (SES) | The position people hold in society based on such factors as income, education, occupational status, and the prestige of their neighborhoods. |
| adolescence | The transitional period between childhood and adulthood that begins with puberty and ends when the individual has acquired adult competencies and responsibilities; roughly ages 10 to 18 or later. |
| life expectancy | The average number of years a newborn baby can be expected to live; now about 78 years in the United States. |
| nature–nurture issue | The debate over the relative roles of biological predispositions (nature) and environmental influences (nurture) as determinants of human development. |
| maturation | Developmental changes that are biologically programmed by genes rather than caused primarily by learning, injury, illness, or some other life experience. |
| genes | A functional unit of heredity made up of DNA and transmitted from generation to generation. |
| environment | Events or conditions outside the person that are presumed to influence and be influenced by the individual. |
| learning | A relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavioral potential) that results from a person’s experiences or practice. |
| evidence-based practice | Grounding what professionals do in research and ensuring that the curricula and treatments provided to students or clients have been demonstrated to be effective. |
| baby biographies | Carefully recorded observations of the growth and development of children by their parents over a period; the first scientific investigations of development. |
| storm and stress | G. Stanley Hall’s term for the emotional ups and downs and rapid changes that he believed characterize adolescence. |
| gerontology | The study of aging and old age. |
| life-span perspective | A perspective that views development as a lifelong, multidirectional process that involves gain and loss, is characterized by plasticity, is shaped by its historical–cultural context, has many causes, best viewed from a multidisciplinary perspective. |
| plasticity | An openness of brain cells or of the organism as a whole to positive and negative environmental influence; a capacity to change in response to experience. |
| neuroplasticity | The brain’s remarkable ability to change in response to experience throughout the life span, as when it recovers from injury or benefits from stimulating learning experiences. |
| scientific method | An attitude or value about the pursuit of knowledge that dictates that investigators must be objective and must allow their data to decide the merits of their theorizing. |
| theory | A set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain a set of observations. |
| hypothesis | A theory-based prediction about what will hold true if we observe a phenomenon. |
| sample | The group of individuals chosen to be the subjects of a study. |
| population | A well-defined group that a researcher who studies a sample of individuals is interested in drawing conclusions about. |
| random sample | A sample formed by identifying all members of the larger population of interest and then selecting a portion of them in an unbiased way to participate; a technique to ensure that the sample studied is representative of the larger population of interest. |
| naturalistic observation | A research method in which the scientist observes people as they engage in common everyday activities in their natural habitats. Contrast with structured observation. |
| structured observation | A research method in which scientists create special conditions designed to elicit the behavior of interest to achieve greater control over the conditions under which they gather behavioral data. Contrast with naturalistic observation. |
| functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) | A brain-scanning technique that uses magnetic forces to measure the increase in blood flow to an area of the brain that occurs when that brain area is active, to determine which parts of the brain are involved in particular cognitive activities. |
| case study | An in-depth examination of an individual (or a small number of individuals), typically carried out by compiling and analyzing information from a variety of sources such as observing, testing, and interviewing the person or people who know the individual. |
| experiment | A research strategy in which the investigator manipulates or alters some aspect of a person’s environment to measure its effect on the individual’s behavior or development. |
| 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. Contrast with dependent 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. |
| random assignment | A technique in which research participants are placed in experimental conditions in an unbiased or random way so that the resulting groups are not systematically different. |
| experimental control | 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. |
| 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. |
| correlation coefficient | A measure, ranging from +1.00 to ?1.00, of the extent to which two variables or attributes are systematically related to each other in either a positive or a negative way. |
| directionality problem | The problem in correlational studies of determining whether a presumed causal variable is the cause or the effect. |
| third variable problem | In correlation studies, the problem posed by the fact that the association between the two variables of interest may be caused by some third variable. |
| meta-analysis | A research method in which the results of multiple studies addressing the same question are synthesized to produce overall conclusions. |
| video deficit | The difficulty infants have learning from video presentations as compared with live interactions with social partners. |
| cross-sectional design | A developmental research design in which different age groups are studied at the same point in time and compared. |
| cohort | A group of people born at the same time; a particular generation of people. |
| age effects | In developmental research, the effects of getting older or of developing. Contrast with cohort effects and time of measurement effects. |
| 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. Contrast with age effects and time-of-measurement effects. |
| longitudinal design | A developmental research design in which one group of subjects is studied repeatedly over months or years. |
| baby boom generation | The huge generation of people born between 1946 (the close of World War II) and 1964. |
| millennials | Also called Generation Y or the “baby boomlet” generation, the American generation born from 1982 to 2004. |
| 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). |
| 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. |
| WEIRD people | An acronym referring to people living in societies that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The field of psychology has been characterized as the study of WEIRD people (for example, American college students). |
| ethnocentrism | The belief that one’s own cultural or ethnic group is superior to others. |
| research ethics | Standards of conduct that investigators are ethically bound to honor to protect their research participants from physical or psychological harm. |
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