| A | B |
|---|
| developmental psychology | field in which psychologists study how people grow and change throughout the life span |
| maturation | automatic and sequential process of development that results from genetic signals |
| critical period | a stage or point in development during which a person is best suited to learn a particular skill or behavior pattern |
| infancy | period from birth to 2 years |
| childhood | period from 2 years to adolescence |
| reflex | an involuntary reaction or response |
| attachment | emotional ties that form between people |
| stanger anxiety | at 8 months infants can develop a fear of strangers, they cry and reach for parents in the presence of a stranger |
| separation anxiety | infants cry and act distressed if the primary caregiver leaves |
| contact comfort | instinctual need to touch and be touched by something soft |
| imprinting | when animals form immediate bonds during critical periods, sometimes it is the first moving object they see |
| authoritative | authority, parents combine warmth with age appropriate rules and responsibilities |
| authoritarian | parents believe in obedience for its own sake |
| unconditional positive regard | parents love and accept their children for who they are no matter how they behave |
| conditional positive regard | parents who their love only when the child behaves in certain acceptable ways |
| self-esteem | the value or worth that people attach to themselves |
| sensorimotor stage | Piaget's 1st stage of cognitive development, learning to coordinate sensation and perception with motor activity |
| object permanence | understanding that objects still exist even when they cannot be seen or touched |
| preoperational stage | Piaget's 2nd stage of cognitive development, children use words or symbols to represent objects, 2 years old |
| concrete-operational stage | Piaget's 3rd stage of cognitive development, 7 years old, children show signs of adult thinking |
| formal-operational stage | Piaget's 4th stage of cognitive development, 11/12 years old, cognitive maturity, thinking abstractly |
| preconventional moral reasoning | Kohlberg's 1st stage of moral development, 0-9 years old, base judgments on the consequences of behavior |
| conventional moral reasoning | Kohlberg's 2nd stage of moral development, make judgments in terms of whether or not an act conforms to conventional standards of right and wrong |
| postconventional moral reasoning | Kohlberg's 3rd stage of moral development, reasoning is based on one's own moral standards of goodness |
| assimilation | processing new information by placing it into a pre-existing category |
| accomodation | processing of new information by placing it into a new category |
