Development

Question 1

Post Hoc Fallacy

Answer 1

false assumption that because one event occurred before another event, it must have caused that event

Question 2

Developmental psychology

Answer 2

study of how behaviour and mental processes change over the lifespan

Question 3

Bidirectional Influences

Answer 3

Children’s experiences affect their development, but their development also influences their experiences.

Question 4

Cross Sectional Design

Answer 4

research design that examines people of different ages at a single point in time

Question 5

Cohort Effect

Answer 5

effect observed in a sample
of participants that results from individuals in the sample growing up at the same time

Question 6

longitudinal design

Answer 6

research design that examines development in the same group of people on multiple occasions over time
- Pros: ideal for studying change over time
- Cons: costly, time-consuming, and can lead to attrition

Question 7

Infant Determinism

Answer 7

the widespread assumption that extremely early experiences—especially in the first three years of life—are almost always more influential than later experiences in shaping us as adults.

Question 8

Childhood Fragility

Answer 8

which holds that children are delicate little creatures who are easily damaged

Question 9

gene–environment interaction

Answer 9

situation in which the effects of genes depend on the environment in which they are expressed

Question 10

gene expression

Answer 10

activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout development

Question 11

Nature via Nuture

Answer 11

tendency of individuals with certain genetic predispositions to seek out and create environments that permit
the expression of those predispositions

Question 12

Sequential Design

Answer 12

Repeatedly testing several age cohorts as they grow older.

Question 13

zygote

Answer 13

fertilized egg

Question 14

blastocyst

Answer 14

ball of identical cells early in pregnancy that haven’t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part

Question 15

embryo

Answer 15

The second to eighth week of prenatal development, during which limbs, facial features, and major organs of the body take form

Question 16

fetus

Answer 16

The period of prenatal development from the ninth week until birth, after all major organs are established and physical maturation is the primary change

Question 17

teratogen

Answer 17

an environmental factor that can exert a negative impact on prenatal development

Question 18

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FADS)

Answer 18

condition resulting from high levels of prenatal alcohol exposure, causing learning disabilities, delays in physical growth, facial malformations, and behavioural disorders

Question 19

Obstacles to normal fetal development

Answer 19

(a) exposure to hazardous environmental influences, (b) biological influences resulting from genetic disorders or errors in cell duplication during cell division, and (c) premature birth.

Question 20

TDF (testis-determining factor) gene

Answer 20

A gene on the Y chromosome that triggers male sexual development.

Question 21

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS):

Answer 21

A severe group of abnormalities that
result from prenatal exposure to
alcohol

Question 22

Preferential Looking Procedure

Answer 22

A study type developed and used by
Robert Fantz to research infants’
visual preferences.

Question 23

motor behaviour

Answer 23

bodily motion that occurs as a result of self-initiated force that moves the bones and muscles

Question 24

Sensory-Perceptual
Development

Answer 24

Newborns’ sensory-perceptual abilities improve rapidly.
- Their visual field in each eye expands to almost adult size by six months of age.
-

Question 25

Auditory pattern perception

Answer 25

relatively advanced in young infants, who can detect tiny changes in adult speech sounds that differentiate one word from another (called phonemes) by one to two months of age.

Question 26

Maturation

Answer 26

A genetically programmed, biological process that governs our growth.

Question 27

Cephalocaudal Principle

Answer 27

The tendency for physical development to proceed in a head-to-foot direction

Question 28

Proximodistal Principle

Answer 28

The principle that physical development begins along the innermost parts of the body and continues toward the outermost parts.

Question 29

Environmental Influences

Answer 29

Although physical and motor development are guided by genetic programs (i.e., maturation), they are also influenced by experience

Question 30

primary sex characteristic

Question 31

secondary sex characteristic

Answer 31

a sex-differentiating characteristic that doesn’t relate directly to reproduction, such as breast enlargement in females and deepening voices in males

Question 32

cognitive development

Answer 32

study of how children acquire the ability to learn, think, reason, communicate, and remember

Question 33

Assimilation

Answer 33

Piagetian process of absorbing new experience into current knowledge structures

Question 34

stage-like changes in understanding

Answer 34

sudden spurts in knowledge followed by periods of stability

Question 35

continuous changes in understanding.

Answer 35

gradual, incremental

Question 36

domain-general

Answer 36

Cross-cutting changes in children’s cognitive skills that affect most or all areas of cognitive function at once

Question 37

domain-specific

Answer 37

Children’s cognitive skills develop independently and at different rates across different domains, such as reasoning, language, and counting

Question 38

Piaget

Answer 38

A stage theorist who believed that children’s development is marked by radical reorganizations of thinking at specific transition points—stages— followed by periods during which their understanding of the world stabilizes.

Question 39

accommodation

Answer 39

Piagetian process of altering a belief to make it more compatible with experience

Question 40

sensorimotor stage

Answer 40

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by a focus on the here and now without the ability to represent experiences mentally

Question 41

object permanence

Answer 41

the understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of view

Question 42

preoperational stage

Answer 42

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to construct mental representations of experience but not yet perform operations on them

Question 43

egocentrism

Answer 43

inability to see the world from others’ perspectives

Question 44

conservation

Answer 44

Piagetian task requiring children to understand that despite a transformation in the physical presentation of an amount, the amount remains the same

Question 45

concrete operations stage

Answer 45

stage in Piaget’s theory characterized by the ability to perform mental operations on physical events only