AP®︎ Psychology: Unit 3 Flashcards

Study of age-related stability and change in behavior and mental processes across the entire lifespan

The theme concerning how biological inheritance and environmental experience interact to influence development

The theme asking which characteristics remain relatively consistent over time and which are systematically altered by maturation and experience

Continuous development is gradual and cumulative; discontinuous development involves distinct stages or qualitative changes in functioning

A design comparing different groups, usually different age groups, at approximately the same time, with each participant ordinarily measured once

A design that repeatedly measures the same individuals over an extended period to observe within-person stability and change

An age-group difference caused by generations' differing historical or cultural experiences rather than by aging itself

An environmental agent, such as alcohol, nicotine, certain medications, chemicals, or radiation, capable of disrupting prenatal development

A severe disorder caused by prenatal alcohol exposure and marked by growth problems, characteristic facial features, and central nervous system impairment

The biologically guided process of growth that produces orderly behavioral changes relatively independently of specific training

An age-related skill or ability that most children achieve within a typical developmental range

Skills using large muscles and whole-body movement, such as sitting, walking, running, jumping, and balancing

Skills requiring precise control of small muscles, especially in the hands and fingers, such as grasping, drawing, and writing

An infant’s automatic turning toward a touch on the cheek and opening of the mouth, helping the infant locate food

A transparent, supported apparatus with apparent shallow and deep sides that measures infants’ depth sensitivity through their willingness to cross

The ability to perceive the three-dimensional world and judge the distance of objects

A limited developmental window during which a necessary experience must occur for a capacity to develop typically

A flexible developmental window during which an organism is especially responsive to certain experiences, though later development remains possible

A rapid, biologically prepared following behavior in which some young animals attach to the first conspicuous moving object encountered early in life

A period during adolescence of rapid increases in height, weight, and overall body size

The period of sexual maturation during which reproductive capability and primary and secondary sex characteristics develop

Reproductive body structures directly involved in reproduction, such as the ovaries, uterus, testes, and penis

Physical traits associated with sexual maturation but not directly required for reproduction, such as breast development, body hair, and voice changes

The first menstrual period, marking a milestone within female pubertal development

The first ejaculation, marking a milestone within male pubertal development

The normal adult transition marking the end of menstrual cycles and natural reproductive capacity as ovarian function declines

A cluster of physical characteristics associated with reproduction and sexual development, including chromosomes, reproductive anatomy, gonads, and sex hormones

The identities, roles, behaviors, and expectations that individuals and cultures associate with sex categories

A culture's expectations for the behaviors, responsibilities, interests, and characteristics considered appropriate for a particular gender

A person's internal sense of gender

The process through which people learn culturally associated gender expectations

An enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction

A mental framework used to organize and interpret information

Interpreting new information through an existing schema without fundamentally changing the schema

Altering an existing schema or creating a new one when old schemas do not fit new information

Psychologist who proposed that children actively construct knowledge and progress through four stages of cognitive development

Piaget’s birth-to-about-age-2 stage, when infants learn through sensory experience and physical action and develop object permanence

The understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be directly perceived

Piaget’s roughly ages-2-to-7 stage, marked by symbolic thought and pretend play but limited conservation, reversibility, and perspective-taking

Internal representations in which words, images, or other symbols stand for objects, events, or ideas

Play in which a child acts as though objects, people, or situations are something other than they literally are

The understanding that quantity remains unchanged when appearance or arrangement changes but nothing is added or removed

The ability to mentally undo or reverse an operation or transformation

Attributing life, intentions, feelings, or other humanlike mental qualities to inanimate objects

Difficulty taking another person’s perceptual or cognitive perspective, rather than selfishness

Understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, perceptions, and knowledge that may differ from one’s own or from reality

Piaget’s roughly ages-7-to-11 stage, when children reason logically about concrete information and master conservation and reversibility but struggle with abstraction

Piaget’s stage beginning around age 12, marked by abstract, hypothetical, and systematic reasoning, though not everyone consistently attains it

The ability to reason about concepts, principles, and ideas not tied to concrete objects or immediate experience

The ability to consider imagined possibilities and reason about what might happen under different conditions

Psychologist who emphasized that cognitive development occurs through social interaction, cultural tools, and guidance from more knowledgeable others

Cognitive development occurs through social interaction, guided participation, and culturally provided tools and practices

Temporary, adjustable support for a task within the learner’s ZPD that is gradually withdrawn as competence increases

The range between what a learner can do independently and what the learner can accomplish with effective assistance

The ability to reason flexibly, recognize novel patterns, and solve unfamiliar problems, which tends to decline with age

Accumulated knowledge and the ability to use learned information and skills, which generally remains stable or improves through much of adulthood

Substantial cognitive decline beyond typical aging that interferes with independent daily functioning

A shared, rule-governed system of arbitrary symbols that can generate indefinitely many meaningful messages

The smallest distinctive sound unit in a spoken language; phonemes distinguish sounds but usually carry no meaning themselves

The smallest language unit that carries meaning, either as an independent word or a meaningful word part

The meanings of words and morphemes and how their meanings combine in phrases and sentences

The overall system of rules governing how a language’s units may be combined and interpreted

The part of grammar governing the permissible arrangement of words and phrases in sentences

The capacity to recombine a limited set of language units and rules to express an effectively unlimited number of novel ideas

Prelinguistic movements such as reaching, showing, or pointing that intentionally communicate requests or direct attention

An early vocal stage, usually around 2–4 months, consisting mainly of prolonged vowel-like sounds

An early vocal stage, usually prominent around 6–10 months, involving repeated consonant-vowel combinations such as “da-da.”

The stage, typically around 12–18 months, when a child uses one meaningful conventional word to communicate a larger idea

Brief early word combinations, often beginning around 18–24 months, that retain key content words while omitting many function words and grammatical markers

Applying a general language rule to an exception, as in “breaked” or “sheeps.”

Development reflects interacting influences from nested immediate, institutional, cultural, and temporal social environments

Groups and settings that interact directly with an individual, such as family, friends, and school

Relationships between parts of an individual’s microsystem, such as communication between family and school

Institutions or circumstances that indirectly affect an individual even though the individual does not participate in them

The broad cultural and societal context, including values, customs, laws, ideologies, and economic arrangements

The influence of time, including life stages, personal transitions, changing circumstances, and historical events

A parenting style high in demands and control but relatively low in warmth, responsiveness, and negotiation

A parenting style high in both demands and responsiveness, combining clear limits with warmth, explanation, and appropriate independence

A parenting style high in warmth and responsiveness but relatively low in demands, limits, or consistent enforcement

Relatively characteristic patterns of emotional reactivity and self-regulation that appear early in life

An emotional bond in which a child seeks closeness to a caregiver when distressed and may use the caregiver as a secure base

Using the caregiver as a base for exploration and seeking and accepting comfort from the caregiver after separation

An attachment pattern marked by apparent indifference to separation and avoidance or minimization of contact at reunion

An attachment pattern marked by intense separation distress and difficulty being soothed, often combining contact-seeking with resistance

An attachment pattern lacking a coherent strategy and showing contradictory, confused, frozen, fearful, or disoriented behavior

A structured observation of infant attachment using an unfamiliar room, a stranger, caregiver separations, and reunions

Heightened anxiety or fear when a child is away from a caregiver, in an unfamiliar setting, or near a stranger

Infant rhesus monkeys preferred and sought comfort from a soft cloth surrogate over a wire surrogate that supplied milk

The soothing sense of security produced by warm, soft physical touch with a caregiver

Children play beside one another with similar materials but show little direct coordination

A heightened adolescent focus on one’s own thoughts, experiences, and social significance

The exaggerated belief that other people are continually observing, noticing, or evaluating oneself

The belief that one’s experiences are uniquely special or incomprehensible to others, sometimes including exceptionalism or invulnerability

A culturally shaped timetable for when major life events and adult roles are expected to occur

A culturally contingent transition from adolescence to established adult roles, often involving continued exploration during the late teens and twenties

A lifespan theory proposing eight stages, each organized around a psychosocial conflict that a person must address

Erikson’s infancy conflict in which reliable, sensitive care supports an expectation that others and the environment are dependable

Erikson’s toddlerhood conflict in which support for age-appropriate independence promotes autonomy rather than shame and self-doubt

Erikson’s early-childhood conflict in which encouragement of self-directed plans and activities supports initiative rather than excessive guilt

Erikson’s middle-childhood conflict in which learning skills and completing valued work support competence rather than inferiority

Erikson’s adolescent conflict of forming a coherent sense of self rather than remaining directionless or divided among incompatible roles

Erikson’s young-adulthood conflict of forming close, committed, mutually supportive relationships without losing one’s sense of self

Erikson’s middle-adulthood conflict of contributing to future generations and the community rather than remaining narrowly self-focused

Erikson’s late-adulthood conflict of accepting one’s life as meaningful and coherent rather than viewing it with persistent regret or bitterness

Potentially traumatic or chronically stressful childhood conditions associated with increased risks to later relationships, health, and well-being

An identity status involving meaningful exploration followed by commitment

An identity status involving neither meaningful exploration nor commitment

An identity status involving commitment without substantial prior exploration

An identity status involving active exploration without a settled commitment

Mental representations of what a person might become, hopes to become, or fears becoming

The perspective that psychology should focus on observable, measurable behavior and how environmental events shape it through conditioning

Associative learning in which one stimulus becomes associated with another and comes to elicit a response

Learning that events or stimuli occur together, allowing one to predict another

The formation of the association in which an initially neutral stimulus becomes a CS and begins eliciting a CR.

A stimulus that naturally and automatically elicits a response without prior learning

The unlearned, automatic response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus

A previously neutral stimulus that elicits a learned response after being associated with the UCS.

The learned response elicited by the conditioned stimulus

The weakening and eventual disappearance of a CR when the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS.

The return of an extinguished CR when the CS is presented after a pause

The tendency for stimuli resembling the original CS to also elicit the CR.

The learned ability to distinguish the CS from other stimuli and respond selectively to it

Conditioning in which an established CS is used like a UCS to make a new neutral stimulus into another CS.

A learned emotional reaction elicited by a previously neutral stimulus after it is paired with an emotion-producing event

Watson and Rayner conditioned fear in an infant by pairing a white rat with a frightening noise, with fear later generalizing to similar furry objects

Replacing an unwanted conditioned response by establishing a different, more adaptive response to the CS.

A learned avoidance of a food or flavor that has been associated with nausea or illness

Acquiring an association through one pairing without the association being strengthened by further pairings

An inherited predisposition to learn some stimulus-response associations more readily than others

A diminished response caused by repeated or enduring exposure to a stimulus

Learning in which a behavior becomes more or less likely because of the consequences that follow it

Behaviors followed by reinforcing consequences become more likely, while behaviors followed by punishing consequences become less likely

A consequence that increases the future frequency or probability of the behavior it follows

A consequence that decreases the future frequency or probability of the behavior it follows

Adding a stimulus after a behavior so that the behavior increases

Removing, reducing, or preventing an aversive stimulus after a behavior so that the behavior increases

Adding a stimulus after a behavior so that the behavior decreases

Removing a valued stimulus after a behavior so that the behavior decreases

A reinforcer with unlearned value because it satisfies a biological need or innate form of comfort

A reinforcer that acquires value through learned association with other reinforcers

Developing a target behavior by reinforcing successive approximations that come progressively closer to it

Behaviors that increasingly resemble a desired target behavior and are reinforced step by step during shaping

The tendency for a trained animal behavior to shift toward an instinctive behavior that competes with the trained response

Behavior repeated because it was accidentally followed by reinforcement despite lacking a genuine response-consequence contingency

Reduced attempts to escape or exert control after learning through repeated uncontrollable aversive events that responding is ineffective

Reinforcement of every occurrence of the target behavior, producing rapid acquisition but relatively rapid extinction

Reinforcement of only some occurrences of a behavior, usually producing slower acquisition but greater resistance to extinction

Reinforcement after a set number of responses, producing high responding with postreinforcement pauses

Reinforcement after an unpredictable number of responses around an average, producing very high, steady, extinction-resistant responding

Reinforcement of the first response after a set time, producing a scalloped pattern of pausing and accelerating responding

Reinforcement of the first response after unpredictable time intervals around an average, producing moderate, steady responding

The greater resistance to extinction of behavior learned under partial reinforcement than under continuous reinforcement

Learning by watching a model’s behavior and sometimes the consequences that follow it

The theory that learning can occur by observing models without personally experiencing consequences; similar models are more likely to influence behavior

The process of observing and copying a particular behavior

Learning from consequences experienced by a model rather than from consequences experienced personally

Becoming more likely to perform a behavior after observing a model rewarded for it

Becoming less likely to perform a behavior after observing a model receive an aversive consequence or lose something desirable

Experiments showing that children imitated an adult model’s distinctive aggression and that observed consequences affected performance more than acquisition

A sudden problem solution produced through cognitive reorganization without a current association, consequence, or model

Learning that occurs without reinforcement and remains hidden until a reason or opportunity causes it to be performed

A mental representation of the spatial relationships among locations, routes, landmarks, and possible shortcuts