| ability grouping | The practice in elementary school of grouping children according to their presumed academic ability; thought by some, when not used in conjunction with other grouping possibilities, to stigmatize and limit children's potential, particularly minority students, at an early age; see tracking.
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| accommodation | A term used by Piaget to describe how children change existing schemes by altering old ways of thinking or acting to fit new information in their environment; contrast with assimilation,
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| achievement motivation | An internal mechanism that energizes, directs, and terminates achievement behavior; explained by theorists variously as an enduring psychological need, an environmentally activated state, or a set of cognitions and beliefs.
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| action research | Research conducted by teachers, administrators, and other change agents in the school to improve the educational environment for their students. The goal of action research is to understand a specific problem or to improve teaching practices within a specific classroom or school settings.
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| adaptation | One of two basic principles referred to by Piaget as invariant functions; the ability of all organisms to adapt their mental representations or behavior to fit environmental demands; contrast with organization.
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| adolescent egocentrism | A cognitive limitation emerging in adolescence, characterized by difficulty distinguishing thoughts about one's own thinking from their thinking about the thoughts of others. This limitation may manifest itself in heightened self-absorption and self-consciousness.
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| age norms | The estimated age, often established by cross-sectional studies, at which certain psychological or behavioral characteristics emerge.
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| aggression | Behavior that is intentionally aimed at harming or injuring another person; see instrumental aggression, hostile aggression.
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| alphabetic system | The structure of some languages, including English, whereby single shapes in the written language make up letters, which in turn, are linked to specific sounds; contrast with ideographic system.
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| amniotic sac | A structure present at implantation of the zygote that begins to function and mature during the embryonic period. See placenta.
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| androgens | Sex hormones generally associated with male characteristics, yet produced and present in both sexes.
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| androgyny | A blend of masculine and feminine traits that develop gradually as young people mature and become more flexible in their attitudes toward gender-typed behaviors through encounters with new activities and interests.
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| animism | According to Piaget, children's inclination during the preoperational stage to attribute intentional states and human characteristics to inanimate objects.
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| anorexia nervosa | An eating disorder, mainly affecting adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 18, characterized by a 25 percent to 50 percent loss in body weight through excessive dieting and exercise; usually treated with a combination of hospitalization and family counseling.
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| assimilated | A personal attitude and stance of a minority member characterized by adopting the norms, attitudes, and behaviors of the dominant culture and rejecting one's ethnic or racial culture.
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| assimilation | A term used by Piaget to describe how children mold new information to fit their existing schemes in order to better adapt to their environment; contrast with accommodation.
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| attachment | The close, affective relationship formed between a child and one or more caregivers.
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| attention deficit hyperactive disorders | Behavior, diagnosed by a qualified professional, characterized by inattention, impulsivity, and unusual or excessive activity.
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| attribution theory | A cognitive theory of motivation that examines how individuals interpret their successes and failures in achievement situations.
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| authentic assessment | A currently preferred performance assessment method with the underlying principle that students are more apt to understand a concept that has real-life application.
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| authoritarian | A parenting style characterized by rigid rules and often unrealistic expectations for children; contrast with authoritative and permissive.
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| authoritarian parenting | A style of parenting that is high on the demand/control dimension but low on acceptance/responsiveness. It is characterized by low warmth and little positive involvement. Rigid rules are set with the expectation they will be followed due to parental authority.
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| authoritative | A parenting style characterized by high levels of warmth, acceptance, and responsiveness as well as reasonable expectations for children and firmly enforced rules; contrast with authoritarian and permissive.
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| authoritative parenting | A style of parenting characterized by warm, responsive involvement, and the setting of appropriate and clear standards for behavior. The child's autonomy is encouraged by providing rationales for rules and showing respect of her rights and opinions.
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| autism | A lifelong developmental disability that is neurologically based and affects the functioning of the brain; disabilities vary from mild to severe and include deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication, problems with reciprocal social interaction, and a restrictive set of activities and interests.
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| automaticity | A factor in the development of children's attentional processes whereby familiarity with an object or task allows them to use it or perform without thinking.
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| autonomy | The ability to be independent and self-motivated; to control and assume responsibility for one's own actions.
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| basic sense of trust | In Erikson's theory, the first stage of psychosocial development in which infants must form a sense that their care-givers and their environment are safe, secure, and predictable; establishes a foundation for confidence in one's self. See Table 6.1.
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| behavioral geneticist | Scientists who study the degree to which psychological traits, such as sociability, aggression, and mental abilities are inherited.
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| biculturalism | The maintaining of ties of both the dominant and ethnic culture and developing an identity that allows the child to alternate between dominant and ethnic identities depending on the situation.
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| bidilectal | An ability to speak several varieties of English, including SAE and a home dialect.
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| bilingual | The ability to speak two languages.
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| bilingual-bicultural program | A learning program focused on producing balanced learners who are competent in both English and their home language; contrast with transitional bilingual program.
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| bilingual education | A perspective or approach to teaching children that uses at least two languages during instruction, usually a child's native language and the second language the child is acquiring.
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| binge drinking | Drinking five or more alcoholic drinks in a row.
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| birth order | The child's position in the family, whether born first, second, last, and so forth.
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| blended family | A family configuration that includes a biological parent, stepparent and child. It is formed when two partners bring together children from a previous marriage.
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| blind | Those who have either 20/200 vision or a 20 percent or less field of vision; see low vision.
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| bulimia nervosa | An eating disorder characterized by binge eating followed by vomiting or use of laxatives to purge the body; more common among older teens and young adults. This disorder generally is associated with a distorted body image and an inability to control one's impulses; treatable through family and individual therapy.
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| bullying behavior | The most common form of aggression often taking the form of embarrassing people, hitting, destroying property, and ridiculing.
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| case study | A research design for in-depth investigation of a person or small group of individuals; not a reliable source for generalized statements beyond those investigated in the study.
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| causal relationship | When the results of a study indicate there is a systematic cause-and-effect result between two factors.
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| centration | A developmental limitation present during the preoperational stage that makes young children focus their attention on only one aspect, usually the most salient, of a stimulus.
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| cephalocaudal | One of two patterns characterizing growth in infancy; growth begins at the head and proceeds downward. As a result, the infant's brain, neck, and trunk develop before the legs.
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| chromosomes | The structures that carry the genes; composed of long threadlike molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
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| chronosystem | Term used by Bronfenbrenner to refer to the involving the timing and patterning of events in an individual's life and the position of that individual's life in the larger flow of historical time.
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| circular reactions | Piaget's term for patterns of behavior during the sensorimotor stage that are repeated over and over again as goal-directed actions.
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| class inclusion | A concept acquired during the concrete operational stage that involves children's understanding of hierarchies; knowledge that objects in a subcategory (tulips) must be smaller than the superordinate category (flowers).
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| classical conditioning | A behavioral principle of learning by which a new response is learned through the pairing of two stimuli. The response that naturally occurs in the presence of one stimulus (food) which begins to occur following the presentation of a second stimulus (bell) when the two stimuli are repeatedly paired.
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| classification | A mental operation achieved during the concrete operational stage that allows children to impose order on their environment by grouping things and ideas according to common elements.
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| clinical interview method | An interview technique attributed to Piaget of probing children's reasoning processes; a way of combining performance assessments and interviews.
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| clique | A small peer group, generally same-sex and same race, that has a clear social structure with one or two members serving as leaders.
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| code-switching | A personal attitude and stance, usually by a minority member, characterized by successful shuttling between the dominant and one's ethnic or racial culture.
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| coercive family process | A family dynamic characterized by inconsistent, ineffective, or punitive parental discipline during early development that leads to aggressive behavior in children.
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| cognitive behavior modification | Meichenbaum's developmental program that helps children control and regulate their behavior; children are taught self-regulatory strategies to use as a verbal tool to inhibit impulses, control impulses and frustration, and promote reflection.
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| collaborative consultation | A teaching partnership that often accompanies cooperative or team teaching and is characterized by a consultative relationship in which both special and general educators discuss academic and social behavior problems in the general classroom to meet the needs of all children.
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| collective monologue | A characteristic conversational pattern of preschoolers who are unable to take the perspective of others and thus make little effort to modify their speech for their listener so that remarks to each other seem unrelated.
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| communication disorders | Individuals characterized by specific impairments in speech and/or language (see Table 7.2).
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| communicative competence | Learning to use language in an appropriate manner; knowing what words and structures to use on what occasion. This is the major area of linguistic growth during childhood, through adolescence, and continuing into adulthood.
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| compensation | One of three basic mental operations including negation and identity needed to perform Piagetian conservation tasks; a form of reversibility which involves an understanding that one operation can compensate for the effects of another operation. In Piaget's conservation of liquid task, the height of one glass can compensate for the breadth of another glass (see Figure 1.13).
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| componential intelligence | One of three components of intellectual behavior in Sternberg's triarchic model of intelligence involving such skills as the ability to allocate mental resources, to encode and store information, to plan and monitor, to identify problems, and to acquire new knowledge; contrast with experimental intelligence and contextual intelligence.
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| comprehension | An active process in which readers strive to construct a meaningful interpretation of written or oral information.
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| concrete operational stage | The period of life from 7 to 11 years old when, Piaget believed, children's thinking becomes less rigid, and they begin to use mental operations, such as classification, conservation, and seriation to think about events and objects in their environment.
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| conditional knowledge | Children's understanding about why learning strategies are effective in specific situations; contrast with declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.
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| conflict resolution program | School-based intervention programs designed to help students acquire the skills they need to resolve conflict; components include defining the problem, brainstorming about possible solutions, and choosing solutions that benefit both sides (called win-win solutions).
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| conservation | A mental operation in the concrete operational stage that involves the understanding that an entity remains the same despite superficial changes in its form or physical appearance.
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| constructivist approach | An approach to learning which purports that children must construct their own understandings of the world in which they live. Teachers guide this process through focusing attention, posing questions, and stretching children's thinking; information must be mentally acted on, manipulated, and transformed by learners in order to have meaning.
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| context knowledge | A decoding strategy; using the surrounding text and one's background knowledge to identify an unknown word; contrast with phonic knowledge and sight word knowledge.
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| contextual intelligence | One of three components of intellectual behavior in Sternberg's triarchic model of intelligence involving the ability to adapt to a changing environment or to shape the environment to capitalize on one's abilities or skills; contrast with componential intelligence and experiential intelligence; also see practical intelligence.
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| conventional level | According to Kohlberg, the second level of moral judgment, characterized by individuals who accept society's rules for right and wrong and obey authority figures; contrast with preconventional level and postconventional level.
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| corporal punishment | Use of physical punishment with the intention of causing a child to experience physical pain, but not injury; used as a means for reducing or eliminating undesirable behavior in children.
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| corregulation | Control shared by parents and children which develops in middle childhood.
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| correlational coefficient | The statistic that measures the strength of relations between two measures (e.g., self-esteem and school achievement); expressed in a positive or negative ratiofrom 1.0 to 1.0
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| correlational study | A widely used design for developmental research studying what different factors influence one another or go together; such studies are not able to test cause-and-effect hypotheses.
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| critical literacy | The ability to use written language to solve problems and to communicate.
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| critical period | (1) Periods of development during which certain basic structures are formed or a child is most vulnerable or responsive to environmental influences. (2) Lenneberg's hypothesis that language development has a biological basis and there is a time in infancy when particular neurological faculties develop. It states that if certain internal or external conditions related to language development are missing, then a child will never be able to acquire language.
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| cross-sectional study | A study that gathers information simultaneously on one or more aspects of development among children of different age groups.
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| cross-sequential study | A study that follows a group of different-aged children for 2 or 3 years; can reliably identify antecedents and stability of behavior patterns during the course of the study.
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| crowds | The largest adolescent group that is made up of individuals with similar reputations and stereotyped identities that is not conducive to close interpersonal relations.
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| crystallized intelligence | In intelligence theories, one of two kinds of intelligence that develops from learning experiences; measured by word fluency, general information, and vocabulary and verbal comprehension; contrast with fluid intelligence.
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| cumulative deficit effect | A phenomenon found in some studies showing that under poor environmental conditions, differences in IQ scores among races increase with age.
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| curriculum casualty | A school situation in which a child's needs clash with the learning and behavioral expectations of the educational system.
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| deaf | Those who cannot hear or understand speech; see hard of hearing.
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| deaf-blindness | A condition characterized by the unique debilitating effects of hearing and vision impairments.
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| declarative knowledge | Children's understanding about what learning strategies are available to help them; contrast with procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge.
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| decoding | The process that readers use to determine the oral equivalent of written words.
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| deferred imitation | A Piagetian concept in representational thinking in which children are able to repeat a simple sequence of actions or sounds after the sequence is observed; an early form of representational thinking.
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| deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) | Long threadlike molecules that twist around to form a double helix and make up chromosomes; believed to contain about 100,000 genes, the basic units of heredity; see dominant gene and recessive gene.
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| depression | An affective disorder characterized by disturbances in cognitive and behavioral functioning that last longer than 2 or 3 weeks; symptoms include an inability to concentrate, feelings of hopelessness, weight changes, an inability to have fun, and thoughts of death.
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| development | The systematic and successive changes that follow a logical or orderly pattern over a long period of time and enhance a child's adaptation to the environment.
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| dialect | A variation of a single language spoken by members of a speech community; contrast with accent; see social dialect.
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| direct instruction | A teaching strategy in which the teacher explains, demonstrates, and then provides supervised practice for a learning task.
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| discontinuous process | The emergence of drives, needs, and cognitive processes in a series of discrete stages of maturation that influence the way a child relates to the environment; psychoanalytic and cognitive development (Piagetian) theories argue that development is a series of discrete stages.
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| dizygotic twins | Two siblings who come from separate eggs that are released at the same time from an ovary and are fertilized; also known as fraternal twins.
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| dominant gene | A gene inherited from one parent, such as brown hair, that will mask the expression of a recessive gene from the other parent.
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| Down syndrome | A genetic disorder of varying degree that is due to the presence of an extra twenty-first chromosome or a piece of one, causes a range of physical and mental handicaps, and occurs in 1 out of 800 live births. Mothers over the age of 35 have an increased risk of conceiving a child with this disorder, because of their longer exposure to environmental substances. The presence of this abnormality can be detected through the genetic screening process amniocentesis in the fourth month of pregnancy.
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| ectoderm | The outer most layer of the embryonic structure that will develop into the nervous system and skin.
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| effectance motivation | According to White, an inherent need that propels individuals to engage in activities from which they can derive a sense of personal mastery or competence.
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| egocentric speech | One of three stages of children's use of language identified by Vygotsky during which children begin to use speech to regulate their behavior and thinking through spoken aloud self-verbalizations; contrast with social speech and inner speech.
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| egocentrism | The tendency to think about, see, and understand the world from one's own perspective; an inability to see objects or situations from another's perspective. Ego-oriented goals. See performance-oriented goals.
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| elaboration | A memory encoding strategy in which one forms a personally meaningful mental image of items to be remembered.
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| embryonic period | The second stage of prenatal development marked by the implantation of the zygote and lasting from weeks 2 to 8, during which all the basic structures of the child (the central nervous system, the skeleton, and the internal organs) are established and begin to function.
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| emergent literacy | The concept that literacy learning is ongoing from birth.
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| emotional competence | The understanding, expression, and regulation of emotions. Also called emotional intelligence.
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| emotional maltreatment | Rejection and consistent lack of concern for another's emotional well-being.
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| emotional or behavior disorders | Characterized by significantly different psychosocial development from one's peers, including hyperactivity, aggression, withdrawal, immaturity, and learning difficulties.
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| empathy | The ability to know and feel another person's emotional state.
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| encode | To process information and place into memory through the use of cognitive strategies such as elaboration, organization, and rehearsal.
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| endoderm | The innermost layer of the embryonic structure that will develop into the digestive tract and vital organs.
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| English as a second language (ESL) | A special language learning program for nonnative speakers that focuses narrowly on learning the target language.
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| entity theory of ability | A theory of intelligence, proposed by Dweck, whereby students believe their ability level is fixed and cannot be improved through practice or effort; contrast with incremental theory of ability.
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| episodic memory | Long-term memory storage of personal or autobiographical events or information, as well as information about the place, time, and order of events.
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| equilibration | Piaget's concept that refers to our innate tendency of self-regulation to keep our mental representations in balance by adjusting them to maintain organization and stability in our environment through the processes of accommodation and assimilation.
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| estrogens | Sex hormones generally associated with female characteristics, yet produced and present in both sexes; crucial to the maturation of the reproductive system, breast development, and the onset of ovulation and menstruation in females.
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| ethic of care | Gilligan's argument that women are socialized to take responsibility for the well-being of others and therefore emphasize connections between people as well as of justice.
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| ethnic identity | Refers to one's sense of self concerning racial or ethnic group membership.
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| ethnicity | Refers to a group of people, such as Japanese, Cuban, or Italian, who share a common nationality, cultural heritage, and language; contrast with race.
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| event sampling | A technique used to record observations of a certain selected behavior, such as aggression.
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| exceptionality | An umbrella term to describe all who receive special education-children with disabilities as well as children who are gifted.
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| exosystem | In Bronfenbrenner's theory, the system that influences the child's development only indirectly.
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| expectancy-value theory | A cognitive model of motivation which stresses that individuals are more apt to engage in and persist at learning activities when they expect and want to succeed.
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| experiential intelligence | One of three components of intellectual behavior in Sternberg's triarchic model of intelligence involving the ability to cope with new situations in an effective, efficient, and insightful manner; contrast with componential intelligence and contextual intelligence.
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| experimental study | After careful selection and matching on a number of variables, participants are randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control group to measure any difference between the groups for a particular outcome, known as the dependent variable; any significant variance between the two groups' outcome measure would support the hypothesis that the treatment caused the outcome.
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| expert versus novice studies | A research paradigm that shows that more knowledgeable individuals are better able than novices to group or organize information in meaningful patterns suggests that advances in children's thinking processes are explained by both quantitative changes in their thinking processes and qualitative changes in how knowledge is organized.
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| external locus of control | A pattern of attributing events to factors outside one's control; a characteristic of children with learning disabilities; see locus of causality.
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| externalizing problems | The kinds of difficulties a majority of children with emotional and behavioral disorders experience, including argumentative, aggressive, antisocial, and destructive actions; contrast with internalizing problems.
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| extrinsic motivation | A need to learn or act that rises from external contingencies, such as winning an award, parental demands, or to achieve a high grade; contrast with intrinsic motivation.
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| familialism | The strong identification with and attachment to both the nuclear and extended family, and the feelings of loyalty, respect, duty, and reciprocity which accompany such familial attachment.
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| family structure | The configuration of people who live together in a given family unit.
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| feeling of inferiority | In Erikson's fourth stage of psychosocial development, children 7 to 11 years old can develop negative attitudes about their abilities and competencies if a parallel internal sense of industry is not encouraged (see Table 6.1).
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| fetal period | The third and longest stage of prenatal development, from 8 weeks until birth, during which time the fetus increases in size; eyelids, fingernails, taste buds, and hair form; and the respiratory system matures to enable breathing after birth.
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| fine motor skills | Involve small body movements and small muscle coordination and control.
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| fluid intelligence | In intelligence theories, one of two kinds of intelligence that reflects innate cognitive abilities; measured by the speed of information processing, memory processes, ability to detect relationships, and other abstract thinking skills; contrast with crystallized intelligence.
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| formal logic | The development during the formal operational stage of the cognitive tools for solving many types of logical problems; examples are propositional and hypothetico-deductive thinking.
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| formal operational stage | During the period of life between 11 and 12 years of age and onward during which, Piaget believed, children begin to apply formal rules of logic and to gain the ability to think abstractly and reflectively; thinking shifts from the real to the possible; see formal logic.
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| fragile-X syndrome | A genetic disorder more common in male than female offspring due to the presence of an X chromosome that appears to be pinched or very thin in one area and is likely to break during cell division. May cause mild retardation in females; will cause varying degrees of retardation in males and is associated with both physical (cleft palate, eye disorders) and mental (hyperactivity) deficits. This disorder can be detected through genetic screening.
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| functionally literate | Able to read and write well enough to negotiate daily life.
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| gender constancy | The understanding by around age 4 or 5 that one's sex is permanent and cannot be altered by changes in clothing, hairstyle, or activities.
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| gender-role conceptions | The images we have of ourselves as males and females.
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| gender-role identity | Children's perceptions of themselves as a female or male.
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| gender-role socialization | The process by which children learn the attitudes and behavior that society defines as appropriate for their gender; see gender-typed behavior. Same as sex-role socialization.
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| gender schema | Children's understanding of gender and gender-role expectations.
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| gender-typed behavior | Preferences demonstrated by the age of 3 for choosing toys and activities; can be influenced by stereotypical social values.
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| general intellectual factor | In intelligence theories, the idea that a general ability factor (g) underlies all intellectual functioning. Someone with a high general intelligence is expected to do well on all intellectual tests.
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| generalizability | An important determination, in judging the quality of a study, of whether or not the findings apply or do not apply to groups other than the one studied.
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| genes | A unit of the chromosome by which hereditary characteristics are transmitted.
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| genotype | A person's genetic characteristics as determined by the genes a person inherits from both parents for any particular trait; contrast with phenotype.
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| germinal period | The first stage of prenatal development, encompassing the first 2 weeks of fetal development. The fertilized egg rapidly divides, travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus, and prepares for implantation.
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| giftedness | Individuals identified with a minimal IQ score of about 130 and above-average academic achievement, usually 2 years above grade level.
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| goal theory of motivation | A cognitive theory of motivation that emphasizes students' personal reasons for choosing, performing, and persisting at various achievement levels.
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| grammar | Language rules that extend from the simplest level of combining sounds to the complex level of extended conversations including phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and the lexicon; see Figure 5.1.
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| gross motor skills | Involve the movement of the head, body, legs, arms, and large muscles; see Table 2.7.
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| guided participation | Rogoff's term used to describe transferring responsibility for a task from the skilled partner to the child in a mutual involvement between the child and the partner in a collective activity. Steps include choosing and structuring activities to fit the child's skills and interests; supporting and monitoring the child's participation; and adjusting the level of support provided as the child begins to perform the activity independently.
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| habituation procedure | A technique researchers use to study infant memory by assessing changes in the intensity of infants' responses to various forms of stimulation over a period of time.
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| hand dominance | A preference for using either the right or left hand that develops around the age of 5 for more than 90 percent of all children.
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| hard of hearing | Those who have sufficient hearing to enable them to understand speech; may require amplification of speech through a hearing aid; see deaf.
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| heritability | The proportion of observed variance for a behavior that can be ascribed to genetic differences among individuals in a particular population; a population statistic that applies only to the sample from which it is derived.
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| hierarchial classification | A mental operation learned during the concrete operational stage that allows children to organize concepts and objects according to how they relate to one another in a building-block fashion. For example, all matter is composed of molecules and molecules are made up of atoms, which, in turn, are made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons.
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| holophrases | Refers to single words intended to convey more complex meaning typically utilized by children aged 18 to 24 months.
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| homophobia | An irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals.
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| homosexual orientation | Consistent sexual attraction toward persons of the same gender that includes fantasies, conscious attraction, romantic feelings, or sexual behaviors.
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| horizontal decalage | Piaget's term for children's inconsistency in thinking within a developmental stage; explains why, for instance, children do not learn conservation tasks about numbers and volume at the same time.
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| hostile aggression | In 3- and 4-year-old children, behavior that is intended to hurt or harm another person; see aggression. Contrast with instrumental aggression.
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| hypothalamus | A structure at the base of the brain that controls the pituitary gland.
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| hypothesis | A statement of prediction derived from a theory that has not yet been tested.
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| hypothetico-deductive thinking | A form of formal logic achieved during the formal operational stage Piaget identified as the ability to generate and test hypotheses in a logical and systematic matter.
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| ideal self | The image of the self created during middle childhood that is developed by comparing one's real self to a set of desired characteristics including the expectations, values, and ideals of peers and adults.
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| identity | (1) In Piaget's theory, one of three basic mental operations including negation and compensation needed to perform conservation tasks; involves an understanding of cognitive constancy, that people, objects, and quantities remain unchanged despite changes in appearance. (2) In Erikson's theory, the fifth stage of psychosocial development when adolescents commit themselves to a set of beliefs, values, and adult roles in forming a basic sense of self. If adolescents are unable to explore alternative roles and options, they will experience a parallel internal state of role confusion; see Table 6.1.
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| identity achievement | Marcia's term for an adolescent's determination of definite goals or choices after having explored different options.
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| identity foreclosure | The state adolescents are in when they have not explored different possibilities but have committed to specific choices.
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| identity moratorium | Marcia's term for an adolescent's exploration of different occupational plans, ideological stances, and personal relationship when she is not ready to make a choice or commitment.
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| identity versus identity confusion | In Erikson's theory, the central issue that defines adolescence whereby the adolescent must feel his identity informed by his past, future, and current identities, and how he sees himself and how others see him.
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| ideographic system | The structure of some languages, including Chinese, whereby each character in the written language represents the meaning of an individual word; contrast with alphabetic system.
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| imaginary audience | The belief that one is constantly being watched and evaluated, which is an expression of adolescent egocentrism, defined by Elkind as resulting from the inability of adolescents to distinguish between their thoughts about themselves and their thoughts about others.
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| incremental theory of ability | A theory of intelligence, proposed by Dweck, whereby students believe their ability level can improve through a greater investment of effort or by trying different strategies; contrast with entity theory of ability.
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| inductive discipline | A discipline technique in which parents offer explanation for their rules and ask children to reflect on their behavior; helps children develop self-control and self-discipline.
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| infant attachment | The process by which infants form strong affectional ties with their caregivers; generally takes place within the first 6 months of age and is important for the development of a basic sense of trust that can have long-term effects on an infants' later emotional and cognitive development.
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| infant mortality | A term referring to the number of infants that die within the first year of life, often caused by a short gestation period or low birthweight.
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| inner speech | One of three stages of children's use of language identified by Vygotsky during which children internalize their self-verbalizations and are able to manipulate language in their heads to think about problem solutions and action sequences. A self-regulatory process by which children guide their own thinking and behavior; also called private speech; contrast with social speech and egocentric speech.
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| insecure-avoidant attachment | In Ainsworth theory, a behavior pattern in which infants appear indifferent to the departure of their mothers and avoid the parent when they return. Distinguished from secure attachment.
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| insecure-disorganized attachment | Another form of insecure attachment in which infant shows disorientation and contradictory behavior in Ainsworth's Strange Situation. Distinguished from secure attachment.
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| insecure-resistant attachment | In Ainsworth theory, a behavior pattern in which infants show high levels of distress upon separation, but ambivalence when parent returns.
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| instrumental aggression | In young children, behavior that is intended to obtain an object, to protect a play space, or to get one's way; behavior that is not intended to hurt or harm another person; see aggression. Contrast with hostile aggression.
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| instrumental conditioning | See operant conditioning.
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| intelligence quotient (IQ) | Represents a score obtained by comparing a child's mental age score with other children's of the same chronological age; currently determined through a deviation IQ score procedure.
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| interactional perspective | A theory that supports the interplay of innate and environmental influences on a child's development.
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| intercoder reliability | See interobserver reliability.
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| interindividual variation | Differences in developmental needs from one child to the next; see intraindividual variation.
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| internalization | Vygotsky's term for the process of constructing a mental representation of external physical actions or cognitive operations that first occur through social interaction.
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| internalizing problems | The kinds of problems some children with emotional and behavioral disorders experience, including depression, withdrawal, anxiety, and obsession; contrast with externalizing problems.
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| interobserver reliability | A reliability estimate used in interview and observation studies whereby more than one person observes or codes the same events and a percentage of agreement is computed to guard against subjective interpretations and judgments; also called intercoder reliability.
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| interview | A self-report measure in which subjects are asked a standard set of questions.
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| intraindividual variation | The unique pattern of strengths and needs related to each child's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional growth; see interindividual variation.
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| intrinsic motivation | A desire to learn or act that arises from internal sources of curiosity, interest, enjoyment, and innate strivings for mastery and growth; contrast with extrinsic motivation.
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| intuitive theory | Piaget's explanation for young children's attempts to explain natural phenomena by using their personal experiences; characterized by animism.
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| invented spelling | Unconventional ways children spell words in their early attempts at writing.
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| language | A symbolic system in which a series of sounds make words to represent an idea, an object, or a person and eventually becomes the medium through which we think.
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| language acquisition device (LAD) | Chomsky's idea that children are born with a mechanism in their brains that enables them to recognize the universal rules that underlie all languages and the structure and grammar of their native language.
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| lateralization | Specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain.
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| lateralized | A theory about cognitive functioning suggesting that each of the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain, the left side and the right side, performs a special set of functions and becomes the dominant center of brain functioning.
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| learned helplessness | A feeling of helplessness that develops when one encounters difficult or failure, especially in situations when one does not have control. This reinforces low self-confidence.
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| learning-oriented goals | Outcome desired because of the child's intrinsic interest in learning something new.
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| limited English proficiency (LEP) | A minimal knowledge of Standard American English (SAE); often characteristic of nonnative speakers.
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| literacy | Constructed meaning; meaning created through the interaction of reader or writer and written text.
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| literate environment | A place in which children encounter print with authentic purposes and adults value and participate in reading and writing.
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| literate thinking | The ability to think and reason like a literate person within a particular society; see literacy.
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| locus of causality | In attribution theory, the motivational source, either internal or external, to which people attribute their actions or achievements.
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| logical rule of class inclusion | A mental operation achieved during the concrete operational stage that allows children to understand the relationship of something's whole to its parts; see class inclusion.
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| logical rule of progressive change | The understanding which develops during the concrete operational stage that various stimuli can be ordered in terms of increasing and decreasing size.
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| logical rule of transitivity | The understanding which develops during the concrete operational stage that objects in the middle of a series are both shorter and longer than others; a necessary concept in solving seriation problems.
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| Logico-mathematical knowledge | In Piaget's theory, the type of knowledge as the mental construction of relationships involved in the concrete operations of seriation, classification, and conservation, as well as various formal operations that emerge in adolescence.
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| longitudinal study | A study that collects different types of data (e.g., early experiences, education, personality characteristics) on a regular basis and tracks the development of a group of children over a number of years.
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| long-term memory | A component of the information processing system into which information passes from short-term memory if it has been transformed or worked on in some personally meaningful way; has a large capacity, and can store information indefinitely.
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| low birth weight | Many premature and some full-term babies who weigh less than 5.5 pounds or 2,500 gram |
