Diane E. Papalia,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Sally Wendkos Olds
Ruth Duskin Feldman
| "difficult" children | Children with irritable temperament, irregular biological rhythms, and intense emotional responses.
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| "easy" children | Children with a generally happy temperament, regular biological rhythms, and a readiness to accept new experiences.
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| "slow-to-warm-up" children | Children whose temperament is generally mild but who are hesitant about accepting new experiences.
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| "still-face" paradigm | Research method used to measure mutual regulation in infants 2 to 9 months old.
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| A, not-B error | Tendency, noted by Piaget, for 8- to 12-month-old infants to search for a hidden object in a place where they previously found it, rather than in the place where they most recently saw it being hidden.
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| acceleration | Approach to educating the gifted, which moves them through a curriculum at an unusually rapid pace.
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| Accommodation | Piaget's term for changes in a cognitive structure to include new information.
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| achievement tests | Tests that assess how much children know in various subject areas.
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| acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) | Viral disease that undermines effective functioning of the immune system.
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| acute medical conditions | Illnesses that last a short time.
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| adaptation | Piaget's term for adjustment to new information about the environment.
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| adolescence | Developmental transition between childhood and adulthood entailing major physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes.
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| adolescent growth spurt | Sharp increase in height and weight that precedes sexual maturity.
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| adolescent rebellion | Pattern of emotional turmoil, characteristic of a minority of adolescents, which may involve conflict with family, alienation from adult society, reckless behavior, and rejection of adult values.
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| adrenarche | Maturation of adrenal glands.
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| alleles | Paired genes (alike or different) that affect a trait.
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| altruism | Behavior intended to help others out of inner concern and without expectation of external reward.
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| ambivalent (resistant) attachment | Pattern in which an infant becomes anxious before the primary caregiver leaves, is extremely upset during his or her absence, and both seeks and resists contact on his or her return.
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| animism | Tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive.
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| anorexia nervosa | Eating disorder characterized by self-starvation.
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| anoxia | Lack of oxygen, which may cause brain damage.
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| Apgar scale | Standard measurement of a newborn's condition; it assesses appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration.
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| aptitude tests | Tests that measure children's general intelligence, or capacity to learn.
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| assimilation | Piaget's term for incorporation of new information into an existing cognitive structure.
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| asthma | A chronic respiratory disease characterized by sudden attacks of coughing, wheezing, and difficulty in breathing.
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| attachment | Reciprocal, enduring tie between infant and caregiver, each of whom contributes to the quality of the relationship.
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| attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) | Syndrome characterized by persistent inattention and distractibility, impulsivity, low tolerance for frustration, and inappropriate overactivity.
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| authoritarian | Baumrind's term for parenting style emphasizing control and obedience.
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| authoritative | Baumrind's term for parenting style blending respect for a child's individuality with an effort to instill social values.
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| autism | Pervasive developmental disorder of the brain, characterized by lack of normal social interaction, impaired communication and imagination, and repetitive, obsessive behaviors.
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| autobiographical memory | Memory of specific events in one's own life.
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| autonomy versus shame and doubt | Erikson's second crisis in psychosocial development, in which children achieve a balance between self-determination and control by others.
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| autosomes | The 22 pairs of chromosomes not related to sexual expression.
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| avoidant attachment | Pattern in which an infant rarely cries when separated from the primary caregiver and avoids contact upon his or her return.
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| basic trust versus basic mistrust | Erikson's first crisis in psychosocial development, in which infants develop a sense of the reliability of people and objects in their world.
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| Bayley Scales of Infant Development | Standardized test of infants' mental and motor development.
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| behavioral genetics | Quantitative study of relative hereditary and environmental influences.
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| behaviorism | Learning theory that emphasizes the predictable role of environment in causing observable behavior.
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| behaviorist approach | Approach to the study of cognitive development that is concerned with basic mechanics of learning.
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| behavior therapy | Therapeutic approach using principles of learning theory to encourage desired behaviors or eliminate undesired ones; also called behavior modification.
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| bilingual | Fluent in two languages.
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| bilingual education | System of teaching non-English-speaking children in their native language while they learn English, and later switching to all-English instruction.
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| bioecological theory | Bronfenbrenner's approach to understanding processes and contexts of development.
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| birth trauma | Injury sustained at the time of birth.
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| body image | Descriptive and evaluative beliefs about one's appearance.
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| brain growth spurts | Periods of rapid brain growth and development.
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| Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale | Neurological and behavioral test to measure neonate's responses to the environment.
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| bulimia nervosa | Eating disorder in which a person regularly eats huge quantities of food and then purges the body by laxatives, induced vomiting, fasting, or excessive exercise.
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| bullying | Aggression deliberately and persistently directed against a particular target, or victim, typically one who is weak, vulnerable, and defenseless.
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| canalization | Limitation on variance of expression of certain inherited characteristics.
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| case study | Study covering a single case or life.
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| cell death | Elimination of excess brain cells to achieve more efficient functioning.
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| central executive | In Baddeley's model, element of working memory that controls the processing of information.
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| central nervous system | Brain and spinal cord.
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| centration | In Piaget's theory, tendency of preoperational children to focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others.
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| cephalocaudal principle | Principle that development proceeds in a head-to-tail direction; that is, upper parts of the body develop before lower parts.
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| cesarean delivery | Delivery of a baby by surgical removal from the uterus.
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| child development | Scientific study of processes of change and stability from conception through adolescence.
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| child-directed speech (CDS) | Form of speech often used in talking to babies or toddlers; includes slow, simplified speech, a high-pitched tone, exaggerated vowel sounds, short words and sentences, and much repetition. Also called parentese.
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| childhood depression | Mood disorder characterized by such symptoms as a prolonged sense of friendlessness, inability to have fun or concentrate, fatigue, extreme activity or apathy, feelings of worthlessness, weight change, physical complaints, and thoughts of death or suicide.
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| chromosomes | Coils of DNA that carry the genes.
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| chronic medical conditions | Illnesses or impairments that persist for at least 3 months.
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| chronosystem | Bronfenbrenner's term for effects of time on other developmental systems.
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| circular reactions | Piaget's term for processes by which an infant learns to reproduce desired occurrences originally discovered by chance.
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| classical conditioning | Learning based on associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a particular response with another stimulus that ordinarily does elicit the response.
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| class inclusion | Understanding of the relationship between a whole and its parts.
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| clone (verb) | To make a genetic copy of an individual; (noun) a genetic copy of an individual.
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| code mixing | Use of elements of two languages, sometimes in the same utterance, by young children in households where both languages are spoken.
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| code switching | Process of changing one's speech to match the situation, as in people who are bilingual.
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| cognitive neuroscience approach | Approach to the study of cognitive development that links brain processes with cognitive ones.
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| cognitive perspective | View that thought processes are central to development.
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| cohort | Group of people who share a similar experience, such as growing up at the same time and in the same place.
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| commitment | Marcia's term for personal investment in an occupation or system of beliefs.
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| committed compliance | Wholehearted obedience of a parent's orders without reminders or lapses.
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| componential element | Sternberg's term for the analytic aspect of intelligence.
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| concordant | Term describing twins who share the same trait or disorder.
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| concrete operations | Third stage of Piagetian cognitive development (approximately from ages 7 to 12), during which children develop logical but not abstract thinking.
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| conduct disorder (CD) | Repetitive, persistent pattern of aggressive, antisocial behavior violating societal norms or the rights of others.
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| conscience | Internal standards of behavior, which usually control one's conduct and produce emotional discomfort when violated.
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| conservation | Piaget's term for awareness that two objects that are equal according to a certain measure remain equal in the face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing has been added to or taken away from either object.
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| constructive play | In Piaget's and Smilansky's terminology, the second cognitive level of play, involving use of objects or materials to make something.
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| contextual element | Sternberg's term for the practical aspect of intelligence.
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| contextual perspective | View of development that sees the individual as inseparable from the social context.
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| control group | In an experiment, a group of people similar to the people in the experimental group who do not receive the treatment whose effects are to be measured.
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| conventional morality (or morality of conventional role conformity) | Second level in Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning, in which the standards of authority figures are internalized.
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| convergent thinking | Thinking aimed at finding the one "right" answer to a problem.
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| coregulation | Transitional stage in the control of behavior in which parents exercise general supervision and children exercise moment-to-moment self-regulation.
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| corporal punishment | Use of physical force with the intention of causing pain, but not injury, to correct or control behavior.
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| correlational study | Research design intended to discover whether a statistical relationship between variables exists.
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| crisis | Marcia's term for period of conscious decision making related to identity formation.
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| critical period | Specific time when a given event, or its absence, has the greatest impact on development.
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| cross-modal transfer | Ability to use information gained by one sense to guide another.
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| cross-sectional study | Study design in which people of different ages are assessed on one occasion.
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| cultural bias | Tendency of intelligence tests to include items calling for knowledge or skills more familiar or meaningful to some cultural groups than to others.
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| culture | A society's or group's total way of life, including customs, traditions, beliefs, values, language, and physical products-all learned behavior passed on from parents to children.
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| culture-fair | Describing an intelligence test that deals with experiences common to various cultures, in an attempt to avoid cultural bias.
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| culture-free | Describing an intelligence test that, if it were possible to design, would have no culturally linked content.
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| decenter | In Piaget's terminology, to think simultaneously about several aspects of a situation.
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| deductive reasoning | Type of logical reasoning that moves from a general premise about a class to a conclusion about a particular member or members of the class.
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| deferred imitation | Piaget's term for reproduction of an observed behavior after the passage of time by calling up a stored symbol of it.
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| Denver Developmental Screening Test | Screening test given to children 1 month to 6 years old to determine whether they are developing normally.
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| deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) | Chemical that carries inherited instructions for the formation and function of body cells.
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| dependent variable | In an experiment, the condition that may or may not change as a result of changes in the independent variable.
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| depth perception | Ability to perceive objects and surfaces three-dimensionally.
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| developmental priming mechanisms | Aspects of the home environment that seem necessary for normal cognitive and psychosocial development.
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| differentiation | Process by which neurons acquire specialized structure and function.
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| discipline | Methods of molding children's character and of teaching them self-control and acceptable behavior.
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| dishabituation | Increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new stimulus. Compare habituation.
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| disorganized-disoriented attachment | Pattern in which an infant, after being separated from the primary caregiver, shows contradictory behaviors upon his or her return.
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| divergent thinking | Thinking that produces a variety of fresh, diverse possibilities.
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| dizygotic (two-egg) twins | Twins conceived by the union of two different ova (or a single ovum that has split) with two different sperm cells; also called fraternal twins.
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| dominant inheritance | Pattern of inheritance in which, when a child receives contradictory alleles, only the dominant one is expressed.
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| Down syndrome | Chromosomal disorder characterized by moderate-to-severe mental retardation and a downward-sloping skin fold at the inner corners of the eyes.
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| drug therapy | Administration of drugs to treat emotional disorders.
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| dual representation hypothesis | Proposal that children under the age of 3 have difficulty grasping spatial relationships because of the need to keep more than one mental representation in mind at the same time.
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| dyslexia | Developmental disorder in which reading achievement is substantially lower than predicted by IQ or age.
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| early intervention | Systematic process of providing therapeutic and educational services to families to help meet young children's developmental needs.
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| egocentrism | Piaget's term for inability to consider another person's point of view.
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| elaboration | Mnemonic strategy of making mental associations involving items to be remembered.
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| electronic fetal monitoring | Mechanical monitoring of fetal heartbeat during labor and delivery.
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| embryonic stage | Second stage of gestation (2 to 8 weeks), characterized by rapid growth and development of major body systems and organs.
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| emergent literacy | Preschoolers' development of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that underlie reading and writing.
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| emotional maltreatment | Action or inaction that may cause behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders.
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| emotions | Subjective reactions to experience that are associated with physiological and behavioral changes.
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| empathy | Ability to put oneself in another person's place and feel what that person feels.
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| encoding | Process by which information is prepared for long-term storage and later retrieval.
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| English-immersion | Approach to teaching English as a second language in which instruction is presented only in English.
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| enrichment | Approach to educating the gifted, which broadens and deepens knowledge and skills through extra activities, projects, field trips, or mentoring.
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| enuresis | Repeated urination in clothing or in bed.
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| environment | Totality of non-genetic, or experiential, influences on development.
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| episodic memory | Long-term memory of specific experiences or events, linked to time and place.
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| equilibration | Piaget's term for the tendency to seek a stable balance among cognitive elements.
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| ethnic group | Group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, and/or national origins, which contribute to a sense of shared identity.
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| ethnographic study | In-depth study of a culture, which uses a combination of methods including participant observation.
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| ethological perspective | View of development that focuses on biological and evolutionary bases of behavior.
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| exosystem | Bronfenbrenner's term for linkages between two or more settings, one of which does not contain the child.
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| experiential element | Sternberg's term for the insightful aspect of intelligence.
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| experiment | Rigorously controlled, replicable procedure in which the researcher manipulates variables to assess the effect of one on the other.
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| experimental group | In an experiment, the group receiving the treatment under study.
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| explicit memory | Memory that is intentional and conscious.
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| extended family | Kinship network of parents, children, and other relatives, sometimes living together in an extended-family household.
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| external memory aids | Mnemonic strategies using something outside the person.
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| family therapy | Psychological treatment in which a therapist sees the whole family together to analyze patterns of family functioning.
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| fast mapping | Process by which a child absorbs the meaning of a new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation.
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| fertilization | Union of sperm and ovum fuse to produce a zygote; also called conception.
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| fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) | Combination of mental, motor, and developmental abnormalities affecting the offspring of some women who drink heavily during pregnancy.
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| fetal stage | Final stage of gestation (from 8 weeks to birth), characterized by increased detail of body parts and greatly enlarged body size.
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| fine motor skills | Physical skills that involve the small muscles and eye-hand coordination.
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| fontanels | Soft spots on head of young infant.
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| foreclosure | Identity status, described by Marcia, in which a person who has not spent time considering alternatives (that is, has not been in crisis) is committed to other people's plans for his or her life.
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| formal operations | In Piaget's theory, the final stage of cognitive development, characterized by the ability to think abstractly.
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| functional play | In Piaget's and Smilansky's terminology, the lowest cognitive level of play, involving repetitive muscular movements.
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| gateway drugs | Drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, the use of which tends to lead to use of more addictive drugs.
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| gender | Significance of being male or female.
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| gender constancy | Awareness that one will always be male or female. Also called sex-category constancy.
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| gender identity | Awareness, developed in early childhood, that one is male or female.
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| gender roles | Behaviors, interests, attitudes, skills, and traits that a culture considers appropriate for males or for females.
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| gender-schema theory | Theory, proposed by Bem, that children socialize themselves in their gender roles by developing a mentally organized network of information about what it means to be male or female in a particular culture.
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| gender stereotypes | Preconceived generalizations about male or female role behavior.
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| gender-typing | Socialization process by which children learn appropriate gender roles.
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| generalized anxiety disorder | Anxiety not focused on any single target.
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| generic memory | Memory that produces scripts of familiar routines to guide behavior.
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| genes | Small segments of DNA located in definite positions on particular chromosomes.
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| genetic code | Sequence of base pairs within DNA, which determine inherited characteristics.
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| genetic counseling | Clinical service that advises couples of their probable risk of having children with hereditary defects.
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| genetic testing | Procedure for ascertaining genetic makeup to identify predispositions to hereditary diseases or disorders.
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| genotype | Genetic makeup of a person, containing both expressed and unexpressed characteristics.
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| genotype-environment correlation | Tendency of certain genetic and environmental influences to reinforce each other; may be passive, reactive (evocative), or active. Also called genotype-environment covariance.
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| genotype-environment interaction | The portion of phenotypic variation that results from the reactions of genetically different individuals to similar environmental conditions.
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| germinal stage | First 2 weeks of prenatal development, characterized by rapid cell division, increasing complexity and differentiation, and implantation in the wall of the uterus.
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| gonadarche | Maturation of testes or ovaries.
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| goodness of fit | Appropriateness of environmental demands and constraints to a child's temperament.
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| gross motor skills | Physical skills that involve the large muscles.
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| guided participation | Participation of an adult in a child's activity in a manner that helps to structure the activity and to bring the child's understanding of it closer to that of the adult.
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| habituation | Simple type of learning in which familiarity with a stimulus reduces, slows, or stops a response. Compare dishabituation.
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| handedness | Preference for using a particular hand.
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| heredity | Inborn influences on development, carried on the genes inherited from the biological parents.
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| heritability | Statistical estimate of contribution of heredity to individual differences in a specific trait within a given population.
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| heterozygous | Possessing differing alleles for a trait.
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| holophrase | Single word that conveys a complete thought.
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| Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) | Instrument to measure the influence of the home environment on children's cognitive growth.
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| homozygous | Possessing two identical alleles for a trait.
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| horizontal décalage | Piaget's term for inability to transfer learning about one type of conservation to other types, which causes a child to master different types of conservation tasks at different ages.
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| hostile aggression | Aggressive behavior intended to hurt another person.
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| human genome | Complete sequence or mapping of genes in the human body and their locations.
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| hypotheses | Possible explanations for phenomena, used to predict the outcome of research.
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| hypothetical-deductive reasoning | Ability, believed by Piaget to accompany the state of formal operations, to develop, consider, and test hypotheses.
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| ideal self | The self one would like to be.
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| identification | In Freudian theory, the process by which a young child adopts characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of the parent of the same sex.
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| identity achievement | Identity status, described by Marcia, which is characterized by commitment to choices made following a crisis, a period spent in exploring alternatives.
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| identity diffusion | Identity status, described by Marcia, which is characterized by absence of commitment and lack of serious consideration of alternatives.
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| identity statuses | Marcia's term for states of ego development that depend on the presence or absence of crisis and commitment.
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| identity versus identity confusion | Erikson's fifth crisis of psychosocial development, in which an adolescent seeks to develop a coherent sense of self, including the role she or he is to play in society. Also called identity versus role confusion.
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| imaginary audience | Elkind's term for an observer who exists only in an adolescent's mind and is as concerned with the adolescent's thoughts and actions as the adolescent is.
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| implicit memory | Unconscious recall, generally of habits and skills; sometimes called procedural memory.
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| imprinting | Instinctive form of learning in which, during a critical period in early development, a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees, usually the mother.
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| independent variable | In an experiment, the condition over which the experimenter has direct control.
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| individual differences | Differences among children in characteristics, influences, or developmental outcomes.
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| individual psychotherapy | Psychological treatment in which a therapist sees a troubled person one-on-one.
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| inductive reasoning | Type of logical reasoning that moves from particular observations about members of a class to a general conclusion about that class.
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| inductive techniques | Disciplinary techniques designed to induce desirable behavior by appealing to a child's sense of reason and fairness.
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| industry versus inferiority | Erikson's fourth critical alternative of psychosocial development, in which children must learn the productive skills their culture requires or else face feelings of inferiority.
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| infant mortality rate | Proportion of babies born alive who die within the first year.
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| infertility | Inability to conceive after 12 to 18 months of trying.
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| information-processing approach | Approach to the study of cognitive development by observing and analyzing the mental processes involved in perceiving and handling information.
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| initiative versus guilt | Erikson's third crisis in psychosocial development, in which children balance the urge to pursue goals with moral reservations that may prevent carrying them out.
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| instrumental aggression | Aggressive behavior used as a means of achieving a goal.
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| integration | Process by which neurons coordinate the activities of muscle groups.
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| intelligent behavior | Behavior that is goal-oriented and adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life.
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| internalization | Process by which children accept societal standards of conduct as their own; fundamental to socialization.
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| invisible imitation | Imitation with parts of one's body that one cannot see.
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| IQ (intelligence quotient) tests | Psychometric tests that seek to measure intelligence by comparing a test-taker's performance with standardized norms.
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| irreversibility | Piaget's term for a preoperational child's failure to understand that an operation can go in two or more directions.
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| Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) | Nontraditional individual intelligence test designed to provide fair assessments of minority children and children with disabilities.
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| laboratory observation | Research method in which all participants are observed in the same situation, under controlled conditions.
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| language | Communication system based on words and grammar.
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| language acquisition device (LAD) | In Chomsky's terminology, an inborn mechanism that enables children to infer linguistic rules from the language they hear.
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| lanugo | Fuzzy prenatal body hair, which drops off within a few days after birth.
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| lateralization | Tendency of each of the brain's hemispheres to have specialized functions.
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| learning disabilities (LDs) | Disorders that interfere with specific aspects of learning and school achievement.
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| learning perspective | View of development that holds that changes in behavior result from experience, or adaptation to the environment.
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| linguistic speech | Verbal expression designed to convey meaning.
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| literacy | Ability to read and write.
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| longitudinal study | Study design to assess changes in a sample over time.
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| long-term memory | Storage of virtually unlimited capacity, which holds information for very long periods.
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| low birthweight | Weight of less than 51/2 pounds (2,500 grams) at birth because of prematurity or being small for date.
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| macrosystem | Bronfenbrenner's term for overall cultural patterns.
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| maturation | Unfolding of a genetically influenced, often age-related, sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns, including the readiness to master new abilities.
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| mechanistic model | Model that views development as a passive, predictable response to stimuli.
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| meconium | Fetal waste matter, excreted during the first few days after birth.
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| menarche | Girl's first menstruation.
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| mental retardation | Significantly subnormal cognitive functioning.
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| mesosystem | Bronfenbrenner's term for linkages of two or more microsystems.
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| metacognition | Awareness of a person's own mental processes.
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| metamemory | Understanding of processes of memory.
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| microgenetic study | Study design that allows researchers to directly observe change by repeated testing over a short time.
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| microsystem | Bronfenbrenner's term for a setting in which a child interacts with others on an everyday, face-to-face basis.
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| mnemonic strategies | Techniques to aid memory.
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| monozygotic (one-egg) twins | Twins resulting from the division of a single zygote after fertilization; also called identical twins.
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| morality of constraint | First of Piaget's two stages of moral development, characterized by rigid, egocentric judgments.
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| morality of cooperation | Second of Piaget's two stages of moral development, characterized by flexible judgments and formation of one's own moral code.
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| moratorium | Identity status, described by Marcia, in which a person is currently considering alternatives (in crisis) and seems headed for commitment.
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| mother-infant bond | Mother's feeling of close, caring connection with her newborn.
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| multifactorial transmission | Combination of genetic and environmental factors to produce certain complex traits.
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| mutations | Permanent alterations in genes or chromosomes that may produce harmful characteristics.
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| mutual regulation | Process by which infant and caregiver communicate emotional states to each other and respond appropriately. |
