| AB error | When infants make the mistake infants make by of selecting the familiar hiding place (A) rather than the new hiding place (B), as they progress into Piaget's substage 4 in sensorimotor development.
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| acceptance | Stage in which dying person comes to accept the certainty of his or /her death
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| accommodation | Occurs when individuals adjust to new information.
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| acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) | A sexually transmitted disease caused by the HIV virus, which destroys the body's immune system.
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| active (niche-picking) genotype-environment correlations | Correlations that exist when children seek out environments they find compatible and stimulating.
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| active euthanasia | Death induced deliberately, as by injecting a lethal dose of a drug.
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| activity theory | The view that the more active older adults are, the more likely they are to be satisfied with life.
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| addiction | A pattern of behavior characterized by an overwhelming involvement with using a drug and securing its supply.
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| adolescent egocentrism | The heightened self-consciousness of adolescents.
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| adoption study | A study in which investigators seek to discover if children are more like their adoptive parents than their biological parents.
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| aerobic exercise | Sustained exercise (such as jogging, swimming, or cycling) that involves oxygen intake (such as jogging, swimming, or cycling) and that stimulates heart and lung activity.
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| affectionate love | In this type of love (also called "companionate love";), an individual desires to have the other person near and has a deep, caring affection for that person.
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| affordances | Opportunities for interaction that are offered by objects that are necessary to perform functional activities.
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| ageism | Prejudice against other people because of their age, especially prejudice against older adults.
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| altruism | Unselfish interest in helping another person.
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| Alzheimer disease | A progressive, irreversible brain disorder characterized by a gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and eventually physical function.
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| amnion Bag- or enveloped-shaped | The life-support system that is a bag or envelope that contains a clear fluid in which the developing embryo floats.
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| amnion | The life-support system that is a bag or envelope that contains a clear fluid in which the developing embryo floats.
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| androgyny | The presence of positive masculine and feminine characteristics in the same person.
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| anger cry | A cry with more excess air forced through the vocal chords.
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| anger | Stage of dying in which the dying person's denial gives way to anger, rage, resentment, and envy
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| animism | The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.
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| anorexia nervosa | An eating disorder that involves the relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation.
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| Apgar Scale | widely used method to assess the health of newborns at one and five minutes after birth. The Apgar Scale evaluates an infant's heart rate, respiratory effort, muscle tone, body color, and reflex irritability.
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| aphasia | A loss or impairment of language ability caused by brain damage.
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| arthritis | Inflammation of the joints that is accompanied by pain, stiffness, and movement problems; especially common in older adults.
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| assimilation | Occurs when individuals incorporate new information into their existing knowledge.
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| assimilation | The absorption of ethnic minority groups into the dominant group, which often involves the loss of some or virtually all of the behavior and values of the ethnic minority group.
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| associative play | Play that involves social interaction with little or no organization.
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| attachment | A close emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver.
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| attachment-related anxiety | Involves the extent to which individuals feel secure or insecure about whether a partner will be available, responsive, and attentive.
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| attachment-related avoidance | Involves the degree to which individuals feel secure or insecure in relying on others, opening up to them, and being intimate with them.
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| attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) | A disability in which children consistently show one or more of the following characteristics: (1) inattention, (2) hyperactivity, and (3) impulsivity.
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| attention | The focusing of mental resources.
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| authoritarian parenting | Restrictive punitive style, with firm limits and controls on child and little verbal exchange with child.
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| authoritative parenting | Parents encourage independence but place limits and controls on child's behavior.
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| autonomous morality | The child becomes aware that rules and laws are created by people and that, in judging an action, one should consider the actor's intentions as well as the consequences.
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| average children | Children who receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations from peers.
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| bargaining | Stage of dying in which the dying person develops the hope that death can be postponed
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| basal metabolism rate (BSM) | The minimum amount of energy a person uses in a resting state.
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| basic cry | A rhythmic pattern usually consisting of a cry, a briefer silence, a shorter inspiratory whistle that is higher pitched than the main cry, and then a brief rest before the next cry.
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| basic-skills-and-phonics approach | The idea that reading instruction should teach both phonics and the basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds.
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| Bayley Scales of Infant Development | Scales used widely in assessment of infant development, developed by Nancy Bayley.
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| becoming parents and a family with children | The third stage in the family life cycle. Adults who enter this stage move up a generation and become caregivers to the younger generation.
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| behavior genetic | The field that seeks to discover the influence of heredity and environment on individual differences in human traits and development.
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| big five factors of personality | Emotional stability (neuroticism), extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
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| blastocyst | The inner mass of cells that develops during the germinal period. These cells later develop into the embryo.
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| body transcendence versus body preoccupation | Refers to older adults either coping with declining physical well-being or becoming obsessed by it.
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| bonding | The formation of a close physical bond between parents and newborn in the period shortly after birth.
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| brain death | Neurological definition of death; all electrical activity of brain has ceased. for a period of time
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| brainstorming | A technique in which individuals are encouraged to come up with creative ideas in a group, play off one another's ideas, and say practically whatever comes to mind.
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| Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale | A test given several days after birth to assess a newborn's neurological development, reflexes, and reactions to people.
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| breech position | The baby's "backward" position in the uterus; that causes delivery occurs with the feet or buttocks appearing first.the buttocks to be the first part to emerge from the vagina.
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| Broca's area | An area in the brain's left frontal lobe involved in speech production.
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| bulimia nervosa | An eating disorder in which the individual consistently follows a binge-and-purge pattern.
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| care perspective | The moral perspective of Carol Gilligan, which views people in terms of their connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication, relationships with others, and concern for others.
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| case study | An in-depth look at a single individual.
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| cataracts | Involve a thickening of the lens of the eye, which that causes vision to become cloudy, opaque, and distorted.
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| cellular clock theory | Leonard Hayflick's theory that the maximum number of times that human cells can divide is about 75 to 80.
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| centration | The focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.
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| cephalocaudal pattern | The sequence in which the greatest growth occurs at the top—the head—with physical growth in size and weight and feature differentiation gradually working from top to bottom.
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| child-centered kindergarten | Education that is appropriate for the child's physical, cognitive, and social development.
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| child-directed speech | Language spoken in a higher pitch than normal, with simple words and sentences.
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| chromosomes | Threadlike structures that contain the remarkable substance DNA; there are 23 pairs of these.
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| chronic disorders | Illnesses that are characterized by slow onset and long duration. They are rare in early adulthood, they increase during middle adulthood, and they become common in late adulthood.
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| Climacteric | The midlife transition in which fertility declines.
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| clique | A small group that ranges from 2 to about 12 individuals, averaging about 5 to 6 individuals, which can form because adolescents engage in similar activities.
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| cognitive developmental theory of gender | Once children conceive of themselves as male or female, they often organize their world on the basis of gender.
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| cognitive mechanics | The "hardware" of the mind, reflecting the neurophysiological architecture of the brain as developed through evolution; cognitive mechanics involves the speed and accuracy of the processes involving sensory input, visual and motor memory, discrimination, comparison, and categorization.
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| cognitive pragmatics | The culture-based "software programs" of the mind; it involves. Cognitive pragmatics include reading and writing skills, language comprehension, educational qualifications, professional skills, and also the type of knowledge about the self and the life skills that help us to master or cope with life.
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| cognitive processes | Changes in a person's thought, intelligence, and language.
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| cohort effects | Effects due to a person's time of birth era or generation but not to actual age.
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| commitment | Marcia's term for the part of identity development in which adolescents show a personal investment in what they are going to do.
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| complicated grief | Grief that involves enduring despair and remains unresolved over an extended period of time.
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| connectedness | Refers to the Connectedness consists of two dimensions of: mutuality (sensitivity to and respect for others' views) and permeability (openness to others' views).
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| consensual validation | An explanation of why individuals are attracted to people who are similar to them. Our own attitudes and behavior are supported and confirmed when someone else's attitudes and behavior are similar to our own.
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| conservation | In Piaget's theory, awareness that altering an object's or a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties.
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| constructive play | Combines sensorimotor and repetitive activities with symbolic representation of ideas.
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| constructivist approach | A learner-centered approach that emphasizes the importance of individuals' actively constructing their knowledge and understanding with guidance from the teacher.
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| contemporary life-events approach | Emphasizes that how a life event influences the individual's development depends not only on the life event, but also on mediating factors.
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| context | The setting in which development occurs. Development is influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors.
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| continuity–discontinuity issue | Focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).
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| controversial children | Children who are frequently nominated both as someone's best friend and as being disliked.
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| conventional reasoning | The second, or intermediate, level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, individuals abide by certain standards, but they are the standards of others such as parents or the laws of society.
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| convergent thinking | Thinking that produces one correct answer and is characteristic of the kind of thinking tested by standardized intelligence tests.
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| cooperative play | Combines sensorimotor and repetitive activity with symbolic representation of ideas.
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| coordination of secondary circular reactions | Piaget's fourth sensorimotor substage, which develops between 8 and 12 months of age.
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| correlation coefficient | A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables.
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| correlational research | Study whose goal is to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics.
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| creative thinking | The ability to think in novel and unusual ways and to come up with unique solutions to problems.
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| crisis | Marcia's term for a period of identity development during which the adolescent chooses among meaningful alternatives.
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| critical thinking | Thinking reflectively and productively, as well as evaluating the evidence.
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| cross-cultural studies | Comparisons of one culture with one or more other cultures.
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| cross-sectional approach | A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time.
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| crowd | A larger group structure than a clique, usually formed based on reputation. Members may or may not spend much time together.
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| crystallized intelligence | Accumulated information and verbal skills, which increase with age, according to Horn.
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| cultural-familial retardation | Retardation that is characterized by no evidence of organic brain damage, but the person's IQ is between 50 and 70.
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| culture | The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group that are passed on from generation to generation.
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| culture-fair tests | Intelligence tests designed to be free of cultural bias.
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| date or acquaintance rape | Coercive sexual activity directed at someone with whom the perpetrator is at least casually acquainted.
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| dating scripts | The cognitive models that individuals use to guide and evaluate dating interactions.
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| deferred imitation | Imitation that occurs after a time delay of hours or days.
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| dementia | GA global term for any neurological disorder in which the primary symptoms involve a deterioration of mental functioning.
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| denial and isolation | Stage of dying in which the dying person denies that he/she is really going to die
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| depression | Kübler-Ross's fourth stage of dying, in which the dying person comes to accept the certainty of her or his death. A period of depression or preparatory grief may appear.
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| descriptive research | Has the purpose of observing and recording behavior.
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| development | Pattern of change that begins at conception and continues throughout the life span. Most development involves growth, although it also includes decline brought on by aging, which ends in death..
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| Developmental quotient (DQ) | In the Gesell assessment of infants, the An overall score that combines subscores in motor, language, adaptive, and personal-social domains in the Gesell assessment of infants.
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| developmentally appropriate practice | Education that is both age-appropriate and individually -appropriate.
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| differentiation versus role preoccupation | Adults must redefine their worth in terms of something other than work roles.
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| difficult child | A child who tends to react negatively, cry frequently, is slow to accept new experiences, and has irregular daily routines.
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| direct instruction approach | A structured, teacher-centered approach that is characterized by teacher direction and control, mastery of academic skills, high expectations for students' progress, maximum
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| disease model of addiction | The view that addictions are biologically based, lifelong diseases that involve a loss of control over behavior and require medical and/or spiritual treatment for recovery.
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| disengagement theory | The view that to cope effectively, older adults should gradually withdraw from society.
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| dishabituation | Recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation.
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| divergent thinking | Thinking that produces many answers to the same question and is characteristic of creativity.
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| divided attention | State of concentrating on more than one activity at the same time.
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| DNA | Complex molecule that contains genetic information.
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| doula | A caregiver who provides continuous physical, emotional, and educational support for the mother before, during, and after childbirth.
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| Down Syndrome | A form of retardation of motor and mental abilities, caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21.
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| dual-process model | Framework for A model of coping with bereavement that emphasizes oscillation between two dimensions: 1) loss-oriented stressors and 2) restoration-oriented stressors.
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| dynamic systems theory | The perspective on motor development that seeks to explain how motor behaviors are assembled for perceiving and acting.
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| dyslexia | A category of learning disabilities that involves a severe impairment in the ability to read and spell.
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| easy child | A child who expresses a generally positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to new experiences
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| eclectic theoretical orientation | An orientation that does not follow any one theoretical approach, but rather selects the best aspects from each theory whatever is considered best in it.
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| ecological theory | Bronfenbrenner's environmental systems theory, which that focuses on five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
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| ecological view | The view that perception functions to bring organisms in contact with the environment and to increase adaptation.
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| ego transcendence versus ego preoccupation | A developmental task of aging described by Peck, in which older adults must come to feel at ease with themselves by recognizing that although death is inevitable and probably not too far away, they have contributed to the future through raising their children or through their vocations and ideas.
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| egocentrism | The inability to distinguish between one's own perspective and someone else's (salient feature of the first substage of preoperational thought).
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| elaboration | An important strategy that involves engaging in more extensive processing of information.
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| eldercare | Physical and emotional caretaking of elderly members of the family.
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| Embryonic period | The period of prenatal development that occurs two to eight weeks after conception. During the embryonic period, the rate of cell differentiation intensifies, support systems for the cells form, and organs appear.
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| emerging adulthood | emerging adulthood The transition from adolescence to adulthood (approximately 18 to 25 years of age) that involves experimentation and exploration.
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| emotion | Feeling or affect that occurs when a person is in a state or involved in an interaction that is important to him or her.
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| emotional intelligence | A form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and action.
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| emotional regulation | Effectively managing arousal to adapt and reach a goal.
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| empty nest syndrome | A decrease in marital satisfaction after children leave home, because parents derive considerable satisfaction from their children.
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| epigenetic view | Emphasizes that development is the result of an ongoing, bidirectional interchange between heredity and environment.
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| episodic memory | The retention of information about the where and when of life's happenings.
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| equilibration | A mechanism proposed by Piaget to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next.
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| Erikson's theory | Includes eight stages of human development; each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be faced.
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| ethnic gloss | Use of an ethnic label such as African American or Latino in a superficial way that portrays the ethnic group as being more homogeneous than it really is.
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| ethnic identity | An enduring, basic aspect of the self that includes a sense of membership in an ethnic group and the attitudes and feelings related to that membership.
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| ethnicity | Characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language.
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| ethology | Study of behavior as it is strongly influenced by biology, tied to evolution, and characterized by critical or sensitive periods.
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| euthanasia | The painlessly ending of the lives of persons suffering from incurable diseases or severe disabilities
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| evocative genotype-environmental correlations | Correlations that exist when the child's genotype elicits certain types of physical and social environments.
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| evolutionary psychology | Emphasizes the importance of adaptation, reproduction, and "survival of the fittest" in shaping behavior.
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| experiment | A carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant.
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| explicit memory | Memory of facts and experiences that individuals consciously know and can state.
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| family at midlife | The fifth stage in the family life cycle, a time of launching children, linking generations, and adapting to midlife developmental changes.
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| family in later life | The sixth and final stage in the family life cycle, involving retirement and, in many families, grandparenting.
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| family with adolescents | The fourth stage of the family life cycle, in which adolescents push for autonomy and seek to develop their own identities.
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| fertilization | Stage in reproduction whereby an egg and a sperm fuse to create a single cell, called a zygote.
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| fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) | A cluster of abnormalities that appears in the offspring of mothers who drink alcohol heavily during pregnancy.
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| fetal period | The prenatal period of development that on average begins two months after conception and lasts for seven months.
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| fine motor skills | Motor skills that involve finely tuned movements, such as finger dexterity.
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| first habits and primary circular reactions | Piaget's second sensorimotor substage, which develops between 1 and 4 months of age.
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| fluid intelligence | The ability to reason abstractly, which steadily declines from middle adulthood on, according to Horn.
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| Fragile X Syndrome | Genetic disorder involving an abnormality on a gene in the X chromosome, which does not produce protein properly and often breaks.
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| free-radical theory | A microbiological theory of aging that states that people age because inside their cells normal cellular metabolism produces unstable oxygen molecules. These molecules ricochet around inside cells, damaging DNA and other cellular structures.
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| friendship | A form of close relationship that involves enjoyment, acceptance, trust, respect, mutual assistance, confiding, understanding, and spontaneity.
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| fuzzy trace theory | States that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: (1) verbatim memory trace and (2) gist. In this theory, older children's better memory is attributed to the fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information.
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| games | Activities engaged in for pleasure that include rules and often competition.
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| gender identity | The sense of being male or female, which most children acquire by age 3 years.
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| gender role | A set of expectations that prescribes how females and males should think, act, and feel, respectively.
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| gender schema theory | The theory that an individual's attention and behavior are guided by an internal motivation to conform to gender-based sociocultural standards and stereotypes.
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| gender stereotypes | Broad categories that reflect our impressions and beliefs about females and males.
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| gender | The psychological and sociocultural dimensions of being female or male.
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| generational inequity | Refers to an aging society being unfair to younger members as older members pile up advantages.
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| genes | Units of hereditary information, composed of DNA, which direct cells to reproduce themselves and to assemble proteins.
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| genotype | A person's genetic heritage; his or her unique genetic material.
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| germinal period | The period of prenatal development that takes place in the first two weeks after conception. It includes the creation of the zygote, continued cell division, and the attachment of the zygote to the uterine wall.
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| gifted | Having above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent for something.
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| glaucoma | Damage to the optic nerve because of the pressure created by a buildup of fluid in the eye.
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| gonads | The sex glands—the testes in males and the ovaries in females.
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| goodness of fit | Match between a child's temperament and the environmental demands placed on the child.
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| grasping reflex | Response that occurs when an infant's palms are touched; an infant responds by grasping tightly.
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| grief | Emotional numbness, disbelief, despair, sadness, and loneliness that accompanies the ying loss of a loved one
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| gross motor skills | Motor skills that involve large-muscle activities, such as walking.
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| habituation | Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentation of the stimulus.
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| hardiness | A personality style characterized by a sense of commitment (rather than alienation), control (rather than powerlessness), and a perception of problems as challenges (rather than threats).
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| heritability | The fraction of variance in a population that is attributed to genetics, computed using correlational techniques.
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| heteronomous morality | Justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people.
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| heteronomous morality | Kohlberg's first stage in preconventional reasoning, in which moral thinking is tied to punishment.
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| hormonal stress theory | The theory that aging of the body's hormonal system can lower resilience in the face of stress and increase the likelihood of disease.
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| hormones | Powerful chemical substances secreted by the endocrine glands and carried through the body by the bloodstream.
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| hospice | Program committed to making the end of life as free from pain, anxiety, and depression as possible
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| hypothalamus | A structure in the higher portion of the brain that monitors eating, drinking, and sex.
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| hypotheses | Specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine their accuracy.
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| hypothetical-deductive reasoning | Piaget's formal operational concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best guesses, about ways to solve problems, such as an algebraic equation.
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| identity achievement | Marcia's term for adolescents who have undergone a crisis and have made a commitment.
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| identity diffusion | Marcia's term for adolescents who have not yet experienced a crisis (explored meaningful alternatives) or made any commitments.
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| identity foreclosure | Marcia's term for adolescents who have made a commitment but have not experienced a crisis.
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| identity moratorium | Marcia's term for adolescents who are in the midst of a crisis, but whose commitments are either absent or vaguely defined.
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| imaginary audience | Involves adolescents' belief that others are as interested in them as they themselves are; attention-getting behavior motivated by a desire to be noticed, visible, and "on stage."
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| imminent justice | The concept that, if a rule is broken, punishment will be meted out immediately. The social and psychological dimension of being male or female.
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| implicit memory | Memory without conscious recollection.
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| implicit memory | Memory without conscious recollection; involves skills and routine procedures that are automatically performed.
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| inclusion | Full-time education in the regular classroom for a child who has special education needs.
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| individual differences | The stable, consistent ways in which people are different from one another.each other.
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| individualism, instrumental purpose, and exchange | The second Kohlberg stage of moral development. At this stage, individuals pursue their own interests but also let others do the same.
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| individuality | Refers to the two dimensions of: self-assertion (the ability to have and communicate a point of view) and separateness (the use of communication patterns to express how one is different from others).
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| individualized education plan (IEP) | A written statement that spells out a program tailored to a child with a disability. The plan should be (1) related to the child's learning capacity, (2) specially constructed to meet the child's individual needs and not be merely a copy of what is offered to other children, and (3) designed to provide educational benefits.
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| indulgent parenting | A style of parenting in which parents are highly involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them. Indulgent parenting is associated with children's social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control.
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| infinite generativity | The ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.
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| information-processing theory | Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it.
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| innate goodness | Refers to Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's belief that children are inherently good.
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| insecure avoidant babies | Babies who show insecurity by avoiding the caregiver.
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| insecure disorganized babies | Babies who show insecurity by being disorganized and disoriented.
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| insecure resistant babies | Babies who often cling to the caregiver, then reject him or her by fighting against the closeness, perhaps by kicking or pushing away.
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| integrity versus despair | Refers to reflecting on the past and either seeing it as positive or concluding that one's life was not well spent.
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| intelligence quotient (IQ) | A person's mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100.
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| intelligence | Problem-solving skills and the ability to learn from and adapt to the experiences of everyday life.
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| intermodal perception | The ability to relate and integrate information from two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing.
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| internalization of schemes | Piaget's sixth and final sensorimotor substage, which develops between 18 and 24 months of age.
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| intimacy in friendships | Self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts.
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| intuitive thought substage | Piaget's second substage of preoperational thought—a child begins to reason primitively.
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| justice perspective | A moral perspective that focuses on the rights of the individual; individuals independently make moral decisions.
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| kangaroo care | A way of holding a preterm infant so that there is skin-to-skin contact.
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| Klinefelter Syndrome | A chromosome disorder in which males have an extra X chromosome, making them XXY instead of XY.
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| kwashiorkor | A condition caused by a deficiency in protein in which the child's abdomen and feet become swollen with water.
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| laboratory | A controlled setting in which many of the complex factors of the "real world" are removed.
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| language acquisition device (LAD) | Chomsky's term to describe a biological endowment for language features and use.
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| language | A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
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| lateralization | Specialization of function in one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex or the other.
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| launching | Refers to process in which youths move into adulthood and exit their family of origin.
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| learning disability | Disadvantaged condition that consists of three components: low IQ level, significant difficulty in school-related area; and exclusion of other disorders (i.e., emotional, sensory, and neurological).
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| least restrictive environment (LRE) | The concept that a child with a disability must be educated in a setting that is as similar as possible to the one in which children who do not have a disability are educated.
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| leaving home and becoming a single adult | The first stage in the family life cycle. It involves launching.
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| leisure | (K)Non-work when individuals are free to pursue activities and interests of their own choosing.
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| life expectancy | The number of years that will probably be lived by the average person born in a particular year.
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| life span | Duration of existence; The upper boundary of life, the maximum number of years an individual can live, which for human beings is about 120 to 125 years of age.
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| life-history record | A record of information about a lifetime chronology of events and activities that often involves a combination of data records on education, work, family, and residence.
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| life-process model of addiction | The view that addiction is not a disease but rather a habitual response and a source of gratification and security that can be understood only in the context of social relationships and experiences.
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| life-span perspective | The perspective that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual; it involves growth, maintenance, and regulation.
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| longitudinal approach | A research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over a period of time, usually several years or more.
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| long-term memory | A relatively permanent type of memory that holds huge amounts of information for a long period of time.
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| low-birth weight infants | An infant that weighs less than 5 ½ pounds at birth.
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| macular degeneration | A disease that involves deterioration of the retina, in an area that corresponds to the focal center of the visual field.
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| major depression | A mood disorder that makes a person deeply unhappy, demoralized, self-derogatory, and bored; the person does not feel well, loses stamina easily, has poor appetite, and is listless and unmotivated. Major depression is so widespread that it has been called the "common cold" of mental disorders.
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| marasmus | A wasting away of body tissues in the infant's first year, caused by severe protein–calorie deficiency.
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| meaning-making coping | Involves drawing on beliefs, values, and goals to change the meaning of a stressful situation, especially in times of chronic stress—for example, as when a loved one dies.
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| meiosis | A specialized form of cell division that produces cells with only one copy of each chromosome. Meiosis forms eggs and sperm (or gametes).
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| memory | A central feature of cognitive development, involving retaining information over time.
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| menarche | The first menstrual period.A girl's first menstruation.
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| menopause | The complete cessation of a woman's menstruation, which usually occurs in the late 40s or early 50s.
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| mental age (MA) | Binet's measure of an individual's level of mental development, compared with that of others.
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| mental retardation | A condition of limited mental ability in which an individual has a low IQ, usually below 70, on a traditional test of intelligence, and has difficulty adapting to everyday life.
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| metacognition | Cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing.
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| metalinguistic awareness | Refers to knowledge about language, such as knowing what a preposition is or how to the ability to discuss the sounds of a language.
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| middle adulthood | The developmental period beginning at approximately 40 years of age and extending to about 60.
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| mitochondrial theory | The theory that aging is caused by the decay of the tiny cellular bodies that supply energy for function, growth, and repair.
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| mitosis | Cellular reproduction in which the cell's nucleus duplicates itself, with two new cells being formed, each containsing the same DNA as the parent cell, arranged in the same 23 pairs of chromosomes.
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| Montessori approach | An educational philosophy in which children are given considerable freedom in choosing activities.
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| moral development | Development that involves thoughts, feelings, and actions regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people.
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| Moro reflex | A neonatal startle response that occurs in reaction to sudden, intense noise, causing infant to arch its back, throw its head back, and fling out its arms and legs.
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| morphology | Units of meaning involved in word formation.
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| multi-infarct dementia | Sporadic and progressive loss of intellectual functioning caused by repeated temporary obstruction of blood flow in cerebral arteries.
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| mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity | Kohlberg's third stage of moral development. At this stage, individuals value trust, caring, and loyalty to others as a basis of moral judgments.
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| myelination | The process by which the nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells, which increases the speed at which information travels through the nervous system.
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| natural childbirth | Childbirth method that attempts to decrease fear through education about childbirth and relaxation techniques.
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| naturalistic observation | Observation of behavior in real-world settings.
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| nature–nurture issue | Refers to the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by what we are born with or what we experience in our environment as we grow.
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| neglected children | Children who are infrequently nominated as a best friend but are not disliked by their peers.
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| neglectful parenting | A style of parenting in which the parent is uninvolved in the child's life; it is associated with children's social incompetence, especially a lack of self-control.
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| Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) | Measure that provides a comprehensive analysis of the newborn's neurological and stress responses.
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| neo-Piagetians | Developmentalists who have elaborated on Piaget's theory, giving more emphasis to information-processing, strategies, and precise cognitive steps.
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| neuron | Nerve cell that handles information processing at the cellular level.
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| new couple | Refers to forming the new couple is the second stage in the family life cycle. Two individuals from separate families of origin unite to form a new family system.
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| non-shared environmental experiences | The child's own unique experiences, within and outside the family, that are not shared by another sibling.
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| normal distribution | A symmetrical distribution with most cases falling in the middle of the possible range of scores and a few scores appearing toward the extremes of the range.
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| object permanence | The Piagetian term for one of an infant's most important accomplishments: understanding that objects and events continue to exist, even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.
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| onlooker play | Play in which the child watches other children play.
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| operations | In Piaget's theory, internalized sets of actions that allow children to do mentally what they formerly did physically.
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| organic retardation | Mental retardation that involves some physical damage and is caused by a genetic disorder or brain damage.
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| organization | Piaget's concept of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system; the grouping or arranging of items into categories.
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| organogenesis | Organ formation that takes place during the first two months of prenatal development.
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| original sin | Refers to the condition, according to early Christian doctrine, into which children were born, thus making them basically evil beings.
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| osteoporosis | A chronic condition that involves an extensive loss of bone density; can cause and is the main reason many older adults to walk with a marked stoop. Women are especially vulnerable.
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| pain cry | A sudden beginning of loud crying without preliminary moaning, and followed by an extended period of breath-holding.
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| palliative care | Pain-reducing treatment emphasized in hospice care; involves reducing pain and suffering and helping individuals to die with dignity.
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| parallel play | Child plays separately from others, perhaps mimicking others' play.
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| Parkinson disease | A chronic, progressive disease characterized by muscle tremors, slowing of movement, and partial facial paralysis.
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| passive euthanasia | The withholding of available treatments, such as life-sustaining devices, and allowing the person to die.
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| passive genotype-environmental correlations | Correlations that exist when the natural parents, who are genetically related to the child, provide a rearing environment for the child.
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| perception | The interpretation of what is sensed.
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| personal fable | The part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent's sense of uniqueness and invincibility.
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| personality type theory | personality type theory John Holland's view that it is important for individuals to select a career that matches up well with their personality type.
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| phenotype | The way an individual's genotype is expressed in observed and measurable characteristics.
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| phenylketonuria (PKU) | Genetic disorder in which an individual cannot properly metabolize an amino acid. PKU is now easily detected but, if left untreated, results in mental retardation and hyperactivity.
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| phonology | The sound system of a language.
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| Piaget's theory | States that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development.
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| pituitary gland | An important endocrine gland that controls growth and regulates other glands.
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| placenta | A disk-shaped group of tissues in which small blood vessels from the mother and offspring intertwine but do not join.
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| popular children | Children who are frequently nominated as a best friend and are rarely disliked by their peers.
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| postformal thought | A form of thought that is qualitatively different from Piaget's formal operational thought. It involves understanding that the correct answer to a problem can require reflective thinking, that the correct answer can vary from one situation to another, and that the search for truth is often an ongoing, never-ending process. It also involves the belief that solutions to problems need to be realistic and that emotion and subjective factors can influence thinking.
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| postpartum period | The period after childbirth when the mother adjusts, both physically and psychologically, to the process and aftermath of childbirth. This period lasts for about six weeks or until her body has completed its adjustment and returned to a near prepregnant state.
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| potsconventional reasoning | The highest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, the individual recognizes alternative moral courses, explores the options, and then decides on a personal moral code.
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| practice play | Play that involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports.
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| pragmatics | The appropriate use of language in different contexts.
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| preconventional reasoning | The lowest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. The individual's moral reasoning is controlled primarily by external rewards and punishment.
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| prepared childbirth | Childbirth method similar to natural childbirth, but includes special breathing techniques.
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| pretense/symbolic play | AA Child transforms the physical environment into a symbol.
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| preterm infants | Infants born three weeks or more before gestation is completed.
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| Project Head Start | A government-funded program designed to provide low-income children with the opportunities needed for school success.
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| prospective memory | Involves remembering to do something in the future.
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| proximodistal pattern | The sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves toward the extremities.
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| psychoanalytic theory of gender | According to Freud, children identify with the same-sex parent and unconsciously adopt that parent's characteristics.
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| psychoanalytic theory | Describes development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion.
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| puberty | A period of rapid skeletal and sexual maturation that occurs mainly in early adolescence.
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| rape | Forcible sexual intercourse with a person who does not consent to it.
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| reciprocal socialization | Socialization that is bidirectional; children socialize parents, just as parents socialize children.
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| reflexes | Built-in reactions to stimuli that govern the newborn's movements, which are automatic and beyond the newborn's control.
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| reflexive smile | A smile that does not occur in response to external stimuli.
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| rejected children | Children who are infrequently nominated as a best friend and are actively disliked by their peers.
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| restrained eaters | Individuals who chronically restrict their food intake to control their weight.
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| romantic love | Also called eros, this emotion has strong sexual and infatuation components and often predominates in the early period of a love relationship.
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| rooting reflex | Built-in reaction in newborn that, causesing it to turn its head toward the side that was touched, in an apparent effort to find something to suck.
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| scaffolding | Activity whereby Parents time interactions so that infants experience turn-taking with the parents.
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| schemes | In Piaget's theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.
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| secondary circular reactions | Piaget's third sensorimotor substage, which develops between 4 and 8 months of age.
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| securely attached babies | Babies who use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment. Ainsworth believes that in the first year of life this provides an important foundation for later psychological development.
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| selective attention | Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.
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| selective optimization with compensation theory | The view theory that successful aging is related to three main factors: selection, optimization, and compensation.
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| self-concept | Domain-specific evaluations of the self.
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| self-efficacy | The belief that one can master a situation and produce favorable outcomes
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| self-esteem | The global evaluative dimension of the self.
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| self-understanding | The child's cognitive representation of self, and the substance and content of the child's self-conceptions.
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| semantic memory | A person's knowledge about the world—including one'sa person's fields of expertise, general academic knowledge of the sort learned in school, and "everyday knowledge."
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| semantics | The meaning of words and sentences.
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| sensation | The product of the interaction between information and the sensory receptors—the eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin.
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| sensorimotor play | Deriving pleasure from existing sensorimotor schemas.
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| sensorimotor stage | The first Piaget stage, in which infants construct an understanding of the world through sensory experiences and motor actions.
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| separation anxiety | An infant's distressed reaction when the caregiver leaves.
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| seriation | The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).
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| service learning | A form of education that promotes social responsibility and service to the community.
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| sexually transmitted infections (STIs) | sexually transmitted infections (STIs) Diseases that are contracted primarily through sex.
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| shape constancy | Refers to the recognition that an object's shape remains the same even though its orientation to us changes.
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| shared environmental experiences | Siblings' common environmental experiences, such as their parents' personalities and intellectual oreientation, socioecnomic status, and neighborhood.
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| short-term memory | The memory component in which individuals retain information for up to 30 seconds, assuming there is no rehearsal.
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| sickle-cell anemia | A genetic disorder that affects the red blood cells and occurs most often in people of African descent.
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| simple reflexes | Piaget's first sensorimotor substage, which corresponds to the first month after birth.
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| size constancy | Refers to the recognition that an object remains the same even though the retinal image of the object changes.
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| slow-to-warm-up child | A child who has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, and displays a low intensity of mood.
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| Small for date infants | Infants whose birth weight is below normal when the length of pregnancy is considered.
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| social clock | The timetable according to which individuals are expected to accomplish life's tasks, such as getting married, having children, and establishing themselves in a career.
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| social cognitive theory of gender | Children's gender development occurs through reward and punishment for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.
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| social cognitive theory | The theory that emphasizes behavior, environment, and cognition as the key factors in development.
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| social constructivist approach | An approach that emphasizes the social contexts of learning and the idea that knowledge is mutually built and constructed.
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| social contract or utility and individual rights | The fifth Kohlberg stage. At this stage, individuals reason that values, rights, and principles undergird or transcend the law.
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| social conventional reasoning | Thoughts about social consensus and convention, in contrast to moral reasoning, which stresses ethical issues.
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| social play | Involves social interaction with peers.
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| social referencing | Reading emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in a particular situation.
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| social role theory | Proposes that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women.
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| social smile | A smile in response to an external stimulus, which, early in development, is typically a face.
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| social systems morality | The fourth stage in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Moral judgments are based on understanding the social order, law, justice, and duty.
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| socioeconomic status (SES) | The grouping of people with similar occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
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| socioemotional selectivity theory | The view that oOlder adults become increasinglymore selective about their social networks.
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| solitary play | Play in which the child plays alone and independently of others.
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| source memory | The ability to remember where one learned something.
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| standardized test | Test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring.
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| stereotype threat | The anxiety that one's behavior might confirm a negative stereotype about one's group.
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| Strange Situation | An observational measure of infant attachment that requires the infant to move through a series of introductions, separations, and reunions with the caregiver and an adult stranger in a prescribed order.
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| strategies | Also called control processes.
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| strategies | Deliberate mental activities to improve the processing of information.
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| sucking reflex | Built-in reaction in newborn that enables it to get nourishment before it has associated a nipple with food.
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| sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) | When an infant stops breathing and dies suddenly.
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| sustained attention | The state of readiness to detect and respond to small changes occurring at random times in the environment.
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| symbolic function substage | Piaget's first substage of preoperational thought, in which a child can mentally represent an object that is not present.
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| syntax | The way words are combined to form acceptable phases and sentences.
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| tabula rasa | Latin term used by John Locke to indicate his belief that children are like "blank tablets" ("clean slates") on which their characteristics are drawn as they mature.
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| telegraphic speech | The use of short and precise words without grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary words, and other connectives.
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| temperament | A person's behavioral style and characteristic way of emotionally responding.
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| teratogen | From the Greek word "tera," meaning "monster." Any agent that causes a birth defect. The field of study that investigates the causes of birth defects is called teratology.
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| tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity | Piaget's fifth sensorimotor substage, which develops between 12 and 18 months of age.
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| theory of mind | Refers to the awareness of one's own mental processes and the mental processes of others.
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| theory | An interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain events and make predictions regarding their outcome.
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| top-dog phenomenon | The circumstance of moving from the top position in elementary school to the lowest position in middle or junior high school.
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| transitivity | The ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions.
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| triarchic theory of intelligence | Sternberg's theory that intelligence consists of analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence.
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| trophoblast | An outer layer of cells that develops in the germinal period. These cells will become part of the placenta.
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| Turner Syndrome | Chromosome disorder in females in which either an X chromosome is missing, making the person Xop instead of XX, or the second X chromosome is partially missing.
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| twin study | A study in which the behavioral similarity of identical twins is compared with the behavioral similarity of fraternal twins.
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| Type A behavior pattern | A cluster of characteristics—being excessively competitiveness and being, hard-driven, impatient, and hostile—thought to be related to the incidence of heart disease.
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| Type B behavior pattern | Being primarily calm and easygoing.
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| umbilical cord | Contains two arteries and one vein; it connects the baby to the placenta.
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| universal ethical principles | The sixth and highest stage in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Individuals develop a moral standard based on universal human rights.
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| unoccupied play | Child might stands in one spot or performs random movements that do not seem to have a goal.
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| visual preference method | A research method used to determine whether infants can distinguish one stimulus from another.
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| Vygotsky's theory | sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.
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| Wernicke's area | An area of the brain's left hemisphere involved in language comprehension.
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| whole-language approach | An approach to reading instruction based on the idea that instruction should parallel children's natural language learning. Reading materials should be whole and meaningful.
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| wisdom | Expert knowledge about the practical aspects of life that permits excellent judgment about important matters.
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| working memory | Closely related to short-term memory but places more emphasis on mental activity; refers to a kind of "workbench" area where the brain can manipulate and assemble information—making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending written and spoken language.
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| Write of passage | A ceremony or ritual that marks an individual's transition from one status to another; usually. Most of these focuses on the transition to adult status.
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| XYY Syndrome | Chromosmal disorder in which males have an extra Y chromosome.
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| zone of proximal development (ZPD) | Vygotsky's term for tasks too difficult for children to master alone but that can be mastered with assistance.
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| zygote | A single cell formed through the fusion of an egg and a sperm in a process called fertilization.
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