Glossary of Terms

Psychology 30: Glossary of Terms

Accommodation: In Piaget's cognitive theory, accommodation refers to changes in existing ways of thinking in response to encounters with new stimuli or events.

Altruism: An unselfish concern for another person.

Assimilation: In Piaget's cognitive theory, assimilation is the process through which people understand an experience in terms of their current state of cognitive development and way of thinking.

Attachment: An intense emotional relationship that is specific to two people, that endures over time, and in which prolonged separation from the partner is accompanied by stress and sorrow (Gross and McIlveen, 1998, p. 328).

Biotechnology: Biological science when applied, especially to genetic engineering and DNA technology.

Cephalocaudal trend: A newborn's head is about one-fourth of its body length; a two-year-old's head is only one-fifth of its body length. This pattern of growth is called the cephalocaudal trend (Lefton, Boyes and Ogen, 2000, p. 339).

Cloning: To make a copy of.

Cognition: Includes all the mental processes that are used to obtain knowledge or to become aware of the environment. Cognition encompasses perception, imagination, judgement, memory, and language. It includes the processes people use to think, decide, and learn.

Culture: Culture can be defined as a program of shared rules that govern the behaviour of people in a community or society, and a set of values and beliefs shared by most members of that community that are passed from one generation to another.

Ego: According to the psychoanalytic perspective on human development, the ego is the part of the personality that is rational and reasonable. Providing a reality check for the demands of the id, the ego acts as a buffer between the outside world and the primitive id. The ego operates on the “reality principle”, in which instincts are restrained in order to maintain the safety of the individual and help integrate the individual into society.

Embryonic period: The embryonic period is the period of prenatal development that occurs from two to eight weeks after conception.

Ethnicity: Ethnic character, background, or affiliation.

Exosystem: Surrounding the microsystems is the exosystem, which includes all the external networks, such as community structures and local educational, medical, employment, and communications systems that influence the microsystem.

Fetal period: The fetal period is the period of development that begins two months after conception and lasts for seven months, on the average.

Gender: Gender refers to culturally constructed distinctions between masculinity and femininity. Individuals are born female or male; however, they become feminine and masculine through complex developmental processes that take years to unfold.

Genetics: The study of how heredity works and, in particular, of genes. A gene is a section of a long deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule. It carries information for the construction of a protein or part of a protein.

Genetic engineering: Genetic engineering is the alteration of an organism's genetic instructions through the insertion of additional genes. In humans, genetic engineering involves adding normal genes, either directly via a blood transfusion or bone marrow transplant or directly into a cluster of cells, thereby enabling the body to replace ailing cells with healthy ones.

Germinal period: The germinal period of development is the first two weeks of development. It is characterized by rapid cell division, the beginning of cell differentiation, and implantation of the blastocyst into the uterine wall.

Heredity: The process of transmitting biological traits from parent to offspring through genes, the basic units of heredity. Heredity also refers to the inherited characteristics of an individual, including traits such as height, eye colour, and blood type.

Heuristics: Heuristics are rules of thumb people follow in order to make judgements quickly and efficiently. People use judgemental heuristics to deal with the large amount of social information with which we are faced.

Id: According to the psychoanalytic perspective on human development, the id is the raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality that is present at birth. It represents primitive drives related to hunger, sex, aggression and irrational impulses. The id operates according to the “pleasure principle”, in which the goal is to maximize satisfaction and reduce tension.

Macrosystem: The macrosystem influences all other systems. It includes cultural values, political philosophies, economic patterns, and social conditions.

Maturation: The predetermined unfolding of genetic information.

Microsystem: Microsystems are the systems that intimately and immediately shape human development. Interactions among the microsystems, as when parents and teachers coordinate their efforts to educate the child, take place through the mesosystem.

Nature/nurture: Nature refers to traits, abilities, and capacities that are inherited from one's parents. Nature encompasses any factor that is produced by the predetermined unfolding of genetic information, a process known as maturation. These genetic inherited influences are at work as we move from the one celled organism that is created at the moment of conception to the billions of cells that make up a fully-formed human being. Nurture refers to the environmental influences that shape behaviour. Some of these influences may be biological, such as the impact of a pregnant mother's substance abuse on the fetus, or the amount and kind of food available to children. Other environmental influences are more social, such as the ways parents discipline their children and the effects of peer pressure on adolescents (Feldman, 2000, p. 10).

Perception: Perception is more than the sum of all the sensory input supplied by our eyes, ears and other receptors. It is the active selection, organization, and interpretation of such input.

Personality: Personality is a particular pattern of behaviour and thinking prevailing across time and situations that differentiates one person from another.

Privation: The failure to develop an attachment to any individual. In humans, it is usually (but not necessarily) associated with children reared in institutions, either from or shortly after birth.

Proximodistal trend: Another growth pattern, the proximodistal trend, has growth moving from the centre (proximal part) of the body outward to the more “distant” extremities, that is, the head and torso grow before the arms, legs, hands, and feet.

Psychology: Psychology is the science of human thought and behaviour.

Reflex: An involuntary response to a stimulus.

Reliability: The extent to which research yields the same results each time it is applied to the same issue.

Social cognition: Focuses on the way in which our thoughts are affected by the immediate social context, and in turn how our thoughts affect social behaviour.

The approach can be summarized as follows:
• people take cognitive shortcuts such as stereotyping in order to minimize the cognitive load
• •we develop schemata that represent our knowledge about ourselves, others and our roles in the social world. Once formed, schemas bias our judgement
• schemata become more complex and organized over time and are harder to change (Cardwell, 1996, p. 218).

Social perception: The process by which someone infers other people's motives and intentions from observing their behaviour and deciding whether the causes of the behaviour are internal or situational. Social perception helps people make sense of the world, organize their thoughts quickly, and maintain a sense of control over the environment. It helps people feel competent, masterful, and balanced because it helps them predict similar events in the future (Lefton et al., 2000, p. 457).

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): The term ‘sudden infant death' is more a description after the fact than a diagnosis of cause. Despite decades of research, the root cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is still unknown. In all probability, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome results from a combination of factors (characteristics of the mother, characteristics of birth, situation at death, and sleeping conditions), and each factor adds slightly to the overall risk for certain infants who, for unknown genetic reasons, are vulnerable.

Superego: According to the psychoanalytic perspective on human development, the superego represents a person's conscience, incorporating distinctions between right and wrong. It develops around age five or six and is learned from an individual's parents, teachers, and other significant figures.

Temperament: Every individual is born with a distinct genetically-based set of psychological tendencies or dispositions. These tendencies, which together are called temperament, affect and shape virtually every aspect of the individual's developing personality. Temperament, and therefore personality, is not merely genetic. It begins in the multitude of genetic instructions that guide the development of the brain and then is affected by the prenatal environment (Berger, 2000, p. 219).

Teratogens: The broad range of substances (such as drugs and pollutants) and conditions (such as severe malnutrition and extreme stress) that increase the risk of prenatal abnormalities.

Validity: The extent to which a research methodology measures what it is supposed to measure (Baron, Earhard and Ozier, 1998, p. 4)

1.1 Introduction to developmental psychology

Lesson Objectives:

• What is developmental psychology?
• Why should we study human development from conception to death?
• Who are developmental psychologists and what are the career options in developmental psychology?
• What is the lifespan approach to human development?
• What are the key issues and questions in developmental psychology?

What is developmental psychology?

Lifespan development is the field of study that examines patterns of growth, change, and stability in behaviour that occur throughout the entire human lifespan (Feldman, 2000, p. 5).

Why should we study human development from conception to death?

Developmentalists assume that the process of development persists throughout every part of people’s lives, beginning with the moment of conception and continuing until death.  Developmental specialists assume that in some ways people continue to grow and change right up to the end of their lives, whereas in other respects their behaviour remains stable.  At the same time, developmentalists believe that no particular single period of life governs all development.  Instead, they believe that every period of life contains the potential for both growth and decline in abilities, and that individuals maintain the capacity for substantial growth and change throughout their lives (Feldman, 2000, p. 5).

 Who are developmental psychologists, and what do they do?

Because I teach at the University of Regina, my primary focus is academic, on the teaching of the concepts of psychology.  But a large part of my responsibilities also involves research with children, going out to see what children do, and how they change.  Developmental psychologists also perform community work, for example working with parenting groups, or support groups for parents with children with special needs.  Developmental psychologists also work closely with educators to assist them with children with developmental problems and learning disabilities.  You will also find developmental psychologists working with and for social welfare groups, and involved in legal issues related to psychology, for example, determining how reliable children’s eyewitness testimony is, or the validity of childhood memories in legal cases (Robinson, 2001).

What is the lifespan approach to human development?

The lifespan perspective on human development has seven basic characteristics.  Development is:

• Life-long
• No age period dominates development.
• Multi-dimensional
• Development consists of biological, cognitive, socioemotional, and spiritual dimensions.
• Multi-directional
• Some aspects of development increase, while others decrease.
• Plastic
• Depending on the individual's life conditions, development may take many paths.
• Historically-embedded
• Development is influenced by historical conditions.
• Multidisciplinary
• Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and medical researchers all study human development and share a concern for unlocking the mysteries of development throughout the lifespan.
• Contextual
• The individual continually responds to and acts on contexts, which include a person’s biological makeup, physical environment, social, historical, and cultural contexts (Santrock, 1999, p. 10).

What are the key issues and questions in developmental psychology?

From the time of its establishment, several key issues and questions have dominated the field of developmental psychology.  Among these issues are the nature of developmental change, the importance of critical periods, lifespan approaches versus the more focused approaches, and the nature/nurture issue.

• Continuous change versus discontinuous change:  In continuous change, developmental change is gradual, with achievements at one level building on those of previous levels.  In contrast, discontinuous change occurs in distinct stages or steps.  Each stage brings about behaviour that is assumed to be qualitatively different from behaviour at earlier stages. 

• A critical period is a specific time during development when a particular event has its greatest consequences.  Critical periods occur when the presence of certain kinds of environmental stimuli are necessary for development to proceed normally.

• Lifespan approaches versus a focus on a particular period:  Developmentalists now believe the entire lifespan is important, for several reasons.  One is the discovery that developmental growth and change continue during every part of life.  Furthermore, to understand fully the social influences on people of a given age, we need to understand the people who are, in large measure, providing those influences.  For instance, to understand development in infants, we need to unravel the effects of their parents’ ages on the social environment.

• Nature versus Nurture:  One of the enduring questions of development involves how much of people’s behaviour is due to their genetically-determined nature and how much is due to nurture, the physical and social environment in which a child is raised.  In this context, nature refers to traits, abilities and capacities that are inherited from one’s parents.  Nature encompasses any factor that is produced by the predetermined unfolding of genetic information, a process known as maturation.  These genetic inherited influences are at work as we move from the one-celled organism that is created at the moment of conception to the billions of cells that make up a fully-formed human being.  In contrast nurture refers to the environmental influences that shape behaviour.  Some of these influences may be biological, such as the impact of a pregnant mother’s substance abuse on the fetus, or the amount and kind of food available to children.  Other environmental influences are more social, such as the ways parents discipline their children and the effects of peer pressure on adolescents (Feldman, 2000, p. 10).

Handouts: Course outline, Glossary of Terms, Endless Possibilities+,  Medicine Wheel, Circle of Human Kinship

Course Outline PSY30

Welcome to Psychology 30

Psychology Education

Psychology is the systematic scientific study of human behaviour, experiences and mental processes.  Psychologists use stringent scientific methods and standardized scientific procedures to collect information and to analyze and interpret data.  Psychology education involves students in learning about the science of psychology, as well as in conducting their own psychological research and exploring how their results can be applied to their lives and the world around them.

Psychology 30

The focus of this course is human development.  Developmental psychology is the field of psychology that focuses on human development across the life span.  Students will learn about human growth and changes in behaviour associated with age, including the various stages of development from infancy through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.  As well, students will learn how psychological studies are conducted, and engage in studies of their own.  Students will be encouraged to re-assess preconceived ideas and prejudices, and begin to discover how psychological theories, methods and studies lead to greater understanding of how, in general, humans think, feel and behave relative to each stage of development.

Program Aim

The program aim of Psychology 30 is to develop students' understanding and appreciation for psychology as a field of scientific knowledge, and to give students a frame of reference for understanding themselves, others and social relationships.

Goals

The general goals of Psychology 30 are to help students to:

• understand the fundamentals of the science of psychology
• understand and engage in scientific methods of research
• develop problem-solving and decision-making skills with regard to psychological research and issues
• develop critical analysis and dialectical thinking skills, including the ability to evaluate and resolve psychology-related issues
• communicate effectively to share their understanding and ideas, and to share and defend their opinions
• develop an appreciation for the contributions of the science of psychology to human self-understanding
• explore psychology-related career opportunities and options
• develop skills in working independently, as well as collaboratively and cooperatively

Psychology 30

Course Outline 2010/2011 – Semester 2

Mrs. Burback & Mr/s. FillintheBlank

Unit 1: What is Developmental Psychology?

Unit 2: What is the developmental process before birth?

Unit 3: What is the developmental process during infancy?

Unit 4: What is the developmental process during early childhood?

Unit 5: What is the developmental process during middle childhood?

Unit 6: What is the developmental process during adolescence?

Unit 7: What is the developmental process during adulthood?

Evaluation

60% - Assignments, projects, research, etc

10% - Journal

30% - Final

Routines for Psychology 30

1.       Arrive to class on time.

2.      Bring supplies to every class: binder, paper, pen/pencil and all required assignments.

3.      Assignments are to be handed in on time.

4.      If you miss a class you are responsible to get the notes from another classmate or the instructor.

5.      Work without disrupting others.  Be pleasant and kind. 

Discussion Items

            Special Note: Psychology is what you make it.  The more discussions we have in class the better….  Discussion in class allows for a deeper understanding of ideas and concepts for everyone.  So please: discuss.  Also journaling is a very important part too.  I would like you to have a divider in your binder where you will be given the chance to respond to something.  You will be given marks for a journal that is complete by the end of the semester.  A good journal entry will be approximately ½ a page of legitimate content.