DSST Lifespan Developmental Psychology flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Informed consent with minors

Researchers obtain parental or guardian permission plus the child's assent, typically from about age 7; assent is not legally binding but respects developing autonomy.

Debriefing requirement

After research involving deception, investigators must explain the true purpose, rationale, and any concealed information, and address participant reactions promptly.

Confidentiality limits

Promised privacy is overridden by mandated reporting of suspected child abuse, imminent danger to self or others, and legally compelled disclosure.

Embryonic period

Weeks 3 through 8 after conception, when organogenesis occurs; this is the period of greatest vulnerability to structural teratogenic damage.

Cephalocaudal principle

Growth and motor control proceed from head to tail: infants control head and neck before trunk, and trunk before legs and fine finger movements.

Synaptic pruning

Unused synapses are eliminated while active ones are strengthened; pruning continues through adolescence and increases neural efficiency.

Visual cliff finding

Infants around 6 to 8 months show wariness of the apparent drop; crawling experience predicts earlier avoidance, supporting an experiential component to depth perception.

Habituation paradigm

Repeated presentation of a stimulus reduces looking time; recovery of looking to a new stimulus (dishabituation) demonstrates discrimination and memory for the original.

Perceptual narrowing

Early in life infants discriminate faces and speech sounds from many groups; with limited exposure, discrimination of non-native categories declines across the first year.

Negative reinforcement

Removal or avoidance of an aversive stimulus following a behavior, which increases that behavior; it differs from punishment, which decreases behavior.

Variable ratio schedule

Reinforcement follows an unpredictable number of responses; this schedule produces high, steady response rates that resist extinction.

Infantile amnesia

Adults rarely recall autobiographical events from before about age 3, reflecting immature encoding, limited language, and incomplete self-development.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight, achieved by most infants by 8 to 12 months in Piaget's sensorimotor stage.

Conservation failure

Preoperational children judge quantity by a single perceptual dimension; they cannot mentally reverse a transformation, so they say a taller glass holds more.

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks a learner can complete with guidance but not alone; scaffolding targets this zone.

Overregularization

Applying a grammatical rule to irregular forms, as in 'goed' or 'mouses'; it indicates active rule learning rather than simple imitation.

Strange situation

Ainsworth's laboratory procedure with separations and reunions used around 12 to 18 months to classify attachment as secure, avoidant, resistant, or disorganized.

Goodness of fit

The match between a child's temperament and environmental demands; a difficult temperament predicts poorer outcomes mainly when the fit is poor.

Identity moratorium

Marcia's status of active exploration without commitment, typically seen in adolescence and early adulthood before identity achievement.

Self-conscious emotions

Shame, guilt, pride, and embarrassment require self-awareness and emerge around 18 to 24 months, later than basic emotions such as joy and fear.

Authoritative parenting

High warmth combined with firm, reasoned control and autonomy support; associated with the most favorable social and academic outcomes across cultures.

Relational aggression

Harm delivered through relationships, such as exclusion, gossip, or withdrawal of friendship; more common and salient in adolescence than physical aggression.

Rejected-aggressive status

A peer status marked by high dislike and frequent aggressive behavior; these children face the greatest risk of later conduct problems.

Socioemotional selectivity

Carstensen's theory that shrinking time horizons lead older adults to prioritize emotionally meaningful relationships, reducing network size while raising satisfaction.

Family life cycle stages

Carter and McGoldrick's sequence from leaving home through marriage, young children, adolescents, launching, and later life, each requiring role renegotiation.

Transition to parenthood

The shift after a first child often brings a modest, temporary dip in marital satisfaction, moderated by fairness in division of labor.

Divorce adjustment timeline

Most children show a temporary adjustment decline and improve within about two years; parental conflict predicts outcome more than family structure.

Sandwich generation

Midlife adults simultaneously caring for dependent children and aging parents, which can create role strain and competing demands on time and finances.

Primary appraisal

Lazarus and Folkman's first stress appraisal, judging whether an event is irrelevant, benign, or threatening and whether it is a challenge or harm.

Problem-focused coping

Efforts to change or manage a stressor directly, such as planning or seeking information; best suited to controllable stressors.

Dual-process model

Stroebe and Schut's model of grieving as oscillation between loss-oriented coping (grief work) and restoration-oriented coping (daily life rebuilding).

Prolonged grief disorder

Persistent intense yearning or preoccupation with the deceased plus functional impairment beyond expected norms, roughly 12 months after the loss in adults.