1.
accommodation: adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
2.
acheivement test: a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
3.
adolescence: the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence
4.
aptitude test: a test designed to predict a person's future performance; is the capacity to learn
5.
assimilation: interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schemas
6.
attachment: an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation
7.
autism: a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind
8.
basic trust: according to Erik Erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
9.
cognition: all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
10.
concrete operational stage: in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events
11.
conservation: the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects
12.
content validity: the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest
13.
creativity: the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas
14.
critical period: an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development
15.
cross-sectional study: a study in which people of different ages are compared with one another
16.
crystallized intelligence: one's accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
17.
developmental psychology: a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span
18.
down syndrome: a condition of retardation and associated physical disorders caused by an extra chromosome 21 in one's genetic makeup
19.
egocentrism: in Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view
20.
embryo: the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month
21.
emerging adulthood: for some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to early twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood
22.
emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions
23.
factor analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie one's total score
24.
fetal alcohol syndrome: physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions
25.
fetus: the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth
26.
fluid intelligence: our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood
27.
formal operational stage: in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts
28.
general intelligence: a general intelligence factor that according to Spearman and others underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
29.
generaltivity: Stagnation
30.
habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner
31.
identity: one's sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles
32.
imprinting: the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life
33.
intelligence: mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations
34.
intelligence quotient IQ: defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.
35.
intelligence test: a method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores
36.
intimacy: in Erikson's theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood
37.
longitudinal study: research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.
38.
maturation: biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience
39.
menarche: the first menstrual period
40.
menopause: the time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines
41.
mental age: a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance
42.
mental retardation: a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound
43.
normal curve: the symmetrical bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.
44.
object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived
45.
predictive validity: The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior
(criterion-related validity).
46.
preoperational stage: in Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic
47.
primary sex characteristics: the body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible
48.
puberty: the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing
49.
reliability: the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting
50.
savant syndrome: a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing
51.
schema: a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information
52.
secondary sex characteristics: nonreproductive sexual characteristics, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair
53.
self-concept: our understanding and evaluation of who we are
54.
sesorimotor stage: in Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities
55.
social clock: the culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement
56.
social identity: the "we" aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to "who am I?" that comes from our group memberships
57.
standardization: defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group
58.
stanford-binet: the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test
59.
stereotype threat: a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype
60.
stranger anxiety: the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age
61.
theory of mind: people's ideas about their own and others' mental states -- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behavior these might predict
62.
validity: the quality of being logically valid
63.
wechsler adult intelligence scale (WAIS): the WAIS is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests
64.
zygote: the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo
