AP Psychology · Unit 6

Developmental Psychology: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)

42 flashcard terms for AP Psychology Unit 6, written to match the course framework. Read them here, drill them as flashcards, or take the 24-question quiz. Free, no account needed.

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Developmental Psychology: The study of physical, cognitive, and social change across the human lifespan.
Nature vs Nurture: The debate over the relative contributions of genes (nature) and experience (nurture) to development.
Continuity vs Stages: Whether development is gradual and continuous or proceeds through distinct qualitative stages.
Teratogens: Harmful agents (like alcohol or viruses) that can damage a developing embryo or fetus.
Jean Piaget: Proposed that children actively construct understanding through four cognitive stages.
Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to about 2 years; infants know the world through senses and actions and gain object permanence.
Object Permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen.
Preoperational Stage: About 2 to 7 years; children use language and symbols but show egocentrism and lack conservation.
Egocentrism: Difficulty taking another person's point of view, typical of the preoperational stage.
Conservation: Understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in shape or appearance.
Concrete Operational Stage: About 7 to 11 years; children think logically about concrete events and grasp conservation.
Formal Operational Stage: About 12 and up; adolescents reason abstractly and use hypothetical, systematic thinking.
Lev Vygotsky: Emphasized social interaction and the zone of proximal development in cognitive growth.
Zone of Proximal Development: The gap between what a child can do alone and with guidance, aided by scaffolding.
Harry Harlow: Showed with monkeys that attachment depends on comfort and contact, not just feeding.
Mary Ainsworth: Used the Strange Situation to identify secure and insecure infant attachment styles.
Secure vs Insecure Attachment: Securely attached infants explore and are comforted by caregivers; insecure infants are anxious or avoidant.
Erik Erikson: Proposed eight psychosocial stages, each with a crisis to resolve across the lifespan.

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Trust vs Mistrust: Erikson's first stage (infancy) in which responsive care builds a sense of basic trust.
Identity vs Role Confusion: Erikson's adolescent stage focused on forming a coherent sense of self.
Lawrence Kohlberg: Proposed three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
Preconventional Morality: Early moral reasoning based on avoiding punishment and gaining rewards.
Postconventional Morality: Advanced moral reasoning based on abstract ethical principles and universal rights.
Temperament: An infant's innate emotional reactivity and intensity, evident early and fairly stable.
Teratogens: Agents such as alcohol, drugs, or viruses that cross the placenta and harm the embryo or fetus; fetal alcohol syndrome is a leading preventable cause of intellectual disability.
Habituation: Decreasing response to a repeated stimulus; used to study infant cognition — renewed looking indicates the infant detects novelty.
Maturation: Biologically driven growth sequences relatively uninfluenced by experience (crawl before walk); sets the basic course, experience adjusts timing.
Schema, Assimilation, Accommodation: Piaget: schemas are mental frameworks; assimilation fits new experience into existing schemas, accommodation adjusts schemas to fit new information.
Object Permanence: Awareness that objects exist when not perceived; Piaget placed it around 8 months, though later research shows earlier signs.
Conservation: Understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in shape (pouring water into a tall glass); mastered in the concrete operational stage.
Egocentrism: Preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view (three-mountains task); not selfishness.
Theory of Mind: Ability to infer others' mental states, emerging around age 4-5 (false-belief tasks); delayed in autism spectrum disorder.
Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development: Range between what a child can do alone and with guidance; scaffolding by adults supports learning within this zone.
Stranger Anxiety: Fear of unfamiliar people appearing around 8 months, when infants have schemas for familiar faces.
Harlow's Monkeys: Infant monkeys preferred a cloth 'mother' over a wire one that provided food, showing attachment stems from contact comfort, not nourishment.
Ainsworth's Strange Situation: Secure infants explore, are distressed when mother leaves, and are comforted on return; insecure (avoidant/anxious) infants show less exploration and either indifference or clinging.

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Imprinting & Critical Period: Lorenz: certain animals form attachments during a limited early period; humans lack rigid imprinting but early attachment matters.
Baumrind's Parenting Styles: Authoritarian (rules, low warmth), permissive (few demands), authoritative (demanding but responsive — linked to best outcomes), and neglectful.
Erikson's Stages: Eight psychosocial crises: trust vs mistrust, autonomy vs shame, initiative vs guilt, industry vs inferiority, identity vs role confusion, intimacy vs isolation, generativity vs stagnation, integrity vs despair.
Kohlberg's Moral Stages: Preconventional (self-interest), conventional (laws and social approval), postconventional (abstract principles); criticized by Gilligan for a male bias toward justice over care.
Adolescent Brain: Limbic system matures before the prefrontal cortex, contributing to impulsivity and risk-taking; frontal lobes continue developing into the mid-20s.
Fluid vs Crystallized Intelligence: Fluid (speedy abstract reasoning) declines with age; crystallized (accumulated knowledge and verbal skill) holds or increases into later adulthood.

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