A branch of psychology supposedly founded by Wilhelm T. Preyer (1841-1897) that typically studies the behavior of children at key ages or makes comparisons between adjacent ages using experimental methods in order to tease out age-specific functions, processes and mechanisms that may be deemed to be cognitive, emotional, social etc. in nature. Often it is …
Author Archives: Brian Hopkins
Childhood amnesia
The inability of adults to recall early autobiographical memories in the first few years of their lives. Most people report their earliest memory to be between their third and fourth birthdays, and generally memories of childhood do not become a continuous narrative until after about seven years of age. Identified for the first time in …
Child death
The death of a child at one year of age or later. See Fetal death, Infant death, Infanticide, Neonatal death
Child development
A vast multidisciplinary area of study that includes, for example, child psychology, child psychiatry, developmental psychology, and paediatrics as well as various sub-fields of biological and cultural anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience and sociology. It is distinguished by methodological pluralism (e.g., experimental and correlational methods), and a range of theoretical and applied concerns. There tends to be …
Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ)
Originally devised by Mary Rothbart it aims to measuretemperament, with specific focus on characteristics such as activity level;disposition toward new experiences, including positive (e.g., excitement) ornegative (e.g., fear) displays; reactivity to new stimuli; and rate of calmingfrom strong emotion. The CBQ can be used, depending upon theparticular version selected, from infancy through age adulthood. In the …
Child-Adult Medical Procedure Interaction Scale (CAMPIS-SF)
A behavior rating scale usedto assess children’s distress and coping during medical procedures, as well asthe distress and coping promoting behaviors of their parents and health careproviders present in the room during the medical procedure. Acceptable validity has been reported for the codes of Child Coping, Child Distress, Parent Coping Promoting, ParentDistress Promoting, Nurse Coping Promoting, …
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Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)
Assesseschildren’s skills regarding the management of their own emotion and behavior,with emphasis on identifying children who exhibit less adaptive patterns. Children can be assessed by parents or teachers from ages 1.5 years through 18years, with separate versions for preschool- and school-aged children. School-aged children can also evaluatethemselves. Specific foci spanning all age groups include internalizing …
Chiari II malformation
Sometimes referred to as the Arnold-Chiara malformation, it is a complex malformation of the brain and spine characterized often by myelomeningocoele nd hydrocephalus, asub-type of spina bifida (in which the embryonic caudal neuropore fails to close and spinalcord protrudes from back), reduced posterior fossa and descent of the brain stemand cerebellum. Frequentlyassociated with agenesis of the corpus callosum. It …
Chaos theory
Established in 1961 by the meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz in attempting to forecast weather systems, it is a branch of mathematics termed non-linear dynamics that focuses on irregular and complex behavior that never has an underlying order, and on events and processes that cannot be predicted, except over the short term. Its establishment ended the …
Character
In evolutionary biology, characters, in contrast to traits, are shared similarities, which are regarded as properties (structures or behaviors) in different organisms. They are treated as being heritable and homologous. Differences between homologous characters in different organisms are called character states or modes. A character differs from a character state in that it only specifies …