ALL ALL ALL

Adolescence

The period of transition between childhood and adulthood, historically ages 12-18, from onset of puberty to legal independence.

Developmental Tasks of Adolescence

Social and emotional relationships, de-idealizing and separating from parents, centralising peer relationships, more complex abstract thinking, development of identity, increasing autonomy, emotional and behavioural.

Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017)

basic psychological needs theory and relationships motivation theory. people are most motivated when their basic psychological needs are met

Basic Psychological Needs

Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

effects of controlling/coercive parenting in adolescence

Leads to need frustration, more emotional and behavioural problems; can negatively impact later relationships.

Adolescent Brain Development

A period of dramatic change in the brain involving synaptic pruning, myelin formation, and hormonal changes.

Synaptic Pruning

Unwanted or unused connections are discarded, leading to significant restructuring of the brain; adolescents lose up to 17% of grey matter.

Hormonal Changes in Adolescence

More cortisol, teenage amygdala less able to deal with fear and anger, more varying serotonin, increased dopamine, melatonin released later.

Adolescent Sleep Patterns

Teens need 9-10 hours of sleep ideally, but most get 6-7 or less due to later melatonin release and early school starts, linked to low mood and poorer learning.

Storm and Strife

Emotional turmoil and behavioural difficulties, characterised by conflict.

Protective Factors for Adolescent Mental Health

Supportive family members, development of skills and interests, emotional regulation, academic achievement.

Resilience

The ability to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

Parenting Goals

health and safety, preparing children for adult life, and transmitting cultural values.

Self-Determination Theory

autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and relationships motivation theory focused on mutually autonomy-supportive nature of close relationships.

Galinsky's Stages of Parenthood

Image-making (planning & pregnancy),

Nurturing (birth – 2 years),

Authority (toddler/pre-school),

Interpretive (school),

Interdependent (adolescence),

Departure (moving away)

Autonomy-Supportive Parenting

higher self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms, ability to deal with academic demands and social expectations, and, specifically for LGB adults, lower internalized homophobia and higher self-esteem.

Baumrind's Parenting Styles

Responsiveness/acceptance and Demandingness/control, predicting children’s social, emotional, and cognitive functioning.

Authoritative Parenting

Parents are both responsive and demanding; they encourage independence but set limits, expect age-appropriate behavior, and use reasonable punishment. Children tend to be successful, well-liked, generous, and independent.

Permissive Parenting

Parents are responsive but not demanding; they are nurturing and accepting but have low expectations and avoid discipline. Children tend to be immature, impulsive, short-tempered, unaccustomed to rules, and insensitive to others.

Authoritarian Parenting

Parents are demanding but not responsive; they are restrictive and controlling, expect rules to be followed without explanation, and may use aggressive punishment. Children tend to be low in self-esteem, anxious, and have underdeveloped or externally focused morality.

Disengaged Parenting

Parents are neither responsive nor demanding; they are emotionally unsupportive, low in warmth, and generally uninvolved. Children tend to be emotionally withdrawn, attempt to provide for themselves, and lack an internal sense of discipline.

Determinants of Parenting Behavior Model

Developed by Belsky (1984), this model identifies Parent characteristics, Child characteristics, and Contextual factors as key influences on parenting.

Parental weaving techniques

Strategies for reconciling work and family demands, contributing to child wellbeing. Work-family conflict impacts negatively on child health.

Autonomy

Basic psychological need related to wellbeing, even in collectivist cultures. Supported by autonomy-supportive parenting.

Bidirectional

Refers to the interaction between parent and child characteristics, where both influence each other.

Basic psychological needs theory

Part of Self-Determination Theory, includes autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Meeting these needs leads to better ability to meet needs of others.

Cupboard Love - Freud

The belief that a child's main drive to attach to their mother is to feed.

Attachment bond

attachment is based on psychological and emotional comfort, not food.

Critical period for imprinting

The concept that attachment was irreversible after a specific time.

John Bowlby

A psychoanalyst who developed attachment theory, emphasizing the importance of early relationships.

Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

The hypothesis that a lack of attachment relationship leads to ongoing relationship difficulty and behavioral problems.

Secure base

The concept that a mother allows a child to maintain a balance between closeness and exploration.

The Strange Situation

A standardized procedure used to assess attachment security in infants.

Secure Attachment

An attachment style where the infant plays and interacts with the stranger when mom is present, may be distressed when mom leaves, but comforted when she returns.

Insecure Attachment: Avoidant

Attachment style where the infant tends to be distant in the presence of the mother. Ignores mother when she returns.

Insecure Attachment: Ambivalent

Attachment style where the infant poorly adjusts to the environment, is distressed when mother leaves, and is hard to comfort when she returns.

Insecure Attachment: Disorganised

Attachment style where there is no organized way of dealing with stress and has inconsistent behavior.

Resilience

The ability to recover quickly from difficulties.

New Developments in Attachment Theory

Moving away from focus on monotropy towards recognition of alloparenting

Good enough’ mother

The aim to be appropriately responsive and encourage independence.

Monotropy

Focus on a single attachment figure, typically the mother.

Alloparenting

Caregiving provided by individuals other than the biological parents.

Piaget

infants and children learn and think in a qualitatively different way from each other and from adults.

Constructivist

child developing in isolation, constructing their own understanding of the world.

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years)

infants movements are reflexive. Development of separation of self from external environment, object permanence and onset of deferred imitation

Preoperational Stage: (2-7 years)

child’s ability to use a symbol, an object or a word to stand for something. Children in this stage are egocentric, unable to separate their own perspective from that of others and unable to use logic to problem solve.

Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years)

Children begin to be able to solve conservation tasks correctly and begin to think logically, but physical components of the problem must still be present.

Formal Operational Stage (approx 12 years plus)

Thinking is both logical and abstract. Adolescents can also reason hypothetically and think about nature of, and their role in, society

Schemes

Basic mental structures, coordinated & systematic pattern of action or way of reasoning

Assimilation

Process of interpreting an experience in terms of current ways of thinking

Accommodation

Modifications in behaviour and thinking that occur when old schemes no longer fit

Equilibration

Innate self regulatory process that, through assimilation and accommodation, result in more organised, powerful and complex schemes for adapting to the environment

Maturation

The gradual unfolding over time of genetic programmes for development

Vygotsky

Emphasised the social and cultural environment which creates and shapes cognitive development through language and tools

Vygotsky’s Key Concepts

Higher mental functions develop through social interactions and the child then internalizes shared cultural knowledge

Appropriation

Children adapt tools in unique ways

Prosocial behaviour

Actions that are generally valued by other people in a particular society.

Helping behaviour

Acts where people voluntarily and intentionally behave in a way they believe will benefit others.

Altruism

An act which benefits others but is not expected to have any personal benefits.

Reciprocity

Returning a favour for a favour; a social norm responsible for helping behaviour.

Social responsibility

We should help others when they are dependent on us; a social norm responsible for helping behaviour.

Social justice

We should help others who deserve help (i.e., ‘good’ people in trouble); a social norm responsible for helping behaviour.

Modelling

Learning to engage in helping behaviour by observing the behaviour of others.

Social exchange theory

What we do stems from desire to maximize rewards and minimize costs; true altruism does not exist.

Empathy

Put oneself in the shoes of another person and experience events and emotions the way that person experiences them.

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis

When we feel empathy for a person, we will attempt to help that person purely for altruistic reasons, regardless of what we have to gain.

Bystander effect

The presence/absence of other people will affect how likely someone is to help.

Pluralistic ignorance

When a situation is ambiguous, people will look to others around them for cues of whether they should help; can lead to everyone thinking that no help is needed, when that is not actually the case.

Affiliation

The tendency to form social bonds with others.

Ostracism

The exclusion of someone from society or a group.

Brain regions that respond to peer rejection

Anterior cingulate cortex and right ventral pre-frontal cortex

Temporal Need-Threat model

A model suggesting that social exclusion can be divided into reflexive and reflective phases.

Cyber-ostracism

Exclusion online; not receiving likes on posted content impairs emotional well-being.

Privacy Regulation Theory

Our need for privacy regulates over time, and we adjust our privacy levels to reflect this.

Social Affiliation Model

Need for affiliation changes over time, depending on our circumstances.

Interpersonal attraction

Having a positive attitude or evaluation about a particular person; having a desire to approach another individual for interaction.

Dimorphism

Differences in appearance between males and females of a species.

Similarity to the self

People are generally attracted to those who are similar to them. This includes similar demographics and personality traits.

Reciprocity principle

We have a tendency to like those who like us, and dislike those who dislike us.

Proximity

A key determinant of attraction; how close people are to us physically.

Attractiveness stereotype

The belief that attractive people are rated more highly than unattractive people on almost all traits.

Non-verbal communication

A form of communication in which thoughts and feelings are sent and received, without using words.

Elements of Non-Verbal Communication

Facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body positions, body movements, the use of touch, and eye gaze.

Primary functions of non-verbal communication

Expressing emotion, conveying attitudes, communicating personality traits, and facilitating verbal communication.

Emotional Conditions

Can last for weeks, months, or years; may have specific causes but less tied to particular events than emotions.

Encode

To express or emit non-verbal behavior.

Decode

To interpret the meaning of non-verbal behavior.

Seven Universal Facial Expressions (according to Paul Ekman)

Happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and contempt.

Emotion suppression

When people try to hide or disguise their emotions in certain situations.

Forced Choice Paradigm

A research method where participants must choose between a limited number of options with no neutral responses allowed.

Need to belong theory

Proposed by Baumeister & Leary (1995), it suggests the need to belong is as important to humans as food and shelter.

Satiation

In the context of the need to belong theory, satiation refers to seeking out new relationships when we have enough existing ones.

Substitution

In the context of the need to belong theory, substitution means that lost relationships can be replaced.

Social Identity Theory

Argues that the groups that we belong to is important to how we feel about ourselves; we each have many different identities (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

Social identities

Characteristics of the social groups that we belong to.

Personal identities

Our traits, characteristics & the roles we play in relationships.

Categorisation

Grouping others based on observable characteristics (component of Social Identity Theory).

Identification

Groups that we perceive ourselves to belong to (component of Social Identity Theory).

Comparison

Comparing between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (component of Social Identity Theory).

In-groups

A group that we are a member of and identify with; it commands our esteem and loyalty.