Psych Midterm

Up to midterm - no diagrams

Human Development

study of conception until death - change overtime

The rate of change in the brain

largest amount of brain development

Stage change

Big sudden change - Ex. One day a kid can walk

The way a baby behaves in the first few days

can dictate adult behaviour

Sensation

What comes in

Perception

How we organize that information (organization)

4 main periods of Human Development

1. Prenatal period and infancy

2. Childhood

3. Adolescence

4. Adulthood

Prenatal period and infancy

Conception - 2 - 3 years

Childhood

2-3 - 11 years

Adolescence

12 - ??? —> guess that it ends at around 25

Adulthood

??? - death

Our early memories

around 3-4-usually with high emotional or physical impact

Influences even in utero

influences development

Learning languages

easier when you are younger

One of the earliest experiences a human experiences

is in utero - they can hear around halfway through pregnancy - typically hear pitch

The next thing is touch in utero

fetus can kick

They also tend to taste and smell in utero

Ex. Spicy foods can make babies kick

Within hours of being born - babies show preferences towards food - depends on what the mom eats

The human experience begins with

conception

Prenatal Development

Germinal/Zygotic Stage

Embryonic Stage

Fetal Period

Germinal/Zygotic Stage

fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall (0-2 weeks)

Embryonic Stage

Organ development - organism = fetus (3-8 weeks)

Fetal Period

Fetus (9 weeks - birth)

Ectopic Pregnancy

fertilization in the fallopian tube

Synaptogenist pruning

gets rid of the unused pathways to make pathways more efficient - leads to child learning

Fetal Hearing

Fetal heart rate increases when they hear voices outside the mother - different to music than it is to human speech

Newborn babies

recognize their mother's language and their mother's voice

Teratogens

External substances that cause damage or death to a fetus during prenatal development

Examples of Teratogens

Alcohol, Radiation, Some medications, Caffeine

Teratogens most affect fetuses during

a series of critical and sensitive periods

Critical period

most dangerous time for a structure to be affected

Birth

different experiences - hospitals vs home birth - makes a difference for the child

Neonatal period

the average newborn spends most of their time sleeping 2/3 of the day sleeping quiet sleep and active sleep - spend more time in REM sleep - cry for 2 hours a days (non-communative crying)

Infant's perception

use behavioural cues to tell their reactions

Preferential looking

infants like looking at things are familar or find interesting

Visual acuity test

using paddles with different textures - babies with blurry vision can not differenciate between them - the ones that can prefer bolder patterns

In first month

visual acuity goes from 20/400 to 20/120 - their color perception = gets better - so does their movement

Newborns motor instincts

mostly reflexes - Ex. Grasping, Blinking, Swallowing - some last whole life while some reflexes only stay when we are babies

Development of more complicated motor skills - two rules

1. Cephalocaudal rule

2. Proximodistal rule

Cephalocaudal rule

Top-bottom rule - describes motor skills to develop from head to feet

Proximodistal rule

"Inside to outside" rule - describes motor skills that develop from center to outward

There are large ranges for motor development (In North America)

lifting head (smaller range) vs. walking (larger range)

Environmental factors in different countries

cause children to develop motor skills at different rates

Motor development-

• studied by Karen Adolph at NYU

• found that visual development and motor developed are linked

• when crawling - they can't see their target - they need to stop quickly to see their target

• when walking - they can see their target - seeing them gets them to move to reach target faster

Cognitive Development

how we think about the world around us

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist who came up with understanding children's child development with stages

Piaget’s Stages

1. Sensorimotor Stage (0 - 2 years)

2. Preoperational Stage (2 - 6 years)

3. Concrete Operational Stage (6 - 11 years)

4. Formal Operational Stage (11 yrs - adulthood)

Piaget believed that children more from one stage to the other by gaining knowledge

When children update their schemas (assimilation) - when they learn something new or radical - splitting schema (accommodation)

Assimilation

When gaining new knowledge, we add it into a new schema (mental framework)

Accommodation

when acquiring new knowledge - modify schema to fit new knowledge - drastically changing their framework

Adults

learn less rapidly harder for adults to change their schema - as brain becomes less malleable

Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)

• Infants rely on their movement and senses to learn about the world

• Young babies have issues with object permanence

Preoperational Stage (2-6 years)

• Children moves from egocentrism to socicentrism

• Children develop a working theory of mind

• They realize that not everyone need to like or dislike what they like or dislike

Theory of mind

the understanding that human behaviour is guided by mental representation - and that they differ for others

Egocentrism

believe that they are the center of attention and that the world revolves around them

Sociocentrism

believe that just because they can't see something it doesn't mean they can't perceive it

How do we measure Theory of Mind?

• False belief tasks

• “Change of location” task aka “Sally-Anne task” (failed by most 3 year olds)

“Sally-Anne task”

2 children-Sally puts a ball in a basket, Anne takes the ball and puts it in a box - adults will tell you to look in the basket but Sally would look in the box first

Between the ages of 3 - 4

children are able to have 2 different perspectives

"Unexpected contents task"

• Adult gives a child a box of candy - kid opens the box to see pencils - when asked what they think their friend would say is in the candy box - they would say pencils

• During tests - they typically ask about a peer the same age as them - not their parents - cause kids assume their parents know everything

Humans require social partners

since we thrive in social settings

We require having caregivers

we have important bonds with our primary caregivers that affects our future relationships + our bond with our future children

Experiment done on monkeys to test attachment bonds

monkeys did not thrive/died early/ were bad parents themselves due to the lack of the primary attachment figure

Differences in attachment based on how infants are attached to their caregiver

• The extent to which infants use their caregiver as a secure

  base

• How infants react to reunions with their caregiver

Strange Situation Procedure

having a child who is securely attached to their mom who is in a new room with a stranger in it - the child starts to explore - the child starts chasing the mom + starts crying - stranger tries to comfort baby- does not work - only calms down when mom comes back in

Insecure attachment

when a baby clings into their mom but will push them away

Style of attachment

can dictate future relationship dynamics and self esteem

Young children describe themselves

• positively + physical traits

• the positive traits decline during school age

• due to comparisons, bullying, failing tasks, pressures

• children begin to become more sociocentric

Adolescents have relatively low self esteem

particularly true for women

Self-esteem consistency

called rank-order stability - compared to other people - an individual's self-esteem is consistent across the life span

Ex. children with lower self esteem - as adults have lower self esteem

Not a biological sex difference in self esteem

gender difference

self esteem increases after the dip from adolescence

then when elderly - lowers again because of the loss of social circle

A lot of the variability in self esteem - due to heredity

• Identical twins share 100% of their sibling's DNA their self esteem correlates to a higher degree than non-twin siblings

• Heredity - also impacts physical appearance + activity - so it's the same with self esteem

Adolescence

• start of adolescence - ends when brain matures

• ages aprox. 11-13 - 22-25

• includes change in self esteem identity, morality, sexuality

Identity

Erik Erikson - German Psychologist who developed a theory of conflicts and resolutions

Erik Erikson

Said the Primary conflict we need to resolve - Identity

In order to move on to young adulthood - need to figure out our identity-stable identity that most people maintain throughout their lives

Erikson’s stages

he divided up the lifespan into different stages

Identity Confusion

Erikson believed that we would have an incomplete and incoherent sense of self - they keep changing their minds - this is very common

Identity foreclosure

when an adolecent makes a premature identity choice - a person has decided on a particular track - then realize it wasn't meant for them (less common) - Ex. Pre-med - realizing it isn't for you

Negative Identity

Identity that is formed in opposition to social norms or parents - it's not always bad - it's just against others

Most people with identity issues

emerge from this process with a stable identity some change their identities later as well (outliers

Emergence of Abstract Thinking

personality traits become more important to them than looks

Emergence of self socialization

• seeking out your own social partners (ex. friends)

• friends and social groups - the most important thing in their lives

Personal fable

leftover bit of egocentrism left from childhood - thinking that their challenges are unique - "nobody understands them "

Imaginary audience

the thought that everyone is watching you and analyzing your flaws-you feel like you're the focus of attention - my anxiety tells me this - remenant of egocentrism

Older adults

• semantic memory (fact based) - does not decline

• report having more satisfying sex lives than young adults - experience + connection with partner

• have lower levels of stress than younger adults - focus or positive stimuli

• smaller friend groups

• auditory perception starts to decline at 30

Development - doesn't stop at 18

• changes in sensory systems

• changes to brain structures

• changes in memory storage and retrieval

• slowing in cognitive processes

Episodic memory

the ability to remember past events - decreases overtime

Semantic memory

the ability to remember general information - increases overtime

Do non-humans have language?

• dogs - bark to vocally let us know things

• bees - dance to communicate

• birds - pass down their specific song down through generations

Humans language systems

• We have many language systems - not all humans communicate linguistically

• Unique to humans

• Able to communicate about new things - generativity

• Symbols - arbitrary pairing sounds that we make that are not related to what we are talking about

• Exception - Onomatopoeia

Phonemes

• the basic sounds we produce

• smallest units of sound recognizable as speech

• consonants and vowels

• each language different set of phonemes

• english has 11 sounds

• not all languages use all phonemes

Morphemes

• the combination of sounds that make up meaning

• the smallest meaningful units of language

• smallest number of phonemes - make a morpheme

Semantics

What words mean

Syntax

• Grammar - what we use to combine words

• Rules governing how words are combined to form meaningful phrases and sentences

• Syntactical rules differ across languages

Pragmatics

Changes the context of a word-context and tone

Metalinguistics

Talking about language - using language to talk about language

Bilingualism

• asset to get a job

• higher vocabulary than peers may have less of monolingual peers when kids - bilinguals end up catching up

• can code switch

• may outperform monolinguals on certain non-linguistic tasks - specifically tasks that involve changing rules - Ex. Simon says

Simultaneous (early) bilingualism

• learning 2 languages from birth

• strongest in both languages

Sequential bilingualism

Learn one language then later learn the other language

Heritage Bilingualism

understand a language - aren't fluent or super confident to speak that language