PSYC 3120 Exam 3

Physical Growth in Infancy

- Myelination of different parts of the brain

- As a newborn, brain is about 25% of its adult weight but by 2 years it's 75%

- Triple birthweight by 1 year

- 50% increase in height

Physical Growth in Preschool

- Brain reaches 95% of adult weight

- Prefrontal cortex and cortex grows (increases ability to reason)

- Learning self control and emotion regulation

- Physical growth slows

Cognitive Development in Infancy (Piaget)

- Sensory motor period (reflexes to intentional goal directed behavior)

- Limited to here and now at first

- By end can use symbols (mentally represent)

Cognitive Development in Preschool (Piaget)

- Preoperational period

- Cannot perform logical mental operations; have limited understanding of cause and effects

- May hold animistic beliefs

- Focus on their own perspective (egocentrism)

- Often struggle with idea of reversibility

- Lack conservation

Symbolic Thought

Children use objects to stand in for, or symbolize, another object; a block can become a rocket ship; the space under the table can be a house

Intuitive Thought

The stage of "Why?"; children begin to have a more logical sense of how the world works but still display some limitations

Centration

Children focus on one feature of a problem (like how wide a glass is) to the exclusion of other factors

Magical Thinking

Children often come up with illogical or magical explanations for events they do not fully understand

Vygotsky's Theory of Children Learning

- Children's cognitive maturation results from social interaction

- Learning is best when customized to meet the needs of the individual learner

* Collaborative and sensitive scaffolding

* Zone of proximal development

- Thinking is comprised of various mental tools or strategies

* Private speech

Scaffolding

Adjusting the support offered during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance

Zone of Proximal Development

The difference between what a child can actually do and what the child could do with the help of others; with scaffolding the parent or teacher helps the child move into the ZPD

Private Speech

The internal dialogue that occurs when people talk to themselves (either silently or out loud)

Information Processing in Infancy

- Attention

* Goes from novelty preference to intentional focus

* Increases with maturation

* Joint attention

- Memory

* Ability to retain information improves

* Explicit and implicit memory

Information Processing in Preschool

- Episodic memory (long term)

* Rapidly improves with developing language skills, storytelling, and brain maturity (hippocampus and neural circuits)

- Working memory (short term)

* Slow to mature memory (late-developing cortex circuits) gradually becomes more efficient and reliable during preschool years

Attention in Preschool

- Allows children to focus, shut out distractions, and keep their mind from wandering

- May be lessened by over-excitement and supported by emotional involvement

Executive Function

- Helps suppress impulsive actions and implement long-term plans

Language Development in Infancy

- Prelinguistic communication

- By 13 months, 50 words receptive vocabulary

- By 18 months, can produce those 50 words

- Vocabulary growth spurt at 18 months

- 18-24 months telegraphic speech

Language Development in Preschool

- Fast-mapping: hear word one time to learn it

- Have basics of language rules down

Supporting Language Development in Early Childhood

- Talk and listen

- Be responsive

- Read, sing and tell stories

- Go on longer

- Use the language that comes easily

- Complexity is helpful

- Talk about things that are not in the here and now

- Expect mistakes

Early Childhood Education

- Worldwide, most children begin formal school around age 6

- In the US, most communities don't have public preschool or Pre-K programs

- Children who attend preschool are from relatively affluent families

Boosting Skills

- Early learning is powerfully driven by intrinsic motivation

- High-quality early education boosts academic skills

* Emergent literacy, phonemic awareness, ordinality

- Advantages exist for children from families who are less affluent, less educated or don't speak the majority language

Quality Practices

- Warm communities are built

- Guidance is individualized

- Assessment is used

- Families are supported

Can play work in preschool?

- Developing theory of mind and abstract thinking in pretend play

- Practicing emotion regulation in make-believe play

- Building social, language, and executive function skills in dress-up play and working together

- Building academic skills in teacher-guided play

Self Appraisal

- Children under the age of 8 tend to have unrealistically positive self appraisals

* Makes them more likely to try new things and take risks

- Self appraisals become more realistic across development as children incorporate feedback from others

- Insecurely attached parent child/maternal depression have lower or negative self concept

Children's higher self esteem is associated with parents who are...

- Accepting, affectionate

- Involved with their children

- Set clear and consistent rules

- Use non-coercive disciplinary tactics

- Consider the child's views in family decisions

Praising Children and Boosting Self Esteem

- Research suggests that praising children for their talent and intelligence doesn't help them achieve success; it sets them up for disappointment

* Have difficulty when they face challenges and do not receive accolades

- Better to foster a "growth mindset" in children

* Helps children problem solve

Individual Differences in Emotional Expressiveness

- Differences related to temperament

- Associations with temperament suggest that biological factors play a central role in how intensely children react to emotionally arousing situations and how well they regulate their reactions

- Individual differences in positive and negative emotionality are also related to children's overall adjustment

Emotion Regulation

- The managing, monitoring, evaluating and modifying of emotional reactions to reduce the intensity and duration of emotional arousal

- Makes children feel better

- Increases the likelihood that other people will respond to the child positively

Tactics for Regulating Emotion in Infancy

Turning away, self-distraction, falling asleep

Tactics for Regulating Emotion in Preschool

Self-distraction, orientation of attention toward or away from a stimulus, approach or retreat from a situation, use of language skills

Children who are both temperamentally __________ and __________ at controlling their attention are poor emotion regulators

Reactive; poor

Emotion Regulation Abilities Predict Children's Later Adjustment

Associated with less aggressive and disruptive behavior, social competence, and peer acceptance

Socialization by Parents

- Positive correlation between parent and child expressiveness

- When parents scold or punish their children for expressing emotions, especially negative ones, children have difficulty regulating their emotions

- When children have poor regulation, social relationships suffer

- Dismissive parents are not modeling good emotional strategies and leave children to fend for themselves

- Emotionally coaching parents teach children how to deal with all emotions

Five aspects of parenting that constitute "emotion coaching"

- Being aware of the child's emotions

- Recognizing emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching

- Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings

- Labeling emotions in words children can understand

- Helping children come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting situation

Modeling in Emotion Regulation

Mothers who are good at regulating their own emotions offer more lessons and display better balance between positive and negative emotions

Authoritative Parents (Baumrind)

- Warm and responsive, but restrictive and demanding

- Energetic, friendly children who are more socially competent in every way

- Cheerful, self controlled and self reliant

- Achievement oriented

- Tend to maintain friendly relations with their peers

- Cooperate with adults

- Cope well with stress

Authoritarian Parents (Baumrind)

- Rejecting and unresponsive as well as restrictive and demanding

- Conflicted, irritable children; fearful, moody, anxious, fail to initiate activity, poor communication skills

- Linked to higher level of externalizing problems

Permissive Parents (Baumrind)

- Warm and responsive as well as permissive and undemanding

- Impulsive, aggressive children; uncontrolled, noncompliant, and aggressive behavior

Neglectful Parents

- Rejecting and unresponsive as well as permissive and undemanding

- Children develop the sense that other aspects of the parents' lives are more important than they are

- Children tend to be socially incompetent

- Poor self control and don't handle independence well

- Low self esteem, are immature and may be alienated from the family

- In adolescence they may show patterns of truancy and delinquency

- Associated with higher level of externalizing problems

Physical Punishment

- Linked to a variety of negative outcomes, especially increases in children's aggression

- Depends on the type of physical punishment

- Most negative outcomes occur when:

* Physical punishment is the predominant disciplinary tactic

* Punishment is severe, including shaking and spanking that is anger driven and out of control

What is puberty?

- Brain neuroendocrine process that stimulates the rapid growth physical changes that take place during this period of development

- "Genetically wired" into our species

- Hormones and endocrine system play an important role

When does puberty start?

- For females puberty starts on average at 8.5 years

- For males puberty starts on average at 9.5 years

- Onset varies for individuals although there does seem to be a sequence genders follow

Primary Sexual Characteristics

Testicles and penis; ovaries, uterus, and vagina

Secondary Sexual Characteristics

Breasts, facial hair, pubic hair, body odor

When do growth spurts occur?

Females peak at 9 years, males peak at 11 years

Secular Trend in Puberty Timing

- Menarche has declined (normal range 9-15)

* Likely due to better nutrition and medicine

- Other environmental factors also impact early maturation

* Obesity

* Urban environment

* Low SES

* Adoption, father absence, family conflict and maltreatment

* Stress has an impact on all of the above

The Origins of Desire

- Desire is triggered by the release of hormones, such as the adrenal hormone DHEA, estrogen and testosterone during adrenarche and puberty

- Dopamine becomes prevalent in the subcortical structures involved in the reward system and adolescents' cortex is activated when they think about romantic relationships

Brain in the Teen Years

- Gray/white matter continue to grow well past puberty

- Critical pruning into late teens

- 6-12 years of age the neurons grow bushier and gray matter grows thicker

* Thinned out at a rate of 1-2% per year until early 20s

* White matter thickens because of myelin growth

* Neural darwinism- pruning of synapses

- Brain grows from back to front

* Prefrontal cortex is last part to develop

Prefrontal Cortex

- Planning, setting goals/priorities, organizing thoughts, suppressing impulses, weighing consequences of one's actions, etc.

Active Subcortical Structures

- The reward system connects brain regions including the dorsal and ventral striatum, small structures inside the basal ganglia

- According to some estimates, adolescents have up to seven times more dopamine in their reward system than children

- The maturation of the reward circuit helps power adolescents' motivation to learn and solve problems

Exploratory Learning

Trying out different ways to solve a problem before deciding on the best solution

Hormones in the Teen Years

- Aside from ovaries and testes, testosterone like hormone also released from adrenal glands

- These hormones very active in the brain

- Attaches to receptors of serotonin and other neurochemicals that regulate mood and excitability

- Affects limbic system (brain's emotional center)

Hormonal Changes in Males During Puberty

- Testosterone increases eighteen fold

- Estradiol increases two fold

Hormonal Changes in Females During Puberty

- Estradiol increases eight fold

- Testosterone increases two fold

Moodiness

Sensation seeking high but good decision making low

fMRI Studies by Yurgelun-Todd

- Method: Teens and adults identify emotions displayed on pictures

- Results: Children and teens

* Amygdala was most active (amygdala associated with emotions and gut reactions)

* Identified fear as anger and confused as sad

- Results: Adults

* Frontal lobes more active and made fewer errors

Addiction in Teen Years

- Dopamine rich areas of brain make teens more vulnerable to stimulating and addictive effects of drugs/alcohol

- Affects of alcohol more reinforcing and fun for teens

- Teens need more alcohol/drugs to reach desired affects

Dopamine

Brain chemical involved in motivation and reinforcing behavior (higher levels during teen years)

Nucleus Accumbens

Region of frontal cortex that directs motivation to seek rewards/pleasure

Bjork's Study at National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

- fMRI study of motivation during gambling game found teens have less activity in nucleus accumbens than adults

- Teens have motivation deficit (like high excitement and low effort)

- Teenagers exhibited exaggerated responses to medium and large rewards compared to children and adults

* When presented with a small reward, teenagers' brains hardly fired at all in comparison to adults and children

Why are teens night owls?

- Pineal gland produces melatonin

- Takes longer for melatonin levels to rise in teens, regardless of exposure to light or stimulating activities

- Therefore go to sleep later and wake up later

- Need 9-10 hours of sleep

Egocentrism in Adolescent Thinking

- Stage of self absorption where the world is seen only from one's own perspective

- Highly critical of authority figures, unwilling to accept criticism, and quick to find fault with others

- Helps explain why teens often think they're the focus of everyone's attention

- Leads to imaginary audience and personal fables

Imaginary Audience

- Adolescents think they're the focus of everyone's attention

- Construct elaborate scenarios about other's thoughts/intentions

Personal Fables

- Belief that the adolescent is unique and exceptional and shared by no one else

* "No one understands me"

* Risk taking behavior

STIs in the US

- Half of 20 million STIs in the US happen in 15-24 year olds

- 23% of new HIV cases occur in 13-24 year olds

Characteristics of Sexually Active Adolescents

- Personal: Early pubertal timing, childhood impulsivity, weak sense of personal control

- Family: Step-, single-parent, or large family, little or no religious involvement, weak parental monitoring, disrupted parent-child communication

- Peer: Sexually active friends, older siblings, alcohol, drug use

- Educational: Poor school performance, low educational goals

Abstinence Education or "Sexual Risk Avoidance"

- Scientifically and ethically problematic

* Ignore/stigmatize young people

* Don't meet their health need

- Not complete in medical accuracy or based on scientific evidence

- DOES NOT stop or delay sexual behavior

- No scientific evidence that sex ed leads to sexual risk taking

Factors Contributing to Adolescent Parenthood

- Low parental warmth

- Repeated parental divorce

- Poor school achievement before pregnancy

- Alcohol, drug use

- Antisocial behavior

- Low SES

- Mom was a teen mom

- Teen sister also a mom

Risks for Teenage Mothers and Babies

- Low educational attainment

- More time as single parent

- Lifelong economic difficulties

- Pregnancy and birth complications

* More likely to have low birth weight/premature babies

* Less likely to get prenatal care

- Weak parenting skills

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Strategies

- Better sex ed

- Skills for handling sexual situations

- Information and access to contraceptives and healthcare

- Academic and social competence

- School involvement

Teen Pregnancy Intervention Strategies

- Healthcare

- Help staying in school

- Job and life management training

- Parenting instruction

- Adult mentors

- Affordable child care

- Father support

Formal Operational Stage (Piaget)

- Starts at age 11 (last cognitive stage)

- Can think abstractly

- Idealistic

- Can use hypothetical deductive reasoning to solve problems

* Develop a hypothesis and test it logically and systematically

Problems/Criticisms of Piaget's Formal Operational Stage

- Only 1/3 of adolescents reach this level

- Many American adults have not released this stage

- Culture and education matters

* Exposure to science

Fuzzy Trace Dual Model Process

- Two cognitive systems at work - one is analytical (literal, precise, verbatim) and the other is gist based (intuition and simple bottom up processing)

- Risky situations- better for teens to gist base

Decision Making in Adolescence

- Overly emotional so poor decision makers

- This problem is worse in context of peers (when with peers, more likely to take risks)

Why do kids drop out of high school?

- Pushed out when adverse situations within the school environment lead to consequences, ultimately resulting in drop out

* Include tests, attendance and discipline policies and consequences of poor behavior

- Pulled out when factors inside the student divert them from completing school

* Financial worries, out of school employment, family needs, or even family changes (e.g. marriage, child birth)

- Falling out of school occurs when a student does not show significant academic progress in schoolwork and becomes apathetic or even disillusioned with school completion

* Not necessarily an active decision, but rather a "side effect of insufficient personal and educational support"

* Student gradually increases in behaviors or desires of academic disengagement, yet without being forced out or lured out- they "fall out"

Teens Have a Lot on Their Developmental Plates

- Physical changes and adjusting to them

- Brain maturation continuing (changes in thinking)

- New role- expected to act more mature (more autonomy)

- Consider their "futures"/careers

- Developing sense of self

- Budding sexuality

- Intimacy with friends/lovers

James Marcia's Approach to Identity Development

- Crisis

- Commitment

- Four statuses

Crisis

A period of identity development in which an adolescent consciously explores alternatives

Commitment

A psychological investment in a course of action or an ideology

Identity Achievement

Adolescents consider and explore various alternatives and make a commitment (crisis leading to commitment)

Identity Foreclosure

Adolescents here did not do adequate personal exploration but made a commitment (usually following other's directives) (no crisis, but commitment)

Identity Diffusion

Adolescents do not explore options and do not commit to one; adolescent is indifferent (no crisis and no commitment)

Moratorium

Adolescents explore and do not commit to an option and that creates anxiety and conflict; an identity is usually defined later, after a struggle (crisis with no commitment yet)

MAMA Cycle

- Moratorium-achievement-moratorium-achievement

- Teens/young adults may reach identity but not stable and changes over the lifespan

Self-Concept

- Domain-specific evaluations of self (academic, athletic, physical appearance, etc.)

Self Esteem

Global self worth

What aspects are tied to identity?

- Vocational/career

- Political and religious identity

- Relationship, achievement and intellectual identity

- Sexual identity

- Cultural/ethnic identity

- Interests

- Personality

- Physical identity

Positive Roles Peers Play in Teens Life

- Intimacy (sharing)

- Reassurance of worth

- Companionship

* Supportive, academically oriented and socially skilled friends play beneficial role

- Healthy relationships

* Less substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, bullying and victimization)

Negative Roles Peers Play in Teens Life

- Coercive friends who encourage drinking

- Conflict ridden

- Poor quality friendships

Which teens are more susceptible to peer pressure?

- Younger adolescents are more conforming (peaks 8th/9th for antisocial behaviors)

- Low self esteem

- Uncertain identity

- Social anxiety

- High status peers are followed more often

Clique

- Smaller group between 2-12 people (average 5-6)

- Similar characteristics (age, gender, interests)

- Friendship

Crowd

- Larger group

- "Reputation" based

- Not necessarily friends

- Based on activities

Risk Factors for Suicide

- Gender (more females attempt, but males are more successful and use more violent means)

- History of family instability and unhappiness

- Lack of supportive friendships

- Cultural contexts

- Genetic factors

- Depressive symptoms

Characteristics of Suicidal Teens

- Depressed

- Hopelessness

- Low self esteem

- High self blame

How prevalent is depression in teens?

13.8% had at least 1 major depressive episode

Factors Contributing to Depression

- Genes

- Certain family factors

- Poor peer relationships

Treatment of Depression

- Drug therapy using serotonin reuptake inhibitors

- Cognitive behavior therapy

- Interpersonal therapy

Emerging Adulthood

- New stage between adolescence and adulthood as proposed by Arnett

- Roughly 18-25+ years

Social and Economic Changes That Precipitated Emerging Adulthood

- Transition from manufacturing economy to information, technology and services economy

- Increasing number of young people pursuing post secondary education

- Later marriages and having children later

- Increased tolerance of premarital sex and cohabitation before marriage (Pill developed in 60s)