Unit 7: Developmental Psychology

Explain the nature vs nurture debate in developmental psychology.

Explain the nature vs nurture debate in developmental psychology.

• gene combination helped form us, as individuals. Genes predispose both our shared humanity and our individual differences.

• Also true that our experiences form us. families, and in our peer social relationships, we learn ways of thinking and acting. differences initiated by our nature may be amplified by our nurture.

• We are formed by their interrelationships—their interaction.

Explain the continuity vs stages debate in developmental psych.

• Generally speaking, researchers who emphasize experience and learning see development as a slow, continuous shaping process.

• Those who emphasize biological maturation tend to see development as a sequence of genetically predisposed stages or steps: Although progress through the various stages may be quick or slow, everyone passes through the stages in the same order.

Explain the stability vs change debate in developmental psych.

• As we follow lives through time, do we find more evidence for stability or change? If reunited with a long-lost grade-school friend, do we instantly realize that “it’s the same old Andy”? Or do people we befriend during one period of life seem like strangers at a later period?

• Research reveals that we experience both stability and change. Some of our characteristics, such as temperament (our emotional reactivity and intensity), are very stable.

What are the three stages of prenatal development?

zygote: the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo.

embryo: the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month. (placenta begins absorbing nutrients)

fetus: the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth. (longest period, changes to brain

Explain teratogen using an example.

(literally,“monster maker”) agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.

• pregnant women are advised not to drink alcoholic beverages. As alcohol enters her bloodstream, and her fetus’, it depresses activity in both their central nervous systems.

fetal alcohol syndrome

(FAS) physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features.

What are innate reflexes of babies?

Human behavior, too, exhibits certain unlearned fixed patterns, including infants’innate reflexes for rooting and sucking.

evolutionary psychology’s underlying assumption that genes predispose species-typical behavior remains as strong as ever.

Babinski reflex

The projection of the big toe and the fanning of the other toes when the sole of the foot is touched

How can we determine a baby’s interest in a new object?

habituation:
decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

What is maturation?

biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Why are we unable to recall any events from before we are 3/3.5?

• From ages 3 to 6, the most rapid growth was in your frontal lobes, which enable rational planning.

• The association areas—those linked with thinking, memory, and language—are the last cortical areas to develop. As they do, mental abilities surge (Chugani & Phelps, 1986; Thatcher et al., 1987).

What is a schema? How are Assimilation and Accommodation related to this concept?

schema: a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

To explain how we use and adjust our schemas, Piaget proposed two more concepts:

• assimilation: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

  • (changing the new to fit the old)

• accommodation: adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

  • (changing the old to fit the new)

An example of a schema is that someone can figure out how to order food at a restaurant even if they have never visited that particular restaurant before, due to their schema based on prior knowledge.

Who is Piaget and how did he describe cognitive development?

Piaget believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting with it.

In Piaget’s view, cognitive development consisted of four major stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Piaget’s theory: sensorimotor stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

• Object permanence

• Stranger anxiety

Describe Object Permanence and how this affects young babies.

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. (lack before 6 months, unfolds gradually)

Piaget’s theory: preoperational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to about 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns

to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.

• Pretend play

• Egocentrism

Describe the lack of Conservation in terms of the Preoperational stage.

the principle(which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. (lacked before about 6)

egocentrism

in Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.

Piaget’s theory: concrete operational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.

• Conservation

• Mathematical transformations

Piaget’s theory: formal operational stage

in Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.

• Abstract logic

• Potential for mature moral reasoning

Criticism of Piaget?

Today, see development as more continuous than did Piaget.

By detecting the beginnings of each type of thinking at earlier ages, they have revealed conceptual abilities Piaget missed. Moreover, they see formal logic as a smaller part of cognition than he did.

What is theory of mind?

people’s ideas about their own and others’mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.

What is the main difference between the Concrete Operational stage and the Formal Operational stage?

• Our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving actual experience) to encompass abstract thinking (involving imagined realities and symbols)

• systematic reasoning: first this, then that

How did Lev Vygotsky’s views differ from Jean Piaget’s?

• Where Piaget emphasized how the child’s mind grows through interaction with the physical environment, Vygotsky emphasized how the child’s mind grows through interaction with the social environment.

• By mentoring children and giving them new words, parents and others provide a temporary scaffold from which children can step to higher levels of thinking. Language, an important ingredient of social mentoring, provides the building blocks for thinking, noted Vygotsky

vygotsky sounds like schlotzskys which is next to mcneil and people probs have socisl interactions

Lev Vygotsky’s scaffolding/zone of proximal development

• By mentoring children and giving them new words, parents and others provide a temporary scaffold from which children can step to higher levels of thinking

• For Vygotsky, a child’s zone of proximal development was the zone between what a child can and can’t do—it’s what a child can do with help.

What are some characteristics of ASD?

disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.

impaired theory of mind, they have difficulty inferring others’ thoughts and feelings.

differing levels of severity.

• “High-functioning” vs spectrum’s lower end(unable to use language at all)

Piaget child’s mind grows through interaction with the _____

Vygotsky child’s mind grows throughinteraction with the _____

physical environment

social environment

How does stranger anxiety play a role forming parent-infant attachment bonds?

stranger anxiety: the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.

attachment: an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.

How did Margaret Harlow and Harry Harlow conduct a study of attachment and what did they discover?

• psychologists Harry Harlow and Margaret Harlow bred monkeys for their learning studies. To equalize experiences and to isolate any disease, they separated the infant monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth and raised them in sanitary individual cages, which included a cheesecloth baby blanket. Then came a surprise: When their blankets were taken to be laundered, the monkeys became distressed.

• created two artificial mothers. One was

  a bare wire cylinder with a wooden head

  and an attached feeding bottle, the other a cylinder wrapped with terry cloth.

  When raised with both, the monkeys

  overwhelmingly preferred the comfy cloth

  mother. the monkey babies would cling to their cloth mothers when anxious. When exploring their environment,

  they used her as a secure base.

• Researchers soon learned that other qualities—rocking, warmth, and feeding—made the cloth mother even more appealing.

What is a Critical Period

an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.

What is Imprinting?

the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during an early-life critical period.

Which researcher is connected to imprinting?

Konrad Lorenz: showed imprinting through baby ducklings following him around

konrad sounds like quack! like ducks like imprinting!

What is temperament? What kinds of temperaments can be found in babies?

a person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

• some infants are reactive, intense, and fidgety.

• some are easygoing, quiet, and placid.

• Difficult babies are more irritable, intense, and unpredictable.

• Easy babies are cheerful, relaxed, and predictable in feeding and sleeping.

• Slow-to-warm-up infants tend to resist or withdraw from new people and situations

What did Mary Ainsworth discover regarding attachment and mothers?

• Mary like Mother Mary so like mother-infant

• Mary Ainsworth (1979) designed the strange situation experiment. She observed mother-infant pairs at home during their first 6 months. Later she observed the 1-year-old infants in a strange situation (usually a laboratory playroom). Such research has shown that about 60 percent of infants display secure attachment. In their mother’s presence they play comfort- ably, happily exploring their new environment. When she leaves, they become distressed; when she returns, they seek contact with her.

  Other infants avoid attachment or show insecure attachment, marked either by anxiety or avoidance of trusting relationships. They are less likely to explore their surroundings; they may even cling to their mother. When she leaves, they either cry loudly and remain upset or seem indifferent to her departure and return

Mary Ainsworth findings

Ainsworth and others found that sensitive, responsive mothers—those who noticed what their babies were doing and responded appropriately—had infants who exhibited secure at- tachment (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997). Insensitive, unresponsive mothers—mothers who attended to their babies when they felt like doing so but ignored them at other times— often had infants who were insecurely attached.

importance of contact comfort

What do studies regarding day care find regarding children’s developmental growth?

• research has uncovered no major impact of maternal employment on children’s development, attachments, and achievements

• Research then shifted to the effects of differing quality of day care on different types and ages of children

• children who had spent the most time in day care had slightly advanced thinking and language skills + increased rate of aggressiveness and defiance

What is self-concept? How is this different than self-esteem?

• all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”

• Their self-esteem is how they feel about who they are

Describe each of the parenting styles according to Diana Baumrind.

1. Authoritarian parents impose rules and expect obedience: “Don’t interrupt.” “Keep your room clean.” “Don’t stay out late or you’ll be grounded.” “Why? Because I said so.”

2. Permissive parents submit to their children’s desires. They make few demands and use little punishment.

3. Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive. They exert control by setting rules and enforcing them, but they also explain the reasons for rules. And, especially with older children, they encourage open discussion when making the rules and allow exceptions

4. Uninvolved parenting provides little guidance, nurturing, or attention

What did we learn from Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment?

children can learn through observation and later imitating the same behaviors with a combination of environmental and cognitive processes

What is gender? What is one gender differences that is supported by research?

the socially constructed roles and characteristics by which a culture defines male and female.

• woman: enters puberty 2 earlier, longer life span, carries more fat, less muscle, shorter, expresses emotions more freely, can smell fainter odors, and is offered more help, sexually re-aroused soon after orgasm, vulnerable to depression and anxiety, eating disorder

• Men: more likely to commit suicide or develop alcohol use disorder, more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, color-blindness, attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial personality disorder as an adult.

How do women and men differ regarding aggression?

aggression: any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy.

• men admit to more aggression than women do.: harmful physical aggression,

• women may be slightly more likely to commit acts of relational aggression (e.g. gossip)

What are gender roles?

a set of expected behaviors for males or for females.

How does the social learning theory contribute to our understanding of how children learn gender roles?

the theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished.

assumes that children acquire this identity by observing and imitating others’ gender-linked behaviors and by being rewarded or punished for acting in certain ways themselves

What research did Carol Gilligan show regarding the difference between males and females.

Research by Carol Gilligan and her colleagues suggested that this struggle describes Western individualist males more than relationship-oriented females. Gilligan believed females tend to differ from males both in being less concerned with viewing themselves as separate individuals and in being more concerned with “making connections.”

females are more interdependent than males

carol like caroling cause like you go caroling in groups get it?

How is gender identity different from sexual orientation?

gender identity: our sense of being male or female.

• male or female

sexual orientation: direction of one’s sexual attraction

• attraction

Which parent determines your biological sex?

dad!

Explain with an example of gender typing.

the acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

• children organize themselves into “boy worlds” and “girl worlds,” each guided by rules for what boys and girls do.

What did Rosenzweig discover regarding his study into rats, environments, and regarding early experiences?

Mark Rosenzweig raised some young rats in solitary confinement and others in a communal playground. When they later analyzed the rats’ brains, those raised in the enriched environment, which simulated a natural environment, usually developed a heavier and thicker brain cortex.

So great are the effects that, shown brief video clips of rats, you could tell from their activity and curiosity whether their environment had been impoverished or enriched

Rosenzweig like Rats

How do peers and parents each influence a child’s behavior?

Parents are more important when it comes to education, discipline, responsibility, orderliness, charitableness, and ways of interacting with authority figures.

• Also values, political beliefs, and manners.

Peers are more important when it comes to learning cooperation, finding the road to popularity, and inventing styles of interaction among other peers.

• Also influence slang, food, and fashion. (culture)

Regarding differences between men and women, research shows that there are ______

no big differences.

"People tend to overestimate the differences because they notice the extremes."

What is adolescence? What changes are occuring during this time period?

the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence

starts with the physical beginnings of sexual maturity and ends with the social achievement of independent adult status.

What is puberty?

Adolescence begins with puberty, the time when we mature sexually. Puberty follows a surge of hormones, which may intensify moods and which trigger a series of bodily changes

the sequence of physical changes in puberty is far more predictable than their timing

What are the benefits and drawbacks of early development for boys? Girls?

• For boys, early maturation has mixed effects. Boys who are stronger and more athletic during their early teen years tend to be more popular, self-assured, and independent, though also more at risk for alcohol use, delinquency, and premature sexual activity

• For girls, early maturation can be a challenge. If a young girl’s body and hormone-fed feelings are out of sync with her emotional maturity and her friends’ physical development and experiences, she may begin associating with older adolescents or may suffer teasing or sexual

What kind of changes are happening in the brain during adolescence.

• puberty like pruning
  Until puberty, brain cells increase their connection. Then, during adolescence comes a selective pruning of unused neurons and connections.

• frontal lobes also continue to develop. The growth of myelin enables better communication with other brain regions. These developments bring improved judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.

• Maturation of the frontal lobes lags behind that of the emotional limbic system. Puberty’s hormonal surge and limbic system development help explain teens’ occasional impulsiveness, risky behaviors, and emotional storms

Describe Kohlberg’s moral thinking theory and its stages. Give examples for each stage.

Kohlberg = Conventional

Agreeing with Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg proposed three basic levels of moral thinking:

• preconventional: Self-interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards.

  • before age 9

• conventional: Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order.

  • early adolescence

• postconventional: Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles.

  • adolescence and beyond

How does Carol Gilligan criticize Kohlberg’s research?

argued that women are not deficient in their moral reasoning and instead proposed that males and females reason differently: girls and women focus more on staying connected and maintaining interpersonal relationships.

What do we learn from Jon Haidt’s experiments on morality?

• Jon is a rlly short name so like “quick gut feelings”
  believes that much of our morality is rooted in moral intuitions “quick gut feelings, or affectively laden intuitions.” According to this intuitionist view, the mind makes moral judgments as it makes aesthetic judgments quickly and automatically.

• These feelings in turn trigger moral

Erikson’s psychosocial stages

Infancy (to 1 year)

• Trust vs. mistrust

• If needs are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust.

Toddlerhood (1 to 3 years)

• Autonomy vs. shame / doubt

• Toddlers learn to exercise their will and do things for themselves, or they doubt their abilities.

Preschool (3 to 6 years)

• Initiative vs. guilt

• Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent.

Elementary school (6 years to puberty)

• Competence vs. inferiority

• Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior.

Adolescence (teen years into 20s)

• Identity vs. role confusion

• Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are.

Young adulthood (20s to early 40s)

• intimacy vs. isolation

• Young adults struggle to form close relationships and to gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated.

Middle adulthood (40s to 60s)

• Generativity vs. stagnation

• In middle age, people discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose.

Late adulthood (late 60s and up)

• Integrity vs. despair

• Reflecting on his or her life, an older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure.

What is identity?

our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.

What is social identity?

the “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?” that comes from our group memberships.

What is intimacy?

in Erikson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in late adolescence and early adulthood.

How has the ‘emerging adulthood’ phase changed over time?

• emerging adulthood: for some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid- twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible

• later independence and earlier sexual maturity have widened the once-brief interlude between biological maturity and social independence

What factors affect the sex of a baby?

From your father, you received the one chromosome that is not unisex—either another X chromosome, making you a girl, or a Y chromosome, making you a boy.

What are primary and secondary sex characteristics? What are examples of each?

primary: the body structures (ovaries, testes, and external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible.

secondary: nonreproductive sexual traits, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.

What are some reasons why America has high rates of STI / Teen Pregnancy compared to other developed countries?

Minimal communication about birth control

Guilt related to sexual activity

Alcohol use

Mass media norms of unprotected promiscuity

What is sexual orientation?

an enduring sexual attraction toward members of either one’s own sex (homosexual orientation), the other sex (heterosexual orientation), or both sexes (bisexual orientation).

What factors have researchers found that affect sexual orientation?

• If there are environmental factors that influence sexual orientation, we do not yet know what they are.

• brains differ with sexual orientation.

• genetic influence on sexual orientation

• “gay genes”

• prenatal environment matters

What are some changes that occur later in life?

• physical abilities perceptible decline

• gradual decline in fertility (menopause)

• sexual activity lessens

• Muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina diminish in late adult- hood

• visual sharpness diminishes, and distance perception and adaptation to light- level changes are less acute.

• body’s disease-fighting immune system weakens

• Slower neural processing

• diminished sensory abilities

Explain Erikson’s psychosocial stages of intimacy v. isolation and generativity v. stagnation, and integrity v. despair.

Young adulthood (20s to early 40s)

intimacy vs. isolation

Young adults struggle to form close relationships and to gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated.

Middle adulthood (40s to 60s)

Generativity vs. stagnation

In middle age, people discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose.

Late adulthood (late 60s and up)

Integrity vs. despair

Reflecting on his or her life, an older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure.

How does life satisfaction change over time?

For those in the terminal decline phase, life satisfaction does decline as death approaches

most find that the over-65 years are not notably unhappy. If anything, positive feelings, supported by enhanced emotional control, grow after midlife, and negative feelings subside

Most older people’s sense that life, on balance, has been mostly good.

What is the difference between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies?

cross-sectional study a study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.

longitudinal study research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.