PSYC 190 - Self Control, Family Structure

(VIDEO 3.35) Children & Disrespect

• children seem to understand fairly early (perhaps in infancy) that angry, violent and selfish people are not as nice, friendly, peaceful and sharing people

• the problem is acting in accordance to their own beliefs and moral compass

  • they lose control a lot more frequently

(VIDEO 3.35) Why do kids lose control more often?

• they lose control because their brains are different from ours

  • children’s prefrontal cortex is slow to develop and slow to become connected up to other parts of the brain

(VIDEO 3.35) The brain development

• brain is made up of billions of nerve cells (neurons) which form complex networks that do all of the computations that drive our behavior and form our experiences of the world

• its important to understand that these cells communicate using electricity

• gray & white matter are slow to develop in the prefrontal cortex, slower than in other areas of the brain

• white matter in the frontal cortex continues to develop well into adolescence

• our prefrontal cortex plays a huge role in making plans and deciding what to do and white matter is imporant to enforcing these plans, sending out signals for action, suppressing thoughts/impulses

(VIDEO 3.35) Types of Cells

• gray matter cells

  • most nerve cells are pretty tiny and their roots acting as tendrils of communication with nearby cells

• white matter cells: incredibly long and connects entire regions of the brain to one another

  • coated in a fatty tissue called myelin which acts as insulation

  • this insulation insures that signals that are sent across different areas of the brain are preserved and aren’t blurred by all of the other electrical signals in the brain

  • if this insulation degenerates signals can’t travel efficiently

    • causes negative results for movement & other important biological and cognitive functions

(VIDEO 3.36) Executive function

• elicits a metaphor of the brain as an organization, that features many processes that need to be coordinated

• broken down into four parts

  • 1. attentional control: ability to select and attend to important information

  • 2. working memory (short-term memory): ability to keep track of things or juggle them in our minds eye (ex: holding numbers in mind when doing mental math)

  • 3. inhibitory control (self-control): ability to inhibit or suppress unwanted thoughts or action

  • 4. cognitive flexibility: ability to quickly tasks or to view an old problem in a new way

  • 5. thinking: reasoning, problem-solving and planning

(VIDEO 3.36) Children who perform well on executive function

• 1. increased cooperation in classroom settings

• 2. better at being able to focus on tasks

• 3. fewer problems with behavioral issues at school

• 4. better academic achievement

• 5. better health & financial outcomes later in life

(VIDEO 3.36) How is executive function tested?

• in a previous video on bilingualism

  • ‘Go No Go Task’ : in this task you had to clap for one thing like frogs but not for another thing like flowers → required stopping (inhibitory control)

• cognitive flexibility

• Marshmallow Task (Walter Mischel)

(VIDEO 3.36) Cognitive flexibility

• multi-dimensional card sort task

  • involves sorting cards, according to multiple dimensions

• (see example from lab of Dr. Yuo Munakata → Professor at the University of Colorado)

  • young kids don’t have trouble learning the rules of the game, instead their problem is switching from one rule to another

(VIDEO 3.36) Marshmallow Task - Walter Mischel

• the child is presented with a single marshmallow and then is left alone with it for up to 10 mins and if they can wait and not eat the marshmallow then they will receive two marshmallows in exchange

  • Mischel found that the results predicted important life outcomes

    • kids who could wait longer performed significantly better on their SAT

(VIDEO 3.36) Study by Moffit & Colleagues (1972-2005)

• traced 1000 kids from 1972 to 2005 and found a massive study and found that executive function tested at 3 & 5 years of age predicted important life outcomes more than 30 years later

• found that parent, teacher and self-reports of impulsivity, aggression, hyperactivity and lack of persistence on tasks was predictive of:

  • in teens: it predicted smoking, high school dropout & teenage pregnancy

  • in adults: it predicted substance abuse, poor physical health, low income, low saving & high rates of criminal conviction

(VIDEO 3.37) Executive function & ADHD

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders)

• defined by problems of paying attention, hyperactivity and difficulty controlling behavior

• behaviors like difficulty sustaining attention to tasks, tendency to make careless errors in school work, problems listening when spoken to, problems following through on instructions and finishing task, easily distracted etc.

(VIDEO 3.37) Receiving an ADHD diagnosis

• these problems have to be sufficiently serious that they’re disrupting the child’s life, making it difficult for them to function

(VIDEO 3.37) American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on ADHD

• estimate that 10-11% of kids in the U.S actually receive a diagnosis of ADHD

  • boys being about 3x more likely than girls to receive the diagnosis

• this level of diagnosis has increased in recent years

• diagnoses have increased considerably because of changes in how doctors diagnose it rather than because of new environmental factors

(VIDEO 3.37) Controversies on ADHD

• researchers have very little understanding of the specific workings of ADHD

• we do know that it’s highly heritable

(VIDEO 3.37) Heritability of ADHD (Findings)

• one recent review which summarized the findings of 18 different studies found that on average genetics accounts for about 77% of the variability between children’s ADHD symptoms

(VIDEO 3.37) Treatment for ADHD

• there isn’t a perfected treatment

• in many cases kids between the ages of 2 & 5 receive prescription drug treatments

  • about 75% of the time this is their first line of treatment

(VIDEO 3.38) Center for Disease Control and Prevention Study

• reports that among 2-5 year old kids who have access to either medicaid or to healthcare through their parents’ employer, about 5-6% received a diagnosis of ADHD

• ¾ of these received prescription drugs as treatment

  • in particular, most kids received stimulant drugs, including amphetamine and methylphenidate (Ritalin)

• few of these same kids were receiving other forms of help

  • a much smaller percentage, fewer than half, received cognitive behavioral therapy

  • this is significant because currently based on clinical evidence, the CDC recommends behavioral therapy as a first line

(VIDEO 3.38) How medication works in children ADHD

• the use of stimulants to treat ADHD is a little bit counterintuitive

  • we generally associate stimulants with more excitation

• in kids w/ADHD, these drugs increased focus and behavior control as well as measurable long-term reductions in brain abnormalities that are associated with ADHD with no serious long-term side effects

(VIDEO 3.38) Alternative Treatments for ADHD

• one relatively mainstream approach is ‘tools of the mind’

  • involves changing entire classrooms to improve executive function in all kids

(VIDEO 3.38) Tools of the Mind

• This curriculum (designed by Adele Diamond at UBC in Canada) involves teaching kids tools that externalize their thoughts

  • allows them to become aware of them and better control of these thoughts

• tools:

  • 1. private speech: talking to oneself while doing a difficult task to remember what comes next

  • 2. use of physical objects: to remind kids of which task they’re currently doing

  • 3. active play: children learn best when they direct their own energies and learn through active play rather than being forces to suppress their desires

(VIDEO 3.38) Other possible treatments for ADHD

• there’s a growing literature on the use of mindfulness meditation to help children train executive function

  • kids sit for short periods, once or twice a day, maybe five minutes wile instructions to notice breathing, to notice one’s own body, to notice thoughts come and go and become aware of one’s own mental states

(VIDEO 3.38) American Academy of Pediatrics

• recommended neurofeedback

  • similar to meditation but simply adds an external feedback

  • placing non-invasive sensors on the child’s that measure electrical activity in their brain, a sound or a visual feedback can be created and the child can attempt to change the shape of the feedback

    • this method tells you when you’re succeeding and when your mind is wandering

(VIDEO 3.38) What steps should parents take if child is struggling? (ADHD)

• start by getting a referral to a trained cognitive behavioral therapist who specializes in ADHD

• with a trained clinician, parents can develop practices that the child can adopt both at home and in the school

(VIDEO 3.39) Family structure & a child’s moral life

• Harvard researcher Richard Weissbourd has argued that moral development is fundamentally linked to emotional developmental

  • children who suffer from persistent negative emotions may be less able to experience feelings like caring, responsibility to others, and idealism about life which are arguably important foundations to a healthy moral outlook

(VIDEO 3.39) Family Structure in the US

(VIDEO 3.39) Single-parenting families (Sweden study)

• examine the link between family structure and important life outcomes

• in total, they looked at data from almost a million Swedish families

  • around 900,000 of the kids in the sample were raised in two-parent households while 65,000 were raised by single parents (somewhat lower rate than in the US)

(VIDEO 3.39) Sweden study findings (single-parent families)

• children from single-parent families exhibited higher risk of psychiatric disease, suicide, suicide attempt, injury and addiction to drugs or alcohol

  • these results were found even after adjusting for family income and the parents’ own psychiatric status

• the authors concluded that growing up in a single-parent family imposes significant risks upon children (major factor being access to economic resources)

(VIDEO 3.39) Additional studies on single-parent families

• other major studies find similar results, including studies conducted in the U.S

• these negative effects appear to grow the longer the child lives with a single parent

  • is greater for boys relative to girls

(VIDEO 3.39) Single parents vs. parents who stay together

• it is possible that the parents rather than the parenting or single parenting are what explain children’s outcome

  • ex. divorce is predicted by low executive function early in life and executive function is heritable → parents who have low executive should be more likely to have kids with low executive function and more likely to get divorced

• its possible that children from single-parent families struggle has to do with sharing genetic predispositions

(VIDEO 3.39) Literature on the effects of divorce

• a large summary of 92 studies found that if you look at very early studies there is large negative consequences found but more recent studies find much smaller negative effects of divorce on children

  • of the 92 studies → most negative consequences of divorce were found for high-conflict families

(VIDEO 3.39) Why have negative effects of divorce decreased?

• divorce has become much more common and studies show it’s more accepted

(VIDEO 3.39) High-conflict families

• highest amount of animosity between parents before and during the divorce

• the amount of conflict leading up to the divorce was one of the strongest predictors of how kids fared after the separation

• findings suggest:

  • Single parents can do just fine and the problem isn’t the parenting but rather the conditions in a relationship

  • children who are prone to behavioral problems may be more likely to have parents with problems controlling behavior & resolving conflict amicably

(VIDEO 3.39) Children of divorce parents vs parent death

• large summary of studies tell us here is that kids who lose a parent due to premature death fall right in between those who live in two-parent & single parent

• these kids have lower academic achievement, lower self-esteem, and poorer conduct than kids in two-parent families but fare better on each of these measures than children in divorced families

(VIDEO 3.39) Advice for parents on separating

• getting separated may be better than staying together if there’s conflict in the home, and is likely to have a smaller effect if both parents are financially stable and if they can support each other/stay friendly despite their differences

(VIDEO 3.39) Same-sex couples

• around 14,000 adoptees, about 4% in the US, live with gay or lesbian parents

• the gender and sexual orientation of parents has no known effects on children

• Researchers Ellen Perrin & Benjamin Siegel:

  • children raised by gay & lesbian parents demonstrated resilience (in regards to social, psychological & sexual health)

• Dr. Charlotte Patterson concludes that: research has failed to reveal important differences in the adjustment or development of child by same-sex couples

(VIDEO 3.40) Pew Research Center (Study)

• nonpartisan research organization

• surveyed 35,000 Americans in all 50 states (to study differences between religious and non-religious)

• found that religious faith differs by age, by marital status, by income, etc.

(VIDEO 3.40) Belief in God by age group

(VIDEO 3.40) Belief in God by household income

(VIDEO 3.40) Belief in God by educational group

(VIDEO 3.40) Sharing Study

• children aged 5-12 were given a bunch of stickers and allowed to share as many as they chose with another child

• researchers found that non-religious children shared more stickers than christian and muslim children

• when they showed kids videos of people pushing or bumping someone else, Christians and Muslims said that the actions were meaner than did non-religious kids and recommended harsher punishments

• the study included socioeconomic status, like education & income

(VIDEO 3.40) Researchers at Duke University

• found that atheist kids are less likely to care about what the cool kids think & less likely to express racist beliefs

• other studies show that non-religious adults are less likely to be vengeful, are less authoritarian & more tolerant than religious adults

(VIDEO 3.40) Conclusions on Religion

• there is no reason to believe that raising your kids without religion will have serious negative consequences

• if anything, the evidence points to greater levels of generosity, less racism, and greater tolerance

• doesn’t mean that these things are caused by non-belief but it does suggest that these outcomes are possible without religion

(VIDEO 3.40) Other Correlational data (religion)

• people raised in religious households report higher level of happiness than their non-religious peers, despite the fact that religious households tend to be less affluent & less education

(VIDEO 3.40) Pew study (part 2)

• found that in adults about 40% of believers report being very happy compared to 29% of non-believers

(VIDEO 3.40) Why might religion afford differences in happiness?

• 2015 study - found that religious people tend to be happier when they live in predominantly religious countries and that this edge may stem in part from non-religious people being socially excluded or being otherwise socially unusually in their cultural context

• other studies → happiness is more strongly related to social religious practices like attending services and community events than with individual practices like prayer or mediation

(VIDEO 3.40) Maximizing Benefits for your children

• the way to maximize the benefits of religion for your child is to be active in your community’s religious practices and if you don’t believe, what may be most important is to find ways for you and your child to become more connected to your neighbors and community

(VIDEO 3.41) Spanking as a punishment

• the risks are substantial and the possible benefits are pretty much non-existent

• children who get spanked are later more violent which in turn leads them to get spanked even more

(VIDEO 3.41) Spanking Stats

• 90% of parents in the US report having spanked their child at least once

• about 60% of mothers have done so within the last week

  • mothers spank more than fathers

• average → children are spanked three times a week; about 1.5% getting spanked more than 15 times

• less educated and less wealthy parents spank more

• more common among African American parents & Protestant parents

• boys are more likely to be spanked than girls

(VIDEO 3.41) Gedeon Deak - Effectiveness of spanking

• short term → equally or perhaps a little more effective at getting children to stop a behavior

• long term → a number of negative outcomes

  • damage done to the parent-child relationship

  • does not help with long-term compliance

(VIDEO 3.41) Negative effects on parent-child relationships

• effect on parent-child relationships isn’t understood in a lot of detail partly because of cultural differences of how spanking is viewed