Special Populations Midterm

Cultural Relativism Theory

There are no universal standards or rules by which we can judge behaviour, cognitions, and emotions to be atypical or abnormal

Anxious shyness

Fear and anxiety in social situations

Regulated shyness

Self-conscious avoidance of public attention and social restraint in behaviour

What did the study by Kong et al. (2023) reveal about regulated shyness in Canada and China?

• In Canada, regulated shyness relates to social anxiety

• In China, regulated shyness does not result in psychopathology (may be adaptive)

What did the study by Kong et al. (2023) reveal about anxious shyness in Canada and China?

Anxious shyness resulted in social anxiety in both Canadian and Chinese children

Examples of externalizing problems

Aggressive behaviour, rule breaking, and other conduct problems

What did the study by Weisz et al. (1995) reveal about externalizing problems in North America and Thailand?

• Thai teachers reported many more externalizing problems compared to North American teachers

• When researchers went into the classrooms, they saw that North American children were displaying many more externalizing problems compared to Thai children

Psychological constructs

The intangible aspects of one’s psychology which can’t be measured directly

Systematic observation

Watching children and recording what they say or do

Naturalistic observation

Behaviours observed in real-life situation

Time sampling

Assessing whether a behaviour occurred or not during a specific time frame (epoch)

Event sampling

Counting how many times the child engaged in the behaviour of interest during the entire time session

Structured observation

Researcher creates setting likely to elicit behaviour of interest

Coding scheme

A document that contains all the rules for coding a set of behaviours for a given task or set up

Observer influence (Hawthorne Effect)

Participant changes their behaviour because they are being observed

Habituation

Allows participant to get used to researcher’s presence

How can we limit observer influence?

By using habituation

Observer bias

Expectations influence decisions

• May notice behaviours that support hypothesis and discount those that don’t

• May interpret behaviours in such a way that they support the hypothesis

Inter-rater reliability

Are behaviours coded in a consistent way across independent coders?

What are 3 ways to calculate inter-rater reliability

1) Percent agreement

2) Intraclass correlation

3) Kappa statistic

Kappa statistic

Actual agreement as a proportion of the potential agreement following correction for chance agreement

• Ranges from -1 (less agreement than can be expected by chance) to +1 (perfect agreement)

• Researchers generally aim for a Kappa of 0.7 or higher

Correlational study

Relations between variables as they exist naturally in the world

Correlation coefficient (r)

Direction and strength of a relation between two variable

What is the major problem with correlational design?

We can’t always know which variable is driving which other variable. Or there could be a third variable explaining both

What are the two types of experimental research?

Randomized and quasi-experimental

Randomized

Participants assigned to different groups using random assignment

Quasi-experimental

Subjects are not randomly assigned

Case study

Intervention or experimental manipulation with a single participant

When are case studies used?

• Can be used when participants are unique or present with unique symptoms

• Or when intervention is unique or expensive

Cross sectional design

Testing children of different ages at one particular point of development

What is a problem with cross sectional designs?

Cohort effects - different developmental environments based on when you were born

Longitudinal design

Same individuals are observed or tested repeatedly at different points in their lives

What are some problems with longitudinal designs?

• Practice effects - improvement over time might be attributed to practice with a particular test

• Selective attrition - those who drop out of the study may be significantly different from participants who remain

• Cohort effects - developmental change may be particular to a specific generation of people

Accelerated longitudinal design

• Sequences of samples that are studied longitudinally OR

• Cross-sections are collected simultaneously to a longitudinal group

What is the benefit of an accelerated longitudinal design?

It can account for practice and cohort effects while maintaining continuity

Temperament

• Core emotional, cognitive, and behavioural characteristics around which personality traits develop

• Biologically-based behavioural styles that are stable across situations

• Individual difference in emotional reactivity and self-regulation

Reactivity

• Excitability, responsivity, and arousability of behavioural and physiological systems

• Threshold for some sort of response (size of thermometer)

Self-regulation

• Neural and behavioural processes functioning to modulate underlying reactivity

• The degree to which we can bring the arousal within our thermometer down

Co-regulation of emotion

Parents help teach children how to regulate their emotions

• Early on, touch and comfort is effective

• Later, parents will use distraction

Behavioural inhibition

Responding to new objects, situations, and people with wariness

• Higher arousal in response to novel stimuli

What is the relationship between reactivity and behavioural inhibition?

Higher reactivity = higher behavioural inhibition

Shyness

Higher arousal around novel people or social situations

Sociability

Preference for being around others

Effortful control

The ability to inhibit a dominant response and/or to activate a subdominant response, to plan ahead, and to detect errors (i.e. not about how much effort we’re putting in but how well we’re able to control our effort)

• Not considered to be under voluntary control

What is a dominant response?

Anything that is easy or fun for a child (e.g. playing)

What is a subdominant response?

Something that is hard for the child and they should be doing (e.g. doing their chores or homework)

Risk

Variables that precede and increase the chance of psychological impairment

What 3 factors can increase risk?

Intensity, duration, and timing

Adaptation

Fitting into the circumstances of your life

Vulnerability

The tendency to respond maladaptively to life circumstances

Resilience

Relatively positive outcome in the face of significantly adverse or traumatic experiences

Indirect effect

Impact of a mediating variable between an independent variable and a dependent variable (e.g. marital conflict causes parenting difficulties and it’s the parenting difficulties that are causing the child’s adjustment problems)

Necessary cause

Must be present for the disorder to occur (e.g. brain dysfunction is necessary for schizophrenia to emerge but not necessarily sufficient)

Sufficient cause

In itself responsible for the disorder (e.g. trisomy 21 in down syndrome)

Contributing causes

Factors that are not necessary or sufficient (e.g. stress, impulsivity, lack of inhibition)

Development

Involving progressive adaptations or maladaptation to changing circumstances

Transactional

Stable adaptation

When a child has relatively few risks or adversities and is well-adjusted

Stable maladaptation

When a child has a difficult time fitting into the circumstances of their life in early childhood and this continues over time

Reversal of maladaptation

When a child experiences maladaptation in early childhood but something shifts for them to start fitting into the circumstances of their life as they get older ( e.g. maybe they find social support in a team they join)

Decline of adaptation

When a child is initially adapting quite well to the circumstances of their life but something happens at some point in their development causing a shift (e.g. disruption in family)

Temporal maladaptation

E.g. child has been bullying at school but receives the support they need to get back on track

Equifinality

Diverse factors can be associated with the same outcome

Multifinality

An experience may lead to different outcomes

Interactional model

Transactional model

Development is the result of an ongoing reciprocal transaction between the individual themself and the environment they’re in

Behavioural genetics

The study of the manner in which genetic variation affects psychological traits

What are the three laws of behavioural genetics?

• All human behavioural traits are heritable

• The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes

• A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioural traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families