Psych Unit 1 & 2

What are hereditary factors in development?

What are hereditary factors in development?

Factors that influence development, which are genetically passed down from biological children.

What do environmental factors in development include?

Factors like what school you go to, your friends, what extracurriculars you do, etc.

What is the Biopsychosocial Model?

A framework for understanding the human experience in terms of the influence of biological, psychological, and social factors.

What are biological factors?

Internal genetic and/or physiologically based factors.

What are psychological factors?

Internal factors pertaining to an individual's mental processes, including cognition, affect, thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes.

What are social factors?

External factors relating to an individual's interactions with others and their external environment, including relationships and community involvement.

What is emotional development?

The continuous, lifelong development of skills that allow individuals to control, express, and recognize emotions in an appropriate way.

What are the four attachment styles proposed by Bartholomew and Horowitz?

Preoccupied attachment, fearful attachment, secure attachment, or dismissive attachment.

What characterizes preoccupied attachment?

A strong desire for closeness and intimacy, often accompanied by anxiety about the relationship.

What marks fearful attachment?

A desire for connection but coupled with a fear of rejection or being hurt, leading to avoidance of intimacy.

What involves secure attachment?

Comfort with intimacy and independence, allowing for healthy relationships.

What is dismissive attachment?

A strong sense of self-sufficiency and a tendency to minimize the importance of relationships.

What is attachment theory?

An emotional bond between two individuals.

What defines secure attachment?

A strong emotional bond formed when the caregiver consistently meets the infant's needs.

What is insecure-avoidant attachment?

Infant avoids contact with the caregiver, often due to unmet needs.

What is insecure-anxious (resistant) attachment?

An infant alternates between clinging to and rejecting the caregiver due to inconsistent responses to their needs.

What is cognitive development?

The continuous, lifelong development of the ability to think, comprehend, and organize information from the internal and external environment.

What are the stages of Piaget's theory of cognitive development in order?

Sensorimotor stage, Preoperational stage, Concrete operational stage, Formal operational stage.

What happens in the sensorimotor stage?

Babies learn through their senses and actions.

What characterizes the preoperational stage?

Young children start to think about things and use words, but may not understand the logic behind them.

What occurs in the concrete operational stage?

Kids begin to think logically about real objects and events.

What defines the formal operational stage?

Teenagers develop the ability to think abstractly and solve problems in a more sophisticated way.

What is social development?

The continuous, lifelong development of skills, attitudes, relationships, and behaviors that enable interaction with others.

What are Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development?

Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation, Integrity vs. Despair.

What are sensitive periods in development?

Times when it is best to learn a skill, but it can still be learned after the period with more difficulty.

What are critical periods in development?

Times when there is little to no opportunity to learn a skill after that period.

What is personal distress?

An aversive and often self-oriented emotional reaction.

Neurodivergent

Individuals who have a variation in neurological development and functioning.

Neurodiversity

Variations in neurological development and functioning within and between groups of people, particularly observed in individuals with autism.

Neurotypicality

A term used to describe individuals who display neurological and cognitive functioning in a way that is typical or expected.

Person Perception

The process of forming impressions and making judgments about others based on observed behaviors, physical appearance, and social cues.

Attributions

Explanations for the causes of behavior or events, which can be internal (personal traits) or external (situational factors).

Attitudes

Learned evaluations or feelings toward a person, object, or idea that influence behavior, consisting of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.

Stereotypes

Oversimplified and generalized beliefs about a group of people that affect expectations, judgments, and interactions with individuals in that group.

Cognitive dissonance

The mental discomfort experienced when a person holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, prompting a motivation to reduce the inconsistency.

Cognitive bias

A mental shortcut that causes people to think in certain ways that can lead to errors in judgment or decision-making.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making and problem-solving, offering quick solutions in complex situations, but can lead to errors or biased judgments.

Prejudice

A preconceived negative attitude or belief about a person or group, often based on stereotypes, that can lead to unfair treatment or bias.

Discrimination

The unfair or unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on characteristics like race, gender, or social status, often resulting from prejudice.

Stigma

A negative stereotype or social label that devalues a person or group, leading to social exclusion, shame, or marginalization.

Mental Well-Being

A person’s emotional, psychological, and social state, influenced by factors like stress, self-esteem, and relationships, and how they cope with life’s challenges.

Ways to Reduce Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stigma

Strategies such as education, empathy-building, creating inclusive environments, and promoting open dialogue to challenge stereotypes and reduce negative social attitudes.

Sustained Attention

The ability to focus on a specific task or stimulus for an extended period without becoming distracted.

Divided Attention

The ability to focus on multiple tasks or stimuli simultaneously, switching attention between them as needed.

Selective Attention

The ability to focus on a specific stimulus or task while ignoring irrelevant or distracting information in the environment.

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to make sense of the world around us.

Top-Down Processing

The interpretation of sensory information based on prior knowledge, expectations, or experiences, influencing how we perceive new information.

Bottom-Up Processing

The interpretation of sensory information starting with the basic details, such as sensory input, and building up to a more complex understanding without relying on prior knowledge or expectations.

Visual Perceptual Systems

The processes through which the brain interprets and makes sense of visual stimuli received from the eyes.

Agnosia

A condition where a person has difficulty recognizing or interpreting sensory information, despite having normal sensory abilities, often due to brain damage.

Gustatory Perception

The process of detecting and interpreting tastes through sensory organs like taste buds.

Fallibility of Gustatory Perception

The idea that our sense of taste can be inaccurate or influenced by various factors, leading to incorrect judgments about flavors.

Synaesthesia

A condition where stimulation of one sensory pathway (e.g., hearing a sound) involuntarily triggers an additional sensory experience (e.g., seeing colors), leading to cross-sensory perceptions.

Spatial Neglect

A condition, often caused by brain injury, where a person fails to notice or attend to objects or events in a specific area of their visual field, usually the side opposite to the injury.

Sensation

Refers to the process of receiving and detecting raw sensory stimuli via sensory organs and sending  this information to the brain

Stages of Sensation

Reception - The sensory information is first received 

Transduction - The information is converted into a neural impulse

Transmission - The information is sent to the brain for perceptual processing

Stages of Perception

Selection - Certain sensory stimuli are attended to, and other features are ignored

Organization - The selected features of sensory stimuli are regrouped so that they are cohesively arranged

Interpretation -  The now organized sensory information is understood in a way that depends on the meaning that is assigned to it 

Cornea

Protects the eye from outside infiltrates and ultraviolet radiation

Aqueous Humor

Keeps your eye inflated and provides nourishment

Pupil

Let light into your eye as the muscles of your iris change their shape

Lens

Transmit light, focusing it on the retina

Ciliary Muscle

Changes the shape of the lens which occurs during the accommodation reflex

Vitreous Humor

Provides nutrients to your eye and helps your eye keep its shape

Retina

Converts light that enters your eye into electrical signals your optic nerve sends to your brain which creates the images you see

Optic Nerve

Lets your eyes send signals to your brain describing what they detect

Standard Deviation

a measure of dispersion or scatter in a data set relative to the data's central mean value. eg. if the IQ's of some group have a standard deviation of 10, most of the group will have an IQ within approximately 10 points of the mean.

Way to deal with outliers

Remove or ignore them from data