AP Psych Unit 4 Flashcards - Development and Personality

Chamberlain

Nature or nurture?

How does out genetic inheritance (our nature) interact with our experiences (our nurture) to influence our development

When does nature and nurture begin to influence human development?

Nature: since fetus, it’s inscribed in out DNA

Nurture: since fetus with prenatal nutrition during pregnancy, teratogens, and maternal mental and physical healthy. Stress, trauma can affect epigenetics mom needs to maintain health for a healthy baby.

Continuity or stages?

What parts of development are gradual and continuous? What parts change abruptly in separate stages?

Stability or change?

Which of our traits persist throughout life? How do we change as we age?

Prenatal nutrition

Nutrition during pregnancy— can change/shape the way baby comes out. Malnutrition/bad diet can affect baby.

Tetratogens

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

behavior geneticists

Study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.

molecular geneticits

The subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes.

monozygotic twins (identical)

Develop from a single fertilized egg that slits. Genetically identical.

dizygotic twins (fraternal)

Develop from separate fertilized eggs. They’re genetically no closer than ordinary brothers/sisters, but they share a prenatal environment.

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals in a group that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a traits may vary, depending on the range of the population and environments studied.

Heritability factors:

Closer to 1.0—> difference is because of genes (there can only be a heritability factor of 0 in identical twins since their genes are the same)

Closer to 0.0—> difference is due to genes

Epigenome

“above” or “in addition to” (epi) genetics; the study of environmental influences of gene expression that occur without a DNA change.

Ex: identical twins—although they share exactly the same DNA, their unique experiences in life will cause some genes to express themselves. This is why, over time, identical twins come to behave differently.

zygote stage

The fertilized egg; enters a 2-week period of raid cell division and develops into an embryo.

Embryo stage

The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the 2nd month. Placenta forms, organs begin to form and function, heart begins to beat.

fetus (ZEF) stage

The developing organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth. Organs such as the stomach develop enough to give fetus a good change of surviving and thriving if born prematurely.

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.

Reflexes

What reflexes are babies born with? What function do they serve?

• reflexes are suited for survival

• babies withdraw their limbs to escape pain

• If cloth interferes with breathing, they turn their head to the side and try and swipe at it.

• When something touches their cheek, they turn towards it, open their mouth and look for a nipple

• Grasping reflex—gross grasp (able to wrap hand around and squeeze)

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner. Gives away what infants see and remember.

Ex: If a person who has lived in a rural area moves to the city, they may not be able to sleep at night at the beginning of their stay due to the lights and noise of the city. However, as time goes on, they may become accustomed to these stimuli and be able to sleep.

Maturation

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience. Can be understood as the mental, physical, emotional growth and development which is essential for successful adjustment of all individuals.

Physical milestones in infancy through childhood

• 3-5 months: gross grasp (wrap hands around and squeeze)

• 6 months: sit unaided

• 8-12 months: pincer grasp (able to grab things with our individual fingers, pinching)

• 10 months: crawling/creeping

• 1 year: pull to stand

• 13 months: crawling upstairs

• 14 months: stand unaided

• 15 months: walk

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Key developmental stage theory: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operational, and Formal operational

Mnemonic: SPeCiFy (the e=egocentric)

We assimilate: Sort experiences into the schema

and accommodate: Change constructs (Schema)

Ex: A kid who knows the word dog might call any four-legged animal a dog (assimilate). However, if someone corrects them and tells them that not all four-legged animals are called dogs the child will accommodate.

Sensorimotor, age: birth to 2/3 years old

Milestone: Object permanence - learns that “out of sight out of mind” is false, around 8 months old,

Stranger anxiety, aroudn 8 months old.

Preoperational stage, about age 2 to 6-7 years

Milestones:

Theory of mind: the realization that not everyone has the same thoughts and feelings

• necessary to overcome the egocentric worldview of early childhood

• roots of empathy

Pretend play: animism—assigning life to inanimate objects

concrete operational stage, 7-11 years old

Milestones:

Conservation: change in form doesn’t mean change in quantity.

Able to do mathematical transformations.

Formal operational stage, 12 years to adulthood

Milestones:

• Abstract theories, “What if…” ex: big bang theory

schema

Operating system babies are born with. How to react to sensory info

Attachment theory

Key theory

Humans are born with a need to form a close emotional bond with a caregiver and such a bond will develop if the caregiver is appropriately responsive.

a. Body contact: physical touch/comfort is important for attachment

Harlow and the rhesus monkeys

Key study

Harlow removed young monkeys from their natural mother after birth and left them to be “raised by “surrogates”. The experiment demonstrated that the baby monkeys spent significantly more time with their cloth more than with their wire mother. When wired mother left manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development. When the surrogate mother left, they freaked out, baby monkeys didn’t know how to deal with stress because even thought the mother provided physical touch, the mom showed no interest in the baby monkey

a. familiarity: safety signal, breeds content

b. attachment difference: temperament and parenting

Konrad Lorenz

Ducks bonding to 1st moving thing they see at birth, however, this is not the case for humans

Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation study

Key study

A procedure for studying a child, caregiver’s attachment; a child is placed in an unfamiliar environment while their caregiver leaves and then returns, and the child’s reactions are observed.

the separation:

• a secure attachment is demonstrated by infants who are comfortable exploring environments in the presence of a caregiver, showing only temporary distress when the caregiver leaves

• an insecure attachment children also freak out

the reunion:

• in a secure attachment, the child finds comfort in the caregiver’s return, and everything goes back to usual

• in an insecure attachment, the child displays either a clinging, anxious attachment, or an avoidant attachment that resists closeness.

a. deprivation of attachment: neglect and abuse in early childhood impact socially, emotionally, and cognitively.

b. self-concept

c. parenting styles

self-concept

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves in answer to the question: “Who am I?

Temperament

A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.

Heredity affects temperament, and temperament affects attachment style.

Secure attachment

Securely attached adults tend to be more satisfied in their relationships. Children with a secure attachment see their parent as a secure base from which they can venture out and independently explore the world. A secure adult has similar relationship with their romantic partner, feeling secure and connected, while allowing themselves and their partner to move freely.

Anxious preoccupied attachment

Tend to be desperate to form a fantasy bond. They often feel emotional hunger. Frequently looking to their partner to rescue or complete them. seeking a sense of safety by clinging to their partner, they take actions that push their partner away.

Dismissive avoidant attachment

People with dismissive avoidant attachment have the tendency to emotionally distance themselves from their partner. May come off as focused on themselves and may be overly attending to their creature comforts.

Fearful avoidant attachement

Lives in an ambivalent (mixed feelings) state, in which they are afraid of being both too close or too distance from other. Attempt to keep their feelings at bay but are unable to, or run away from their feelings. Mixed up or unpredictable moods. The person they want to go to for safety is the same person they are frightened to get close to.

Diane Baumrind’s Parenting styles

Key theory

Authoritarian, Permissive, Uninvolved/Negligent, Authoritative

Authoritarian parenting style

Parents are coercive. They impose rules and expect obedience. “Because I said so”

Effect: Children with less social skills, self-esteem, brain overreacts when they make mistakes.

Permissive parenting style

Parents are unrestrained. They make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment

Effect: Children who are more aggressive and immature

Uninvolved parenting style

Parents are uninvolved. Are neither demanding nor responsive. Are careless, inattentive and don’t seek to have a close relationship with their children.

Effect: children wit poor academic and social outcomes

Authoritative parenting style

Parents are confrontive. Are both demanding and responsive. They exert control by setting rules, but, especially with older kids, encourage open discussion and allow exceptions.

Effect: children with the highest self-esteem, self-reliance, self-regulation, and socila competence.

Gender roles

A set of expected behaviors, attitudes, and traits for males or females.

gender typing

The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

Social learning theory

Assumes that we acquire our idenity in childhood by observing and imitating others gender-linked behaviors and by being rewards or punished for acting in certain ways.

Ex: “You’re such a good mommy to your dolls!” “Big boys don’t cry”

Gender schema theory

Cultural learning of gender—>gender schema—>gender-organized thinking + gender-typed behavior

Androgyny

Displayed both traditional masculine and female psychological and physical characteristics

Transgender

An umbrella term describing people whose gender identity or expression differs from that associated with their birth-designed sex.

Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning

Key developmental stage theory

Level 1: preconventional morality (around age 9)

Level 2: Conventional morality (early adolescence)

Level 3: Postconventional morality (adolescence and beyond)

preconventional stage (around age 9)

Egocentrism, self-interest, Obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards

Ex: “Be good so Santa won’t put coal in my stocking”, “Be good so Santa will bring me presents”

Conventional stage (early adolescence)

Follow laws to gain social approval or maintain social order. Focuses on punishment

Ex: “be good to gain approval of others”

Postconventional stage (adolescence and beyond)

Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles. Follow laws bc of moral

Ex; Hurricane Katrina stealing reasoning

Erikson’s psychosocial theory stages

Key developmental stage theory

1. Infancy (to 1 year): Trust vs mistrust

2. Toddlerhood (1-3 years): Autonomy vs shame and doubt

3. Preschool (3-6 years): Initiative vs guilt

4. Elementary school (6 years to puberty): Competence vs inferiority

5. Adolescence (teen years into 20s): Identity vs role confusion

6. Young adulthood (20s to early 40s): Intimacy vs isolation

7. Middle adulthood (40s to 60s): Generativity vs stagnation

8. Late adulthood (late 60s to death): Integrity vs despair

Mnemonic: The Automobile Is Industry’s Ickiest Invention Generating Emissions

Infancy (to 1 year): Trust vs mistrust

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

Toddlerhood (1-3 years): Autonomy vs shame and doubt

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

Preschool (3-6 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

Teens 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 form close relationships and to gain capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated

Middle adulthood (40s to 60s): Generativity vs stagnation

Middle-aged 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 to death): Integrity vs despair

Reflecting on their lives, older adults may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure.

Primary sex characteristics

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

secondary sex characteristics

Nonreproductive sexual traits, such as female breasts and hips, males voice quality and body hair

Pre-natal on sexual orientation

• Altered prenatal hormone exposure may lead to homosexuality in humans

• Men with several older bio brothers are more likely to be gay possibly due to a maternal immune-system reaction

Physical, cognitive, social decline as humans age

• Menopause: time of natural cessation of menstruation, a woman’s ability to reproduce declines

• Physical decline begins in early adulthood

• Take more time to react, remember, and solve perceptual puzzles.

• Alzheimer’s disease: a neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques, often with onset after age 80, and entailing a progressive decline in memory and other cognitive abilities

• neurocognitive disorders (NCDs): Acquired (not lifelong) disorders marked by cognitive deficits; often related to Alzherimer’s disease, brain injury or disease, or substance abuse. Formerly called dementia

Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD)

The space between what a learner can do without assistance and what a learner can do with adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Basically, learning happens through help, steps that are basic, controllable to learn.

Mnemonic: VygotSKI like teaching kids how to ski shows ZPD theory

Freud’s psychosexual stage theory

Key developmental stage theory

1. Oral stage

2. Anal stage

3. Phallic stage

4. Latent phase

5. Genital Stage

Mnemonic: Only Angry People Like Garbage

fixations

becoming stuck at a particular point in psychosexual development

Oral stage (age birth-2)

Id gets satisfaction from the act of sucking on things. Eventually the infant must be weaned (give up act of nursing on bottle or breast)

Ego trait: independence.

Id oral fixations: sarcasm, biting nails, alcoholism, eating disorders, sucking thumb, smoking, chewing gum or pencil or hair.

Anal (ages 2-3)

The toddler’s id gets satisfaction from having bowel movements. Eventually the child must be potty trained and learn self-control over the urge to poop

Ego trait: pride in one’s work, self-control

Id anal fixations:

• Anal expulsive: personality type: overly messy, out of control, impulsive OR

• Anal retentive: personality type: overly controlling, neat freak , bossy, perfectionist.

Phallic (age3-5)

The young child’s if harbors unconscious lust for the opposite sex parent and an unconscious urge to kill the same sex parent. During this stage, girls develop penis envy while boys have castration anxiety

Female ego traits: Girls take on gender appropriate roles and seek out healthy heterosexual life partners during teen years.

Female id traits:

• Girls act like boys, try to compensate for lack of penis

• Girls seek out father figures for husbands

• Girls seek out other women

• Girls seek out other women because over-identify with mommy

Male ego traits: Boys take on gender appropriate roles and seek out healthy heterosexual life partners during teen years

Male id traits:

• Boys seek out girlfriends who will mother them

• Boys over-identify with father and become gay

Latent phase

Placid, smooth sailing, id is lying underneath waiting until puberty to make an apperance

Genital stage (puberty+)

Ego: pleasure through heterosexual relationships. No struggle, independence, self-control, know what they want.

Id: not stable, things they do are based on things from other stages.

Id vs Ego

Id: egocentric, unconscious, impulsive, want it now. Mnemonic: Nike’s ”Just do it”. Often shown as the devil. We’re all born with it

Ego: conscious, “executive” part of the personality that mediates among the demands of the id and superego. It’s parents job to inflate it, but not too much.

superego

Moral, conscience voice. Appears during latency. Is often presented as the angel.

Rosenzweig’s rats and brain development

Rats in impoverished, solitary environment had impoverished brain cells. Rats in an enriched, accompanied environment, showed enriched brain cells.

Showed that interaction with our environments created better mind growth. Depriving young infants from stimuli is bad.

social clocks

The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement.

Genetic mutations

• Passed along from parents’ gametes (chromosomes are in gametes, chromosomes made of DNA)

• Occur during cellular dividing during zygote phase

• Can be created later in life dur to nurture factors (ex: exposure to radiation)

• Can be bad or beneficial (evolutionary advantages) to individual/species

chromosomal disorders

turner syndrome (X), Kilnefelter’s syndrome (XXY)

Carol Gillian critic of Kholberg’s thery

Is morality a part of evolution? Does it start from when we’re born? Biased against eastern, communal societies, doesn’t fit in those societies.

libido

Freud’s psychosexual theory

Sex drive. Is an energy that moves around as we age

erogenous zone

Freud’s psychosexual theory

Same pleasurable feelings exists since birth but in different places (oral, anal, phillac, gential stage)

personality

the set of thoughts, feelings, traits, and behaviors that are characteristic of a person and consistent over time and in different situations.

type A person

Competitive, bossy, high-standards, stressed.

type B person

Chill, laid back, not competitive.

Oedipus crisis

Freud’s psychosexual theory

Boys that do not resolve the unconscious desire for mommy may end up seeking mommy figures as girlfriends, wives.

Electra crisis

Freud’s psychosexual theory

Girls that do not resolve the unconscious desire for daddy may end up seeking father figures as boyfriends.

Eros

The life instinct. There’s nothing better than making babies.

Thanatos

The death instinct. Drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.

Mnemonic: Thanos from Marvel

defense mechanisms

Are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

compensation

Mature Defense Mechanisms

Is a process of psychologically counterbalancing perceived weaknesses by emphasizing strength in other areas.

Ex: “I may not know how to cook, but I can sure do the dishes!”

denial

Primitive defense mechanisms

Refusal to accept reality or fact, acting as if painful event, thought or feeling didn’t exist.

Ex: A functioning alcoholic will often simply deny they have a drinking problem, pointing out how well they function in their job and relationships.

sublimation

Mature Defense Mechanisms

The channeling of unacceptable impulses, thoughts and emotions into more acceptable ones.

Ex: When a person has sexual impulses they would like not to act upon. they may instead focus on rigorous exercise.

projection

Primitive defense mechanisms

Misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses.

Ex: Someone who is loudly homophobic around friends and coworkers though he secretly wonders if he himself is gay.

reaction formation

Primitive defense mechanisms

Converting of unwanted or dangerous thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites.

Ex: Woman who is very angry at her boss is instead overly kind and generous toward her boss.

intellectualization

Less primitive, more mature defense mechanisms

The overemphasis on thinking when confronted with an unacceptable impulse, situation or behavior without employing any emotions whatsoever to help mediate and place thoughts into an emotional, human context.

Ex: Person given a terminal medical diagnosis, instead of expressing their sadness and grief, focuses instead on the details of all possible fruitless medical procedures.

displacement

Less primitive, more mature defense mechanisms

the redirecting of thoughts feelings and impulses directed at one person or object, but taken out upon another person or object.

Ex: Man is angry boss, but can’t express anger or he’ll be fired. Instead, he comes home and kicks his dog.

rationalization

Less primitive, more mature defense mechanisms

Putting something into a different light or offering a different explanation for one’s perception or behaviors in the face of a changing reality.

Ex: Mom give’s a harsh whooping to her kid. The mom says that the punishment is for the child’s own good.

repression

Less primitive, more mature defense mechanisms

The unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses. (Freud)

regression

Primitive Defense Mechanisms

Reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable thoughts or impulses.

Ex: Jamilla is devastated when she is fired from her dream job; after finding out, she goes home and retreats to a fetal position and begins rocking and crying.

Criticism of Freud’s theory

Karen Horney, Nancy Chodorow: Issues with penis envy—it’s sexist. This means boys must have womb envy.