Child & Adolescent Psych: Exam 3

Middle Childhood

7-12 years

Elementary School

Piaget on Middle Childhood

Concrete Operations

-First time thinking logically about life

-7-8

Brain Developing

-Slow-growing frontal lobes spearhead growth of middle childhood achievements

Cerebral Cortex

More than 2 decades to develop

Frontal Lobe

Responsible for reasoning, planning actions, thinking through actions, and managing our emotions

Motor Skills Expand

-Stronger, more coordinated

-Dramatic individual differences

Correlation between physical coordination & fitness

Decreases into teenage years

Childhood activity related to caregiver activity

-Want parents to encourage, not helicopter

Memory

A step-by-step information processing perspective on intellectual growth that develops over time

Sensory Store

When we hold stimuli from the outside world given senses

Working Memory

-How we process information

-What we pay attention to

-All the information we can keep in awareness at certain time

Growing Memory Bin

-How much we can hold in at a time

-Adults: 7 chunks

-Kids: growing

Maturing Executive Processor

Keep memory or throw it away

School-Related Executive Functions

-Rehearsal increases

-Ability to understand & selectively attend improves

-Inhibition skill increases as continual socialization goal

Rehearsal

Repeating information to embed it in memory

Selective Attention

-Manage awareness, to attend to only what is relevant & filter out unattended information

Inhibition

-Not doing what we feel like doing, holding back urge

Young Children Info-Processing Theory

-Use prompts to aid memory

-Expect difficulty in inhibition of impulsivity

Middle Childhood Info-Processing Theory

-Use active teaching study skills & selective attention strategies

-Scaffold organizational strategies

-Expect difficulty in multi-tasking

-Reduce distractions

Emotional Regulation

-Skills involved in controlling feelings-

Externalizing Tendencies

-Act on immediate impulses, often behaving aggressively

Denying Reality

-Not gonna acknowledge shortcomings, high sense of self-worth, blame someone else, continue cycle of impairment, not recognize failures

Internalizing Tendencies

-Intense fear, socialization inhibition, depression

Learned helplessness

-When someone gives up without trying, don’t feel capable of controlling outcome, won’t study → gonna fail anyways, read failure into things

Self-Esteem

-Tendency to feel good or bad about self

-Care about something, not good at it, self-esteem decreases

Harter’s 5 Areas Related to Self-Esteem

-Scholastic Competence

-Behavioral Conduct

-Athletic Skills

-Peer likeability

-Physical Appearance

Promoting Realistic Self-Esteem

-Enhancing self-efficacy

Encouraging realistic perceptions

Enhancing Self-Efficacy

Believe in yourself

Emphasizing Effort

You’re Smart (No)

You’re Working Hard (Yes)

Encouraging Realistic Perceptions

-Providing accurate feedback

-”I have no friends” → “You got invited to Sarah’s birthday party

-”I barged in a game” → “Other kids don’t really like that, lets ask if we can join”

Empathy

-Directly feeling the exact emotion of another person

-Watching NEWS feeling overwhelmed

Sympathy

-Feeling upset for a person

-Person talking about friend, feeling for friend

-”My heart goes out to you”

Moral Disengagement

-When someone is rationalizing moral or ethical lapses by evoking justification

-”He deserves that”

Induction

-Discipline style to promote prosocial behavior, us taking kid who hurt someone & teaching them empathy, promoting guilt

-Female → comfort victim

-Male → confront bully

Shame

Personally humiliated, can cause withdrawal or strike back

Guilt

Violated personal moral standard, hurt another human being

Producing Prosocial Children

-Praise generous behaviors; label caring treats

-Identify feelings & moral issues when child hurts another

-Avoid teasing & shaming

-Model tolerance & moral precepts

Aggression

Any hostile or destructive act

Proactive Aggression

-Initiated aggression to achieve a goal

-Spread rumor to break up friends

-Kick kid to steal ball

Reactive Aggression

-In response to aggression and acting back

Hostile Attributional Bias

-Seeing motives or actions & seeing as aggressive

Bullying Prevalence Rate

13%-36%

Bullying is aggressive

Aggression is not always Bullying

Bullying

-Aggressive behavior or intentional harmful acts

-Carried out repeatedly over time

-Involving an imbalance of power

Overt Victimization

Physical harm

Relational

Damage to social relationship

-Rumors or leaving people out

What is a Bully?

Perpetrating aggressive behavior

What is a Victim?

Person receiving aggressive behavior

What is a Bully-Victim?

Receiving and giving aggressive behavior

Concurrent & Short-term Effects of Victimization

High levels of internalizing and externalizing problems

Long-Term Effects

Disorders in adulthood, risky behavior

Bi-directional relationship

Both can occur

Why do Children Bully?

-Revenge

-Recreation

-Social rewards/ Peer reinforcements

Bully Prevention Program

-Olweus Bully Prevention Program: change school environment (it’s not cool)

-Lunch Buddy

Friendship

-Protect & enhance developing self

-Teach emotional management & conflict management

-Can be good or bad

Deviancy Training

In-forcing dangerous behavior in a friend group

Popularity

-Differs from friendship & involves competition to rise in peer ranks

-May be enhanced by relational aggression

-Kindness causes children to be accepted & liked by peers

ADHD: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

-Most common childhood disorder in the U.S. (1-10 kiddos)

-Usually diagnosed in elementary school; more among males

Executive Function Deficits

-Working Memory

-Inhibition

-Impulsivity

-Tasks under pressure

Inattentive

-Previously ADD

-Difficulty focusing

-Distractible

Hyperactive/Impulsive

-More impulsive & acting on them

-Over-active (fidget, can’t sit still)

Combines

-Have both

-Could have difficulty with school

-To diagnose: must affect 2 different settings

Primarily Genetic Causes

-Delayed maturation of frontal lobes

-Premature, low dopamine levels

Psycho-Stimulant Medicine

Medicine that helps reduce symptoms

-Pro: can help & normally work well

-Cons: Side-effects, lack of appetite, only works when your on them

Behavioral Interventions

-Treatments that aren’t meds

Behavioral Therapy

-Utilizies behavioral principles to modify the environment

ADHD accommodations

-Not the most helpful/doesn’t work

-Exception: read aloud

Positive Reinforcement

-Adding something to make a behavior happen more often

-Ex: A+ on test, getting a treat or toy

Negative Reinforcement

-Taking away something to make a behavior happen more often

-Ex: Take away a chore

Positive Punishment

-Adding something to make behavior happen less often

-Ex: Add chores, screaming, spanking/hitting

Negative Punishment

-Taking away something to make behavior happen less often

-Ex: take away phone, grounding, no friends, time-out

Summer Treatment Program (STP)

-Developed by Dr. Bill Pelham

-Behavior modification treatment for ADHD kids

-Summer camp/ sports setting

-Clinical & research experiences

Adolescence

-Age 13-18

-Became life stage during 20th century

-Identified & characterized by storm and stress
-High School attendance enhances intellectual skills of whole teen cohort

Storm and Stress

-Intense moodiness, emotional sensitivity, risk-taking tendencies

Cognitive

Ways they think

Piagets Formal Operational Thinking

-Age 12

-Ability to think logically about concepts & hypothetical possibilities

-Logically manipulate concepts in their minds

-Think scientifically

Piaget’s Pendulum Apparatus

-A task to assess whether children can reason scientifically

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

-Developing moral code to guide life

-Constructed ethical dilemma (Heinz dilemma

-Levels of moral reasoning

Preconventional Thought

-Lowest level

-Approaching ethical issues by considering the personal punishments or rewards

-Avoid getting in trouble or having concrete benefits

-13-14

Conventional thought

-Upholding societies rules/norms

-Act to be a “good person”

Postconvential thought

-Personal moral codes that transcends societies rules

-Abstract morals

-Not universal

Elkind

-Awareness of difference between what adults say & do emerges

-Sensitivity to what others think

Adolescent Egocentrism

-Distorted feeling that your own actions are at the center of everyone else’s conciousness

Imaginary Audience

-Idea that everyone is watching your every action

Personal Fable

-Teens think that they’re invincible & you’re own life experiences are unique

-That can’t happen to me

-No one’s had a pimple this big

Risk-Taking

-Being with peers has enormous effect on young teens

-Reckless driving and binge drinking more likely to happen around peers

How do teenagers feel about their future?

-Upbeat, confident, high hopes, big dreams

-More emotionally intense (higher highs and lower low)

-Peak crime years

Non-suicidal self-injury

-Burning or cutting one’s body to cope with stress

Not with intent to commit suicide

What do depression rate do during teen years?

-Increase

-Females are twice as likely to have depression than males

Research

-Data collection method

-Meant to collect moment by moment experiences

At-risk Teens

-More likely to experience negative outcomes

-Prior emotion regulation problems

-Poor family relationships, insecure attachment, bi-directional relationship

-Risk-taking environment: older siblings could be similar

Prior emotion regulation problems

-Feeling a lot emotions and we can bring them down

-More external (outburst/aggression)

-Might be rejected my peers

-Could lead to antisocial behavior and hang out with other risk-taking teens

Flourishing Teens

-Superior executive functions: better at emotion regulation, planning out actions, inhibiting impulses

-Positive reinforcement from parents (good relationship → good reinforcement)

Adolescence-Limited Turmoil

-Idea that that antisocial behavior is specific to adolescence and it does not persist into their adult life

Life-Course Difficulties

-When antisocial behavior persists into adult life

The Blossoming Teenage Brain

-Starting the engine of an adult skilled brain with an inexperienced driver

-Cognitive controls are not fully developed

Grey matter declines

-Neurons and synapse peak right before puberty and declines after

-Just neuron pruning in the frontal lobe

White matter grows

-Myelin sheath, fatty neuron covering

Sex differences in timing of accelerated brain development

Girls reach puberty earlier, so their brain is developing a tad faster

Epstein’s Critique of immature adolescent brain

-It’s artificial construction

-Nature programs people to enter adulthood at puberty

-Thinks we shouldn’t have teens because of this age range (brains are similar to adults)