PSYCH 001 EXAM 3

Chapters 5, 11, 12, 15

Fetal alcohol syndrome

Developmental disorder that affects children exposed to alcohol during pregnancy. Effects include a range of learning and behavioral chalenges and differences in physical size and facial characteristics

Down syndrome

Development disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. Intellectual disabilities, delays motor development, increased risk for a range of health problems

Developmental psychology

Understanding how humans grow and change across the lifespan

Motor development

Changes in the ability to coordinate and perform bodily movements

Takes more time, typically goes from head to toe (cephalocaudal rule) and from proximal to distal areas (proximodistal rule)

Jean Piaget

First psychologist to consider cognitive development, after noticing children of similar ages make similar mistakes

Sensorimotor stage

Children begin to develop schemas about how the world works (birth - 2 years)

Assimilation

Piagets theory, manages how we take in new information and incorporate that new information into our existing knowledge

(Ex. A child sees a new breed of dog they've never seen before and immediately points to it and says, "Dog!")

Accommodation

Piagets theory, involves altering one's existing schemas or ideas as a result of new information or new experiences (sensorimotor stage)

(Ex. a child who understands that a four-legged creature is called a dog. Then, the child encounters a cat and refers to it as a dog until corrected by a parent. After being corrected, the child can distinguish between a dog and a cat)

Preoperational stage

Children begin understanding the world but fail on tasks on conservation (quantitative properties are stable despite appearances - same amount of water, long vs short cup)

(2 - 6 years)

Concrete operational stage

Children understand conservation and know minds can represent and misrepresent (6 - 11 years)

Formal operational stage

Development of abstract problem solving and reasoning skills

(11 and up)

Harry Harlow

Thought infants seek out their mothers not just because they are a food source but because she provides comfort (contact comfort overshadows all other variables)

(Monkey furry machine experiment)

Kohlberg

Thought there were three basic stages of moral development (pre conventional, conventional, principle)

(Mom leaves infant with stranger experiment)

Preconventional stage

Morality is determined by consequences for individual

Conventional stage

Morality determined by the expectations of family/society

Principled stage

Uses defined moral principles

Secure attachment

Distressed when parent leaves, comforted upon return (60% of children experience)

Ambivalent attachment

Distressed when parent leaves, but fails to acknowledge return or remain distressed even when parent returns (15% of children experience)

Avoidant attachment

Not concerned when parent leaves, fail to acknowledge return (20% of children experience)

Disorganized attachment

No clear pattern of responses (5% of children experience)

False belief task

Assesses a childs understanding of others mental states (children fail this task until around 4-6 years of age)

(When children can pass the false belief task, we consider them to have theory of mind)

Theory of mind

Understanding that we and other people have minds, that these minds represent the world in different ways, and that these representations can explain and predict how others will behave

Moral development

How children learn what is right and wrong

Moral intuitions

Some moral situations we just feel

Trolley problem

Not often solved by rational thinking

(Choose whether or not to pull lever and switch tracks)

Adolescence

The period between sexual maturity and adulthood (independence)

(Many of these body changes occur during puberty - begins 11-14 and ends 18-21)

Primary sex characteristics

Structures directly involved in reproduction (penis, vagina, etc)

Secondary sex characteristics

Indirectly involved in reproduction (development of breasts, under arm/pubic hair growth)

Puberty

Marks the onset of adolescence (changes to the body leads to sexual maturity)

Mere exposure effect

People tend to develop a preference for things or people that are more familiar to them than others

Permissive-neglectful

Parents make few demands, little structure/monitoring, little interest or emotional support (can lead to poor social skills, little self control)

(Low control, low warmth)

Permissive-indulgent

Sets few limits/demands, but highly involved and emotionally connected (can lead to a failure to learn respect, impulsiveness, immaturity)

(Low control, high warmth)

Authoritarian

Rigid and punitive, low on warmth and responsiveness (can lead to child being easily upset, fail good communication skills)

(High control, low warmth)

Authoritative

Set and enforce firm limits, highly involved, tender, emotionally supportive (can lead to child being self reliant, self controlled, high acheiveing)

(High control, high warmth)

Stages

Distinct segments of organisms life with sharp differences or discontinuities between them

Maturation

Series of biological growth processes that enable orderly growth, relatively independently of experience

Cross sectional design

Methodological approach that compares participants of different age groups to one another

(Ex. 6, 8, 12 month old - compare on language)

Longitudinal design

Methodological approach across time and compares each participant at different time points

Sequential design

Methodological approach that tracks multiple age groups across time and compares different age groups to one another, as well as participants to themselves at different points in time

Zygote

Fertilizied egg formed by the union of a sperm and egg

Embryo

Unborn, developing offspring, identified in humans between the 2nd and 8th week of prenatal development

Neural tube

Tubular structure formed early in embryoic stage from which the brain and spinal cord develop

Teratogens

Environmental agents that can interfere with healthy fetal development (smoke, alcohol, etc)

Reflexes

Automatic patterns of motor responses that are triggered by specific types of sensory stimulation

(Infants reflexes include rooting, sucking, grasping)

Habituation

Decreased response to a repeated stimulus

Dishabituation

the reinstatement of previously habituated responses following presentation of a different stimulus

Cognitive development

Changes in all of the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

(Piaget argued that it is active anf mostly self driven)

Schemas

Concepts or mental models that represent our experiences

Object permanence

Awareness that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight

(infants lack object permanence)

Social referencing

Process of using others facial expressions for information about how to react to a situation

(When infants encounter an unfamiliar situation, they often look to the faces of their caregivers for advice on how to react)

Attachment

Strong, enduring, emotional bond between an infant and caregiver

Conservation

Idea that the physical properties of an object, such as mass, volume, and number, remain constant despite superficial changes in the objects shape or form

Egocentrism

Piagets theory, the difficulty that preoperational children have with thinking about how objects or situations are perceived by other people

Sociocultural view of development

Proposal that the childs mind grows through social interaction with knowledgable others

Discover the world with the guidance of others (Lev Vygotsky)

Scaffolding

Provided with ongoing support to succeed at challenging new tasks

Gender socialization

Process by which people internalize social expectations and attitudes associated with perceived gender

Gender schema

Mental representation of a concept of gender that includes assumptions about how people with different genders are supposed to think, feel, and act

(Ex. child living in traditional culture could think that the role of a woman is to be a mother)

Personality

An individuals characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling

Personality test

Seek to provide a stable measure of the construct of personality

MInnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

One of the most famous self report measures of personality

Problem: People lie to themselves, social desirability

Big five personality traits

Openness, Concientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

Communion

Other-oriented, gentle, cooperative, caring, emotionally aware (feminine)

Agency

Self orientation, assertive, dominant, competitive, independent

Social role theory

differences and similarities arise primarily from the distribution of men and women into social roles within their society

(Many of these differenced were in the frontal cortex and the cingulate)

ID

Biological component of the personality, including instincts (operates in our unconscious mind)

like the devil sitting on your shoulder (selfish and needy)

pleasure principle - all needs should be met immediately

EGO

Makes the ultimate decisions and faces the consequences

The main character with both angel and devil on shoulder

(operates under the reality principle - desires of the ID must be satisfied in a method that is both socially appropriate and realistic)

SUPEREGO

Represents concern for what is socially acceptable

like the angel sitting on your shoulder (pushes you to obtain egp ideal - view of what is right, and represents conscience - view of what is wrong)

Existential side

Emphasizes how our choices influence how our personality develops

Existential angst

Can occur when faced with overwhelming options

(How we choose to deal with this angsy determines our personality)

Social cognitive approach

portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences

Locuses of control

Internal vs External (you control what happens to you, external variables are to blame for what happens to you)

Self serving bias

More likely to take responsibility for our successes and attribute failures to outside circumstances

Narcissism

Tendency to have unrealistic and self aggrandizing views of the self

Unconscious

The part of our mental life that influences our thoughts, feelings, and actions that we cannot directly observe and of which we are unaware

Freuds structure of personality

Conscious mind, Preconcsious mind (EGO), Unconscious mind (SUPEREGO, ID)

Defense mechanisms

Various ways in which the ego is thought to cope with conflict between the unconscious desires of the ID and the moral constraints of society

Displacement

Defense mechanism in which the ego redirects the aggressive impulses from the ID from their intended targets to more defenseless targets

Projection

Defense mechanism in which people, instead of acknowledging it in themselves, see others as possessing a disliked trait or feeling

Repression

Defense mechanism in which the EGO keeps unwanted feelings, thoughts, and memories below the level of conscious awareness

Denial

Defense mechanism in which the ego prevents the perception of a painful or threatening reality as it is occuring

Cardinal traits

Those that dominate someones personality (a trait that seemed to direct one’s every behavior)

Central traits

The more general dispositions that we use to describe someone (outgoing, neurotic) - traits that do not utterly define the person but provide useful insight into how they typically behave

Lexical hypothesis

Traits that provide useful ways to differentiate among peoples personality characteristics are necessarily encoded in language

Factor analysis

Statistical technique that groups large sets of variables into a smaller set of constructs based on how they correlate with one another

Assessment

Process of developing and validating tools to accurately measure and quantify traits and other features of personality

Openmindedness

Extent to which a person is imaginative and independent and prefers variety

Concientiousness

Extent to which a person is organized, careful, and responsible

Extraversion

Extent to which a person is energetic and outgoing

Agreeableness

Extent to which a person is good natured, helpful, and trusting

Neuroticism

Extent to which a person is calm and secure

Behavioral genetics

An approach that estimates the heriability of a trait by statistically comparing patterns of similarity in the behavioral personailty profiles of people who differ in their genetics relatedness

Gene x Environment interactions

Model positing that in order to understand and predict behavior, it is necessary to account for both personal dispositions and the situation people find themselves in, as well as the interaction between the two

Social learning theory

Theory of how peoples cognitions, behaviors, and dispositions are shaped by observing and imitating the actions of others

Reciprocal determinism

The idea that personality guides cognition about the world in ways that can shape the environments people choose, serving to reinforce or amplify their personality

Learned helplessness

State of passive resignation to an averse situation that one has come to believe is outside of ones control

Depressive realism

Painful awareness of personal limitations that render outcomes uncontrollable, in contrast to a more commonly held illusion of control for those who are not depressed

Sexual selection

the evolutionary explanation describing why humans prefer some partners over others

Social role theory

Theory positing that the roles people find themselves in can profoundly shape their personality

Self actualization

Process of fulfilling ones true potential by gaining a sense of personal anatomy, accepting oneself, and accepting other people

Self determination theory

Well being and success are most likely to be acheived when a persons environments support three key motivations: Autonomy, competence, relatedness