Chapter 3 - Physical Growth Flashcards
Physical growth size
- Cephalocaudal - fastest growth happens at the head then down
- later growth slows down
Physical growth pattern differences among other children
- Differences in height and weight depend on genetics, environment (urban, middle SES, firs born children = taller than opposite)
- strongest impact on heigh and weight is nutrition
Puberty
- rapid hormonal and physical changes in early adolescence as body prepares for reproduction
- individual changes in onset and progression
- girls - 10-14 (menarche decreased 3-4 months per decade), boys 12-16
Hormones
- timing of puberty governed by genetics and environmental factors
- hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and gonads (sex glands) control puberty
- Andogens - male sex hormones - testosrone
- Estrogens - female sex hormones - estradiol
Hormones and Behavior
- social factors account for 2-4 times as much variance in girls’ depression and anger relative to hormonal factors
- stress - cortisol impacts endocrine system
- amounts of hormones in blood does not equal behavior
Psychology of puberty
- adolecents are occupied with body image
- girls less happy with body than boys - peer influence
- early maturing girls - smoke, depressed, eating disorder - could be more evocative effects
Brain plasticity
- neural activation are plastic - can adapt to challenges especially earlier in devleopment
Ex) patient part of brain removed and the part that was removed had functions that worked in other places
Adolecent brain devlopment
- corpus callous thickens
- amygdala matures faster than prefrontal cortex (limbic system - emotional processing)
- adolcensts act based on emotions without full consideration of consequences (prefrontal cortex)
IQ differences and cortical differences
- high IQ based on thickenss of cortical
- more is not always better
- average children - thickens dont change much
- superior group - cortex thickens alot more (thickness more common in prefrontal areas)
Why does it change:
- prenatal devleopment - formation of neurons, dentrides, synapses
- Childhood and adolence - proliferation of myelination
- Adolescence - usage dependent pruning of synapses
Sleep and REM sleep
- more REM sleep needed during infancy, more sleep needed during devlopment
REM
- rapid-eye movements phase of sleep
- aids IP
-brain is sifting through daily experiences to organize and store info - evidence of perceptual learning after REM with no added training
- neurons are firing
Study
- people who had more REM sleep could notice the ticks faster in a spot the ticks
- only when something is new and ealry in deveopment - not for experts
Co-sleeping and SIDS
- infants stop breathing while sleeping
- highest cause of infant death
- correlated with co-sleeping, soft bedding, abnormal serotonin, maternal smoking, heart issues, sleep apnea, LBW infants, lower SES
- CRIB UNTIL 6 MONTHS LAY ON BACK
- this is all correlational data
Adolescent data
- 8-10 hrs sleep a night for teenagers
10 min nap during school prevents stress-related problems - brain regions most susceptible to sleep loss- prefontral cortex, amygdala, limbic, hippocampus
- change in melatonin production -> older teens sleep and wake up later
