Chapter 9: Human Development Flashcards
(124 cards)
1
Q
What is developmental psychology?
A
A subfield that examine how genes interact with early experiences to make each of us different
2
Q
From about 2 weeks to 2 months, the developing human is known as …? What happen during that phase?
A
Embryo. During this stage, the organs and internal systems (such as the nervous system) begin to form
3
Q
After 2 months of prenatal development, the growing human is called…? What happen during that stage?
A
Fetus. All the organs are formed and the heart begins to beat. Also survival is possible outside the womb (between 22 to 42 weeks)
4
Q
Early brain growth has two important aspect. What are they?
A
1) First, specific areas within the brain mature and become functional.
2) Second, regions of the brain learn to communicate with one another through synaptic connections.
5
Q
What is one important way that brain circuits mature ?
A
Myelination. The myelinated axons form synapses with other neurons.
6
Q
What is synaptic pruning? Why is it important for the brain developpement?
A
When connections are used, they are preserved. When connections are not used, they decay and disappear. “Use it or lose it.”
It eliminates unused synaptic connections, which allows for adaptation to any environment.
7
Q
What are two important aspects of nutrition for the brain developpement?
A
1) For the myelination
2) Malnourished children might also lack the energy to interact with objects and people, which impact their brain growth. Very few synaptic connections will be made
8
Q
What factor can diminish an environment for brain developpement ?
A
Poverty. (e.g., stress, poor nutrition, exposure to toxins and violence)
9
Q
What are Teratogens ? Give some examples.
A
Teratogens are agents that harm the embryo or fetus. Teratogens include drugs, alcohol, bacteria, viruses, and chemicals
10
Q
What are the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)?
A
The symptoms of this disorder are low birth weight; face and head abnormalities; deficient brain growth; and evidence of impairment, as indicated by behavioral or cognitive problems or low IQ
11
Q
What are the symptoms of newborn withdrawal?
A
These symptoms include irritability, high-pitched crying, tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, and rapid breathing
12
Q
Does life experiences and environmental circumstances can be passed along in sperm as epigenetic information ?
A
Yes !
13
Q
Why does babies have the grasping reflex?
A
From our primate ancestors. Young apes grasp their mothers, and this reflex is adaptive because the offspring need to be carried from place to place
14
Q
What is the rooting reflex?
A
The turning and sucking that infants automatically engage in when a nipple or similar object touches an area near their mouths
15
Q
What is sucking reflex?
A
If they find an object, through the rooting reflex, they will suck on it.
16
Q
What are the uses of rooting and sucking reflexes?
A
These reflexes pave the way for learning more-complicated behavior patterns, such as feeding oneself or walking
17
Q
What is the Dynamic systems theory?
A
It views development as a self-organizing process, in which new forms of behavior emerge through consistent interactions between:
- a biological being
- cultural and environmental contexts
18
Q
What is the baby first social interaction?
A
Imitation
19
Q
True or false? The baby brain doesn’t already has specific neural circuits for identifying biological motion and inanimate object motion, along with specific circuits to identify faces and facial movement
A
False. Babies are born categorizing, and newborns already understand they are in the people category, not the object category
20
Q
What sense develop more slowly than the others?
When does the infant reach that sense close to the adult’s level ?
A
The sense of vision develops more slowly, it increases rapidly over the first six month.
Infants do not reach adult levels of acuity until they are about 1 year old
21
Q
What is visual acuity?
A
The ability to distinguish differences among shapes, patterns, and colors
22
Q
Through research, what is the preferential-looking technique?
A
In using this technique, the researchers show an infant two things. If the infant looks longer at one of the things, the researchers know the infant can distinguish between the two and finds one more interesting.
23
Q
Why does the development of memory helps children learn about the world around them?
A
Children are able to use new information to build on what they already know
24
Q
What is infantile amnesia (Freud)?
A
The inability to remember events from early childhood
25
Why are many toys for infants black-and-white?
Infants have poor color vision and low visual acuity, so they most easily perceive objects with stark contrasts, such as black against a white background.
26
What are the reasons that the original “Mozart effect” study does not support playing music to children to increase their cognitive abilities?
There are a few reasons. 1) In the original study, “intelligence” was tested in relation to a motor skill; the test results might have been influenced by the mood-enhancing qualities of the situation;
2) And the participants were college students, so there was no way to know whether the results applied to infants.
27
What is an attachment ?
| Why is it important?
It's a strong, intimate, emotional connection between people that persists over time and across circumstances.
Such emotional bonds are the building blocks of a successful social life later on. The attachment process draws on humans’ innate tendency to form bonds with others
28
Why attachment is an adaptive trait?
Forming bonds with others provides protection for individuals, increases their chances of survival, and thus increases their chances of passing along their genes to future generations. Human infants cannot even hold up their own heads or roll over
29
Between 4 and 6 weeks of age, most infants display a first social smile. Why is it important for further developpment?
That attachment behaviors motivate adult attention. This expression of pleasure typically induces powerful feelings of love in caregivers
30
What is imprinting?
A behavior where animals (and humans) will attach themselves to an adult (usually to their mothers) and then follow the object of their attachment
31
What did Harlow discovered through his research on monkeys?
Harlow’s findings established the importance of contact comfort—the importance of physical touch and reassurance—in aiding social development, and that the mother figure was not only food related.
32
How do you measure the attachment quality with the caregiver (like through the strange situation by Ainsworth)
The extent to which the child copes with distress and the strategies he uses to do so indicate the quality of the child’s attachment to the caregiver.
33
What defines secure attachment
1) A secure child is HAPPY to play alone and is friendly to the stranger AS LONG as the attachment figure is present
2) When the attachment figure leaves the playroom, the child is DISTRESSED, whines or cries, and shows signs of looking for the attachment figure
3) When the attachment figure returns, the child usually reaches his arms up to be picked up and then is HAPPY and quickly COMFORTED by the caregiver
So caregiver = source of security in times of distress
34
What are the two types of insecure attachment, and what defines them ?
1) Avoidant attachment: do NOT get upset or cry at all when the caregiver leaves, and they MAY PREFER to play with the stranger rather than the parent during their time in the playroom
2) Ambivalent attachment style : may cry a great deal when the caregiver leaves the room BUT then be INCONSOLABLE when the caregiver tries to calm them down upon return
So caregiver = NOT available to soothe them when distressed or is only inconsistently available
35
What is the role of oxytocin?
It plays a role in maternal tendencies, feelings of social acceptance and bonding, and sexual gratification. It promotes behaviors that ensure the survival of the young
36
According to Bowlby, how is attachment adaptive?
Attachment motivates infants and caregivers to stay near each other, increasing the likelihood that the infants will survive and thrive.
37
What are Piaget's four stage of development ?
Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational
38
What is Piaget's version of the Schemes ?
For Piaget, schemes were organized ways of making sense of experience, and they CHANGED as the child learned NEW information about objects and events in the world
39
What is Piaget's assimilation and accommodation with schemes?
1) assimilation: new experience is placed into an existing scheme
2) accommodation : a new scheme is created or an existing one is dramatically altered to include new information that otherwise would not fit into the scheme
40
When does sensorimotor stage happens?
Between Birth and 2 years old
41
Why is it called sensorimotor phase?
Cause children acquire information through SENSES and MOTOR exploration
42
What important cognitive concept is developed during the sensorimotor stage?
Around what age is it happening?
The object permanence. This term refers to the understanding that an object continues to exist even when it is hidden from view
It happens around 9 months.
43
At what age does the preoperational stage takes place?
Between 2 and 7 years old
44
What happen during the preoperational stage?
Children can begin to think about objects not in their immediate view. Having formed conceptual models of how the world works, children begin to think SYMBOLICALLY.
45
Why is it called preoperational stage?
Cause children cannot do at this stage is think “operationally.” That is, they cannot imagine the logical outcomes of performing certain actions on certain objects. They do not base their reasoning on logic
ex: Law of conservation of quantity in glasses full of water
46
What is the cognitive limitation characteristic of the preoperational period?
Egocentrism. They can understand how others feel, and they have the capacity to care about others. BUT , they tend, to engage in thought processes that revolve around their own perspectives
47
Why does egocentrism is useful in the preoperational stage?
A clear egocentric focus prevents them from trying to expand their schemas too much before they understand all the complex information inside their own experience
48
At what age does the concrete operational stage takes place in the child life?
Between 7 to 12 years old
49
Why is it called the concrete operational stage?
A concrete operational child is able to think logically about actual objects. A classic operation is an action that can be UNDONE.
50
At what age does the formal operational stage takes place?
Between 12 to adulthood
51
What happens during the formal operational stage?
Individuals can reason in sophisticated, abstract ways. Formal operations involve critical thinking. This kind of thinking is characterized by the ability to form a hypothesis about something and test the hypothesis through deductive logic.
52
What is the difference between Vygotsky and Piaget?
Vygotsky emphasized social relations over objects in thinking about cognitive development
53
Through Vygotsky's thinking, why is culture important?
Culture, in turn, dictates what people need to learn and the sorts of skills they need to develop
54
Why is language important for cognitive developpement (Vygotsky)?
From this perspective, your thoughts are based on the language you have acquired through your society and through your culture, and this ongoing inner speech reflects higher-order cognitive processes
55
What did Piaget underestimated with children's cognitive abilities?
- The importance of culture and social aspects on cognition
- That children moves back and forth between stages
- That all adult were formal operational thinkers, while some are not using critical and analytical thinking skills
- underestimated the age at which certain skills develop (like object permanence)
- children younger than 3 years of age can understand more than and less than
56
What did Piaget underestimated with children, with laws of physics understanding?
That infants even have a primitive understanding of some of the basic laws of physics
57
What is orienting reflex?
Humans’ tendency to pay more attention to new stimuli than to stimuli to which they have become habituated
58
Why early social interactions with others are important?
It creates social skills, and these skills enable individuals to live in society
59
What is the theory of mind ? (Premack and Guy Woodruff)
Humans have an innate ability to understand that others have minds and that those minds have desires, intentions, beliefs, and mental states. People are also able to form, with some degree of accuracy, theories about what those desires, intentions, beliefs, and mental states are.
60
Are very young children able to read people's intentions?
Yes they can, as young as 9 months.
61
What part of the brain is important in the theory of mind ?
The developpement of the frontal lobes. Prefrontal brain regions become active when people are asked to think about other people’s mental states
62
What is empathy?
Empathy involves understanding another’s emotional state and relies on theory of mind
63
What is sympathy?
Sympathy arises from feelings of concern, pity, or sorrow for another. Sympathy may produce different emotions from those experienced by the other person
64
What is prosocial behavior?
Any voluntary action performed with the specific intent of benefiting another person
65
Does children with higher scores on theory of mind tests are more likely to behave prosocially?
Yes
66
Morality can be divided in two types, what are those?
1) moral reasoning, which depends on cognitive processes
2) moral emotions, which are linked to societal interests as a whole. Moral emotions motivate people to do good things and avoid doing bad things.They include:
- shame
- guilt
- disgust
- embarrassment
- pride
- and gratitude.
67
What are the three levels of Lawrence Kohlberg’s stage theory, and what are they implying?
1) preconventional level: people classify answers in terms of self-interest or pleasurable outcomes
2) conventional level: people’s responses conform to rules of law and order or focus on others’ disapproval
3) postconventional level: the highest level of moral reasoning, people’s responses center around complex reasoning about abstract principles and the value of all life
68
What is the social intuitionist model (Haidt) ?
Moral judgments reflect people’s initial and automatic emotional responses. In other words, the emotions come first and thinking follows, with the influence of the initial emotion.
69
On a moral level, what can happen to people who had experienced prefrontal damage during infancy?
Severe deficiencies in moral and social reasoning, and preconventional level scoring at Kohlberg’s moral-dilemma task. Failing to express empathy, remorse, or guilt for wrongdoing (low on the theory of mind), or good parenting skills.
70
Other than the prefrontal cortex what other parts of the brain are involved in moral judgement?
Insula and amygdala, are active during moral judgments and experience of moral emotions.
71
According to the social intuitionist model, how might judges’ emotional reactions to trials affect the sentences they give to those found guilty?
Emotions might color the judges’ moral judgments. Therefore strong emotional reactions might lead to longer sentences, and weak emotional reactions might lead to shorter sentences.
72
What is puberty?
The onset of sexual maturity and thus the ability to reproduce. Adolescence begins with puberty
73
Around what age does puberty starts, and is completed?
8 for females and age 10 for males. Most girls complete pubertal development by the age of 16, with boys ending by the age of 18
74
What is adolescent growth spurt?
A rapid, hormonally driven increase in height and weight caused by hormone levels increase throughout the body.
75
What is the development of primary sex characteristics? What phenomenon happen with each sex?
Maturation of the male and female sex organs
| In females, the beginning of menstruation; in males, the beginning of the capacity for ejaculation
76
What happen during development of secondary sexual characteristics?
Pubic hair, body hair, muscle mass increases for boys, and fat deposits on the hips and breasts for girls. Boys’ voices deepen and their jaws become more angular. Girls lose baby fat on their bellies as their waists become more defined
77
True or false: When girls live in homes with nongenetically related adult males (such as the mother’s boyfriend or a stepfather), they tend to start puberty months earlier than girls who live in homes with only genetically related males.
True
78
True or false: girls who live in extremely stressful environments or have a history of insecure attachments to caregivers begin menstruating later than girls in peaceful or secure environments
False ! The ones in stressful environment tends to start their menstruation EARLIER !
79
Why does the body starts its puberty with cues of threat in its environment, especially with females?
Evolutionarily speaking, these threat cues increase a female’s need to reproduce sooner to increase her chances of continuing her gene pool
80
What are some of the characteristics of the ''teenage brain''?
1) Their brains are in an important phase of reorganization, with synaptic connections being refined and gray matter increasing.
2) The frontal cortex of the brain is not fully myelinated until the mid-20
3) Because a teenager’s limbic system—the reward and emotional center of their brain—tends to mature more quickly than his frontal lobes, teenagers are likely to act on their impulses
81
How did Erickson conceptualized each stage of his theory?
Each has a ''crisis''
82
What is the role of each crisis during human developpement in Erickson's theory?
Each crisis provides an opportunity for psychological development. The challenge at each stage provides skills and attitudes that the individual will need in order to face the next challenge successfully
83
In Erikson’s theory, what is the most fundamental crisis ?
Adolescents face perhaps the most fundamental crisis: how to develop an adult identity
84
Does Erickson's theory have empirical support ?
Not much
85
What are the three major changes that generally cause adolescents to question who they are?
1) Their physical appearance transforms
2) Their cognitive abilities grow more sophisticated, increasing the tendency for introspection
3) They receive heightened societal pressure to prepare for the future
86
What is the difference between sex and gender?
Biological sex , refers to the genes that differenciate males and females (chromosomes XX and XY)
Gender, is for psychological differences between males and females
87
What is Gender identity ?
Gender identity is one’s sense of being male or female
88
What is a gender role ?
Gender role is a BEHAVIOR that is typically ASSOCIATED with being male or female
89
True or false ? Gender identity begins very early in prenatal development?
True
90
What is intersexuality ? What is the cause of this?
1) Some people have aspects of biological sex that are either ambiguous or inconsistent with each other
2) Abnormalities in the sex chromosomes or in hormones, both of which can affect how the genitals look
91
What could be a theory for transidentity?
It has to do with timing of hormonal events during pregnancy.
1) Early in pregnancy, the presence or absence of testosterone leads to the formation of male or female sex organs, respectively.
2) Later in pregnancy, hormones influence the sexual differentiation of the brain
92
Children in underrepresented groups often engage in additional processes aimed at ethnic identity formation. Why ?
The child may have to serve as a “cultural broker” for her family, perhaps translating materials. They could also face racism.
93
What is bicultural identity?
When a person strongly identifies with two cultures and seamlessly combines a sense of identity with both groups
94
In developmental terms, when does attention to peers begins? And how is it manifested?
1) It begins at the end of the first year of life, 2) infants begin to imitate other children, smile, and make vocalizations and other social signals to their peers
95
Children and adolescents compare their strengths and weaknesses with those of their peers. Why ?
1) They form friendships with others whose values and worldviews are similar to their own.
2) They use peer groups to help them feel a sense of belonging and acceptance.
96
What are cliques ?
A way for outside observers to quickly place teenagers who dress or act a certain way into groupings
97
Adolescent identity development is shaped by three factors :
1) the perceptions of adults
2) the influences of peers
3) the teen’s own active exploration of the world.
98
Are the majority of bullies guilty or ashamed of their behavior towards victims ?
No, experts tend to agree that bullies might not strongly feel the moral emotions of guilt and shame. It is specially true of bullies with high self-esteem, who tend to rationalize and justify their mistreatment of others
99
Being bullied during childhood can lead to what kind of psychological disorders?
Anxiety disorders and depression
100
True or false ? The parents are the primary role in a child’s social development
The peer group nor the family can be assigned the primary role in a child’s social development. The two contexts play complementary roles
101
Chess and Thomas (1984) pinpointed the most important factor in determining a child’s social development. What is it ?
The fit between the child’s biologically based temperament or personality and the parents’ behaviors.
102
What is the best parenting style for child social developpement ?
Being dynamic and flexible
103
How is conflict with parents important in an adolescent developpement ?
Conflict actually helps adolescents develop many important skills, including negotiation, critical thinking, communication, and the development
104
True or false ? Overall, married people typically experience greater happiness and joy and are at less risk for mental illnesses such as depression when compared with unmarried people
True
105
Do heterosexual men or women benefit most from being married?
Husbands receive the most benefit from marriage, in part because their wives encourage healthy lifestyles and provide social support.
106
True or false. Research consistently finds that couples with children, especially with adolescent children, report more marital satisfaction than those who are childless
False. Research consistently finds that couples with children, especially with adolescent children, report LESS marital satisfaction than those who are childless
107
True or false. Having children has a much more negative impact on life satisfaction in less wealthy nations.
True.
108
People who have children, at least within wealthy nations, are more likely to be married, richer, better educated, more religious, and healthier. What happens if you take away one of those factors ?
Once you take these factors into account, the presence of children has a reliably negative effect on life satisfaction, although the effect is small
109
What is one of the main factor of unhappy couples ?
communication failure
110
True or false. Having a child, even if early couple life was chaotic, can bring more happiness into the relationship.
False. Partners who report their early married life as chaotic or negative early on are more likely to find that having a baby does not bring them closer together or solve their problems
111
When does the body and mind, start deteriorating slowly ? And why ?
1) Around the age of 50
| 2) Frontal lobes shrink proportionally more than other brain region
112
What is dementia?
This brain condition causes thinking, memory, and behavior to deteriorate progressively
113
What cause Alzheimer's disease ?
We don't know yet, but evidence suggests there is a genetic predisposition to its development
114
What neurotransmitter is involve in Alzheimer's disease and what are the results?
The memory-related neurotransmitter acetylcholine is very low in people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, and this deficit results in abnormal protein accumulation in the brain
115
What is Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory ?
As people grow older they view time as limited and therefore shift their focus to emotionally meaningful events, experiences, and goals
116
What is one of the most consistent and identifiable cognitive changes as someone that gets older ? Give two exemples.
1) A slowing of mental processing speed
2) -Their sensitivity to visual contrast decreases
- Sensitivity to sound also decreases with age, especially the ability to tune out background noise
117
Older people have difficulty with memory tasks that require juggling multiple pieces of information at the same time. Why ?
Some scientists believe these deficits reflect a decreased ability to store multiple pieces of information simultaneously in working memory
118
True or false. Generally speaking, long-term memory is more affected by aging than is working memory.
False. Long-term memory is LESS affected by aging than is working memory
119
Through the study of Jessica Logan and colleagues (2002), what discoveries were made regarding older people and memory ?
These findings suggest that one reason for the decline in memory observed with aging is that older adults tend not to use strategies that facilitate memory, encoding or retrieving information
120
What could be useful for postponing age-related memory deficits?
cognitive training
121
What is another potential reason for declines in working memory ?
Age-related reductions in dopamine activity in the frontal lobes
122
What is Fluid intelligence ?
Fluid intelligence is the ability to process new general information that requires no specific prior knowledge
123
What is Crystallized intelligence ?
Crystallized intelligence is based on specific knowledge—the kind that must be learned or memorized
124
How do fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence change with aging?
Fluid intelligence decreases, but crystallized intelligence increases.
