500- Human Growth and Development Flashcards
Accommodation
Part of: developmental understanding, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
Who: Piaget
What: It is the process of modifying schemas in order to take new information and experience into account.
When: old information no longer fits a narrative, it must be replaced to better explain the world.
Why: It is important to realize how we process new information in the stages of development when working with clients who are in those stages and it can explain clients’ worldview.
Example: You are counseling a child that grew up in a house in which the father figure modeled aggressive behavior. This child has a kind male teacher at school this year so he uses this information to modify his schema that men don’t have to exhibit aggressive tendencies.
Adverse childhood events
Part of: understanding trauma’s effects on child development
Who: affects children and minors but the potential for effects to last into adulthood.
What: disruptions to safe and nurturing family environments characterized as stressful. It includes all types of abuse or neglect such as parental substance use, incarceration, and domestic violence. It can also include situations that may cause trauma for a child such as having a parent with a mental illness or being a part of a family going through divorce.
When: a child has been exposed to an abusive or traumatic event, it can lead to disorders like anxiety, depression, or PTSD.
Why: This is important for counselors when conceptualizing a case as ACE scores could be involved in the underlying cause of different conditions. Adverse childhood experiences also have the potential to influence the course of treatment in an individual.
EXAMPLE: Chippy, an 8 year old, presents to therapy with symptoms of depression after being referred by his pediatrician. It turns out his mom has been verbally abusing him ever since her and Chippy’s dad got a divorce. It is determined by you that the adverse childhood experiences Chippy has endured are the divorce itself and the verbal abuse from his mom. This is a factor in his depression diagnosis.
Androgyny
Part of: developmental psychology
Who: an androgenous person does not fit into gender stereotypes. Sandra Bem is responsible for creating the Bem Sex Role Inventory that can determine how masculine, feminine, or androgynous an individual is.
What: this is having both feminine and masculine attributes in appearance, traits, attitudes, and behavior. A healthy balance of these characteristics includes competency, flexibility, and mental well-being.
When: comes up as part of the ADDRESSING model during client intake.
Why: This is important in the role of healthy development as it is psychologically better to have blended traits rather than being strictly male or female according to Bem.
EXAMPLE: You are counseling a child that does not fit into typical gender stereotypes or roles. After performing your initial clinical interview and testing the child using the Bem Sex Role Inventory, you bring the parent in and explain to her that her daughter is simply psychologically androgynous and that she scores highly in masculinity and femininity. You also explain to the parent that this is not a bad thing and having blended traits promotes flexibility with mental well-being.
Assimilation
Part of: developmental psychology and cognitive development theory.
Who: Piaget studied this in children.
What: This is a form of adjustment modification where children use their existing schemas to make sense of new information/experiences so the event fits with the schema. It is the sister to accommodation but typically viewed as more negative.
When: Relevant to development
Why: This is considered an important task for children to be able to move through Piaget’s stages of development. Understanding this concept tells us as clinicians how people process new information and learn through already encoded knowledge.
Example: A child entering therapy has had previous experience with males being aggressive. The child is afraid of the therapist, who is a male, as he is using assimilation to group the therapist into “aggressive males” instead of creating a new schema for “non-aggressive males”.
Attachment
Part of: developmental psychology
Who: Freud (gratification and fixation), Harlow (monkeys), Erikson (stages), Bowlby (instinctive attachment) and Ainsworth (strange situation)
What: it is a close emotional bond between two people based on security, safety, needs, and love. Attachment has been central to many theories in psychology and they all agree that it is formed in phases beginning in infancy. Things that affect attachment include genetics, temperament, and cultural differences. It is typically agreed upon that there are 4 types, secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized.
When: It starts with infant-caregiver attachment bonds and is indicative of what bonds we will form with others (friendships, romantic relationships) in adulthood.
Why: These early attachment bonds have also been shown to foreshadow later social behaviors like pathology for some and attachment bonds with life partners. They also help explain our interpersonal relationships.
Example: A one-year-old child is playing with their mother at a park when one of the mother’s friends approaches. The child has never met this friend. The mom asks that her friend watch the child while she visits the restroom. The child shows distress when the mother leaves and when the mother returns. But, after receiving and some encouraging words the child calms down quickly and resumes happily playing near the mother. According to attachment theory, this child is securely attached.
Child abuse
Part of:
Who:
What:
When:
Why: factors affecting development, this is an act or failure to act from the part of a parent or caregiver which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, and/or sexual abuse or exploitation. It includes neglect which is the most common form of child abuse. It is important for therapists to be aware of it because it can cause a multitude of developmental consequences such as attachment issues, poor emotion regulation, depression or delinquency.
Children who experience abuse and neglect are also at a higher risk for problems in adulthood including substance abuse, employment-related difficulties, relational difficulties and anxiety and depression. Young children, special needs children, and ill children are most at risk. Abusers tend to be previous victims of abuse perpetuating the cycle of abuse. When counseling young children, therapists should be aware of the signs as they are mandated reporters.
EXAMPLE: A child has come into the clinic and in session you notice his knees are swollen, red, and have little cuts on them. In session he admits that when he gets a bad grade in school, his parents make him kneel on rice for hours at a time and also withhold food and water from him. You decide to report this to your supervisor and she reports this as child abuse.
Continuity vs. non-continuity
Regarding development psychology; the debate about whether development is continuous (a gradual, cumulative change) or discontinuous (a set of distinct stages) process.
Piaget’s stages purport that individuals move through distinct, qualitatively unique stages of development, an example of a theorist who has landed closer to discontinuity in the debate. Behavioral theorists, on the other hand, stress that development is happening constantly and continuously.
Developmental delays should be evaluated for when working with children or people with disabilities.
Example: You are working with an adolescent client who reports feeling anxious and depressed over who they want to become. Believing that development happens continuously, you determine that your adolescent client is just developing their identity (the norm) and major theories back this up. Sharon has a patient who reports feeling depressed and anxious. After several sessions, Sharon discovers that her patient is struggling with his sexual and gender identity.
Critical period
Part of lifespan development; this is a fixed time period during which certain experiences or events can have a long-lasting effect on development. It is also referred to as a maturational stage during which the nervous system is especially sensitive to environmental stimuli. If, during this period, the person does not receive the appropriate stimuli required to develop a given function, it may be difficult or even impossible to develop that function later in life. It is most commonly associated with language development.
There is also a critical period of development for fetuses in the womb in which the fetus is vulnerable to teratogens and other environmental factors that can interfere with normal development.
EXAMPLE: A parent brings their adopted child to therapy because the parent is worried about the child’s development. The child is struggling in kindergarten to engage and learn things the other children are learning. After speaking to the parent, the therapist finds out that the child was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The therapist explains to the parent that the child may be struggling to engage and learn things because the child’s birth mother drank alcohol during a critical period of fetal development exposing the fetus to teratogens.
Developmental level
Part of developmental psychology; a stage in human development; span of time when changes occur. This gives clinicians a guideline of what should be happening & when; can indicate lack in cognitive development or potential neurological problems.
EXAMPLE: A parent at the clinic you work at is concerned their 6 month old infant is not making eye contact or engaging with them by smiling. The therapist suggests that maybe there is a delay because this is not typical for the developmental level of a 6 month old.
Egocentrism
From Piaget’s theory of development, it is the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s (unable to see other’s point of view). This quality is present in children who are in the preoperational stage of development which lasts from about age 2 to about age 7.
Egocentrism disappears in the next stage of development, the concrete operational stage and children in this stage should be able to distinguish between their on perspective and someone else’s.
EXAMPLE: A 2 year old you are working with at the clinic is having a difficult time sharing his toys with his new baby brother. You explain to his parents that it is a difficult concept to understand for the developmental stage he is at, because from his viewpoint, the toys belong to him and not his baby brother so why should he have to give them to him if playing with them makes him happy and his baby brother should be happy as well.
Genotype vs. Phenotype
Part of genetics/biology
A genotype refers to a person’s genetic makeup or set of genes. Each genotype has a range of phenotypes that can be expressed. There are three of genotypes: AA (homozygous dominant), Aa (heterozygous), and aa (homozygous recessive) - based on alleles. Genes can only be discovered through biological testing. Phenotypes however are a set of observable characteristics. physical characteristics (height, hair color, etc) and psychological characteristics (intelligence, personality, etc.).
EXAMPLE: Fred has come to therapy because he is convinced his wife is cheating on him, even though she vehemently denies it. He says he has suspected her ever since their child was born. Fred explains that he and his wife both have brown hair, but their child is now 5 years old and he has blonde hair. The therapist explains that both parents may have the genotype that includes the recessive gene for light hair which is not expressed in the phenotype of either parent but was passed down to their child.
EXAMPLE: Fred has come to therapy because he is convinced his wife is cheating on him, even though she vehemently denies it. He says he has suspected her ever since their child was born. Fred explains that he and his wife both have brown hair, but their child is now 5 years old and he has blonde hair. The therapist explains that both parents may have the recessive gene for light hair which is not expressed in the phenotype of either parent but was passed down to their child.
Genotype-environment relationship
Part of development, this is the complex interaction between a person’s genetics and the environment where environmental factors can have the potential to influence how genes are expressed.
There are 3 types:
1. Passive: Parents create a home environment that is influenced by their own genetics
2. Evocative: child’s heritable characteristics elicit certain responses from the environment
3. Active/Niche-picking: child actively seeks out certain environments or activities as a result of their genotype
Example: An individual inherits a gene that gives them the genetic potential for being tall. However, that person grows up in an environment without access to healthy food and, thus, that genetic potential for height is not realized.
Habituation
Part of behaviorism/ development? This is a decreased responsiveness to a certain stimulus (sight, sound, smell) after repeated presentations of that stimulus. This is an important concept for researchers interested studying infant perceptions and preferences, because infants are incapable of self-report. Researchers have demonstrated that certain behaviors are associated with novel stimuli. For example, infants will look longer at newer visual presentations, stop sucking when presented with a novel sound. As they become habituated to these stimuli, their behavior changes (they look for less time or keep sucking).
EXAMPLE: A mother gives her infant a new mobile above his crib. At first the infant stares at it for long stretches of time (8-10 minutes), which allows the mother to fold his clothes and put them away. After a few days, the mobile no longer holds the infants attention - the infant has become habituated to the visual stimuli. Therefore, the mother twirls it a few times before beginning her laundry and this new stimuli keeps the infant’s attention. For a few days, that is.
Heterozygous vs. homozygous
Course: Development
What is it part of? Genetics
Who? Neonates
Where? at the microscopic level
What: There are two alleles, or versions, of each gene. Being homozygous for a particular gene means you inherited two identical versions/copies. It’s the opposite of a heterozygous genotype, where the alleles are different versions/copies.
Why? Understanding genetics is important for understanding a person sometimes and plays into the concept of the diathesis-stress model.
Ex: If you have two copies of the allele for blonde hair, you are homozygous for that trait. Having one copy of the allele for blonde hair and one copy of the allele for brown hair makes you heterozygous for hair color.
Identity achievement
Identity achievement is an identity status of adolescents described by James Marcia. Marcia delineated four phases of identity development, one of which is identity achievement. For an individual to be considered in this phase, they must have gone through an identity crisis and made a commitment about their identity.
Classification based on existence or extent of a person’s crisis and commitment.
Crisis: a period of identity development when individual is exploring alternatives
Commitment: personal investment in identity
One of four statuses, other are identity diffusion (no crisis no commitment), identity foreclosure (no crisis, but commitment), and identity moratorium (yes crisis, but no commitment)
Identity does not remain stable; typically a person has repeated MAMA cycling.
Key changes in identity are more likely to take place in emerging adulthood (18 to 25 years old) than in adolescence
EXAMPLE: A person who is in identity achievement with regard to occupation would have first tried out various career routes via internships, online research and informational interviews before identifying the best fit and sticking to that choice.
