chapter 3 and 4 exam Flashcards
Developing Morality
Kohlberg (1981, 1984) sought to describe the development of moral reasoning by posing moral dilemmas to children and adolescents, such as “Should a person steal medicine to save a loved one’s life?” He found stages of moral development.
Kohlberg Research Method
Interview Method
No influence from the group
Subjects share personal information
Follow-up interviews find the subject more compliant due to the researcher establishing a personal relationship with subject.
Preconventional Morality
: Before age 9, children show morality to avoid punishment or gain reward.
Conventional Morality:
By early adolescence, social rules and laws are upheld for their own sake.
Postconventional Morality:
Affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows personally perceived ethical principles.
Moral Feeling
Moral feeling is more than moral thinking. When posed with simulated moral dilemmas, the brain’s emotional areas only light up when the nature of the dilemmas is emotion-driven.
Moral Action
Moral action involves doing the right thing. People who engage in doing the right thing develop empathy for others and the self-discipline to resist their own impulses.
Criticisms of Kohlberg
Carol Gilligan
Based on the responses of boys.
Can’t assume boys and girls come to the same conclusions in the same way.
Gilligan believed that women pay attention to situational factors more than moral absolutes.
Zygote:
conception to 2 weeks
Embryo:
2 weeks – 8 weeks
Fetus:
9 weeks to birth
Conception
A single sperm cell (male) penetrates the outer coating of the egg (female) and fuses to form one fertilized cell.
Prenatal Development
A zygote is a fertilized cell with 100 cells that become increasingly diverse. At about 14 days the zygote turns into an embryo (a and b).
Prenatal Development/ teratogens
At 9 weeks, an embryo turns into a fetus (c and d). Teratogens are chemicals or viruses that can enter the placenta and harm the developing fetus.
stage
Infancy
what is the span
Newborn to toddler
stage
childhood
what is the span
toddler to teenager
Maturation
Growth processes through orderly changes
Experience does not control it, but helps
adjust
Maturation
As Seen Through Motor Development
First, infants begin to roll over. Next, they sit unsupported, crawl, and finally walk. Experience has little effect on this sequence.
sitting unsupported
6 months
crawling
8-9 months
beginning to walk
12 months
walking independetly
15 months
- Brain Development
Neurons overproduced
23 billion at birth
Most in frontal lobe
The earliest age of conscious memory is around
3 and ahalf yeas
A 5-year-old has
a sense of self and an increased long-term memory
Infants are born with
reflexes that aid in survival
Reflexes are specific
inborn, automatic
responses to certain,
specific stimuli.
Examples of Reflexes Evident at Birth
sucking Reflex Grasping Reflex rooting reflect Moro Reflex Babinski Reflex
Motor Development Differences
- timing
- culture
Experience/Maturing Nervous System
Identical Twins (Genetics)
Cognitive Development
piaget
Piaget believed that the driving force behind intellectual development is our biological development amidst experiences with the environment. Our cognitive development is shaped by the errors we make.
Piaget’s Core Idea
Children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more advanced understandings of the world.
Schemas
A concept or framework that organizes and
interprets information.
Assimilation
Interpreting one’s new experience in terms
of one’s existing schemas.
Accommodation
The process of adjusting our schemas and
modifying it to be more specific in correctl identifying things
Sensorimotor Stage
In the sensorimotor stage, babies take in the world by looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. Children younger than 6 months of age do not grasp object permanence, i.e., objects that are out of sight are also out of mind.
Sensorimotor Stage: Criticisms
Piaget believed children in the sensorimotor stage could not think —they do not have any abstract concepts or ideas.
However, recent research shows that children in the sensorimotor stage can think and count.
Children understand the basic laws of physics. They are amazed at how a ball can stop in midair or disappear.
Children can also count. Wynn (1992, 2000) showed that children stared longer at the wrong number of objects than the right ones.
Preoperational Stage
Piaget suggested that from 2 years old to about 6-7 years old, children are in the preoperational stage—too young to perform mental operations.
Preoperational Stage: Criticism
DeLoache (1987) showed that children as young as 3 years of age are able to use mental operations. When shown a model of a dog’s hiding place behind the couch, a 2½-year-old could not locate the stuffed dog in an actual room, but the 3-year-old did.
Egocentrism
Piaget concluded that preschool children are egocentric. They cannot perceive things from another’s point of view.
When asked to show her picture to mommy, 2-year-old Gabriella holds the picture facing her own eyes, believing that her mother can see it through her eyes.
Theory of Mind
Preschoolers, although still egocentric, develop the ability to understand another’s mental state when they begin forming a theory of mind.
The problem on the right probes such ability in children.
Concrete Operational Stage
In concrete operational stage, given concrete materials, 6- to 7-year-olds grasp conservation problems and mentally pour liquids back and forth into glasses of different shapes conserving their quantities.
Children in this stage are also able to transform mathematical functions. So, if 4 + 8 = 12, then a transformation, 12 – 4 = 8, is also easily doable.
Formal Operational Stage
Around age 12, our reasoning ability expands from concrete thinking to abstract thinking. We can now use symbols and imagined realities to systematically reason. Piaget called this formal operational thinking.
Critics of Piaget believe:
Development is a continuous process.
Children express their mental abilities and operations at an earlier age.
Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition.
Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky believed that through play
and social situations, we learn to think for
ourselves.
Origins of Attachment
Harlow (1971) showed that infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact and not because of nourishment.
Deprivation of Attachment
What happens when circumstances prevent a child from forming attachments?
Withdrawn
Frightened
Unable to develop speech
Secure Attachments
66%
Explore when parents are present
Distressed when parents leave
Come to parents when they return
Avoidant Attachments
21%
Resist being held by parents
Explore novel environment
Do not go to parents for comfort upon return
Anxious/
Ambivalent
12%
Ambivalent reactions to parents
Show stress when parents leave
Resist being comforted when they return.
Separation Anxiety
Separation anxiety peaks at 13 months of age, regardless of whether the children are home or sent to day care.
Prolonged Deprivation
If parental or caregiving support is deprived for an extended period of time, children are at risk for physical, psychological, and social problems, including alterations in brain serotonin levels.
Adolescence – Physical Development
Primary sex characteristics develop quickly
Reproductive organs
External genitalia
Adolescence Brain Development
Until puberty, neurons increase their connections. However, at adolescence, selective pruning of the neurons begins. Unused neuronal connections are lost to make other pathways more efficient.
Frontal Cortex
During adolescence, neurons in the frontal cortex grow myelin, which speeds up nerve conduction. The frontal cortex lags behind the limbic system’s development. Hormonal surges and the limbic system may explain occasional teen impulsiveness.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Development
Believed that our personality was influenced by our experiences with others.
At each stage we face an important issue or crisis. How we resolve each crisis shapes our personality and affects our relationship with others.
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Trust vs. Mistrust
infancy to 1 and a half
Erikson’s Psychosocial
2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
1 and a half to 3
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Initiative vs. Guilt
3-5
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Industry (competence) vs. Inferiority
5-12
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Identity vs. Role Confusion
12-18
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Intimacy vs. Isolation
18-40
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Generativity vs. Stagnation
40-65
Erikson’s Psychosocial
Ego Integrity vs. Despair
65+
Cross-sectional study
A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.
Longitudinal study
Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.
Alzheimer’s Biological Causes
Damage to neurons that transmit the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Tangles are twisted fibers of the protein tau that build up inside of cells.
Plaques are deposits of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid that build up in the spaces between neurons
Alzheimer’s - Cognition impact
Plaques and tangles seem to begin in areas important for memory, the hippocampus.
Further damage spreads to regions for thinking and planning, the frontal lobe.
Speaking and understanding of language areas also see damage. These would be in the left hemisphere and include the Wernicke’s area and the Broca’s area.
Concluded that there are five (5) stages of coping:
Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance
epigentic researc
studies gees and how they change due to environemnt and what it can cause in the body
studey of biological mechanisms that switch genes on and ogg
