Chapter 3- Causal Factors And Viewpoints Flashcards
What are some examples of protective factors?
Having a family environment in which at least one parent is warm and supportive, allowing the development of a good attachment relationship between the child and parent that can protect against the harmful effects of an abusive parent.
Do not necessarily need to be positive experiences. Sometimes exposure to stressful experiences that are dealt with successfully can promote a sense of self confidence or self-esteem. Has sort of a “steeling” or “inoculation” effect, but usually only with moderate stressors instead of mild or extreme ones.
Qualities or attributes of a person such as an easy-going temperament, high self-esteem, high intelligence, and school achievement.
Describe how imbalances of neurotransmitters impacts abnormal behaviour
Sometimes psychological stress can bring on neurotransmitter in balances which can be created in a variety of ways:
- excessive production and release of a neurotransmitter substance into the synapses, causing a functional excess in levels of that neurotransmitter
- Disfunctions in the normal processes by which neurotransmitters, once released into the synapse, are deactivated.
- problems with the receptors in the postsynaptic neuron, which may be either abnormally sensitive or abnormally insensitive
Neurons that are sensitive to a particular neurotransmitter tend to cluster together, forming neural paths between different parts of the brain known as:
Chemical circuits
What are the five kinds of neurotransmitters that have been most extensively studied in relationship to psychopathology?
- Norepinephrine: plays an important role in how our bodies react to emergency situations, as well as inattention, orientation, and basic motives
- Dopamine: pleasure and cognitive processing, and has been implicated in schizophrenia as well as in addictive disorders
- Serotonin: effects the way we think and process information from our environment as well as on behaviour and moods
- Glutamate
- Gamma aminobutyric acid GABA
Describe how genetic vulnerabilities may contribute to abnormal behaviour
Most mental disorder show at least some genetic influence ranging from small to large. Abnormalities in the structure or number of the chromosomes can be associated with major defects or disorders.
Anomalies may also occur in the sex chromosomes, producing a variety of complications, such as ambiguous sexual characteristics.
More typically, personality traits and mental disorders are influenced either by abnormalities in some of the genes on the chromosomes or by naturally occurring variations of genes known as polymorphisms.
A persons phenotype can shape the environment a child experiences, and an individual’s genotype may shape his or her environment.
What are three important ways in which an individual’s genotype may shape his or her environment?
(genotype-environment correlation)
- Passive effect: the child’s genotype may have a passive effect on the environment, resulting from the genetic similarity of parents and children.
Example – highly intelligent parents may provide a highly stimulating environment for their child, thus creating an environment that will interact in a positive way with the child’s genetic endowment for high intelligence. Conversely, parents who exhibit antisocial behaviour tend to create a risky environment characterized by family dysfunction, thereby increasing the probability of certain mental disorders in their children. - Evocative effect: the child’s genotype may evoke particular kinds of reactions from the social and physical environment.
Example – active, happy babies evoke more positive responses from others than do passive, unresponsive infants. - Active effect: the child’s genotype may play a more active role in shaping the environment. In this case the child seeks out or builds an environment that is congenial, a phenomenon known as “niche building”
Example – extroverted children may seek the company of others, thereby enhancing their own tendencies to be sociable.
People with different genotypes may be differentially sensitive or susceptible to their environments. This is known as a:
Genotype-environmental interaction
Example: children with the genetic vulnerability to PKU react very differently to many common foods with phenylalanine than do normal children because they cannot metabolize it, and as it’s metabolic products buildup, they damage the brain. This mental retardation syndrome can be prevented if the young child’s diet is changed to eliminate this amino acid.
Example: people at genetic risk for depression have been shown to be more likely to respond to stressful life events by becoming depressed than are people without the genetic risk factors who experience the same stressful life events.
What are the biological theories of abnormal behavior? (4)
Neurotransmitter/hormonal abnormalities in the brain or other parts of the central nervous system
Genetic vulnerabilities
Temperament
Brain disfunction and neural plasticity
What are four categories of psychological causal factors that can each have important detrimental effects on a child’s socioemotional development?
Early deprivation or trauma, in adequate parenting styles, marital discord and divorce, maladaptive peer relationships
A form of early deprivation or trauma where children are raised in an institution where, compared with an ordinary home, there is likely to be less warmth and physical contact, less intellectual, emotional, and social stimulation, and a lack of encouragement and help in positive learning
Institutionalization
Unfavorable, especially if the institutionalization lasts longer than six months
A form of early deprivation or trauma in which young children are separated from their parents for prolonged periods
Separation
Can result in secure attachment, insecure attachment
A form of early deprivation or trauma in which children suffer from maltreatment at home.
Neglect and abuse in the home
Parents can neglect a child in various ways – by physical neglect, denial of love and affection, lack of interest in the child’s activities and achievements, or failure to spend time with the child or to supervise his or her activities.
And inadequate parenting style where parents who have various forms of psychopathology tend to have one or more children who are at heightened risk for a wide range of developmental difficulties
Parental psychopathology
Describe four types of parenting styles that seem to be related to different developmental outcomes for children
- Authoritative: parents are both very warm and very careful to set clear standards and limits on certain kinds of behaviours while allowing considerable freedom within these limits. Associated with the most positive early social development
- Authoritarian: parents are high on control but low on warmth. Children tend to be conflicted, irritable, and moody
- Permissive/indulgent: parents are high on warmth but low on discipline and control. Associated with impulsive and aggressive behaviour in childhood and adolescence
- Neglectful/uninvolved: parents are low both on warmth and on control. Associated with disruptions in attachment during early childhood and with moodiness, low self-esteem, and conduct problems later in childhood
Describe the socio-cultural perspective and it’s contributions to understanding abnormal behaviour
Concerned with the impact of culture and other features of the social environment on mental disorders.
Has led to programs designed to improve the social conditions that foster maladaptive behaviour and mental disorder, and to community facilities for the early detection, treatment, and long-range prevention of mental disorder
