Development

Question 1

What is maturation? Talk about nature and nurture, and infancy development in the brain.

Answer 1

• Biologically-driven growth and development enabling a sequence of predictable cognitive and behavioural changes
• Experience (nurture) can adjust the timing but maturation (nature) sets the sequence
• In infancy, you can see the change in brain (starting from older brain structures to cortex which you see change in behaviour) and motor development

Question 2

What is cognitive development?

Answer 2

• Refers to mental activities that help us function including
• Figuring out how the world works
• Developing models and concepts
• Problem-solving
• Storing and retrieving knowledge
• Understanding and using language

Question 3

What did Jean Piaget come up with?

Answer 3

• Schema: a “mental container” that holds our experiences and organizes them according to similarities and differences
• Assimilation: new experiences are absorbed into an existing schema
• Accommodation: new experiences lead to the modification of a schema
• Piaget’s stages of development: development in combination of nature and nurture + is not one continuous progression of changes but steps (make leaps)

Question 4

What are the stages in Piaget’s theory of development?

Answer 4

1. Sensorimotor stage: experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, grasping)
   - Birth to nearly 2 years old
   - Object permanence: know object is there even though it does not seem to be there
   - Stranger anxiety
2. Preoperational: representing things with words and images, using intuitive rather than logical reasoning
   - About 2 to 6-7 years old
   - Pretend play
   - Egocentrism: appreciate they have a presence in the world, but have hard time seeing the world through other people’s eyes
   - Theory of mind refers to the ability to understand that others have their own thoughts and perspective
3. Concrete operational: thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations
   - About 7 to 11 years old
   - Conservation: changing the form of an object does not change its volume, mass, or amount
   - Mathematical transformations: addition, subtracting without using concrete representation of units such as toys and objects
4. Formal operational: abstract reasoning
   - About 12 and up
   - Abstract logic: eg. never being in glass house but would not throw bricks in it
   - Potential for mature moral reasoning

Question 5

What does reassessment of Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory tell us?

Answer 5

• Development is a continuous process though sometimes seems to be in stages
• Children show some mental abilities and operations at an earlier age than Piaget thought
• Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition than Piaget believed

Question 6

What is socialization?

Answer 6

• Socialization: the process by which children learn norms and values that regulate their social environment
• Fundamental to our ability to efficiently interact with others
• Relationship child has with her/his parents is crucial (trust)

Question 7

What is attachment?

Answer 7

• Attachment: refers to emotional tie to another person

- In children, attachment can appear as a desire for physical closeness to a caregiver

Question 8

What did the strange situation test involve?

Answer 8

The “strange situations” test involved mother and infant alone in unfamiliar (strange) room, stranger enters room, mother leaves room after a bit (separation), then comes back (reunion)

Question 9

What types of attachment did the strange situation test come up with?

Answer 9

• Secure attachment: most children (60%), play around when mother is in room, distress at separation, seek contact at reunion
• Insecure attachment (anxious-style): 25-30%, clinging to mother, less exploration, distress at separation, remain upset/angry at reunion
• Insecure attachment (avoidant-style): 10-15%, seems indifferent to mother
• Disorganized: child has learned that caregivers are both sources of fear and comfort

Question 10

What causes different attachment styles?

Answer 10

1. Interaction of parent?
   - Sensitive, responsive, calm parenting is correlated with secure attachment
   - Environment
2. Child’s personality?
   - Temperament: person’s characteristic style and intensity of emotional reactivity
   - Genetics

Question 11

What are the different styles of parenting?

Answer 11

• Authoritarian: parents impose rules “because I said so” and expect obedience
• Permissive: parents submit to kids’ desires, not enforcing limits or standards for child behaviour
• Authoritative: parents enforce rules, limits, and standards but also explain, discuss, listen, and express respect for child’s ideas and wishes

Question 12

What happens when children are exposed to severe deprivation of attachment or abuse?

Answer 12

• Difficulty forming secure forms of attachment
• Increased risk for anxiety and depression
• Lowered intelligence
• Increased aggression

Question 13

What is authoritative parenting associated with?

Answer 13

Associated with self-reliance, social competence, increased self-esteem, decreased aggression

The ideal parent does not reflexively respond to all of child’s needs but is sensitive to how much responsiveness the child needs

Question 14

What is the zone of proximal development?

Answer 14

Development is ideal when children attempt skills and activities that are just beyond what they can do alone, but they have guidance from adults who are attentive to their progress

Question 15

What is scaffolding?

Answer 15

Highly attentive approach to teaching in which the teacher matches guidance to learner’s needs

Question 16

What is prosocial behaviour? What are the behavioural systems attached?

Answer 16

• Being aware of one’s own emotions and understanding the emotions of others
• Attachment behavioural system: focused on meeting our own needs for security
• Caregiving behavioural system: focused on meeting the needs for others

Question 17

What is instrumental and empathic helping?

Answer 17

• Instrumental helping: providing practice assistance

- Empathic helping: providing help in order to make someone feel better

Question 18

What physical development occurs during adolescence?

Answer 18

• Puberty is the time of sexual maturation (becoming physically able to reproduce)
• During puberty, hypothalamus begins stimulating release of sex hormones

1. Primary (part of reproduction) and secondary sex characteristics
2. Some changes in mood and behaviour
3. Height changes are an early sign of puberty

Question 19

What neurological development occurs during adolescence?

Answer 19

• The brain stops automatically adding new connections
• Focus on efficiency by “rewiring”
• “Pruning” away the connections not being used
• Coating the often-used connections in myelin (kind of like insulation sheet, ensures that pathway is protected)
• Crucial time for efficiently/easily acquiring knowledge
• Frontal lobes are the last to mature
• The limbic system (risky) matures much before the frontal lobes (when faced with potential rewards they discount risk)
• In mid-20s will develop ability to delay gratification and risk appreciation

Question 20

What cognitive development occurs during adolescence?

Answer 20

• Focus on social representation
• Plan how to pursue goals (formulate intentions and an implementation plan to reach goals, linked to maturation of frontal lobes)
• Change in perspective: start to appreciate how reality compares to ideals
• The ability to appreciate that often multiple answers exists to any given problem
• The ability to tolerate intellectual uncertainty (without frustration or a need to find intellectual closure)
• The ability to assess the validity of relative answers using critical thinking
• The ability to accept multiple relativistic answers, evaluated as valid, even if some may contradict each other

Question 21

What is Perry’s theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development?

Answer 21

• Focus on absolute answers (good vs bad, right vs wrong) and the experience of frustration by complex relative answers (true sign of cognitive development)
• Particularly in educational contexts (Piaget’s assimilation)
• Imitate an appreciation for complex and incomplete answers to complex problems, but not internalized
• A genuine appreciation for complex and often incomplete answers to complex problems

Question 22

What is Lawrence Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning?

Answer 22

1. Preconventional morality
   - Up to age 9
   - Follow the rules because if you don’t you’ll get in trouble; if you do, you might get a treat
   - Eg. fear of punishment so no looting after disasters even if you need it
2. Conventional morality
   - Early adolescence
   - Focus on societal values
   - Follow the rules because we get along better if everyone does the right thing
   - Eg. societal consequence of looting after disaster; if not major then you’ll do it (gradient in thinking)
3. Postconventional morality
   - Late adolescence and adulthood
   - Focus on internal morality principles
   - Sometimes rules need to be set aside to pursue higher principles
   - Eg. being selfish by looting to survive after disasters

Question 23

What are some critics of Kohlberg’s model?

Answer 23

• Cultural bias (north American perspective vs like Eastern perspective on the family not the self)
• Low correlation with moral behaviour: being in a stage does not mean you will act morally, can’t help you understand people’s actions
• Causal direction
• Assumes moral evaluation (cognition) comes first then emotional response…except emotions can shape cognition of morals

Question 24

What is Erik Erikson’s model of Social Development?

Answer 24

1. Infancy (up to 1 year)
   - Trust vs mistrust
2. Toddlerhood (1-3 years)
   - Autonomy vs shame and doubt
   - Toddlers learn to exercise their will and do things for themselves
   - Or they doubt their abilities
3. Preschool (3-6 years)
   - Initiative vs guilt
   - Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans
   - Or they feel guilty about wanting to be independent
4. Elementary school (6 years to puberty)
   - Competency vs inferiority
   - Children learn to pleasure of applying themselves to competently accomplish tasks
   - Or they feel inferior
5. Adolescence (puberty into 20s)
   - Identity vs role confusion
   - Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity
   - Or they become confused about who they are
6. Young adulthood (20s to early 40s)
   - Intimacy vs isolation
   - Young adults learn to form close relationships and to gain capacity for intimate love
   - Or they feel socially isolated
7. Middle adulthood (40ss-60s)
   - Generativity vs stagnation
   - In middle age, people discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work (their legacy, their mark on the world)
   - Or they feel a lack of purpose/meaning of their life
8. Late adulthood (late 60s and up)
   - Integrity vs despair
   - An older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction from having successfully gone through the previous stages
   - Or experience feelings of despair and failure

Question 25

What are some cognitive changes about growing old?

Answer 25

• Verbal ability and numeric ability do not change as you age
• Verbal memory, spatial orientation, inductive reasoning, perceptual speed decline
• Emotion regulation increases

Question 26

Discuss medication for old people.

Answer 26

• Abnormal cognitive changes are often linked to wrong prescription of medication particularly in no specific condition could otherwise explain the change
• Many patients want doctors to prescribe them something even when not needed (eg. sleeping aid medication, your body will produce less sleep hormones so you will need to sleep less, so it is not a disorder you don’t need medication which will mess with your body)
• When there are mental health related indications, cognitive and behavioural wonders
• Medication is a good idea when used for a specific condition for which it is indicated or in conjunction with cognitive and/or behavioural interventions

Question 27

What are some social changes about growing old?

Answer 27

• Isolation and loneliness are genuine concerns (eg. friends or family passing away, losing ability to drive)
• Lack of stimulation (you’re alone all day) accelerates the decline in abilities (eg. motor coordination, lack of intellectual stimulation)
• Our current system struggles to figure out how best to handle an aging population
• The perception that older people are a problem that needs to be taken care of
• The notion of a “vacation retirement” may not be ideal
• One solution to do something: volunteering (not a lot required, an hour of 2 a week can guard against cognitive decline)