Exam 1 Flashcards
What are the four lobes of the brain?
Frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal
When does vision fully develop?
around age 2
When does the temporal lobe fully develop?
around age 25
What is the limbic system
Emotional center drive
What are the prefrontal cortex/frontal lobe?
Self-regulation system; the voice of reason
What is the dorsolateral responsible for?
Planning ahead and controlling impulses
What is the ventromedial responsible for?
Gut level decision making
What is the orbitofrontal responsible for?
Risks and rewards
What happens when your cortical and subcortical regions increase connectivity?
The limbic system begins to talk to the frontal lobe
Why do adolescents do more risky behavior?
This is because their subcortical systems develop earlier than their prefrontal control regions
What changes during adolescents regarding dopamine?
the amount of density and distribution of dopamine receptors are heightened
What was seen in the dot test?
Adults fail the dot test due to their usage of the frontal lobe whilst adolescence use a different part of the brain
What was seen in the swimming with sharks study?
Adolescents took longer to respond due to the fact that their prefrontal cortex were not fully developed whilst adults use the basal ganglia which automatically allows us to scoff at the idea
What was seen with the Iowa gambling task?
We saw that adolescents focused on rewards due to the ventral striatum whilst adults focused on the punishments in order to do harm avoidance
What is the limbic system?
It is the emotional drive system with it’s functions being food, fear, fighting and sex. Teens use the amygdala (fight or flight response) rather than the frontal cortex
What did we see in the performance in response to emotional cues?
Adolescents performed worse in the neutral and fearful cues showing that they are using their limbic system more.
Is adolescence a time of storm and stress?
No, we believe it to be true due to myths
What is an important hormone that kick starts puberty?
Kisspeptin
What is the leptin/fat hypothesis?
It posits that your body needs enough fat cells in order to begin puberty
What is the secular trend?
the age at which we start puberty is getting younger and younger
What are the positive and negative of early maturation in males?
Positive: more popular and athletic, Negative: treated like an adult and the risk to be more antisocial
What are the positive and negative of later maturation in males?
They have better coping skills and are more insightful and creative however they are at higher risk of anxiety/depression
What are the negatives of early maturation in females?
They tend to be more short and stocky which typically brings about a lower body image
Why is maturation better later in females?
Due to the fact that they get taller and skinnier
Why do adolescents have a hard time getting up in the morning?
This is due to the fact that we have a changing sleep schedule and we require less REM sleep than children. This is called the delayed phase preference
What are the changes in adolescent cognition?
They gain hypothetical thinking, move from inductive to deductive reasoning, development of metacognition, imaginary audience, personal fables, multiple dimensions and adolescent relativism
What is inductive to deductive reasoning?
You are moving from assumptions and stereotypes to a more logic based scientific form of thought process
What is the imaginary audience?
The idea that everyone is looking at you
What is the personal fable?
Thinking that bad things will not happen to you
What is multiple dimensions?
The ideas of sarcasm
What is adolescent relativism?
Realizing that the world is not black and white
How do adolescents process information different from a child?
They develop the ability to multi task, you have better working and long term memory, can process information much faster and develop the ability to organize things much better
What is the immaturity gap?
It explains the idea that although adolescents have developed cognitively as adults their prefrontal cortex has not fully developed yet thus resulting in adolescents making stupid decisions despite being so smart
What was found in the study of adolescent competence in courts?
We saw that kids below the age of 14 had little to no recognition of court proceedings, among the idea that adolescence has a less developed prefrontal cortex thus resulting in a less than ideal situation of children.
What Piagetian operations are adolescents going through?
Formal operations
What are examples of selective and divided attention?
Selective attention (doing homework) divided attention (doing homework whilst texting a friend)
