Exam 1 Flashcards
Plato’s philosophy
- Emphasized self control & discipline
- Believed children are born with innate knowledge
Aristotle’s philosophy
- Concerned about fitting child rearing to the needs of the individual child
- Believed knowledge comes from experience
Original sin
Early Christian doctrine
Born evil
Tabula rasa
Locke, 1600s
Children are a blank canvas controlled through experience (discipline)
Innate goodness
Rousseau, 1700s
Argued that parents and society should give the child maximum freedom from the beginning
People are inherently good
Life-span perspective (unified developmental perspective)
The belief that development occurs throughout life and doesn’t end when people reach a certain age.
Normative age-graded influences
Similar for individuals in a particular age group
Normative history-graded influences
Common to people of a particular generation because of historical circumstances. (ie baby boomers and JFK assassination)
Non-normative life events
Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on a specific person’s life
According to unified developemental perspective, development is:
- Lifelong
- Multidimensional
- Multidirectional
- Plastic
- Multidisciplinary
- Contextual
Developement is lifelong
Development doesn’t have an end point
Development is multidimensional
At every age, your body, mind, emotions, and your relationships change and affect each other.
Developemtn is multidirectional
some dimensions or componetns of a dimension expand and others shrink
Developement is plastic
Plasticity is the capacity for change. People’s patterns are not concrete
Developement is multidisciplinary
spans across ways of learning and interests
Development is contextual
Contexts change our development by influencing us at varying stages
Nature/nurture
To what extent is development influenced by nature and nurture? Nature: biological inheritance (heredity, maturation, genes) Nurture: environmental factors (physical and social environment, experience, learning)
Stability/change
To what extent do early traits and characteristics persist through the life or change?
Stability: result of heredity and early experience
Change: plasticity, potential for change throughout the lifespan
Continuity/discontinuity
To what extent is change gradual or abrupt?
Continuity: gradual, cumulative change with age
Discontinuity: stages that appear qualitatively different
Psychodynamic Theorists
- Freud
- Erikson
imprinting
after hatching a duckling is exposed to its mother and immediately approaches & follows her.
any kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior.
Maternal Call
ducklings hatched from eggs incubated in isolation show a species-appropriate preference for the maternal call
Freud’s perspective
Development depends on the unconscious mind.
- Less emphasis on behavior
- Mind must be analyzed to understand behavior
- Early experiences important in development
- Change happens because of internal drive
- Psychosexual stages
Erickson’s theory
Eight stages of development unfold as we go though life, each with a unique developmental task/crisis that must be resolved. Psychosocial stages
Freud’s psychosexual stages
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
Id
Pleasure principal. sexual & aggressive impulses
Ego
Reality-satisfies impulse with reason
Super ego
morality.
Id/Ego/Superego
All three create personality. Conflict=anxiety
Ego resolves anxiety by using coping mechanisms
Psycho-dynamic theory
Describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion
Erikson’s psychosexual stages
- trust/mistrust
- autonomy/shame and doubt
- initiative/guilt
- industry/inferiority
- identity/identity confusion
- intimacy/isolation
- generativity/stagnation
- integrity/despair
Cognitive theories
emphasize conscious thought in development
Cognitive theorists
- Piaget
- Vygotsky
Learning theories
- Behavioral
- Social cognitive
Behavioral Theorists
- Pavlov
- Skinner
- Watson
Social cognitive theorists
Bandura
Ethological theorists
Lorenz
Ecological theorists
Bronfenbrenner
Learning/behaviorist theory
Behavior is learned
Classical conditioning
pairing of involuntary behaviors
Operant conditioning
Learning as a result of consequence
Ecological theory
emphasizes environmental factors.
- Microsystem
- Mesosystem
- Exosystem
- Macrosystem
- Chronosystem
Reliability
Consistent information regardless of context
Inter-observer reliability
Assess degree to which different raters/observers give consistent estimates of the same phenomenon. 2 people can come up with the same conclusion
Test-retest reliability
assess consistency of a measure from one time to another.
Asking the same thing… worded differently several times to get consistent answers.
Internal consistency
Assess consistency of results across items within a test
Validity
Is the test measuring what you think it’s measuring?
Face validity
Reasonable questions on surface to neutral observer. Face value-Does it look like it?
Predictive validity
Scores predict closely to another similar measure. Measuring the same thing differently… like two different personality tests
Construct validity
How well scores fir into network of constructs specified by theory. Can the findings be generalized?
Research designs
- Descriptive research
- Correlational research
- Experimental research
- Meta-analysis
Correlational research
Goal is to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics.
Finds negative or positive correlation
Experimental research
Carefully regulated procedure in which a specific variable is manipulated with all others help constant
Independent/dependent variables, control group, randomization
Seeks causation, but is not generalized
Independent variable
Experimental factor
What is being manipulated
Dependent variable
Outcome effect
What occurs after manipulation
Control group
Baseline
What doesn’t get manipulated
Time span research approaches
- Cross sectional
- Longitudinal
- Sequential
Cross sectional time span research
Individuals of different ages are compared at one time.
- Census type
- Majority of studies
- Doesn’t account for how people change over time.
Longitudinal approach
Same individuals studied over a period of time
- Expensive and time consuming
- People adapt to the test
Sequential approach
Combines cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Cross sectional design follows group longitudinally.
-Useful in exploring Cohort Effects
Cohort effect
Impact due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation, but not actual age.
Ethnic gloss
Over-generalization about ethnic groups.
Genotype
All of a person’s genetic makeup. What you got from parents
Phenotype
Observable characteristics… how genes manifest
Gene-linked abnormalities
Harmful genes that cause rare disease such as PKU and Sikle-cell anemia
3 Periods of Prenatal development
- Germinal period
- Embryonic period
- Fetal period
Germinal period
Conception-2 weeks after conception
zygote/Blastocyst/Implantation
Embryonic period
2-8 weeks. Cell differentiation intesifies.
Organogenesis. Three layers of embryo: (endoderm/mesoderm/extoderm)
Blastocyst
(1 week) Inner mass of cells to become embryo
Zygote
Fertilized egg, rapid mitosis
Implantation
attachment to uterine wall (10-14 days)
Endoderm
inner. Digestive & respiratory systems
Mesoderm
middle. Circulatory, excretory, reproductive, musculoskeletal
Ectoderm
Outer. Nervous system, ears, nose, eyes, skin parts (hair and nail)
Fetal period
8 weeks-birth.
Fetal viability
~7 months
Average height/weight of American baby
7.5 lbs
20” long
Prenatal diagnostic tests
Ultrasound sonography Chorionic Villi Sampling Amniocentesis Maternal blood test Fetal MRI
Ultrasound sonography
After 7 weeks
High frequency sound waves
-Detects structural abnormality/sex
Chorionic Villi sampling
10-12 weeks
Small sample of placenta removed.
Detects genetic/chromo defects
Amniocentesis
15-18 weeks
Samples amniotic fluid
Detects genetic/chromo defects
Teratogen
Any agent that can potentially cause birth defects of negatively alter cognitive or behavioral outcomes.
Drugs, incompatable blood types, environmental pollutants, infectious disease, nutritional deficiencies, maternal stress, advanced maternal/paternal age
Fetal brain development
Basic brain structure: First 6 months
Connectivity & Function: last 3 months
Neural tube development
18-24 days after conception
Neural migration
6-24 weeks
Cells move outward from point of origin to their appropriate locations creating different structure/regions of the brain
Birth defects from brain development
Failure of neural tube closure
- Spina bifida
- Anencephaly
Apgar scale
Heart rate/reflexes/color. Appearance Pulse Grimace Activity Respiration
Sensation
Occurs when physical information contact sensory receptors
Perception
Interpretation of sensation
What are the results and outcomes of the Fantz research
Young infants prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast because they have poor contrast sensitivity. This is because the cones of the eye which are concentrated in the fovea differ from adults in size shape and spacing. In addition very young infants have limited color vision although by 2 to 3 months of age they’re color vision is similar to that of adults
ecological view
The view proposed by the Gibsons that people directly perceive information in the world around them. perception brings people in contact with the environment in order to interact with it and adapt to it.
Affordances
Opportunities for interaction offered by objects necessary to perform activities
Behavioral techniques of infant perception
- visual preference
- high amplitude sucking
- conditioned head turn procedure
How is visual preference assessed
Eye tracking
Habituation
Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus
Dishabituation
The recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation
Results of the Gibson Walk experiment
2 to 4 month old show differences in heart rate when placed on a steep side of a cliff. 6 to 12 month olds would not crawl across the glass
Presbyopia
Difficulty with close objects. Sharpest decline between 40 and 59
Visual changes in adulthood
Presbyopia, decreased blood supply to the eyes resulting in smaller visual field, slower dark adaptation, declining color vision, declining depth perception
Auditory perception in adults
decline begins around age 40. Males lose sensitivity to high pitch sound sooner than females. Gender differences may be due to occupations
Auditory perception in infants
Newborns turn toward sounds a phenomenon referred to as auditory localization. Infants recognize their mother’s voice. They’re less sensitive to low pitched sounds. By the middle of the first year infants discriminate most acoustic differences that signal relevant sound information for language
Results of the Decasper and Spence study
Mothers read the cat in the hat while they were pregnant. After being born the babies preferred their mothers reading that book than another
Intermodal perception
The ability to integrate information about two or more sensory inputs such as vision and hearing
Dynamic systems view
Infants assemble motor skills receiving end acting. To develop motor skills infants must proceed something in the environment that motivates them to act and then use their perceptions to fine-tune their movements
List the newborn reflexes
- Rooting reflex
- Sucking reflex
- Moro reflex
- Grasping reflex
- Babinski reflex
- Stepping
Gross motor milestones
- Lift head
- Chest up with arms for support
- Roll over
- Support some weight with legs
- Sit up with no support
- Stand with support
- Pull up
- Cruise
- Stand alone easily
- Walk
Gross motor skills
Skills that involve large muscle activities
Fine motor skills
Involve finely tuned movements
Palmar grasp
A grip with the whole hands
Infants
Pincer grip
Grip with thumb and forefinger
Karen Aldoph’s Research: Experience/slope study
Negotiating ramps depends on how much experience the infant has walking and assessing risks.
How many crawling postures
25
Cephalocaudal pattern of growth
Sequence in which the fastest growth in the human body occurs at the top, with the head.
Proximodistal pattern of growth
The growth sequence that starts at the center of the body and moves toward the extremities.
Growth in infancy
Avg: 20” and 7.5 lbs
Triple weight by 1 year
1/2 adult height and 20% weight by year two
Growth in early childhood
- growth slow and individualized
- Girls slightly smaller and lighter
- Girls gain fat, boys gain muscle
Growth in middle and late childhood
- Slower consistent growth
- Muscle mass and strength increase
- Boys stronger, body proportions change
Body image in adolescence
Girls less satisfied as body fat increases. Early maturation leads to risks and problem behaviors.
Boys more satisfied as muscle mass increases. Early maturation leads to better peer relations
Brain myelination
Sheath around neural axons that allow electrical signals to travel faster
Brain lateralization
Specialization of function in one hemisphere of the brain.
At birth, activity in left hemisphere specializes as infants listen to speech.
The infant brain
- At birth, the newborn’s brain is about 25% of its adult weight
- By 2nd bday, about 75% of the adult weight
Prefrontal cortex
Reasoning, self-control, and decision making
Amygdala
Emotions, anger
Matures earlier than prefrontal cortex. Why adolescents have magnified emotions and poor self control/greater risk/lack of practical experiences and immature judgement
REM Sleep
Rapid eye movement:
- Suppression of muscle tone
- increases later in the night
Percentage of time infants are in REM sleep
50%
Percentage seniors are in REM sleep
30%
Sleep hormone
melatonin
How much sleep needed for newborns
12-18 hours
How much sleep needed for Infants (3-11 months)
14-15 hours
How much sleep needed for Toddlers (1-3 years)
12-14 hours
How much sleep needed for preschoolers (3-5 years)
11-13 hours
How much sleep needed for school-aged children (5-10 years)
10-11 hours
How much sleep needed for teens (10-17 years)
8.5-9.25 hours
How much sleep needed for adults
7-9 hours
American Academy of Pediatrics suggestion for breastfeeding
breastfeed for 1 year
Sleep on back
Benefits of infants breastfeeding
- Fewer GI/respiratory/middle ear infections
- less likely to become obese/develop diabetes II/SIDS
Benefits of mothers breastfeeding
- Lower incidence of breast and ovarian cancer
- Reduction in type II diabetes
Psychosocial sequalae of childhood obesity
- Poor quality of life
- Depression
- anxiety
- poor executive functioning
- low self esteem
- peer victimization
- suicidal idealization
- sleep disturbance
BMI formula
Weight in kilos divided by height in meters squared. Same calculation for adults
BMI Underweight
<5th percentile
BMI healthy weight
5th-85th percentile
BMI overweight
85th-95th percentile
BMI obese
95th-99th percentile
BMI morbidly obese
> 99th percentile
