Final Exam Flashcards
What happens during middle childhood brain growth?
- Synaptogenesis begins to slow
- Myelination continues
- Areas involved in cognition continue to evolve
- Processing is faster
- Memory and retrieval improve
How much of sports-related injuries are from children ages 5-14?
2/3
Gray matter development in girls vs. boys?
Tends to be 1-2 years ahead for girls
- peaks occur in different lobes at different times
- differences in overall brain size = 8-10% larger in boys
Piaget: Contrete Operational
- The child is more logical
- They can attend to multiple aspects of a situation simultaneously and take various perspectives
Vygotsky Applied to the Classroom
- Teachers are the focus of many studies
- Reciprocal teaching
Reciprocal teaching
The teacher explains and models 4 cognitive strategies to provide scaffolding & improve reading comprehension
- questioning
- summarizing
- clarifying
- predicting
Kohlberg’s Stages
- Preconventional
- Conventional
- Postconventional
Preconventional: Avoidance of punishment (obedience)
Moral decisions based on avoiding negative consequences
Preconventional: Satisfaction of one’s own needs (self-interest)
Moral decisions are based in self-centeredness
Conventional: Good girl/bad girl (conformity)
Emphasis on gaining approval of others
Conventional: Law and Order
Emphasis on maintaining a social order
Post-conventional: Social contract (human rights)
Weighing the values of different perspectives (both individual and social) on how each upholds the common good
Post-conventional: Universal ethical (universal human ethics)
“Decision of conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical principles that are logical, universal, and consistent”
Girls who mature earlier than their peers…
- tend to become dissatisfied with their body image
- become sexually active sooner
- give birth earlier
- tend to have less education
- tend to have less stable partnerships
- experience more emotional distress
Boys who mature earlier than their peers…
- tend to be more mature and more popular
- tend to be regarded as leaders
- are happier with their body image compared to late maturing boys
- tend to use tobacco and alcohol earlier than their peers
Reorganization of the brain in adolescence:
after gray matter peaks, it begins to decline due to pruning of extra/weak synapses; at the same time, myelination increases
Role of experience in brain maturation in adolescents
experience supports cognition and the development of abstract thinking
Adolescent brain & risky behavior: 3 factors
- Change in ratio of gray to white matter
- Increase in connections with other parts of the brain
- Increase in the neurotransmitter dopamine, especially in the limbic system
Adolescent pregnancy:
- pregnancy for a woman < 20 years old
- birth rates have decreased since 1970