Lifespan Flashcards
1
Q
Children experiencing peer rejection versus children subject to peer neglect experience which trajectory when changing schools?
A
School change has no effect on the status of rejected children but may have beneficial effects on the peer status of neglected children; Coie and Kupersmidt showed that peer rejection tends to be stable across social transitions and is maintained in novel social groups, while those that are peer neglected may improve relations in the new setting
2
Q
Aging causes what change in the focal point of the eye?
A
The near focal point will move away from the eyes; The process of accommodation, defined by the near and far focal point, is changed by the hardening of the visual lens with age. The near focal point moves farther away.
3
Q
Emotional contagion
A
Emotional contagion refers to the tendency of babies to cry at the sound of another infant’s cries. This occurs in infants as young as two days old and is considered by experts to be the first sign of empathy.
4
Q
The intellectual disability associated with PKU is preventable with:
A
a special diet; PKU (phenylketonuria) involves an inability to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine. Intellectual disability and other symptoms of PKU can be reduced or eliminated by a diet low in phenylalanine beginning at birth.
5
Q
Permissive parents
A
Permissive parents provide their children with few controls or demands and display moderate levels of warmth. Their children exhibit little self-reliance, exploratory behavior, or self-control.
6
Q
Authoritarian parents
A
Authoritarian parents impose absolute standards of control and stress obedience, and they are willing to use force to obtain compliance. Their children tend to be insecure, anxious, and dependent and display a limited sense of responsibility.
7
Q
Authoritative parents
A
Authoritative parents combine rational control with warmth, receptivity, and the encouragement of independence. The authoritative style is most likely to produce independent, self-confident children and adolescents.
8
Q
phoneme
A
Babbling involves the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds—e.g., bi-bi-bi and da-da-da. These are simple units of sound without meaning, definitive of a phoneme.
9
Q
babbling age
A
begins at between 4-5 months of age and usually initially includes repetition of vowel and consonant sounds (simple sounds without meaning - phoneme)
10
Q
Children obey rules during the second stage of Kohlberg’s preconventional level of moral development, because:
A
doing so helps them satisfy their personal needs; Kohlberg’s theory of moral development consists of three levels, with each level including two stages. Instrumental hedonism is the second stage of the preconventional level. Children in this stage consider the correct action to be the one that best satisfies their own personal needs. Kohlberg illustrates this stage with the example of a 10-year-old boy’s reply to what it means to be a good son: “Be good to your father, and he will be good to you.”
11
Q
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
A
-Pre-conventional (0-9) 1. Obedience and punishment 2. Individualism and exchange
-Conventional (early adolescence to adulthood) 3. developing good interpersonal relationships 4. maintaining social order
Post-conventional (some adults, rare) 5. social contract and individual rights 6. universal principals
12
Q
Assimilation and accommodation (piaget)
A
Assimilation involves incorporating new knowledge into existing cognitive structures or schemes. The child in the question doesn’t know what a dog is and is incorporating it into her existing “kitty” scheme. Accommodation involves modifying an existing scheme or creating a new one.
13
Q
Thomas and Chess’s “goodness-of-fit” model (1977) predicts that maladjustment in children is due to:
A
a mismatch between the child’s basic temperament and their parents’ child rearing practices.
14
Q
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model
A
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model distinguishes between five layers (levels) that influence a child’s development: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. The mesosystem is the second layer and consists of interactions between components of the microsystem (e.g., the parents’ involvement in the child’s school experiences and interactions between the child’s church and community). The exosystem consists of elements in the social setting that indirectly affect the child’s development (e.g., the parents’ jobs). The macrosystem is the outermost layer and includes the values, laws, customs, etc. of the child’s culture.
15
Q
The age range of Erikson’s ____________ stage of psychosocial development corresponds to Freud’s phallic stage.
A
Erikson’s initiative vs. guilt stage is characteristic of children aged 3 to 6 years, which corresponds to Freud’s phallic stage.
16
Q
Children begin to deliberately and regularly use rehearsal, elaboration, and organization as memory strategies by _____ years of age.
A
The research has shown that the deliberate and consistent use of the memory strategies listed in the question begins at about 9 to 10 years of age.
17
Q
____________ involves intellectual disability and extreme obesity and is caused by a chromosomal deletion.
A
Approximately 1 in 200 babies is born with a chromosomal abnormality. Prader-Willi syndrome is caused by a chromosomal deletion, which occurs when part of a chromosome is missing.
18
Q
When does auditory localization in children establish?
A
Auditory localization refers to the ability to orient toward the direction of a sound (i.e., to turn one’s head toward the sound). This ability is not consistently established until about 1 year.
19
Q
Factors that predict adolescent drug use in Shedler and Block’s longitudinal studies (1990) include:
A
alienation, impulsivity, and subjective distress; This study of preschool to age 18 found that social maladjustment predates frequent drug use in adolescence.
20
Q
Most infants take their first steps with support at about:
A
9 to 10 months of age
21
Q
Rosenthal Effect
A
The Rosenthal Effect states that creating expectations for achievement has a self-fulfilling effect; Considering the Rosenthal effect, students described to teachers as “academic successes” are likely to achieve more than the other students by the end of the school year.
22
Q
ADAPTATION (ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION):
A
According to Piaget, cognitive development occurs when a state of disequilibrium brought on by a discrepancy between the person’s current understanding of the world and reality is resolved through adaptation, which entails two complementary processes: Assimilation is the incorporation of new knowledge into existing cognitive schemas, while accommodation is the modification of existing schemas to incorporate new knowledge.
23
Q
ADOLESCENT EGOCENTRISM (ELKIND)
A
Adolescent egocentrism appears at the beginning of the formal operational stage. As defined by Elkind, its characteristics include the personal fable and the imaginary audience.
24
Q
ADULT ATTACHMENT INTERVIEW
A
Research using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has confirmed a relationship between parents’ own attachment experiences and the attachment patterns of their children. For example, children of adults classified as dismissing on the AAI often exhibit an avoidant attachment pattern in the strange situation.
25
Androgyny
The research has found that, for both males and females, androgyny (which combines masculine and feminine characteristics and preferences) and, to a lesser degree, masculinity were associated with higher levels of self-esteem than was femininity. Androgyny has also been linked to greater flexibility when coping with difficult situations, higher levels of life satisfaction, and greater comfort with one’s sexuality.
26
BEHAVIORAL INHIBITION
Kagan (1989) found evidence of both a biological contribution and stability for the temperament trait of behavioral inhibition. His study demonstrated that children identified as either inhibited or uninhibited at 21 months of age can be similarly categorized at 5-1/2 and 7-1/2 years and that level of inhibition is related to physiological responsivity.
27
BILINGUALISM AND BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Bilingualism has been linked with several benefits including higher scores on measures of cognitive flexibility, cognitive complexity, analytical reasoning, and metalinguistic awareness. Research on bilingual education has produced inconsistent results partly because the existing programs vary considerably in approach and quality. Probably the best overall conclusion that can be drawn is that, when language-minority children participate in high-quality bilingual programs, they acquire academic English and knowledge of subject matter as well as or better than those who participate in immersion (English-only) programs.
28
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT (CEREBRAL CORTEX, NEUROGENESIS):
The cerebral cortex is largely undeveloped at birth but shows dramatic growth during the first two years of life primarily as the result of an increase in interconnections between neurons and myelination of nerve fibers. During the first few months of life, the primary motor and sensory areas of the cortex undergo substantial development, while the prefrontal cortex continues to mature through childhood and adolescence and may not be fully developed until the early or mid-20s. By about age 30, the brain starts to gradually shrink as the result of the atrophy of neurons, and there is an acceleration of this cell death after age 60. However, there is evidence that the brain attempts to compensate for neuronal loss by forming new interconnections between neurons and neural pathways and by creating new neurons (neurogenesis) in the hippocampus and possibly other areas of the brain.
29
BRONFENBRENNER’S ECOLOGICAL MODEL:
Bronfenbrenner described development as involving interactions between the individual and their context or environment, and his ecological model describes the context in terms of five environmental systems or levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
30
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE:
In terms of the outcomes of child sexual abuse for male and
female victims, some studies have found no consistent gender differences; but, when differences are found, the outcomes are worse for females than for males. The research has also found that the effects of sexual abuse tend to be less severe when the abuse was committed by a stranger than by a family member or other familiar person.
31
CHILDHOOD (INFANTILE) AMNESIA:
Studies investigating episodic (autobiographical) memory have found that adults are usually able to recall very few of the events they experienced prior to age three or four. This is referred to as childhood or infantile amnesia.
32
COERCIVE FAMILY INTERACTION MODEL (PATTERSON):
Patterson et al.’s coercive family interaction model proposes that children initially learn aggressive behaviors from their parents who rarely reinforce prosocial behaviors, rely on harsh discipline to control their children’s behavior, and reward their children’s aggressiveness with approval and attention and that, over time, aggressive parent-child interactions escalate. They developed the Oregon model of parent management training (PMTO) to help stop this coercive cycle by teaching parents effective parenting skills and providing parents with therapy to help them cope more effectively with stress.
33
COMPENSATORY PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS:
Research evaluating the effects of Head Start and other compensatory preschool programs has found that, while initial IQ test score gains produced by these programs are usually not maintained, children who attend these programs tend to have better attitudes toward school and are less likely to be retained in a grade, be placed in special education classes, and drop out of high school and more likely to attend college than their peers who do not attend such programs.
34
CONSERVATION
As defined by Piaget, conservation is the ability to understand that the physical characteristics of an object remain the same, even when the outward appearance of that object changes. Conservation depends on the operations of reversibility and decentration and develops gradually during the concrete operational stage, with conservation of number occurring first, followed by conservation of liquid, length, weight, and then displacement volume.
35
CONTACT COMFORT (HARLOW):
Research by Harlow with rhesus monkeys indicated that an infant’s attachment to their mother is due, in part, to contact comfort, or the pleasant tactile sensation that is provided by a soft, cuddly parent.
36
CRITICAL AND SENSITIVE PERIODS:
A critical period is a time during which an organism is especially susceptible to positive and negative environmental influences. A sensitive period is more flexible than a critical period and is not limited to a specific chronological age. Some aspects of human development may depend on critical periods but for many human characteristics and behaviors, sensitive periods are probably more applicable.
37
DIVORCE AND DIMINISHED CAPACITY TO PARENT
Divorced parents often experience emotional distress and changes in functioning that include a diminished capacity to parent. For example, custodial mothers may be uncommunicative, impatient, and less warm and loving toward their children (especially sons), and they monitor their children’s activities less closely and are less consistent but more authoritarian in terms of punishment.
38
DOWN SYNDROME
Down syndrome is caused by an extra number 21 chromosome. It is characterized by intellectual disability, retarded physical growth and motor development, distinctive physical characteristics, and increased susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease, leukemia, and heart defects.
39
EARLY REFLEXES
Reflexes are unlearned responses to particular stimuli in the environment. Early reflexes include the Babinski reflex (toes fan out and upward when soles of the feet are tickled) and the Moro reflex (flings arms and legs outward and then toward the body in response to a loud noise or sudden loss of physical support).
40
EFFECTS OF DIVORCE ON CHILDREN (CHILD’S AGE, SLEEPER EFFECT, PARENTAL CONFLICT):
The effects of divorce are moderated by several factors including the child’s age and gender. With regard to age, preschool children exhibit the most problems immediately after the divorce, but long-term consequences may be worse for children who were in elementary school at the time of the divorce. Boys exhibit more problems than girls initially, but there may be a “sleeper effect” for girls who do not exhibit negative consequences immediately after the divorce but exhibit problems in adolescence and early adulthood. The negative consequences of divorce are reduced when the conflict between parents is minimized.
41
EFFECTS OF AGE ON MEMORY
Several aspects of memory show age-related declines, especially recent long-term (secondary) memory. Deficits in secondary memory are believed to be due primarily to a reduced spontaneous use of effective encoding strategies. The working memory aspect of short-term memory also exhibits substantial age-related decline.
42
EFFECTS OF MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT
Research investigating the effects of maternal employment has found it to be associated with greater personal satisfaction for the working mother (especially when she wants to work) and, in terms of the children, with fewer sex-role stereotypes and greater independence. For lower-SES boys, maternal employment is associated with better performance on measures of cognitive development; but for upper-SES boys, it may result in lower scores on IQ and achievement tests.
43
EMPTY NEST SYNDROME:
Contrary to what is commonly believed, adults do not usually experience distress and a sense of loss (i.e., the “empty nest syndrome") when all of their children come of age and leave home. Instead, the studies suggest that they usually experience an increase in marital satisfaction and other positive changes.
44
ERIKSON’S STAGES OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Erikson’s theory of personality development proposes that the individual faces different psychosocial crises at different points throughout the life span. These are: trust vs. mistrust; autonomy vs. shame and doubt; initiative vs. guilt; industry vs. inferiority; identity vs. role confusion; intimacy vs. isolation; generativity vs. stagnation; and integrity vs. despair.
45
FETAL ALCOHOL SPECTRUM DISORDER
: Prenatal exposure to alcohol can cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) which encompasses a range of conditions that involve largely irreversible physical, behavioral, and/or cognitive abnormalities. Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the most severe form of FASD and is characterized by facial anomalies; retarded physical growth; heart, kidney, and liver defects; vision and hearing impairments; cognitive deficits; and behavioral problems. Alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder (ARND) is characterized by cognitive deficits and behavioral problems without prominent facial anomalies, delayed physical growth, or physical defects, while alcohol-related birth defects (ARBD) involves physical defects without other prominent symptoms.
46
FREUD’S STAGES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT:
: Freud’s theory of personality development proposes that development involves five invariant stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital), in which the libido shifts from one area of the body to another.
47
GAY AND LESBIAN PARENTS:
The research on gay and lesbian parenting suggests that the nature of the parent-child relationship is more important than a parent’s sexual orientation. Overall, children of gay and lesbian parents are similar to children of heterosexual parents in terms of social relations, psychological adjustment, cognitive functioning, gender identity development, and sexual orientation.
48
GENDER IDENTITY (KOHLBERG, BEM):
According to Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory, the development of a gender identity involves a sequence of stages that parallels cognitive development: By age two or three, children acquire a gender identity; that is, they recognize that they are either male or female. Soon thereafter, they realize that gender identity is stable over time (gender stability). By age six or seven, children understand that gender is constant over situations and know that people cannot change gender by superficially altering their external appearance or behavior (gender constancy). Bem’s gender schema theory attributes the acquisition of a gender identity to a combination of social learning and cognitive development. According to Bem, children develop schemas of masculinity and femininity as the result of their sociocultural experiences. These schemas then organize how the individual perceives and thinks about the world.
49
GENOTYPE VS PHENOTYPE
Genotype refers to a person’s genetic makeup; phenotype refers to observable characteristics, which are due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
50
GOODNESS-OF-FIT MODEL (THOMAS AND CHESS)
According to Thomas and Chess’s goodness-of-fit model, behavioral and adjustment outcomes are best for children when parents’ caregiving behaviors match their child’s temperament.
51
HETERONOMOUS VERSUS AUTONOMOUS MORALITY (PIAGET):
Piaget distinguished between two stages of moral development. The stage of heteronomous morality (or morality of constraint) extends from about age seven through age ten. During this stage, children believe that rules are set by authority figures and are unalterable. When judging whether an act is “right” or “wrong,” they consider whether a rule has been violated and what the consequences of the act are. Beginning at about age 11, children enter the stage of autonomous morality (or morality of cooperation). Children in this stage view rules as being arbitrary and alterable when the people who are governed by them agree to change them. When judging an act, they focus more on the intention of the actor than on the act’s consequences.
52
HORIZONTAL DECALAGE
As described by Piaget, horizontal decalage refers to the gradual development of an ability (e.g., conservation) within a particular stage of development.
53
IDENTITY STATUSES (MARCIA):
Marcia proposes that the achievement of an identity (including values, beliefs, and goals) involves four identity stages (statuses) that reflect the degree to which the individual has experienced an identity crisis and is committed to an identity: diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement.
54
INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORIES
Information processing theories describe cognitive development as involving increasing information processing capacity and efficiency. For example, improvements in memory are due to increased memory capacity, enhanced processing speed, and greater automaticity. In contrast to Piagetians, information processing theorists focus on development within specific cognitive domains such as attention, memory, and reasoning rather than on identifying global principles of development.
55
INTERNAL WORKING MODEL (BOWLBY):
Bowlby distinguished between four stages of attachment development that occur during the first two years of life – pre-attachment, attachment-in-the-making, clearcut attachment, and the formation of reciprocal relationships. According to Bowlby, as a result of experiences during these stages, a child develops an internal working model, which is a mental representation of self and others that influences the child’s future relationships.
56
KLINEFELTER SYNDROME:
Klinefelter syndrome occurs in males and is due to the presence of two or more X chromosomes along with a single Y chromosome. A male with this disorder has a small penis and testes, develops breasts during puberty, has limited interest in sexual activity, is often sterile, and may have learning disabilities.
57
KOHLBERG’S LEVELS OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT:
According to Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory, moral development coincides with changes in logical reasoning and social perspective-taking and involves three levels that each include two stages: preconventional (punishment and obedience; instrumental hedonism), conventional (good boy/good girl; law and order), and postconventional (morality of contract, individual rights, and democratically-accepted laws; morality of individual principles of conscious).
58
MALNUTRITION DURING PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT:
Malnutrition during prenatal development is associated with miscarriage, stillbirth, and low birth weight and may result in suppression of the immune system, intellectual disability, and other serious problems. Severe malnutrition in the third trimester (especially protein deficiency) is particularly detrimental for the developing brain and can lead to a reduced number of neurons, reduced myelination, and neurotransmitter abnormalities.
59
MATERNAL DEPRESSION:
Children of depressed mothers are at higher risk for emotional and behavioral problems, although the exact nature and severity of the problems depend on several factors including genetic predisposition and the quality of early mother-child interactions. There is evidence that the physiological signs of distress in children associated with maternal depression (e.g., elevated heart rate, greater right frontal lobe asymmetry) are apparent by the time the child is three months of age. In addition, studies of toddlers have linked maternal depression (especially chronic, severe depression) to passive noncompliance and higher-than-normal rates of aggressiveness when interacting with peers.
60
MEMORY STRATEGIES OF CHILDREN:
Preschoolers sometimes use non-deliberate memory strategies but do so in an ineffective way, while children in the early elementary school years use somewhat more effective techniques but are often distracted by irrelevant information. In addition, when taught rehearsal or other memory strategies, young children may apply them to the immediate situation but do not subsequently use them in new situations. By age nine or ten, children begin to regularly use rehearsal, elaboration, and organization, and, in adolescence, these strategies are “fine-tuned” and used more deliberately and selectively.
61
MONTESSORI METHOD:
The Montessori Method is an approach to education that emphasizes child-centered, experiential learning and sense discrimination (i.e., learning through seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching).
62
NATIVIST APPROACH TO LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (CHOMSKY):
The nativist approach to language acquisition stresses the role of biological mechanisms (e.g., Chomsky’s language acquisition device) and universal patterns of development.
63
NICHE-PICKING:
Niche-picking is also known as active genotype-environment correlation and occurs when individuals deliberately seek environments that are consistent with their genetic makeup.
64
OBJECT PERMANENCE:
According to Piaget, an important accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage is the development of object permanence (the “object concept”), which allows the child to recognize that objects and people continue to exist when they are out of sight.
65
PARENTING STYLE (BAUMRIND):
Baumrind and colleagues distinguish between four parenting styles that reflect various combinations of responsivity and demandingness: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and rejecting-neglecting. High parental responsivity combined with moderate control (an authoritative style) is associated with the best outcomes for children and adolescents, including greater self-confidence and self-reliance, achievement-orientation, and social responsibility.
66
PATTERNS OF ATTACHMENT (AINSWORTH):
Research using Ainsworth’s strange situation has revealed four patterns of attachment: secure, insecure/ambivalent, insecure/avoidant, and disorganized/disoriented. Each pattern is associated with different caregiver behaviors and different personality and behavioral outcomes. For example, infants who exhibit a disorganized attachment pattern are at an increased risk for aggressive behavior problems in childhood.
67
PERCEPTION IN NEWBORNS (VISION, AUDITORY LOCALIZATION, PAIN):
Of the senses, vision is least well developed at birth. At birth, the newborn sees at 20 feet what normal adults see at about 200 to 400 feet; but, by about six months, the infant’s visual acuity is probably very close to that of a normal adult. With regard to specific types of visual stimuli, newborns prefer to look at high-contrast patterns, and their preference for more complex patterns increases with increasing age. The fetus hears sounds in the uterus during the last months of development, and newborns are only slightly less sensitive to sound intensity than adults. Some auditory localization is evident shortly after birth, seems to disappear between two and four months, and then reappears and improves during the rest of the first year. The research has confirmed that newborns are sensitive to pain. For example, male newborns who are circumcised without anesthesia often react with a loud cry, a facial grimace, and an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. There is evidence that exposure to severe pain as a newborn can impact later reactions (e.g., in some cases, can increase sensitivity to pain).
68
PHENYLKETONURIA (PKU):
PKU is caused by a pair of recessive genes and produces severe intellectual disability unless the infant is placed on a diet low in the amino acid phenylalanine soon after birth.
69
PHONEMES VERSUS MORPHEMES
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that are understood in a language. The English language has 45 phonemes – for example, b, p, f, v, and th. Morphemes (e.g., “un” and “ing”) are the smallest units of sound that convey meaning. Morphemes are made up of one or more phonemes.
70
PHYSICAL MATURATION IN ADOLESCENCE:
: Early and late physical (sexual) maturation in adolescence has been associated with several consequences. For example, early maturation has mixed consequences for boys. It has been linked to greater popularity with peers and superior athletic skill but also to dissatisfaction with body image and increased risk for drug and alcohol use, delinquency, and depression. For girls, early maturation has been linked primarily to negative consequences. Early maturing girls tend to have a poor self-concept, be unpopular with peers, be dissatisfied with their physical development, have low academic achievement, be more likely to engage in sexually precocious behavior and drug and alcohol use, and be at increased risk for depression and eating disorders.
71
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
According to Piaget, cognitive development involves four universal and invariant stages. During the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the child learns about objects and other people through the sensory information they provide and the actions that can be performed on them. A key accomplishment of the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7) is the development of the symbolic (semiotic) function, which is an extension of representational thought and permits the child to learn through the use of language, mental images, and other symbols. Limitations of this stage include precausal reasoning and egocentrism. Children in the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11) are capable of mental operations, which are logical rules for transforming and manipulating information. As a result, they are able to classify in more sophisticated ways, seriate, understand part-whole relationships in relational terms, and conserve. Finally, a person in the formal operational stage (age 11+) is able to think abstractly and is capable of hypothetico-deductive reasoning.
72
PRECAUSAL REASONING (MAGICAL THINKING/ANIMISM):
As described by Piaget, the preoperational stage of cognitive development is characterized by precausal (transductive) reasoning, which reflects an incomplete understanding of cause and effect. One manifestation of precausal reasoning is magical thinking (the belief that thinking about something will cause it to occur); another manifestation is animism (the tendency to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects).
73
REJECTED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN:
A distinction is made between rejected and neglected children; and the studies have found that, overall, outcomes are worse for children who are actively rejected by their peers. Rejected children express greater loneliness and peer dissatisfaction and are less likely to experience an improvement in peer status when they change social groups.
74
RELATIONAL CRISIS (GILLIGAN)
Gilligan proposed that, in early adolescence, girls experience a relational crisis due to pressures to conform to cultural stereotypes of
femininity. As a result, they become disconnected from themselves (e.g., they experience a “loss of voice”).
75
REMARRIAGE (CHILD’S AGE, STEPFATHERS):
Although there is evidence that, when compared to children in intact biological families, children in stepfamilies have more adjustment problems, the differences between the two groups of children are generally small. Problems are often most severe when remarriage occurs when children are in early adolescence, and this is particularly true for girls residing with a biological mother and stepfather. In terms of parenting style, the typical stepfather tends to be distant and disengaged from his stepchild.
76
RUTTER’S INDICATORS:
Rutter argued that the greater the number of risk factors a baby is exposed to, the greater the risk for negative outcomes. He concluded that the following six family risk factors are particularly accurate predictors of child psychopathology: severe marital discord, low socioeconomic status, overcrowding or large family size, parental criminality, maternal psychopathology, and the placement of a child outside the home.
77
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY EFFECT:
Research by Rosenthal and Jacobson found that teachers’ expectations about students can have a “self-fulfilling prophecy effect” on their academic performance, motivation, and self-esteem of students.
78
SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING:
Semantic and syntactic bootstrapping are mechanisms that facilitate early language development. Semantic bootstrapping refers to using knowledge of the meaning of a word to infer its syntactical category; while syntactical bootstrapping refers to using syntactical knowledge to deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word.
79
SEXUAL ACTIVITY IN LATE ADULTHOOD:
The research has generally confirmed that sexual activity in mid-life and earlier is a good predictor of sexual activity in late adulthood. For example, Landau et al. (2007) found that sexually active adults 57 to 85 years of age reported a frequency of sexual activity similar to the frequency reported in an earlier study of adults ages 18 to 59. However, their survey results also indicated that the number of older adults identifying themselves as “sexually active” decreased with increasing age
80
SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS:
Most interactions between young siblings involve prosocial, play-oriented behaviors. However, middle-childhood is usually marked by a paradoxical combination of closeness/conflict and cooperation/competition. During this period, sibling rivalry increases and is most intense among same-gender siblings who are 1-1/2 to 3 years apart in age and whose parents provide inconsistent discipline. In adolescence, siblings spend less time together, their relationship becomes less emotionally intense and more distant, and the friction between them usually declines as they begin to view one another as equals.
81
SIGNS OF ATTACHMENT
Obvious signs of attachment to a primary caregiver are usually not apparent until about six months of age. These include social referencing, separation anxiety, and stranger anxiety.
82
SOCIAL-COGNITIVE FACTORS AND AGGRESSION:
The research on social-cognitive factors has found that aggressive children differ from their less aggressive peers in terms of self-efficacy beliefs (they are more likely to say that it is easy to perform aggressive acts but difficult to inhibit aggressive impulses) and beliefs about the outcomes of their behaviors (they expect that aggression will be followed by positive consequences including reduced aversive treatment by others). Aggression has also been linked to a hostile attribution bias, which is the tendency to misinterpret the positive or ambiguous acts of others as intentionally hostile.
83
SOCIOEMOTIONAL SELECTIVITY THEORY (CARSTENSEN):
An assumption underlying socioemotional selectivity theory is that social goals have two primary functions – the acquisition of knowledge and the regulation of emotion – and it predicts that social goals correspond to perceptions of time left in life as being limited or unlimited. According to this theory, older adults perceive time as limited, and consequently, tend to prefer emotionally close partners.
84
STAGES OF GRIEF (KUBLER-ROSS):
Kubler-Ross (1969) concluded that people progress through the following five stages of grief when facing their own death or other important loss: (a) denial and isolation (“No, this isn’t happening to me!”); (b) anger (“Why me?”); (c) bargaining (“Yes me, but not until my grandchild is born”); (d) depression (“Yes, me”); and (e) acceptance (“My time is close and that’s alright”).
85
STAGES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (CRYING, BABBLING, FIRST WORDS, TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH):
Language development occurs in a predictable sequence of stages. Infants initially produce three distinct patterns of crying: a basic (hunger) cry, an anger cry, and a pain cry. Babbling begins at about four months of age and consists of the repetition of simple consonant and vowel sounds (e.g., “bi-bi-bi”). Early babbling includes sounds from all languages; but, between nine and 14 months of age, babies narrow their repertoire of sounds to those of their native language. Most infants speak their first word between the ages of 10 and 15 months and, by 18 months, speak about 50 words. First words are most often nominals, or labels for objects, people, or events, although action words, modifiers, and personal-social words (e.g., please) also occur. By 18 to 24 months of age, children exhibit telegraphic speech – i.e., they string two or more words together to make a sentence (e.g., “me go,” “more juice”). While these phrases initially contain only nouns, verbs, and adjectives, by 27 months, prepositions and pronouns have been added.
86
TEACHER FEEDBACK
The research indicates that teachers tend to respond differently to boys and girls. Boys generally receive more correction, criticism, praise and help than girls do. Moreover, the nature of the feedback is gender-related; e.g., boys are more often criticized for sloppiness and inattention, girls for inadequate intellectual performance.
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TURNER SYNDROME
Turner syndrome occurs in females and is caused by the presence of a single X chromosome. Females with Turner syndrome are short in stature, have characteristic physical features (e.g., drooping eyelids, webbed neck), have delayed or absent development of the secondary sex characteristics, and may exhibit certain cognitive deficits.
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UNDEREXTENSION/OVEREXTENSION
During the course of language development,
children exhibit a number of errors including underextension and overextension. Underextension occurs when a child applies a word too narrowly to objects or situations, while overextension occurs when a child applies a word to a wider collection of objects or events than is appropriate.
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VISUAL CHANGES IN ADULTHOOD
After age 65, most individuals experience visual changes that interfere with reading, driving, and other aspects of daily life. In addition to presbyopia (loss of near vision), common changes include loss of visual acuity, reduced perception of depth and color, increased light sensitivity, and deficits in visual search, dynamic vision (perceiving the details of moving objects), and speed in processing what is seen.
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VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY (ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT, SCAFFOLDING):
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory proposes that cognitive development is always first interpersonal (when the child interacts with an adult or other teacher) and then intrapersonal (when the child internalizes what he/she has learned). According to Vygotsky, cognitive development is facilitated when instruction falls within the child’s zone of proximal development, which refers to the discrepancy between a child’s current developmental level (the level at which the child can function independently) and the level of development that is just beyond their current level but can be reached when an adult or more experienced peer provides appropriate scaffolding (instruction, assistance, and support).
