Lifespan Development - Flash Cards
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.
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).
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.
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.
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”).
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.
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.
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.
Adult Attachment Interview
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.
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.
Heteronomous vs 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.
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.
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.
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”)
(e) acceptance (“My time is close and that’s alright”).
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.
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 retarded or absent development of the secondary sex characteristics, and may exhibit certain cognitive deficits.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model
Bronfenbrenner described development as involving interactions between the individual and his/her context or environment, and his ecological model describes the context in terms of five environmental systems or levels: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
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, retarded physical growth, or physical defects, while alcohol-related birth defects (ARBD) involves physical defects without other prominent symptoms.
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.
Genotype Versus Phenotype
Genotype refers to a person’s genetic make-up; phenotype refers to observable characteristics, which are due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
Contact Comfort (Harlow)
Research by Harlow with rhesus monkeys indicated that an infant’s attachment to his/her mother is due, in part, to contact comfort, or the pleasant tactile sensation that is provided by a soft, cuddly parent.
Adolescent Egocentrism (Elkind)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.