Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is human development?
- the multidisciplinary study of how people change systematically and how they remain systematically the same over time
- change dependent on previous changes
- not just children
What order do the lobes in the brain develop?
- occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal
- reverse c shape
What are theories?
set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain observations
Why do we need theories?
they help us understand the MECHANISMS of how things work
What are the three theories that drives the field of developmental psychology?
- Nature vs nurture
- Activity vs Passivity
- Continuity vs Discontinuity
Describe nature vs nurture
- nature refers to our genetic endowment
- nurture refers to the wide range of environments that influence our development (everything except DNA)
Discuss the idea that children can shape their own development
- children contribute to their own development from early in life and their contributions increase as they grow older
- attentional patterns (ex: a kid who shows an early interest in music may in turn receive more exposure to music)
- older children and adolescents choose many environments, friends, and activities for themselves –> their choices impact future
Compare activity vs passivity
Idea that individuals have active role in shaping who they become vs not getting to pick or play a part
Describe continuity vs discontinuity
- continuous development: age-related changes occur gradually
- discontinuous development: age-related changes include occasional large shifts so that children of different ages seem qualitatively different
- ex: could view infant as changing every day (continuous) or infant → toddler → kid → teen → young adult → adult → old (discontinuous)
What are John Locke’s theories?
- tabula rosa (blank slate)
- we are born with an empty mind & we acquire knowledge through our experiences
- people who raise children have power in determining who they become
- nurture
What is Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory?
- natural unfolding
- human development like in nature… a seed will still sprout and bloom and die even if it is never seen or touched by human
- The body knows what it needs to do → we should just let it be and not mess with it
What led to research-based approaches and when?
- social reform movements
- Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
- 19th century
How does Darwin relate to developmental psych?
- theory of evolution provides a useful framework for thinking about the mechanisms that produce change in children’s development
What is variation?
differences in thought and behavior within and among individuals
What is selection?
more frequent survival and reproduction of organisms that are well adapted to their environment
What was Sigmund Freud’s theory?
- psychoanalytic theory…
- intrinsic drives and motives that we’re largely unaware of (can be irrational and unconscious)
- resolution of earlier stages affects later self (there are enduring effects of early-life experiences)
- thought there were qualitative sexual stages (now debunked)
What was John Watson’s theory?
- behaviorism…
- conclusions about human behavior should be based only on observable behaviors (not non-testable theories)
- environmental determinism (physical environment affects behavior/society)
- nurture
- influenced by Pavolv’s classical conditioning –> Little Albert sutdy
Which is it: nature or nurture?
- it’s the interaction between both!
Compare identical and fraternal twins
- identical = shared placenta, identical DNA, same sex, same blood type, monozygotic, 1 sperm & 1 egg split
- fraternal = 2 separate placentas, non-identical DNA (50%), can have same or different sex/blood type, 2 separate embryos (nature)
- both share 100% of the same environment with the other twin (nurture)
- so if rate of depression for both types is same then it’s bc of nurture
- if rates are different it’s bc of nature
What do twin studies control for?
- can control for the environment (nurture)
- because 100% of environment is shared
What are the Jim twins? What about the 3 identical strangers?
- example of identical twins/triplets raised in different environments
- have a ton of stuff in common with each other
Compare normative development and individual differences
- normative development = looking at changes of groups (how people are alike)
- individual differences = looking at individual variations in development (how people differ from each other)
What are problems in longitudinal research?
- attrition: participants may move away or drop out of research, leading to biased samples
- practice effects: participants may behave unnaturally from repeated exposure to a test situation (ex: standing up for height measure)
- cohort effects: particular influences on one group that may make results inapplicable to other groups (ex: COVID)
Describe cross-sectional research
- different-aged groups are studied at the same point in time
- group differences are assumed to be result of developmental changes
What are pros and cons of cross-sectional research?
Pros:
- fast/cheap
Cons:
- individual changes in development cannot be detected
- results may suffer from cohort effects
Describe longitudinal-sequential designs.
- combines longitudinal and cross-sectional methods by studying 2+ age groups over time
- allows longitudinal & cross-sectional comparisons
- detects cohort effects by comparing same-age results for participants who were born in diff years
What are some characteristics of infants
- have a heartbeat
- sucking reflex
- look at things
- get bored
- reach for objects
- turn their head
- crawl
What’s the preferential looking paradigm?
given 2 objects to look at, infants will look at the the more interesting one
If an infant does not possess visual acuity, where will they look in a preferential looking task?
they will have no preference between more/less interesting stimuli
Do babies look more at a scrambled or schematic face?
schematic (b/c its meaningful)
What is habituation?
- decreased response to repeated stimuli
- infant gets bored after being show something enough
- dehabituation: show them something different & they’ll be interested if they can detect the difference
What’s the violation of expectancy in infants?
- young infants express surprise and will look longer at events or objects that violate their expectancy
- ex: object permanence (the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they can no longer be seen or heard
Describe the object permanence study.
- found that babies looked longer at “impossible” event when they possessed object permanence
- babies knew the block was still there & should have stopped the train even though they couldn’t see it
- could have object permanence at ~ 3months in this study when they thought not until ~9 months before
Describe eye tracking in babies?
- identifies angle between center of pupil (which moves) and corneal reflection (which doesn’t move)
- this computes the point of gaze
How can the eye tracking task be used to see early detections of autism?
- autistic individuals make less eye contact than non-autistic
- if looking at mouth (more interesting to ASD babies), likely autistic; if looking at eyes, probably not autistic
Describe the high-amplitude sucking paradigm
- program detects sucks, computes their amplitude, & plays a stimulus back when a suck has a high amplitude
- reinforcing auditory stimulus is presented contingent on infant’s sucking responses –> the more they suck, the more they can listen
Describe the high-amplitude sucking paradigm study with mother’s voices (Decasper & Spence, 1986)
- moms read Dr. Seuss to baby for 6 weeks prior to birth
- 3-day old infants attached to high-amplitude sucking machine
- babies listened to tape of mom or other 3-day old infant’s mom reading Dr. Seuss
- response was stronger (sucked faster) to own mom showing they recognized and preferred their mom’s voice
Describe the infant kicking research method’s study
- tied string to baby’s foot & when they kick, the mobile spins until eventually they realize, they control it
- babies came back later to see if they remembered & kicked instantly
- infants as young as 2 months could remember a week later
What can we draw conclusions about when comparing psychological outcomes in identical vs fraternal twins?
we can draw conclusions about genetic contributions be cause the twins in both groups is held constant
Describe an FMRI. (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
- way to non-invasively measure brain activity
- large magnet
- spatial resolution goof, temporal bad
- expensive
- sensitive to movement
What were Descartes’ theories?
- Wanted to answer how body & spirit are connected…
- said body works like a machine w/ material properties & spirit is nonmaterial/doesn’t follow laws of nature
- thought they were connected in pineal gland but not true (mind is rlly produced from cellular activity in brain)
- theory was dualism: interaction of theology & physics (belief that psychological and biological processes are separate)
What are lobes?
- major areas of the cortex that are associated with different categories of behavior
- occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal
What does the occipital lobe do?
primarily associated with processing visual information
What does the temporal lobe do?
involved in memory, visual recognition, and processing of emotion & auditory infomation
What does the parietal lobe do?
It governs spatial processing and integrates sensory input with information in memory
What does the frontal lobe do?
It organizes behavior and is responsible for planning
What order does the brain develop in?
C-shape formation
What do neurons do?
- 1 neuron sends message to the next
- they run all throughout the body
What are the stages of neural development?
- proliferation: rapid production of new cells (we make too many at first)
- migration: following chemical paths to its final destination
- aggregation: adhering to similar cells
- differentiation: they get assigned their specialized role
- synapse formation: axons & dendrites form, overproduction of them (these are what allows cells to communicate)
- apoptosis: selective cell death & synapse elimination
- myelination - myelin covers nerons (speed)
Describe synaptogenesis.
- period of overproduction
- followed by synapse pruning/
elimination - neutral darwinism (survival of the fittest in brain cells)
- neuroplasticity (ability of brain to change)
Describe synaptic pruning
- neurons communicate through synapses (neural networks)
- brain prunes away weaker synapses because we start with too many)
- the more a pathway is used, the stronger the connection
- if not enough synapses are prunes, there’s hyper connectivity (like in autism/sensory overload b/c they’re not correctly specialized)
- most pruning happens early in life
- process not all happening uniformly (c-shaped development)
Why doesn’t the marshmallow task work as well on older kids or adults?
- prefrontal cortex more developed as you get older
- little kids don’t know how to inhibit their actions
- preschoolers do very poorly but by 6 years old they do much better
How does the red light, green light game relate to developmental psych?
- kids fall at the red light because they don’t have much inhibitory control yet
- this is because their prefrontal cortex isn’t developed
- this extends to the body, not just the mind
What does the PKU example show?
- environment interacts with genes
- PKU is genetic disease where phenylalanine builds up in body b/c it can’t be metabolized which can lead to intellectual delays
- if ppl with PKU don’t ever consume phenylalanine, they won’t have disability but if they do, they will
- having the genotype doesn’t mean the phenotype will be expressed - it depends on environment
Explain a gene x environment interaction with abuse/depression as an example
- if you have the alleles for depression and are abused, the genes get turned on
- if you have the genes but don’t get abused, they won’t get turned on
- basically just don’t have to worry about genes at all unless you encounter abuse –> then it only matters if you do have the alleles
What is plasticity?
- the ability of the brain to change in response to the environment
- negative ex: kittens raised in a vertical world wouldn’t be able to see horizontal lines
- positive ex: if child learns violin young & is right-handed, they can become ambidextrous
Describe Greenough’s rats
- rats were raised in what was labeled an enriched or a control environment but it was really a typical environment and a depriving environment
- those in the typical (“enriched”) environment had higher learning on future tasks, synapse formation, dendritic spines, & neural growth
- parents thought this meant they needed to have kids in hyper-enriched environments but misinterpreted meaning of enriched
What is a critical period? What is a sensitive period?
critical period:
- time early in life with heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli.
- without appropriate stimulus, can be impossible to develop some functions
- ex: lazy eye (patch can fix at age 4-6 but not after)
sensitive period:
- same thing but just gets harder to develop function, not impossible
- ex: learning a second language
What are the 3 types of development?
- gene-driven: occurring based on unfolding DNA, which tells brain everything
- experience-expectant: too many neurons when first born b/c brain doesn’t know what world you’ll be born into
- experience-dependent: synapse pruning to get rid of neurons and make unique individual based on experiences
What is the neural tube?
- U-shaped groove formed from top layer of differentiated nerve cells in the embryo
- eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord
What happens in the placenta? Is it perfect?
- placenta is where developing fetus & mother’s blood cross
- evoultion has not made mother’s womb a biological barrier - toxins/ stress/ disease can still affect baby
Describe teratogens
- anything that can harm the fetus
- effect depends on genetic diathesis
- the greater the dose, the more the harm but nobody knows how much is okay (ex: alcohol)
- can be transmitted through father
- most impactful during rapid growth (sensitive period)
What are some reasons a teratogen may affect a fetus when the mother remains unharmed?
- does of medicine for 135 pound woman may be a massive overdose for a fetus
- mother is not undergoing organogenesis (development of organs)
- placenta is not fool-proof
What can a fetus sense?
- sensory structures present relatively early in prenatal development
- fetus experiences tactile stimulation as result of own activity & tastes/smells amniotic fluid
- responds to sound from at least 6th month of gestation (ex: prof breaking plate & her belly shaking)
- prenatal visual experience bad (bad vision b/c no visual stimuli before birth)
What is the stepping reflex?
a baby held upright moves its feet like walking
Can a fetus be habituated or dehabituated?
- yes
- at 32 weeks gestation, the fetus habituates
Describe Mary Schneider’s rhesus monkeys study
- 6 pregnant monkeys were exposed to unpredictable noise to replicate moderate stress
- 6 other pregnant monkeys as controls
- the 18 month old offspring of the mothers with stress has anxious/awkward behaviors when they experienced stress
- shows that stressful experience of mother can affect offspring social behavior
What happened in the second rhesus monkeys study when they injected ACTH instead of noise administration?
- offspring of stressed mothers still anxious (same results)
- shows that the cortisol release is responsible for the anxious offspring
Which gender goes through puberty first?
girls before boys
What are some psychological areas affected by a child’s size and motor abilities?
- testing of wills (ex: if toddler refuses to get in car, parent can just pick them up. can’t do that when they;re a teen)
- social interaction (ex: last picked for dodgeball influences psychological experience)
- attachment behaviors (ex: attachment btwn mother & infant at earlier stages)
- boldness (ex: 2 vs 16 yr olds have diff levels of power/boldness)
- agency (ex: old enough to drive car or ride roller coaster)
What is puberty?
- process of reaching sexual maturity
- physical AND psychological changes
- “renaissance of the brain”
- hormone cascade leads to brain changes & secondary sex characteristic + secondary sex characteristics leads to brain changes
Does the brain keep up with changes in the body?
- no
- age of onset puberty is dropping & emotional centers early developing
- prefrontal cortex continues to develop into early adulthood so immature impulse control
- adult body but not brain
What happens with late maturing boys?
- tend to be more anxious, eager, attention seeking
- feel more socially inadequate
- lower academic aspirations (from parents too)
- b/c development is evocative & bigger seems better
What happens with early maturing girls?
- tend to be more anxious/depressed
- tend to be less outgoing & popular
- b/c girls develop earlier so not appealing to underdeveloped male counterparts
- instead attract older boys w/ activities they’re not cognitively ready to handle
Compare nature vs nurture in terms of motor development
- nature: unfolding of a genetically programmed sequence of events (as brain hets better, instructs body to do more complicated things)
- nurture: opportunities to exercise & practice motor movements are critical in developing these skills
Why does the stepping reflex disappear a few weeks after birth only to return a few months later? Describe the study.
- examined body weight & number of steps of infants
- 3 groups: control, added weight group, removed weight group
- heavier infants stepped less & lighter infants stepped more
- the reflex stops because their legs are too heavy so they’re harder to lift
- shows that changes as simple as physical growth can affect phenotype
Who came up with the dynamic systems theory? What is it?
- Esther Thelen
- need to consider the entire baby as a system
- development is self-organizing, systems generate novelty through their own activity
- through problem-solving, the body instructs the brain
Describe the example of dynamic systems where toys are offered to babies’ feet.
- infants attached to contraption and had toy held in front of them by arms or by feet
- reach for it with feet first b/c its easier & the opportunity is presented
- they want the toy so they tell the brain to move the leg
How can you differentiate a younger from an older brain?
- the whiter one is the older individual
- the more dense one?
