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PSYCH 130 > Midterm 1 > Flashcards

Midterm 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is human development?

A
  • 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
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2
Q

What order do the lobes in the brain develop?

A
  • occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal
  • reverse c shape
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3
Q

What are theories?

A

set of concepts and propositions designed to organize, describe, and explain observations

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4
Q

Why do we need theories?

A

they help us understand the MECHANISMS of how things work

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5
Q

What are the three theories that drives the field of developmental psychology?

A
  • Nature vs nurture
  • Activity vs Passivity
  • Continuity vs Discontinuity
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6
Q

Describe nature vs nurture

A
  • nature refers to our genetic endowment
  • nurture refers to the wide range of environments that influence our development (everything except DNA)
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7
Q

Discuss the idea that children can shape their own development

A
  • 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
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8
Q

Compare activity vs passivity

A

Idea that individuals have active role in shaping who they become vs not getting to pick or play a part

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9
Q

Describe continuity vs discontinuity

A
  • 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)
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10
Q

What are John Locke’s theories?

A
  • 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
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11
Q

What is Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory?

A
  • 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
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12
Q

What led to research-based approaches and when?

A
  • social reform movements
  • Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution
  • 19th century
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13
Q

How does Darwin relate to developmental psych?

A
  • theory of evolution provides a useful framework for thinking about the mechanisms that produce change in children’s development
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14
Q

What is variation?

A

differences in thought and behavior within and among individuals

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15
Q

What is selection?

A

more frequent survival and reproduction of organisms that are well adapted to their environment

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16
Q

What was Sigmund Freud’s theory?

A
  • 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)
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17
Q

What was John Watson’s theory?

A
  • 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
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18
Q

Which is it: nature or nurture?

A
  • it’s the interaction between both!
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19
Q

Compare identical and fraternal twins

A
  • 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
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20
Q

What do twin studies control for?

A
  • can control for the environment (nurture)
  • because 100% of environment is shared
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21
Q

What are the Jim twins? What about the 3 identical strangers?

A
  • example of identical twins/triplets raised in different environments
  • have a ton of stuff in common with each other
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22
Q

Compare normative development and individual differences

A
  • 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)
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23
Q

What are problems in longitudinal research?

A
  • 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)
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24
Q

Describe cross-sectional research

A
  • different-aged groups are studied at the same point in time
  • group differences are assumed to be result of developmental changes
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25
Q

What are pros and cons of cross-sectional research?

A

Pros:
- fast/cheap

Cons:
- individual changes in development cannot be detected
- results may suffer from cohort effects

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26
Q

Describe longitudinal-sequential designs.

A
  • 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
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27
Q

What are some characteristics of infants

A
  • have a heartbeat
  • sucking reflex
  • look at things
  • get bored
  • reach for objects
  • turn their head
  • crawl
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28
Q

What’s the preferential looking paradigm?

A

given 2 objects to look at, infants will look at the the more interesting one

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29
Q

If an infant does not possess visual acuity, where will they look in a preferential looking task?

A

they will have no preference between more/less interesting stimuli

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30
Q

Do babies look more at a scrambled or schematic face?

A

schematic (b/c its meaningful)

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31
Q

What is habituation?

A
  • 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
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32
Q

What’s the violation of expectancy in infants?

A
  • 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
33
Q

Describe the object permanence study.

A
  • 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
34
Q

Describe eye tracking in babies?

A
  • identifies angle between center of pupil (which moves) and corneal reflection (which doesn’t move)
  • this computes the point of gaze
35
Q

How can the eye tracking task be used to see early detections of autism?

A
  • 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
36
Q

Describe the high-amplitude sucking paradigm

A
  • 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
37
Q

Describe the high-amplitude sucking paradigm study with mother’s voices (Decasper & Spence, 1986)

A
  • 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
38
Q

Describe the infant kicking research method’s study

A
  • 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
39
Q

What can we draw conclusions about when comparing psychological outcomes in identical vs fraternal twins?

A

we can draw conclusions about genetic contributions be cause the twins in both groups is held constant

40
Q

Describe an FMRI. (functional magnetic resonance imaging)

A
  • way to non-invasively measure brain activity
  • large magnet
  • spatial resolution goof, temporal bad
  • expensive
  • sensitive to movement
41
Q

What were Descartes’ theories?

A
  • 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)
42
Q

What are lobes?

A
  • major areas of the cortex that are associated with different categories of behavior
  • occipital, temporal, parietal, frontal
43
Q

What does the occipital lobe do?

A

primarily associated with processing visual information

44
Q

What does the temporal lobe do?

A

involved in memory, visual recognition, and processing of emotion & auditory infomation

45
Q

What does the parietal lobe do?

A

It governs spatial processing and integrates sensory input with information in memory

46
Q

What does the frontal lobe do?

A

It organizes behavior and is responsible for planning

47
Q

What order does the brain develop in?

A

C-shape formation

48
Q

What do neurons do?

A
  • 1 neuron sends message to the next
  • they run all throughout the body
49
Q

What are the stages of neural development?

A
  • 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)
50
Q

Describe synaptogenesis.

A
  • period of overproduction
  • followed by synapse pruning/
    elimination
  • neutral darwinism (survival of the fittest in brain cells)
  • neuroplasticity (ability of brain to change)
51
Q

Describe synaptic pruning

A
  • 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)
52
Q

Why doesn’t the marshmallow task work as well on older kids or adults?

A
  • 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
53
Q

How does the red light, green light game relate to developmental psych?

A
  • 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
54
Q

What does the PKU example show?

A
  • 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
55
Q

Explain a gene x environment interaction with abuse/depression as an example

A
  • 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
56
Q

What is plasticity?

A
  • 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
57
Q

Describe Greenough’s rats

A
  • 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
58
Q

What is a critical period? What is a sensitive period?

A

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

59
Q

What are the 3 types of development?

A
  • 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
60
Q

What is the neural tube?

A
  • U-shaped groove formed from top layer of differentiated nerve cells in the embryo
  • eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord
61
Q

What happens in the placenta? Is it perfect?

A
  • 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
62
Q

Describe teratogens

A
  • 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)
63
Q

What are some reasons a teratogen may affect a fetus when the mother remains unharmed?

A
  • 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
64
Q

What can a fetus sense?

A
  • 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)
65
Q

What is the stepping reflex?

A

a baby held upright moves its feet like walking

66
Q

Can a fetus be habituated or dehabituated?

A
  • yes
  • at 32 weeks gestation, the fetus habituates
67
Q

Describe Mary Schneider’s rhesus monkeys study

A
  • 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
68
Q

What happened in the second rhesus monkeys study when they injected ACTH instead of noise administration?

A
  • offspring of stressed mothers still anxious (same results)
  • shows that the cortisol release is responsible for the anxious offspring
69
Q

Which gender goes through puberty first?

A

girls before boys

70
Q

What are some psychological areas affected by a child’s size and motor abilities?

A
  • 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)
71
Q

What is puberty?

A
  • 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
72
Q

Does the brain keep up with changes in the body?

A
  • 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
73
Q

What happens with late maturing boys?

A
  • 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
74
Q

What happens with early maturing girls?

A
  • 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
75
Q

Compare nature vs nurture in terms of motor development

A
  • 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
76
Q

Why does the stepping reflex disappear a few weeks after birth only to return a few months later? Describe the study.

A
  • 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
77
Q

Who came up with the dynamic systems theory? What is it?

A
  • 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
78
Q

Describe the example of dynamic systems where toys are offered to babies’ feet.

A
  • 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
79
Q

How can you differentiate a younger from an older brain?

A
  • the whiter one is the older individual
  • the more dense one?

PSYCH 130 (3 decks)

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