Modules 12-17 Flashcards
Learn
Childhood
Before puberty
Critical period
A window of time when exposure to certain stimuli is necessary for an aspect of development
ex. may be a critical period for language (i.e. if not exposed to language within first few years of life, language capabilities may never develop, debated since can’t ethically be studied experimentally)
Brain cell development
Brain needs input to develop
Impoverished environment produces less developed brain cell
Enriched environment produces more developed brain cell
Schema
Conceptual framework for understanding what something is, what it involves, and what it is like
Assimilation
Interpreting new information based on existing schema
Accommodation
adapting schema to incorporate new information
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
How we develop understanding of how the world works by interacting with the world
Sensorimotor phase
Birth-nearly 2 years old
Experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping)
Key milstones: object permanence, stranger anxiety
Preoperational phase
About 2-6/7 years old
Representing things with words and images, using intuitive rather than logical reasoning
Key milestons: pretend play, egocentrism
Concrete operational phase
About 7-11 years old
Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and preforming arithmetic operations
Key milestones: conversation, mathematical transformations
Formal operational
About 12-adulthood
Reasoning abstractly
Key milestones: abstract logic, potential for mature, moral reasoning
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Deficits in communication, social interaction, interpreting emotions, unusual posture, tone of voice (or sometimes completely nonverbal), fixated interests, repetitive behaviors
Reduced communication among brain regions that normally work together in perspective taking which requires theory of mind (understanding that different minds have different perspectives and different access to information)
Genetic, prenatal influences (e.g. “extreme male” brain)
Attachment styles of infants
Assessed using strange situation paradigm (infant is in room with mother and stranger, mother leaves, then mother returns)
Reflects infant’s temperament and caregivers’ responsiveness
Associated with relationships later in life
Secure attachment
Infant is comfortable exploring if mother nearby, when mother leaves, infant becomes distressed, mother returns and infant can be quickly comforted
Insecure attachment
Any deviation from secure attachment responses
Parenting Styles
Correlated with different outcomes for children
Permissive style
Few boundaries
Children tend to be aggressive and immature
Authoritarian style
Extremely strict and unreceptive
Children tend to have impaired social skills, lower self-esteem
Authoritative style
Clear boundaries, but communicative
Children tend to have better social skills, higher self-esteem
Neglectful Style
Children tend to have poor academic and social outcomes
Adolescence
Begins at puberty “sexual maturity”
End not clearly defined (somewhere around 19-24 years old)
Frontal lobe continues to develop, myelinate allows for development of reasoning, long-term planning, impulse control, moral thinking, etc.
Frontal lobe development lags behind limbic system development
Often impulsivity, struggles with emotion
Parent relationships in adolescence
Parent-child arguments increase (usually over mundane things) but most adolescents report liking their parents
Peer relationships in adolescence
Peers influence behavior, social inclusion important
Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development
Different periods of development are characterized by different social issues/conflict that affect social development
Adolescence (teen years into 20s): identity vs. role confusion, teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity or they become confused about who they are
Social identity
Comes from social group memberships
Identity
Sense of self
Adolescents may try out various roles
Intimacy
Developing close relationships
Kohlber’s levels of moral thinking
Preconventional morality
Conventional Morality
Post-conventional morality
Preconventional morality
Before 9
Self interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards, “if you save your dying wife, you’ll be a hero”
Conventional morality
Early adolescence
Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social order “if you steal the drug for her, everyone will think you’re a criminal”
Post-conventional morality
Actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles “people have the right to live”
Sex
Biological maleness/femaleness
Chromosomal (XX=female, XY=male)
Genital (internal and external sex organs)
Hormonal (higher levels of testosterone stimulate male development, estrogen with women)
In vast majority of cases, sex is unambiguously male or female because all starts with chromosomes
Chromosomes cause either male or female genitals to develop and chromosomes and genitals influence sex hormones that cause secondary sex characteristics (breasts, facial hair, etc.) and various male/female typical characteristics
Intersex
Rare cases where people are “between sexes” not fully male or female
e.g. missing or extra sex chromosome (X, XXX, XXY)
XY with female external genitals or XX with male external genitals
External genitals that are between male and female
Gender
General term for societal, behavioral aspects of maleness/femaleness, masculine/feminine
Exists in every culture though specific gender expressions differ
Gender identity
Deeply felt sense of one’s own maleness/femaleness
Gender expression
All the signifiers of gender (clothing, speech, interests, etc.) which may or may not reflect one’s gender identity
Transgender “trans”
General term that includes various ways one’s gender identity can differ from one’s sex
Male sex, female gender identity
Female sex, male gender identity
Gender identity neither male nor female, or mixture of both
Gender dysphoria
Intense distress over conflict between one’s sex and gender identity
Typically starts in childhood, worsens in puberty
Most people who identify as trans are not diagnosed with gender dysphoria
Prenatal sexual development
Around 7th week: Y chromosome prompts testes develop and produce testosterone
Between 4th and 5th month: sex hormones in fetal brain support male/female typical development
It’s thought that slightly more or less than typical amount of given sex hormone during development may lead to more ‘masculinized’ and ‘feminized’ brain in different ways depending on particular point of development
Perhaps causing brain to develop in way that leads to same-sex attraction later in life, or in a way leads to transgender identity later in life
Adolescent sexual development
Largely driven by sex hormones
Primary sex characteristics
Sex characteristics directly related to reproduction (e.g. maturation of ovaries/testes, external genitals)
Secondary sex characteristics
Sex characteristics not directly related to reproduction (e.g. breasts and widened hips in girls, voice change, body hair)
Males vs. females sex differences
Exist in all sexual species
Boys are more physically aggressive, girls are more relationally aggressive (using gossip, ostracization)
Testosterone
Main male sex hormone
In both males and females but much higher amount in males
Stimulate growth male sex organs during fetal period and development of male sex characteristics during puberty
Estrogen
In both males and females but much higher amounts in females
Contributes to female sex organs during fetal period and development of female sex characteristics
Sexual Response Cycle
Defined by William Masters and Virginia Johnson (1966)
Excitement
Plateau
Orgasm
Resolution
Refractory period
Sexual dysfunction
Consistent impairment of sexual arousal or functioning causing distress (erectile disorder, premature ejaculation, inability to orgasm, lack of interest/arousal, typically more physiological than psychosocial)
Paraphilia
Unusual sexual interest that causes distress for the person or causes harm to self/others
e.g. pedophilia (sexual interest in prepubescent children)
Sexual orientation
Enduring sexual attraction to same sex, other sex, or both
Heterosexual
Attraction to opposite sex
Most common
Homosexual
~3-4% men, ~2% in women (but women more likely to have same-sex experience)
Bisexual
<1% of population
Asexual
<1% of population
Evidence for genetic influence on sexual orientation
Sexual orientation more common among identical twins than among fraternal twins
Single gene in fruit flies determines sexual orientation (no single “gay gene” in humans)
Prenatal influence on sexual orientation
Atypical hormone exposure at particular point in development may lead to development more typical of other sex in some particular way (e.g. sexuality)
Subtle gay/straight brain differences
Part of hypothalamus in gay men resembles that in straight women more than in straight men
On average, gay people perform between straight men and straight women on certain cognitive tasks (e.g. visual rotation)
Same-sex attraction in other species
Seen in hundreds of other species (birds, bears, giraffes, gorillas, monkeys, bonobos)
Sexual selectivity
Across cultures, men less selective in sexual partners than women
Likely evolutionary reasons for differences in mating strategies
Higher cost of mating for females (even risk of life), can only reproduce about once per year at most, with one mate at a time, so more important to find best available mate rather than maximizing number of mating opportunities
We don’t see all men being extremely promiscuous and all women being extremely selective because each strategy at least somewhat beneficial to both sexes (men can’t invest resources in unlimited number of offspring), men and women mostly have the same genes, so if trait is beneficial enough to one sex, it can last in the gene pool and end up in both sexes unless chromosome specific
Evolutionary basis for attraction
Some traits attractive in all cultures: signs of health and fertility, facial symmetry, “averageness”, social dominance and affluence in men, low waist/hip ratio in women, differential sex characteristics (masculinity in men, femininity in women)
Sexual selection (certain traits being more attractive to potential reproductive partners and thus lasting in the gene pool) is type of natural selection
e.g. male peacock’s tail evolved because sexy to females, offers no survival benefit
Sensation
Process of receiving sensory information
A stimulus (energy) stimulates sensory receptors
Energy is transduced into electrochemical energy (in form of action potentials) and delivered to the brain
e.g. receiving light bouncing off a table is sensation
Perception
Process of organizing and interpreting sensations (making “sense” of them)
e.g. recognizing the object is a table is perception
Involves two types processing
Bottom-up processing
Uses only the raw sensations
Top-down processing
Uses other information (prior expectations, knowledge, etc.)
Absolute threshold
Theoretical minimum intensity of stimulus needed to be detectable
In actuality, typically isn’t consistent minimum amount so often measured as intensity that’s detectable some percentage of the time (e.g. 50%) of the time
Difference threshold
JND “just noticeable difference”
Theoretical minimum change in intensity of stimulus needed to be detectable
In actuality isn’t consistent minimum amount so often measured as change that’s detectable some percentage of the time
Probability of detecting stimulus on graph
Typically S-shaped function of stimulus intensity
Weber’s law
JND for given type of stimulus is constant proportion of stimulus intensity and not a constant absolute amount
e.g. JND for weight is some constant proportion of initial weight not constant number of points, in otehr words, JND directly proportional to intensity of stimulus
Not really a law (some types of stimuli approximately follow Weber’s Law but not all)
Sensory adaptation
Reduced sensitivity resulting from constant stimulation (e.g. stop hearing air conditioner after a while)
Unchanging stimuli aren’t typically important
We perceive the world not exactly as it is but rather in a way that tends to be useful to use
Not habituation because about perception rather than interest (loss of interest vs. sensing stimulus less)
