PSY 341 - Exam 1 - Study Guide

Question 1

Critical period

Answer 1

Critical: A period of moderate sensitivity to environmental influences or stimulation that at other times.
* Begins and ends abruptly.
* After this period, the phenomenon will not appear.

Question 2

Sensitive period

Answer 2

Sensitive: A period of maximum sensitivity to environmental influences or stimulation.
* Begins and ends gradually.
* Phenomenon may still be influenced beyond this period.

Question 3

The earliest developing parts of the brain

Answer 3

In just the first 6 months of college, brains changed in specific areas:

(a) inferior anterior cingulate gyrus
(b) right posterior insula and bilateral claustrum
(c) caudate head
(d) right claustrum

All areas associated with Emotion, Motivation, and Self-awareness.

6 weeks: reflexive smile (brain stem)
9 weeks: social smile (other brain areas)

Question 4

Understand the levels of Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model

Answer 4

(1) Micro-system: who & what do I interact with every day?
* Joey himself (internal), his immediate environment, relationships.

(2) Exo-system: family, finances, neighborhood, healthcare
* Circumstances in which Joey doesn’t directly
participate (family’s finances, foster mother’s health, social
worker’s responsibilities).

(3) Macro-system: Culture, economy, popular understanding of
infant development.
* The cultural impacts on Joey & his foster parents
(including foster care laws & cultural beliefs about child care).

(4) Meso-system: Relationships between micro systems (foster
mother/social worker)

(5) Chrono-system: Age, Developmental Level, Time

Question 5

Experience expectant vs. Experience dependent brain growth

Answer 5

Experience-expectant refers to the fact that the average or normal environment provides infants with the necessary input to develop the neural connections to enable the baby to function across these domains.

Experience-dependent includes their socio-emotional development, language and some of the higher aspects of cognitive development.

Question 6

Explicit vs. Implicit memory

Question 7

Risk factors, protective factors, resilience

Answer 7

What are RISK FACTORS?
May be specific (linked to a negative outcome) or non-specific (linked to a variety of potentially negative outcomes)

The number of risk factors may be more predictive of many outcomes than any particular combination of them.

What are PROTECTIVE FACTORS?
Characteristics or conditions which delay, suppress, or neutralize negative outcomes.

What is RESILIENCE?
A process that allows an individual to:
Overcome the odds posed by risk
Maintain competence under pressure
Recover from trauma

Question 8

How does the HPA axis develop over the first year of life?

Question 9

What is Toxic / Tolerable / Positive stress? How does toxic stress effect a child (Romanian orphanage example from lecture)

Answer 9

Positive: Brief increases in heart rate and mild elevations in stress hormone levels.

Tolerable: Serious, temporary stress response, buffered by supporting relationships.

Toxic: Prolonged activation of stress response systems in the absence of protective relationships.

Question 10

What is Theory of Mind

Answer 10

Theory of Mind: (beginning around age 4-5) understand that thoughts are individual and private. Other people experience different things than you do, and even the same
experience may be interpreted differently by two people…

This is the start of “REAL FRIENDSHIPS”

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: “peak” experience of friendships

Question 11

Infant attachment classification types and what they mean

Answer 11

Secure Childhood: Unhappy when the mother leaves and happy when she comes back.
Secure Adulthood: Confident in relationships and willing to ask for help from partner.

Avoidant Childhood: Does not want mother when she comes back and is distracted by the environment.
Avoidant Adulthood: Prefers life alone and doesn’t open up emotionally to partner.

Ambivalent Childhood: Very upset when the mother leaves and does not interact with the environment a lot.
Ambivalent Adulthood: Is always afraid to be rejected and obsessive to keep closeness.

Question 12

Attachment styles in adulthood – what are they? do they influence parenting?

Answer 12

Secure Childhood: Unhappy when the mother leaves and happy when she comes back.
Secure Adulthood: Confident in relationships and willing to ask for help from partner.

Avoidant Childhood: Does not want mother when she comes back and is distracted by the environment.
Avoidant Adulthood: Prefers life alone and doesn’t open up emotionally to partner.

Ambivalent Childhood: Very upset when the mother leaves and does not interact with the environment a lot.
Ambivalent Adulthood: Is always afraid to be rejected and obsessive to keep closeness.

Question 13

The relationship between child attachment style and child temperament (clown example from lecture)

Answer 13

Does temperament play a role in attachment? An 18-month-old baby will respond differently to the stressors based upon attachment and temperament. Inhibited temperament (hard time adjusting to stimuli) and insecure attachment with their mother showed elevated cortisol levels when placed in a new situation. A clown or robot would walk in. If a child had an insecure attachment and inhibited temperament would get a rise in cortisol levels. An inhibited temperament but secure attachment would get scared and turn to the mother for comfort, but their cortisol levels wouldn’t rise – predisposition to the stress reaction, but since the caregiver was there, it didn’t happen. Kids with a less inhibited temperament and insecure attachment relationship seemed less vulnerable to the cortisol rise.

Question 14

Explain the Orchid Hypothesis

Answer 14

David Dobbs tells us about a new theory in genetics called the orchid hypothesis that suggests that the genes that underlie some of the most troubling human behaviors — violence, depression, anxiety — can, in combination with the right environment, also be responsible for our best behaviors.

Risk alleles create not just risk but possibility.

Question 15

What is a polymorphic allele?

Answer 15

Polymorphism, as related to genomics, refers to the presence of two or more variant forms of a specific DNA sequence that can occur among different individuals or populations. The most common type of polymorphism involves variation at a single nucleotide (also called a single-nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP). Other polymorphisms can be much larger, involving longer stretches of DNA.

Question 16

From an evolutionary perspective, why do “high risk”
polymorphisms exist?

Answer 16

“Dandelions” – more protective polymorphisms over-all, less
vulnerable to environmental risks

“Orchids” – one or more polymorphisms that increase risk
- more vulnerable to environmental risks.

Question 17

What is epigenetics?

Answer 17

Epigenetics, the science of how environmental exposures can modify gene expression without altering the DNA sequence of the gene itself.

The epigenome, a lattice of chemical “marks” or tags, literally lies upon the genome and controls the expression or silencing of DNA.

Question 18

What is a polygenic trait?

Answer 18

(1) Hereditary influences on behavior are polygenic & multifactorial.

A polygenic trait = phenotype is influenced by more than one gene. Traits that display a continuous distribution, such as height or skin color, are polygenic.

Many polygenic traits are also influenced by the environment and are called multifactorial.

(2) Genetic effects on behavior are probabilistic rather than predetermined.

3) Genetic bases for developmental disorders reflect, in most cases, extreme variations on a continuum that includes normal variants.

Some genes modify the effect of environmental risks
on behavioral outcomes
* The purpose of Polymorphic alleles is to facilitate
adaptation to environmental contexts

Question 19

What is notable in the present day about Freud’s psychosexual stages of development?

Answer 19

• Not particularly useful in explaining modern day human development.
• 1st person to link early childhood experiences and how they shape our adulthood.
• 1st to say our behavior is driven by unconscious drivers.
• If you treat your child in a negative way during a psycho-sexual phase, that child will engage in that activity.
• 1st to combine nature and nurture to form our personality, relationship status and mental health status.

Question 20

Cognitive Theory – Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Answer 20

• Thoughts shape our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.
• The ability to think changes qualitatively over the lifespan. Prior to Piaget, the idea was quantitative - as we grow older, we know more. As we know more, we think and act differently.

Question 21

Schemas

Answer 21

• The way we make sense of the world. We build on what we already understand.
• Become more complicated as we grow older.
• A cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. We use schemas because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment.

Question 22

Assimilation & Accommodation

Answer 22

Assimilation: what we are good at when we are little. We take what happens to us and add it to what we already understand without changing anything. Like air in a balloon. A child may not be able to assimilate that a horse is an animal if they have dogs and cats in their house (existing schema). Information that doesn’t fit with their existing schema is rejected.

Accommodation: you can change your schema when you receive new information.
* Our brains cannot perform the function of accommodation very well until we are in Piaget’s state of concrete operational thought - a hallmark of good accommodation - adjust our schemas so we can adapt to new information.