PSYC-500 Human Growth and Development Flashcards
Accommodation
Piagetian concept of adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences. Involves changing a schema to incorporate new information. This can also mean changing expectation. Happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.
Ex: When a child is told his existing schema for dog doesn’t fit with a horse, the child must accommodate or adapt his schema for horses.
Androgyny
Falls under the umbrella of gender role classification, it is in contrast to the dictates of stereotypical gender roles. Sandra Bem, an expert in the field, argues that it is psychologically healthier to have blended traits rather than be only stereotypically male/female. Bem created a sex role inventory that can determine how masculine, feminine, or androgynous an individual is.
Ex: Oprah would be considered androgynous. She is a successful business woman who built media empire, but she also focuses on and advocates for women’s issues on her talk show. The rock star, David Bowie would be considered androgynous for wearing stereotypically female clothing, makeup, and for having long hair
Assimilation
A process by which members of an ethnic minority group lose cultural, social, and psychological characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant cultural group and forsake thier own culture. The individual loses aspects of their culture of origin, such as language, customs, and ethnicity, and becomes indistinguishable from the majority. Individuals may feel pressure from members of the majority culture to assimilate quickly. Generally seen as a negative thing due to giving up the previous culture, and may have been forced to assimilate.
Attachment
Attachment refers to the close, emotional bond between two people, especially between caregivers and children. Early theorists who influenced the work on attachment include Harry Harlow, Erik Erikson, but John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth furthered the study and importance of the attachment construct in critical ways for the study of socio-emotional growth and development. Their work demonstrated that how we attach to caregivers leads to individual differences in personality and socio-emotional processing.
Example: A one-year-old child is playing with their mother at a park when one of the mother’s friends approaches. The child has never met this friend. The mom asks that her friend watch the child while she visits the restroom. The child shows distress when the mother leaves and when the mother returns. But, after receiving and some encouraging words the child calms down quickly and resumes happily playing near the mother. According to Attachment Theory, this child is securely attached.
Child Abuse
Child abuse is a type of maltreatment that refers to both active abuse which can be physical, sexual and/or emotional as well as the neglect of children. Child abuse has many negative impacts on development in childhood and adolescence including poor emotion regulation, trouble with peers, trouble at school. Children who experience abuse are at higher risk for problems in adulthood including substance abuse, mood disorders, relational difficulties, and employment issues.
Example: Robby is a little boy who was a victim of child maltreatment/abuse by his parents who both had substance abuse issues. He was often left alone at a young age, left to fend for himself. There was not always food in the house. Sometimes when his parents came home inebriated, they’d hit Robby. Robby had trouble maintaining friendships at school, missed a lot of days of school because he did not have anyone to bring him, and often physically lashed out at other children when they teased him about his appearance.
Classical conditioning
A type of learning coined by Ivan Pavlov after his seminal experiments with dogs, classical conditioning is a type of learning via association. A previously neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus resulting in a conditioned response. Understanding this process has led to a deeper understanding of how environmental conditions can elicit specific responses and have advanced how we treat certain psychological disorders such as substance-use disorders.
Example: Jim is seeking help quitting smoking. His therapist reviews the conditions under which Jim is likely to smoke. Jim says he starts every day with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Jim has learned via classical conditioning to associate coffee with the pleasant impacts of nicotine. It will likely require many cups of coffee not paired with a cigarette to break this association and lessen Jim’s morning cravings.
Cohort
A cohort is a group of people born at a similar point in history who share similar experiences. Sometimes cohorts are studied to understand the differences in life-span development amongst different cohorts.
Example: Individuals born during the Great Depression had a lot fewer opportunities for formal education and often did not have enough to eat. This cohort often performs significantly worse on intelligence tests than cohorts born after WWII who were more likely to be food secure and have opportunities for formal and even free education.
Continuity vs. non-continuity
Continuity vs. Non-continuity is an ongoing debate amongst developmental researchers regarding how humans grow and develop. The debate surrounds the extent to which development is continuous and gradual or occurs in distinct stages. Understading the debate is critical for understanding how different theorists study and conceptualize human development.
Example: Cognitive theories of development like Piaget’s stages explain purport that individual’s move through distinct, qualitatively unique stages of development, an example of a theorist who has landed closer to discontinuity in the debate. He theorizes that humans move through stages as they gain new cognitive abilities. Behavioral theorists, on the other hand, stress that development is happening constantly and continuously. We learn new information or behaviors via reinforcement.
Control group
In experimental research, a control group is a randomly assigned group of participants that receive a placebo or no treatment. This allows researchers to measure the effect of the particular treatment of study and to determine causal relationships between variables.
Example: A social scientist is interested in whether or not a new style of therapy is effective for treating anxiety. She recruits participants that score high on anxiety measures and randomly assigns each to either a control group that will receive a placebo or no treatment or the experimental group which will receive the novel treatment. Both groups are tested again following treatment on anxiety measures to assess significant group differences and, thus, the effectiveness of the treatment.
Correlational research
Correlational research is used to explore and describe the relationships between two or more variables. Correlations look at whether or not variables vary together, not whether one causes the other. Correlations are expressed using a correlational coefficient (f) which is a number between -1 and 1. The higher the correlational coefficient (whether positive or negative), the stronger the relationship between the variables.
Example: A researcher is interested in exploring the relationship between socio-economic status and marital satisfaction. They collect survey data to see if the two variables very together and find a moderate positive correlation of r=.41. Their research can’t determine if lower SES causes lower levels of marital satisfaction or if low levels of marital satisfaction somehow lead to lower levels of SES or if some other variable moderates or mediates the relationship.
Critical Period
Critical or sensitive periods are specific time frames during early development in which the presence or absence of certain experiences has long-lasting effects on individual growth and development. If during a critical period, an individual does not receive the appropriate stimuli required to develop a given function, it may be difficult or even impossible to develop that function later in life. Most commonly associated with language development and attachment.
Example: An embryo is exposed to a teratogen in week three of in-utero development. This is the critical period for the growth of the central nervous system and causes a structural defect in the brain of the embryo.
Example: A parent brings their adopted child to therapy because the parent is worried about the child’s development. The child is struggling in kindergarten to engage and learn things the other children are learning. After speaking to the parent, the therapist finds out that the child was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The therapist explains to the parent that the child may be struggling to engage and learn things because the child’s birth mother drank alcohol during a critical period of fetal development.
Cross-sectional Design
A quasi-experimental research method in which researchers look at a cross-section of individuals of different ages in order to determine if any group differences in a dependent variable are the result of age. This type of design is advantageous in the study of human growth and development because it is cost-effective and efficient. However, this design can obscure trends in development and can’t determine causality as it does not trace variables over time, but takes a snapshot.
Example: A researcher is interested in how stress levels of individuals change over the course of a lifetime. They have a short timeframe and a small budget to conduct their research and opt for a cross-sectional design which will allow them to capture and compare stress levels of individuals of many ages in a relatively short period of time.
Defense Mechanism
Part of psychoanalytic theories and coined by Freud and his daughter, Ana, defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies that reduce the unpleasant feelings that arise from conflicts between parts of our psyche (id, ego, superego). They allow people to navigate painful experiences and/or channel energy, but can become problematic used to frequently or throughout an individual’s development.
Example: Mike hates his gym teacher. The experience of hatred and the thoughts and feelings that accompany it are abnormal for Mike and produce a lot of discomfort. His ego unconsciously protects him from this experience by projecting his feelings of hatred onto the gym teacher. Mike believes that his gym teacher hates him.
Developmental Level
Part of developmental psychology; a stage in human development or span of time when changes occur. Understanding developmental levels gives clinicians a guideline of what should be happening & when
can may indicate a lack in cognitive development or potential neurological problems.
Example: A client brings his 4-year-old daughter to therapy because she is not yet talking. After a physical examination, her family practitioner was unable to find a physical reason for this. The therapist concluded that speech should have typically occurred at this developmental level and the lack of speech may reflect a developmental delay
Egocentrism
Part of Piaget’s theory of development, egocentrism is the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and another person’s. This quality is presenting children in the preoperational stage (2-7) and is an important cognitive limitation to understand the development of children.
Example: Sam is taking part in a study on egocentrism in preschool-aged children. He is 4 years old. He is seated at a table and shown a model of a town with a small child doll in it. The researcher moves the doll around the model and asks Sam to select from a set of pictures of the model which picture best represents the doll’s perspective or view of the town. He selects his own view of the town. He is unable to put himself in the place of the doll.
Extinction
Part of behavioral psychology, extinction is a process or term used in both operant and respondent conditioning.
As defined by B.F. Skinner in operant conditioning, extinction is the process of withdrawing or withholding reinforcers that maintain a behavior. This process can be an effective treatment for decreasing an unwanted behavior but is generally more effective when combined with other therapies. In classical conditioning, extinction is a stage of learning when a conditioned stimulus does not elicit a conditioned response any longer after repeated presentations of the CS without the US.
Example: You’re seeing a child for behavioral problems. One of the parent’s complaints is that the child is always throwing tantrums at the store. He always asks the parent to buy candy. At first, the parent refuses and when the child starts crying the parent gives him and buys him candy. You explain to the parent that she is unknowingly reinforcing the tantrums. You ask her to engage in extinction by saying no and sticking to it (removing reinforcement for tantrum).
Genotype
Part of the biological determinants of human development, genotypes include information in the form of DNA encoded in the genes that we inherit from our parents. Our genotype is our genetic makeup or profile. Genotypes can be expressed in different ways depending on epigenetic and environmental differences. Understanding genotypes is critical to understanding individual differences in growth and development.
Example: An individual inherits an allele for blue eyes from one parent and an allele for brown eyes from the other parent. Those two alleles form a gene and are part of an individual’s genotype.
Genotype- environment Relationship
The environment an individual grows in, both in utero and extra utero, influences how an individual’s genotype, or genetic make-up, is expressed. Understanding this relationship is critical for understanding how our biological and environmental environments influence growth and development.
Example: An individual inherits a gene that gives them the genetic potential for being tall. However, that person grows up in an environment without access to healthy food and, thus, that genetic potential for height is not realized.
