PSYC 500: Human Growth and Development Flashcards
Accommodation
This term comes from Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. It explains how children adjust their schemas to take new information into account when it does not fit into existing schemas. Accommodations pays a significant role in allowing humans to adapt to and learn about their environment.
Ex: When children see moving vehicles and they think they are all cars. Upon correction, the child’s schemas change to understand that cars, trucks and motorcycles are all vehicles but different types of vehicles, allowing them to better understand the world.
Androgyny
A term from sociocultural theory in developmental psychology describing people who have a mix of both feminine and masculine characteristics within a single individual. This does not only include physical characteristics, but emotional and behavioral characteristics as well as attitudes. This is important in understanding how gender influences identity development, and how it influences communication styles and relationships, especially in early adulthood.
Ex:
Assimilation
A term from human development and Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, assimilation is when a person encounters new information and they use their existing schemas to understand the new experience. This is important in learning because it helps individuals to classify new information.
Ex: A child sees a moving machine, like a train, and calls it a car because they know the moving machine their parents have is called a car.
Attachment
A term from human development, attachment is the close emotional bond between two people, especially between infant and caregiver. There are four main attachment styles: anxious-ambivalent attachment, secure, avoidant, and disorganized. This is important as attachment styles often influence relationships through adulthood. Attachment theorists believe that attachment styles set the stage for adolescent and adult behavior which is why one must develop healthy attachment early in life to have healthy emotional and interpersonal development.
Ex: A couple starts seeing therapist for marriage counseling. The wife expresses anxiety about husband leaving, and through therapeutic exploration it is revealed that parents provided inconsistent care and affection. This produced an anxious attachment that is currently affecting the marriage.
Child Abuse
Maltreatment of a child of either abuse, which includes physical sexual of emotional, or neglect. Child abuse has negative impacts on development, especially regarding poor emotional regulation, trouble with peers and trouble at school. Children who experience abuse are at a higher risk of problems in adulthood, like substance abuse, mood disorders, relational difficulties and employment difficulty/issues. It is important for counselors to look out for signs of child abuse because they are mandated reporters and legally required to report suspected abuse.
Ex: Alexa’s dad get angry, especially when he’s been drinking. On certain nights when his anger is exceptionally present and Alexa does something to upset him, like play with her dolls in the front room instead of in her bedroom, he burns her with the ends of his cigarettes and tells her how stupid she is. This is physical and emotional abuse toward Alexa.
Classical Conditioning
Part of theories of development - a type of learning named by Ivan Pavlov, notoriously exhibited in his experiment with salivating dogs. Classical conditioning is learning by association where a neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus to provoke an unconditioned response. Over time, the neutral stimulus becomes conditioned to elicit the unconditioned response thus making it a conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. This is a crucial concept to understanding how environmental conditions affect responses and has helped improve treatments of certain disorders like substance use disorder.
Ex: Sally (NS) likes Jake so she decides to give Jake his favorite type of candy (UCS) (which makes him happy- UCR) every time they see each other. After many times of Sally giving Jake candy, Jake feels happy (CR) when seeing Sally (CS) even without candy.
Cohort
A term from human development to explain a group of people born around a similar time in history and share common experiences. Cohorts may be studied to understand these differences in life-span development amongst different cohorts. Cross-sectional designs may be used to compare differences among cohorts while longitudinal studies may compare the cohort to itself over time. These cohort effects may be any belief or characteristic shared by the cohort and are influenced by pressures or challenges that are typical of that group.
Ex: The cohort born between 1990 and 1999 are called 90’s babies while the children born after the end of World War II are referred to as “boomers.” The experiences that 90’s babies shared are similar to those in their cohort but different from the experiences of those in the “boomers” cohort. Boomers often believe that a strong work ethic is an essential personality trait of productive members of society (cohort effect).
A client enters therapy frustrated because his granddaughter engages in frivolous spending. the client grew up in the Great Depression and has different ideas about spending money. the clinician explains that he and his granddaughter are part of two different cohorts. because his granddaughter did not experience the financial struggles of his generation, she will not understand why he is so frustrated.
Continuity vs Non-continuity
A term from human development that explains the ongoing debate of whether developmental stages are continuous (gradual change) or discontinuous (distinct, exclusive change). When evaluating developmental issues, most developmentalists acknowledge that development is not all or nothing. Awareness of this debate aids in understand how different theorists conceptualize the different stages of human development.
Ex: A concerned mother brings her 5-year-old into the clinic and expresses concern that her son is still unable to understand tracing letters and overall penmanship. Her son turned 5-years-old two days prior to the clinic appointment. A developmentalist with a continuous theory of development would likely not express great concern, as their understanding of development (including writing skills) occurs gradually. Whereas a developmentalist with a more noncontinuous theory of development may have expected a distinct change in writing skills by age 5.
Control Group
A group in an experimental research design that is nearly identical to the experimental group but does not receive manipulation of the independent variable. This group provides the baseline data to compare the effects of treatment from the experimental group to and infer causation.
Ex: A new study is testing the effects of a cancer drug in patients. There are two groups: one the receives the cancer drug and one that is placed on a waitlist. The group that is placed on a waitlist and does not receive treatment is the control group and their data serves as the baseline for the experiment.
Correlational Research
A type of research design that aims to assess the relationship between two variables, but cannot determine causation between the variables. Correlations fall between -1 and 1 depending on the strength and direction of the relationship between two variable. The closer the coefficient is to (-)1 the stronger the correlation is, with positive correlations being those when the variables increase or decrease in the same direction and negative correlations being those where one variable increases while the other decreases. This type of research is very common in psychological research and it is cost-effective. Statistical tests include Pearson, spearman, and point-biserial. [Regression?]
Ex: A study wanted to find the relationship between ice cream consumption and violent crimes, finding that as ice cream consumption increased so did violent crimes. This is a positive correlation between the two variables studied. While they are related, it does not mean that ice cream causes people to commit more violent crimes or vise versa because causation cannot be drawn from a correlational study.
Critical Period
A term from human development, this is a fixed period very early in development during which certain experiences or events can have a long-lasting effect on development. There are different critical periods for different developmental milestones, such as fetal development and language development. If during a critical period, and 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. Similarly, if a damaging stimulus is present, it can also inhibit proper growth and development, especially in fetal development.
Ex: Exposure to teratogens in the fetal period is more likely to cause harm in how organs function and may result in stunted growth rather than structural damage. Many children with fetal Alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have learning difficulties and are below average intelligence. Exposure to this harmful stimulus during early development (fetal critical period) causes irreversible damage in the development of the person.
Family court Judge ordered court-mandated therapy for teen who was recently placed with foster family. Child was severely neglected prior to foster placement and was rarely given face-to-face interactions. Since language development usually occurs between toddler years and puberty, clinician understands that language development will be more difficult now since the child is outside of the critical period range.
Cross-Sectional Design
A quasi-experimental research design (not manipulating variables) in which a large group of people, or a representative subset, are compared at a single point in time. This group of people are similar in all characteristics except one key characteristic, limiting the effect of extraneous variables. this type of design does not provide info about the aging process because it’s only one point in time and it cannot determine causation. However, cross-sectional designs are advantageous in the study of human growth and development because it allows one to collect large amounts of data in a short amount of time and it’s cost effective.
Ex: a researcher collects data from participants that have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The researcher is interested in finding correlations [???right word???] between characteristics or experiences that may have been similar in those individuals that develop the disorder. [ADD MORE]
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
A term from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory describing unconscious strategies used to cope with unpleasant feelings or situations that the mind had classified as unacceptable. This process is usually conceptualized as the ego balancing the desires of the id with the restrictions of the superego. Defense mechanisms are not inherently bad because they can allow people to navigate painful experiences, however, overuse of them can be problematic and lead to pathology. Some of these defense mechanisms are denial, repression and rationalization. Recognizing when a client is using a defense mechanism can benefit the therapeutic process.
Ex: A long-time client reports that she was broken up with by the man she thought she was going to marry unexpectedly. Instead of presenting any sadness, she is smiling and says she is happy to be exploring new prospective romantic partners and that it will be a fun experience getting to know new people. The client is using the defense mechanism of denial to protect herself from the extreme sadness she may feel as a result of this unexpected life change.
Developmental Level
A term from developmental psychology, a span of time when change occurs and certain milestones or growth markers are achieved at or by a certain point. These markers allow one to know if an individual is progressing at a normal rate and bring attention to possible delayed delayed development or neurological problems.
Ex: A child around the age of 10-18 months learns to take it’s first steps and starts walking. They have reached the developmental level of a toddler which is age appropriate for this age group.
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
A term from Piaget’s preoperational stage of cognitive developmental theory, that lasts from ages 2 to 7. Children are preoccupied with thoughts centering around themselves and are largely unable to imagine a situation from another’s perspective. According to Piaget, an egocentric child assumes that all other people think and feel the same as they do, an important cognitive limitation to understand in the development of children. This perspective is eliminated when the child moves into the concrete operational stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Ex: a 4-year-old boy is playing and wants a toy that a peer has at his preschool. Being in the preoperational stage of development, he walks up and takes the toy from his peer without thinking about how it will make that peer feel. This frame of mind of only considering one’s own feelings is egocentrism.
Extinction
A principal from operant conditioning in behavioral theory in which reinforcement is withdrawn or withheld in order to discourage and eventually discontinue an unwanted behavior. During this process, behaviors typically increase before they start to decrease as the subject is attempting to gain the previous reinforcement that is suddenly withdrawn called extinction bursts. Extinguishing a behavior is not always permanent as the behavior may be spontaneously recovered after a length of time.
Ex: A monkey in a lab study is reinforced for selecting a square shape on an iPad, but researchers hope to extinguish this behavior. The withhold all future reinforcement for the monkey selecting this shape. The monkey clicks the square at an increased frequency and hits the iPad after numerous unreinforced attempts (extinction bursts) before the behavior eventually decreases. After a few days with no reinforcement for this behavior, the monkey stops clicking the square shape on the iPad at all. Extinction has been achieved as the unwanted behavior is no longer being performed.
Child client is reinforced by attention given from parents after self-harm behaviors. Clinician learns that parents ignore child when self-harm behaviors are not present. In order to reduce/extinct these self-harm behaviors, clinician instructs parents to withhold attention after self-harm (while still being aware of child’s safety). Clinician provides psychoeducation to warn parents about possibility of behaviors of self-harm increasing before they decrease, known as extinction bursts.
Genotype
A term from human development that describes the complete genetic makeup of an individual with input of dominant and/or recessive genes from both parents. They can be discovered through genetic testing and appear in three forms: homozygous dominant (AA), homozygous recessive (aa) or heterozygous (Aa). A person’s genotype determines the available genes to be passed on to offspring and has implications for genetic testing of genetic disorders.
Ex: A client with bipolar I disorder expresses concern to her therapist that she is concerned by the possibility of passing on the disorder to her children because of the disorder’s hereditary component. Client completes genetic testing at her physician’s office and her results show a biomarker commonly present in those with Bipolar disorder.
Fred presents to therapy because he is convinced his wife is cheating on him and has thought so since their child was born, though she continuously denies infidelity. Fred explains that both he and his wife have brown hair and their now 5-year-old daughter has blonde hair. The therapist explains that both parents may have the genotype that includes the heterozygous (Aa) gene for blonde hair which is not expressed in the phenotype of either parent but was passed down to their child.
Genotype-Environment Relationship
A term from developmental psychology that names the complex interaction between a person’s genetics and the environment around them, both in utero and extra utero, explaining that the environmental factors can influence potential trait expression of genes. There are three types of genotype-environment relationships:
1. passive - biological parents create a rearing environment based on their own genetic makeup which is related to the child
2. evocative - child’s genetically influenced characteristics evoke certain types of environments
3. active/niche-picking - children gravitate toward environments that are suited to their genetically influenced abilities
Understanding this relationship is critical for understand how our biology and environments interact to influence growth and development.
Ex: A child that has the genetic makeup for smiling often and being active evoke more social environments than children that are shy. Their genetic makeup influences their environment.
