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Unit 2 chapter 9:

Development

EG, age 4 with his birthday present of “all the Thai food.”

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9.1 The Lifespan and Physical Development in Childhood

Developmental Psychology

Zygote

Embryo

Fetus

Teratogens

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Habituation

Maturation

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Conception

A single sperm cell (male) penetrates the outer coating of the egg (female) and fuses to form one fertilized cell.

Your most fortunate of moments!

Out of the 200 million sperm and 5000 total eggs ‘you’ won the race and had perfect timing that month.

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Prenatal Development

  • Zygote – conception to 2 weeks
  • Embryo – 2 weeks through 8 weeks
  • Fetus – 9 weeks to birth
  • Placenta
    • Connects fetus to mother
    • Brings oxygen and nutrients
    • Takes away waste
  • Critical period
    • A time during development when influences have major effect
  • Teratogens
    • Substances that can damage an embryo or fetus

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Prenatal Development

  • A blastocyte is a fertilized cell.
  • Cells become increasingly diverse.
  • 14ish days post-fertilization

zygote called an embryo

  • smaller than poppy seed @ 4wks
  • link to more info

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Embryo: 6 Weeks

Notice the large neural tube and the formation of heart tube and other internal organs outside the body.

The embryo detail visible under microscope. Electrical activity in heart tube, debatable if heartbeat.

Size of lentil.

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Embryo: 7 weeks

  • Facial features forming including a tongue.
  • Developing eyes have retinas and lenses.
  • The major muscle systems developing, movt.
  • Develops own blood type, distinct from mother's.
  • These blood cells are made

by the liver now instead of the

yolk sac. Yolk sac is the white.

Blueberry sized unformed

Placenta, sac, and embryo.

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Fetus: 9 Weeks, no longer an embryo

  • Called a fetus at this stage, is about half an inch long.
  • Protected by the amniotic sac, filled with cushioning fluid.
  • Fingers forming.
  • Brain waves can now be measured.
  • Sac size of kidney bean

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Fetus:10 Weeks

  • The heart is almost completely developed

  • An opening the atrium of the heart and the presence of a bypass valve divert much of the blood away from the lungs, as the child's blood is oxygenated through the placenta. Heart doesn’t pump on its own.
  • Toes developing.
  • Photo here is the size of a grape.

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Fetus: 12-13 Weeks

  • Vocal chords formed
  • The eyelids now cover the eyes, and will remain shut until the seventh month to protect the delicate optical nerve fibers.
  • Head and torso approx same size

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Fetus at 14-15 Weeks:

  • 14 weeks—
    • Muscles lengthen and getting organized.
  • 15 weeks—
    • Taste buds emerge
    • Foods the mother eats can affect movement of the baby

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16-18 Weeks:

  • Can grasp with hands, suck thumb, kick, move.
  • Face is fully developed and downy hair covers skin.
  • Eyes fully formed but not yet functional.
  • Fully dependent upon placenta and parent for food, O2, everything.

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20 Week fetus:

  • Can hear.
  • Fingernails and fingerprints appear.
  • Sex organs visible, prior to this pretty much the same, only blood test can tell gender before 20w.
  • Using an ultrasound device, the doctor can discern sex for the earliest point.

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25 weeks or 5 Months:

  • Coated w hair. Brain devt and putting on weight.

  • Definite sleep/awake cycles now.

  • REM sleep occurs.

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25 weeks:

  • Approximately 8-10 inches long and 1 to 2 pounds

  • Body position is often still “head up” -hasn’t yet turned to position

  • Baby has a 50/50 chance of survival outside the womb.

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30 Weeks:

  • For entire existence, the umbilical cord has been the baby's lifeline to the mother.
  • Nourishment is transferred from the mother's blood, through the placenta, and into the umbilical cord to the fetus.
  • Waste is pulled out of the fetus and forms the amniotic fluid.

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32 Weeks:

  • The fetus sleeps 90-95% of the day with REM sleep dominating the sleep cycle, brain devt key
  • The baby is viable at this point, with a 75% or higher chance of survival.
  • If the baby is born, the concerns are with adequate lung development. Final lung development does not occur until about 37 weeks. Concerns also with brain and immune system development

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Birth: 38-42 Weeks

  • 40 weeks is typical gestation on a normal population distribution
  • The baby weighs on average 7 lbs. and is 20 inches long.
  • At birth the baby can see, hear, move and recognizes the voices of her parents or others who have been near the mother.

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Teratogen:Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

    • Occurs in children of women who consume large amounts of alcohol during pregnancy, especially early
    • Symptoms include facial deformities, heart defects, stunted growth, and cognitive impairments

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Reflexes

  • Rooting
    • Baby turns its head toward something that brushes its cheek and gropes around with mouth
  • Sucking
    • Newborn’s tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth
  • Swallowing
    • Enables newborn babies to swallow liquids without choking
  • Stepping
    • Stepping motions made by an infant when held upright, (cannot walk)

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Specific reflexes

Moro reflex – when startled, baby will throw arms and legs out and head back and then pull them into body

Toe curling reflex – stroke outer sole and baby spreads toes, stroke inner sole and baby curls toes.

Sucking reflex – touch roof of baby’s mouth and she will suck

Grasping reflex – put finger in baby’s palm and baby will grab

Tonic Neck Reflex – if baby’s head is turned to side, baby makes “on guard” move with arms

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Temperament

  • Temperament refers to characteristic patterns of emotional reactions and emotional self-regulation
  • Thomas and Chess identified three basic types of babies
    • Easy
      • Good-natured, easy to care for, adaptable
    • Difficult
      • Moody and intense, react to new situations and people negatively and strongly
    • Slow-to-warm-up
      • Inactive and slow to respond to new things, and when

they do react, it is mild

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Temperament

  • Kagan has added a fourth type
    • Shy child
      • Timid and inhibited, fearful of anything new or strange
  • Temperament may predict later disposition

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Perceptual Abilities

  • Vision
    • Clear for 8-10 inches
    • Good (as it gets) vision by 6 months
  • Depth perception
    • Visual cliff research
  • Other senses
    • Ears are functional prior to birth
    • Infants particularly tune in to human voices
    • Taste and smell are fully functional

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Cognitive Development in the Newborn

Investigators study infants becoming habituated to objects over a period of time. Infants pay more attention to new objects than habituated ones, which shows they are learning

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Developing Brain

The developing brain overproduces neurons. Peaking around 28 billion at 7 months, these neurons are pruned to 23 billion at birth. The greatest neuronal spurt is in the frontal lobe enabling the individual to think rationally.

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Physical Development

  • Children grow about 10 inches and gain about 15 pounds in first year
  • Growth occurs in spurts, as much as 1 inch overnight
  • Growth slows during second year

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Maturation

  • The development of the brain unfolds based on genetic instructions, causing various bodily and mental functions to occur in sequence— standing before walking, babbling before talking—this is called maturation.

  • Maturation sets the basic course of development, while experience adjusts it

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Motor Development

  • Developmental Norms
    • Ages by which an average child achieves various developmental milestones
    • First, infants begin to roll over. Next, they sit unsupported, crawl, and finally walk.
    • Experience has little effect on this sequence.

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Typical maturation (box and whisker plot)

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Cephalocaudal and Proximodistal devt

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9.2 Social Development in Childhood

Attachment

Critical period

Temperament

Imprinting

Baumrind’s 4 parenting styles- know each and their results

Erickson’s 8 Stages- know each of them and their virtue

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What is attachment?

an emotional tie

with another person; shown in

young children by their seeking

closeness to their caregiver and

showing distress on separation

This striking parent-infant attachment bond is a powerful survival impulse that keeps

infants close to their caregivers.

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What is stranger anxiety?

the fear of

strangers that infants commonly

display, beginning by about

8 months of age

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When does separation anxiety peak?

Children’s anxiety over separation

anxiety from parents peaks at around 13 months,

then gradually declines.

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What conditions create anxiety?

  • During the 1950s, University of Wisconsin psychologists Harry Harlow and Margaret Harlow bred monkeys for their learning studies.
  • To equalize experiences and to isolate any disease, they separated the infant monkeys from their mothers shortly after birth and raised them in individual cages, each including a cheesecloth baby blanket. (Harlow et al., 1971)
  • Then came a surprise: when their soft blankets were taken to be washed, the monkeys became distressed.

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How does attachment to a caregiver occur?

For many years, psychologists reasoned that infants became attached to those who satisfied their need for nourishment.

The Harlows recognized that the monkey’s intense need for the blanket contradicted the idea that attachment derives from an association with nourishment.

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Harlows’ research design

Psychologists Harry and Margaret Harlow raised monkeys with two artificial mothers—one a bare wire cylinder with a wooden head and an attached feeding bottle, the other a cylinder with no bottle but covered with foam rubber and wrapped with terry cloth.

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What were the assumptions in the Harlow study?

When raised with both, the monkeys overwhelmingly

preferred the comfy cloth mother.

Like other infants clinging to their live mothers, the monkey babies would cling to their cloth mothers when anxious.

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What were the conclusions of the Harlow study?

When exploring their environment, they used her as a secure base, as if attached to her by an invisible elastic band that stretched only so far before pulling them back. Researchers soon learned that other qualities—rocking, warmth, and feeding—made the cloth mother even more appealing.

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What is the critical period for �development of attachment?

Another key to attachment is familiarity.

In many animals, attachments based on familiarity form during a critical period—an optimal period when certain events must take place to facilitate proper development.

(Bornstein, 1989)

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the critical period

For goslings, ducklings,

or chicks, the critical period falls in the hours shortly after hatching, when the first moving object they see is normally their mother. From then on, the young fowl follow her, and her alone.

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How did Konrad Lorenz explore �imprinting in geese?

  • Konrad Lorenz explored imprinting, the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life. Lorenz wondered:
  • What would ducklings do if he was the first moving creature they observed?
  • What they did was follow him around.
  • Although baby birds imprint best to their own species, they also will imprint to a variety of moving objects—an animal of another species, a box on wheels, a bouncing ball. (Colombo, 1982; Johnson, 1992)

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Do humans imprint?

Children—unlike ducklings—do not imprint. However, they do become attached, during a less precisely defined sensitive period, to what they’ve known.

Mere exposure to people and things fosters fondness.

Children like to reread the same books, rewatch the same movies, reenact family traditions. They prefer to eat familiar foods, live in the same familiar neighborhood, attend school with the same old

friends.

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What accounts for children’s �attachment differences?

Mary Ainsworth designed the

strange situation experiment.

She observed mother-infant pairs at home during their first six months. Later she observed the 1-year-old infants in a strange situation (usually a laboratory playroom) with and without their mothers.

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What was the strange situation design?

a procedure for studying child-caregiver attachment; a child is placed in an unfamiliar environment while

their caregiver leaves and then returns, and the child’s reactions

are observed

Ainsworth found that sensitive, responsive mothers had infants who were securely attached.

Insensitive, unresponsive mothers had infants who were insecurely attached.

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What is the difference between a secure and insecure attachment?

secure attachment

demonstrated by infants who comfortably explore environments in the presence of their caregiver,

show only temporary distress when the caregiver leaves, and find

comfort in the caregiver’s return

insecure attachment

demonstrated by infants who display either a clinging, anxious

attachment or an avoidant

attachment that resists closeness

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What are two types of insecure attachment?

anxious attachment

People constantly crave acceptance but remain vigilant to signs of possible rejection.

avoidant attachment

People experience discomfort getting close to others and use avoidant strategies to maintain distance from others.

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How does an insecure attachment effect romantic relationships?

In romantic relationships, an anxious attachment style

creates constant concern over rejection, leading people to cling to their partners.

An avoidant attachment style decreases commitment and increases conflict.

(DeWall et al., 2011; Overall et al., 2015)

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What is temperament?

a person’s innate and inborn

characteristic emotional reactivity

and intensity

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Types of Temperament

The Difficult Child tends to react negatively and cry frequently, engaging in irregular daily routines and is slow to accept new experiences.

The Easy Child is generally in a positive mood, quickly establishing regular routines in infancy and adapts easily to new experiences.

The Slow to Warm Up Child has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, shows low adaptability and displays a low intensity of mood.

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Can an infant’s temperament influence attachment?

  • Twin and developmental studies reveal that heredity affects temperament, and temperament affects attachment style. (Picardi et al., 2011; Raby et al., 2012)

  • Shortly after birth, some babies are noticeably difficult— irritable, intense, and unpredictable. Others have an easy temperament—cheerful, relaxed, and feeding and sleeping on predictable schedules. (Chess & Thomas, 1987)

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How does temperament impact parenting?

This helps explain why parenting correlates with children’s behavior; it’s partly because children with difficult temperaments

elicit and react more to negative parenting.

(Slagt et al., 2016)

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How do we vary parenting while controlling for temperament?

  • One Dutch researcher’s solution was to randomly assign 100 temperamentally difficult 6- to 9-month-olds to either an experimental group, in which mothers received personal training in sensitive responding, or to a control group, in which they did not.

  • At 12 months of age, 68% of the infants in the experimental group were securely attached, compared to only 28% of the control-group infants. (van den Boom, 1994)

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What does the research show about �the power of dads?

Across nearly 100 studies worldwide,

a father’s love and acceptance have been comparable with a mother’s love in

predicting their offspring’s health and

well-being.

(Rohner & Veneziano, 2001)

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What impact does involved fathering have on children’s success in school?

In one large British longitudinal study following 7,259 children from birth to adulthood, those whose fathers were most involved in parenting (through outings, reading to them, and taking an interest in their education) tended to achieve more in school.

(Flouri & Buchanan, 2004)

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What are the co-parenting positives?

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How does childhood abuse or �neglect affect children’s attachment?

  • One of the most provocative studies on children deprived of care came from Romanian orphanages.
  • These socially deprived children had lower intelligence scores, reduced brain development, abnormal stress responses, and quadruple the rate of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) found in children assigned to quality foster care settings. (Bick et al., 2015; Kennedy et al., 2016; McLaughlin et al., 2015; Nelson et al., 2014)

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How does extreme early trauma �impact the brain?

Abused children’s brains respond to angry faces with heightened activity in threat-detecting areas.

(McCrory et al., 2011)

In conflict-plagued homes, even sleeping infants’ brains show heightened reactivity to hearing angry speech. (Graham et al., 2013)

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What are the long-term impacts of abuse?

  • Child abuse can also leave epigenetic marks—chemical tags—that can alter normal gene expression.

  • Such findings help explain why young children who have survived severe or prolonged physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse, bullying, or wartime atrocities are at increased risk for health problems, psychological disorders, substance abuse, and criminality.

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Can adversity produce well-adjusted adults?

Most children growing up under adversity (such

as the surviving children of the Holocaust and victims

of childhood sexual abuse) are resilient; they withstand the trauma and become well-adjusted adults.

(Clancy, 2010; Helmreich, 1992; Masten, 2001)

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What are four types of �parenting styles?

authoritarian parents impose rules and demand obedience

permissive parents set few limits, make few demands and use little punishment

authoritative parents set rules but allow open discussion and exceptions

Permissive indifferent parents are careless, inattentive and do not seek a close relationship with their children

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What outcomes are associated with authoritarian parenting styles?

Children with less social skill and self-esteem, and a

brain that overreacts when they make mistakes.

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What outcomes are associated with permissive parenting styles?

Children who are more aggressive and immature

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What outcomes are associated with �Permissive indifferent parenting styles?

Children with poor academic and social outcomes.

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What outcomes are associated with authoritative parenting styles?

Children with the highest self-esteem, self-reliance, self-regulation, and social competence.

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Beware the correlational fallacy…

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You gotta know Erikson.

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Psychosocial Stages of Personality Development

  • 8 successive stages over the lifespan
  • Crisis: must adaptively or maladaptively cope with task in each developmental stage
    • Respond adaptively: acquire strengths needed for next developmental stage
    • Respond maladaptively: less likely to be able to adapt to later problems
  • Basic strengths: Motivating characteristics and beliefs that derive from successful resolution of crisis in each stage

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Stage 1: Basic Trust vs. Mistrust

  • Birth to age 1
  • Totally dependent on others
  • Caregiver meets needs: child develops trust
  • Caregiver does not meet needs: child develops mistrust
  • Basic strength: Hope
    • Belief our desires will be satisfied
    • Feeling of confidence

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Trust vs. Mistrust = Hope

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Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

  • Ages 1-3
  • Child able to exercise some degree of choice
  • Child’s independence is thwarted: child develops feelings of self-doubt, shame in dealing with others
  • Basic Strength: Will
    • Determination to exercise freedom of choice in face of society’s demands

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Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

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Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

  • Ages 3-5
  • Child expresses desire to take initiative in activities
  • Parents punish child for initiative: child develops feelings of guilt that will affect self-directed activity throughout life - purpose
  • Basic strength: Purpose
    • Courage to envision and pursue goals

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Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

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Stage 4: Industriousness vs. Inferiority

  • Ages 6-11
  • Child develops cognitive abilities to enable in task completion (school work, play)
  • Parents/teachers do not support child’s efforts: child develops feelings of inferiority and inadequacy
  • Basci strength: Competence
    • Exertion of skill and intelligence in pursuing and completing tasks

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Stage 4: Industriousness vs. Inferiority

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Erikson’s Stages of development

  • Stages 1-4
    • Largely determined by others (parents, teachers)
  • Stages 5-8
    • Individual has more control over environment
    • Individual responsibility for crisis resolution in each stage

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Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion

  • Ages 12-18
  • Form ego identity: self-image
  • Strong sense of identity: face adulthood with certainty and confidence
  • Identity crisis: confusion of ego identity
  • Basic strength: Fidelity
    • Emerges from cohesive ego identity
    • Sincerity, genuineness, sense of duty in relationships with others

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Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion

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Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

  • Ages 18-35 (approximately)
  • Undertake productive work and establish intimate relationships
  • Inability to establish intimacy leads to social isolation
  • Basic strength: Love
    • Mutual devotion in a shared identity
    • Fusing of oneself with another person

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Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

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Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation

  • Ages 35-55 (approximately)
  • Generativity: Active involvement in teaching/guiding the next generation
  • Stagnation involves not seeking outlets for generativity
  • Basic strength: Care
    • Broad concern for others
    • Need to teach others

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Stage 8: Ego Integrity vs. Despair

  • Ages 55+
  • Evaluation of entire life
  • Integrity: Look back with satisfaction
  • Despair: Review with anger, frustration
  • Basic strength: Wisdom
    • Detached concern with the whole of life

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9.3 Cognitive Development in Childhood

Schema

Assimilation

Accommodation

Sensorimotor Stage

Object Permanence

Sense of Self

Pre-operational Stage

Egocentrism

Theory of Mind

Conservation

Concrete Operational Stage

Formal Operational Stage

Abstract Reasoning

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Once conscious, how does the mind grow?

Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget [pee-ah-ZHAY] spent his life searching for the answer.

He studied the development of children’s cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

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What was Piaget’s belief about cognitive development?

Piaget’s studies led him to believe that a child’s mind develops through a series of stages,

in an upward march from the newborn’s simple reflexes to the adult’s abstract reasoning

power.

For example, an 8-year-old can comprehend things a toddler cannot, and an adult can understand nuances and abstract concepts that a child cannot.

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How do we make sense of our experiences?

Piaget’s core idea was that our intellectual progression

reflects an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences.

To this end, the maturing

brain builds schemas, concepts or mental molds into which we pour our experiences.

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What is a schema?

A schema (or an idea or model) for “doggy” might include: four legs, furry coat, long tail, wet tongue, cold nose, friendly, and fun.

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How does a child add new items to existing schemas?

When first seeing a “cat”, a child may think of it in relation to their schema of “doggy”…four legs, furry, long tail, cold nose… and assimilate (or add) this new example into their existing schema.

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What if a new example doesn’t fit our existing schema?

If the new example does not quite fit the schema, we receive correction and need to modify our understanding.

This is called accommodation.

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How does accommodation increase cognition?

By accommodating (or changing) the existing schema and adding new characteristics to distinguish “doggy” from “cat”, we begin to increase cognitive understanding of our world.

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discuss...

Be able to identify what it means to assimilate and accommodate schemas.

Students have confused these terms on the AP® exam

In the past.

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What are Piaget’s four stages of �cognitive development?

Piaget believed that children construct their understanding of the world while interacting

with it.

In Piaget’s view, cognitive development consisted of four major stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

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What is the sensorimotor stage?

in Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory

impressions (what they see, hear, etc.)and

motor activities (how they move)

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What is object permanence?

Young infants lack object permanence—the awareness that objects continue to exist even when not perceived.

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How did Piaget test object permanence?

Very young babies seem to live in the present:

out of sight is out of mind.

In one test, Piaget showed an infant an appealing

toy and then covered it with his hat.

Before the age of 6 months, the infant acted as if the toy ceased to exist. By 8 months, infants begin exhibiting memory for things no longer seen and search for the toy. They acquire object permanence.

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Criticism of Piaget

Researchers believe Piaget and his followers underestimated young children’s competence and that infants are smarter than Piaget appreciated.

Young children think like little scientists.

They test ideas, make causal inferences,

and learn from statistical patterns.

(Gopnik et al., 2015)

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Consider this research…

Renée Baillargeon devised impossible scenes for infant subjects to view, such as a car seeming to pass through a solid object, a ball stopping in midair, or an object violating object permanence by magically disappearing.

Baillargeon saw that infants look longer at and explore those impossible scenes. Why do infants show this visual bias? Because impossible events violate infants’ expectations.

(Baillargeon, 2008; Shuwairi & Johnson, 2013; Stahl & Feigenson, 2015)

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Do infants have math sense?

Psychologist Karen Wynn showed 5-month-olds one or two objects then she hid the objects behind a screen, and visibly removed or added one.

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What were the results?

When she lifted the screen, the infants sometimes did a double take,

staring longer when shown a wrong number of objects.

(Wynn,1992, 2000, 2008)

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What is the preoperational stage?

in Piaget’s

theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which

a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the

mental operations of concrete logic.

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What is pretend play?

the acting out of stories which involve multiple perspectives, the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions, and the use of symbols

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Shortcoming: egocentrism

in Piaget’s theory,

the preoperational child’s difficulty

taking another’s point of view

A 4-year-old girl shows her grandpa “a match” on two memory game cards

with matching pictures— that faced her, not grandpa.

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What are examples of egocentrism?

Asked to “show Mommy your picture,” 2-year-old Gabriella holds the picture up facing her own eyes.

Three-year-old Gray makes himself “invisible” by putting his hands over his eyes, assuming that if he can’t see his grandparents, they can’t see him.

4-year-old Norah “shows” her aunt her new toys over a telephone call, thinking her aunt can see them too.

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Watch Out!

Careful! Egocentric is not the same as egotistical.

Egocentric means you can’t take someone else’s

point of view.

Egotistical means you’re pretty full of yourself.

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They will gain a theory of mind

people’s ideas

about their own and others’ mental

states—about their feelings,

perceptions, and thoughts, and the

behaviors these might predict

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How does theory of mind reveal itself?

With time, the ability to take another’s perspective develops. Children come to understand what made a playmate angry, when a sibling will share, and what might make a parent buy a toy. They begin to tease, empathize, and persuade.

And when making decisions, developing children use

their understanding of how their actions will make others feel.

(Repacholi et al., 2016)

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How is theory of mind tested?

Children viewed a doll named Sally leaving her ball in a red cupboard.

Another doll, Anne, then

moved the ball to a blue cupboard.

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When Sally returns, where will she �look for the ball?

When asked the question above, 85% of the children in the study answered the question correctly. This showed that although they subjects knew the ball had been moved, they demonstrated theory of mind in knowing that Sally would NOT have known.

(Baron-Cohen, 1985)

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They will gain Mental Representations

Psychologist Judy DeLoache showed children a model of a room and hid a miniature stuffed dog behind its miniature couch.

The 2½-year-old subjects easily remembered where

to find the miniature toy, but they could not use the model to locate an actual stuffed dog behind a couch in a real room.

Three-year-olds—only 6 months older—usually went right to the actual stuffed animal in the real room, showing they could think of the model as a symbol

for the room.

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They lack conservation?

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part

of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the

same despite changes in the forms

of objects

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How did Piaget test for conservation?

This visually focused preoperational child does not yet understand the principle of conservation.

When the milk is poured into a tall, narrow glass, it suddenly seems like “more” than when it was in the shorter, wider glass. In another year or so, she will understand that the amount stays the same.

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What is the concrete operational stage?

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically

about events.

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They will get

Mathematical Transformations

3x2 is the �same as 2x3

Complex Classification

More oranges or more fruit?

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What is the formal operational stage?

In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

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Formal Operational

  • At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
  • Abstract thought emerges
  • Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
  • Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information

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What characterizes the formal �operational stage?

By age 12, our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving actual experience)

to encompass abstract thinking (involving imagined realities and symbols).

As children approach adolescence, said Piaget, they can ponder hypothetical propositions and deduce

consequences: If this, then that.

Systematic reasoning, what Piaget called formal operational thinking, is now within their grasp.

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Who was Lev Vygotsky?

Vygotsky, pictured here with his daughter, was a Russian developmental psychologist.

He studied how a child’s mind feeds on

the language of social interaction.

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How did Piaget’s view of cognitive development differ from that of Vygotsky?

As Piaget was forming his theory of cognitive development, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky

was also studying how children think and learn. Where Piaget emphasized how the child’s mind

grows through interaction with the physical environment, Vygotsky emphasized how the child’s

mind grows through interaction with the social environment.

If Piaget’s child was a young scientist, Vygotsky’s

was a young apprentice.

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What is scaffolding?

a framework that offers children

temporary support as they develop

higher levels of thinking

By giving children new words

and mentoring them, parents, teachers, and other children

provide a temporary scaffold from which children can step to higher levels of thinking.

(Renninger & Granott, 2005)

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What was Vygotsky’s view of child �cognitive development?

Effective mentoring occurs when children are

developmentally ready to learn a new skill.

For Vygotsky, a child’s zone of proximal development is the zone between what a child can and can’t do—it’s what a child can do with help.

Children learn best when their social environment

presents them with something in the sweet spot

between too easy and too difficult.

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9.4 Adolescent Development

Adolescence

Puberty

Menarche

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What is adolescence?

the transition

period from childhood to

adulthood, extending from puberty

to independence

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What is puberty?

the period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing

Just as in the earlier life stages, the sequence of physical changes in puberty (for example, breast buds and visible pubic hair before menarchethe first menstrual

period in girls, or spermarche, the first ejaculation

in boys) is far more predictable than their timing.

Some girls start their growth spurt at 9, some boys as late as age 16.

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Puberty

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How does the brain change during puberty?

An adolescent’s brain is still a work in progress. Until puberty, brain cells increase their connections, like trees growing more roots and branches. Then, during adolescence, comes a selective pruning of unused neurons and connections.

(Blakemore, 2008)

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How do the frontal lobes develop?

As teens mature, their frontal lobes also

continue to develop.

The continuing growth of myelin, the fatty tissue that forms around axons and speeds neurotransmission,

enables better communication with other

brain regions.

These developments bring improved judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.

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developing impulse control

Surveys of more than 7000 American 12- to 24-year-olds

reveal that sensation seeking

peaks in the mid-teens, with impulse control developing more slowly as frontal lobes mature.

National Longitudinal Study of

Youth and Children and Young

Adults survey data presented by

Steinberg, 2013.

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How do adolescents think?

During the early teen years, reasoning is

often self-focused.

Adolescents may think their private experiences are unique, something parents just could not understand: “But, Mom, you don’t really know how it feels to be in love.”

Capable of thinking about their own thinking, and about other people’s thinking, they also begin imagining what others are thinking about them.

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Imaginary Audience

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Personal Fable

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Teen Anxiety and Mood Swings

  • Mood swings and anxiety, often caused by stress, are well known characteristics of puberty.
  • Anxiety is regulated by the brain's principal inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA (gamma-amino-butyric-acid) which counteracts the effect of glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain's limbic system.

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Teen Anxiety and Mood Swings

  • Stress causes the release of a steroid known as THP which in adult and pre-pubescent individuals increases the "calming" effect of GABA in the limbic system.
  • THP has two roles, one in the limbic system where it helps to calm things down, and another in the hippocampus where in adolescents it heats things up. (The hippocampus is important for emotion regulation.)

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Teen Anxiety and Mood Swings

  • The underlying mechanism appears to be different levels of expression of a type of receptor known as the "alpha4betadelta" GABAA receptor in the hippocampal brain region known as CA1.
  • In adults and pre-adolescents, the receptors are in low numbers so the overall effect of THP is a calming one.
  • However, in adolescents, the expression of these receptors is high, so for these individuals the anxiety raising effect of THP in the hippocampus outweighs the calming effect it has in the limbic system.

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What is identity?

our sense of self; according to Erik Erikson, the

adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles

Adolescents wonder, “Who am I as an individual? What do I want to do with my life? What values should I live by? What do I believe in?” Erikson called this quest the adolescent’s search for identity.

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How do adolescents explore identity?

To refine their sense of identity, adolescents in individualist cultures usually try out different

“selves” in different situations.

They may act out one self at home, another with friends, and still another at school or online.

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Identity Crisis

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What is social identity?

the “we” aspect

of our self-concept; the part of our

answer to “Who am I?” that comes

from our group memberships

For both adolescents and adults, group identities are often formed by how we differ from those around us.

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Historically, when did adulthood begin?

In the 1890s, the average interval between a woman’s first menstrual period and marriage, which typically marked a transition to adulthood, was about 7 years.

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Today, when does adulthood begin?

By 2006 in industrialized countries, the gap between

the first menstrual period and marriage had

widened to about 14 years.

(Finer & Philbin, 2014; Guttmacher Institute, 1994)

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9.5 Adulthood and Aging

Menopause

Alzheimer’s

Five Stages of Grief

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What research methods are useful for studying aging?

cross-sectional study

research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time

longitudinal study

research that follows and retests the same people over time

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What aspects of our life dominate �our adulthood?

Two basic aspects of our lives dominate adulthood.

Erik Erikson called them the social crisis of intimacy (forming close relationships) v. isolation and generativity (being productive and supporting future generations) v. stagnation.

Sigmund Freud put this more simply:

The healthy adult, he said, is one who

can love and work.

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What is the social clock?

Life events trigger transitions to new life

stages at varying ages.

The social clock—the definition of “the right time” to leave home, get a job, marry, have children, and retire—varies from era to era and culture to culture.

The once-rigid sequence has loosened; the

social clock still ticks, but people feel freer about being out of sync with it.

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What is the midlife transition?

  • As people enter their forties, they undergo a transition to middle adulthood, a time when they realize that life will soon be mostly behind instead of ahead of them.
  • Some psychologists have argued that for many the midlife transition is a crisis, a time of great struggle, regret, or even feeling struck down by life.
  • The popular image of the midlife crisis—an early-forties man who forsakes his family for a younger romantic partner and a hot sports car—is more a myth than reality.

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So the midlife crisis is a myth?

  • Unhappiness, job dissatisfaction, marital dissatisfaction, divorce, anxiety, and suicide do not surge during the early forties. (Hunter & Sundel, 1989; Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998)
  • Divorce, for example, is most common among those in their twenties, suicide among those in their seventies and eighties.
  • One study of emotional instability in nearly 10,000 men and women found “not the slightest evidence” that distress peaks anywhere in the midlife age range. (McCrae & Costa, 1990)

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Happiness Curve - Blanchflower and Oswald

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Money and Life Satisfaction

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Consider this quote…

“ Our love for children is so unlike any other human emotion. I fell in love with my babies so quickly and profoundly, almost completely independently of their particular qualities. And yet 20 years later I was (more or less) happy to see them go—I had to be happy to see them go. We are totally devoted to them when they are little and yet the most we can expect in return when they grow up is that they regard us with bemused and tolerant affection.”

Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik,

“The Supreme Infant,” 2010

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Is the empty nest syndrome a myth?

Although love bears children, children eventually leave home. This departure is a significant

and sometimes difficult event.

But for most people, an empty nest is a happy place.

(Adelmann et al., 1989; Gorchoff et al., 2008)

Many parents experience a “postlaunch honeymoon,”

especially if they maintain close relationships with their children.

(White & Edwards, 1990)

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How do telomeres impact aging?

Tips of chromosomes, called telomeres, wear down, much as the tip of a shoelace frays. This wear is accelerated by smoking, obesity, or stress. Breast-fed children have longer telomeres, while those who suffer frequent abuse or bullying exhibit the biological scars of shortened telomeres.

(Shalev et al., 2013)

As telomeres shorten, aging cells may die without being replaced with perfect genetic replicas.

(Epel, 2009)

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the aging brain

But compared with teens, older people take a bit more time

to react, to solve perceptual puzzles, even to remember names.

(Bashore et al., 1997;

Verhaeghen & Salthouse, 1997)

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What does the research show about the effects of aging on the brain?

Brain regions important to memory begin to atrophy during aging.

(Fraser et al., 2015; Ritchie et al., 2015)

The blood-brain barrier also breaks down beginning in the

hippocampus, which furthers cognitive decline.

(Montagne et al., 2015)

In early adulthood, a small, gradual net loss of brain cells begins, contributing by age 80 to a brain-weight reduction of 5 percent or so.

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What are neurocognitive disorders �(NCDs)?

acquired (not lifelong) disorders marked by cognitive

deficits; often related to Alzheimer’s disease, brain injury or disease, or substance abuse.

In older adults, neurocognitive disorders were

formerly called dementia.

A series of small strokes, a brain tumor, or alcohol use disorder can progressively damage the brain.

Heavy midlife smoking more than doubles later risk of

the disorder. (Rusanen et al., 2011)

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What is Alzheimer’s disease?

a neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques, often with onset after age 80, and entailing a

progressive decline in memory and other cognitive abilities

As the disease runs its course, after 5 to 20 years, the person becomes emotionally flat, then disoriented and disinhibited, then incontinent, and finally mentally vacant—a sort of living death, a mere body stripped of its humanity.

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predicting �Alzheimer’s disease

During a memory test, MRI scans of the brains of people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease (top) revealed more intense activity (yellow, followed by orange and red) when

compared with normal brains (bottom).

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Parkinson’s Disease

  • Nerve cell damage in the brain causes dopamine levels to drop, leading to the symptoms of Parkinson's.
  • Parkinson's often starts with a tremor in one hand. Other symptoms are slow movement, stiffness, and loss of balance.
  • Cognitive changes: problems with attention, planning, language, memory or even dementia

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Stages of Grief �Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying.

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6.6 Moral Development

Preconventional Morality

Conventional Morality

Postconventional Morality

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What research has been conducted on �moral development?

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas (for example, the Heinz dilemma which questioned whether a person should steal medicine to save a loved one’s life) and asked children, adolescents, and adults whether the action was right or wrong.

His analysis of their answers led him

to propose three basic levels of moral thinking:

preconventional, conventional, and postconventional

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AP® Exam Tip

Kohlberg’s is an important stage theory.

It’s very important to understand that the stage you’re

in doesn’t depend on what you decide to do (for example, steal the medicine), it depends on why you decide to do it.

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Heinz Dilemma:

In Europe, a lady was dying because she was very sick. There was one drug that the doctors said might save her. This medicine was discovered by a man living in the same town. It cost him $200 to make it, but he charged $2,000 for just a little of it. The lady’s husband, Heinz, tried to borrow enough money to buy the drug. He went to everyone he knew to borrow the money. But he could borrow only half of what he needed. He told the man who made the drug that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell the medicine cheaper or let him pay later. But the man said, "No, I made the drug and I’m going to make money from it." So Heinz broke into the store and stole the drug. Should Heinz have done this? Explain your answer.

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How do you react?

  1. Should Heinz have stolen the drug?
  2. Would it change anything if Heinz did not love his wife?
  3. What if the person dying was a stranger, would it make any difference?
  4. Should the police arrest the chemist for murder if the woman dies?

It isn’t the answer, its how you got to it.

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Morality Development: Kohlberg

  • Level I: Pre-conventional: Egocentric, focusing on moral consequences for self; reasoning found until about 10 years of age

Stage

Description

1: Punishment - Obedience

2: Individualism and Exchange

Moral reasoning based on reciprocity. An act is moral if a similar act occurs in return (i.e. satisfies own needs)

Moral reasoning based on immediate consequences for the individual. An act is moral if a person isn’t punished for it. It is immoral if the person is punished.

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Morality Development: Kohlberg

Level II: Conventional: Moral reasoning linked to perspectives of/concerns for others (i.e. loyalty, obeying the law, family obligation); typical of 10 to 20 yr olds

Stage

Description

3: Good boy-nice girl

4: Law and Order

Moral reasoning based on rules, laws, and orderly society. An act is moral if it follows rules or promotes an orderly society.

Moral reasoning based on concern for others or the opinions of others. An act is moral if others demonstrate similar acts, or it helps others (i.e. behavior likely to please others)

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Morality Development: Kohlberg

Level III: Post-conventional. Reasoning transcends society’s rules; understands that rules sometimes need to be changed/ignored.

Stage

Description

5: Social Contract

6: Universal Ethical

Moral reasoning based on abstract principles. An act is moral if it is consistent with an abstract principle that transcends an individual’s society.

Moral reasoning based on principled agreements among people. An act is moral if it is consistent with a principled agreement. (ex: Bill of Rights)

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Criticisms of Kohlberg

Kohlberg’s critics have noted that his postconventional stage is culturally limited, appearing mostly among people from western societies that prize individualism.

(Barrett et al., 2016; Eckensberger, 1994; Miller & Bersoff, 1995)

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Carol Gilligan on Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory

Research by Carol Gilligan and

her colleagues suggests that this ladder of moral development describes Western individualist

males more than relationship-oriented females.

Gilligan challenged Kohlberg’s findings which were drawn from data collected by wealthy middle-class males and did not reflect female moral development or non-western thinking.

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What is moral intuition?

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes that much of our morality is rooted in moral intuitions—“quick gut feelings, or affectively laden intuitions.”

According to this intuitionist view, the mind makes moral judgments in much the same way that it makes aesthetic judgments—quickly and automatically.

Feelings of disgust or of elation trigger moral reasoning, says Haidt.

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6.7 Gender and Sexual Orientation

Gender/Gender Binary

Sex/Intersex (NOT just 2!)

Gender Identity/fluidity

Androgyny

transgender

Sexual Orientation

Asexual

Cisgender/Cisnormativity

Ally *this is not the A in LGBTQIA, that is asexual or ace in slang.

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What determines the sex of a person?

  • Sex is a combination of
    • What chromosomes you have
    • What your hormone levels are
    • What genetalia a person has externally and internally

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How do chromosomes contribute to this?

  • X and Y chromosomes help determine a person’s sex
  • Most females are born with 46XX
  • Most males are born with 46XY
  • If Y is present and functioning male phenotypes (internal and external genitalia and expression of secondary sex characteristics) will develop.

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But chromosomes are complex

  • 45X or 45Y (sex monosomies)
  • 47XYY or 47XYY (sex polysomies) 47XXY is Klinefelters
  • 46XX individuals that have a translocation of Y onto X will develop male phenotypes
  • 46XY individuals who have a

defective mutation in Y will display

female phenotypes

  • 48XXXY and 49XXXXYindividuals will present as a male phenotype.

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It’s also about hormonal expression and reception

  • A lack or deficiency of male hormones in a genetic male fetus can cause ambiguous genitalia, while exposure to male hormones during development results in ambiguous genitalia in a genetic female.
  • Mutations in certain hormone producing genes can influence fetal sex development and cause ambiguous genitalia.

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Intersex

  • More than just male and female
  • We created those categories based on generalities of typical sex features.
  • Intersex people are individuals that are born with variations in their sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, or genitals.

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heritability

measures how much of a trait's variation in a pop can be linked to genetic differences.

It's not about how much a trait is genetic, but how much genetic differences account for variations.

This concept is crucial in understanding intelligence, behavior, and other bio linked traits.

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“Disorders of Sexual Development”

There is still intense social pressure to conform to the binary model of sex.

This pressure has meant that people born with clear DSDs often undergo surgery to 'normalize' their genitals. Such surgery is controversial because it is usually performed on babies, who are too young to consent, and risks assigning a sex at odds with the child's ultimate gender identity.

This issue was brought into focus by a lawsuit filed in South Carolina in May 2013 by the adoptive parents of a child known as MC, who was born with ovotesticular DSD, a condition that produces ambiguous genitalia and gonads with both ovarian and testicular tissue. When MC was 16 months old, doctors performed surgery to assign the child as female—but MC, who at 9yo, went on to develop a male gender identity. Because he was in state care at the time of his treatment, the lawsuit alleged not only that the surgery constituted medical malpractice, but also that the state denied him his constitutional right to bodily integrity and his right to reproduce. A court decision prevented the federal case from going to trial in 2023, but a state case is ongoing. to read more

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What is Gender Identity?

  • [a] person’s deeply-felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or male; a girl, a woman, or female; or an alternative gender (e.g., genderqueer, gender non-conforming etc.) which may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth or to a person’s primary or secondary sex characteristics. Since gender identity is internal, a person’s gender identity is not necessarily visible to others.” APA
  • Gender identity develops between 2-5 years old.

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Gender is a Spectrum

  • “Gender is a continuum with very few people at either extreme and everybody else in the middle. At some point you just have enough characteristics of one or the other where society sees you as being of a particular gender.” - Pat Nivins

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What is Gender Binary?

  • Remember, humans are cognitive misers
  • It makes sense they’d be drawn to simplify complex situations like a gender continuum.
  • Gender Binary is the oversimplified classification that there are only two genders and that one's biological or birth sex will align with traditional social constructs of masculine and feminine identity, expression, and sexuality.

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Is Gender a Social Construct?

  • Mostly. The roles society creates around gender are socially constructed. They are constructed from the interplay of biology and culture.
  • There is no nature that is independent of social context and no social context independent of nature.
  • If gender is inherently felt how can it be socially constructed?
  • How can it be self chosen and simultaneously socialized?

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So … what is gender?

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, a spectrum between masculinity and femininity.

-Gender is complex mix of societal and biological factors-

One is not simply one's sex—then again, one is not simply one's gender identity either - it’s a complex interaction

Boiling down a complex idea into a binary is excessively simplistic and very harmful.

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What is Gender Essentialism?

Gender binary stems from gender essentialism; belief that gender roles and stereotypes are the natural result of biological or neurological differences between males and females.

Used to justify the binary.

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Labels within the gender spectrum

Person determined to be F at birth and identifies as a F: cisgender woman

Person determined to be M at birth and identifies as M: cisgender man

Person determined to be M at birth and identifies as a F: trans woman

Person determined to be F at birth and identifies as M: trans man

Person determined to be either M or F,identifies as somewhere along the spectrum, but not within the confines of male or female: nonbinary

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Beyond the Binary

  • Since gender is a spectrum, it can look lots of different ways.
  • A cisgender man may dress in predominantly stereotypical female clothes, but still identify as male. Identity vs. Expression
  • It is important to remember that a person’s experience with gender is unique to them.
  • This can be a difficult concept to understand in a binary focused world.

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Gender Assignment

Occurs at/before birth based on observable biological sex traits. (not necessarily based on chromosomes.)

A label put on a person before they have a voice.

A legal category in some states.

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What is the difference between identity and expression?

  • Gender identity: How YOU feel about your gender, both physically and psychologically. Identity is individualized and can be fluid. It can be what you were “assigned” at birth or not.
  • Gender expression: also sometimes referred to as gender performance. It is how you show to the world your gender identify.

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What is gender attribution?

  • Assuming you know someone’s gender at a glance.
  • It is the act of going into a room and thinking “4 boys and 3 girls.”
  • Often we do this process unconsciously without even realizing it, and only become aware of it when we stop to question someone’s gender identity.
  • Or incorrectly assume their pronoun(s).

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androgyny

a person whose gender identity is not exclusively male or female and who may or may not have an

intersex condition.

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And now for a totally new topic.

Finished gender and sex.

Moved on to the totally new topic of sexual orientation.

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What is Sexual Orientation?

  • Who a person is attracted to, who they want to form romantic connections with, and who they want to have sex with.
  • Sexual identity, like gender, is (you guessed it) a spectrum
  • Along that spectrum there are some categories with specific labels.

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Examples of a few sexual identities

Using old school metaphors, just in case you know someone who needs it spelled out really simply.

  • Heterosexual: an apple is attracted to an orange, an orange is attracted to an apple. Attraction to the opposite gender and or sex
  • Homosexual: an apple is attracted to an apple, an orange is attracted to an orange. Attraction to the same gender and or sex
  • Pansexual: An apple is attracted to apples, oranges, apples that were assigned oranges, oranges assigned apples, fruits with no labels. Attraction to the person, regardless of gender identity and or sex.
  • Bisexual: An apple that likes oranges and apples, or an orange that likes apples and oranges. Attraction to the same and the opposite gender and or sex.
  • Asexual: An apple, an orange, or a fruit with no label that isn’t attracted to any kind of fruit. Someone who is asexual does not experience sexual attraction, but they may still experience romantic attraction. People who are asexual have romantic relationships and form families, but they don’t tend to have sexual desires.

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What are the origins of sexual orientation?

  • Neither heterosexuality, homosexuality, nor bisexuality has a single cause.
  • Heterosexuality is normative because the majority of people are heterosexual; other orientations are a normal part of human diversity and are present in other animals and in historical artifacts.
  • Biological factors may predispose an individual to a particular sexual orientation with psychological and social factors playing various supporting roles.

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Genetic factors

  • Concordance rates for identical twins (MZ) is about 52% but only about 22% in fraternal twins (DZ).
  • Certain DNA patterns on the X chromosome (the genes a man inherits from his mother) appear to be associated with male homosexuality. No such pattern has yet been identified for lesbians.
  • 50-60% of a person’s tendency toward one sexual orientation of the other appears to be genetic.

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Anatomical factors

  • Differences between heterosexual and homosexual males are found in a small region of the hypothalamus as well as a major bundle of nerves connecting the two halves of the brain.
    • These parts of the homosexual male’s brains were more similar to brains of heterosexual females than they are to brains of heterosexual males.
  • Are we born with these brain differences or do our brains change as we respond to life experiences? -Lema

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Effects of the prenatal environment

  • The mother’s immune system changes with each birth and may affect her younger sons.
  • Homosexual males have more older brothers than heterosexual males; each additional older brother increases the probability that the younger brother will be homosexual by 33%.
  • It appears to result from how the mother’s immune system learns to react to the high levels of testosterone.

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Hormones in the prenatal environment

  • Animal studies reveal that prenatal treatment with hormones will result in homosexual behavior.
  • Hypothalamus’ of male homosexuals respond to estrogen in the same way as heterosexual female; the hypothalamus appears “feminine.”
  • Other hormonal effects:
    • Homosexuals are more likely to be left-handed
    • Lesbian finger length studies – similar to males

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How can anatomy be “normal” �but orientation be variant?

  • Ellis and Ames claim that the critical period for development of sexual orientation comes between 2nd and 5th months of pregnancy; others claim that hormones have an effect in the first year or two following birth. The genitals have been differentiated since weeks 7-12.
  • Maternal stress, genetic-hormonal factors, drugs, and immune system functioning may all play a role in the biological component of orientation.

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Conclusions about the �origins of sexual orientation

  • Both biological and social influences contribute to the development of sexual orientation, whether heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual.
  • Biological factors predispose an individual to a particular sexual orientation.
  • Today there is stronger evidence for the biological contribution in males than in females; the sexual fluidity of bisexual females emphasizes the importance of social context in female’s relationships.

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