Psych 250 Test 1

A period during which specific biological or environmental events are required for normal development to occur (Imprinting)

A time in an organism's development when a particular experience has a profound effect (Language acquisition)

• Psychodynamic
• Behaviorism
• Cognitive
• Systems

• Sigmund Freud: psychosexual stages are associated with the changing focus of the sex drive
• Erik Erikson: psychosocial stages are associated with tasks or crises shaped by social and cultural factors

• Focus on development as the result of learning, behavioral changes resulting from the individual's forming associations between behavior and consequences
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Social Learning

• Pavlov, Watson
• Previously existing behaviors come to be associated with and elicited by new stimuli

• Skinner
• New behaviors may come about as a result of reinforcement and punishment of behaviors

Emphasizes the influence that other people have over a person's behavior, involving learning by observation and imitation

• Piaget
• Theory in which cognitive development results from children's active construction of reality based on their experiences with the world
• Children actively construct knowledge
• Development is achieved via adaptation and assimilation to achieve equilibrium
• All children move through four periods:
• Sensorimotor (birth-2 years) - use senses and motor abilities to understand the world, active learning, no conceptual or reflective thought
• Preoperational (2-6 years) - think magically and poetically, use language
• Concrete Operational (6-11 years) - understand and apply logic, thinking is limited to what they personally experience
• Formal Operational (12 years-adulthood) - think about abstractions and hypothetical concepts, reason analytically, can be logical about things they've never experienced

• New cognitive theory
• Theories that look at how children process, store, organize, retrieve, and manipulate information in increasingly efficient ways
• Analogous with computer processing
• Continuous development

• See development in terms of complex wholes made up of parts (systems) which interact and change over time
• Ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner) focuses on the organization and interaction of the multiple environmental contexts within which individuals develop

Material and symbolic tools that accumulate over time, are passed on through social processes, and provide resources for the developing child

Contains instructions that guide the formation of the individual's traits

The individual's particular set of genes

• The individual's actual traits, behavior, and psychological traits
• Genotype+environment
• Two-way process
• Genetic factors play a role in where people choose to live, and what social experiences they choose to have

• Genes are found on them
• Molecule of DNA (apparently its a "rod" for this class)

The specific form of a gene

Lactose tolerance - Bedouins of Middle East drank from cows, adapted tolerance

• Periods: 
• Beginning of Pregnancy:  at conception = gestational stage, at implantation = embryonic stage (2 weeks after conception)
• Full term pregnancy: 266 days, 38 weeks, 9 months
• Trimesters: Germinal, Embryonic, Fetal
• Due date based on last period, only 5% of babies actually born on due date

• Weeks 3-8
• Brain: nerves and muscles link to the brain -> movement
• Facial features: fully formed eyes, eyelids, ears (external, middle, inner parts)
• Sex organs: developed but difficult to detect
• Head is disproportionately large, neck is defined, tail will disappear soon
• Arms can bend at elbows, fingers formed and separated

Forms internal organs

Forms skeleton and muscles

Forms skin & nervous system

• Formation of the neural plate and development of the neural tube
• Lasts for the first 7 months in utero, then stops

• Cell body
• Dendrite 
• Axon

Migrate to the proper cortical location, and proper layer

Once at their destination, a neuron will differentiate to become specific to it's area

• Cell death
• Marks the rest of brain life (use it or lose it)

Dendrites reaching out to connect to other neuron dendrites

Formation of new connections between neurons

• Junction between neurons or a neuron and another tissue
• Communication occurs electrochemically here

• The coating of axons with a fatty substance (Myelin) that improves the speed and efficiency of neural impulse transmission (and essentially the speed of brain function)
• Increases from childhood to adulthood
• Decreases with old age, disease

• Gets rid of neurons that aren't used frequently
• Decrease in total neurons and synaptic density

• Later paternal age >40 associated with children with autism
• Exposure to toxins can lead to abnormal sperm, causing birth defects or low birth weight

• Stress can affect baby (cortisol)
• Nutrition: intake of folic acid, calcium, and iron

• Any environmental agent that causes damage during the prenatal period
• Effect is based on: dose, timing, genetic predispositions, presence  of other factors

• Appearance 
• Pulse
• Grimace
• Activity
• Respiration

• Triple in weight
• Grow about 10 inches

• Sleep less than 24 hours a day, patterns vary
• Begin sleep with REM and fall into NREM (quiet) sleep. Gradually the sequence reverses and becomes like adults in adolescence (NREM --> REM)

• Babies hear in utero
• ABR for newborns (auditory brain stem response) - tests brain's ability to distinguish between rapidly-presented sounds

• 2-8 Months: perceive distinctions in all languages 
• 10-11 Months: Loss of non-native distinction, improved native distinction

• Newborns are nearsighted
• Sort of color blind
• Show a preference for faces, can distinguish mother's face
• Pay greater attention to faces with eye-gaze directed at them

• Involve the large muscles of the body and make locomotion possible
• Sitting without support
• Standing with assistance
• Hands and knees crawling
• Walking with assistance
• Standing alone
• Walking alone

• Birth-1 month: newborn reflexes
• 1-4 months: simple motor habits centered around own body
• 4-8 months: repeat interesting effects in surroundings
• 8-12 months: intentional, goal-directed behavior; object permanence 
• 12-18 months: explore properties of objects through novel actions
• 18 months-2 years: internal depictions of objects or events, deferred imitation

Cognitive abilities present at EARLIER stages (object knowledge at 2.5 months)

• 2-4 Months: Cooing
• 5-11 Months: Babbling
• 12 Months: Holophrases
• 18 Months-2 Years: Telegraphic Speech