Intro to Psychology

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Intro to Psychology

• Development

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Development changes over the lifespan

• Physical Development Physical changes in the
  size and structure of our bodies between
  conception and adulthood. Most physical changes
  occur during the first 18 years of life.
• Cognitive Development Changes in cognitive
  abilities and functioning occurring as
  individuals grow older.
• Emotional/Social Development Changes in
  emotional experiences and expressions, and in
  behaviors and attitude toward others occurring
  with age.
• Moral Development Changes in the capacity to
  reason about an actions rightness or wrongness
  that occur with age.

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How Psychologists study development

• Longitudinal Studies involve studying the same
  people over time. The researcher selects a group
  of participants and follows them for several
  years to record changes.
• Example Collecting information about and from a
  class of entering freshmen at a university and
  following their progress for six years.
• Cross-sectional Studies involve studying
  different groups of people at the same time. The
  researcher selects participants from a range of
  levels of the variable under consideration.
• Example Evaluate six classes of students
  freshmen, sophomore, juniors, seniors, last years
  graduates, and graduates from two years ago.

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• Cohort Effects - The differences found between
  persons of different age groups.
• Potential problems with cross-sectional research
• The differences stem from the contrasting social
  or cultural conditions that occurred during the
  period in which they grew up
• Example People growing up in the late twenties
  and early thirties may be different due to
  experiencing the depression.

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Nature or Nurture

• Nature we are born with some knowledge and
  skills for dealing with the world
• Tabula Rosa - Blank Slate. Humans have no skills
  or knowledge when they are born. Everything we
  know and can do is the result of learning.
• Current theories of development reflect a
  combination of Nature (heredity/genetics) and
  nurture (our experiences after we are born).
• Epigenesis spiraling together of nature and
  nurture

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Physical development

• Prenatal development- development that occurs
  before birth.
• Zygote the fertilized egg.
• Embryonic period- Weeks 1 - 8. Cells begin
  differentiating. They go from a ball of cells to
  something resembling a person. Sexual
  differentiation also occurs.
• Fetal period- after 8 weeks until birth.
• After the first 3 months, skeletal and muscular
  systems begin developing.
• Middle 3, slow growth.
• Last 3, rapid growth, especially brain.

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• Fetal development can be disrupted by external
  factors in utero.
• Teratogens- drugs or other substances that can
  cause birth defects.
• Most teratogens are harmful early in pregnancy
• First 8 weeks is highest risk critical periods
• Common teratogens
• Rubella virus - German measles
• Can cause blindness, deafness, heart defects,
  mental retardation.
• Toxoplasmosis - infection caused by a
  single-celled parasite
• Typically spread by cat feces
• Can cause blindness, hydrocephalus, brain damage,
  epilepsy, deafness, and calcification of brain

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• Smoking
• Leads to lower birth weight
• Increase risk of miscarriage and infant mortality
• Triple the rate of SIDS
• Problems associated with hypoxia
• Infant can be addicted at birth
• Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) - Physical, mental
  and neurobehavioral birth defects associated with
  alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
• Stunted growth of head and body
• malformations of the face, heart, and ears
• nervous system damage, including mental
  retardation, seizures, hyperactivity, and
  learning disabilities.
• Leading cause of mental retardation and other
  birth defects

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FAS
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The Newborn

• Born with a number of reflexes an automatic
  response to an event independent of experience
• Sucking finger in mouth ? sucking
• Rooting stroking cheek ? turn and suck
• Babinski stroking sole of foot ? toes fan out
• Startle loud sound ? throws out arms and legs,
  pulls them back in, cries
• Born with a certain temperament innate
  inclination to engage in a certain style of
  behavior. Little personalities
• Approach openness to experience?
• Withdrawal react negatively to new situations

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Piaget's Theory of cognitive development

• According to Piaget, behavior is based on
  schemata. A schema is an organized way of
  interacting with objects in the world
• Feeding (bottle of milk)
• Assimilation- application of an old schema to new
  objects
• ball, a toy similar to a bottle.
• Accommodation- the modification of an old schema
  to fit a new object.
• New category is formed for ball.

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• Sensorimotor stage (from birth to about 1.5
  years)
• Behavior consists mostly of simple motor
  responses to sensory stimuli. Ex. the grasp
  reflex.
• Little thought to the infants. As the child
  progresses through the sensorimotor stage, they
  appear to gain some concept of self.
• For example- self-recognition in a mirror.
• Object permanence - objects still exist when they
  are out of sight.
• If a child drops their pacifier at 4 months of
  age they will think it is gone forever.
• At 6 months they will likely look for the
  pacifier briefly, but will initially think it is
  gone.
• At 8-12 months they will look for pacifier.

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• Preoperational - Ages 2 - 6/7. Children can make
  mental representation of the external world.
• Major cognitive developments is egocentrism.
• Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish their
  own perspective from that of others. Children
  have difficulty seeing the world from another
  point of view.
• A child sees the world as centered around himself
  or herself and cannot take the perspective of
  another person. Sharing does not come natural.

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• Concrete Operations (7 11 or 12) Children can
  perform concrete operations and begin developing
  a capacity for logical thought.
• Concrete operations refers to seeing what is in
  the here and now or something they can picture.
• If the concept is abstract they have more
  difficulty understanding.
• For example, Jill is taller than Robert is, and
  Robert is taller than Julie is. Who is taller,
  Jill or Julie? They lack this ability.
• Develop conservation

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• Conservation - Child will only pay attention to
  one dimension of an object at a time.
• They have difficulty understanding that the
  volume of an item doesn't change simply because
  it is in a skinny glass rather than a wider
  glass.

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• Formal Operations - 12 - adulthood.
• Develop ability for deductive or propositional
  reasoning.
• Hypothetical-Deductive reasoning - Can form a
  hypothesis and test it logically to solve the
  problem.
• Propositional reasoning - can asses the validity
  of verbal information even when it only refers to
  possibilities
• Idealistic thinking what is possible

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Social and Emotional Development

• Attachment - The strong affiliation between
  infants and their caregivers
• Mother - Child
• Father - Child
• Attachment styles determine what sorts of
  relationships we will have later in life

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Early Theories of Attachment

• Infants become attached because their caregivers
  feed them
• This feeding becomes associated with positive
  feelings

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Research on Attachment

• Harlows rhesus monkeys
• A study by Harlow placed infant moneys in cages
  with two artificial mothers.
• One was made from hard wire, the other was
  covered with soft cloth and warmed.
• The hard wire "mother" provided food to the
  infant. But the infant spent more time with the
  soft "mother".
• Conditioning principles would have predicted that
  the infant monkey would spend more time with the
  mother that provided them with food (a primary
  reinforcer).
• Comfort contact seems to be more important than
  food!

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• Without comfort contact
• Some monkeys were only raised with a wire mother
  or without one
• Problems later in life
• Emotionally unstable They engaged in stereotyped
  behavior patterns such as clutching themselves
  and rocking constantly back and forth

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• They exhibited excessive and misdirected
  aggression
• Socially inept
• Problems getting a mate
• Sex behavior was, for all practical purposes,
  destroyed
• Bad immune system

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Attachment in humans

• The strange situation a procedure for measuring
  levels of attachment
• Mother and the infant come into a room with many
  toys.
• Then, a stranger enters the room.
• The mother leaves and then returns.
• A few minutes later both the stranger and the
  mother leave
• Then the stranger returns
• Finally the mother returns.

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4 Categories of Attachment

• Securely attached- Child is stable and
  independent - infant expects that caregiver will
  be available
• The infant uses the mother as a base of
  exploration, often showing her a toy, cooing at
  her, or making eye contact with her.
• The infant shows some distress when the mother
  leaves, but cries only a little, if at all.
• When she returns, the infant goes to her with
  apparent delight, cuddles for a while, and then
  returns to the toys.

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• 2. Anxious ambivalent / resistant attachment-
• characterized by a lack of trust, anxiousness -
  caregiver cannot be counted on for comfort
• Responses toward the mother fluctuate between
  happy and angry.
• The infant clings to the mother and cries
  profusely when she leaves, as if worried that the
  mother might not return.
• When she does return, the infant clings to her
  again.

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• 3. Anxious avoidant attachment
• While the mother is present, the infant does not
  interact with her much and does not stay near
  her.
• The infant cries when she leaves but does not go
  to her when she returns.
• 4. Disorganized
• the infant pays little attention to the mother
  and seems not to notice when she leaves or
  returns.

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• Secure attachments 55
• more likely to relate well to playmates.
• Better social skills / leadership
• Higher self-esteem, resiliency
• Less aggressive, less angry
• Anxious - avoidant 23
• devious and manipulative
• aggressive
• narcissistic and socially incompetent
• Anxious-ambivalent 8
• dependent
• More emotionally and behaviorally disturbed
• Less resilient
• Disorganized 15
• High incidence of psychopathology
• Conduct disorders
• More criminal problems

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• Attachment is a continuum
• Attachment to mother or father extends to other
  relationships. The quality of one relationship
  correlates with the quality of another.
• Behavior in the strange situation correlates
  strongly with behavior at home
• one can predict the pattern of attachment from
  how the parents treat the infant at an earlier
  age
• The more time that parents spend affectionately
  interacting with an infant at the age of 3
  months, the more likely that infant is to show a
  secure attachment at 12 months.
• Children that are adopted after the age of 6
  months or so are at risk for attachment problems.

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Development of Moral Reasoning

• Lawrence Kohlberg
• What is right or wrong- His idea was that
  children underwent a process of the development
  of morals that paralleled Piagets stages.
• He noticed that wrong to a young child is
  something that is punished. Whereas an older
  child can know that something is wrong even if it
  is not punished.
• Set up moral dilemmas

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• In Europe, a woman was near death from a special
  kind of cancer. There was one drug that the
  doctors thought might save her. It was a form of
  radium that a druggist in the same town had
  recently discovered. the drug was expensive to
  make, but the druggist was charging ten times
  what the drug cost him to make. He paid 400 for
  the radium and charged 4,000 for a small dose of
  the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went
  to everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried
  every legal means, but he could only get together
  about 2,000, which is half of what it cost. He
  told the druggist that his wife was dying, and
  asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay
  later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered
  the drug and I'm going to make money from if."
  So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets
  desperate and considers breaking into the man's
  store to steal the drug for his wife.
• Should Heinz steal the drug?

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• Preconventional level (Ages 4 to 10)- Standards
  set by others are observed in order to receive
  reinforcement or avoid punishment.
• Intentionality is largely ignored.
• To them, accidentally breaking 4 cups is worse
  than intentionally breaking one.
• Conventional role conformity (ages 10 to 13)-
  rules and standards are internalized and
  behaviors are performed in order to please others.

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• Postconventional or principled morality (age 13
  or later, if at all).
• An individual decides whether or not a particular
  behavior is good or bad, regardless of what
  others think or of any legal restrictions that
  exist.
• Separation of morality from law, reward, or
  religion