Psychology Unit 6

• Nature vs. Nurture argument - is genetics or environment more powerful in determining behavior or traits
• Longitudinal study - examines one group of participants over a long period of time; Costly, takes a long time, and typically lose participants over time
• Cross sectional studies - uses people of different ages to compare how certain characteristics may change over the course of life; Can be hard when the groups have grown up in different times
• Biographical or retrospective studies - Looks at one person at a time through individuals memory; Good for detail, but memory may not be accurate and the information may not be generalizable
• According to Evolutionary Psychology, women want wealth, security, power from potential partners.
• According to Evolutionary Psychology, men want healthy, young potential partners with waist 1/3 narrower than hips.
• behavior genetics - study of the power and limitations of genes on who we are
• temperament - aspects of a person’s personality that we are born with; ex: whether someone is shy, aggressive, easily scared; remain relatively stable over time
• heritability - degree(typically a percentage) to which genetic factors (heredity) can explain the differences of a given trait among a population
• stability vs change debate - Are traits infant displays enduring, or do they change as the growing person interacts with other people and his or her culture
• Turner’s Syndrome - baby is born with just a single X chromosome (seen only in girls); Shortness, webbed neck and unusual sexual development
• Klinefelter’s Syndrome - baby is born with an extra X chromosome (seen only in boys); Minimal sexual development and extreme introversion
• Down’s Syndrome - baby is born with an extra chromosome on the 21st pair; Rounded face, shorter fingers, low cognitive ability
• teratogens - agents, such as chemicals & viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) - physical & cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking; symptoms include facial disproportions
• healthy newborns turn head towards voices, see 8 to 12 inches from their faces, gaze longer at human like objects right from birth; prefer human voices and faces, Face-like images, smell and sound of mother
• Habituation - decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation
• newborns become bored with a repeated stimulus, but renew their attention to a slightly different stimulus
• Rooting Reflex - a baby’s tendency, when touched on the cheek, to open mouth and search for a nipple
• Sucking Reflex - the baby will suck on anything put in their mouth
• Grasping Reflex - when something is placed in the palm of the hand or foot, the baby will try to grab hold of it
• Moro(Startle) Reflex - when startled, the baby will flail out its arms and legs, then retract them, making herself as small as possible
• Babinski Reflex - when baby’s foot is stroked, he or she will spread their toes
• Maturation - orderly sequence of biological growth by which an organism develops over time, both physically and mentally
• While in the womb, you produce almost ¼ million brain cells per minute.
• Although the brain does not develop many new cells, the existing cells begin to work more efficiently- forming more complex neural networks.
• If children from impoverished environments given stimulating infant care, they score better on intelligence tests by age 12 than counterparts.
• “Selection effect” - we seek out people with similar interests
• Feral Children - Children who have been deprived of social contact or upbringing
• Lev Vygotsky - Said that one’s thinking is influenced by one’s culture
• Zone of Proximal Development - the difference between what a learner can do without help and what a learner can do with help, to suggest the steps of making children more independent. Parents should provide less and less assistance until the child can complete the task alone. Vygotsky thought that if a child had an older influence, they would develop faster.
• cognition - All mental activities associated with thinking, knowing and remembering
• Schema - A mental outlook or framework developed as a child and used to solve problems or to organize knowledge
• Assimilation - interpreting new experiences into one’s existing schemas
• Accommodation - adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
• sensorimotor stage - Piaget; start to develop schemas; age 0-2; develop object permanence; they enter the next stage when they develop object permanence
• preoperational stage (3-7) - inability to think in reverse order; believing inanimate objects have thoughts and feelings; Pretend play; egocentrism that should be gone by age 5; Begin to understand theory of mind; lack ability to understand the concept of conservation due to centration; lack basic logical operations skills
• theory of mind - the ability to imagine what other people are thinking, to predict their behaviour and intentions, to speculate about their concerns and beliefs
• conservation - that objects remain the same even when their shapes change
• centration - focusing on one aspect of a situation and ignoring others