# Counseling/Human Development

Please read my comments in the Scientific Method section; I am worried by what I read in this text that I am following. I am not much happier with the neruropsychology material either, but it is not distressing me like this life-span material is. Rather than create annotated bibliographies from these texts, I will reconstruct the material from perspectives that concern me: the interrelations between intelligence, emotion, and communications. And from the perspective given by the instructor.--JohnBessa 19:47, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

## Human Development Introduction

Orderly, planned, enduring; it's all growth
Systematic changes and continuities from fertilization to death: physical, cognitive, psychosocial. Developmental change during any period involves both gain and loss; children gain cognitive abilities as they become adults, but lose self-esteem and are more prone to depression: aging results in wisdom. Changes are not better or worse, but result in a different person:
* Gain
* Loss
* Continuities

#### Physical development

Growth:
* Body
* Organs
* Function of physiological system
* Aging, physical aspects
* Motor abilities, growth and decline

#### Cognitive development

Changes and continuities:
* Perception
* Language
* Learning
* Memory
* Problem solving

#### Psychosocial

Changes and carryover in personal and interpersonal development:
* Motives
* Emotions
* Personality traits
* Interpersonal and relationship skills
* Roles in society and family

#### Growth strata

* Prenatal
* Infancy
* Preschool
* Middle childhood
* Adolescence
* Early adulthood
* Middle adulthood
* Late adulthood

#### Age Norms

Age groupings for life's milestones are different for different types of societies, cultures, subcultures, and income levels:
* Marrying
* Children
* Work
* Retirement

#### Biological VS environmental growth influences

Nature VS nurture
Biological:
Differences are differences in genes
* heredity
* maturation with respect to gene influence
* predispositions from evolution
* hormone influence
* brain growth spurts
Environmental:
Learning and environmental stimuli, people should be alike or different according to environmental conditions
* external physical
* social conditions
* stimuli
* crowded living conditions
* pollution, noise, chemical
* other people's behaviors
* family members
* peers
* teachers
* education

#### Growth

Development is a product of the relationship between the two, where the two affect each other: bio-ecological.
Biological:
* genetic endowment
* biological influences
* maturation
Environmental:
* effects of the surrounding environment
* learning
Interrelationship: Brain, and organ, allows us to experience the surrounding environment, a major component of understanding growth.
(Examples needed here)

##### Layered environmental systems

Bronfenbrenner
* Micro Immediate physical and social environment
* Meso Interrelationships or linkages between microsystems
* Exo Indirect social influences by distant linkages through meso links
* Macro Societal and cultural "bigger picture" influences

### Key assumptions of lifelong development

* Lifelong process
* Multidirectional
* Gain and loss
* Life-long plasticity Ability to change with environmental influences
* Historical-cultural context
* Multiply influenced
* Development is multidisciplinary

### Development study strategies
#### Scientific Method

The authors state in the first sentence that "there is nothing mysterious about the scientific method," which implies that she hasn't attempted these complex new research strategies that are still being developed.
This chapter seems weak in that it is missing key developments:
* Scientific modeling
* Whole systems approaches (especially to culture and community)
* Action Research (which eliminates a primary weakness of research by concurrently applying learning, especially the evaluation of participant responses, in-place as solutions to problems being researched)
Missing also are concerns about bias and preconception. Bias tends to victimize those who are unaware of it, or helps them victimize others. Preconception can be described as assumed hypothesis; the prevention being community involvement at the design criteria stages. Do they have design criteria stages?
       With more reading, my question becomes "what of the missing bias concern in theory, or model development?" Concepts such as empathy and love are barely mentioned. Love is replaced with attachment, and morality is related to punishment in places.
       The empathy model is partly a resource model; humans as higher organisms collaborate to create beneficial resources, or, if they cannot collaborate, they cooperate to take them. The natural tendency is towards collaboration, but a break in evolution, what Darwin called natural affection, has allowed some to create an environment of exploitation that has been refined in many places by oligarchs, such as the Socratics, to become exploitation structures such as the Roman capital system. Capital has been preserved for us through the ages in many ways, especially human capital, in which eduction is the biggest player-- universal extensions of institutions such as Plato's Lyceum. Bias certainly plays in human capital exploitation into recent time: the persistence of American slavery. If it is human capital, irrespective of reason, that this discipline, and hence this text, promotes through emotionally-blinded research strategies, then it will be evident in the text.
Many, smaller, components of the Scientific method are missing that I describe in middle school teaching such as the need for community in design and peer review, and the dangers of preconception and bias. If the author's research stratgies are deliberately self-limited, then does it follow that her ideas and the ideas she presents would likewise be limited, and the data possibly tainted? Also see here.

##### Theory, hypothesis, and proof

* Describing a single phenomena
* Generating ideas to create theories by making generalized observations
* Theory that is a set of ideas that describe a phenomena
* Data from systematic observation supports ideas
* Discount or abandon flawed a idea if the data disproves it
* Test ideas with disciplined observation and data collection
* Trust the results of the data
General theories and ideas gathered from observation guide research design, which is the creation of hypotheses and tests to prove the hypotheses.
Theory is an explanation for phenomena leading to a hypothesis that creates a scenario that attempts to predict behaviors. The hypothesis is tested by observing behavior, and, depending on the results, the theory is accepted, revised, or rejected.

#### Sample

Group of individuals studied whose behaviors can be generalized to the larger population Random samples are best Samples are from local communities, and there is an attempt to apply the data widely Data cannot be applied to differing types of communities

#### Data collection
##### Self-report measures/verbal report

Interviews, questionnaires, tests
* May not be useful for people who have impaired communication
* There may be a desire to report in a socially favorable way
* Computers help bypass aging issues and focus responses

##### Behavioral observations

Naturalistic
* Observing in natural environment
* When self-reporting cannot be used
* Only method for everyday life
* Cannot pinpoint causes
** Presence of observer may alter behaviors
** Too many simultaneous events
** Causes may be historical
Structured behavioral observation
* Create environmental conditions to elicit response

##### Physiological measurements

Physical changes in the body linked to emotional changes that can be reliably measured
* Electrical
* Hormonal
* Heart rate
* Brain scan

#### Experimental method

Alters an aspect of the environment to see how behaviors change
* Independent variable alters the environment
* Dependent variable is measured
Manipulation of the independent variable
* Different groups are given different experiences
* Random assignment to assure that a wide variety of types of participants and that the groups are homogeneous so that data can be generalized
* Control, all other factors have to be the same to assure that only the independent variable is different
* Easily establish causal effects
Ethics may prevent an experiment
The controlled environment may make the experiment irrelevant if it is too different from the real world

#### Correlational method

If two or more variables in a natural environment are related in a systematic, or causal, way:
* Experiences
* Characteristics
* Developmental outcomes
Does a certain event or condition causes a specific behavior?
Correlational coefficient is the measurement of the relationship between the two values that are being compared. It can range from +1 to -1, where +1 shows complete relationship, and a negative number shows a reversal of the relationship.
Correlational can only suggest causal relationships
* Participants have already had different experiences
* Environmental factors that may affect variables are too diverse in natural environments to be controlled or compensated for, and if past information is used, control is impossible.
Multiple influences can be studied simultaneously with the help of information technology. Computer networking can assist by increasing data-set sizes and data diversity and algorithms can show relationships that are otherwise invisible in the big data-sets.
Because the experiences have already happened, ethical issues are unlikely.

#### Developmental research designs

Cross-sectional: Factors about different age groups, or cohorts, are compared. Cultural differences may produce different results.
Longitudinal: A single cohort is assessed repeatedly over time
Sequential: Combine longitudinal and cross-sectional to show how each cohort is affected by the passage of time (age effects) and the environment during specific times, or cohort effects.

### Rights and cultural in research

Protecting the rights of participants

#### Culture

Research needs to be widespread to help us understand how diverse environments affect development, and how interrelations between cultures affect it; the measurements and methods need to reflect this in ways that relate to individual cultures, sub-cultures, and socioeconomic groupings, or SES--developmental differences between middle class, poverty-stricken, and wealthy economic levels.
Middle class or wealthy families are better able than poor families to provide supportive homes that stimulate developmental success.
Self-reporting materials and interview questions have to be meaningful within the scope of a group, especially with respect to translations.
Ethnocentrism as a belief of cultural self-superiority, or cultural bias, affect research design, and all social strata, especially minority cultures, are defined in terms of majority cultures, such as the White upper-middle-class.

#### Personal protection

Researchers may not hurt participants. They have to be aware that emotionally negative responses may cause distress, and have to carefully rationalize risks with respect to benefits.
If harm is likely, researchers must develop another strategy. Federal regulations state that research risks should not exceed any other type of examination, and that the researcher is held responsible for damage.
Research information is confidential, and likewise protected by federal laws such as HIPAA.

## Theories

Historically:
* stage theories
* learning theories
* complex system theories
May be the work of theoretical eclectics

#### Developmental theories

* internally consistent
* falsifiable
* supported by data

#### Major issues

* nature and nurture (biological and environmental)
* goodness and badness of human nature
* activity and passivity
* continuity and discontinuity
* universality and context specificity

### Psychoanalytic Theory

* Influential
* Difficult to test and support
* Not easily falsifiable
* Better at describing than explaining

#### Freud

Humans:
* irrational
* biological instincts that are inborn and unconscious
Personality partitions that emerge in order:
* id
* ego
* superego
Libido is channeled across psychosexual stages that involve psychic conflicts that create the need for defense mechanisms:
* oral
* anal
* phallic
* latent
* genital
Growth:
* Biological needs drive development
* Parents affect a child's ability to deal with conflict
* Parental restriction can lead to emotional problems

#### Erikson

Neo-Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychological development stages:
* trust
* autonomy
* initiative
* industry
* identity
* intimacy
* generativity
* integrity
Conflicts are resolved:
* parents
* peers
* culture
Differences with Freud:
* social influences over biological
* ego over id
* more optimistic about human nature
* human ability to overcome early problems
* whole life-span

### Learning theories

* well-supported and applicable
* do not explain changes
* biological influences underemphisized
* growth is gradual change
* environmental influences cause development in many directions

#### Watson

* "classical" conditioning

#### Skinner

* operant conditioning
** reinforcement strengthens behavior
** punishment weakens behavior

#### Bandura

* social-cognitive
* cognitive processes in (from?) observational learning
* human agency
* self-efficacy
* reciprocal determinism
** person
** behavior
** environment

### Cognitive developmental theory
#### Piaget

Constructivist, absolute universality
* intelligence is adaptive
* understandings from interactions
* growth in distinct stages
* sensorimotor
* preoperational
* concrete operational
* formal operational

### Systems theories

Focus on systems and not the entirety of growth Individual and environment:
* ongoing transactions
* mutual influence

#### Ethology

Evolution of species-specific behaviors

##### Epigentic psychological systems (Gottlieb)

Mutual influences among genes in terms of evolution and growth, or epigenetic process:
* neural activity
* behavior
* environment

## Genes, Environment, and Development
### Evolution and species heredity

Human similarity:
* Species heredity, which is a product of evolution
* Cultural heredity through the evolution of culture
Darwin: Genetic variation within a species that gives some species members an advantage in adapting to the environment, those members will reproduce more spreading those genetic variations.

### Individual heredity

* Egg and sperm each contributes 23 chromosomes
* Meiosis joins each contribution to form single-cell zygote with 46 chromosomes
* Parent and child share 50%
* Siblings share 50% on average
* chromosomes have 20,000-25,000 genes
* differences and similarities
** groups
** species
Environmental factors
* genotype -- genes
* phenotype -- traits
Regulator DNA -- controls gene expression, or phenotype
* genetic code
* environmental factors
Inheritance mechanisms:
* single gene-pair
* sex-linked
* polygenic, or multiple, gene
Non-inheritance mechanisms:
* mutations (cancer?)
* choromosome error syndromes
** Down
** Turner
** Klinefelter
** fragile X
Genetic counseling tests:
* amniocentesis
* chroionic villus sampling
* ultrasound
* preimplantation genetic diagnosis
* maternal blood sampling

### Strong genetic and environmental influences

Behavioral geneticists do studies between pairs of people:
* selective breeding
* twin adoption
They use statitiscal techniques to estimate the hereditability of traits with shared sibling influences or non-shared environmental influneces:
* concordance rates
* correlation coeeficients
Molecular genetic studies compare identifiable gene variants:
* people who have them
* people who do not have them

### Individual differences

Genotype: physical physiological
Phenotype:
* intellectual abilities
* personality traits
* social attitudes
Heritability:
* creativity
* parent-child attachment
Influences:
* intelligence rates are inherited
* infant mental growth is influenced by species-wide maturation plan
* childhood and adolescence mental growth influences:
** individual genotype
** non-shared, or individual, environmental influences
** less-so with shared environmental influences with growth

#### Personality and temperament

Influences:
* genotype
* non-shared, or individual, environmental influences
* less-so shared environmental influences with growth

#### Psychological disorders

May require interaction of genotype with environmental stresses:
* schizophrenia

### Hereditary and environmental conspiring

Life-span influences:
* genes
* non-shared environmental
Childhood influences:
* shared environmental
Gene-environment interactions:
* environment influences how genes are expressed
* genes influence how people react to the environment
Genetic predispositions determine what experiences and environments people seek:
* passive
* evocative
* active

## Prenatal, Perinatal, and Neonatal Development
### Prenatal development

Stages:
    1. conception
    2. germinal
   * single-cell zygote multiplies and implants in the uterus
   * two weeks
    3. embryonic
   * organogeneisis: major organs take shape
   * placenta forms and connects child to mother with umbilical cord
   * heart formation and starting
   * sexual differentiation
   * ends with eighth week
    4. fetal
   * body and brain become viable at 23-24 weeks
   * neural multiplication and differentiation

### Prenatal environment

Quality influences:
* age
** women in 20s have lowest complication rates
* emotional state
** stressed mothers have smaller babies
* nutrition
* father's characteristics (biological or behavioral?)
Teratogens harm organs:
* diseases
** rubella
** syphilis
** AIDS
* drugs
** prescription
** street
** over-the-counter
** alcohol
* environmental agent
** radiation
** pollution
Teratogens do most damage:
* organ is growing fastest
* exposure
* strength
Teratogen effects:
* genotypes of mother and child
* environments
** prenatal
** postnatal

### Perinatal environment

Birth is a three stage process:
* regular contractions of uterus, and dialation of cervix
* emergence of baby
* delivery of placenta
Delivery assistance:
* vacuum extraction
* forceps
* cesarean section, or other surgical removal
* medications
** pain reduction with spinal blocks or epidurals
** promote contractions with oxytocin
Complications:
* Anoxia, or oxygen deprivation, can result in brain or neurological damage in minutes

### Neonatal environment

One month after delivery Breastfeeding:
* common to all cultures
* some mothers start with bottle feeding or switch to it
At-risk babies out-grow problems if they have personal resources:
* sociability
* intelligence
* supportive environment
* love
Problems for at-risk infants:
* short-term
* long-term

## Health and Physical Development

Influenced by genotype, life-style choices, sociohistorical context

### Building blocks

Endocrine glands regulate behavior by putting hormones in the blood system:
* pituitary
* thyroid
* testes
* ovaries
Brain development:
* greatest during late prenatal and infancy with plasticity
* occurs through life span
Integrated and differentiated growth principles:
* cephalocaudal, or head-to-tail
* proximodistal, or center outward
* orthegenetic, or global

### Infant

* reflexes
* sensory capabilities
* organized states
* ability to learn from experiences

#### Motor milestones

Dynamic systems model:
* crawling
* walking
* reaching
* grasping

### Child

Physical changes less than infancy or adolescence.
Physical activity is an important component of health.
Car accidents are leading cause of child death.
Health is influenced by parents:
* socioeconomic status
* lifestyle choices

### Adolescent

* growth spurts and sexual maturation
* emotionally affected by maturation, especially girls
* worry about appearance and abilities
Maturation:
* boys have advantage when early
* girls want to mature with peers
Choices by adolescents can have short-term and long-term effects; most adolescents are healthy, sendentary adolescents can be obese

### Adult

Declines are noticable in older adults:
* menopause
* andropause
* neural response decline
* physical activity extends life span and health
Symptoms of aging are variable:
* disuse
* abuse
* disease
** osteoporosis
** osteoarthritis

## Perception

* sensation: sensory stimulation
* perception: interpretation of sensed stimulation
* innate: nativist
* sensed: constructivist

### Infancy

Sensory and perceptual abilities are innate but need experiences to develop the abilities into skills during sensitive periods. Infants provide themselves with sensory stimulus by exploring their environments.
Visual system works well at birth and improves during 6 - 12 months. They perceive depth during first year but must learn to use the information.
Auditory and other senses also well developed at birth; parents can be recognized by voice and infants can distinguish some sounds better that adults.
Cross-modal perception, or the ability to recognize through one sense what was learned through another sense, develops during 3-6 months and matures during childhood.
Visual pattern preferences:
* contour
* movement
* moderate complexity
Infant perception study methods:
* habituation evoked potentials
* preferential looking
* operant conditioning

### Childhood

Children learn to use information from senses:
* they can sustain attention for longer periods
* direct perception by filtering out distracting information
* plan and implement perceptual inquiry

### Adolescence

Sensation and perception are at peak levels, and attention control improves.
They are sensitive may lack ability to act responsibility; the often ignore the possibility of hearing loss from loud noise.

### Adulthood

Sensory abilities decline:
* thresholds increase
* perceptual processing of senses may decline
Vision:
* cataracts
* pupil response
* presbyopia -- thickening of the lense
* retinal changes
** macular degeneration
** retinitis pigmentosa
* glaucoma
Hearing, or presbycusis:
* high-pitched sounds
* speech perception
** noisy conditions
Taste and smell:
* slight declines
Other senses:
* touch
* temperature
* pain

## Cognition
### Constructivist approach

Jean Piaget
Children use active exploration of the environment to create cognitive structures, or schemes, in four stages.
Organisms adapt to their environments using intelligence.
Children organize their understanding of the world by constructing a perception in which they insert new information, or adapt existing structure to accommodate new information.

### Infant

Sensorimotor stage consists of motor reaction to sensed information.
Object permanence: objects exist outside of the context of immediate experience
Symbolic capacity: one thing can represent something else; a picture can relate to an object. This skill allows for pretend play and language.

### Child

Helped structurt growth concepts but underestimated the abilities of children
* stages do not relate (coherent)
* vague explanations
* underestimating role of language and social interaction
Preoperational stage (pre-school):
* Perceptionally salient features of a task or object (no logical reasoning)
* egocentric, cannot see others' points of view
Concrete operational stage of growth during childhood enables logical reasoning about concrete information:
* logic
* conservation (resource?)
* classification
* decentrate
* reverse thought (reversibility of thought)
* transform ideas (transformational thought)

### Adolescent

Formal-operational thought:
* hypothetical reasoning
* simultaneously consider multiple task components
* special forms of egocentrism (??misuse of term)
** imaginary audience
** personal fable

### Adult

Formal-operational thought
* education
* culture
* area of expertise

### Sociocultural influences

Vygotsky (1930s)
* Believe that how we develop, particularly how we learn to think, is primarily a function of the social and cultural environment in which we are reared. It emphasizes what makes people different thinkers rather than what we all have in common as people.
Four different levels of development that should be studied: 1. Ontogentic Development:
    Development of the individual over his or her lifetime.
2. Microgenetic Development:
    Individual across very short/small periods of time. Focuses on teaching someone something and seeing how strategy can play a role in remembering something.
3. Phylogenetic Development:
    Changes across evolutionary times.
4. Sociohistorical Development:
    Change across history that's occurred in the culture (ie computers).
* Elementary Mental Functions
** Cognitive abilities that children are born with, like attention, sensation and perception, vision, and memory abilities. These abilities are the same across cultures.
* General Genetic Law of Cultural Development
** Higher level of mental functions first appear in a child's social interactions. Then, the child begins top internalize them. Largely a function of a caregiver helping a child to grow, it's not something that just happens because of the neural pathways become more diverse and numerous.
* Zone of Proximal Development
** For every skill and every ability. A zone that is determined by what a child can do alone at one end, the bottom end, and what a child can do in that area with adult guidance. Ex: 4 year old comes and says "I sure would like to have some cookies, I wish we could make some cookies." 4 year old can't make cookies, so they make them together. As a caregiver, there are some aspects of the task that the 4 year old can do as long as you're there guiding them.
* Scaffolding
** Occurs anytime the caregiver modifies the interactions with the child so they can perform at their highest level of their ability. Doesn't believe in homogeneity. Learning is very task specific.
Language
* passes:
** culturally valued thinking
** problem solving
* shapes:
** thought
evolution path:
* social speech
* private speech
* inner speech

## Memory Information Processing
### Memory

Definition of Memory:
* The means by which we retain and draw on our past experience to use that information in the present.
* The dynamic mechanisms associated with encoding, storing, and retrieving information about past experiences.
** Encoding - transforming data (perceptual, preesxisting in memory, or inferred) into representations.
** Storing - maintaining representations across time.
** Retrieval - accessing stored representations.
Explicit Memory vs. Implicit Memory
* Explicit Memory
** Conscious access to stored data & experiences.
** What the layperson typically considers memory
** Measured with commonly known tasks of recall (e.g., essay questions) and recognition (e.g., multiple choice).
* Implicit Memory
** Unconscious access to stored data & experiences.
** Measured with tasks that "prime" or "activate" representations.
** Typical measure is increased speed of "primed" condition as compared to "unprimed" condition.
** Another typical measure is bias, (ie the tendency to choice a particular "primed" option more often than an "unprimed" option.
Explicit Memory Tasks
Types of Recall:
* Free Recall -
** Recall all the words from a list, in any order.
* Cued Recall -
** Subjects are given a cue to facilitate recall.
** Recall as much as possible about "Civil War".
** Subjects learn pair items (e.g., words, pictures) and then are given one of the pair and asked to recall the other.
* Serial Recall -
** Need to recall order as well as items.
** Recall the names of all American presidents in the order they were elected (or impeached).
* Recognition -
** Select from a list of previously presented items.
** Circle all the previously studied words.
** Indicate which pictures were presented yesterday.
** Chose the correct answer from 5 alternatives.
Encoding
* long-term memory
* storage
Retrieval
* recognition
* cued recall
* recall memory
Use recalled information
* problem solving

### Infant

Memory with birth
* recognition
Recall
* 2-3 months with cues
* 1 year without cues
Deliberate conscious recall
* 2 years

### Child

Fundamental process become automated to free memory space
Memory strategies develop to process information in areas of expertise through an overlapping natural selection process rather than steps from one way to thinking to the next:
* rehersal
* organization
* elaboration
* systematic rules (Siegler)
* replacement of faulty rules with relevant rules

### Adolesent

Advanced learning strategies:
* elaboration
* note taking
* underlining
* deliberate and selective use
** strategies
** metacognitive abilities to guide learning

### Adult

* domain expertise
* bases are organized and large
* retrieval and use is specialized and automated
In real-life problem-solving skills improve early to middle adulthood and remain through old age.
Age differences:
* basic processing capacity
* difficulty with strategies
* contextual factors
** cohort differences
* laboratory problem solving tests
Older adults out-performed by younger:
* speed memory tasks
* unfamiliar or meaningless material
* unexercised abilities
* recall (facts?) over recognition (constructed?) memory
* explicit over implicit memory

## Intelligence

Psychometric: Traits that can be measured and compared with age mates
* Stanford-Binet
* Wechsler
Global increase in scores (Flynn effect):
* nutrition
* living conditions
* education
Differences:
* genotype
* home
** intellectual stimulation
** parental involvement
** responsive stimulation
* social class
** increased IQ for children who move from low to high income homes
* racial differences
** stereotype threat
** genetic factors
Mentally retarded functioning is deterimed by IQ determines depending on causes of retardation:
* organic
* cultural-familial
High IQ scores:
* above-average success in life
Cognitive development approaches:
* qualitatively different stages (Piaget)
* sociocultrually transmitted modes of thought (Vygotsky)
* information processing (memory and problem solving)
* psychometric measurement
Creativity
* novel
* socially valued
* divergent and not convergent
* independent of IQ intelligence

### Infant

DQ scores do not predict IQ well
* Bayley scale
Information processing speed measures:
* rapid habituation
* preference for novelty

### Child

Creativity decreases
IQ scores are predictive of future scores Variation in growth:
* major gains in favorable environments
* cumulative deficit for disadvantaged

### Adolescent

* stable through adolescence
* IQ scores predict school achievement and years of education
Creativity rises:
* thrives in homes where independence is valued

### Adult

IQ stable throughout adulthood Correlations:
* occupational status
* heath during adulthood
Age declines:
* fluid more so
* crystallized less so
Creativity:
* high for young adults in areas of expertise
* declines with old age
* survives for elders in some fields

## Language and Education
### Mastering language

Acquired easily:
* inborn readiness
* environment
First few years and refined through adolescence:
* phonology
* semantics
* morphology
* syntax
* pragmatics

### Infant

Opportunities for success are necessary because a desire to master environment predicts achievement motivation.
Learned helplessness orientation results from lack of opportunities.

### Child

Reading requires effort as children have to create phonologial interpretation of the alphabet. Success is variable.
Schools succeed when they provide a good fit between academics and students. Fit should extend to students at the individual level.
Success is not correlated by:
* spending
* class size
* ability grouping
* length of school
** day
** year
Students from motivating, comfortable, task-oriented environments that integrate parents into learning are more successful. Students from advantaged homes have highest performance.

### Adolescent

Achievement motivation drops:
* cognitive growth
* family characteristics
* peer pressure
* poor fit by school
Asian students outperform US students:
* more hours of study
* Asian parents value academics

### Adult

Adults inherit achievement motivation.
Women who raise children may lose achievement motivation. Mothers with higher education can recover achievement motivation when children get older.
Adults who struggle with literacy may have achievement motivation to return to school.

## Self and Personality
### Conceptualizing the self and personality

Personality is the organized attributes of the individual:
* self-concept is perception of attributes
* self-esteem is evaluation of self-worth
* identity is a coherent self-definition
Big Five personality dimensions, or traits, of personality (McAdams and Pals):
* similar as a result of evolution
* different because of dispositional traits
* differ in changeable attributes
* construct unique narrative identities
* shaped by cultural and situational factors
Psychoanalytic (Erikson):
* personality changes in stages at similar ages
Trait theory:
* dimensions are enduring
Social learning:
* people adapt to social environments in anyway at any time

### Infant

First year:
* seperate from surrounding environments
* affect them
18-24 months:
* display self-recognition
* age and sex categorical self-base
Temperaments are different and influenced by genotype and fit to environment and only moderately predicts later personality
Thomas and Chess:
* easy
* difficult
* slow to warm up
Kagan:
* behavioral inhibition
Rothbart:
* surgency/extraversion
* negative affectivity
* effortful control

### Child

Personality traits become consistant showing correlations between early temperaments and Big Five.
Preschool self-concepts:
* physical characteristics
* activities
8-year-old self-concepts:
* inner psychological traits
* use social comparison to evaluate competencies
Self-esteem reaches high levels with:
* competence
* rate well in social comparisons
* warm and democratic parents

### Adolescent

Self-awareness increases, and self-esteem usually rises but may decline.
Self-concept:
* psychological
* abstract
* integrated
Conflict of identity (Erikson) as identity VS role confusion of college-agers at different rates in different domains:
* diffusion
* foreclosure
* moratorium
* identity achievement status
Narrative identity, or life story, is an approach to identity study.

### Adult

Older adults maintain self-esteem:
* converge their ideal and real selves
* change standards of self-evaluation
* compare themselves with other older adults
Rise with age:
* Big Five dimensions self-ranking stabilize with age
* emotional stability and conscientiousness rise with age
Decline with age:
* openness to experience
* activity level
Stability VS change
Stability:
* genotypes
* early experiences
* stable environments
* gene-environment relationships (phenotype dynamics)
Instability:
* biological or environmental changes
* poor-person-environmental fit
Psychosocial theory is supported by successful maturity through conflict resolution. Foundation:
* trust
* autonomy
* industy
Results: All ages:
* integrity
Adolescence:
* identity
Young adult:
* intimacy
Adult:
* generativity
Elder:
* life review
Young adults:
* explore and question early
* 30s, selttle down
* 40s, achieve peak success
Older workers:
* maintain productive levels
* higher satisfaction
** selective optimization
** compensation to cope
* stability in physical and psychological health after retirement
Retirement negative changes:
* pre-retirement
* honeymoon
* disenchantment
* reorientation
* drop in income
Activity and disengagement theory in retirement do not emphasize:
* person-environment fit
* selective optimization with compensation

## Gender Roles and Sexuality

Gender roles:
* interaction of biological influences and socialization
Socialization:
* learning of gender-role norms and stereotypes
Similarities:
* psychologically more similar than different
Differences:
* physical
* psychological
* social
Differences are small and becoming smaller:
Males:
* aggressive
* ative
* assertive
* developmentally vulnerable
Problem solving:
* spatial
* mathematical
Females:
* less aggressive
* compliant with adults
* tactful
* nurturant
* anxious
Problem solving:
* verbal tasks

### Infant

Boys and girls are similar despite being treated differently by adults.
Age 2:
* know their gender
* play with gender-appropriate preferences

### Child

2-3 year olds know gender sterotypes.
Typing most rapid:
* toddler
* preschool
Rigid in gender norms during childhood school years and genders segregate themselves into groups:
* strongest early on
* relaxes later on

### Adolescent

Intolerance in gender-role divisions and concern with conformance to gender norms (problems for same-sex youth?).
Gender-role development theories make useful contributions but none are complete:
* biosocial theory (Money and Ehrhardt)
* psychoanalytic approach (Freud)
* social learning theory
* cognitive development theory (Kholberg)
* gender schema theory

### Adult

Marriage and child-raising increases distinctions. Distinctions decrease as children get older.
Androgyny is beneficial for most, but not all, age groups or situations.

### Sexuality

Infants and children are curious and experiment with their bodies.
Adolescent behavior is increasingly sexual.
Declines in sexual capacity with age does not fully explain sexual declines :
* poor health, mental or physical
* loss of partner
* negative societal attitudes
* abstinence

## Social Cognition and Moral Development
### Social cognition

Thinking about self and others:
* social behavior
* moral behavior
Milestones
infancy:
* joint attention
* pretend play
2 years:
* theory of mind (simulation)
       ability to infer another person's beliefs and desires from experiences or behavior
* desire psychology
4 years:
* belief desire
Theory of mind requires a normal brain and environment:
* mirror neuron systems
* beneficial social and environmental experience
Pre-school:
* physical features
* activities
8 years:
* inner traits
Adolescents:
* personality profiles created from interchanging trait profiles
* role-taking adeptness
Social cognitive skills improve and are maintained through adulthood; they may decline late in life because of social isolation.

### Perspectives on moral development

Moral development:
* moral reasoning
* moral affect
* behavior
Morality:
* cognitive
* affective
* behavioral
Psychoanalytic:
* superego
* moral emotions
Cognitive development (Piaget):
* premoral
* heteronomous
* autonomous
Kohlberg, each includes two stages:
* preconventional
* conventional
* postconventional
Social cognition (Bandura):
* past learning
* situational forces
* self-regulatory processes
* moral disengagement
Evolutionary theorists show adaptive benefits:
* morality
* pro social behavior

### Infant

Moral growth is a*mutually responsive orientation between parent and child (Kochanska)
* amoral
* disciplinary encounters
** right
** wrong
* internalize rules
Age 2:
* empathy
* prosocial behavior

### Child

Preconventional moral reasoning
Children have moral sophistication (underestimated by Kohlberg and Piaget):
* consider intentions
* distinguish between types of rules
** moral
** social conventional
* question authority
* preconventional moral thinking
Moral growth:
* reinforcement modeling
* disciplinary approach of induction
Temperment:
* interacts with moral training
Moral inconsistency:
* situational influences

### Adolescent

Conventional moral reasoning emerges with many incorporating moral values into their senses of identity.
Antisocial behavior:
* biopsychological interaction model
** genetic predisposition
** social-environment values
* social information-processing (Dodge)
* coercive family environments (Patterson)
** negative peer influences
Prevention:
* moral discussion groups (Kohlberg)
* social information-processing skills (Dodge)
* altering coercive family environments (Patterson)

### Adult

Elders:
* moral thinking is maintained
* minority progress from conventional to postconventional
Some elders:
* advanced moral reasoning
* spirituality
* wisdom
Morality of justice (moral reasoning stages, Kholberg):
* cognitive growth
* social experiences
* others' perspectives
Morality of care (Gilligan):
* non-Western
* conservative
* women

## Attachment and Social Relationships

Attachment theory (Bowlby-Ainsworth):
* built into humans
* develop through interaction of biological and environmental influences during a sensitive period
* affect later development by shaping internal working models of self and other
Peer world of childhood:
* reciprocal nature of peer relations (Piaget)
* children are more socialized by peers than parents (Harris)

### Infant

First year
Shortly after Birth, an infant's eyesight is 6-10 inches; which is actually the distance from the baby held in his mother's arms to her eyes. Amazing how this is set up to help nurture the parent-child relationship! An infant can also recognize the difference between human and non-human faces.
Biologically-based emotions:
* fear
* anger
Progress through phases:
* undiscriminating social responsiveness
* discriminating social responsiveness
* active proximity seeking
* goal-corrected partnership
First attachment at 6-7 months includes exploration from a secure base and anxiety:
* separation
* stranger
Second year, self-concision emotions:
Attachment figures:
* arouse strong emotions
* socialize emotions
* help regulate emotions until infants can regulate their own emotions
Parental attachment:
* before or shortly after birth
* quickly establish synchronized routines
Strange situation parent-infant attachment(Mary Ainsworth):
* secure
* resistant
* avoidant
* disorganized-disoriented
Contact comfort is more important for attachment than feeding (Harlow).
Secure attachments in parenting:
* sensitive
* responsive
Infant characteristics:
* temperment
* achievement of person permanence
Difficulty forming normal relationships where recovery is possible:
* long-term separation
* social deprivation
Beneficial day-care does not disrupt parental attachment.
Secure attachment benefits later growth:
* cognitive
* social competence
Children can recover from insecurely attached infancy.
18 months:
* complementary interactive exchanges (coordinated activity)
* form friendships

### Child

2-12 years:
* parental goal-corrected partnerships
* peer time increases with same-sex
* play becomes more social and imaginative
** social pretend play
** organized games
** hobbies

### Adolescent

* emotional intimacy
* self-disclosure
Transition to different friends and groups:
* same-sex
* mixed-sex
* larger crowds
* dating relationships
    a) fulfill needs:
   * self-esteem
   * status
    b) genuine affection
Peers are usually positive.
14-15 years: Increased susceptibility to negative peers.
Poor parent relationships result in anti-social peers.

### Adults

Internal working models from early attachment experiences:
* secure
* preoccupied
* dismissing
* fearful
Model affects:
* romantic relationships
* work
* parenting
* adjustment
Life satisfaction:
* confidants
* physical heath
* cognitive functioning
Spouse relationships do not take away from long-lasting and equitable friendships.

## Family

Changing social systems within changing societal systems:
* single adults
* fewer children
* working women
* divorce
* fewer care givers for the aging

### Infant

Benefit from mutually affective parental relationships.
Fathers:
* less involved
* challenging play
Positively influencing relationships between parents indirectly create positive outcomes for infants.

### Child

Parenting dimensions:
* acceptance
* responsiveness
* demandingness
Parenting style influences:
* genes
* socioeconomic status
* economic hardship
* culture
Children are more competent when parents are authoritarian.
Children's problems are not solely caused by parental effects:
* parent and child effects
* transactional models of family influence
Sibling relationships:
* affection
* rivalry
* emotional support
* care giving
* teaching
* social experience

### Adolescent

* parents remain close
* initial conflict
* become equal with negotiation

### Adult

Sibling relationships continue in affection and rivalry with less contact.
Young adults and parents establish mutual relationships.
Negative:
* marital satisfaction declines with parenthood
Positive:
* empty nest transition
* grandparenthood companionship
Middle-aged adults are mutually supportive of elder parents unless:
* burden of care-giving
* middle age squeeze
Diversity in family life: Traditional family life-cycle does not describe:
* single or cohabitating adults
* childless marriages
* dual-career families
* gays and lesbians, and same-sex marriages

### Family violence

Contributing factors:
* parent characteristics
* child characteristics
* contextual factors

## Developmental Psychopathology

Origins and course of maladaptive behavior. Diathesis-stress model helps understand nature/nurture contributions.

### Abnormal development

Diagnosing disorders:
* statistical evidence
* maladaptiveness
* personal distress
* DSM-IV

### Infant

Autism responds to early behavior training:
* deviant social responses
* language and communication deficits
* repetitive behavior
* genotype
* social cognition
* mirror neuron
Depression-like symptoms from:
* maltreatment
* attachment separation
* depression in parents
* failure to thrive

### Child

ADHD is an externalizing disorder:
* inattention
* impulsivity
* hyperactivity
* stimulant drugs and behavior training
* may continue through life

### Adolescent

Most do not experience storm and stress.
More vulnerable than children, but not more than adults.
Risk of depression rises especially among females.
Suicide:
* cry for attention
* attempts
* less likely to succeed than adults

### Adult

Young adults:
* more life stress
* more disorders
* depression
Dementia increases with age:
* neural deterioration
* cognitive decline
Correctable conditions:
* reversible dementias
* delirium
* depression