Chapter 8 Psych Notes Chapter 8 Human development Nature vs Nurture Debate comes up yet again in this chapter how does our environment and our genes influence the way we grow and develop The younger you are the more plastic your brain is Genie Video in class 13 year old girl never been able to talk 1970 Little to look at or talk to for more than 10 years She was strapped in a potty chair for most of her life and confined to a crib Doctors and scientists examined Genie Genie could not really play with toys Never developed a complex language only basic I want type words Nurture wasn t enough after she was rescued from her terrible environment because it was past her critical period of growth Solitary confinement Genie was an extreme case of this The parents thought she had a developmental disability and that was their reasoning for locking her in the room and isolating her for 10 years Genie s later outcomes in life Sensitive Critical Periods Time periods in development when specific skills develop most easily Certain experiences need to occur in order for development to continue in a typical manner Critical must learn a behavior because that is the only time you really can in your life Ex Vision You need to experiences seeing and vision by a certain age or you will never be able to Kitten and visual development example Genie missed the critical period for development such as speech temperament interaction with the world etc Development of the Brain the process of encasing never fibers with a fatty sheath Myelination As we age most of the growth in our brain is because the neurons get bigger and we form new synaptic connections By the time we are older we have most of the neurons we are going to have in our life they just get bigger as we age even though we can make new neurons entirely but they mostly just grow As we get older the speed of our brain gets faster because we form more Myelin sheath sheath slip and slide helps move info around must faster Myelin sheath is most rapid during first two years of life Myelin is said to be hard wired in our brain genetic it is very predictable production of synaptic connections between happens in a specific way for the most part Synaptogenesis Burst neurons twice as many will be produced than used Very important for development because they develop and strengthen according to your environment Not the same for everyone Not predictable Over production in the first few years to make sure you can connect to anything you want Whatever doesn t get used those synapsis decay and die away Death of cells and elimination of synapses leads to more efficiency Pruning Any experience in your life leaves a physical path in your brain Back to Sensitive Periods Sensitive critical periods thought to map onto the periods of synaptogenesis and pruning Synaptic Pruning faces of primates apart from one another Because we don t need that face as we get older we lose that ability because we don t use those specific synapses anymore Our synapses make us experts at recognizing human faces because we are faced with them all our life Face Recognition Video when you are a baby you can tell Q Children who suffer severe neglect have been found to have brains that are smaller lighter and that develop abnormally These results are most likely due to A A lack of synaptic connections Q Both Tyler and Jimmy are healthy boys Tyler grew up on a farm and was constantly taking care of his family s cow and pigs However Jimmy grew up in a large city and had access to a lot of video games and TV As adults Tyler and Jimmy are likely to have different brain structuring due to the process of A Synaptic Pruning Harlow s Monkeys Mid 1900 s Idea was that infants needed mothers as just a food source Harlow did not agree with this idea so he created an experiment to prove that infants needed the comfort security and contact of a mother Not just as a food source Mokeys almost always sought comfort from the cloth mother and not the metal wire mother that had the food These studies were important for 3 reasons 1 Even thought there was no real mother since there was food the monkey could grow predictably physical weight height etc 2 However they lacked basic social skills and emotional growth this is because they lacked a mother 3 For a long time people thought mothering skills were pre programed to know how to take care of a baby however this proved that mothering is not biologically hard wired These behaviors had to be learned from a real mother If you have a mother that lacks mothering skills and you then learned poor mothering skills then you later in life will be a poor mother Think about how this effects generations Attachment Theory Bowlby Stresses importance of attachment in first year and responsiveness of caregiver Attachment to the mother ensure survival adequate care System of infants signals and parental responses Attachment Categories Secure attachment 65 Insecure ambivalent resistant 10 Insecure avoidant 20 Disorganized Less than 5 Significance of Attachment Sensitive available responsive Caregiver sensitivity thought to be key Perceive and interpret cues Respond appropriately and promptly Disorganized Secure Insecure ambivalent Insecure avoidant Secure attachment in first year is important foundation for psychological development Internal Working Models develop this model emotionally unavailable depresses rejecting Bowlby Bowlby says in first year of life infants unpredictable inconsistent neglect physical abuse Benefits of secure attachments over time Better adjusted more socially skilled Emotional expression communication Piaget s Theory of Cognitive Development Piaget believed that each stage builds on the previous stage through two learning processes Believed that each stage was separated by qualitative differences 1 Assimilation using existing schemas to understand new information or experience Putting in knew information into categories you already know new information or experiences do not fit into existing schemes See something new at the zoo giraffe doesn t fit into cat scheme so you have to create a new one for giraffe Adjust existing schemes or create new schemes when 2 Accommodation Q 3 year old Devin plays in the sand for the first time He tries to scoop and throw it just like he always has played with water in his bathtub This is an example of A Assimilation Q A young child likes to explore her parents house through touch One day she touches the oven and burns her