Final Review

Middle Childhood (6-10)

Right or wrong depends on the consequences

Intentions are neglected - don't focus on the intention of individual, it's instead whether they got PUNISHED or not

Kids act or speak as if AVOIDING PUNISHMENT IS MORALITY

- only able to take their self view - something would be wrong if you were punished for it and if you can get away with it then it's not morally wrong. 

It's morally ok if you get a reward for it!

- Don't steal drug because by the time you get out of jail your wife will be dead anyway (you won't get the reward so it's wrong) OR you should steal it because you will get to be with your wife (since there is a reward it is ok)

YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND I'LL SCRATCH YOURS!

Age: 11-adoescence

- Desire to obey the rules

- Moral Values are internalized

- Less Self-Centered

- Take Social Conventions and laws into Account

Do what is right to be a good person, that's what good people do

Correctly following the "Golden Rule" - Treat others as you wish to be treated.

People would think you're a bad person if you don't (can go both ways)

Following laws and conventions maintains the social system

Don't: Society would fall apart

Do it: you have to because you are married

Adolescence or Emerging Adulthood and Beyond

Defining right and wrong in terms of broad principles of morality like life and liberty

Value of life over property

Overall utility

Accountability

Democratic means of changing or creating laws

Morality earlier than middle childhood (INFANT MORALITY)

Can 6 and 10 month olds recognize good and bad behavior in others?

28 infants observed puppet show

- Alternated between viewing helping and hindering behavior

- Selected either the helper or non-helper

Results: 26/28 selected the helper

Conclusion: Humans engage in social evaluation far earlier than previous thought - findings suggest that capacity to evaluate individual based on social interactions is unlearned

Social Component to what we decide is right or wrong.

People are social creatures whose moral judgements are shaped by the judgements of those around them.

Child is born prepared to develop any of the "bigh three" moral intuitions. 

Alternative to Mainstream Rationalism

- Humans have a built in moral sense that creates pleasurable feelings of approval towards good acts and corresponding feelings of disapproval towards evil and vice

- We FEEL it is right or wrong

- Moral Truths are Self Evident

Explore whether moral reasoning is the CONSEQUENCE rather than the CAUSE of moral judgement

- 180 college students - moral dilemmas tht are offensive but HARMLESS - some are:

DISGUSTING (eating dog meat) (Brother and sister kiss with passion)

DISRESPECTFUL (uses American Flag to clean bathroom)

DISOBEDIENT (guy doesn't visit mothers grave)

Conclusion: some moral judgements are made on the basis of intuition rather than reason

Child is born prepared to develop any of the "big three" moral intuitions

Ethic of Autonomy

Community - Loyality and Honor

Divinity - Purity and Piety

Suggests difference in orientation putting females at disadvantage in Kohlberg's scoring system

- example: Jack vs Amy on the Heinz Dilemma

- Jake sets up Dilemma like Math Problem (individual rights and property)

- Amy can't or wont answer the question - denies the validity of the arguement.

Ethics of Justice      Ethics of Care

Abstract                          Contextual

Objective                          Narrative

Focus on Individual      Focus on Relationships

Right/Wrong                    Caring

Black and White            Shades of Grey

Rule Oriented                  People Oriented

Commanding role          Shying away from decision making

Logic                                Communication

Competing Rights          Competing Responsiblities     

24 women recruited from pregnancy counseling services and abortion clinics

Interviews in first trimester and a year later

a real rather than hypothetical moral dilemma

Referred because they were in greatest conflict about their decision

Self Care: "I want an abortion, so I'm having one"

Caring for others: Concept of responsiblity to Others - Self Sacrafice - "I had the aobortion even though I wanted a baby"

Integration of Concern for others and self: Morality of including ones own needs - Moral equivalence between self and others

Overall attitude and approach that parents use when guiding, socializing and diciplining their children.

- has impact on development

Research involved white middle class preschool children and their parents in Sub.CA. 

Identified three parenting styles:

Authoritarian: value blind obedience to parental authority

Permissive: Emotional warmth but reluctance to set or enforce any rules

Authoritative: expect children to meet standards, but treat with warmth and encourage them to think for themselves. 

Uninvolved: "I have a child?"

Permissive: "whatever you want, honey"

Authoritarian: "Do it because I said so"

Authroitative: Verbal Give and Take

Uninvolved: sad, lonely, early sex, and drug abuse, impulsive.

Permissive: Lack of self control, irresponsible, immature, and selfish, problem behaviors

Authoritarian: Cons cientious, obedient, and quiet - Depressed, guilty, anxious - sometimes rebel - lack confidence and self-reliance

Authoritative: successful, happy, articulate, creative, generous with others, more responsible, good peer and teacher relationships, good academic perfomrance

Too simplistic

Ethnocentric

Unidirectional

Uniform

High level of strictness and control - should be understood in larger context

- Nurturing in early environment

- Mother helps child in grade school

- Derives from concept of Guan

Social order is maintained by each party honoring the guidelines of hierarchial relationships with special significance. 

- Senior member must justly govern, teach and discipline

Offended that you were offended - no paradox when you consider cultural norms

Authoritarian parenting does not have the same meaning when applied to Asian cultures. 

Compared 50 Chinese-American and 50 European-American mothers

Self Report using Baumrind's standard questionaire

Results CA mothers higher on authoritarian and 'training' than EU-AM mothers

Conc: Baumrind's categories don't apply crossculturally. Judgemental and wrong.

Chinese-American youth report greater levels of parental control than EU-AM mothers

However, Chinese American yough feel less angry about parental control

Does parenting style influence the chold behavior or is it the other way around?

469 adolescent girls, assessed at two points in time, one year apart. 

Rated (self reported) Parenting style, externalizing symptoms (acting out), and substance use. 

Results: Initial levels of parental control did not predict ex.symp./sub abuse, however, initial levesl of misconduct did predict decreases in parental control over time

Conc: parents give up / childrens behavior impacts parenting type

Does a childs genotype influence the impact of parenting style?

Proced: 641 AfAm fmailies in GA - Target child 11 year old

7, two hour training sessions for parents

control group

Measure risky behavior

Assessed 5HTT gene

Results: Evidence of gene-engironment interaction

Conc: effect of parenting style may depend in part on the genetic contribution of the child

parental knowledge about each child's whereabouts, activities, and companions - we know what they are doing and who they are doing it with.

- in the context of warm, supportive relationships, high parental monitoring is associated with confidence and reduced drug use and risky sex.

the experience of a significant and profound loss that results in outcomes such as depression and indentiy crisis

- early research supported negative outcomes associated with the transition to the empty next particularly for mothers!

Does empty nest syndrome still apply given recent changes in context of launching?

Most parents actually experience positive psychological consequences such as increased personal growth, improved marital relationships, increased leisure time, and feelings of mastery. 

Permanence

Universality

Non-Functionality

living functions cease

- thoughts, feelings, movement, body functions

Preschoolers comprehend death in order - perminance, universality, nonfunctionality

Mature understanding but Slight regression in adolescents

Mature understanding but Death Anxiety

"what would you do if you only had six months left to live?" Concerns about death vary by age and reflect Erikson's developmental stages (starting with young adults and moving through elderly adults)

• Young adults: "grab all the gusto" and spend time with loved ones (identity and intimacy concerns)
• Middle age: concern about welfare of others (generativity concerns)
• Elderly: meaning making (integrity concerns)

Health care workers don't like to deal with death.

KR argued that denial of death was not healthy for dying or those who survive. 

Interviewed 200 terminally ill patients

Analyzed the data qualitatively

Developed 5 stages of dying - considered "emotional reactions" not stages...

Denial and Isolation

Anger

Barganing

Depression

Acceptance

"Oh No!  Not Me!  This is a Mistake!!"

denise the existence of the seriousness of their diagnosis to escae the prospect of death

This is healthy unless it is extremely prolonged.  Can be a danger if they do not seek treatment because they are in denial

WHY ME?

Rage, Resentment, Envy. 

Angry about the "unfairness of death"

Taken out on external targets

"Okay me, but please..."

Make an agreement to postpone the inevitable

Self-imposed deadline

Implicit, or explicit. 

Most people don't keep their promises

If I can live till ___ then I'll die... now I want to live till ___ then I'll die...

Reactive Depression: Grief over losses that hve already occured

  - Reassurance is helpful

Preparatory Depression: grief over the losses that have yet to come

- don't want to be seperated from loved ones...

- Reassurance not helpful

Not a happy acceptance, just a more peaceful situation - at ease

Communications become non-verbal

The feeling that all this must have meant something

exists through all five stages

essential to maintain hope

Help dying person find hope when needed and allow them to release it when it's time

- can be even something as simple as the hope fo dying with dignity

Development occurs thorughout the lifespan

Development is multidirectional (gains and losses)

Development is Multi contextual

-micro

-meso

-exo

-macro

-chrono

Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity

Poverty - Negative effects

Affluence - higher rates of depression

Good outcomes in spite (or because) of serious threats to adaptation or development

Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

Resiliency is "ordinary"

Germinal Stage

Embryonic Stage

Fetal Stage

conception to 2 weeks

zygote fertilized

cleavage

differentiation

2-8 weeks

Support structure

Structures major organs laid out

3-neural tube

4-heart and face

5-arms and legs

6-hands and feet

7-fingers and toes

9 -38 weeks

Growth, brain development, refinement of primitive organ systems

DeCasper and Spence

Read passages last 6 weeks of pregnancy

Measure sucking

Conclusion: Fetus learned nd remembered something about the acoustic cues they heard in utero

exogenous agents that interrupt biological development in the womb

EX:  Aspirin/Advil - neonatal bleeding, low birth weight, premy

Caffeine: increased risk of miscarriage, higher heart rate, low birth weight

Tobacco: abnormal growth of the placenta, low birth weight, lower IQ, hearing deficits, cancer, increased rates of SIDs

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Distinctive physical features, retarded physical growth, cog. defects. 

Fetal Alcohol Effects: some but not all of the symptoms of FAS due to lesser consumption of alcohol.  Most preventable cause of mental retardation

Dose-Response relation

Damage depends on time of exposure

Specific impact

Impact depends on physiological state of mother and father. 

Sleeper effects

more teratogen the greater the risk

little impact on mother can still have large impact on fetus

Germinal: spontaneous abortion

Embryonic: CNS and limb damage

Fetal: Damage in higher order cognitive functioning as well as weight and growth

Ex: Thalidomide

Individual reactions (not all developing individuals react the same way to teratogens

Physiological state of mother and fater

Genetic make-up of mother, father and child

Postnatal environment

Neurogenesis

Synaptogenesis

Synaptic Pruning

Plasticity

the elimination of synapses

Cell deathis normal

the capacity of the brain to be affected by experience

Certain Functions of the Brain require basic experiences in order to develop

Sensitive Periods - time period when human brain is especially sensitive to particular stimuli

some brain functions depend on particular, idiosyncratic experiences

some dendrites grow and thrive while others die

string musicians have increased cortical representation of the fingers in the left hand...

begins at preadolescence

continues through puberty and beyond

5 mri scans 2 years apart

Conclusion: prefrontal cortex regulates attention, impluse control, anticipating consequences, and setting priorties

Rapid brain development during this tme may be related to impuslive and sometimes irrational behavior in teenagers

16 taxi drivers MRI for structure

50 non taxi drivers as control

All males

Conclusions: Changes in the hippocampal size are acquired with experience

There is a capacity for local, plastic change in structure of brain in response to environmental demands, even in adults

Proportion of population variance in a trait that can be explained by additive genetic influences

Context traits there are many genetic influences that contribute to variations in traits.

Not interpretable at the level of the individual

50% of the differences between individuals can be credited to genetics

Shared: Nutrition, Parenting Style, Parental influences

Non-Shared: Friends, peer groups, Accidents/Illness

• Twin studies: DZ and MZ (monozygotic – share 100% of genetics)

• Adoption designs

• Other family designs

• Molecular methods

• Multivariate analysis
• Relationship between traits (ex: anxiety and depression)

• MZ twins share 100% of their genetic variation
• DZ twins share 50% of segregating alleles on average (actual number varies)
• Variance of trait = h2 + c2 + e2
• rMZ = h2 + c2; rDZ = ½ h2 + c2 so:
• h2 = 2(rMZ – r DZ),
• c2 = rMZ – h2 = 2rDZ – rMZ,
• e2 = 1 – rMZ

Equal Environment Assumption...

That MZ and DZ twins are equally correlated in their exposure to environmental factors that are important for the traits under study

Cumulative effect of many genes coming online throughout development

The same shared environment and influence of the family, the same environment is contributing but importance drops

Unique environmental influences are mostly specific to each age.

• Environmental exposure is influences by genetic factors:
• Passive: Parental genotype (partially shared by child) influences the environment they provide for their children
• Hard to separate between genetic and environmental
• Evocative (reactive) : an individual’s (heritable) behavior evokes a response from others which shapes their environmental exposure.
• Active: A heritable propensity to seek out certain environments

Father of Attachment Theory

First thing he looked at was Hospitalized Children (after WWII)

Bowlby

Noticed the same kind of disattachment as children after WWII

• Indifference to others
• Long, early separations from their mothers
• He’s saying this is defensive – (Argues that it is an unconscious defense).

Monkeys clung to terry cloth mother whether or not she had the bottle

• Importance of comfort contact – touch provided by soft caretaker. This was more important than milk!

Conclusions:

• Comfort contact: necessary but not sufficient

two main elements of attachment theory

• Pre-attachment (birth to 6 weeks of life)
• “Attachment-in-the-making” (6 weeks to 6-8 months)
• “Clear-cut attachment” (6-8 months to 18-24 months)
• Reciprocal relationships (24 months and up)

• Infant shows a preference for familiar people and things

• Distinguish between caregivers and strangers

• Develop wariness = uneasiness or fear of things that are out of the ordinary – confronted with unfamiliar things or people they become uncomfortable

• Hallmark of clear-cut attachment is separation anxiety
• Visceral fear of separation from primary caretaker
• Child gets visibly upset when the mother leaves the room

• Contribute more and more to the equilibrium of the interaction system
• Become more mobile and gain more skills they begin to wander off from caretaker more and more

• Secure Base = point of safety from which an infant can feel free to venture away

“is there some relationship between how mothers and infants interact at home and how they do in the SST?"

Overall: mothers of securely attached babies didn’t hold the children MORE but just did it at the right times…

Secure

Ambivalent (insecure)

Avoidant

Disorganized

(65% of middle class infants)

• Child behavior:
• Secure base, separation anxiety, easily comforted by mother at both reunions
• Maternal behavior:
• Responsive to infant needs/signals, warm, prompt – fed on demand and not schedule

• (10%) – anxious ambivalent – anxious resistant
• Infant appears overly dependent on mother
• Child Behavior: Anxious in mothers presence, extreme distress, not easily comforted (mixed signals) – really sad and scared in the absence of the mother – not comforted at the mothers return

• Maternal behavior: Mothers who were unpredictable: inconsistent when dealing with infant (sometimes pick baby up when crying, sometimes let them cry it out) – Misreading signals

• (15%) - babies look very independent in behavior (indifferent to mothers presence)
• Child Behavior:
• Indifferent, may or may not show distress, equally comforted by mom and stranger
• Cutting off anger – stuffing anger with mother
• Maternal Behavior:
• Rejecting: unresponsive and cold to child
• More cold with infants – showed aversion to physical contact
• Half of them handled their babies roughly (not hurt them but just rough with them)

• (15%) – could go up to 85% in high risk samples (low SES or mother with psychological issues)

• Child Behavior:
• Absence of organized strategy: stereotypical, freezing, misdirected, fear
• Rocking, appear to be in a trance, baby went to researcher (not stranger or mother) show fearful reponse throughout the strange situation

• Parent behavior:
• Abusive, depressed, frightening, frightened (bipolar, eating disorders, schizophrenia)
• Parents

Attachment Theory

Behavioral Theory (BF Skinner) - Ferber

Mad About You clip…

• 12 month old (n=106), German, range of SES, mother primary caretaker
• Strange situation (started with much larger sample but 106 were categorized as disorganized)
• DNA sample from cheek cells
• 30-min play session to assess maternal responsivity

• Significant association between attachment disorganization and the short polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR)
• ll – 10% disorganized
• sl – 25% disorganized
• ss – 42% disorganized

• These data suggest a genetic vulnerability for disorganized attachment

• No evidence of gene/environment correlation
• Maternal responsivity did not vary according to the infant genotype

• Evidence for gene-environment interaction (you have to consider both variables!)

YES

Van Den Boom

More is not necessarily better

- “monotropy” (Bowlby, 1951) = only the principal attachment figure has an impact on social/emotional development = mother

- Hierarchy of attachment (Lamb, 1979; Bowlby, 1984) = one caregiver is the most important attachment figure, while other caregivers may be secondary

-  Independence Model = Child may be attached to several caregivers who are equally important but influence different developmental domains (Sir Richard Bowlby in Newland and Coyl, 2010)

Attachment predicted by a combination of mother AND childcare variables (key finding that is usually overlooked is --> primary predictor of secure attachment is mother responsivity!)

The idea that a secure attachment might promote good relationships with peers in preschool and then good relationships with peers in preschool might help build the skills need to have good relationships with parents and other people in adolescences which might provide the skills for good romantic relationships later in life.

Kids who have a secure attachment - the secure attachment is able to predict positive change and weather the storm so to speak. Doesn't protect us from difficulty but helps us get through and deal with difficulty when we experience it.

Airport Situations

Adults separating more likely to maintain proximity and protest separation than those not separating

Secure/autonomous

Dismissive

Preoccupied

Unresolved/disorganzied