Psychology Finals

Death

1) Agonal phase: gasps and muscle spasms during the first moments in which the regular heartbeat disintegrates. 2) Clinical death: a short interval afterwards in which heartbeat, circulation, breathing and brain functioning stop, but resuscitation is still possible. 3) Individual passes into permanent death.

Peck's Tasks of Ego Integrity

1) Ego differentiation: find ways to affirm self-worth 2) Body transcendence: compensate with cognitive, emotional and social powers 3) Ego transcendence: face reality of death, construct secure and meaningful life for next generationl

Arthritis

1)Osteoarthritis, involves deteriorating cartilage on ends of bones of frequently used joints. 2) Rheumatoid arthritis affects whole body, autoimmune response that leads to the inflammation of the connective tissues in membranes that line the joints, resulting in deformed joints and often serious loss of mobility.

Labouvie-Vief's Theory

1)Pragmatic Thought: adulthood changes from hypothetical to pragmatic thought, an advance in structural logic. 2) Cognitive-affective complexity--awareness of conflicting positive and negative feelings and coordination of them into complex and organized structure that recognizes individual uniqueness.

Information-Processing view of adolescent cognitive development

1. Attention becomes more selective. 2. Inhibition improves. 3. Strategies become more effective. 4. Knowledge increases. 5. Metacognition expands. 6. Cognitive self-regulation improves. 7. Speed of thinking and processing capacity increase.

Vocational Choice

1. Fantasy Period: children in early and middle childhood fantasize and gain insight to career options. 2. Tentative Period: adolescents think about careers in more complex ways, at first in terms of interests and later abilities and values. 3. Realistic Period: late teens and young adults narrow their options by further exploration and crystallization, where they focus on general vocational category and experimenting for a period of time before settling on a single occupation.

Kohlberg's Stages

1. Pre-conventional level: morality is externally controlled, children accept rules of authority figures and behaviors that result in punishment is bad, those leading to reward is good. (Punishment and obedience, instrumental purpose orientation). 2. the Conventional level: individuals value conformity to social rules to ensure positive relationships and societal order (interpersonal cooperation, societal-order-maintaining). 3. Post-conventional/Principled level: individuals move beyond unquestioning support for society's laws and define morality in terms of abstract principles and values that apply to all situations (social contract, universal and ethical principle).

Concrete Operational Stage

7 to 11 years. Children in this stage compared to early childhood is much more logical, flexible and organized. Concrete operational thought includes conservation (reversibility: the capacity to think through steps and retrace them to get to starting point), classification, seriation (order items along quantitative dimension), and spatial reasoning (cognitive maps).

Hardiness

A combination of three personal qualities: control, commitment and challenge. Hardy individuals are likely to cope adaptively with stress brought on by the inevitable changes of life.

Kinkeeper

A role (usually mothers) which members of the middle generation partake to gather the family for celebrations and making sure everyone stays in touch.

Feminization of poverty

A trend in which women who support themselves or their families have become the majority of the adult population living in poverty, regardless of age or ethnic group.

Levinson's seasons of life

According to Levinson, middle-aged adults must confront four developmental tasks to reassess and rebuild their life structure. Each requires the individual to reconcile two opposing tendencies within the self. Young-old, Destruction-creation (reflection on hurtful behavior and strong urge to leave a legacy), masculinity-femininity, engagement-separateness

Functional age

Actual competence and performance that chronological age is not perfect at indicating.

Health in Adolescents

Anorexia nervosa-starve oneself due to compulsive fear of getting fat. Bulimia nervosa- strict dieting and excessive exercise, binge eating followed by deliberate vomiting.

Physical Development in Early Adulthood

Biological aging, or senescence, begins--genetically influenced declines in the functioning of organs and systems that are universal in all members of our society. The lifespan perspective states that a host of contextual factors--genetic makeup, lifestyle, living environment etc--influence biological aging and each of which can accelerate or slow age-related declines. The physical changes of the adult years are multidimensional and multidirectional.

Peer groups

By the end of middle childhood, children display strong desire for group belonging, and forms peer groups, collectives that generate unique valued and standards for behavior and a social structure of leaders and followers.

Emotional understanding

Children become aware of circumstances that spark mixed emotions. Appreciating mixed emotions helps children realize that people's expressions may not reflect their true feelings. Also fosters awareness of self-conscious emotions, leads to empathy.

Moral development in middle childhood

Children have internalized rules and clarified moral and social conventions, developing a better understanding of personal choice and individual rights. They pick up prevailing social attitudes about race and ethnicity, don;t voice their prejudices as much. Those who hold biases typically believe that personality traits are fixed and have inflated self-esteem.

self-consciousness and self-focusing

Cognitive distortions: 1) Imaginary audience: adolescent's belief that he is the center/focus of everyone else's attention and concern. 2) personal fable: certain that others are observing and thinking about them, teenagers develop inflated opinion of their own importance.

Identity VS Role COnfusion

Constructing an identity involves defining who you are and what you value and directions you choose to pursue in life. Identity is a major personality achievement of adolescence and crucial step toward becoming productive and content adult. If young person's earlier conflicts were not resolved or their choices do not match their desires and abilities, they may appear shallow, directionless and unprepared for the challenges of adulthood.

Brain development in adolescence

Continued pruning of unused synapses in cerebral cortex. Corpus callosum, and linkages between the cerebral hemispheres expand, myelinate and attain rapid communication. Prefrontal cortex becomes mroe effective executive, yielding more complex flexible and adaptive thinking and behavior. Changes in the adolescent brain's emotional/social network outpaces development of cognitive-control network, only over time do they learn to effectively manage emotions and reward-seeking behavior.

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligence

Defines intelligence in terms of distinct sets of processing operations that permit individuals to engage in wide range of culturally valued activities. Proposes at least eight independent intelligences (linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily, naturalist, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) and dismisses idea of general intelligence.

Social Theories of Aging

Disengagement theory: mutual withdrawal between older adults and society takes place in anticipation of death. Activity Theory: Social barriers to engagement cause declining rates of interaction. Continuity Theory: most aging adults, instead of maintaining certain activity level, tries to maintain personal system, an identity and set of personality dispositions, interests and skills that promote life satisfaction by ensuring consistency between past and anticipated future. Social-emotional selectivity theory: social interaction is an extension of lifelong selectivity.

Perry's theory

Epistemic Cognition refers to our reflections on how we arrived at facts, beliefs and ideas. Mature rational thinkers reconsider the justifiability and revise their approach when in conflict. Younger students engage in dualistic thinking--dividing information, values, and authority into right or wrong, good or bad. As they get older they move toward relativistic thinking--more aware of differing opinions and they give up the possibility of absolute truth in favor of multiple relative truths. Eventually, the most mature individuals progress to commitment within relativistic thinking, forming a personally satisfying perspective that synthesizes contradictions.

Industry VS Inferiority

Erickson's proposed conflict of middle childhood, which is resolved positively when children develop a sense of competence at useful skills and tasks. Inferiority is reflected in the pessimism of children who lack confidence in their ability to do well. Industry combines a positive but realistic self-concept, pride in accomplishment, moral responsibility and cooperative participation.

Ego integrity VS despair

Erikson's final psychological conflict. Involves coming to terms with one's life, arriving at a sense of integrity and feeling whole, complete and satisfied with their achievements.

Intimacy VS Isolation

Erikson's psychological conflict of early adulthood, reflected in the young person's thoughts and feelings about making a permanent commitment to an intimate partner. Maturity involves balancing desire for self-determination and desire for intimacy.

Generativity VS Stagnation

Erikson's psychological conflict of midlife. Generativity involves reaching out to others in ways that give to and guide the next generation. Work, community service, childbearing and rearing etc. Outlives the self and ensures society's continuity and improvement.

Type A behavior pattern

Extreme competitiveness, ambition, impatience, hostility, angry outbursts and sense of time pressure. Type As are twice as likely to develop heart disease as Type B.

Identity Status

Four identity statuses: 1). Identity achievement: commitment to values belifs and goals following a period of exploration. 2) identity moratoriumL exploration without having reached commitment. 3) Identity foreclosure: commitment in the absence of exploration, and 4). Identity diffusion: apathetic state characterized by lack of both exploration and commitment.

Possible selves

Future-oriented representations of what one hopes to become and what one is afraid of becoming. Temporal dimensions of self-concept--what the individual is trying to strive for and avoid. Middle-aged adults maintain self-esteem and stay motivated by revising possible selves which become more modest and concrete.

Theories of Aging

Genetic programming theory: with each duplication, the ends of chromosomes called telomeres shorten until they no longer duplicate. Free radicals: naturally occurring highly reactive chemicals that form in the presence of oxygen, destroys nearby DNA, proteins and fat essentials etc., more than 60 disorders of aging are related to free radicals. Cross-linkage theory of aging: Protein fibers that make up the body's connective tissues form bonds or links with one another. The cross-linking of fibers make tissues become less elastic organs less flexible and eyes more cloudy. Other theories include graduate failure of the endocrine system to produce regulating hormones etc.

Presbycusis

Hearing loss resulting from adult-onset hearing impairments, may be hereditary but mostly age-related.

Self-conscious emotions

In middle childhood, self-conscious emotions such as pride and guilt are governed by personal responsibility, and motivates children to take on further challenges.

Skipped generations and sandwich generation

In skipped-generation families, kids live with their grandparents apart from their parents. Sandwich generation refer to the idea that middle-aged adults must care for multiple generations above and below them at the same time.

Personality

Investigative: person who enjoys working with ideas and likely to select a scientific occupation Social person: likes interacting with people, likely to go into human services (teaching, social work) Realistic person: prefers real-world problems and working with objects, mechanical (engineering) Artistic person: emotional, likes individual expression, likely to become an artist Conventional person: likes well-structured tasks, values material possessions and social status. Enterprising person: adventurous, persuasive, strong leader (politics,sales etc).

Climacteric

Midlife transition in which fertility declines. In women the climacteric concludes with menopause, the end of menstruation and reproductive capacity. Menopausal women tend to be irritated easily, have less satisfying sleep etc. Ti reduce physical discomforts of menopause doctors may prescribe hormone therapy or estrogen replacement therapy.

Alzheimer's disease

Most common form of dementia, which structural and chemical brain deterioration results in gradual loss of aspects of thought and behavior. Neuro-fibrillary tangles appear as products of collapsed neural structures that contain abnormal forms of protein called tau. Amyloid plaques develop, constituted of deteriorated proteins called amyloids, surrounded by clumps of dead nerve and glial cells.

Big-Five personality traits

Neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness.

Instrumental ADLs

On top of ADLs also requires cognitive competence, telephoning, shopping etc.

Change in Self-concept

Opposing traits and disparities in one's definition of oneself results from the expansion of a teenager's social world, which creates pressure to display different selves in different relationships. Awareness of these inconsistencies grows and teens agonize over their "real identity". Throughout adolescence, cognitive changes enable teenagers to organize their traits and allow them to realize that psychological qualities can vary from one situation to another. Older teens learn to add integrating principles that separate context and make sense of troublesome contradictions.

Aspects of Love

Passionate love--intense sexual attraction-- and companionate love--warm, trusting affection and caregiving.

Vision in middle adulthood

Presbyopia (old eyes): Around age 60, the lens loses capacity to adjust to objects at varying distances, most often far-sightedness. Middle aged adults are also at an increased risk for glaucoma, where poor fluid drainage leads to buildup of pressure within the eye damaging the optic nerve.

Compression of morbidity

Public health goal of decreasing the average period of diminishing vigor (months or years of ill-health and suffering) before death.

Emotional self-regulation

Rapid gains in emotional self regulation occurs in middle childhood. Two general strategies for managing emotions: 1) in problem-centered coping, they appraise the situation as changeable, identifying and deciding what to do with the difficulty. 2) emotion-centered coping is internal, private and aimed at controlling distress when little can be done. Develops along with emotional self-efficacy, a feeling of being in control of their emotional experience.

Practical problem solving

Requires people to size-up real world situations and analyze how best to achieve goals that have higher degree of uncertainty. Gains in expertise help middle aged adults encounter opportunities to display continued cognitive growth.

Cognitive Self-Regulation

School age children have an expanded metacognition (awareness of thought, theory of mind etc), and can utilize memory strategies such as elaboration, rehearsal and organization. However, they are not yet good at continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes and redirecting unsuccessful efforts. Children who acquire effective self-regulatory skills develop a sense of self-efficacy.

Midlife Crisis

Self-doubt and stress are especially great in the forties and prompt major restructuring pf the personality. Changes are better described as turning points than crisis, and only a minority experience midlife crisis characterized by intense self-doubt and stress that lead to a drastic life alterations.

transitive inference

Seriate mentally. Can infer that since A is longer than B longer than C, A is longer than C. However, can only do it with concrete information that they can perceive (wood sticks); cannot reason with hypothetical problems until 11-12.

Dementia

Set of disorders occurring almost entirely in old age in which many aspects of thought and behavior are so impaired that everyday activities are disrupted. Cerebrovascular dementia is a series of strokes that produces step-by-step degeneration of mental ability.

Crystallized intelligence

Skills that depend on accumulated knowledge and experience, good judgement, and mastery of social conventions, abilities acquired because they are valued by the individual's culture.

Traditional Classroom

Teacher is sole authority for knowledge, rules and decision-making. Students are relatively passive, listening, responding when called on etc,

Change in self-esteem in adolescence

Teenagers add new dimensions to self-esteem, such as friendship, romantic appeal, job competence etc. Authoritative parenting and encouragement from teachers continues to predict high self-esteem.

Idealism

Teenagers gain the capacity to think about open possibilities, alternative systems etc. For example, they construct visions of the world without injustice and discrimination etc., which makes them become fault-finding critics.

Decision-making

Teens perform less well in decision making, where they must inhibit emotion and impulses in favor of thinking rationally. More influenced by possibility of immediate reward, less often carefully evaluate alternatives, falling back on intuitive judgements.

Information-Processing view of concrete operational thought

The development of operational thinking can best be explained in terms of gains in information processing speed rather than a shift to a new stage. With more practice and experience, cognitive schemes demand less attention and frees up space in working memory so children can focus on combining old schemes and generate new ones. Once the schemes of the Piagetian stage are automatic and integrated, children acquire central conceptual structures.

Speed of processing theories

The neural network view: as neurons in the brain die, breaks in the neural networks occur. The brain adapts by forming bypasses--new synaptic connections that go around the breaks but are less efficient. The information-loss view suggests that older adults experience greater loss of information as it moves through the cognitive system; as a result the whole system has to slow down to inspect and interpret the information.

Parental Imperative Theory

The theory holds that identification with traditional gender roles are maintained during the parent's active years to help ensure the children's survival. Men are more goal-oriented while women emphasize nurturance. After children reach adulthood, parents are free to express the other gender side of their personalities.

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

This theory of intelligence identifies three broad interacting intelligences: 1) analytical intelligence, or information-processing skills, 2) creative intelligence, the capacity of solve novel problems and 3) practical intelligence, application of intellectual skills in everyday situations.

Self Esteem

Those who are high in academic self-esteem make mastery-oriented attributions, crediting their successes to ability, and attributing their failures to factors that can be changed or controlled such as insufficient effort or very difficult task. In contrast, children who develop learned-helplessness attribute their failures to ability. An intervention called attribution retaining encourages learned helpless children to believe that they can overcome failure by exerting more effort.

Triangular Theory of love

Three components: 1) Intimacy: emotional component that involves warm and tender communication, expressions of concern about the other's wellbeing, and a desire for the other to reciprocate. 2) Passion: desire for romance and sex, physical and psychological arousal. 3) Commitment: cognitive component, leading partners to decide that they are in love and maintain in love.

Marriages

Traditional marriage: involves clear division of roles, husband is responsible for economic well-being of the family while the wife is caregiver and homemaker; still exists in western nations. Egalitarian marriage: partners share equal power and authority. Both try to balance their time and energy devoted to their occupation and children.

Constructivist Classroom

Views children as active agents who reflect on and coordinate their own thoughts. Classroom contains learning centers, small groups and self-chosen problems. Teachers guide and supports in response to children's needs.

Self-Concept

When describing oneself, a child at age 11 emphasizes competencies instead of specific behaviors, and both good and bad personality. Children become better at perspective taking and making social comparisons; they also form an ideal self that they use to evaluate their real self.

Formal Operational Stage

Young people around 11 start to develop the capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking. Such as 1) Hypothetical-deductive reasoning, starting with a hypothesis and prediction about variables that may affect outcome from which they deduce logical inferences; then they systematically isolate and combine variables to confirm inferences in the real world. 2) Propositional thought: ability to evaluate logic of propositions without referring to real-world circumstances.

Activities of daily living (ADLs)

basic self-care tasks required to live on one's own, bathing, dressing, eating etc

Health in late adulthood

cataracts--cloudy areas in the lens, foggy vision and blindness. Macular degeneration, where central vision blurs and is eventually lost. Autoimmune response, where the immune system is more likely to malfunction by turning against normal body tissues.

Memory in old age

deliberate and automatic memory (implicit memory without conscious awareness): recall of episodic memories is more difficult as one ages, but implicit memory retrieval is not as hard. Associative memory deficits exists--difficulty creating and retrieving links between pieces of information. Remote memory )long term mem) recalling is prime in age 10-30, a period of heightened autobiographical memory called the reminiscence bump. In old age, prospective memory, remembering to engage in planned actions in the future, is exhibited.

Fluid intelligence

depends heavily on basic information-processing skills: ability ti detect relationships among visual stimuli, speed of analyzing information and capacity of working memory.

Osteoporosis

severe age-related bone loss that affects 10 million U.S. adults, 80 percent of whom are women.

Emerging adulthood

the transition to adult roles has become so delayed and prolonged that it has spawned a new transitional period from late teens to mid- and late-twenties.

Peer Relationships

two subtypes of popular children: popular pro-social children, who combines academic and social competence, communicating in sensitive friendly and cooperative ways, and popular-anti-social children who are high status and aggressive, authority-defying etc. Rejected-aggressive children show hyperactive inattentive behavior with high rates of conflict and physical aggression. Rejected-withdrawn children are passive and socially awkward.