Definitions

• Teratogens
  • Substances that are harmful to a developing fetus during pregnancy. May cause birth defects or complications.
• Prenatal
  • Life before birth. During pregnancy.
• Conservation
  • The understanding that changes in the form of an object do not necessarily mean changes in the quantity of the object.
  • Milk in a wide glass vs tall glass, children may see tall glass as having more liquid even though the amount is the same.

Goals

• Recognize how the environment the mother is in affects prenatal development
  • Teratogens: Excess stress, cigarettes, alcohol.
  • Health and diet.
  • Community health risks such as water in lead pipes.
  • May have rich or poor access to fruits and vegetables.
  • Science previously, and may still not, take into account differences between sexes that would affect outcomes of medicine and medical procedures.
  • They experience systemic racism. Providers may think they know more than their patients.
    • Providers need to do a better job about standing up and educating about the injustices of racism, tearing down fences that may inhibit proper care.
    • Patient-centered care is an approach used to level the playing field.
      • The patient knows their body, the provider knows the science.
• Define "nature vs nurture" and epigenetics.
  • "Nature" says that your genes help shape aspects of your health and life.
  • "Nurture" says that your environment and upbringing shape aspects of your health and life.
  • Epigenetics bridges the two. Your environment controls and changes how your genes are expressed.
• Define habituation
  • Decreased responsiveness toward a stimulus after it has been presented numerous times in succession.
  • Prolonged exposure therapy will habituate away the trauma response.
• Define schema, assimilation, and accommodation
  • Schema: Patterns of knowledge in long-term memory that help us remember, organize, and respond to information. A roadmap of how to operate in an environment.
  • Assimilation: Incorporating new information into an existing schema.
  • Accommodation: Changing the schema based on new information. Adding a new schema to accommodate the new information.
• Name Piaget's stages, noting that recent research has refined this model
  • Sensorimotor
    • Birth to about 2 years
    • The child experiences the world through the fundamental senses of seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting
  • Preoperational
    • 2-7 years
    • Children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also start to see the world from other people's perspectives.
  • Concrete Operational
    • 5-7 to onset of puberty
    • Children become able to think logically. They can mentally manipulate imagined objects
  • Formal Operational
    • Onset of puberty to adulthood
    • Adolescents can think systematically, can reason about abstract concepts, and can understand ethics and scientific reasoning.
  • Piaget's chart underrepresents environmental factors.
    • Or neglects to take into account environmental factors.
  • Stages aren't as cleanly divided as Piaget's chart shows.
    • People don't climb stages in a linear fashion.
• Explain how adolescents develop a self-identity
  • Hormones surge, pre-frontal cortex is still developing.
  • The self-concept of a teenager develops--schema of our beliefs, personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles.
  • Social identity helps develop self-concept. That is the communities and cultures we belong to, and the meaning we gain from those communities.
  • Gender identity develops from hormones, and genetics. Some people are born intersex.
• Describe the cognitive and social changes in early to middle adulthood
  • Foster and receive love, and build relationships and communities.
  • We develop an interest in guiding the development of the next generation, either as a parent, or mentor.
  • Sensory loss with eyes, ears, muscle tone.
  • Memorization and perceptual skills start to decline.
  • Verbal abilities, spacial reasoning, math, abstract reasoning all improve.
  • Physical exercise and learning new things help stave off cognitive decline.
• Describe the cognitive and social changes in late adulthood
  • The ability to process information and acquire new information slows down.
  • When adequate social support is met (third-places or retirement communities):
    • Maintenance of a healthy, active lifestyle
    • Fondness and nostalgia
    • Increasingly valuing social connection
    • Strengthened crystallized knowledge (general knowledge about the world)
    • NOT neurocognitive disorder

Exam Questions

• Know Piaget's Stages.

Prenatal to Toddlers

Environment Affects Prenatal Development

Individual

Avoid teratogens - Excess stress, cigarettes, alcohol. Tend to health and diet - Mediterranean diet to reduce inflammation.

Overlap

Avoid teratogens - Excess stress, cigarettes, alcohol. - Community health risks such as lead in water pipes. Tend to health and diet - Mediterranean diet to reduce inflammation. - Certain communities may not have access to nutrient knowledge or good food choices. They may live in a healthy-food desert, so-to-speak.

Systems

What is it like for women seeking healthcare? Women of color?

• Science previously, and may still not, take into account differences between sexes that would affect outcomes of medicine and medical procedures.
• They experience systemic racism. Providers may think they know more than their patients.
  • Providers need to do a better job about standing up and educating about the injustices of racism, tearing down fences that may inhibit proper care.
  • Patient-centered care is an approach used to level the playing field.
    • The patient knows their body, the provider knows the science.

Epigenetics

How your environment controls and changes how your genes are expressed. Stable changes to genetic function is known as the epigenome.

Example:

• Control - Oreo
  • Parent grew up in a normal environment.
  • Grew up in a normal environment.
  • 2.25lb, 11in, triangle build.
• Parent - Grizzly
  • 1.95lb, 9.5in, rectangle build.
  • Grew up in a traumatic environment, underweight due to food scarcity.
• Child - Dumplin - Grizzly's Son
  • 2.60lb, 12in, triangle build.
  • Overweight due to epigenome wanting to protect against food scarcity even though he was not subject to food scarcity himself.
  • Slightly less overweight with time after having never had to deal with food scarcity, may not fully resolve for another generation or two.

Habituation

Decreased responsiveness toward a stimulus after it has been presented numerous times in succession.

This can be used in research to help deduce how babies develop. If a baby responds successively to a stimuli, that means that they recognize that the stimuli has changed and are still interested.

Cognitive Development

Schema

Patterns of knowledge in long-term memory that help us remember, organize, and respond to information. A roadmap of how to operate in an environment.

Examples:

• Where to sit in a classroom when first entering.
• What a horse looks like?
• 'Just World' fallacy
  • False: Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.
  • Wrong: People assume if something bad happens, that they then are a bad person.
  • Therapy is used to help accommodate those thoughts into a new schema—some things are out of our control.

Assimilation

Incorporating new information into an existing schema.

Children with a schema of a horse (4 legs, 2 ears, 1 tail), when shown a cow, may try to assimilate the cow into the schema of the horse. 

Accommodation

Changing the schema based on new information. Adding a new schema to accommodate the new information.

When told that a cow is not a horse, the child will accommodate the new information to form a new schema (adding that Cows have a flat back, or a wider body).

Piaget's Research

Recent Research

• Piaget's chart underrepresents environmental factors.
  • Or neglects to take into account environmental factors.
• Stages aren't as cleanly divided as Piaget's chart shows.
  • People don't climb stages in a linear fashion.

Teens to Elders

Puberty

• Hormones surge, pre-frontal cortex is still developing.
• The self-concept of a teenager develops--schema of our beliefs, personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles.
• Social identity helps develop self-concept. That is the communities and cultures we belong to, and the meaning we gain from those communities.
• Gender identity develops from hormones, and genetics. Some people are born intersex.

Adulthood

• Foster and receive love, and build relationships and communities.
• We develop an interest in guiding the development of the next generation, either as a parent, or mentor.
• Sensory loss with eyes, ears, muscle tone.
• Memorization and perceptual skills start to decline.
• Verbal abilities, spacial reasoning, math, abstract reasoning all improve.
• Physical exercise and learning new things help stave off cognitive decline.
• Socially, marriage is expected by society at a certain age. Careers develop.
• Social clock refers to the "right time" for major life changes and events to occur.

Parenting Styles

• Demandingness
  • What you expect of them.
  • High: Bossy; Strict.
  • Low: Loose; Easy-going.
• Responsiveness
  • Being there
  • High: Emotionally responsive.
  • Low: Absent; Ignoring thoughts/feelings/emotions.

• Authoritative
  • High demands, but emotionally supportive.
  • Best parenting style. Like a mentorship.
• Authoritarian
  • Like a dictator. Strict.
  • High expectations, doesn't care for the child's input.
• Permissive
  • Parent is more like a friend than a mentor.
  • Doesn't say no or set and keep healthy boundaries.
• Rejecting-Neglecting
  • Parent is generally absent from the child's life.

Golden Years ~ 58+

When adequate social support is met:

• Maintenance of a healthy, active lifestyle
• Fondness and nostalgia
• Increasingly valuing social connection
• Strengthened crystallized knowledge
• NOT neurocognitive disorder

Social support is driven by third-spaces: libraries, parks, retirement communities. These are funded by taxpayer money and generally are found in wealthy neighborhoods.