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Obesity, Sara D. Mcmullin, Eric A. Goedereis Apr 2025

Obesity, Sara D. Mcmullin, Eric A. Goedereis

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30 in adults and above the 95th percentile for children based on age and sex norms. The prevalence of obesity across the lifespan has increased over the last several decades in the United States. Currently, 17% of children and 36% of adults in the United States meet these criteria, with higher prevalence among racial and ethnic minority groups. Childhood and adult obesity are associated with immediate and long-term medical, psychological, and cognitive consequences. Therefore, the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends all children and adults are …

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Attention In Old Age, Anna C. Mccarrey Apr 2025

Attention In Old Age, Anna C. Mccarrey

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Attention is the first step our brains take to actively process information from the environment. Our attentional capacity is limited, such that we cannot process all the sights, sounds, smells and feelings surrounding us all at once. Attention (along with memory) is one of the basic cognitive processes most impacted by growing older. In addition, attention is not a unitary process and different types of attention require more cognitive resources than others. Thus, not all attentional systems are subject to declines with age to the same degree.

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Stages Of Labor, Ashleigh Lupton, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Stages Of Labor, Ashleigh Lupton, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Labor, or the process through which a baby is born, is separated into three primary stages. The first stage begins at the onset of labor and ends when the cervix reaches a 10-centimeter dilation. This first stage is comprised of three sub-stages: early labor, active labor, and transition. The early labor phase begins at the onset of labor and ends when the women’s cervix is 3 centimeters dilated. This phase generally takes place over 8-12 hours at which point the cervix begins to open up (i.e., dilate) and thin out.  During this phase, contractions, which are the uterine muscles tightening …

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Intelligence- Hierarchical, Brooke Maston, Donna Devaughn Kreskey Apr 2025

Intelligence- Hierarchical, Brooke Maston, Donna Devaughn Kreskey

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Within the field of psychology, intelligence is usually defined using a psychometric approach. This approach relies on the use of psychological measurement, or standardized tests, to objectively measure the cognitive processes and skills of an individual and compare them to the processes and skills of a norm group that represents the general population. Historically, psychologists who studied human intelligence fell into two major groups. One group, which included psychologists such as Charles Spearman, Phillip Vernon, and John Carroll, favored a single general factor comprised of a variety of specific factors to explain intelligence. The second group, which included psychologists such …

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Building Blocks Of Language: Speech Perception In Infants (Eimas Et Al., 1971), Sanjula Mahathantila, Jonathan B. Santo Apr 2025

Building Blocks Of Language: Speech Perception In Infants (Eimas Et Al., 1971), Sanjula Mahathantila, Jonathan B. Santo

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Language is a very important component of what makes humans, humans.  Without language, we would not be able to communicate thoughts, feelings, or ideas.  Learning a native language starts at infancy and continues well into our adult lives.  However, the beginning of learning a language at infancy might not be as simple as it seems.  In adulthood, when hearing a foreign language it might be hard to figure out where one word stops and where another begins.  Infants are doing the same thing, except on a much different scale.

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Michael Rutter, Benjamin Lowry, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Michael Rutter, Benjamin Lowry, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Michael Rutter was born August 15th, 1933 to Winifred and Llewellyn Rutter in Lebanon, where his father was working as a doctor. He returned with his parents to England when he was 3-years-old. In 1940, at the age of 6-years-old, Rutter and his younger sister were evacuated to North America due to fear of German invasion of the British Isles. He and his sister were taken in by different families in the United States and only living together a few months near the end of their four year stay abroad. Rutter denied feeling separated from his parents during his stay …

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Battered Woman Syndrome, Emma Lathan, Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling Apr 2025

Battered Woman Syndrome, Emma Lathan, Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) is a psychological and sociological construct defined as a set of symptoms that develop as coping skills and/or survival mechanisms for repeated physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse by an intimate partner (Walker, 2017). Symptom criteria include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) indicators of fear, hypervigilance, avoidance, and intrusive memories of abuse, in addition to disrupted interpersonal relationships, body image distortion and/or physical health complaints, and sexual dysfunction. Although historically BWS was considered a female syndrome, it is now known that both men and women can experience severe victimization by intimate partner violence (IPV; i.e., contact sexual violence, …

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Bowlby, John, Corey Lieneman, Morgan Simpson, Cheryl B. Mcneil Apr 2025

Bowlby, John, Corey Lieneman, Morgan Simpson, Cheryl B. Mcneil

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Edward John Mostyn Bowlby (February 27, 1907, London, England – September 2, 1990, Isle of Skye, Scotland) was a child psychologist, psychoanalyst, and psychiatrist renowned for his attachment theory. Bowlby was interested in how the caregiver-child bond impacted the child’s personality and emotional bonds formed later in life.

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Kieran Egan, Benjamin Lowry, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Kieran Egan, Benjamin Lowry, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Kieran Egan was born in 1942 in Clomel, Ireland. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 from the University of London. After graduating he was employed at the Institute for Comparative Studies in Kingston upon Thames as a research fellow. Egan then began a Ph.D. program in philosophy of education from Stanford Graduate School of Education, but after two years he transferred to Cornell University and completed his degree in 1972.  He then worked at Simon Frasier University as a professor of education.

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Adolescence: Bio-Physiological Development, Theresa C. Allen Apr 2025

Adolescence: Bio-Physiological Development, Theresa C. Allen

Essays in Developmental Psychology

The Wonder Years was a television comedy-drama that aired for six seasons from 1988 to 1993.  It was a series on the coming of age…life through the eyes of an adolescent boy, Kevin Arnold, living in the late 1960’s - early 70’s.  From surviving the indignities of the junior high gym locker room, to discovering the joys of the opposite sex, to struggling to cut parental apron strings, a nation watched Kevin Arnold try to navigate the ever-changing waters of puberty, friendships, love and lust, and the uncertainty of tumultuous social times while trying to forge a sense of self …

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Handedness, Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Handedness, Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Handedness is a poorly understood phenomenon, that can be defined in many ways. Some consider handedness to be the hand that is used for writing. Others define handedness as the hand that is preferred to be used, or the hand that performs better on manual tasks (Markou, Ahtam & Papadatou-Pastou, 2017). Individuals are generally considered to be right-handed or left-handed, however some individuals may be ambidextrous, or able to use both hands. Finally, some consider handedness to be along a continuum, and not summed into these three categories.

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Prenatal Development, Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Prenatal Development, Huda Abu-Suwa, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Prenatal refers to the period of time between conception and birth. As such, prenatal development is the process in which a fetus develops in its mother’s womb. This period typically lasts nine months. Prenatal development can be divided into three stages: the germinal stage, the embryonic stage, and the fetal stage (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019).

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Ethnic Identity Formation (In A Changing World), Kerrie S. Devries, Jonathan B. Santo Apr 2025

Ethnic Identity Formation (In A Changing World), Kerrie S. Devries, Jonathan B. Santo

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Ethnic identity is a multidimensional construct with varied and changing definitions. Psychologist Jean Phinney (2000, 2003) broadly defines ethnic identity as “an enduring, fundamental aspect of the self that includes a sense of membership in an ethnic group and the attitudes and feelings associated with that group membership.”  Typically, members of ethnic groups will share a similar culture, religion, language, race, values, or place of origin.  As individuals become aware of their ethnicity in the context of their surroundings, ethnic identity develops and changes over time.  Ethnic identity has been shown to impact a broad range of an individual’s feelings, …

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Midlife Stress, Kimberly Diah, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Midlife Stress, Kimberly Diah, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Midlife stress occurs naturally through the aging process but can be the result of an external psychological stressor due to loss or change such as occupational stress, health concerns, parental bereavement and divorce. Coping with the psychological suffering associated with these stressors brings challenges throughout all stages of life, but when it occurs during midlife it can be complicated by heightened or unique feelings of bewilderment. For men, recognition of their own mortality and sense of purpose in life can drive the experience of midlife stress. For women, this experience may be derived from feelings of emptiness and sadness, physical …

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Information Processing Theory (R.J. Lachman), Kimberly Diah, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Information Processing Theory (R.J. Lachman), Kimberly Diah, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Information Processing Theory is a cognitive approach designed to understand human learning. Several perspectives of this theory emerged from the cognitive revolution in psychology beginning in the 1950s. The invention of the technological age of computers brought with it an innovative way of understanding how information is processed in humans. This lead researcher to draw analogies between the processing ability of humans and computers. The human-computer analogy developed from the foundation that as computers are able to process information so too can humans in a very similar method. Both encompasses ‘cognitive’ processes such as learning or obtaining information, solving problems, …

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Mathematical Skills, Rhonda Douglas Brown Apr 2025

Mathematical Skills, Rhonda Douglas Brown

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Mathematical Skills are essential for understanding how the world works and for solving problems that are important to human survival and prosperity.  They are used in everyday living in societies across the world.  The most basic mathematical skills involve estimating the amount of small sets of items without using symbols, called number sense, and tracking a small number of individual objects through space and time, called parallel individuation.  These skills are thought to be present at birth or early in life and to increase in precision into adulthood.

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David F. Bjorklund, Rhonda Douglas Brown Apr 2025

David F. Bjorklund, Rhonda Douglas Brown

Essays in Developmental Psychology

David F. Bjorklund is an eminent scholar in the field of developmental psychology.  He was born on June 13, 1949 in Worcester, Massachusetts.  He received his bachelor’s degree cum laude in psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1971.  His graduate degrees include a master’s in psychology from the University of Dayton in 1973 and a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1976, as well as a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2002.  He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bern, Switzerland in 2015.  Bjorklund is currently a Professor of …

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Lifespan Perspective, Leila Eikevik Apr 2025

Lifespan Perspective, Leila Eikevik

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Psychologists who study human development have adopted the lifespan perspective, which maintains that important changes occur during every period of development and that these changes must be interpreted in terms of the culture and context in which they occur (Boyd and Bee, 2009). Prior to this understanding, the subject of development was limited to childhood. This view has shifted because it is evident adults continue to experience major life changes and there has been a significant increase in age expectancy. Therefore, all stages of life are equally important. Lifespan development begins at the time of conception and continues up until …

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Marriage, Kim Fitzgibbon Apr 2025

Marriage, Kim Fitzgibbon

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Official legislation on the touted “fundamental right” of marriage dates back to the 1800s in the United States, showing the prominence and important that the concept of marriage has on society. Changes in laws and policy have increased the opportunity for marriage to a larger population and as such, research on the construct, its benefits, challenges and statistics has become an area of significant interest. The legal and financial implications of a marriage contract have also encouraged researchers due to the serious and long-lasting implications such a contract can have. Reasons to marry are endless, are highly individualized and can …

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Naïve Theories, Ethan Fleuchaus, Heidi Kloos Apr 2025

Naïve Theories, Ethan Fleuchaus, Heidi Kloos

Essays in Developmental Psychology

While the idea of the mind as a blank slate has long been abandoned, the question of what exactly a “non-blank slate” might look like is still debated. In this entry we discuss the claim that children are equipped with naïve theories—primitive, incomplete, or otherwise ill-formed, but nevertheless systematic, mental representations of cause-effect relations. Other terms that reflect this idea include ‘misconceptions’, ‘naïve beliefs’, ‘prior theories’, ‘alternative conceptions’, or ‘intuitive theories’. Their main characteristic is that they interfere with an open-minded exploration of the surrounding. The unfortunate result of such biased exploration is that children ignore evidence that conflicts with …

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Heinz Werner, Ethan Fleuchaus, Katie Cunningham, Heidi Kloos Apr 2025

Heinz Werner, Ethan Fleuchaus, Katie Cunningham, Heidi Kloos

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Heinz Werner (February 11, 1890 – May 14, 1964) was an Austrian psychologist who played an active role in defining the field of developmental psychology at the start of the 20th century. While initially seeking to become a composer and music historian, he changed his mind after listening to a lecture on Immanuel Kant at the University of Vienna. Werner became engrossed in topics of philosophy and psychology (which were combined at the time), and he wrote his dissertation on the psychology of aesthetic experiences. Subsequently he worked at the University of Hamburg, where he published the first edition of …

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Patriarchal Violence, Fallon Flowers, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Patriarchal Violence, Fallon Flowers, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Patriarchal violence has been described as a pattern of behavior by men perpetuated against women in order to maintain control over women and their behavior. Ultimately, it is meant to oppress them; resulting in women being relegated to a lower position in society. The need for men to exert control over women via Patriarchal violence has roots in one’s cultural, societal, and moral beliefs. Such beliefs pertain to what is considered appropriate and what is considered inappropriate in a cultural context.  One of the burgeoning examples of this form of violence against women is the “honor killing”, the killing of …

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Adolescent Death, Kim Fitzgibbon, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Adolescent Death, Kim Fitzgibbon, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

According to recent statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are approximately 9,500 adolescent deaths per year in the United States, as defined by mortality rates for individuals aged 15-19. CDC statistics also show that the leading causes of death for American adolescents were unintentional accidents and injuries, suicide and homicide. Furthermore, according to David Balk’s Handbook of Adolescent Death and Bereavement, gender and racial differences contribute to disproportionate mortality rates, with African American and Hispanic males finding themselves significantly more likely to be killed by homicide than Caucasian counterparts.

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Secondary Mental Abilities, Kim Fitzgibbon, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Secondary Mental Abilities, Kim Fitzgibbon, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Mental abilities have commonly been broken down into two main categories; primary and secondary. Primary mental abilities are thought to be large scale groups with similar abilities. Secondary mental ability builds off foundational primary mental abilities of intelligence. Research has suggested that there are six main secondary mental abilities, with the potential for additional abilities to be named or discovered as more research emerges. Expanding research on these abilities has also suggested that they can morph and evolve with age, just as primary abilities related to intelligence.

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Brain Study Techniques, Rhonda Douglas Brown Apr 2025

Brain Study Techniques, Rhonda Douglas Brown

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Brain study techniques are used to understand how the brain processes information and manages behavior.  They can establish which parts of the brain are responsible for different types of cognition and behavior.  One technique, called lesion studies, involves conducting case studies of patients with brain injury and associating damage in specific regions or structures with loss or impairment of specific cognitive processes and behaviors.  For example, in the mid1800s, using post-mortem autopsy, Paul Broca observed that patients who had lost the ability to speak, but could understand language, had damage in the posterior sections of the inferior frontal gyrus; whereas, …

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Marriage In Old Age, Nicole M. Fornalski, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Marriage In Old Age, Nicole M. Fornalski, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

As closely interactive cohorts throughout their adult lives, husbands and wives have been seen to become even closer confidants and partners in older age.  These changes may predominate after retirement and the loss of daily work practices and professional systems.  Older couples have frequently shared a considerable quantity of time with one another, and subsequently are able to call forth collective memories and years of intercommunications.  In addition, older adult couples usually report less conflicts, and appear to acquire more meaning out of their spousal relationships.  They also report less psychological distress and rates of illness than older singles.  These …

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Role Transitions, Nicole M. Fornalski, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Role Transitions, Nicole M. Fornalski, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

A role can be defined as one’s position in a relationship or social structure, whereas a role identity consists of the behavioral expectations that are included in that role. While some individuals may view their roles through a fixed set of social standards, others rely on their own subjective perceptions and interpretations of these positions through flexible guidelines.  Through the process of a role transition, the literature identifies two types defined as a macro role transition or micro role transition.  A macro role transition consists of a psychological or physical change between consecutively held roles.  Examples can include career transitions, …

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Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Fallon Flowers, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden Apr 2025

Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Fallon Flowers, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) are diseases that can be passed from one person to another via sexual contact. Some STDs can be treated and cured, while others, once contracted, remain for a lifetime. Chlamydia is one of the more common STDs that both women and men are susceptible to. It is the result of exposure to a bacteria called Chlamydia Trachomatis. In women, the infection can occur in the cervix, throat, or rectum, while men who are infected experience the infection inside the penis (urethra), throat, and rectum. With regard to transmission, Chlamydia can be transmitted from one person to …

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Formal Operational Period, Katie Cunningham, Heidi Kloos Apr 2025

Formal Operational Period, Katie Cunningham, Heidi Kloos

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Consider the following prompt: “If you hit a glass with a feather, the glass will break. Ann hit a glass with the feather. What will happen to the glass?” To answer correctly, one would have to first learn the rule about how the feather will affect the glass. The second step then is to apply the learned rule in a logical fashion. The mental activity needed to carry out these steps is known as hypothetico-deductive reasoning. It is required for counter-factual thinking, transitive inferences, and hypothesis testing. Jean Piaget postulated that this type of mental activity is characteristic of children …

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Attachment Theory: Schaffer And Emerson, Jeffery H. Cornelius-White, Joan E. Test Apr 2025

Attachment Theory: Schaffer And Emerson, Jeffery H. Cornelius-White, Joan E. Test

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson’s work on the development of attachment in childhood is based on the evolutionary perspective of John Bowlby. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) defined attachment as, “The tendency of the young to seek the proximity of other members of the species” (p. 6). In their view, infants and young children seek out and find comfort in being physically close to people with whom they have formed attachments.

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