CAS PS 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Romanian Orphans, Hypothalamus, Cortisol
14 Dec 2017
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February 17th
Discussion of the 17th
What hinders and facilitates typical development?
What hinders a child:
-not appropriate diet
-no access to proper education
-no emotional contact, no affection
All of these are adversities. There are many factors that can contribute to adversity:
-poverty
-health problems
-poor social relationships
-loss
-failure
-threat to life
How do people respond to adversity?
Resilience is very closely tied to adversity. If there is no adversity, you cannot see resilience.
Resilience in psychology: despite the different adversities, will one adapt and how.
Questions:
1. Is resilience common or is it a rare phenomenon?
2. What are some factors that might contribute to resilience?
Resilience results from human adaptation. In fact, resilience is ordinary. It is a common
phenomena, which results from basic human adaptation systems.
Research has found that there are some factors associated with resilience:
-parenting quality
-socio economic status
-intellectual function
-positive self-perceptions
There are certain facts that disrupt the adaption processes and therefore hinder resilience:
-brain development
-caregiver and child relationships (think about the children in the Romanian orphanages)
-emotion and behavior regulation
-engagement with environment (if your environment makes you deal with a lot of adversities)
-motivation (anything that disrupts the underlying motivation process will hinder resilience)
Neurobiological prospect
Any kind of adversity that you deal with becomes a stressor in your life.
Adversity/stressors activate biological stress system. When you are faced with any kind of
stressful situation, your body will switch to a fight or flight mode: an automatic response that
makes you either defend yourself or run away. The biological stress system is still intact, even
though we do not face the same challenges of our ancestors (fight an animal).
SAM is the sympathetic adrenal medullary. It creates an immediate response to stress,
producing adrenaline. Adrenaline is produced in your body and you are pumped up.
There is also a slower response by the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal). This creates a
more slower response which happens after some time of the stress trigger. Cortisol is created in
your body.
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Document Summary
There are many factors that can contribute to adversity: If there is no adversity, you cannot see resilience. Resilience in psychology: despite the different adversities, will one adapt and how. It is a common phenomena, which results from basic human adaptation systems. Research has found that there are some factors associated with resilience: There are certain facts that disrupt the adaption processes and therefore hinder resilience: Caregiver and child relationships (think about the children in the romanian orphanages) Engagement with environment (if your environment makes you deal with a lot of adversities) Motivation (anything that disrupts the underlying motivation process will hinder resilience) Any kind of adversity that you deal with becomes a stressor in your life. When you are faced with any kind of stressful situation, your body will switch to a ght or ight mode: an automatic response that makes you either defend yourself or run away.
