Biological, Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Bases of Behavior
Behavior has biological, cognitive, and social-emotional underpinnings; the exam expects you to link them to classroom performance and to avoid folk psychology.
Neurobiology
- Structures: frontal lobes (executive function, motor planning, inhibition), with the prefrontal cortex supporting working memory and self-regulation into the mid-20s; temporal (auditory processing, language, memory); parietal (somatosensory, spatial); occipital (vision); cerebellum (timing, coordination); limbic system - amygdala (threat detection, emotion), hippocampus (memory consolidation), hypothalamus (homeostasis).
- Development: synaptogenesis, pruning, and myelination; sensitive periods (phonology, vision); adolescent reward circuitry matures before prefrontal control, which helps explain risk-taking.
- Neurotransmitters: dopamine (reward, attention), serotonin (mood), norepinephrine (arousal), acetylcholine (memory), GABA (inhibition).
- Health influences: sleep, nutrition, lead exposure, prenatal alcohol, traumatic brain injury, seizure disorders, and medication effects all change classroom behavior.
Cognition and emotion
CHC abilities - Gf, Gc, Gwm, Gs, Glr, Gv, Ga - organize how cognitive tests are interpreted. Temperament (Thomas and Chess: easy, difficult, slow-to-warm) shapes goodness of fit with classroom demands. Emotion regulation, theory of mind, and Dodge's social information processing model explain aggression and peer difficulty.
Worked example
A student with a frontal-lobe injury is impulsive, disorganized, and slow to shift tasks but scores average on an IQ test. Reasoning: IQ does not measure executive function; assess planning and inhibition directly and build external structure (checklists, transition warnings) rather than assuming the student is unmotivated.
Traps
- Left-brain/right-brain "learning styles" claims.
- Treating working memory and short-term memory as identical.
- Accepting a diagnosis as an explanation for behavior.