Developmental Psychology

1
Developmental Psychology

• Unit 9

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Prenatal Development and the Newborn

• Conception
• Only takes one sperm to penetrate the eggs outer
  coating and fuse together to form a cell (baby)
• Zygote conception to 2 weeks
• Embryo 2 weeks to 8 weeks
• Fetus 9 weeks to birth

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Prenatal development

• Cell division produces a zygote
• Fewer than half of all fertilized egss survive
  beyond the first 2 weeks
• After the zygote attaches to the mothers uterine
  wall (embryo)
• Over the next 6 weeks organs began to form and
  function

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Prenatal development

• By 9 weeks looks human (fetus)
• Fetus becomes responsive to sound
• Mothers voice over any others after birth

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Prenatal development

• Placenta-transfer nutrients and oxygen from
  mother to fetus and screens harmful substances
• Teratogens harmful agents such as viruses and
  drugs
• No safe amount of alcohol during pregnancy
• Fetal alcohol syndrome physical and cognitive
  abnormalities

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The newborn

• Born with coordinated sequence of reflexes
• Touches cheekgtbabies turngtopen mouthgt
• Reflexive tonguing, swallowing, sucking, and
  breathing
• Habituation overtime decreasing responsiveness
  with repeated stimulation

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The Newborn

• We prefer familiar sights and sounds that
  facilitate social responsiveness
• We prefer objects 8 to 12 inches away (happens to
  be distance from nursing baby eyes to mothers
  eyes)

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Infancy and Childhood

• Physical Development
• On the day your were born you had the most brain
  cells you will ever have
• Neural networks grow more complex as you mature
• Maturation growth enable changes in behavior
  uninfluenced by experience

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Infancy and Childhood

• Motor development
• Physical coordination
• Rolling overgtcrawlinggtwalking (illustrating a
  maturing nervous system)
• Genes play a role
• Cerebellum (readiness to walk/balance)

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Infancy and Childhood

• Maturation and infant memory
• Infantile amnesia
• Average age of earliest conscious memory is 3.5
  years
• Memory still processes information before that
  time
• Conscious mind not know or express in words, the
  nervous systems somehow remembers
• Sweating example of remembering pre-schoolers

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Cognitive Development

• Mental activities associate with thinking,
  knowing, remembering, and communicating
• Piagets studies proved that children minds
  develop in stages
• Piaget make sense of our experiences

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Cognitive Development

• Maturing brain builds schemas, concepts or mental
  molds to our experiences
• First we assimilate new experiences (interpret)
  and later accommodate (adjust) our original
  schemas
• Spurts of change to greater cognitive stability

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Piagets theory and current thinking

• Sensorimotor stage
• From birth to 2
• Take in the world through their sense and
  actions-through looking, hearing, touching,
  mouthing, and grasping
• Object permanence (young infants lack up until
  around 8 months)

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Piaget stages

• Preoperational Stage
• Until about age 6 or 7
• Too young to perform mental operations
• Concept of conservation-that quantity remains the
  same despite changes in shape
• Egocentrism difficulty perceiving things from
  anothers point of view

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Piaget theory of mind

• Begin to tease, empathize, and persuade
• Ability to take anothers perspective develops
• Children with autism have difficulty
  understanding other states of mind, reflecting on
  their own mental states, and less likely to use
  personal pronouns
• Gradually develop

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Concrete Operational Stage

• Around 6 or 7 till 12
• Comprehend mathematical transformations and
  conversations

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Formal Operational Stage

• By age 12
• Concrete reasoning to encompass abstract thinking
  
• Children begin to approach hypothetical
  propositions and deducing consequences

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Reflecting on Piagets Theory

• Identified significant cognitive milestones
• Studies around the globe have confirmed that
  human cognition unfolds as Piaget predicated
• Today researchers see development as more
  continuous that Piaget did

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Lev Vygotsky

• Emphasis on how the mind grows through
  interaction with the social environment
• Language provides the building blocks for
  thinking
• Zone of proximal development-what they could
  learn with and without help
• Interacting with others

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Implications for parents and teachers

• Positive feedback vs. negative feedback
• Better to build on what they already known
  engaging them in concrete demonstrations and
  stimulating them to think for themselves
• Childrens cognitive immaturity is adaptive

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Social Development

• Developing an intense bond with caregivers
• Stranger Anxiety- By 8 months some infants show a
  fear of STRANGERS
• Separation Anxiety- crying or otherwise showing
  distress if their mothers leave them (even if
  only for a few moments)

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Origins of Attachment

• Attachment-a powerful survival impulse that keeps
  infants close to their caregivers
• Infants become attached to those who satified
  their need for nourishment

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Origins of Attachment-Body contact

• Harlow experiment
• Monkey overwhelmingly preferred the comfy cloth
  mother as opposed to the wire mother who provided
  food
• Cling to mother (comfy) when anxious
• Rocking, warmth, and feed made the cloth mother
  even more appealing

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Origins of Attachment-Familiarity

• Form during a critical period-an optimal period
  when certain events must take place to facilitate
  proper development
• Children become attached during a sensitive
  period
• Mere exposure to people and things fosters
  fondness

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Origins of Attachment

• Imprinting-certain animals attached during a
  critical time
• Goslings, dockings, chicks hours after hatching
• Konrad Lorenz experiment

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Attachment differences Temperament and Parenting

• Placed in a strange situation the majority of
  infants (60) displayed secure attachment
• Play comfortably in their mothers presence, when
  she leaves they are distressed, and when se
  returns they seek contact
• Insecure attachment cling to mom (wont
  explore), upset or indifference toward mother
  leaving and returning (about how they react when
  parents return)

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Attachment differences

• Sensitive mothers and fathers tend to have
  securely attached infants
• One aspect of personality is temperament
  (reactive, intense, fidgety, easygoing, quiet,
  irritable, unpredictable, cheerful, relaxed)
• Heredity predisposes temperament differences

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Secure vs. Unsecure

• Secure Mothers who are affectionate and RELIABLE
  gtsecurely attached child
• Secure children are happier, friendlier, and
  more cooperative. They are also less likely to
  MISBEHAVE and tend to do better in school
• Insecure Unresponsive or unreliable caregiver
  gtinsecure child

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Attachment differences

• Erik Erikson Securely attached children approach
  life with a sense of basic trusts (early
  parenting)
• Our early attachment forms the foundation for
  affection and intimacy later in life
• Affect future relationships with your own
  children
• Affect motivation

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Deprivation of Attachment

• Harlow monkey cowered in fright or lashed out in
  aggression placed in rooms with other monkeys,
  incapable of mating
• Most children growing up under adversity are
  resilient and become normal adults
• However, others dont bounce back so readily
• Extreme trauma leave footprints on the brain
• Slow serotonin response in abused children

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Disruption of Attachment

• Courts are reluctant to remove children from
  their homes
• If placed in a more positive and stable
  environment, most infants recover from separation
  distress
• A series of foster families can be very
  disruptive
• Deep and longstanding attachments seldom break
  quickly

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Does Daycare affect attachment?

• New research confirms quality day-care matters
• Socio-economic status readily determines quality
  of day-care
• Children ability to thrive under varied types of
  responsive caregivers
• Consistent/warm relationships, can form trusting
  relationships

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Child abuse and neglect

• Most parents are kind and LOVING
• Neglect failure to give a child adequate food,
  shelter, emotional support, or schooling
• more problems result from neglect than from abuse
• 3 million children in the US are neglected

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Child abuse and neglect

• Stress, especially unemployment
• History of ABUSE
• Acceptance of violence as a way of coping
• Lack of ATTACHMENT to child
• Substance abuse
• Rigid attitudes about child REARING
• Children often imitate their parents behavior,
  but it is possible to break the CYCLE

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Self-concept

• By the end of childhood about age 12 most
  children have developed a self-concept-understandi
  ng of who they are
• Mirror images fascinate infants around 6 months
• About 18 months the child recognizes oneself in
  the mirror

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Self-concept

• By school age, children began to describe
  themselves in terms (gender, traits, comparison)
• By age 8 or 10, their self-image is quite stable
• Children who form positive self-concept are more
  confident, independent, optimistic, assertive,
  and sociable

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Parenting-style

• Authoritarian parents impose rules and expect
  obedience
• Permissive parents submit to their childrens
  desires
• Authoritative both demanding and responsive
• Children with the highest self-esteem,
  self-reliance, and social comptence-____________
  parents

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Culture and Child-Rearing

• Western culture-independence
• Many Asian and African cultures value emotional
  closeness and encourage a strong sense of family
  sef
• All in all children across place and time have
  thrived under various child-rearing systems

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Parents and Early Experiences

• Experience and brain development
• Enriched brains are more complex not necessarily
  bigger
• Rosenweig and Krech rat study
• Impoverished vs. enriched activities, weight
• Exposer to language before adolescences
• Genie never mastered a language

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How much credit or (blame) do parents deserve?

• Countless genetic influences beyond their control
• Parents feel enormous satisfaction and guilt over
  their childs successes or failures
• Freud blamed bad mothers
• Power of parenting-abusive, neglect, political
  attitudes, religious beliefs, manners

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Peer Influence

• We seek to fit in with groups and are subject to
  their influences
• Children will adopt the language accent of their
  peers not their parents
• Parents influenced the culture that shapes peer
  group (neighborhood, schools)

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Gender Development

• The biological and social characteristics by
  which people DEFINE as male or female
• Gender Similarities among 46 chromosomes 45 are
  unisex
• More alike than different!!!

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Overall Gender Differences

• Age of puberty
• Women live 5 years longer, 70 carry more fat,
  40 less muscle, 5 inches shorter, smell fainter
  odors, express emotions more freely, offered help
  more often, vulnerable to depression and anxiety,
  10 times more likely to develop an eating
  disorder
• Men 4 times more likely to commit suicide or
  suffer alcohol dependence, far more diagnosed
  with autism, color-blindness, adhd, antisocial
  personality disorder

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Gender and Aggression

• Men tend to behave more aggressively
• Gender gap regarding physical aggression
• Throughout the world
• Hunting, fighting, (men receive more support to
  go to war)

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Gender and Social Power

• In most societies men are more socially dominant
• Leadership tends to go to males
• As leaders men are more autocratic, women tend to
  be more democratic
• Everyday behavior men are more likely to talking
  assertively, interrupting, initiating touches,
  staring more, and smiling less
• Such behaviors are sustain due to social power
  inequities pay, political power

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Gender and Social Connectedness

• Surface early in childrens play
• Girls play in smaller groups, less competitive,
  more imitative, more open and responsive to
  feedback
• Boys play in large groups with an activity focus
  and little intimate discussion

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Gender and Social Connectedness

• Females are more interdependent spend more time
  with friends, conversation
• Men-activities side by side and use conversation
  to communicate solutions
• Bonds are stronger between females

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Gender Differences

• Gender differences in power, connectedness, and
  other traits peak in late adolescence
• As teenage girls become less assertive and more
  flirtatious boys become more domineering and
  unexpressive
• By 50, men become more empathic and less
  domineering, women become more assertive and
  self-confident (especially if working)

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The nature of Gender

• Different sex chromosomes and differing
  concentrations of sex hormones
• Seven weeks determines sex father decides the
  sex
• 4th-5th month sex hormones bathe the fetal brain
  and influence the wiring
• Women have thicker frontal lobes in the area
  involved in verbal fluency
• Part of the parietal cortex (space perception) is
  thicker than males
• Hippocampus, amygala differences

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The nature of Gender

• Hormonal malfunctions (will inject)
• Genetically female infants are born
  masculine-appearing
• Hormones wont reverse their gender identity
• Exhibit tomboyish behavior
• The effect of early exposure to sex hormones is
  direct (appearance) and indirect influence of
  social experiments)

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The nurture of Gender

• Gender roles
• Our expectations about the way men and women
  SHOULD behave
• Can smooth social relations, saving awkward
  decisions, but if we deviate from conventions we
  may feel anxious
• Employed men spend less time at home (employed
  women spend more)
• Stayed home with sick child?__________,
• ________________countries offer the greatest
  gender equity. ___________and _________the least.

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The nurture of Gender

• Gender and Child-rearing
• Gender identity-sense of being male or female
• Gender typed-exhibit masculine or feminine traits
• Social learning theory children learn
  gender-like behaviors by observing and imitating
  and by being rewarded or punished
• Cognition gender schemas (shape experiences
  based on observation)

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Adolescence

• The years spend morphing from child to adult
  starts at the beginning of sexual maturity and
  ends with achievement of independent adult status
• G. Stanley Hall A period of storm and stress
• Negative?
• Positive?

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Physical Development

• Puberty-mature sexually
• Beginning for girls around 11 and boys 13
• Primary and secondary sex characteristics develop
• Timing for boys early maturation being
  stronger, athletic, gtpopular, self-assured,
  independent
• For girls early maturation may suffer from
  teasing and sexual harrassment

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Physical Development

• As teens mature the frontal lobe continues to
  develop
• Bring improved judgment, impulse control, plan
  for long term
• However, hormonal surge and un-developed frontal
  lobe explains impulsive, risky teen behaviors
• Teens are guilty by reason of adolescence
• Juvenile death penalties unconstitutional

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Cognitive Development

• Developing reasoning power
• The ability to reason hypothetically and deduce
  consequences also enables them to detect
  inconsistencies in others reasoning and to spot
  hypocrisy

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Developing Morality

• Discerning right from wrong and developing
  character
• Kohlberg moral stages of development
• Preconvetional before age 9 children morality on
  self-interest
• Conventional by early adolescence, focuses on
  caring for others and uphold laws and rules
• Postconventional Actions judged as right
  because they flow from people's rights (or from
  self-defined)

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Moral Feeling

• Make moral judgments quickly
• Feel disgust when seeing people engaged in
  degrading acts or feel elated when seeing people
  to what is right
• Quick-gut feelings
• Humans are hard-wired for moral feelings
• Doing the right thing!

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Social Development

• Erik Erikson stages of psychosocial development
• Infancy (trust vs. mistrust)
• Adolescence (identity vs. role confusion)

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Forming an identity

• Group identities often form around how we differ
  from those around us
• Some forge their identity early, simply by
  adopting their parents values and expectations
• Other adolescents may adopt an identity define in
  opposition to parent but in conformity with a
  peer group

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Forming an identity

• Most young people do develop a sense of
  contentment with their lives
• A desire to accomplish something personally
  meaningful
• Identity becomes personalized
• Developing capacity for intimacy

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Parent and Peer Relationships

• Adolsecents begin to pull away from their parents
  to form their own identities
• Arguments between parents and kids are over
  mundane-things
• Parent-child conflict tends to be greater with
  first-borns
• Kids who are close to their parents tend to have
  close relationships with friends, healthy, and do
  good in school
• Teens look to parents regarding religious views
  and college/career over friends

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Emerging adulthood

• Delayed independence and earlier sexual maturity
  have widened the interlude between biological
  maturity and social independence
• 18-mid 20s dependent on parents financially and
  emotionally

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Adulthood

• Physical Development
• Our physical abilities-muscular strength,
  reaction time, sensory keenness, and cardiac
  output all crest by the mid-twenties
• Physical changes in Middle Adulthood
• Physical vigor has less to do with age than with
  a persons health and exercise
• Women-menopause
• Men-gradual decline in sperm count, tester one
  level, erection and ejaculation

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Physical changes in later life

• Increasing life expectancy combines with
  decreasing birthrates make older adults and
  larger population segment
• Women outlive women 5-6 years
• Body ages (with age peoples chromosome tips wear
  down and aging cells may die without being
  replaced with perfect genetic replicas)
• Why? Evolutionary theory

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Physical Changes

• Sensory abilities
• Visual sharpness diminishes
• Muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina
• Stairs get steeper, print gets smaller, people
  mumble more

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Physical Changes

• Health
• Body disease fighting immune system weakens, more
  susceptible to cancer and pneumonia not the
  common cold
• Slows the neural processing
• Memory and frontal lobe atrophy during aging
• Physical exercise stimulates brain cell
  development and neural connections

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Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

• Substantial loss of brain cells
• A series of small stroke, a brain tumor, or
  alcohol dependence can progressively damage the
  brain causing dementia
• Alzheimer's
• First memory deteriorates then reasoning (
  smell)
• After 5 to 20 years the person becomes
  emotionally flat, disoriented and disinherited,
  incontinent, and mentally vacant

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Cognitive Development

• Aging and memory
• The ability to recall new information decline
  during adulthood, but the ability to recognize
  new info did not
• Prospective memory (remember to) declines with
  age
• Teens/young adults are better at time-based tasks
• Easier to remember if information is meningful

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Cognitive Development Intelligence

• Phase 1 Cross-sectional Evidence for
  Intellectual Decline
• In time tests fewer correct answer than younger
  adults
• Eventually challenged this idea

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Cognitive Development-Intelligence

• Phase 2 Longitudinal Evidence for Intellectual
  Stability
• Intelligence remains stable until late in life
• Other environmental factors at play
• Never too old to learn

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Cognitive Development Intelligence

• Phase 3 It all depends
• Multiple intelligences need to measure several
  distinct abilities
• Those who are around may be bright healthy people
• Crystallized intelligence-accumulated knowledge
  increases up to old age
• Fluid intelligence-ability to reason speedily and
  abstractly decreases slowly up to age 75
• Mental ability strongly correlates with proximity
  to death

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Social Development Ages and Stages

• Forties-middle adulthood
• Crisis? Not really-unhappiness, divorce, job
  dissatisfaction does not rise
• Divorce most common in 20s, Suicide most common
  70-80s
• Social clock-right time
• Western world-still ticks but people feel freer
  to be out of sync with it
• Chance events-romantic partner
• Repeated exposure, similar background, class,
  attractiveness, reciprocates your affections

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Social Development Adulthood Commitments

• Love
• Adult bonds of love are most satisfying marked by
  similarity of interests and values, sharing of
  emotional and material support, intimate
  self-disclosure
• Stronger with couple who marry after 20
• Why is the divorce rate high? Womens lessened
  economic dependence on men, and rising
  expectations
• Enduring bond, equal wage earner, caregiver,
  intimate friend, warm, responsive lover

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Social Development Adulthood Commitments

• Those who cohabit before marriage have had higher
  rates of divorce
• Less committed to the ideal of enduring marriage
• Less marriage-supporting while cohabiting
• Marriage is a predictor of happiness, health,
  sexual satisfaction, and income
• Marriage that last are not always devoid of
  conflict
• Five-to-one ratio of positive to negative
  interactions
• Smiling, touching, complimenting, and laughing as
  opposed to criticism, sarcasm, insults

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Social Development Adulthood Commitments

• Work
• Difficult
• Not directly tied to your college majors
• Happiness is key do what makes you happy

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Social Development Adulthood Commitments

• When children begin to absorb time, money, and
  emotional energy, satisfaction
• Empty nester syndrome sometimes can be difficult
  or launch a second honeymoon

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Well-being across the life span

• From teens to midlife, people experience a
  strengthening sense of identity, later in life
  challenges arise
• Happiness is higher in older adults
• Risk of depression tapers off in later life
• Bad feelings we associate with negative events
  fade faster than do the good feeling we associate
  with positive events

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Well-being across the life span

• As we age (later in life) we find ourselves less
  often feeling excited and provoke less elation
  and criticism
• Less intense joy but more contentment and
  increased spirituality (especially if social)

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Death and Dying

• Most difficult separation is from a spouse (women
  suffer)
• Grief is severe when the death of a loved one is
  unexpected and before the social clock
• Facing death with openness helps people make
  sense of lifes meaningfulness and unity (sense
  of integrity)

81
Reflections on three major developmental Issues

• Nature vs. nurture both impact development
• Continuity and Stages
• Researchers emphasize experience see development
  as slow continuous process
• Researchers emphasize biology see development as
  predisposed stages
• Research cast doubt on the idea that life
  proceeds through neatly defined, age-linked
  stages, the stage concept remains useful

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Reflections on development

• Stability and Change
• Personality gradually stabilizes with age
• Life requires both
• Stability to depend on others
• Change motives our concerns about present
  influences