Unit 3 Psych: Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology

Examines our physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span

Nature vs. Nurture

How does genetic inheritance and experience influence our development? Genetic physical traits, environmental personality, trauma, behavior

Continuity vs. Discontinuity 

Is development a gradual process or does it proceed through the sequence of separate stages like climbing a ladder? stags like butterfly life cycle(caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly)

Stability Vs. Change

Which of our traits persist through life?  How do  we change as we age?

How do Psychologists Study Development?

Cross sectional

• Uses people of different ages to compare how certain characteristics may change over the course of life

• Can be hard when groups have grown up in different times 

Longitudinal

• Examines one group of participants over a long period of time

• Costly, takes a long time, and typically lose participants over time

Teratogens

Harmful agents that reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and can cause harm

Types of Teratogens

• Viruses: Flu or rubella 

• Nicotine

• Drugs: legal and illegal 

  • Ex: Thalidomide 

• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Rooting, sucking, and grasping reflexes

Rooting Reflex - A baby’s tendency, when touched on the cheek, to open mouth and search for a stimulus such as a bottle 

Sucking Reflex - The baby will suck on anything put in their mouth

Grasping Reflex - When something is placed in the palm of the hand or foot, the baby will try to grab hold of it.

Moro and Babinski Reflexes

Moro reflex - When startled the baby will flail out its arms and legs, then pulls them back in 

Babinski reflex - When a baby’s foot is stroked, he or she will spread their toes

Maturation

biological growth process that enable orderly changes in behavior

Motor Development in Infants

Sequence is the same for motor development (roll over, sit up, stand, crawl, walk, etc) but timing varies 

• In U.S.- 25% learn by 11 months, 50% within a week of 1st birthday and 90% are walking by 15 months.

• Identical twins tend to learn to walk on the same day.

Critical and Sensative periods

Critical period - The optimal period early in life when certain exposure to certain stimuli or experiences will produce normal development 

Sensitive Period - Period that humans have to form attachments

Imprinting

Instinctive bonding to the first moving object seen right after birth 

Some Animals will imprint- humans do not!

Puberty, Primary sex characteristics, Secondary sex characteristics, Spermarche, and Menarche

Puberty (notes: a horrible thing with many negative effects[not excuse harassing others, bullying, being an an a$$hole or not controlling oneself], at least part of the reason middle school sucks)

• The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing

Primary sex characteristics (notes: necessary for reproduction)

• Ovaries, testes and external genitalia that make reproduction possible

Secondary sex characteristics (notes: not necessary for reproduction, non-reproductive traits)

• Nonreproductive sexual traits- female breasts, voice changes, body hair 

Spermarche (notes: it has become increasingly clear the FLE is useless [cont in menarche notes])

• First ejactulation 

Menarche (notes: we didn’t learn about any of this [also they have blatantly lied about things])

• First menstrual period

Physical Changes in Middle Adulthood

• As you age, your body experiences decline

  • physically - more aches and pains.  :) 

  • Decline in fertility in both men and women

  • Women experience menopause- menstrual cycles ends. 

    • Also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines

Physical Changes in Late Adulthood

• Life expectancy is rising

  • Globally, life expectancy has increased from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.4 in 2019 (WHO, 2024)

    • Life expectancy in United States is 78.5

  • Women typically outlive men by about 4.7 years 

• Aging Body

  • As we get older, our cells stop reproducing and become more vulnerable- ex- cold weather, a fall, mild sickness bother us as we age 

  • Muscle strength weakness, eyesight gets worse , reaction time decreases.  

Language

Our spoken, written or signed words and the way we combine them to communicate meaning

Phonemes, Morphemes, and Grammar

Phonemes - The basic unit of sound in a spoken language (not letters!)

• English language has 44 (makes up the 500,000 or so words we have)

• Some units have more than one phonemes

  • ex-vowels -based on long or short sound

• Dog has how many?

  • Three phonemes- d, au, g

Morphemes - The smallest units of meaning 

• Can be a word or part of a word - prefix or suffix

  • Unbreakable

    • 3  un-break-able

  • Pretested

    • 3  pre-test-ed

Grammar - A Language’s set of rules that allow people to communicate

• Semantics- language’s set of rules for deriving meaning from sound

• Syntax- set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentence 

Language consists of phonemes put together to become morphemes, which make up words

Language Development

Babbling Stage

Starting around 3-4 months, the infant makes spontaneous sounds

Ex- da-da-da, na-na

One-Word Stage

1-2 years old. Uses one word to communicate big meanings

Ex- “da”- “look over there”

Telegraphic Stage

Around 2 , uses two or more words to communicate meaning 

Ex- Want milk, play cars

Language Acquisition

The ability to learn language is universal BUT…

Children acquire language much easier than adults 

Adults tend to make grammatical errors when speaking if learning the language as an adult (overgeneralization of language rules)

Jean Piaget(1896-1980) and his 4 Stages

According to Jean Piaget, Children develop schemas through continuous and discontinuous processes such as assimilation and accommodation

1. Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage

• 0-2 Years

• Experiences the world through senses

  • Babies engage in motor activities that bring a desirable result

    • Ex- touching a musical toy will make  a satisfying noise 

• Do not have object permanence

  • The understanding that an object exists even if you can not see it

2. Stage 2 Preoperational Stage

• 2-7 years old

• Have object permanence

• Begin pretend play

• Begin to use language to represent objects and ideas

  • Egocentric

    • Can’t look at the world through anyone’s eyes but their own

• Animism

  • Children believe inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, and feelings

• They do NOT understand the concepts of conservation

  • The idea that a quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance and part of logical thinking

• Theory of the mind

  • Preschoolers form Theory of the Mind when they can begin to infer the mental states (beliefs, intents, desires, emotions and knowledge of others.

    • Still egocentric tho

    • Having ToM is important bc it provided the ability to predict and interpret the behavior of others 

3. Stage 3 Concrete Operational

• Ages 7-11

• Children can demonstrate concept of conservation

  • Learning to think logically

4. Stage 4 Formal Operational

• Late Childhood through adulthood

• Can think abstractly 

• Hypothesize

• Have higher order thinking skills

Not all adults reach achieve formal operational thinking 

Schema, Assimilation, and Accommodation

Schema - A mental outlook or framework developed as a child and used to organize knowledge 

Assimilation - Interpreting new experiences into one’s existing schema 

Accommodation - Adapting to one’s current understandings to incorporate new information

Vygotsky’s Theory of social interaction and the mind 

• Lev Vygotsky

  • emphasized how a mind grows through interaction with the social environment

    • Differed from Piaget 

    • Parents and teachers scaffold (giving children temporary support while developing higher levels of learning)by mentoring them and giving new concepts to dev higher level thinking.

  • Zone of Proximal Development

    • The zone between what a child can and can’t do- It’s what they can do with help

      • “Proximal” refers to the skills that the learner is close to mastering

Ecological Systems Model 

• Emphasizes the influence of various environmental systems on a person's development 

  • Human development is shaped by interactions with different levels of social environments

Chronosystem:   historical events (ex-COVID), political changes, life experiences 

Macrosystem:  cultural influences (geography, culture, values, socioeconomic status, religion)

Exosystem: environments that indirectly affect a person (parent’s jobs, mass media, community, neighbors)

Mesosystem: How different people in your microsystem interact with each other? (coaches and teachers? Teachers and Parents?)

Microsystem: Who were/are your major influences close to you?

Attachment Theories - Stranger Anxiety, Attachment, Harry Harlow and Margaret Harlow, Contact comfort, and Mary Ainsworth: Attachment Theory

Stranger Anxiety

• After 8 months children develop stranger Anxiety

  • The fear of strangers that infants display 

• They have schemas for familiar faces; when they can’t assimilate new faces into their remembered schemas they stress

Attachment

• Refers to a bond between a caregiver and a child.  It has a significant impact on a child’s development on both a social and emotional connection

Harry Harlow and Margaret Harlow

• Harlow and Harlow investigated attachment, maternal separation and dependency

• Theorized that infants attach to those who provided comfort not nourishment

• Experimented on Rhesus monkeys

  • Cloth mother w/ no milk vs. wire mother with milk

Contact Comfort 

• The study showed that the monkeys overwhelmingly preferred contact comfort- comfort via touch, snuggles etc

Mary Ainsworth: Attachment Theory

• Developed the Stranger Situation.

• Experiment was to see how a child reacts when a mother leaves a room with a stranger 

  • Goal was to investigate various forms of attachment and bonding between children and their mothers

Developed the following:

Secure Attachment 

• When mother leaves: Child is upset

• Return of mother:  Child makes an effort to touch  mother and seek comfort             

Avoidant Attachment

• When mother leaves: Child is indifferent 

• Return of Mother: May seek contact but then pull away 

Ambivalent Attachment

• When mother leaves: VERY distressed 

• Return of mother:  They are not comforted by the parents return. Could show Resent towards them 

Disorganized Attachment *Added in 1990 by Mary Main 

• When mother leaves: no clear attachment behavior 

• Return of Mother: confused or apprehensive around presence of mother 

Are Attachment Styles the Result of Parenting?

Question:  Is attachment styles a result of parenting or genetic influence (temperament )?

• Temperament defined:  a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity   

  • Developmental studies conclude that heredity affects temperament and temperament affects attachment styles

Easy Temperaments in children

• Typically  generally happy and adaptable 

Difficult Temperaments in children

• Tend to be more irritable and harder to soothe; slow to warm up to people

Authoritarian

• Parents who impose rules and expect obedience.

  • “My way or the Highway”

• Children with authoritarian parents often can’t make decisions  for themselves.

Permissive

• Parents who seek friendship with their children and set few boundaries.

• Children of permissive parents may be more impulsive and demanding because they are use to getting their way

Authoritative

• Responsive to the input and needs of their children

• Set rules, but not demanding

• Children are usually well balanced and have good decision making abilities and high self esteem

How does childhood neglect and abuse affect children’s attachment?

• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)

  • Children without an attachment to anyone ( raised in institutions, or raised in homes with extreme abuse and neglect) are often withdrawn, frightened

  • Some never recover and the trauma stays with them and they may become abusers themselves (30% of people who have been abused later abuse their children) (Dumont, 2007)

  • Most  are resilient- they withstand the trauma and become well adjusted adults 

How do Peer Relationships Develop over Time?

Young Children

• Engage with each other through play

• Parallel Play 

  • Playing side by side but not playing together

• Pretend Play 

Adolescents

• Rely on peer relationships as they age 

Egocentric in terms of: 

• Personal fable 

  • they believe they are unique and invulnerable to harm)

• Imaginary audience

  • They believe that everyone is paying attention to them and looking at everything they do.  

Adults Social Developments

• Culture plays a role in determining when adulthood begins and when major life events occur

  • Social Clock- cultural expectations for when certain life events should occur

• Relationships with other adults result in forming families or family like relationships

  • They provide mutual support and care 

James Marcia’s Identity Theory 

• People go through 4 identity statuses as they develop their identity

  • Diffusion stage

    • People who have not decided on who they are or what they want

  • Foreclosure

    • A premature commitment to an identity but without giving much thought to their decision 

  • Moratorium

    • Trying to seek a more meaningful identity

  • Achievement

    • A committed sense of self…you know who you want to be…

• The stages are based on the level of exploration and commitment a person has made regarding their identity 

Social Development: Erikson’s 8 Stages

• Erik Erikson

  • Maintained that personality develops in a predetermined order

    • 8 stage of psychosocial development

      • infancy  to  adulthood

    • During each stage, the person experiences a psychosocial crisis which could have a positive or negative outcome for personality development