Chapter 9: Developmental Psychology

Cross-sectional research

uses participants of different ages to compare how certain variables may change over the life span.

Longitudinal research

takes place over a long period of time.

Genetics

Our genes also help determine what abilities we are born with, such as our reflexes and our process of developing motor skills.

Teratogens

can cause harm if ingested or contracted by the mother.

fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

Children of alcoholic mothers who drink heavily during pregnancy are at high risk for

Reflexes

which are specific, inborn, automatic responses to certain specific stimuli.

Rooting Reflex

When touched on the cheek, a baby will turn his or her head to the side where he or she felt the touch and seek to put the object into his or her mouth.

Sucking reflex

When an object is placed into the baby’s mouth, the infant will suck on it.

Grasping reflex

If an object is placed into a baby’s palm or foot pad, the baby will try to grasp the object with his or her fingers or toes.

Moro reflex

When startled, a baby will fling his or her limbs out and then quickly retract them, making himself or herself as small as possible.

Babinski reflex

When a baby’s foot is stroked, he or she will spread the toes.

myelinated

Our motor control develops as neurons in our brain connect with one another and become

Attachment Theory

Some species respond in very predictable ways to environmental stimuli

Konrad Lorenz

established that some infant animals (such as geese) become attached (“imprint”) on individuals or even objects they see during a critical period after birth.

Harry Harlow

studies demonstrated the importance of physical comfort in the formation of attachment with parents.

Mary Ainsworth

researched the idea of attachment by placing human infants into novel situations.

secure attachments

Infants with __ (about 66 percent of the participants) confidently explore the novel environment while the parents are present, are distressed when they leave, and come to the parents when they return.

avoidant attachments

Infants with__(about 21 percent of the participants) may resist being held by the parents and will explore the novel environment.

anxious/ambivalent attachments

Infants with ___ (also called resistant attachments, about 12 percent of the participants) have ambivalent reactions to the parents.

Diana Baumrind

researched parent-child interactions and described three overall categories of parenting styles.

Authoritarian parents

set strict standards for their children’s behavior and apply punishments for violations of these rules.

Permissive parents

do not set clear guidelines for their children.

Authoritative parents

have set, consistent standards for their children’s behavior, but the standards are reasonable and explained.

continuity versus discontinuity

Besides nature versus nurture, one of the other major controversies in developmental psychology is the argument about

Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson

base their stages on psychoanalytic theories and are therefore less scientifically verifiable than the other stage theories.

Oral stage

In this stage, infants seek pleasure through their mouths.

Anal stage

This stage develops during toilet training. If conflict around toilet training arises, a person might fixate in the stage and be overly controlling (retentive) or out of control (expulsive).

Phallic stage

During this stage, babies realize their gender and this causes conflict in the family.

Latency stage

After the phallic stage, Freud thought children go through a short latency stage, or period of calm, and between the ages of six and puberty of low psychosexual anxiety that most psychologists don’t regard as a separate stage.

Genital stage

The focus of sexual pleasure is the genitals, and fixation in this stage is what Freud considers normal.

Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson was a neo-Freudian, a theorist who believed in the basics of Freud’s theory but adapted it to fit his own observations.

Trust versus mistrust

Erikson thought that babies need to learn that they can trust their caregivers and that their requests (crying, at first) are effective.

Autonomy versus shame and doubt

In this next stage, toddlers begin to exert their will over their own bodies for the first time.

Initiative versus guilt

In this stage, children’s favorite word changes from “No!” to “Why?” If we trust those around us and feel in control of our bodies, we feel a natural curiosity about our surroundings.

Industry versus inferiority

If we realize that we are behind or cannot do as well as our peers, having an inferiority complex, we may feel anxious about our performance in that area throughout the rest of the stages.

Identity versus role confusion

He thought that a person might naturally try out different roles before he or she found the one that best fit his or her internal sense of self.

Intimacy versus isolation

Young adults who established stable identities then must figure out how to balance their ties and efforts between work (including careers, school, or self-improvement) and relationships with other people.

Generativity versus stagnation

In this stage, we try to ensure that our lives are going the way we want them to go.

Integrity versus despair

Toward the end of life, we look back at our accomplishments and decide if we are satisfied with them or not.

Jean Piaget

was working for Alfred Binet, creator of the first intelligence test, when he started to notice interesting behaviors in the children he was interviewing.

assimilation

we incorporate our experiences into these existing schemata in a process called

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to Approximately Two Years Old)

Babies start experiencing and exploring the world strictly through their senses.

Preoperational Stage (Two to Approximately Seven Years Ol

Acquiring the scheme of object permanence prepares a child to start to use symbols to represent real-world objects.

Concrete Operations (8 to Approximately 12 Years Old)

Piaget categorized children in the concrete-operations stage when they demonstrated knowledge of concepts of conservation, the realization that properties of objects remain the same even when their shapes change.

concepts of conservation

the realization that properties of objects remain the same even when their shapes change

information-processing model

is a more continuous alternative to Piaget’s stage theory.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s

stage theory studied a completely different aspect of human development: morality.

Preconventional

Children in the preconventional level might say that Heinz should not steal the drug because he might get caught and put into prison.

Conventional

Children in the conventional level might say that Heinz should steal the drug because then he could save his wife and people would think of him as a hero.

Postconventional

A person evaluating a moral choice using postconventional reasoning examines the rights and values involved in the choice.

Carol Gilligan

pointed out that Kohlberg developed the model based on the responses of boys.

Biopsychological (Neuropsychological) Theory

Biopsychological psychologists concentrate on the nature element in the nature/nurture combination that produces our gender role.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud thought that boys and girls develop their gender identities because they realize, unconsciously, that they can’t compete with their same-sex parent for the affections of the opposite sex parent.

Social-Cognitive Theory

Social and cognitive psychologists concentrate on the effects society and our own thoughts about gender have on role development.

Gender schema

theory explains that we internalize messages about gender into cognitive rules about how each gender should behave.