Developmental Psychology (Infancy and Childhood)

million, ever

While in the womb you produce almost ¼ _________ brain cells per minute. That is basically all you are _____ going to develop. After birth the neural networks connect and grow increasingly more complex.

frontal, memory

From 3-6, most rapid growth is seen in the _______ lobe. Association areas for thinking, ________, and language are the last to develop.

Maturation

Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior that are relatively uninfluenced by experience. It is a genetically designed biological process. To a certain extent, we all do this similarly, but the timing can vary depending on the person.

Motor Development

sequence is the same but once again timing varies. First learn to roll over, sit up unsupported, crawl, walk, etc. Gross motor skills learned before fine motor skills.

Gross Motor Skills

include standing, walking, going up and down stairs, running, and other activities that use the large muscles of the arms, legs, and torso.

Fine Motor Skills

involve the muscles of the fingers, hands, and wrists. Coordination of hand, eye, and brain makes gaining these skills a little more difficult. Ex. using scissors, buttoning shirts, coloring, writing.

Walking

in the US 25% learn by 11 months, 50% within a week of 1st birthday, 90% by 15 months (the cerebellum needs to develop). Varies by culture, if the culture emphasizes this, babies can do it younger. Identical twins usually learn it on the same day though.

Toilet Training

The baby needs the physical maturation to hold his or her blader or bowel movements before this. Children can’t d behaviors until they are muscularly and neurologically ready. No training will work until the child is physically ready.

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist who dominated the field of cognitive development. Developed IQ tests and noticed patterns in the questions children got wrong. Thought that kids are not stupid but think different from adults. Believed children are active thinkers, always trying to make sense of the world (they make sense of the world through schemas through both continuous and discontinuous processes).

Schemas

a concept or mental framework that organizes and interprets information. A pliable mental mold into which we pour our experiences.

Assimilation

incorporating new experiences into existing schemas.

Accommodation

adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

Sensorimotor stage

this stage is from birth to around 2 years. Babies take in their world purely through their senses (looking, hearing, touching, tasting, and grasping). At 4-8 months of age a child will learn that they can make things move by banging them and shaking them. Between 8-12 months a child will be able to represent hidden objects in their mind (object permanence). Between 18-24 of age a child will begin to use images to stand for objects (symbols represent objects or events in one’s own environment). They should also be able to recognize themselves in the mirror (spot test).

Object Permanence

the ability to represent hidden objects in their mind.

Preoperational Stage

From around 2-7 years of age. Cannot do mental operations in their mind. Early part of this stage a child will develop the ability to use symbols more. Often believe in animism and sometimes artificialism. They also engage in transudative reasoning. Between 3-4 children will be able to apply the ability to symbolize with objects to people (names represent people). Children are often egocentric. Eventually will develop the theory of mind and move into the concrete stage.

Animism

the belief that inanimate objects have thoughts, feelings, and consciousness

Artificialism

the belief that natural phenomena are created by human beings (ex. a human creates the rain).

Transudative reasoning

moving from one concrete example to another (ex. Daddy eats. Hippos eat. Daddy is a hippo).

Egocentric

the inability to take on another’s point of view.

Concrete Operational Stage

7-12, understand concept of conservation, can think logically, use analogies, and perform mathematical transformations (5+9 is the same as 9-5) also known as reversibility.

Conservation

properties such as mass, volume, and number remains the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Formal Operational Stage

We can reason abstractly, we can ponder hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences, can use propositional logic (If, then statements) and appreciate puns.

Lev Vygotsky and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

child learns through social environment, they are “an apprentice”, Scaffolding.

Scaffolding

social and instructional support for students learning new concepts - given when learning something new, taken away after skill has been mastered.