Week 8 - Dev 1 - Physical and Cognitive

Developmental Psychology

The branch of psychology that deals with how humans develop and change over their lifespan.

prenatal development

the most important stage in the development of the central nervous system. Exposure to harmful environmental agents (teratogens) can result in lasting physical and mental impairment

infancy

\_____are born with adaptive reflexes, e.g. rooting and sucking. These disappear as infants gain more control of their movement

childhood and adolescence

puberty in particular leads to significant physical and psychological changes. The psychological impact of early puberty differs significantly between the sexes

adulthood and ageing

changes after adolescence are more gradual and less dramatic. Ageing leads to reduced sensory ability, which must be dealt with psychologically.

John Locke

1690s, a British philosopher, argued for nurture. Believed
that experiences provided by the environment during childhood have a profound and permanent effect. the newborn as a blank slate, or tabula rasa.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

French philosopher, argued for nature and claimed that children are capable of discovering how the world operates and how they should behave without instruction from adults. children should be allowed to grow as their natures dictate, with little guidance or pressure from parents.

Arnold Gesell

In the early 1900s, the first psychologist to systematically investigate the role of nature in behaviour. He found that their motor skills developed in a fixed sequence of stages unaided by nurture.

Maturation

A term coined by Arnold Gesell to describe the natural growth or change that unfolds in a fixed sequence relatively independent of the environment.

John B. Watson

Founder of the behaviourist approach to psychology, disagreed with Gesell. Claimed that the environment, not nature, moulds and shapes development. Convinced that we learn everything, from skills to fears.

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist, first suggested that nature and nurture work together and that their influences are inseparable and interactive. His work influenced the field of developmental psychology more than those of any other person before or since.

predispositions

is created by heredity and interacts with environmental influences, including family and teachers, books and computers, and friends and random events. It is this interaction that produces the developmental outcomes we see in individuals.

zygote

a new fertilised cell, formed from a father's sperm and a mother's ovum. This new fertilised cell carries a genetic heritage from both mother and father.

germinal stage

-The first stage of prenatal development
-The zygote divides into many more cells
-by the end of the second week have formed an embryo.

embryonic stage

The second stage of prenatal development. the development of a heart, nervous system, stomach, esophagus, and ovaries or testes.
By two months after conception, when this stage ends, the 2.5-centimeter-long embryo has developed eyes, ears, a nose, a jaw, a mouth, and lips. The tiny arms have elbows, hands, and stubby fingers; the legs have knees, ankles, and toes.

embryo

the developing individual from the 14th day after fertilization until the end of the second month
after conception

foetal stage

The third stage of prenatal development,
They can learn. When they hear their mother's familiar voice, their heart beats a little faster, but it slows if they hear a stranger.

foetus

the developing individual from the third
month after conception until birth.

Placenta

sends nutrients from the mother to the foetus and carries away wastes.
- screens out many potentially harmful substances, including most bacteria.
However, gases and viruses, as well as nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs, can pass through.

teratogens

harmful substances that can cause birth defects. Especially damaging during the embryonic stage, because it is a critical period in prenatal development

critical period

an interval during which certain kinds of growth must occur if development is to proceed normally.

foetal alcohol syndrome

a pattern of physical and mental defects found in babies born to women who abused alcohol during pregnancy including intellectual disability and malformations of the face.

Nicotine prenatal effects

babies often suffer from respiratory problems, irritability and social and attention problems, and they are at greater risk of nicotine addiction in adolescence and adulthood.

-They may be born prematurely, and they are usually underweight, so they are likely to have cognitive and behavioral problems that continue throughout their lives.

Stress and prenatal development

The risk of behavioral and psychological difficulties in later life is also increased for children whose mothers were under significant stress, were depressed, or developed the flu during the first six months of pregnancy. However, milder degrees of maternal anxiety or depression during pregnancy may actually advance maturation of the foetus.

Infant vision

- can see at birth, but their vision is blurry; an object 20 feet (6 meters) away appears as clear as if viewed by an adult with normal vision from 300 feet (91 meters) away.

-cells in their fovea are significantly fewer and less sensitive.
-Their eye movements are slow and jerky.
-Pathways connecting the eyes to the brain are still inefficient, as is the processing of visual information within the brain.
- Pay the most attention to objects with large, visible elements, movement, clear contours, and a lot of contrast between lighter and darker areas—all of which exist in the human face.

Infant hearing

- Their hearing is not as sharp as adults' until they are well into childhood.

- at two or three days of age, they can hear soft voices and notice the difference between tones that are about one note apart on the musical scale; they also turn their heads toward sounds.
- By four months of age, they can discriminate differences among almost all of the phonetic contrasts in adult languages.

-They even seem to learn the language faster when they hear 'baby talk'.

Infant smell

They like the odour of their own mother's breast and breast milk - when they smell these odours, they cry less, open their eyes and try to suck.

Infant Senses and development

Sensory abilities are important for survival and development because they focus the infant's attention on the caregiver and draw the caregiver into interaction with the infant.

reflexes

Simple, involuntary, unlearned behaviors directed by the spinal cord without instructions from the brain.

- Most reflexes disappear after the first three or four months when infants' brain development allows them to control their muscles voluntarily.

Environment on motor skills

SIDS sleeping advice led to less crawling and straight from sitting to toddling. Prone to Play advice enabled younger babies to roll and crawl.

Infant Brain Changes

Infants are born with a full capacity of brain cells, but the neural networks linking the cells are immature.

-Over time, the linkages become more complicated and, with pruning, more efficient.

In the first few months of infancy, the cerebellum is the most mature area of the brain. Because it develops quickly, babies can do simple things like start sucking more when they see or hear their mother's face or voice.

Between six and 12 months of age, neurological development in the medial temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex makes it possible for infants to remember and imitate an action they have seen earlier, or to recognize a picture of an object they have never seen but have held in their hands.

Later in childhood, the frontal cortex develops in a way that makes it possible for higher cognitive functions like reasoning to grow.

Piaget's development theory

The theory proposed that cognitive development proceeds through a series of distinct periods or stages.

All children's thinking goes through the same stages, in the same order, without skipping - building on previous stages and then moving on on to higher ones.

What drives children to higher stages is their constant struggle to make sense of their experiences.

They are active thinkers who are always trying to construct more advanced understandings of the world.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget - 1st stage

Birth-2 years: Infants discover aspects of the world through their sensory impressions, motor activities, and coordination of the two.

They learn that things exist even when they can't be seen and that things don't depend on what the baby does. They gain some appreciation of cause and effect

Preoperational Stage

Piaget - 2nd Stage - 2-4 years: Children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in logical ways, but they now can think in images and symbols.

no conservation

4-7 years: They become able to represent something with something else, acquire language, and play games that involve pretending. Intelligence at this stage is said to be intuitive because children cannot make general, logical statements.

Egocentric.

animism

concrete operational stage

Piaget -3rd Stage - 7-11 years - Children can understand logical principles that apply to concrete external objects.

-Conservation
+-*/
perform simple mental manipulations and mental operations on things.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget - 4th stage - Only adolescents and adults can think logically about abstractions, can speculate, and can consider what might be or what ought to be.

They can work with probabilities and possibilities.

They can imagine other worlds, especially ideal ones. They can reason about purely verbal or logical statements.

They reflect on their own activity of thinking.

schemas

Piaget - mental representations (generalizations) of
categories of objects, events, and people.

assimilation

The process of trying out existing schemas on objects that fit those schemas.

Infants and children take in information about new objects by using existing schemas that fit the new objects.

Past experiences affect what and how children think about new ones.

accommodation

The process of modifying schemas when familiar schemas do not work.

Children find that a familiar schema cannot be made to fit a new object, and so they change the schema.

object permanence

the knowledge that objects exist even when they are not in view.
Marks the end of the sensorimotor stage because mental representation can be made.

Is fully developed at 18-24 months when infant looks for a missing object in various places.

conservation

the ability to recognize that the important properties of a substance remain constant despite changes in shape, length, or position.

Modern Infant research

infrared photography to record infants' eye movements,

time-lapse photography to detect slight hand movements,

special equipment to measure infants' sucking rates

computer technology to track and analyze it all.

Their research shows that infants know a lot more, and know it sooner than Piaget thought they did

Modern Infant cognition views

Infants are not just sensing and moving during the sensorimotor period; they are already thinking as well.

Babies as young as two to three months of age can recall a particular mobile that was hung over their cribs a few days before.

When they are a year old, infants can also solve simple problems,

Modern views on cognitive development

psychologists today tend to think of cognitive development in terms of rising and falling 'waves', not fixed stages.

Psychologists now suggest that children systematically try out many different solutions to problems and gradually come to select the best of them.

Modern view on object permanance

Piaget's tests didn't take into account the possibility that babies know a hidden object is still there but don't have the skills to find it or the memory to remember where it is while they look.

Most developmental psychologists now agree that babies have some mental images before Piaget thought they did.

information processing in childhood

This approach describes cognitive activities regarding how people take in information, use it, and remember it.
Focus on how children's mental abilities grow slowly instead of how much they change at different stages of development.

Lev Vygotsky

Russian psychologists are focused on the social world of people. Cognitive abilities were viewed as a product of cultural history. "The child's mind" grows through interaction with other minds.

Scripts

mental representations for social routines.

Impact of Deprivation

Children's cognitive development is seriously slowed down if they are raised in places where they don't get to see, hear, and feel the sights, sounds, and emotions that come from everyday things like family conversations, pictures and books, toys, TV, and the Internet.

Children's genetic potential for cognitive development might also be impaired by inadequate nutrition.

Extreme deprivation, such as neglect, malnourishment, loudness, and turmoil can be found in many poor households.

Children who remain in poverty have lower IQs and poorer school achievement, they have more learning disabilities, they are less engaged in school; and they do worse on neurocognitive tests. They are three and a half times more likely to be held back in school and twice as likely to drop out.

Influence of Parenting on development

Higher cognitive test scores are seen in preschoolers whose parents have the income to provide a more stimulating learning environment, one that is not crowded and chaotic, and where, as a result, parents can be more responsive.

bond

an emotional tie that begins even before the baby is born.

Mothers and fathers, whether they were born to them or not, form close bonds with their babies by spending time with them every day, with or without early contact.

temperament

An individual's basic disposition is evident from
infancy. The infant's style and frequency of
expressing needs and emotions.

Easy babies are predictable;
Difficult babies are irregular and unpredictable.
Slow-to-warm-up babies react warily to new situations but eventually enjoy them.

- mainly reflects nature's contribution to the beginning of an individual's personality; it can also be affected by the prenatal environment, including - as noted earlier - the mother's stress level, smoking, and drug use during pregnancy.

attachment

a deep, affectionate, close and enduring relationship. a deep and enduring relationship with a caregiver or other person with whom a baby has shared many early experiences.

Attachment theory

the idea that children form a close attachment to their earliest caregivers and that this attachment pattern can affect aspects of the child's later life.

Harry Harlow

explored two hypotheses about what leads infants to develop attachments to their mothers.

The first hypothesis was that attachment occurs because mothers feed their babies. Food and the experience of being fed create an emotional bond with the mother.

The second hypothesis was that attachment is based on the warm, comforting contact the baby gets from the mother. Baby monkey—fake mother experiment

Attachment and environment

Visitors observed that children in Romanian and Russian orphanages who had been neglected by institutional caregivers had not developed relationships with their caregivers; instead, they were distant and engaged in constant rocking.

Even after the kids were adopted, they still had emotional issues, and the ones who were adopted later had worse issues.

Dramatic problems observed in isolated monkeys and humans are the result of developmental brain dysfunction or damage brought on by a lack of touch and body movement in infancy and by the absence of early play, conversation, and other typical childhood experiences.

attachment behaviour

actions such as crying, smiling, vocalising and gesturing that help bring an infant into closer proximity to its caregiver

secure attachment

Infants use their mother as a home base, leaving her side to explore and play but returning to her periodically for comfort or contact.
When the mother returns after the brief separation, the infant is happy to see her and receptive when she initiates contact.

A secure attachment to the mother is also reflected in the child's relationships with other people.
- require less contact, guidance, and discipline from their teachers
- less likely to seek excessive attention, act impulsively or aggressively, express frustration, or display helplessness

insecure attachment

The infant's relationship with their mother may be:

(1) avoidant - they avoid or ignore their mother when she returns after the brief separation.

(2) ambivalent: they are upset when the mother leaves, but when she returns, they vacillate between clinging to her and angrily rejecting her efforts at contact.

Disorganised attachment

Infant behavior is inconsistent, disturbed, and disturbing;
they may begin to cry after their mother has returned and comforted them, or they may reach out for their mother while looking away from her

Erikson first year

Trust VS mistrust
Infants learn to trust that their needs will be met by the world, especially by their mother - or they learn to mistrust the world.

Erikson second year

Autonomy VS shame and doubt
Children either learn to exercise their will, make choices, and control themselves, or they become uncertain and doubt that they can do things themselves.

Erikson third to fifth year

Initiative VS guilt
Children learn to initiate activities and enjoy their accomplishments, acquiring direction and purpose. But if they are not allowed to take initiative, they feel guilty about their attempts at independence.

Erikson Sixth year through puberty

Industry vs inferiority
Children develop a sense of industry and curiosity and are eager to learn - or they feel inferior and lose interest in the tasks before them.

Erikson Adolescence

Identity vs. role confusion
Adolescents either see themselves as distinct and integrated individuals with an ideology, or they become unsure of what they want out of life.

Erikson early aduthood

Intimacy vs isolation
Young people become able to commit to another person—or they develop a sense of isolation and feel they have no one in the world but themselves.

Erikson middle age

Generativity vs. stagnation
Adults are willing to have and care for children and to devote themselves to their work and the common good—or they become self-centered and inactive.

Erikson old age

Integrity vs. despair
Older people enter a period of reflection, becoming assured that their lives have been meaningful and ready to face death with acceptance and dignity—or they are in despair over their unaccomplished goals, failures, and ill-spent lives.

socialisation

The process by which parents, teachers, and others teach children the skills and social norms necessary to be well-functioning members of society

Authoritarian parents

Relatively strict, punitive, and unsympathetic.
They value obedience and try to shape their children's behavior to meet a set standard and curb the children's will. They do not encourage independence. They are detached and seldom praise their youngsters.

Authoritative parents

They reason with their children, encouraging give-and-take and setting limits, but also encouraging independence. They are firm but understanding; their demands are reasonable and consistent. As their children get older and better at making decisions, authoritative parents give their children more responsibility

Permissive parents

more affectionate with their children and give them lax discipline and a great deal of freedom.

Uninvolved parents

They are indifferent to their children.
They do whatever is necessary to minimize the costs of having children by investing as little time, money, and effort as possible.
They focus on their own needs before their children's. These parents often need help monitoring their children's activities, mainly when they are old enough to be out of the house alone.

Social skills in development

The ability to engage in sustained, responsive interactions with peers
A second social skill that children learn is the ability to detect and correctly interpret other people's emotional signals.

A related set of social skills involves the ability to feel what another person is feeling or something close to it (empathy) and to respond with comfort or help if the person is in distress.

Children who do not have these skills are rejected or neglected; they may become bullies or the victims of bullies.

self-regulation

the ability to control one's emotions and behaviour. a social skill that develops in childhood.

Children who cannot regulate their emotions experience anxiety and distress and have trouble recovering from stressful events.
When they see someone in trouble, their emotions get too high, and they are often not kind or helpful.

gender roles

The general patterns of appearance and behaviour associated with being male or female.

Male child differences

Boys, in contrast, tend to be more skilled than girls at manipulating objects, constructing three-dimensional forms, and mentally manipulating complex figures and pictures. They are also more physically active. They play in larger groups and spaces and enjoy noisier, more strenuous physical games. From the age of two years, boys engage in riskier behaviours and are injured at a rate that is two to four times that of girls. On the playground, boys are the overtly aggressive ones; they push and punch each other more than girls. They are more competitive and more concerned with dominance than with friendship.

Biological factors of gender roles

studies show sex differences in anatomy, hormones, and brain organisation and functioning that are related to sex-typed patterns of behaviour.

Socialisation of gender roles

From the moment they are born, boys and girls are treated differently. Children also pick up notions of what is gender-appropriate behaviour from their peers. By the time they are in preschool, boys and girls are more likely to play with children of the same sex.

These same-sex peers model and enforce gender role standards and provide the strongest influence on children's gender-typed behaviour.

Cognitive factors in gender roles

As most children want to be accepted, especially by their peers, they become 'gender detectives', searching for clues about who should do what, who can play with whom, and in what ways girls and boys are different.

gender schemas

the generalisations children develop about what toys, activities and occupations are 'appropriate' for males and for females.

resilience

a quality that allows children to develop normally in spite of severe environmental risk factors.

puberty

The condition of being able, for the first time, to reproduce. At the end of the growth spurt, females begin to menstruate and males produce live sperm.

Adolescent brain changes

Prefrontal cortex growth - vital to the ability to think flexibly, to act appropriately in challenging situations, and to juggle multiple pieces of information,

By the end of adolescence, teenagers' brains have fewer neural connections, but those that remain are more selective, stronger and more efficient. At the same time, the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is linked to the feeling of pleasure, becomes more noticeable.

By late adolescence, young people can reason better, plan for the future, and foresee consequences.

Adolescent feelings and behaviour

- depression, insomnia, and other psychological problems.
- eating disorders are likely first to appear
-the incidence of attempted and completed suicides begin to rise.

As sex hormones and pleasure-related brain systems become more active, sexual interest stirs, and the prospect of smoking, drinking alcohol, and taking other drugs becomes more appealing.

The impulse-control areas in the prefrontal cortex complete their development long after the emotional and reward-related areas of the limbic system do. Adolescents who engage in moderate risk-taking tend to be more socially competent than those who take no risks or extreme risks.

Love/Sex in adolescence

Between the ages of 15 and 19, romantic relationships can become central to social life.
linked with feelings of self-worth, competence, and belonging to a peer group.

Violence in adolescense

From childhood to adolescence, aggression is just as stable as intelligence.

Among the childhood characteristics that increase the risk of violent behaviour in adolescence are fearlessness, low intelligence, lack of empathy, lack of emotional self-regulation, aggressiveness and moral disengagement. Gender is another important factor: it is no coincidence that teenage killers are almost always boys. In cultures around the world, homicides committed by males outnumber those committed by females by more than 30 to one.

Identify in adolescence

their self-descriptions emphasise their personal beliefs, values and moral standards. Adolescents come to recognise that they are somewhat different people in different social contexts (such as with friends versus at a family party), and they can think about the possible selves they might be in the future. They can also integrate their seemingly opposite traits, such as 'cheerful' and 'depressed', into a broader characteristic, such as 'moody'.

ethnic identity

The part of a person's identity is associated with the racial, religious or cultural group to which the person belongs.

Adolescents who achieve a clear, positive ethnic identity exhibit higher self-esteem, greater optimism and more social competence, as well as more positive feelings towards their own ethnic group.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Proposed that moral reasoning develops in six stages

preconventional reasoning

Stages 1 and 2 ,

conventional reasoning

Stages 3 and 4 -, 9-19 yo
- are concerned about other people and believe morality consists of following rules and conventions, such as the duty to family and country.

postconventional reasoning

Stages 5 and 6 -
moral reasoning in which judgements are based on personal standards or universal principles of justice, equality and respect for human life.

People at this level believe that individual rights can sometimes justify violating laws if the laws become destructive. People only reach this level after adolescence, if at all. Stage 6 is seen only rarely in extraordinary individuals.

Learning Morals

1 consistent modelling of moral reasoning and behaviour by parents and peers
2 real-life experience with moral issues
3 situational factors that support moral actions

identity crisis

a phase during which adolescent attempts to develop an integrated self-image.

late adulthood

Men shrink about 2.5 centimetres, and women about 5 centimetres as their posture changes and cartilage discs between the spinal vertebrae become thinner.

Hardening of the arteries and a build-up of fat deposits on the artery walls may lead to heart disease.

The digestive system slows down and becomes less efficient.

-brain shrinks, and the flow of blood to the brain slows.

The few reflexes that remained after infancy (such as the knee-jerk reflex) weaken or disappear.

middle adulthood

one of the most common physical changes is the loss of sensory sharpness.

By this time, nearly everyone shows some hearing impairment.

People in their early forties become less sensitive to light, and their vision deteriorates somewhat.

. Inside the body, bone mass is dwindling, the risk of heart disease is increasing, and fertility declines.
menopause. Oestrogen and progesterone levels drop, and the menstrual cycle eventually ceases.

Adult cognition

Adulthood is marked by both increases and decreases in cognitive abilities. Reaction times become slower and more variable, and abilities that involve intensive information processing begin to decline, even in early adulthood. However, abilities that depend on accumulated knowledge and experience increase and don't begin to decline until old age, if at all. In fact, older adults may function as well as or even better than younger adults in situations that tap their long-term memories and well-learned skills.

dialectical thinking

An advanced form of thought that involves detecting paradoxes and inconsistencies among ideas and trying to reconcile them. they understand that knowledge is relative, not absolute - such that what is seen as wise today may have been thought foolish in times past. They see life's contradictions as an inevitable part of reality, and they tend to weigh various solutions to problems rather than just accepting the first one that springs to mind.

Cognitive decline

after age 65 years or so - that some intellectual abilities decline noticeably.
Generally, the abilities most severely affected are those that require rapid and flexible manipulation of ideas and symbols, active thinking and reasoning, and sheer mental effort. When facing complex problems, older people apparently suffer from having too much information to sift through.

Partly a matter of genetics.

Long-term use of tobacco or alcohol is associated with reductions in the speed and accuracy of thinking among the elderly and with reductions in IQ.