Childhood Development

Conception and Gestation

● Germinal stage ends when the Zygote attaches to the uterus

● Embryo: 2nd week to 2nd month of pregnancy

● Fetus: after 9 weeks (looks human, myelination, brain activity, can respond to outside stimulation)

Prenatal (Chemical) Environment

● Nutrition (vitamins, diet, etc)

● Placenta separates the mother’s system from the baby’s

● Teratogens are prenatal poisons (alcohol, marijuana, but can also be excessive amounts of cortisol (stress hormone))

● Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: the name given to cognitive impairments and social impairments developed from the mother’s excessive use of alcohol during gestation. Early Development

● Babies have instincts, Gestalt cues, reflexes, etc.

○ Facial mimicry (Andrew Meltzoff): the developed ability (usually of a baby) to imitate and respond to the facial expressions of those around a person. ● Maturationism: the biological design that dictates in what order development will happen (ex: you need to learn to crawl before you walk)

● Vision: newborns’ fovea is not fully developed and they cannot see fine details (can see faces and big patterns)

● Hearing: babies can discriminate between frequencies

● Smell (babies can smell their mothers), taste (babies prefer sweet tastes), and touch (babies prefer and need cuddling) are all also present

● Motor Skills

○ Motor strip in the frontal lobe handles conscious movements

○ Contralateral control is used

○ Cerebellum (procedural, implicit memories) is used to develop skills like walking ○ Cephalocaudal: the quality of growth in which a baby develops from the head down. For example, a baby will learn to smile before it learns to wiggle its toes. ○ Proximal Distal: the baby will learn its motor skills from the torso outward. The baby will learn to roll over before it learns to walk.

● Temperament & Social Factors

○ Temperament: the pattern of baby’s behaviors and interaction with others ■ Easy, difficult, slow to warm up

○ Attachment styles: a method of discriminating between types of relationships that the baby has with its caregiver, developed by Mary Ainsworth.

■ Secure (mom comes back and life is great)

■ Anxious Avoidant (Baby withdraws for a minute after mom comes back) ■ Anxious Resistant (baby cries and hits even when mom comes back) ■ Disorganized (full tantrum, motor control lost)

○ Influence of Temperament

■ Visual cliff (a baby is asked to crawl over a glass plate that makes it seem like the floor has dropped off): the baby perceives that there is a cliff

because it can perceive depth, but when the mother encourages the baby, it will still crawl on the plexiglass (trust fall basically even though it doesn’t fall)

■ Still Face Experiment (mom stops responding to communication

suddenly): baby gets upset and tries to get the mother’s attention again

■ Harry Harlow (series of monkey experiments; had monkeys choose

between two mother figures: comfy but no food and scary with food): the baby monkey chooses the comfier mother because it prefers cuddles and

comfort. This is a biological need.

■ Conrad Lorenz (baby duck imprinting): imprinting does not occur for humans.

○ Parenting Styles (DIANNA BAUMRIND)

■ Authoritarian: a parenting style associated with strictness and an absence of explanation for decisions or consequences; includes a lack of emotional warmth or communication.

● Child is generally unsociable and withdrawn

■ Permissive: a parenting style associated with a lack of structure, discipline, and consistency, but the parents are still warm and nurturing.

● Child is dependant, moody, and lacks self-control

■ Uninvolved/Negligent: a parenting style associated with a lack of care and interaction with the child.

● Child is indifferent

■ Authoritative: a parenting style associated with firmness, fairness, and consistency. Parents set reasonable goals and encourage independence.

The rationale for rules is explained and the child understands why rules

change.

● Child has good social skills, is self-reliant, and independent

Nature v Nurture

● Reciprocal Determinism: Albert Bandura suggested that personality is created by an interaction between the person (traits), the environment, and the person's behavior, and this interaction loops constantly.

Cognitive Development

PIAGET!!!! (Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development)

● Stage 1 Infancy (Birth - 2 yrs)

○ Sensorimotor: infants construct an understanding of the world through physical actions (motor skills) and senses (what they feel, touch). Newborns begin with instinctive reflexes and gradually progress toward developing schemas based on their immediate physical surroundings (stimuli). By 8-12 months, infants can

grasp the concept of object permanence (recognizing that objects exist even when removed from sight).

● Stage 2 Early Childhood (2-7 yrs)

○ Preoperational: children are the center of their own universe (egotism), until 5 years old. Preoperational children focus on symbolic thought, imitation, play, drawings, and imagination. Children use words to represent objects symbolically, and although their language skills sound like adults, they cannot yet think or reason like them. At 5-6, children understand the law of conservation (a dime is worth more than a nickel even though it’s smaller, 10g of milk is the same weight as 10g of brick)

● Stage 3 Middle Childhood (7-11 yrs)

○ Concrete operations: children begin to think logically. Children can manipulate and classify and are capable of complex thinking. They are successful at solving problems by thinking about multiple perspectives that are real (Concrete!). Children have the ability to imagine the consequences of their actions. A child at this age thinks about what is tangible and real.

● Stage 4 Adolescence (12 yrs - Adulthood)

○ Formal operations: abstract thinking, the ability to formula a hypothesis and systemically test it to critically arrive at a conclusion is formed. Ideas about the moral and ethical consequences of behavior are developed.

Lev Vygotsky

● Child’s interaction with their environment

● Scaffolding: helping the child to learn in a step-by-step method.

● Zone of Proximal Development: the area between what a child can do on its own and what it needs help with. During this, the child may demonstrate learning with guidance. Adolescence

Is the multi-dimensional transition from childhood to adulthood

● Several types: physical (puberty), intellectual (Piaget’s Formal Reasoning stage), emotional (frontal lobe’s ability to control limbic system), and financial (being able to support yourself)

Stanley Hall - Adolescence is a “time of storm and stress”

● Hollywood portrays it as worse than it is

Family Conflict (make sure to operationally define it)

● Good and necessary to teach the child/adolescent to handle conflicts and deal with their emotions

● Schemas change, which creates conflict

○ Assimilation: when a smaller event or change in life occurs and you shift your behaviors and needs slightly because of it.

○ Accomodation: when a new event or experience that is so developmental that your brain must shift and change to handle it

Physical Changes

● Puberty: the physical representation of adolescents (2 years earlier for girls) ○ Menarche: first menstrual period

○ Spermarche: first ejaculation

● Primary Sexual Characteristics: traits related to reproduction (enlargement of sex organs) ● Secondary Sexual Characteristics: traits which have no effect on physical reproduction but come as a result of primary characteristics. (e.g. hair)

Social (Emotional)

● Personal Fable: when adolescents believe themselves to be unique and invincible ● Imaginary Audience: a thought common in adolescence in which they believe that everyone is looking at them because they are the center of the world. (Spotlight effect) ● Social skills become increasingly important

Physical Changes

● Sensation seeking: adolescents are more likely to seek new experience s ○ Limbic system (gas pedal - do it) and Prefrontal cortex (wait hold up) begin to work together

○ Coordination of dopaminergic circuits happens

● Self-Centeredness vs Egocentrism

○ Self-centeredness is more concern for yourself than for others

○ Egocentrism means you literally cannot understand that other people feel People

● Erik Erikson

○ Psychosocial theory of development (Neo-Freudian)

○ Series of unconscious conflicts that one must resolve in order to progress throughout our lifespan

■ Stage 1: Basic Trust vs Mistrust

● Virtue: Hope

● Successful: Trust - infants who have their needs met develop secure attachment by feeling loved by attentive primary caregivers ● Unsuccessful: Mistrust - insecure attachment with feelings of guardedness, unpredictability, and withdrawal from future

relationships.

■ Stage 2: Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt

● Virtue: Will

● Successful: Autonomy - toddler learns to explore, experiment, and more to gain a sense of self-reliance. “Terrible twos” to

accomplish autonomy, the toddler learns to explore in safe limits, perform tasks by himself, and say no to caregiver without serious consequence

● Unsuccessful: Shame & Doubt - happens with criticism, punishment, or over controlling by caregivers. May be unwilling to try new activities and may become too dependent on others ■ Stage 3: Initiative vs Guilt

● Virtue: Purpose

● Successful: Initiative - the preschooler learns to take risks and cause behavior that will lead to his goals. Starts imaginative play ● Unsuccessful: Guilt - children develop a sense of guilt and inhibited creativity, may feel as if a nuisance to others

■ Stage 4: Industry vs Inferiority

● Virtue: Competence

● Successful: Industry - child learns to have a strong self-image through his abilities to accomplish tasks. Socialising with peer groups becomes important, and the child has a need to gain approval by demonstrating competencies.

● Unsuccessful: Inferiority - if industry is not encouraged, the child begins to doubt his abilities, not feel valued, and feel less than others.

■ Stage 5: ID vs Role Confusion

● Virtue: Fidelity

● Successful: Identity - adolescent learns to transition from childhood to adulthood by reexamining his ID and determining

where he fits best in society. Experimenting with aspects and

hobbies becomes common

● Unsuccessful: Role Confusion - the most stressful because the teen

is examining secual and occupational IDs. If he or she is unable to

properly form an internal sense of self, it can lead to not being able

to accept oneself and not being able to fit in

■ Stage 6: Intimacy vs Isolation

● Virtue: Love

● Successful: Adult learns to intimately share himself with someone

else. The person must have a strong sense of self first

● Unsuccessful: adult cannot be intimate until the previous stage is

developed. Without it, the adult may have difficulty developing

and maintaining successful relationships with others.

■ Stage 7: Generativity vs Stagnation

● Virtue: Care

● Successful: unconscious drive to generate one’s life work for the

next generation

● Unsuccessful: if they feel unproductive, they will develop feelings

of not “leaving a meaningful mark on the world.” Accompanied by

feelings of inactivity and worthlessness

■ Stage 8: Ego Integrity vs Despair

● Virtue: Wisdom

● Successful: Ego Integrity: person reflects on life to determine if

life was worth living

● Unsuccessful: those who do not feel they have had a productive

life may feel unsatisfied and feel they have failed by not doing

what they could have. Feelings of regret are common, followed by

despair, depression or anger.

Moral Development

● Lawrence Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development

● Not directly tied to age

● Heinz Dilemma (should you steal money to buy meds for someone you love is dying) — Kohlberg focuses not on what you answer, but your justification for that answer. ● Three Stages!

○ Pre-conventional (Based on consequence / Self Interest)

■ Heinz should not steal because he will get in trouble

■ Heinz should not steal because his wife will owe him a favor

○ Conventional (Based on conformity / social order)

■ Heinz should steal because that’s what a good husband would do

■ Heinz should not steal because if everyone else did, there’d be no more medicine.

○ Post-conventional (Based on social contract / universal ethical principles) ■ Highest level of the hierarchy of needs

■ Heinz should steal but he should also accept the consequences

■ Heins should steal because every human life is worth more than laws, medicine, or money.

● Moral Competence

○ Impulse control: the ability of the conscious mind (frontal lobe) to restrain the urges of the unconscious mind (limbic system)

○ Delayed gratification: the ability for a person to deny themselves certain pleasures ○ Theory of Mind: awareness that others have thoughts, knowledge, and feelings that are different than one’s own.

○ Empathy and connection to the feelings and suffering of others

Development of Decisions Related to Intimacy as People Mature

● Even grade schoolers have crushes

● Early sexual activity in adolescence is related to a host of multi-dimensional problems ● Early adult intimacy is part of Erikson’s stage (Find: Stage 6: Intimacy vs Isolation) ● Middle adulthood hinders intimacy because of concerns with finances, jobs, or raising kids

● Late adulthood: people usually assume that people in late adulthood do not have intimacy because of a physical inability or a lack of desire. ACTUALLY, they enjoy a resurgence of intimacy

Sex & Gender Influence

● Operationally Define Male & Female

○ Hormonal ratio, internal genitals, external genitals, brain structures, how they are raised, self-identity

● Genders are more similar than they are different

● Adolescence is a time of exaggerated gender behavior (ex: high school guys talk about bench pressing and high school girls care about their hair and makeup)

● Sex: the biological differences between male and female.

● Gender: behavior patterns deemed appropriate for men (masculine behaviors) and women (feminine behaviors)

● Androgyny: the quality of showing both male and female characteristics ● Gender Identity: how a person thinks about himself or herself regardless of what their physical sex is.

● Gender expression / Gender typing: how you demonstrate your gender based on traditional gender roles

● Social learning theory: the idea that people learn by observing and imitating ● The Forbidden Experiment

○ Joan / John: monozygotic twins were raised. One had an accident during his circumcision and lost part of his external sex organs. They raised him as a girl (socially), but he still presented male qualities.

○ Instinctive Drift: even if an organism has been conditioned to exert some behavior when given a stimulus, the complete removal of the unconditioned stimulus will cause the organism to forget that learned behavior.

Changes during Lifespan

Neurogenesis: the formation of new connections between neurons that occurs as learning happens.

Optimistic Explanatory Style: habitual tendency to explain uncontrollable negative events as caused by temporary factors external to oneself that do not affect other aspects of one's life. This style is associated with good health and longevity.

Pessimistic Explanatory Style: a tendency to explain bad events that happen in a self-blaming manner, viewing their causes as global and stable

Problems with Lifespan

● Neurocognitive Disorder (dementia) broad category

○ Slowed by social interaction and physical health

● Alzheimer’s Disease: disruption in AcH transmission associated with the slowing of cognitive function

○ Starts gradual and may go undiagnosed