Developmental Psychology

  • Nature vs Nurture

    • How does our genetic inheritance interact with our experiences to influence development

  • Continuity and Stages

    • Which parts of development are gradual and continuous and which parts are abrupt

    • Researchers who emphasize experience and learning view development as slow and continuous

    • Researchers who emphasize biological maturation view development as a sequence of genedtically predisposed series of steps or stages

      • Stage theorists

        • Jean Piaget - Cognitive Development

          • First proposed and formalized stages of development

          • Studied very small group of children

        • Lawrence Kohlberg - Moral Development

        • Erik Erikson - Psychosocial Development

  • Stability and Change

    • Which traits persist, how do we change as we age

    • Some chracteristics, such as temperament, are stable. Social attitudes are not

    • All aspects of our futures selves cannot be based on early life

      • Everyone changes with age in some ways

        • End of history illusion

  • Pernatal Development

    • Zygote : Fertalized egg that begins 2 week period of rapid cell division

    • Embryo : Zygotes inner cells becomes embryo and outer cells placenta, developing human organism from 2 weeks to 2 months

    • Fetus : After 6 weeks, functioning human organism

    • Teratogen : Agent, such as chemical or virus, that can reach embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm; alcohol, nicotine, marijuana

    • Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FAS) : physicl and cognitive function deficits in children caused by heavy drinking during pregnancy

  • Newborn

    • Arrives with automatic reflex responses that support survival: Sucking swallowing, tonguing, and breathing

    • cries to elicit help and comfort

    • searches for sights and sounds

    • smells and sees well uses sensory equipment

    • biologically rooted temperament

    • Research equipment

      • eye tracking machines and pacifiers wired to electric gear

    • Habituation

      • Fetus have adapted to vibrating, honking device on mothers abdomen

    • Preferences

      • Newborms prefer face-like images and smell of mothers body

      • measured by pacifier suckling

    • Physical Development

      • Orderly sequence of growth (maturation)

      • Motor development skills

        • develop as nervous system and muscles mature

        • guided by genes

      • Brain maturation and learning

        • Infants are capable of learning

        • Infantile amnesia may reflect development concious memory

        • Carolyn was able to convert non-verbal infant memory into action

        • Piaget

          • Children are active thinkers

          • Maturing brains build schemas that are used and adjusted through assimilation and accomodation

      • Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years)

        • Thinking and reasoning tools that change with development

        • Adaptation/ Accomodation/ Assimilation

        • Object permanence

      • Preoperational stage (2 years- 7 years)

        • pretend play

          • children can represent things with words and images

        • Egocentrism

          • difficulty from seeing from anothers perspective

      • Concrete operational (7 -11 years)

        • logical reasoning

        • mathematic operations

      • Formal Operational (12+)

        • Ponder hypotheticals and deduce concequences

        • Piaget underestimated childrens cognition

    • Alternate view

      • Vygotsky and the social child

        • Children grow through interation with social environment

        • Grow through interacting with physical environment

        • Parents and others provide a temporary scaffold to facilitate a higher level of thinking

        • Language of a child’s culture is used in internalized, inner speech

    • Theory of Mind

      • ability to read mental state of others

      • between 3.5-4.5, chidren realize others may hold false beliefs

      • 4-5 childred anticipate false beliefs of friends

    • Attachment

      • Emotional tie with another person — shown in young childen by their seeking closness to caregiver and showing distress on seperation

        • stranger anxiety occurs around the same time children develop object permanence

      • Body contact is one key to attachment

      • Human infants demonstrate similar attachments with their caregivers

      • Critical period- optimal period when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces typical development

      • Imprinting- process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life

    • Is attachment style the result of parenting?

      • Mary Ainsworth (1979): Strange situation experiment

        • secure attachment

        • insecure attachment (anxious or avoidant)

    • Or is attachment style the result of genetically influenced temperament?

      • Heredity affects temperament, and that temperament affects attachment style

      • Intervention programs can increase parental sensitivity and to a lesser extent infant attachment security

    • Strange situation experiment shows that some children are securely attached and others insecurly

      • reflects both their individual temperament and responsiveness of their parents and child care providers

      • Influences later adult attachment and relationships

    • Dual parenting positives

      • couples that share housework and childcare are better overall developmentally

    • Attachment Styles and Later Relationships

      • Erik Erikson

        • Securely attached children approach life with a sense of basic trust

      • Early attachments

        • form a foundation or adult relationships and comfort

      • People wo report secure relationships with their parents

        • tend to enjoy secure friendships, adjust well to college from home

    • Developing a self Concept

      • Understanding and evaluation of who we are

        • 6 months: self-awareness begins with self recognition in the mirror

        • 15-18 months: schema of how face should look is apparent

        • School age: more detaield descriptions of gender, group membership

        • 8-10: Self image becomes stable

Day 2

  • Cross sectional studies

    • study in which different people of different ages are compared at one point in time

  • Longitudinal studies

    • Studies that follows the same individual and tests them multiple times

  • Brain Development in childhood

    • Neurons grow rapidly over the first 2 years

      • More than an adult

      • Get pruned down afterwards

  • Brain development in adolescence

    • Puberty marks the onset of adolescence

    • Puberty has a very tangible biological basis, follows a surge of hormonal changes that again have a relatively predictable sequence

  • Adolescent brain

    • The frontal lobe develops later than the limbic system

    • Myelin and glial cell growth enable better communication with other brain regions

    • Formal operational stage (Piaget):

      • “Adolescent egocentrism”

      • Develop new abstract thinking tools

      • Reason hypothetically and deduce consequences

    • David Elkind “personal fable”

      • Adolescents believ their experiences and feelins are novel and unique to them

      • They feel that no one else could relate their experiences

      • sense of invulnerability

  • Morality

    • Piaget

      • Childrens moral judgements build on their cognitive development

    • Lawrence Kohlberg 1981

      • Development of moral reasoning occurs as right and wrong are considered