DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Important Terms

  • Universal vs Ecological

    • universal: all humans across the entire world develop at a similar pace and similar way

    • ecological: acknowledge the impact that environmental and cultural can have on human development

  • Teratogens

    • potentially dangerous components that a fetus can be exposed to that effects its development

    • alcohol is a well-known teratogen, lead to fetal alcohol syndrome

    • different maternal illness, mother has flu the fetus has bigger chance of developing schinia

  • Critical vs Sensitive Periods

    • critical: a behavior or ability has to be learned or else it will never be learned, if it’s not learned during this segment of development, it is lost forever, and they won’t be able to learn it

    • sensitive: easier for an organism to learn that ability at a certain level

    • language

  • Post Hoc thinking

    • A caused B to happen, because A became for B you think that A caused B to happen when there isn’t actually a relationship between the two

  • Stage Theories

    • idea that development happens in stages, a stage must be completed before moving to the next stage of development

  • Habituation

    • find ways around understanding babies, when a baby becomes used to a stimulus, they habituate to it/stop responding to it. If you introduce a new stimulus they will be drawn to it/respond to it

  • Infantile Amnesia

    • huge amount of neuron growth interferes with memory, memory loss that occurs from 0-4 in most people due to rapid neuron growth

  • Social Clock

    • the culturally defined timeline to achieve different milestones, many variants when it comes to social clock depending on culture/different parts of world

Prenatal Sense Development

  • Sound

    • strongest, fetus prefer mothers voice in comparison to others. through heartrate, slows down when hears mother voice

    • newborns can remember sounds they remember in the womb, had mothers read specific child story while pregnant and read same or different story to the child when they were born, had habituation to old story

  • Smell & Taste

    • through amniotic fluid, if mother is eating very flavorful food, fetus seem to recognize the smell and taste after birth

  • Vision

    • basically non-existent, development until after birth

Sense Development

  • Vision

    • mostly seeing in shades of gray when first born

    • start developing near vision, prioritizing face recognition over everything else

    • peak visual at age 3

      • Visual Cliff

        • used to test vision

        • put baby on table where ½ has contrasting pattern and glass with pattern on bottom. testing ability of being able to perceive depth

        • babies who have not perceived depth will go on glass, and who have won’t cross over

      • Scale Error

        • baby sees a smaller version of what they’re used to, treat smaller version as if it is the bigger/larger version

  • Brain Growth

    • critical for perception and sensational development; growing in complexity

    • making a lot of connections and re-organizing itself during initial years

    • frontal lobe - area that deals with decision making, children seem to be so impulsive is because of lack of development in this area

Parenting Style

  • Authoritarianism

    • very specific, lots of rules and if broken there is very severe punishment

    • once children leave household, they go through very strong rebellious phase

  • Permissive

    • Un-restraining, ask very little/ not a ton of rules, if child breaks the rules, they don’t get a ton of punishment

    • parents want to be more of a friend than a parent

  • Negligent

    • don’t want to be involved/interact with child at all; no rules bc don’t care what child does

  • Authoritative

    • can be confrontive, will speak to child if done wrong; listen to child and why rules were broken

    • tends to have structure and also be supportive

Attachment Styles

  • Attachment

    • close emotional bond between infant and their caregiver; attachment strongly correlated to separation anxiety - peaks at 13mo and gradually declines

  • Harry & Margaret Harlow

  • Strange Situation (Ainsworth et al.,1978)

    • bring child into lab, parent interacts with child, parent leaves and sees how child responds; comes back and see how child responds

  • Secure

    • when caregiver leaves, the child may or may not be distressed (doesn’t matter), what matters is that when the caregiver returns they acknowledge and return/calm down

      • 60% of babies have this style

  • Avoidant

    • when caregiver leaves, the child is undistressed, when returns they continue to ignore the caregiver

      • 20% of babies

  • Ambivalent/Anxious

    • when caregiver leaves the baby is distressed, baby continues to be distressed when caregiver returns and won’t be able to calm down

      • 15%

  • Disorganized

    • no clear pattern of response, do strange situation across multiple time periods

      • 5%

  • multiple caregivers, have different attachment style to each one

  • not necessarily connected to how you will interact in romantic relationships

Temperament: child’s personality

  • Thomas & Chess (1977;1989)

    • looked at 3mo babies and organized them into 4 different personalities

  • Easy

    • 3 mo. old that would adapt really well to new experiences; regular eating and sleeping patterns

  • Slow to warm up

    • withdraw from new situations but eventually would adapt

  • Difficult

    • very emotional and very irritable; cried a lot

  • Average

    • babies that didn’t fit precisely in any of the 3 other categories

  • remarkable consistency when met up with the babies again, compared to 3mo and 10 yr, temperament seemed to be consistent throughout their development

Moral Development

  • Piaget’s Moral Development

    • instead of a stage theory it is a shift theory

      • Realism to Relativism

        • realism: rules are rules and should always be followed; any running in house is bad

        • relativism: recognize that there are sometimes you have to break the rules and that is not necessarily a bad thing; if house is on fire, I should run in house; using environment to determine what is good/bad

      • Prescription to Principle

        • prescription: taking the rule at the letter of the law, only taking in what is specifically stated in the rule (run when they go to grandmas house b/c rule is only no running in my house)

        • principle: understand the intent of the rule (not run at grandmas house b/c they understand the rule isn’t ties to location and to not run indoors)

      • Outcomes to Intentions

        • outcomes: going to determine what’s right from wrong based on the consequences of the action; child purposely breaks pencil b/c mad and accidentally ipad, will say ipad is worse)

        • intentions: look at why action happened, based on what is good and what is bad; say purposely breaking pencil is worse than accidentally breaking ipad)

Kohlers Theory of Moral Development

  • 3 Stage Theory

  • Preconventional

    • 1st stage - determined on what’s right and wrong based on what is rewarded and punished

  • Conventional

    • 5/6 years, take rules that authority figures give you and you internalize them

  • Post-Conventional

    • last stage, determine your own personal code of ethics based on your values, tends to happen as people are reaching adulthood

Cognitive Development (as told by Piaget)

  • Assimilate vs Accommodate

    • assimilate: interpret your experiences based on your own understanding of the world, how u currently understand the world; new experience of cat and forcing it into box of dog

    • accommodate: change mindset when we encounter new experiences; instead of treating rabbit as dog they create new category for new organism

  • Sensorimotor

    • birth-2yrs old, babies are building their mindset on the world based on their sensory and move throughout it

      • Object Permanence: where a child starts to understand that just b/c I don’t see something, it doesn’t mean it went away (around 8mo.)

  • Preoperational

    • 2-6/7: child starts to be able to think symbolically; can think from more of an abstract perspective

      • Pretend Play: able to pretend to be and have different things; early stages/examples of symbolic thought

      • Egocentrism: things matter the most that relate to me, world revolves around me, won’t think about things from your perspective b/c mine is the one that matters

  • Concrete Operational

    • 7/8-12: start to be able to understand how to manipulate things that are directly in front of them, mentally manipulate that object and think about it in their mind - has to be in front of them

      • Conservation: a child understands that just because it has changed shape it doesn’t mean it has changed mass

  • Formal Operational

    • 12+: begin to understand hypotheticals and process abstract information better

    • children begin to be able to do algebra and think about symbolism and do mental combinations to arrive at the right answer

Critiques of Piaget

  • Underestimation

    • underestimating children, seem to be able to have complex thought earlier than he thought, don’t tend to be as internally focused

  • Stage Mixing

    • thought they were distinct, once left one you wouldn’t go back, research has shown that there is quite a bit of mixing throughout development

  • Universality

    • thought stages are universal, but are seeing differences throughout/between cultures in how they present and when concepts will manifest

Vygotsky: different perspective, thought cognitive happened largely through:

  • Social Interactions with older individuals

    • Scaffolding: an expert helps someone learn a task or trait, help a person learn a task or trait more effectively, help a lot in beginning and then less and less

  • Language

    • Piaget: side effect of cognitive development

    • Vygotsky: critical for cognitive development

      • Private Speech: language that we speak to ourselves; preschoolers externalize private speech, will talk out loud their private speech

Theory of Mind

  • Understanding of others

    • when a child is able to understand that other people have their own mental experiences and processes

  • Egotism

    • because I am center of world, everything I think matters, everyone shares my mind

  • Deficits

    • develop theory of mind later

    • children w/autism - problem w social awareness and social interactions

    • deaf children of hearing parents

  • Advanced

    • children who have more older siblings, daycare, playdates, and higher SES/socioeconomic statuses tend to develop their mind quicker

Moter Development

  • Developmental Norms

    • median age where traits begin/tend to develop

  • Reflexes

    • Rooting: stroke child’s cheek they move mouth towards that stroking

    • Palmar: put something into baby’s palm, they’ll grasp it

    • Sucking: put something in baby’s mouth, they’ll reflectively suck on it

    • Babinski: stroke baby’s foot they’ll fan out their toes

    • Moro: make a baby feel like they’ll fall, they’ll reach out their arms and legs

  • Control

    • Cephalocaudal: control starts at the top and goes downward

    • Proximodistal: control starts at trunk and moves outward

Social Development

  • Field et al. (1986)

  • Senses

    • building up to be the social creature we know humans are

  • Social referencing - build understanding

    • look back at a person, especially caregiver, in order to understand how to process a situation

  • Mischel et al. (1972-2015)

    • brought 3-5 yr olds and offered them a treat, and if they could wait 15 minutes to receive 2 treats

    • depended on how much trust they had in the researcher

  • Timeline: who matters most for social development

    • Parents and potentially siblings: first people you interact with and care about what they’re thinking

    • Same sex peers: when you start school, what your friends and classmates think most matters

    • Mixed sex peers: around puberty

Eriksons Theory of Development

  • 8 stage

  • Psychosocial Conflicts: each stage is highlighted by psychosocial conflicts and how you resolve these conflicts will affect your personality

  • Year 1: Trust vs Mistrust

  • Year 2-3: Autonomy vs Shame/Doubt

  • Year 4-5: Initiative vs Guilt

  • Year 6-Puberty: Industry vs Inferiority

  • Adolescence: Identity vs Confusion

  • Early Adulthood: Intimacy vs Isolation

  • Middle Adulthood: Generativity vs Stagnation

  • Late Adulthood: Integrity vs Despair

Aging

  • Biological

    • estimate of someone’s age based on their biologic functioning; organs, flexibility

  • Psychological

    • estimate using someone’s mental attitudes and competency

    • Functional

      • based on their ability to function in a given role in society

  • Social

    • based on a person’s willingness to acknowledge and adhere to the social norms/beliefs of the culture they belong to

  • Socioemotional Selectivity

    • younger adults seek information relating to the future, older adults seek information that is emotionally satisfying

  • Activity Theory of Aging

    • life satisfaction in late adulthood is best when you can maintain the activity level you had in middle adulthood