UNIT 3 NOTES - Development and Learning

Early Development

• Developmental Psychology - branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the lifespan

3 major issues:

• Nature vs. Nurture

• Stability and Change

• Continuity and Stages

Fun Facts!

• Women have all their eggs at birth

• Men regenerate sperm (250 million sperm cells at a time)

Prenatal Development

• Germinal Stage (0-2 weeks)

  • as sperm fertilizes the egg (1/5 zygotes move onto the next stage)

    • placenta forms

• Embryonic Stage (2-8 weeks)

  • zygote → embryo, starts forming vital organs, begins to look human

  • developmental issues form

• Fetal Stage (8 weeks until birth) (birth at ~40 weeks)

  • muscle and bone formation; brain formation before 3rd trimester

• Threshold for Viability (youngest a fetus can be born)

  • 23 weeks → 20% survival rate

  • 25 weeks → 67% survival rate

Environmental Factors

• nutrition

  • severe maternal malnutrition linked to schizophrenia

• stress and emotion

  • higher likelihood of a stillbirth

  • disrupts baby’s emotions

• drug abuse/usage

  • babies can come out addicted to drugs

  • includes over-the-counter drugs and marijuana

• alcohol consumption → fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)

  • FAS only occurs with heavy drinking

• teratogens

  • viruses and chemicals that reach the fetus and cause birth defects

• maternal illness

  • any viruses/illnesses transfer to the baby

  • HIV can be transmitted to the babies

    • in the 90s — 20-30% mortality rate

    • 2020s — >2% mortality rate

Newborn Development:

• critical period

  • exposure to certain stimuli/experiences produces normal development

  • language development/any development diminishes by a certain point after the critical period

• rooting/grabbing reflex

  • rooting: looking for a nipple

  • grabbing: closes hand around anything

• habituation

  • decreased interest on a repeated stimuli

  • shows that infants have memory

• smell preference

  • typically whatever the baby’s mother smells like

Motor Development:

• maturation

  • biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

• developmental norms

  • typical ages where an individual child reaches developmental milestones

• infantile amnesia

  • babies don’t encode memories well

Ecological Systems Theory:

• microsystem

  • immediate environment (parents, peers)

• mesosystem

  • connections between environments (2 or more microsystems)

• exosystem

  • indirect environments (extended family, neighbors)

• macrosystem

  • social and surrounding cultures (educational system, law system)

• chronosystem

  • changes over time

As Babies:

• stranger anxiety

  • common stage at around 8 months, recognizes their caregivers and develops a fear of strangers, linked with separation anxiety (emotional distress when away from caregiver)

• attachment

  • 2-3 months → attachment starts

  • 6 months → refusal to be away from mother

  • Harry Harlow’s experiment

    • “do monkeys need mothers for nutrition only? or do they need mothers for comfort?”

      • monkeys became attached to baby blankets, not wire mothers

  • Mary Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation” study

    • studied attachments in 6 month olds

    • secure attachment (60% of babies)

      • slight distress but also comfort when mother returned

    • insecure attachment (40% of babies)

      • avoidant attachment

        • fear of rejection, wouldn’t even go to their mothers for comfort

      • anxious attachment

        • fear of abandonment, clinging to their mothers

• Erik Erikson

  • believes that babies with secure attachment have a relative trust in the world whereas insecure babies didn’t

  • reactive attachment disorder (RAD)

    • condition where a child is unable to form attachment with their caregivers due to severe neglect/abuse

    • symptoms include: no positive emotions, rule-breaking, sociopathic tendencies, controlling and abusive behavior

  • Romanian orphanages

    • socially deprived children

      • lower intelligence scores, reduced brain development

      • abnormal stress levels/responses, higher rates of ADHD

  • adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)

    • includes childhood emotional/physical/sexual abuse and childhood dysfunction during childhood

Parenting Styles:

• authoritarian → strict rules, expect obedience

  • kids have less social skills, lower self-esteem

• permissive → few limitations/expectations

  • kids become aggressive, immature

• negligent → uninvolved, nonresponsive

  • kids have poor academic and social skills

• authoritative → demanding, responsive

  • kids are self-reliant and have high self-esteem

Personality Development

• Forming an Identity:

  • Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development (part I)

• First 4 Stages

  • Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust

    • from infancy to one year old

    • the baby trusts that caregiver will help if the baby cries

  • Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

    • from 2-3 years old

    • taking care of self

      • tasks: potty training, feeding self

  • Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

    • from 3-6 years old

    • learn to function within family

      • tasks: initiate tasks, carry out plans

      • “I can do it myself” mindset

  • Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority

    • from age 6 to puberty

    • function outside of family

      • tasks: applying self to tasks (eg. school)

• James Marcia’s identity theory

  • identity diffusion → low commitment, low crisis

  • identity moratorium → low commitment, high crisis

  • identity foreclosure → high commitment, low crisis

  • identity achievement → high commitment, high crisis

Cognitive Development

• Growth of Thought:

  • JEAN PIAGET (will probably be on the AP exam) — environment, how brains and minds grow

    • schemas — mental framework

    • assimilation — assimilate new experiences in terms of past experiences (toddler thinks every 4-legged creature is a dog)

    • accommodation — adapting schemas to incorporate new things

  • Lev Vygotsky

    • scaffold — a framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking

    • zone of proximal development — learner can do with guidance

    • private speech — talking in one’s head, nonverbal speech

• Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

  • Stage 1: Sensorimotor (birth → 2 years)

    • sensory impressions (5 senses)

    • motor activities (bodily movements)

    • object permanence — recognizing that an object still exists when it is not immediately in view

  • Stage 2: Preoperational (2 → 7 years)

    • language use

    • no concrete logic

    • no “mental operations” (reversing operations)

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

    • egocentrism — difficulty taking another’s point of view

    • animism — the belief that stuffed animals are alive and have feeling

  • Stage 3: Concrete Operational (7 → 11 years)

    • ability to think with concrete logic (hence the name)

    • beginning to classify objects based on their similarities and differences

  • Stage 4: Formal Operational (11+ years)

    • abstract concepts

    • theoretical reasoning

• Language

  • Components of Language

    • phonemes — smallest distinctive sound unit

    • morphemes — smallest unit that carries meaning (words, prefixes)

    • grammar — a language’s set of rules

  • Language Acquisition

    • receptive vocabulary — language that babies can understand

    • productive vocabulary — language that babies can speak

    • fast mapping — categorizing the word under a greater idea; will remember the word for life

    • overextension — the usage of a single word for different objects (eg. “that four-legged animal is a deer, therefore this animal (a dog) is a deer”)

    • underextension — the usage of a single word for a singular object (eg. “my dog is the only dog in the world, every other ‘dog’ is just an animal”)

    • overregularization — simple grammatical errors in a child’s speech (eg. “I eated” or “I playeded”)

    • telegraphic speech — the early stage in which a child speaks like a telegram (eg. “go car” or “I play”)

  • How We Acquire Language

    • B.F. Skinner → mimic, imitation

    • Noam Chomsky → language acquisition device (LAD)

      • LAD → biologically equipped to learn language

    • receptive language

    • productive language

      • babbling stage → ~4 months

      • one-word stage → 1 year

      • two-word stage → 1-2 years

  • Brain Damage and Language

    • aphasia — impairment of language, usually causes an impairment/damage to Broca’s or Wernicke’s areas

  • Language or Thought?

    • linguistic determinations — language determines the way we think

    • linguistic influence/relativity — language influences the way we think

Adolescence

• Adolescent Social Learning

  • childhood vs. adolescence

    • parallel play — playing next to, not together

    • pretend play — imaginary, “pretend that…”

    • imaginary audience — imagine everyone is paying attention to you, watching and judging you

    • personal fable — you are special and one of a kind, and life’s problems will not reach/affect you

    • white matter increases, frontal lobe starts developing, “use it or lose it”

  • Adolescent’s Brain:

    • still developing

    • last area of brain to develop is the prefrontal cortex

  • Physiological Changes:

    • puberty

    • primary and secondary sex characteristics

      • primary — penis, vagina, testes, ovaries

      • secondary — hips, breasts, broad shoulders, facial hair

    • intersex — someone with both primary/secondary sex characteristics

• Gender and Sexual Development

  • Development of Gender Identity:

    • sex vs gender (biological vs. socially-influenced)

    • gender roles

      • socially-influenced roles

    • gender identity — our own personal sense that we are male, female, both, or neither

    • gender typing — masculinity/femininity

    • androgynous — the expression of being both masculine or feminine

    • transgender — someone who doesn’t identify as the sex given at birth

  • Sexual Orientation:

    • heterosexuality — attracted to the opposite sex

    • homosexuality — attracted to the same sex

    • bisexuality — attracted to both sexes

    • Alfred Kinsey’s study — most people are bisexual

    • environmental factors do not have a link to attraction

    • biological factors, however, might

      • brain differences — larger cell cluster in straight people, smaller in LGBTQ+

      • genetic influences — “fertile mother” theory

      • prenatal influences — mother’s immune system could lead to homosexuality in boys

Adulthood

• Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development (part II)

  • Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion (puberty → mid 20s)

    • develop sense of self

    • task: teens test identities to find who they are

  • Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation (mid 20s → early 40s)

    • develop close relationships

    • tasks: find intimate love (friendships or romantic relationships)

  • Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation (early 40s → 60s)

    • contributing to the world

    • tasks: find sense of purpose, either through kids or work

  • Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair (60s → death)

    • reflecting on life

    • task: look back on life with satisfaction or failure

  • Life Transitions:

    • adjusting to marriage, parenthood

    • social clock — the culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and eventually retirement

      • there is an unspoken pressure surrounding the social clock

• Physiological Changes

  • reproductive ability declines (menopause, sperm count decline)

  • decrease in physical capability

  • life span!

    • in the 1950s, life span was ~49 years old

    • in 2014, life span was ~78 years old

    • in 2020, life span was ~77 years old

• Neurological Changes

  • dementia — neurocognitive disorder marked by neurological decline

  • Alzheimer’s disease — 3% of people have it by 75 years old; is a decline in cognitive functioning

How We Learn

• behaviorism — grew in response to psychoanalysis; all behavior is shaped by environmental stimuli; focused on making psychology scientific

• learning — the process of acquiring through experience new and relatively enduring information/behaviors

  • not just in humans

• Types of Learning (Associative)

  • classical conditioning — linking stimuli; 1st stimulus comes to elicit behavior in anticipation of the 2nd stimulus

  • operant conditioning

  • cognitive learning

• Ivan Pavlov

  • the Pavlov experiment with the dogs

Classical Conditioning

• neutral stimulus (NS) — a stimulus that elicits no response before conditioning

• unconditioned response (UCR) — an unlearned, naturally occurring response to an unconditioned stimulus

• unconditioned stimulus (UCS) — a stimulus that unconditionally (naturally and automatically) triggers an unconditioned response (UCR)

• conditioned response (CR) — a learned response to a previously neutral (but now conditioned) stimulus (CS)

• conditioned stimulus (CS) — an originally neutral stimulus that, after association with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), comes to trigger a conditioned response (CR)

• acquisition — initial stage of linking a neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus

• generalization — tendency for stimuli similar to CS to elicit similar responses

  • Little Albert experiment — kid conditioned to fear white, fluffy things

• extinction — diminishing of a conditioned response

• spontaneous recovery — the reappearance, after a pause, of a weakened conditioned response

• stimulus distinction — distinguishing between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not signaled an unconditioned response

• higher-order conditioning — procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a 2nd conditioned stimulus

Operant Conditioning

• Classical vs Operant Conditioning (involuntary vs voluntary)

  • law of effect — the idea that if rewarded, we’ll do it again; if we are punished, we won’t

  • B.F. Skinner !!

    • reinforcers — positive/negative consequences

      • primary reinforcers — things that satisfy a biological need (food, water, sleep)

      • secondary reinforcers — money, grades, etc.

    • shaping — basically molding someone into a behavior

    • Skinner Box

• Reinforcers vs. Punishments

  • positive reinforcement — increasing behaviors by presenting a pleasurable stimulus

  • negative reinforcement — increasing behaviors by stopping/reducing an aversive stimulus

    • escape learning — when an organism decreases/ends an unpleasant stimulus

    • avoidance learning — when an organism avoids an unpleasant stimulus

  • positive punishment — add something that isn’t pleasant, stops the behavior

  • negative punishment — take something pleasant to stop a behavior

• Schedules of Reinforcement

  • continuous reinforcement — reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs

  • fixed-ratio schedule (FR) — reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses

  • fixed-interval schedule (FI) — reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response only after a specific time has elapsed

  • variable-ratio schedule (VR) — a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses

  • variable-interval schedule (VI) —a reinforcement schedule that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals

• Other Types of Learning

  • Cognitive Learning:

    • latent learning — not apparent until there’s an incentive

    • role of motivation

      • intrinsic motivation — pleasurable, for ourselves

      • extrinsic motivation — outside purposes (money, grades)

    • learned helplessness — inability to avoid aversive events, “no control” over environments

  • Observational Learning:

    • social learning

    • Alfred Bandura’s “bobo” experiment