Psychology (Ch.3)

Chapter 3: Developing Through The Life Span

• Developmental Psychology: womb to tomb

  • Nature and Nurture (+ epigenetics)

• Prenatal Development

  • Germinal stage - conception to 2 weeks

  • Embryonic stage - 2 weeks to 8 weeks (organogenesis)

    • Organs in place

  • Fetal stage - 9 weeks to birth

• Cephalocaudal pattern of development

  • “Head to tail”

• Proximodistal pattern of development

  • “in/out” 

• Teratogens

  • Can cross the placenta and harm the baby

    • Ex. smoking, drinking, etc

• The Competent Newborn

  • Reflexes

    • Rooting, grasping, sucking, Moro

  • Senses

    • Vision most poorly developed

  • Perceptual Development

    • Depth perception

    • Visual cliff

• Cognitive Development 

  • Jean Piaget

  • Schemas, assimilation, accommodation

    • Schemas - How we organize information; a “file folder”

      • How we recognize things

    • Assimilation 

      • Associating new information with old information/existing schemas

        • Ex. A baby calling a woman “mom”

    • Accommodation

      • Creating a new folder for new information

1. Sensorimotor stage - birth to 2 years

   1. Causality: Infant learns to control things

   2. Imitation: Doing and Repeating what they see

   3. Object Permanence: Out of sight, out of mind

      1. Learning to understand something is still there

2. Preoperational stage - 3 to 6 or 7

   1. Egocentrism: Can only see things from their POV

   2. Lack of Conservation: Not understanding change of mass or volume

3. Concrete operational stage - 7 to 12 years

   1. 3rd eye problem: No abstract thinking, “here and now”

4. Formal operational stage 

   1. Creative thinking; can think in hypotheticals

• Social Development

  • Harry Harlow’s experiment with rhesus monkeys

    • Surrogate Moms - 1 wire with food, 1 with soft cloth but no food

    • Contact Comfort - attachments are important

• What did Harry Harlow do in his experiments?

  • Exposed baby monkeys to two “surrogate moms”, one with wire with food and one with soft cloth but no food.

• What were his results?

  • The monkey was attracted to the soft cloth mother

• Why were his findings important?

  • The prevailing wisdom was that feeding was important for attachment, however the study proved that comfort was important instead.

• Deprivation of Attachment

  • Erik Erikson - trust vs. mistrust

    • Developmental relationship between infant & caregiver