DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

  • Issues :

    Nature/Nurture: How do genetic inheritance and experiences influence out behavior?

    Continuity/stages: Is it a gradual and continuous process or a sequence of separate stages?

    Stability/Change: Do our early personality traits persist through life/do we become different persons as we age?

    PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEWBORN

  • Conception: When the sperm cell fertilizes the coating of the egg and fuses to form a zygote

    →Zygote: Fertilized egg with 100 cells that become increasingly diverse

    > least vulnerable stage to environmental influences

  • After 10 days, the zygote » embryo —> after 9 weeks, embryo » fetus

  • Teratogens: Chemicals or viruses that can enter through the placenta during these stages and cause harm to the developing organism [ex: Fetal alcohol syndrome]

    NEWBORN

  • Reflexes:

    Rooting Reflex: turn face towards a brush on the face

    Babinski Reflex: Big toe extends when the foot’s sole is stimulated

    Startle Reflex

    Grasping Reflex

  • Attends longer to human voices, face-like images, and novel stimuli

Infancy & Childhood

  • Infancy - newborn » toddler (2-3 years)

  • Childhood- toddler » teenager

  • Most brain cells are already present at birth. After, neural networks multiply leading to higher mental/physical abilities

  • Maturation: Causes various bodily and mental functions to occur in sequence

    → standing to walk

  • Motor Development Ex:

    Roll over » sit unsupported » crawl » walk

  • The earliest age of conscious memory is ~3.5 years

  • 5-year-old has a sense of self & increase in long-term memory. Organization of memory is different from 3-4 years

    Cognitive Development

  • Schemas: Concepts—mental molds into which we pour our experiences

    → Assimilation: Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

    → Accommodation: Adapting current schemas to incorporate new information

  • Piaget’s theory and current thinking:

    1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2yrs): Experiences the world through their senses/interactions

      → Developing Objects Permanence

      →Habituation: Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. Researchers found children in this stage started longer at the wrong number of objects.

    2. Preoperational Stage (2-6/7yrs): Starting to use intuition vs logic. Language skills grow during this time.

      → Egocentrism: inability to perceive things from a different point of view

      → Theory of mind: understanding other’s mental state

      → Cannot understand conservation of mass

      → Cristicisms: (Deloache 1987) Proved 3yo children can use mental operations

    3. Concrete Operational Stage (6/7-11yrs): Thinking more logically about concrete events, grasping concrete analogies, and performing arithmetic operations.

      → Grasping conservation of mass, able to transform math equations

    4. Formal Operational Stage (12-Adulthood): Abstract thinking.

  • Reflections on Piaget’s Theory:

    -Development is a continuous process

    -Children express many of their mental abilities/operations at an earlier stage

    -Formal logic is a smaller part that Piaget thought

  • Vygotsky’s Theory of Social Development: Emphasizes how children’s minds grow through interacting with a social environment

    → Scaffolding: Language provided building blocks for thinking and social memory

    Social Development

  • Stranger Anxiety: Fear of strangers develops at ~8 months. Unable to assimilate new faces because schemas were formed of familiar faces

  • Separation Anxiety: Peaks at 13 months. Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation experiment.

  • Origins for attachment: Harry Harlow’s Monkey experiment

    → Showed infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact and not just nourishment.

    → Familiarity (like body contact) is another factor that causes attachment.

    → Animals can imprint

  • Mary Ainsworth Experiment:

    → 60% Children have a secure attachment with mother, more likely to explore

    → 30% Children have an insecure attachment, less likely to explore environment

  • Deprivation of Attachment can lead to Withdrawn, Frightened behaviors, and inability to develop speech. Prolonged can lead to changes in physical, psychological, and social levels. Alterations in the brain’s serotonin levels.

    Parenting

  • Child Rearing Practices:

    → Authoritarian: Imposing rules, expecting obedience

    → Authoritative: Demanding, but responsive

    > Correlates with social competence—other factors like common genes may lead to an easygoing temperament, evoking authoritative parenting.

    → Permissive: Submits to child’s demands

    → Rejecting/Neglecting: parents are uninvolved with the child

    External Influences on Development

    —> Early postnatal experience affects brain development: rats raised in rich environments developed thicker cortices than those impoverished-raised.

    —>Early experience during development in humans shows remarkable improvement in music, language, arts, etc

  • Brain Development continues to grow and change in adulthood

  • Parental Influence is largely genetic; teens still relate to parent’s religiosity & career choices

  • Conformity, Peers are influential in areas like learning to cooperate with others, gaining popularity, and developing interactions. As we age, peer approval & relationships become more important.

Cultural Influences:

→ Culture: Composed of behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group.

> Individualist & Collectivist

→ Norms: Accepted and expected behavior. Can change quickly over time.

Gender Development

  • based on genetic makeup, males and females are very alike (majority of our inherited genes — 45 chromosomes are unisex)

    → sex is determined by the 23rd chromosome

  • Differ biologically in body fat/muscle, height, the onset of puberty, life expectancy (men have lower life expectancy due to more risky choices)

  • Men are more aggressive physically, testosterone?

  • Men are more socially dominant

  • Women make more connections socially (Carol Gillian)

  • Gender typing: Taking on traditional male or female roles

  • Androgynous: One takes both male and female traits

  • Gender identity: How a person views themselves in terms of genders

  • Gender dysphoria: person experiences discomfort/distress because of a mismatch of bio sex and gender identity

  • Social Learning theory: Proposes gender behavior like any other behavior (reinforced, punished, behavioral)

  • Gender Schema Theory: Suggests we learn a cultural recipe of how to be a fe/male, which influences our gender based perceptions/behaviors. Cognitive behavioral.