Notes: Introduction to Human Development Psychology (PSY01X)

Activity Prompts and Course Context

  • Activity theme: FOUNDED FOR FILIPINOS, BUILT FOR THE NATION; QUASQUICENTENNIAL YEAR; EDUCATION THAT WORKS (repeated across slides to emphasize institutional branding)
  • Page references show prompts for personal reflection and connection to course content:
    • What’s one memory from when you were a child that shaped you?
    • What challenge or milestone did you face in adolescence?
    • What is something you’re working on or looking forward to in your current stage of life?
  • These prompts align with the course goal of linking development across life stages to personal experience.

Objectives (Page 6)

  • Contrast cross-sectional designs and longitudinal designs.
  • Give examples of cohort effects.
  • Explain how psychologists infer the cognitive abilities of infants.
  • List and describe Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
  • Discuss two methods of inferring the concept of object permanence.
  • Give examples to show that infants develop cognitive abilities gradually.

Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies (Table 5.1, Slide 1 of 2)

  • Cross-sectional design
    • Description: Several groups of subjects of various ages studied at one time.
    • Advantages:
    • Quick
    • No risk of sampling differences due to time; study multiple age groups at once
    • Disadvantages:
    • Risk of cohort effects (confounding age with historical/societal changes)
    • Sampling error by getting different kinds of people at different ages
    • Example given: Compare memory abilities of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds.
  • Longitudinal design
    • Description: One group of subjects studied repeatedly as they grow older.
    • Advantages:
    • No risk of sampling differences over time; can study consistency within individuals
    • Can study the effects of one experience on later development
    • Disadvantages:
    • Takes a long time
    • Some participants quit
    • Sometimes hard to separate effects of age from changes in society over time
    • Example given: Study the memory abilities of 3-year-olds and then again at 4 and 2 years later

Cross-Sectional vs Longitudinal – Quick Reference (Page 9)

  • Cross-sectional study = one time point (interview/observation/measurement)
  • Longitudinal study = more than one time point (interview/observation/measurement)
  • TIME concept illustrated (masquicentennial year branding appears; content emphasizes time as a factor in comparing designs)

Figure 5.2 (Slide 2, Page 10)

  • Concept: People born at different times grow up with different experiences.
  • Example provided: In an earlier era, bathing suit inspectors prohibited 'overly revealing' outfits that would seem modest today.
  • Implication: Historical context shapes development and cohort differences.

The Fetus and the Newborn (Page 11)

  • Brain maturation begins long before birth.
  • Exposure to drugs (e.g., alcohol) decreases brain activity and can trigger neurons’ self-destruct programs.
  • Note: Some individuals manage to do well despite unpromising circumstances.

Infants’ Vision (Pages 12–13)

  • Infants spend more time looking at drawings of human faces than at other patterns with similar light/dark areas.
  • Newborn’s face is seen as an oval with content mainly toward the top.
  • Face recognition improves over years and depends on experience; people become best at recognizing faces they frequently see.
  • Developmental progression shown: newborn, 4 months, 8 months, 12 months (visuals likely depict progression of recognition abilities).

Infants’ Hearing and Habituation (Page 14)

  • Habituation: decreased response to a repeated stimulus.
  • Dishabituation: increase in a previously habituated response as a result of a change in stimulation.

Infants’ Learning and Memory (Page 15)

  • Newborns suck more vigorously to turn on a recording of their mother’s voice than another woman’s voice → recognition of mother’s voice.
  • Infants at 2 months can learn to kick and move a mobile; remember how to do it several days later.

Jean Piaget’s View of Cognitive Development (Slides 1–3, Pages 16–19)

  • Core idea: Children’s thought differs qualitatively from adults’ and develops through accommodation and assimilation.
  • Key terms:
    • Accommodation: modifying an old schema to fit a new object/problem.
    • Assimilation: applying an old schema to new objects/problems.
    • Schema: an organized way of interacting with objects.
  • Four major stages of cognitive development:
    • Sensorimotor stage: birth to almost 2 years.
    • Preoperational stage: just before 2 to 7 years.
    • Concrete operations stage: about 7 to 11 years.
    • Formal operations stage: about 11 years onward.

Table 5.3 Summary of Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development (Slide 1 of 2)

  • Sensorimotor (birth to 12 years) — per slide, though conventional view is birth to ~2 years
    • Achievements/Activities: Reacts to sensory stimuli through reflexes and other responses.
    • Limitations: Early focus on reflexes; later progresses to object permanence and primitive actions.
  • Preoperational (1½ to 7 years)
    • Achievements: Develops language; can represent objects mentally by words and symbols; can respond to objects that are remembered but not present.
    • Limitations: Little use of logical operations; seems not to understand object permanence in early part; lacks reversible mental processes; lacks conservation; focuses on one property at a time; confuses appearance with reality.
  • Concrete operations (7 to 11 years)
    • Achievements: Understands conservation of mass, number, and volume; can perform logical operations on concrete objects.
  • Formal operations (11 years onward)
    • Achievements: Can reason logically about abstract and hypothetical concepts; develops strategies; plans actions in advance.
    • Limitations: Has trouble with abstract concepts and hypothetical situations.

Table 5.3 (Slide 2 of 2) – Summary Continuation

  • Stages, age ranges, and general activities/limitations as above; emphasis on progression to logical and abstract reasoning.

Are Piaget’s Stages Distinct?

  • Position: Piaget believed children make distinct jumps from one stage to another.
  • Modern view: Most psychologists see development as gradual and continuous rather than discrete jumps.

Differing Views: Piaget and Vygotsky (Pages 23–24)

  • Implication of Piaget: Children must discover certain concepts largely on their own.
  • Vygotsky’s view: Educators should not wait for children to rediscover basics; guided learning is important.
  • Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): The distance between what a child can do alone and what is possible with help.
  • ZPD concept is central to Vygotsky’s framework.

Zone of Proximal Development (Page 25)

  • Visual representation shows Existence of a ZPD and the role of guided support.
  • Key idea: With guidance, children can perform tasks they cannot yet do alone.

Social and Emotional Development (Pages 26–27)

  • Section heading indicates broader coverage of social and emotional development in the life span, including ZPD as a framework for social learning.

Erikson’s Stages of Human Development (Table 5.4, Page 28)

  • Infant: Basic trust vs mistrust
  • Toddler (ages 1–3): Autonomy vs shame and doubt
  • Preschool child (ages 3–6): Initiative vs guilt
  • Preadolescent (ages 6–12): Industry vs inferiority
  • Adolescent (early teens): Identity vs role confusion
  • Young adult (late teens to early 20s): Intimacy vs isolation
  • Middle adult (late 20s to retirement): Generativity vs stagnation
  • Older adult (after retirement): Ego integrity vs despair
  • Typical questions (as provided):
    • Infant: Is my social world predictable and supportive?
    • Toddler: Can I do things by myself or must I always rely on others?
    • Preschool: Am I good or bad?
    • (Further stages not fully detailed in the slide content provided.)

Infancy and Childhood Attachment and Temperament (Page 29)

  • Attachment: A feeling of closeness toward another person.
  • Strange Situation: A procedure where the mother and infant (12–18 months) are observed as the mother and a stranger enter and leave the room with toys.
  • Temperament: Tendency to be active or inactive and to respond vigorously or quietly to new stimuli.

Social Development in Childhood and Adolescence (Page 30)

  • Western societies: Health and nutrition lowered average age of puberty.
  • Economic factors encourage staying in school and postponing marriage, family, and career.
  • Result: A long period of physical maturity without adult status.
  • Adolescence described as a time of "storm and stress" and also a time of risk-taking behaviors.

Identity Development (Pages 31–32)

  • Identity crisis: Concerns with decisions about the future and the quest for self-understanding.
  • Two major elements:
    • Whether one is actively exploring the issue.
    • Whether one has made any decisions.
  • Identity statuses (visualized as a 2x2 grid):
    • Identity achievement: Has explored and made decisions.
    • Identity foreclosure: Has made decisions without exploration.
    • Moratorium: Has explored but not yet made decisions.
    • Diffusion: Has not explored and has not made decisions.

The "Personal Fable" (Page 33)

  • David Elkind’s concept: The personal fable contributes to risky behavior.
  • Belief characteristic: The sense that "nothing bad can happen to me".

Adulthood and Midlife Transition (Page 34)

  • Major concern: Productivity in family and career.
  • Midlife transition: Period of reassessing goals, setting new ones, and preparing for the rest of life.

Old Age (Page 35)

  • Well-being in old age depends on earlier life events.
  • Key concerns: Dignity and independence.
  • Loss of control is a serious issue when health begins to fail.

The Psychology of Facing Death (Page 36)

  • Terror-management theory: People cope with fear of death by avoiding thoughts of death and by affirming a worldview that provides self-esteem, hope, and value in life.

Gender Influences (Page 37)

  • Men and women differ on average in various behavioral aspects.
  • No clear evidence of differences in intellectual abilities.

Gender Roles (Pages 38–39)

  • Definition: The different activities society expects of males and females.
  • Biology vs social influences:
    • Biology: Greater size and strength on average; prenatal hormones may influence interests.
    • Social: Parent expectations and cultural norms shape gender roles.
  • Over time, gender roles have changed in many countries.

Cultural and Ethnic Influences (Pages 41–44)

  • Some behaviors are similar across cultures; many customs vary widely.
  • Describing cultural effects is difficult and prone to overgeneralization.
  • Ethnic Minorities:
    • Identity development can resemble the process of developing individual identity.
    • Strong, favorable ethnic identity is often linked to higher self-esteem.
  • Acculturation:
    • Biculturalism: Partial identification with two cultures.
    • Biracialism: Having parents from different origins.

Birth Order, Family Size, and Parenting (Pages 45–49)

  • Birth order and family size effects are often confounded.
  • Much of the apparent difference between firstborns and later-borns is due to family size rather than birth order per se.
  • Parenting Styles:
    • Authoritative: High standards and controls, but warm and responsive to the child’s communications.
    • Authoritarian: Emotionally distant; rules set without explaining reasons.
  • Nontraditional Families: No important differences in personality development between children reared by gay/lesbian couples and those reared by heterosexual couples.
  • Parental Conflict and Divorce: Children of divorced parents show distress, but results vary across individuals and cultures; divorce does not necessarily harm all children; do not assume parents must stay together for children’s benefit.

Final Notes and Questions (Page 50)

  • Any questions?
  • Encouragement to engage with the material and seek clarification as needed.

Reference Page (Page 51)

  • 1900 NU East Ortigas (branding/footnote reference in the slides)