Video Lesson: Development (29:01) - Quizlet Import

[Music] the story of how we grow and change across the lifespan is one of the most interesting in all of psychology we'll begin by considering how genetic and environmental factors interact to shape us before we're even born development begins a conception sperm and egg cell unite to form the fertilized egg or zygote within hours of this union the nuclei of the two cells merge the zygote begins a process of dividing and re dividing producing a blastocyst a mass of identical cells about 10 to 14 days after fertilization the blastocyst attaches itself to the wall of the uterus then the embryonic stage begins during this phase cells differentiate into 3 distinct types those that will become the nervous system and outer skin those that will form the skeletal system and voluntary muscles and those that will form the gut and digestive organs one month after conception the embryo begins to develop the major organ systems of the body including the heart and lungs also the arms legs and facial features at about the same time we can detect the beginnings of a nervous system two months after conception the fetal stage begins by this point the mass of cells now call the fetus has grown to an inch in length and the heart has begun to beat the nervous system continues to grow at a remarkable pace new nerve cells are generated at a rate that can approach 250,000 new cells per minute and these cells start to form a network the fetus is capable of simple behaviors for instance it'll show a sucking reflex if it's lips are touched it's not long before other more sophisticated capacities come into view including the capacity for learning in one study researchers asked pregnant mothers to read aloud to their unborn infants twice a day for the last six weeks of their pregnancy once the babies were born researchers set up an apparatus that was controlled by the way newborns sucked on a special pacifier if they sucked in one way the apparatus played a story their mothers had read before they were born if they sucked in another way the apparatus played an unfamiliar story the researchers found that the infant's adjusted their sucking pattern so they could listen to the story which they had been exposed to in utero indicating that the infants had learned one story and preferred it to the other story they didn't know and that is very interesting so what is guiding prenatal development the genome for sure but it's also important to note that environmental factors are just as important so what does environment really mean in this early stage of development consider the earliest stages of embryonic growth every cell in the embryo has the same genes and receives the same genetic instructions so how does each cell managed to develop appropriately into different body parts the answer seems to be that the fate of each cell is determined in part by its cellular neighbors the cells that form its physical environment as the cells reproduce and differentiate they become distinct and the newly created neurons actually migrate toward their appropriate positions this migration process is guided by glial cells acting as guide wires various chemicals also guide the process by attracting some types of nerve cells and repelling other types in all cases the migrating neurons approach the surface of the developing cortex but the first arriving neurons stop short of the surface later arriving neurons passed these now stationary cells and these late arrivals in turn are passed by even later arrivals as a result the cortex develops from the inside out with layers closer to the surface established later than the deeper layers so far we focus on how the local environment surrounding each neuron guides its differentiation and migration more global features of the environment also play a major role namely the organisms own bodily fluids especially its blood so for example hormones circulating in the fetus's blood have a powerful influence on the development of the child's external anatomy and the development of the nervous system also the blood stream of mammalian embryos is intimately connected to the mother's blood supply and so her blood too becomes part of the embryos environment unfortunately many environmental factors are teratogens factors that can disrupt development teratogen x' include general environmental factors such as air pollution and radiation lead and mercury but also cigarettes alcohol and drugs that the mother may use or viruses she may carry teratogen do not always harm the fetus but they are more likely to do so when they and larger amounts for longer periods of time and when the fetus is growing most rapidly [Music] the average newborn weighs approximately seven and a half pounds although small a newborn is not completely helpless because their reflexes and sensory capacities help them interact with the environment newborn reflexes are inborn automatic responses to particular forms of stimulation they are crucial to survival as they help the newborn survive until it's capable of more complex behaviors they usually disappear around four to five months of age here are some examples of reflexes the rooting reflex is the newborns response to anything that touches her cheek when you stroke a baby's cheek she naturally turns her head in that direction and begins to suck the sucking reflex is the automatic unlearned sucking motions that infants do with their mouths also if you put your finger into a newborns hand you will witness the grasping reflex the baby will automatically grasp anything that touches their palms the Moro reflex is the newborns response when they feel like they're falling the baby spreads their arms pulls them back in and usually cries but even at birth the infant's immature brain is ready to support many activities as their senses function quite well from the start infants can discriminate between tones of a different pitch and loudness and they show early preference for their mother's voice over that of a stranger though quite nearsighted newborns can see objects of foot or so away discriminate brightness and color and track and moving stimulus with their eyes what okay what allow me to hold on it we can tell you wait a minute how can we possibly know these things about infants they can understand language to follow instructions they can't talk to tell us that they understand the difference between stimuli they can't even point you might think that some serious high-tech methods must be used but the opposite is actually the case to study perceptual and cognitive abilities of infants habituation procedures are used habituation is the decline in responding to a stimulus once the stimulus has become familiar in habituation experiment a baby might be placed in a highchair and presented with visual stimuli while a video camera records their eye and face movements when the experiment begins a stimulus for example the face of an adult appears in the baby's field of view and the amount of time the baby looks at the faces recorded by the camera then the stimulus is removed for a few seconds before it appears again and the gaze is again measured over time the baby starts to obituary to the face such that each presentation elicits less looking or gazing at the stimulus then a new stimulus for example the face of a different adult or the same face looking in a different direction is presented and the researchers observe whether the gaze time significantly increases if the infant's gaze time increases when a new stimulus is presented this indicates that the baby can differentiate between the two stimuli the trick of this procedure is simply to change the stimulus in controlled ways to see if the baby notices the difference research using the habituation procedure has found that babies can notice changes in colours sounds and even principles of numbers and physics everyone is affected differently by their personal experiences of course but we all share inherent genetic growth tendencies we roll over before we sit we sit before we stand and we stand before we walk the same thing applies to her cognitive development how we learn to think no remember and communicate and if we're going to talk about cognitive development we got to start with a Jean Piaget developmental psychologists extra the NIA Piaget was known for testing children's aptitudes and abilities he became fascinated by the fact that children of a certain age consistently made particular mistakes that older kids and adults didn't and then he theorized that these mistakes and later successes revealed the way that humans go through specific stages of cognitive development in fact pH is most important contribution to understanding cognitive development was the idea that development occurs in unique and distinct stages with each stage occurring at a specific time in a specific sequence and in a way that allows the child to think about the world using new capacities Piaget argue that children do not just passively learn but also actively try to make sense of their worlds as they learn and mature children develop schemas patterns of knowledge and long-term memory that help them remember organize and respond to information when children experience new things they attempt to reconcile the new knowledge with existing schemas he believed that children used two distinct methods in doing so assimilation and accommodation when children employed simulation the use already developed schemas to understand new information if children have learned a schema for horses they may call the striped animal they see at the zoo a horse rather than a zebra in this case children label the new information with existing knowledge accommodation on the other hand involves learning new information and thus changing the schema when a mother says no honey that's a zebra not horse the child may adapt the schema to fit the new stimulus learning that there are different types of four-legged animals but our knowledge base grows in ways that are much more complex than just those two steps at Peter I knew that he went on to devise a four stage theory of cognitive development that describes how we learn in different phases of our lives he called stage 1 the sensory motor stage from birth on to about age 2 this is the time when babies experience the world through their senses and actions touching grabbing looking hearing putting things in their mouth at this stage Piaget observed that younger babies have to see something to know it exists he realized that infants typically look at a new toy with delight but if the toy disappears from view they show a little concern at a slightly later age infants might show signs of distress when the toy disappears but they still make no effort to retrieve it at about eight months infants do start to search for toys that have been hidden but even then they're searching shows a peculiar limitation suppose that a nine month old sees an experimenter hide a toy monkey under a cover located to the child's right the child will happily push the cover off and snatch up the monkey the experimenter now repeats the process a few times always hiding the monkey under the same cover to the child's right again and again the child pulls the cover off and retrieves the monkey but now the experimenter slightly changes the procedure very slowly and in full view of the child she hides the toy in a different place say under a cover to the child's left the child closely watches her every movement and then does exactly what he did before he searches under the cover on the right even though he saw the experimenter hide the toy another place just a moment earlier this phenomenon is called the a not B effect where a designates the place where the object was first hidden and B is the place where it was hidden last why does this error occur KJ argued that the nine-month-old still has not grasped the fact that the object's existence is independent of his own actions so the child believes that he's reaching toward place a where he found the toy previously is as much a part of the monkey as the monkey's tail is in effect then the child is not really searching for the monkey he's searching for the monkey that I find on the right according to Piaget a major accomplishment of the sensorimotor period is coming to understanding that objects exist on their own even when they are not reached for seeing heard or felt Piaget held that what makes this accomplishment possible is the infant's increasingly sophisticated schemas in this way object permanence is considered one of the major achievements of the sensory motor stage the second of Fiji's phases of development is the pre-operational stage and he believed it began around age 2 it carried on through age 6 or 7 the pre-operational stage is marked by a child's ability to mentally represent objects and events with words and images and they're big into animism now and they believe that their favorite teddy bear Batman or stuffed zebra not horse has feelings and opinions during this stage children begin to use language and to think more abstractly about objects but their understanding is more intuitive and without much ability to deduce your reason the thinking is pre-operational meaning that the child lacks the ability to operate on or transform objects mentally in one study that showed the extent of this inability researchers showed children a room within a small doll house inside the room a small toy was visible behind a small couch the researchers took the children to another library which is an exact replica of the dollhouse room but full-sized okay Charlotte can you come fine big Snoopy remember big Snoopy's hiding in the same place in his room where little Snoopy siding when children who are about two and a half years old or asked to find the toy they didn't know where to look they were simply unable to make the transition across the change in a room size remember big Snoopy's in the same place when little Snoopy siding was in the same place little Snoopy is you know I think he's back there somewhere let's just see if you can find him back there three year-old children on the other hand immediately look for the toy behind the couch they were improving their operational skills you watch while I hide little Snoopy I'm hiding him right there okay he's hiding here now I'm gonna take big Snoopy and I'm gonna take big snippy and hide him in the same place in his big new okay okay Mario big snip he's hiding remember he's hiding in the same place in his big room for little Snoopy can you find him I'm finding Snoopy let's see where he is the inability of young children to view transitions also leads them to be egocentric the ability to take another person's viewpoint increases rapidly during the pre-operational stage another revealing example of pre-operational thought is the young child's apparent failure to conserve one procedure demonstrating this failure uses two identical glasses which stand side by side and are filled with the same amount of liquid I say thing those two are the same now yeah we're gonna take the blue water from this glass pour it this glass now does this glass have more water does this glass have more water or are they the same this one has more water can you tell me why okay that's higher than that in the pre-operational period children also failed tests that depend on the conservation of number have more quarters does this row have more quarters or are they the same it's say the same okay now watch now does this row have more quarters does this row have more quarters or are they the same code that one has more quarters why is that awkward hey crank it why do preschool children fail to conserve according to Piaget part of the problem is their inability to interrelate different dimensions of a situation to conserve liquid quantity for example the children must first comprehend that there are two relevant factors the height and width of the glass they must then appreciate that a decrease in the columns height is accompanied by an increase in its width so the children must be able to attend to both dimensions simultaneously and relate the dimensions to each other PJ's third stage of cognitive development is the concrete operational stage around ages 6 to 12 in this stage kids are starting to think logically about concrete events that they've experienced children now grasp the fact that changes in one aspect of a situation can be compensated by changes in some other aspects they're also able to transform their own mental representations in a variety of ways and understand for example what would happen if the liquid will pour back into its original glass but according to Piaget children's intellectual capacities are still limited in an important way they can apply their mental operations only to concrete objects or events it's not until age 11 or 12 that formal operations begin this is a stage marked by the ability to think in abstract terms and to use scientific and philosophical lines of thought children in the formal operational stage are better able to system out of test alternative ideas to determine their influences on outcomes for instance rather than haphazardly changing different aspects of a situation that allow no clear conclusions to be drawn they systematically make changes in one thing at a time and observe what difference that particular change makes they learn to use deductive reasoning and become capable of imagining situations that might be despite the tremendous impact of Piaget his four stage moral on our thinking about development it has also been criticized for oversimplifying things and for being too rigid and how it classifies certain abilities by age today for example researchers have detected these phases at earlier ages than PA ever did like some types of object permanence have been observed in babies as young as three months in spite of many updates to PJ's theory there's no doubt he's one of the most influential developmental psychologists in history and that his work remains relevant to this day but cognitive skills are only part of the changes that are occurring during childhood equally crucial is the development of the child's social skills the ability to understand predict and create bonds with the other people in their environments one of the important milestones in the child social development is learning about his or her own self existence this self-awareness is known as consciousness and the content of consciousness is known as the self-concept the self-concept is a representation or schema that contains knowledge about us including our beliefs about our personality traits physical characteristics abilities values goals and roles as well as the knowledge that we exist as individuals some animals have at least a primitive sense of self including chimpanzees orangutans and perhaps dolphins in one study researchers painted a dot on the foreheads of anesthetized chimpanzees and then placed each animal in a cage with a mirror when the chimps woke up and looked in the mirror they touched the dots on their faces and not the dots on the faces in the mirror these action suggests that the chimps understood that they were looking at themselves and not other animals infants who have a similar dot painted on their foreheads recognized themselves in a mirror in the same way by about 18 months of age by age two the infant becomes aware of his or her gender by age for self descriptions are likely to be based on physical features like hair color and possessions and by about age six the child is able to understand basic emotions and concepts of traits being able to make statements like I'm a nice person soon after by about age five or six they begin to make comparisons with other children a process known as social comparison for example a child might describe himself as being faster than one boy but slower than another psychological development also occurs as children form relationships interact with others and manage their feelings forming healthy attachments is very important and is the major social milestone of infancy the emotional bonds that we develop with those whom we feel closest and particularly the bonds the infant develops with the mother or primary caregiver are referred to as attachment studies by the developmental psychologist John Bowlby and others in the 1950s showed that children and orphanages did not develop normally they were usually sickly emotionally slow to respond and generally unmotivated these observations helped make it clear that normal infant development requires successful attachment to a caregiver in one classic study showing the importance of attachment Wisconsin University psychologist Harry and Margaret Harlow investigated the responses of young monkeys separated from their biological mothers to two surrogate fake mothers introduced to their cages one mother the wire mother consisted of a round wooden head and a mesh of cold metal wires with a bottle of milk from which the babies could drink the second mother was a foam rubber form wrapped in a heated terry cloth blanket with no milk the Harlow's found that although the infant monkeys went to the wire mother for food they overwhelmingly preferred and spent significantly more time with the warm terry cloth mother that provided no food but did provide comfort this is the apparatus we use that looks diabolical that just way the baby monkey feels about [Applause] we'll do a similar situation contact with the mother changes his entire personality the Harlow studies confirm that babies have social as well as physical needs poet monkeys and human babies need a secure base that allows them to feel safe from this base they can gain the confidence they need to venture out and explore their worlds developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth measured an infant's attachment to his or her parent the test is called the strange situation during the procedure a parent and the infant are first left alone while the infant explores the room full of toys then a strange adult enters the room and talks for a minute to the parent after which the parent leaves the room the stranger stays with the infant for a few minutes and then the parent again enters and the stranger leaves a child with a secure attachment style usually explores freely while the mother is present and engages with the stranger the child may be upset when the mother departs but is also happy to see the mother return a child with an ambivalent attachment style is wary about the situation in general particularly the stranger and stays close or even clings to the mother rather than exploring the toys when the mother leaves the child is extremely distressed and is ambivalent when she returns a child with an avoidant attachment style will avoid or ignore the mother showing little emotion when the mother departs or returns the child may run away from the mother when she approaches the child will not explore very much regardless of who is there and the stranger will not be treated much differently from the mother finally a child with a disorganized attachment style seems to have no consistent way of coping with the stress of the strange situation the child may cry during the separation but avoid the mother when she returns or the child may approach the mother but freeze or fall to the floor although some cultural differences in attachment Styles have been found research has also found that the proportion of children who fall into each of the attachment categories is relatively constant across cultures you might wonder whether difference is an attachment style are determined more by the child's nature or more by the parents nurture most developmental psychologists believe that socialization nurture is primary arguing that a child becomes securely attached when the parent is available and able to meet the needs of the child in secure styles occur when the parent is insensitive and responds inconsistently to the child's needs it's important to note though that the attachment behavior of a child is also likely influenced at least in part by temperament the innate personality traits of the infant some children are warm friendly and responsive whereas others tend to be more irritable less manageable and difficult to console these differences may also play a role in attachment taken together it seems safe to say that attachment like all of their developmental processes is affected by an interplay of genetic and environmental influences a number of studies have demonstrated that these working models of attachment do seem to have important consequences for example children who were securely attached as infants are more likely as teenagers to have close friends and are less likely to suffer from anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence another major developmental task beginning in childhood and continuing into adolescence is understanding right from wrong psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg believed that moral development like cognitive development follows a series of stages to develop this theory Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to people of all ages and analyzed their answers to find evidence of their particular stage of moral development here's Kohlberg's best known moral dilemma commonly known as the Heinz dilemma a woman in Europe was near death from a rare kind of cancer there was one drug that the doctors thought might save her but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug costs him to make he charged two thousand bucks for a small dose of the drug the sick woman's husband Heinz went to everyone he knew to borrow money but he could only get together about a thousand bucks he told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later but the druggist said no Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife should the husband have done that after presenting people with this and various other moral dilemmas Kohlberg reviewed people's responses and placed them in different stages of moral reasoning according to Kohlberg an individual progresses from the capacity for preconventional morality before age 9 to the capacity for conventional morality during early adolescence and toward attaining post conventional morality which only a few fully achieved Kohlberg placed in the highest stage responses that reflected the reasoning that Heinz should steal the drug because his wife's life is more important than the pharmacist making money the value of a human life overrides the pharmacists greed many psychologists agree with Kohlberg's theory of moral development point out that moral reasoning is very different from moral behavior sometimes what we say we would do in a situation is not what we would actually do in that situation but anyway how does this theory apply to males and females Kohlberg felt that more males and females achieve the highest stage of moral development oopsy-daisy he went on to note that a women seemed to be deficient in their moral reasoning abilities and now there's a recording of me saying that these ideas were not well received by Carol Gilligan a research assistant of Kohlberg who consequently developed her own ideas of moral development in her groundbreaking book a different voice psychological theory and women's development Gilligan criticized her former mentors theory because it was based only on upper-class white males she argued that women are not deficient in reasoning she proposed that males and females simply reason differently girls and women focus more on staying connected and the importance of interpersonal relationships therefore in the Heinz dilemma many girls and women respond the Heinz should not steal the medicine the reasoning is that if he steals the medicine he's arrested and is put in jail and then he and his wife will be separated and she could die while he is in prison this work highlights the importance of considering individual differences when examining any aspect of development development proceed through the interaction among physical cognitive and socio emotional factors just as influences of nature and nurture are evident only through their interaction so physical cognitive and socio-emotional development are interwoven to constitute the whole person [Music] you