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Developmental Psychology Notes

  • Nature/Nurture - How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the       nurture we receive) influence our behavior? 

  • Continuity/Stages - Is development a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages?

  • Stability/Change - Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do we become different persons as we age.

Prenatal Development and the Newborn

  • Zygote, Embryonic, and Fetal - The three stages that the prenatal development goes through

Zygote - Fertilized cell with 100 cells, around 14 days, the zygote turns into an embryo (a and b).

  • Around 9 weeks, the embryo turns into a fetus (c and d). Teratogens are chemicals or viruses that can enter the placenta and harm the developing fetus.

Teratogens

  • Substances that cross the placental barrier can prevent the fetus from developing normally.

  • Includes: radiation, toxic chemicals, viruses, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, etc.

    • EX. fetal alcohol syndrome

Infancy and Childhood

  • Infancy - Newborn to toddler

  • Childhood - toddler to teenage

Developing Brain

  • When the brain is developing, it over produces neurons. Around 27 million peaks at 7 months, these neurons pruned to 23 billion at birth. Neuronal spurt is in the frontal lobe enabling the individual for rational thought.

Reflexes present at birth

  • Rooting reflex - When one touches the babies cheeks, the baby should turn their head towards the touch and try to eat

  • Grasping reflex - Baby will try to grasp any object placed in their palm or foot pad

  • Moro reflex - When startled, a baby will fling it’s body outward and then retract to become as small as possible

  • Babinskin reflex - Will spread their toes when foot is stroked

Motor Development

  • Infants began to roll over first followed by sitting unsupported, crawling, and finally walking. Experience has little effect on this sequence.

Maturation and Infant Memory

  • Earliest age of conscious memory is around 3 ½ years

Cognitive Development - “We learn from our mistakes.”

Schemas “Schemata”

  • Concepts or mental frameworks that people use to organize and interpret information

  • A person’s “picture of the world”

Assimilation

  • Interpreting a new experience within the context of existing schemas

  • The new experience is similar to other previous experiences

    • You take what you know and make assumptions

Accommodation

  • Adapting current schemas to incorporate new information

  • The new experience is so novel the person’s schema must be changed to accommodate it

Sensorimotor Stage

  • Children younger than 6 months do not have object permanence

    • Objects out of sight = out of mind

Preoperational Stage

  • Children from 2 to around 6-7 years, children are in the preoperational stage – too young to perform mental operations.

Egocentrism

  • Preschool children are egocentric

  • Cannot perceive things from another’s POV

Concrete Operational Stage

  • 6 to 7 year olds grasp conservation problems and mentally pour liquids back and forth into glasses of different shapes conserving their quantities.

Formal Operational Stage

  • Around age 12, our reasoning ability expands from concrete thinking to abstract thinking.

  • Some people do not reach this stage in all areas throughout

Stranger Anxiety

  • Fear of strangers infants commonly display

  • Begins around 8 months of age

Origins of Attachment

  • Infants bonded with surrogates because of bodily contact, not nourishment

    • Deprivation of attention from mother caused long-term effects on monkey’s

      • There are critical periods in some animals (like goslings) where imprinting on the animal allows cause of attachment

  • Children become - Withdrawn, frightened, and unable to develop speech when they aren’t able to form attachments

Attachment Differences with Mary Ainsworth

  • When placed in strange situations, 60% of children express secure attachment.

    • They explore their environment during the presence of their mothers

  • 30% show insecure attachment, more likely will cling to their mothers/caregivers and less likely to explore

Insecure Attachment

  • Monkey’s experience anxiety if their terry-cloth mother was removed

Separation Anxiety

  • Anxiety peaks at 13 months, no matter where the child is.

Prolonged Deprivation

  • When deprived from support, children are at risk for physical, psychological, and social problems.

Child-Rearing Practices

  • Authoritarian - Parents impose rules and expect obedience

  • Permissive - Parents submit to children’s demands

  • Authoritative - Parents are demanding but responsive to their children

Eirk Eirkson and psychosocial development

  • Personality is influenced by our experiences with others

  • Most important

    • Trust vs. Mistrust (birth to 18 months)

    • Identity vs. Role confusion (adolescence)

    • Intimacy vs. Isolation (early adulthood)

    • Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood)

Self-Concept

  • One’s identity and personal worth emerges gradually around 6 months

  • Around 15-18 months, they can recognize themselves in the mirror

  • By 8-10 years, self-image is stable

Adolescence

  • Adolescent development

  • Moral development theory

Physical Development

  • Puberty begins for females around 11 and males around 13

Brain Development

  • Frontal Cortex - Grows myelin which speeds up nerve conduction

  • Cognitive Development - Gives a new level of social awareness

    • Own thinking

    • What others are thinking

    • What others think about them

Developing Reasoning Power

  • Judging good from evil, truth and justice, and think about God in deeper terms

Developing Morality

  • Moral Thinking

  1. Preconventional Morality: Before age 9, children show morality to avoid punishment or gain reward.

    1. How it affects them

  2. Conventional Morality: By early adolescence social rules and laws are upheld at their own sake. 

    1. What others will think

  3. Postconventional Morality: Affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows personally perceived ethical principles

    1. Rights and values involved in choices

Carol Gilligan

  • Criticized Kohlberg because he only looked at male subjects

  • Contended that males and females respond differently to situations

    • Men look at more absolutes

    • Women are more relative and relationship based

Forming an Identity

  • Trying out different selves before settling into a comfortable identity

Parent and Peer Influence

  • Teens become independent of their parents as they grow older, they still relate to their parents but don’t have that same dependence as they once did

Adulthood

  • Social Clock

    • Culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement

      • “Best” timing for certain life events

      • Timing varies from culture to culture

Physical Development 

  • Peak physical performance occurs around 15-18 years of age, which then declines for most of us

Middle Adulthood

  • Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory abilities, and cardiac output begin to decline after mid-twenties

  • At 50, women go through menopause. Men experience decreased levels of hormones and fertility

Old Age

  • Motor Abilities

    • At 70, motor abilities decline

  • Dementia

    • Increased age = risk of dementia

  • Alzhemimer’s Disease

    • Increases with age, in the early stages it shows more MRI activity in the brain than normals of the same age

Aging and Memory

  • Fluid intelligence = ability to reason speedily

  • Crystalline intelligence =

Death and Dying

  • Grief has different stages, one experiences grief compared to others

    • Denial

    • Anger

    • Bargaining

    • Depression

    • Acceptance