© 2014 john wiley & sons, inc. all rights reserved. studying development physical development...

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Studying Development• Physical Development• Cognitive Development• Social-Emotional Development


Things You’ll Learn in Chapter 9Q1 Are our childhood friends’ predictions of our adult

personality better than our own self-ratings?

Q2Does prenatal exposure to smoke increase the risk of obesity later in life?

Q3 Why do teenagers seem to sleep so much?

Q4 Do babies learn faster when they’re sitting up than when they’re lying down?

Q5 Do today’s college students want women to propose marriage?

STUDYING DEVELOPMENT


• Developmental psychology = the study of age-related changes in behavior and mental processes and stages of growth, from conception to death

Theoretical Issues


Nature or Nurture? • How do both genetics (nature) and life experience

(nurture) influence development?• Nature says development is governed by automatic,

genetically predetermined signals– Maturation = the continuing influence of heredity throughout

development; age-related physical and behavioral changes characteristic of a species

– Critical period = time of special sensitivity to specific types of learning that shapes the capacity for future development

Three Major Issues


Stages or continuity?• Some developmental theories feature

stages that are discrete and relatively different from each other

• Other theorists believe development follows a continuous pattern with gradual but steady and measureable changes.

Three Major Issues


Stability or change?• Psychologists who emphasize stability say

measurements of personality in childhood are important predictors of adult personality

• Psychologists who emphasize change disagree

Three Major Issues


• How to study the entire human life span?• Cross-sectional design = A research technique that

measures individuals of various ages at one point in time and provides information about age difference

• Longitudinal design = A research design that measures a single individual or group of individuals over an extended period and gives information about age changes.

Research Approaches


Research Approaches


Martin-Storey et al., 2012• 1976-1978: Researchers asked grade-school children to rate

themselves and their peers on personality factors like likeability, aggression, social withdrawal

• 1999-2003: Researchers asked same participants to complete tests again.

• Peer ratings were better than self-ratings in predicting adult personality


Is this research cross-sectional or longitudinal?

Q1 Are our childhood friends’ predictions of our adult personality better than our own self-ratings?

Consider these results: • Cross-sectional studies show

that intelligence and reasoning peak in early adulthood and then decline

• Longitudinal studies show gradual increase in intelligence and reasoning until age 60 and then decline

Longitudinal vs. Cross-Sectional


What might explain the

difference in the results?

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT


• Germinal Period: From conception to implantation

Prenatal Development


• Embryonic Period: From implantation to 8 weeks

• Fetal Period: From 8 weeks to birth

• Placenta connects fetus to mother’s uterus; serves as link for food and waste; screens out some (but not all!) harmful substances

• Teratogen = An environmental agent that causes damage during prenatal development– Greek word “teras” means “malformation”– Crosses placental barrier

Prenatal Development


Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were more likely to be obese as adults, perhaps due to increased preference for fatty foods from nicotine exposure in the developing brain (Haghighi et al., 2013)

Q2 Does prenatal exposure to smoke increase the risk of obesity later in life?

Environmental Dangers


• Prenatal brain development

• Brain growth in first 2 years

Early Childhood: Brain Development


• Motor development = orderly, observable emergence of active movement skills

Early Childhood: Motor Development


What factors might affect the

speed with which a baby reaches each milestone?

• Hearing is developed, with preference for mother’s voice• Smell and taste are developed, with ability to distinguish

among sweet, salty, and bitter• Touch and pain are highly developed (example: rooting

reflex)• Vision is poorly developed, with vision worse

than 20/200 at birth; vision improves within 6 months to 20/100 and by age 2 is at near-adult acuity

Early Childhood: Sensory and Perceptual Development


• Adolescence is the psychological period between childhood and adulthood

• Puberty = the biological changes during adolescence that lead to an adult-sized body and sexual maturity

• Growth spurt includes rapid increase in size, weight, and reproductive structures

Adolescence


Puberty is triggered by changes in the brain and the release of certain hormones that occur only during deep sleep (Shaw et al., 2012)

Q3 Why do teenagers seem to sleep so much?

• Adolescence in the United States is typically the teenage years

• Concept of adolescence varies across cultures• In non-industrialized cultures, children assume

adult responsibilities as soon as possible, with no need for slow transition from childhood to adulthood


Adulthood: Middle age

Women• Menopause = the cessation

of the menstrual cycle; occurs between 45 and 55

• Decreased production of estrogen produces physical and psychological changes

• Does not cause serious psychological mood swings, loss of sexual interest, or depression

Men• Gradual decline in hormone

levels• Can continue to father

children into 70s or 80s• Male climacteric or

andropause = weight gain, loss of muscle strength, decline in sexual responsiveness, hair loss

• Midlife crisis is myth


• Gradual changes in heart, arteries and sensory receptors

• Cardiac output decreases, blood pressure increases• Visual acuity and depth perception decline; hearing

acuity declines; smell sensitivity declines• Some decline in cognitive and memory skills

Adulthood: After middle age


• Ageism = prejudice or discrimination based on physical age; similar to racism and sexism in its negative stereotypes

• Study of n = 1000 older adults found increase in wellbeingwith age, contrary to negativestereotypes (Jeste et al., 2012)

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Adulthood: After middle age


COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT


• Schemas = the cognitive structures, framework, or “blueprints” of knowledge, regarding objects, people and situations, which grow and differentiate with experience

• Assimilation = applying existing mental patterns (schemas) to new information; new information is incorporated (assimilated) into existing schemas

• Accommodation = the process of adjusting (accommodating) existing mental patterns (schemas) or developing new ones to fit better with new information

Piaget: the Basics


• Remember, stage theories say development occurs in discrete stages. Piaget said each stage is required and leads to mastery of later stages

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development


• Babies were better at distinguishing between objects they first explored while sitting upright than when theywere lying down

• Why? The seated position may make babies better able to reach for, hold, and manipulate objects

Q4 Do babies learn faster when they’re sitting up than when they’re lying down?

• Birth to approximately age 2• Schemas are developed through

sensory and motor activities• Object permanence = Piagetian term for an

infant’s recognition that objects (or people) continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched directly– Gained during sensory/motor stage

Sensorimotor Stage


• Roughly ages 2 to 7• Ability to employ significant language

and to think symbolically• Thinking is egocentric = the inability to take the

perspective of another person; assumes other see, hear, feel, and think exactly as they do

• Thinking is animistic = belief that all things are living (or animated)

• Lacks operations (reversible mental processes) – thus “preoperational”

Preoperational Stage


• Beginning approximately age 7• Child can perform mental

operations on concrete objects andunderstand reversibility and conservation, but thinking is tied to concrete, tangible objects and events

• Conservation = the understanding that certain physical characteristics (such as volume) remain unchanged, even though appearances may change

Concrete Operational Stage


• Beginning around age 11• Can now apply operations to

abstract concepts and hypotheticalsituations

• Imaginary audience = a form of egocentrism where teenagers tend to believe everyone is thinking about them, rather than wrapped up in their own concerns

• Personal fable = adolescents’ belief that they alone have insights or difficulties that no one understands or experiences

Formal Operational Stage


Unique and invulnerable? What could go wrong?

• Mood swings, poor decisions, risky behaviors previously attributed to personal fable may now be tied to less developed frontal lobe in adolescents

Personal Fable or Brain Development?


• Vygotsky emphasized sociocultural influence on child’s development, especially the role of adult as instructor

• Zone of proximal development (ZPD) – the area between what children can accomplish on their own and what they can accomplish with the help of others who are more competent.

Vygosky vs. Piaget


• Criticisms of Piaget• Piaget underestimated abilities– Research shows infants achieve object

permanence earlier than thought– Research shows babies and preschoolers exhibit

non-egocentric responses• Piaget underestimated genetic

and cultural influences

Vygosky vs. Piaget


SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT


• Attachment = a strong emotional bond with special others that endures over time

• Harlow’s studies of monkeys raised by either a “cloth mother” or “wire mother” showed monkeys preferred contact with cloth mother

• Contact comfort, pleasurable tactilesensations, is a powerful contributorto attachment

Attachment


• Mary Ainsworth • “Strange situation” observed how infants

responded to the presence or absence of their mother and a stranger in an unfamiliar setting

Attachment


Parenting Styles


• Consider this situation:– In Europe, a cancer-ridden woman was near

death, but an expensive drug existed that might save her. The woman’s husband, Heinz, begged the druggist to sell the drug cheaper or to let him pay later. But he refused. Heinz became desperate and broke into his store and stole it.

• Was Heinz right? Why or why not?

Moral Development



Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

• Do people high on Kohlberg’s scale act more morally than others?– Some research shows a person’s moral identity is a

good predictor of behavior in real-world situations (Johnston, Sherman, & Grusec, 2013)

– Other research shows situational factors are better predictors of moral behavior (Bandura, 1986, 1992, 2008)

Assessing Kohlberg’s Theory


• Psychosocial stages = Erikson’s theory that individuals pass through eight developmental stages, each involving a specific crisis that must be successfully resolved

Personality Development


• Identity vs. role confusion• Intimacy vs. isolation• Generativity vs. stagnation• Ego integrity vs. despair

• Trust vs. mistrust• Autonomy vs. shame/doubt• Initiative vs. guilt• Industry vs. inferiority

• How would you be different if you were a member of the other sex?

• First, some definitions:• Sex = biological characteristic determined at the

moment of conception• Gender = psychological and sociocultural meanings

added to biological maleness or femaleness• Gender roles = societal expectations for

“appropriate” male and female attitudes and behaviors

Sex and Gender Influences


Gender-Role Development


• Androgyny = exhibiting both masculine and feminine traits; from the Greek andro for “male” and gyn for “female”

• Blending of masculine and feminine traits leads to higher self-esteem and more success in complex society (Bem, 1981, 1993)

• Gender roles are becoming less rigidly defined

Androgyny


• Both men and women strongly prefer traditional gender roles when it comes to marriage proposals, even at a relatively liberal university in California

• More than 60% of women surveyed were at least “somewhat willing” to take their husband’s name (Robnett & Leaper, 2013)

• “Benevolent sexism” like this looks positive on the surface but contributes to power differentials between men and women (Lasnier, 2013)

Androgyny


Q5 Do today’s college students want women to propose marriage?

© 2014 john wiley & sons, inc. all rights reserved. studying development physical development...

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