Chapter 5Developing

Through the Life Span

Developmental Psychology

• A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.

• Infancy old age

3 Major Issues in Developmental Psychology

• How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and our experience (the nurture we receive) influence our development?

Nature/Nurture

• Is development a gradual, continuous process like riding an escalator, or does it proceed like a sequence of stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder?

Continuity/Stages

• Do our early personality traits persist throughout life, or do we become different persons as we age?

Stability/Change

PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEWBORN

Conception

• Begins when a mature egg is released from a woman’s ovary.

• When the sperm reaches the egg it releases a digestive enzyme that eats away at the protective coating surrounding the egg.

• When one sperm cell penetrates the egg’s surface, all other sperm cells are blocked.

• After about half a day , the nuclei of the sperm and the egg fuse.

VIDEO LINK

• Option 1• http://www.thevisualmd.com/videos/result/from_co

nception_to_birth• Option 2• http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvikQMfKPxM&feature=related

3 Stages of Prenatal Development

Zygote• Contraception to 2 weeks

Embryo• 2 weeks through 8 weeks

Fetus• 9 weeks to birth

Prenatal Development• Zygote – the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period

of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo• Embryo – the developing human organism from

about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month

• Fetus – the developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth

Factors That Effect Development• Genetic• Environmental • Teratogens – agents, such as chemicals and viruses,

that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm

• Fetal Alcohol syndrome – physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking.

The Competent Newborn

• Automatic Responses We Are Born With• How Babies Feed• William James’ “blooming, buzzing confusion” • What Can my Baby see, hear, smell, and think?• Novelty-Preference Procedure

INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

Brain Development

• A developing brain forms nearly one-quarter million nerve cells per minute.

• A developing brain cortex overproduces neurons, the number peaks at about 28 weeks, gradually subsides to a stable 23 billion when you are born.

• At birth, you have all the brain cells you will ever need in your lifetime.

Brain Development cont.

• Association areas – parts of the brain linked with thinking, memory, and language – are the last to develop.

• Maturation – biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.

Motor Development

• The sequence of motor development is universal.• Roll, sit unsupported, creep/ crawl, stand, walk, run.• Identical twins usually begin sitting up and walking

on nearly the same day.• What the conscious mind does not know and cannot

express in words, the nervous system somehow remembers.

Cognitive Development

• Cognition – all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

• Somewhere in you journey from egg hood to personhood you become conscious.

• A child's brain is not a miniature model of an adult’s.

Cognitive Development cont.

• A child’s mind develops through a series of stages; from the newborn’s simple reflexes to the adult’s abstract reasoning power [ability].

• Piaget’s core idea is that the driving force behind our intellectual progression is an unceasing struggle to make sense of our experiences.

• Schema – a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Cognitive Development cont.• Assimilation – interpreting our new experience in

terms of our existing schemas.• Accommodation – adapting our current

understandings (schemas)to incorporate new information.

• Sensorimotor stage – the stage during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.

Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking • Object permanence – the awareness that things

continue to exist even when not perceived.

Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking

• Preoperational Stage– Conservation– Egocentrism

• Theory Of Mind• Concrete Operational stage• Formal operational stage• Autism

Social Development

• Infants come to prefer familiar faces and voices.• At approximately 8 moths, infants develop stranger

anxiety. Crying when seeing a strange face, seeking for familiar caregivers

• Children have schemas for familiar faces; when they cannot adapt the new face into these remembered schemas, they become bothered.

Origins of Attachment• By 12 months, infants usually grip tightly to a parent

or guardian when they are either frightened or expect separation.

• Attachment Bond is a powerful survival impulse that keeps infants close to their caregivers. (Found on bottom of page 188)

• Typically infants become attached to those who satisfy their needs according to psychologist research, but this reasoning has been overturned by accidental studies.

Body Contact• University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow,

did an experiment where they bred monkeys in relationship to infants and separated the infant monkeys shortly after they were born. They raised each monkey in different cages with a blanket. They notice when the blankets where gone to be cleaned, the monkeys’ became distressed. This showed that attachment to the blanket contradicted that attachment derives from an association with nourishment. Human infants become attached to parents who are soft, and warm and who rock, feed, and pat.

Familiarity

• Infants and children become familiar with what they know. Children like to reread same books, rewatch same movies and even eating the same foods.

Attachment Differences

• Children play more comfortably when in the presence of their mothers.

• When they are gone they become shy or distressed and may cry out.

• Other infants avoid attachment or show insecure attachment.

Deprivation of Attachment• Babies abused or trapped in situations with no type of

attention can be withdrawn, speechless or frightened.• Harlow monkeys put in isolated environments with no

mother, turned out to be aggressive towards their babies and other adults

• “unloved becomes unloving”• 30% of abusers agree to being abused as children• Traumatic events indented in Brain• Explains why children victim of physical abuse or

witnessing torture, suffer depression, aggression, drugs etc.

Disruption of Attachment

• Separation from family, both humans and monkeys become upset

• Foster care that moved children often prevented attachment and is very disruptive

• Adults can also suffer attachment issues

Does Daycare Affect Attachment?

• New research states quality matters• High quality -warm supportive interaction, and safe,

health, and stimulating environments• Child's temperament, parents sensitivity, family

financial standing, and education level more important than time spent in daycare

Self-Concept

• Major social achievement:• Infancy-Attachment• Childhood-Positive sense of self• by about age 12 most children develop self concept

(understanding and assessment of who they are)• children with positive self concept are • confident, independent, optimistic and • sociable

Parenting Styles

• parents raise children definitely ( spanking VS reasoning)

• investigators identified 3 parenting styles:

Parenting StylesAuthoritarian• Impose Rules• Demand obedience

Permissive• Few demands• Little punishment

Authoritative• Demanding• Responsive

ADOLESCENCE

Adolescence

• Transition from childhood to adulthood• Begins with sexual maturity and ends with

independent adult status• G. Stanley Hall describes adolescence as a period of

'storm and stress'• For many adolescence is a carefree time away

from the adulthood

Bibliography

• Myers, D. G. (2010). Chapter 5: Developing Through the Life Span . In Psychology (9th ed., pp. 173-196). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

• http://cdn2.holytaco.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2010/6/baby%5B1%5D.jpg

• http://r2square.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/old-man.jpg

• http://www.scienceclarified.com/images/uesc_04_img0230.jpg