DEVELOPMENT
Questions to Ponder
1. How is development steered by genes
and by experience?
2. Is development a gradual, continuous
process or a series of discrete stages?
Prenatal Development
Zygote – the fertilized egg (conception to
2 weeks)
Embryo – the developing human
organism (2 weeks – 8 weeks)
Fetus – The developing human organism
Time Lapse: Plant Sprouting
Prenatal Development
Teratogens – harmful chemicals and
viruses
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) –
Newborns
Why do we look at objects 8-10
inches away?
Knows mother’s voice
Within days … knows mother’s smell
Preference for faces
Infancy and Childhood
Explosive nerve cells – greater complexity
(developing brain cortex)
Infancy and Childhood
Motor Development (siting up, crawling,
walking)
Cognitive Development (thinking,
knowing, remembering, and
Piaget
Believed a child’s mind develops through a
series of stages
Stages are uncomprehendable to those in
different stages (adults don’t think like
children and vice versa)
Piaget
Schemas –a concept or framework that organizes and
interprets information… ( like a lens) (“cats and dogs” “concepts of love”)
Assimilation – interpreting experience using out
existing schema
Accommodation – adapting our current
understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information .
Theory of Mind – people’s ideas about their own and
others’ mental states – about their feelings,
*Piaget Stages of Cognitive
Development (page 420)
Sensorimotor stage
Preoperational stage
Sensorimotor – (Ages birth to
nearly 2 years of age)
Making sense of the world through the
senses (touching, grasping, hearing,
tasting …
Lack Object permanence
Preoperational Stage – (2 to
about 6/7)
Too young to perform mental operations
Lack concept of conservation
Experience egocentrism (difficult perceiving things from another’s point of view)
Using intuitive rather than logical reasoning
Concrete Operational Stage
(6/7 -12)
Thinking logically about concrete events
Understand conservation
Formal Operations (Ages 12 +)
Abstract Reasoning
Potential for mature moral reasoning
Social Development
Attachment: An emotional tie
1950s – Harlow experiment with rhesus monkeys
Critical Period – “Are You My Mother”: an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s
exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produce proper development
Imprinting - the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life.
Mere exposure effect (We are creatures of habit☺ -
Attachment
Mary Ainsworth (1979) – studied attachment
differences
Strange Situation Experiment
Secure and Insecure Attachment
Sensitive Response mothers vs. insensitive unresponsive mothers
Erikson believed that securely attached children
Ainsworth – Attachment Styles
* Secure Attachment: (66%)
* Insecure Attachment– 2 Types
1. Avoidant Attachment: (21%)
Self Recognition/Self Awareness
After prolonged exposure to mirrors, several species – chimps, orangutans, gorillas, dolphins, elephants, and
magpies have demonstrated self-recognition of their mirror image.
For Humans this happens at about 15 to 18 months old. Beginning at self-recognition, children’s self-concept
gradually strengthens
By the time you are 8 or 10 your self image is quite stable,
Children who form a positive self-concept are more
Self Concept
An understanding and assessment of who one is
We develop this by age 8
Self esteem is how one feels about who they are
About 15-18 months we recognize ourselves in a mirror
Positive self concept = more confident,
Parenting Styles
Authoritarian – impose rules, expect obedience Permissive – submit to children’s desires (little
punishment)
Authoritative – both demanding and responsive.
Set rules, enforce rules, but also encourage open discussion
A. Less socially skilled, low self-esteem B. Aggressive and immature
Gender – Males vs. Females
pages 435 – 441)
Temperaments (aggression and social power) Social Connectedness
Brains
Gender identity – sense of being male or female
Gender typed – the acquisition of a masculine or feminine role
Gender Schema – lens through which you view your
experiences
Social Learning Theory – Bandura socialization; we
Brain Development
Marsenk Rosenzweig and David Krech
Rats living in enriched environments had thicker brain cortexes
Weight increased 7-10%
Number of synapses increased 20%
Pruning – unused neural pathways weaken and
Adolescence
“Tensions between biological
Adolescence
Puberty
Pruning happens
Frontal lobe development – growth of
myelin
Though – the frontal lobe lags behind the
limbic system and hormonal surge …
*Developing Morality – Page 449
Lawrence Kohlberg
Preconventional Morality – (before age 9) obey rules to
avoid punishment
Conventional Morality – (by early adolescence upholding
laws and social rules simply because they are the laws and the rules
Postconventional morality – (with abstract reasoning of
formal operational thought) Actions are judge “right” because they flow from people’s rights or from self-denied, basic
ethical principles.
Cultural Distinctions???
*Erik Erikson (1963) – Stages
of Psychosocial Development -
Page 451
Each stage of life has its own psychosocial task, a crisis that needs resolution.
Forming an Identity
Through resolving the psychosocial tasks one
forms a consistent and comfortable sense of who one is – an identity.
Identity – our sense of self
“Most teens are herd animals.
They talk, dress, and act more
like their peers than their
Adulthood
Our physical abilities – muscular
strength, reaction time, sensory
True or False – Page 457
Older people become more susceptible to short-term illness.
During old age many of the brain’s neurons die.
If they live to be 90 or older, most people eventually become senile.
Recognition memory – the ability to identify things previously experienced – declines with age.
Health
Immune System
Antibodies
Brain atrophy (memory areas, frontal lobe – hence
frank comments ☺
Exercise helps the brain ☺
Alzheimer’s (diminishing sense of smell,
Intelligence
Recognition memory is still strong / recall is more difficult
Slow to process information but web of existing knowledge helps catch up
Crystallized Intelligence – our accumulated
knowledge and verbal skills; tend to increase with age
Fluid intelligence – Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly (tends to decrease during late
Intimacy
“Given repeated exposure to someone after
childhood, you may form a bond
(infatuation) with almost any available
person who has a roughly similar
Maturity
“At twenty we worry about what others think of us. At forty we don’t care what others think of us. At sixty we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all” (469).
“Most older people sense that life, on balance, has been mostly good “ (469).
