Myers PSYCHOLOGY Seventh Edition in Modules

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Myers PSYCHOLOGY Seventh Edition in Modules

• Module 8
• Infancy and Childhood
• James A. McCubbin, Ph.D.
• Clemson University
• Worth Publishers

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Infancy and Childhood Physical Development

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

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Infancy and Childhood Physical Development

• Babies only 3 months old can learn that kicking
  moves a mobile--and can retain that learning for
  a month (Rovee-Collier, 1989, 1997).

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Cognitive Development

• Developmental psychologists try to describe how
  children think and evaluate the world.
• The work of Piaget had a great impact in this
  area.
• He developed a theory of cognitive development.

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Cognition
• all the mental activities associated with
  thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
• Schemas are the frameworks that we use to
  organize and interpret information.

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Assimilation
• interpreting ones new experience in terms of
  ones existing schemas
• Accommodation
• adapting ones current understandings (schemas)
  to incorporate new information

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Schema Dogs are four legged animalsScenario
child sees a cat

• Assimilation

• Accommodation

• The child thinks that the cat is a dog.

• The child changes their schema to include both
  dogs and cats as having four legs.

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Schema Everything with wheels is a
truck.Scenario Child is presented with a
bicycle.

• Assimilation

• Accommodation

• He thinks the bicycle is a type of truck.

• He changes his concept of things with wheels to
  include trucks and bikes.

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Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development
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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Object Permanence
• the awareness that things continue to exist even
  when not perceived

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Characteristics of the sensorimotor stage

• The child acts on the environment by knocking
  down blocks, making sounds, finding toes.
• The child sees an object and reaches.
• The child realizes that objects still exist
  although the objects is no longer seen.
• The child cries when the parent is no longer
  present. This is called stranger anxiety.

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Baby Mathematics
• Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants
  stare longer (Wynn, 1992)

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Conservation
• the principle that properties such as mass,
  volume, and number remain the same despite
  changes in the forms of objects

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Conservation Experiments

• Conservation of liquid quantity
• Conservation of mass
• Conservation of area
• Conservation of number

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Infancy and Childhood Cognitive Development

• Egocentrism
• the inability of the preoperational child to take
  anothers point of view
• Theory of Mind
• peoples ideas about their own and others mental
  states- about their feelings, perceptions, and
  thoughts and the behavior these might predict
• Autism
• a disorder that appears in childhood
• Marked by deficient communication, social
  interaction and understanding of others states
  of mind

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Characteristics of the preoperational stage

• The child starts to represent the world
  internally through language.
• The child cannot take another point of view.
• The child thinks all objects have life.
• The child thinks human beings created everything.
• The child uses inaccurate logic by assuming that
  the characteristics of a specific idea can be
  applied to a similar idea birds fly airplanes
  fly birds must be airplanes.
• The child classifies objects by only one trait
  typically color.

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Concrete Operational Stage

• The child can now understand simple operations
  performed on concrete reality.
• They have a mental schema for quantity, mass,
  volume and number.
• Change in shape does not affect quantity.
• They can comprehend math transformations.

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Characteristics of the concrete operational stage

• The child begins to understand that objects can
  change shape without other changes in the
  characteristics.
• The child understands and performs operations
  that go in the other direction.
• The child draws conclusions from a number of
  specific facts.
• The child classifies objects into larger classes
  of objects.
• The child classifies by a number of
  characteristics.

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Formal Operational Stage

• Occurs around adolescence
• Manipulate complex mental representation
• Think in terms of abstractions
• Metacognition

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Characteristics of the Formal Operational stage

• The child thinks abstractly.
• The child hypothesizes.
• The child can get specific facts from a
  generalization.

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Assessing Piaget

• Pros

• Cons

• We learn best when we build on what we already
  know.
• New reasoning abilities require previous
  abilities.
• Children dont reason with adult logic.

• He underestimated children.
• Development is continuous not in stages.
• Children go through the stages more rapidly than
  was estimated.

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Examples

• 1. Jake looks at a string of plastic beads six
  are white and ten are blue. Jake is asked how
  many white beads there are and answers correctly
  six. He is then asked how many plastic beads
  there are and he answers ten.
• Stage
• Age
• Concept

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Social Development

• Stranger Anxiety
• fear of strangers that infants commonly display
• beginning by about 8 months of age
• Attachment
• an emotional tie with another person
• shown in young children by their seeking
  closeness to the caregiver and displaying
  distress on separation

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2. Carrie can solve an algebraic equation.Stage
age - concept

• 3. Pierre loves to play peek-a-boo. He laughs
  when someone puts a blanket over his face and
  then pulls it away.
• Stage age concept.
• 4. Paul sees a piece of ribbon tied in a bow.
  He unties the bow and stretches it to its full
  length. Which is longer they are the same.
• Stage age - concept

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Social Development

• Harlows Surrogate Mother Experiments
• Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable
  cloth mother, even while feeding from the
  nourishing wire mother

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Social Development

• Critical Period
• an optimal period shortly after birth when an
  organisms exposure to certain stimuli or
  experiences produces proper development
• Imprinting
• the process by which certain animals form
  attachments during a critical period very early
  in life

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Social Development

• Monkeys raised by artificial mothers were
  terror-stricken when placed in strange situations
  without their surrogate mothers.

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Attachment

• Work of Mary Ainsworth
• Studied attachment between infants and mothers
• 3 types of attachment
• Secure attachment
• Avoidant attachment
• Anxious attachment
• In all studies she observed infants reactions
  when placed into a strange, novel situation when
  their parent left them alone for short period of
  time and then returned.

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Secure attachment

• These infants usually appear active and happy.
• They are willing to explore a new room if the
  mother is present. They warm up quickly to a
  stranger who talks with the mother.
• They are not greatly disturbed if the mother is
  absent for a brief period of time.
• When the mother returns to the room the infant
  becomes anxious and runs to the mothers side.

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Avoidant attachment

• These infants are not even upset by separation
  from the mother. They do not cry when she
  leaves.
• When she returns, the infant may ignore her or
  react casually to her presence. The infant may
  even avoid her.
• If the infant is distressed they will not seek
  contact.

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Anxious attachment

• These infants do not explore a strange room full
  of toys.
• They cry and cling to the mother even before
  being separated from her.
• They act suspicious of strangers and get very
  upset if the mother leaves the room.
• When she returns they pout or even cry.
• They show extreme stress when she leaves but
  resist being comforted when she returns.

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Social Development

• Groups of infants left by their mothers in a
  unfamiliar room (from Kagan, 1976).

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Social Development

• Basic Trust (Erik Erikson)
• a sense that the world is predictable and
  trustworthy
• said to be formed during infancy by appropriate
  experiences with responsive caregivers
• Self-Concept
• a sense of ones identity and personal worth

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Social Development Child-Rearing Practices

• Authoritarian
• parents impose rules and expect obedience
• Dont interrupt. Why? Because I said so.
• Permissive
• submit to childrens desires, make few demands,
  use little punishment
• Authoritative
• both demanding and responsive
• set rules, but explain reasons and encourage open
  discussion

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Parenting examples

• For each scenario determine an authoritarian
  response, a permissive response, and an
  authoritative response.
• 1. Your 7 year old daughter wants to sleep over
  at her friends house with three other girls.
  You have met the friend but not her parents.
• 2. You decide to run away from home. You are
  caught just as you are heading out the door.
• 3. Your 4 year old has coloured on the wall for
  the first time.
• 4. You have missed your curfew by 30 minutes.

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Developmental Issues

• There are three major issues in the study of
  developmental psychology.
• 1. Continuity and stages
• How is our development continuous, and how do we
  develop in stages?
• 2. Stability and change
• What remains stable across our development, and
  how do we change?
• 3. Nature and nurture
• How does the interaction of nature and nurture
  affect development?