Developmental Psychology

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• Developmental Psychology

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Developmental Issues

• Nature versus Nurture
• How is our development influenced by our heredity
  (nature) and by our experience (nuture)?

Nature is all that a man brings with him into
the world nurture is every influence that
affects him after his birth. Francis Galton
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Developmental Issues

• Continuity versus Stages
• Is developmental change gradual and continuous or
  does it proceed through a sequence of separate
  stages?
• An escalator or rungs on a ladder?

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Developmental Issues

• Stability versus Change
• Do we grow into older versions of our early
  selves or do we become new persons?

I was once your age, but I was never your
age!Unknown Quote from an old parent!
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The Developing Person

• Developmental Psychology
• a branch of psychology that studies physical,
  cognitive and social change throughout the life
  span

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Union of Egg and Sperm
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Genetic Influences

• X- Chromosomes
• sex chromosome found in both males and females
• females have two, males have one
• an X-chromosome from each parent produces a
  female
• Y-Chromosomes
• sex chromosome found only in males
• when paired with a X-chromosome from the mother,
  it produces a male child

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Prenatal Development

• Zygote
• the fertilized egg
• enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division
• develops into an embryo
• Embryo
• the developing human organism from 2 weeks
  through 2nd month
• Fetus
• the developing human organism from 9 weeks after
  conception to birth

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Prenatal Development

• 40 days 45 days 2 months 4 months

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Prenatal Development

• Teratogens
• agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can
  reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal
  development and cause harm
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
• physical and cognitive abnormalities in children
  caused by a pregnant womans heavy drinking.
• symptoms include facial misproportions

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The Newborn

• Rooting Reflex
• tendency to open mouth, and search for nipple
  when touched on the cheek
• Preferences
• human voices and faces
• facelike images--gt
• smell and sound of mother
  preferred

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The Newborn

• Habituation
• decreasing responsiveness with repeated
  stimulation
• newborns become bored with a repeated stimulus,
  but renew their attention to a slightly different
  stimulus

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The Newborn
Percentage of time spent looking
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0
Familiar stimulus
Novel stimulus
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The Newborn
Time spent looking (seconds)
Presentation
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Physical Development

• Maturation
• biological growth processes that enable orderly
  changes in behavior
• relatively uninfluenced by experience
• sets the course for development while experience
  adjusts it

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Infancy and Childhood

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

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Cognitive Development

• Cognition
• mental activities associated with thinking,
  knowing, and remembering
• Schema
• a concept or framework that organizes and
  interprets information

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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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Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development
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Cognitive Development

• Object Permanence
• the awareness that things continue to exist even
  when not perceived
• Conservation
• the principle that properties such as mass,
  volume, and number remain the same despite
  changes in the forms of objects
• part of Piagets concrete operational reasoning

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Cognitive Development

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

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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

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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 seeking closeness to
  the caregiver and showing distress on separation

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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
• Temperament
• a persons characteristic emotional reactivity
  and intensity

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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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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

• Groups of infants who had and had not experienced
  day care were left by their mothers in a
  unfamiliar room.

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Social Development- Child-Rearing Practices

• Authoritarian
• parents impose rules and expect obedience
• Dont interrupt
• Why? Because I said so.
• Authoritative
• parents are both demanding and responsive
• set rules, but explain reasons
• encourage discussion

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Social Development- Child-Rearing Practices

• Permissive
• submit to childrens desires
• make few demands
• use little punishment
• Rejecting-neglecting
• disengaged
• expect little
• invest little

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Social Development- Child-Rearing Practices

• Three explanations for correlation between
  authoritative parenting and social competence

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Gender and Child-Rearing

• Gender Identity
• ones sense of being male or female
• Gender-Typing
• the acquisition of a traditional
  masculine or feminine role

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Gender and Child-Rearing

• Social Learning Theory
• we learn social behavior by observing and
  imitating and by being rewarded or punished
• Gender Schema Theory
• children learn from their cultures a concept of
  what it means to be male and female
• adjust behavior accordingly

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Gender and Child-Rearing
Social learning theory
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Adolescence

• The transition period from childhood to adulthood.

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Adolescence

• Adolescence
• the transition period from childhood to adulthood
• extending from puberty to independence
• Puberty
• the period of sexual maturation
• when one first becomes capable of reproduction

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Physical Development

• It all begins with puberty

Puberty the period of sexual maturation, during
which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
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Adolescence

• Primary Sex Characteristics
• body structures that make sexual reproduction
  possible
• ovaries- female
• testes- male
• external genitalia
• Secondary Sex Characteristics
• nonreproductive sexual characteristics
• female- enlarged breast, hips
• male- voice quality, body hair
• Menarche (meh-NAR-key)
• first menstrual period

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When does puberty start?The Landmarks

• First ejaculation for boys

• Menstruation for girls

Do we remember these things?
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Puberty

• Sequence is way more predictable than the timing.

How might timing differences affect an adolescent
socially?
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Adolescence and Adulthood

• In the 1890s the average interval between a
  womans menarche and marriage was about 7 years
  now it is over 12 years.

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Adolescence and Adulthood

• Throughout childhood, boys and girls are similar
  in height. At puberty, girls surge ahead
  briefly, but then boys overtake them at about age
  14.

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Body Changes at Puberty
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Cognitive Development

• Have the ability to reason but.

• The reasoning is self-focused. Assume that their
  experiences are unique.

• Experience formal operational thought

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Lawrence Kohlberg and his stages of Morality

• Preconventional Morality
• Conventional Morality
• Postconventional Morality

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Kohlbergs Moral Ladder
Postconventional level

• As moral development progresses, the focus of
  concern moves from the self to the wider social
  world.

Conventional level
Preconventional level
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Preconventional Morality

• Morality of self- interest
• Their actions are either to avoid punishment or
  to gain rewards.

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Conventional Morality

• Morality is based upon obeying laws to
• Maintain social order
• To gain social approval

I wont speed down Hampton because my friends
and family will look down on me. Besides, the
world would be chaotic if everyone did it.
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Postconventional Morality

• Morality based on universal ethical principles.
• I wont speed down Hampton b/c a society w/o laws
  is not good. If I feel the law is unjust then
  Ill try to change it.

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Social Development

• Its all about forming an identity!!!

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Identity

• Ones sense of self.
• The idea that an adolescents job is to find
  oneself by testing various roles.
• Comes from Erik Eriksons stages of Psychosocial
  development.

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Trust vs. Mistrust
Age Important Event Description
Birth - 18 months Feeding Infants form a loving, trusting relationship with parents they also learn to mistrust others.
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Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Age Important Event Description
18 months - 3 Years Toilet Training Child's energies are directed toward physical skills walking, grasping, and toilet training. The child learns control along with a healthy dose of shame and doubt.
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Initiative vs. Guilt
Age Important Event Description
3 - 6 Years Independence Child becomes more assertive, takes more initiative, becomes more forceful.
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Industry vs. Inferiority
Age Important Event Description
6 - 12 Years School The child must feel competent while risking a sense of inferiority and failure.
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Identity vs. Role Confusion
Age Important Event Description
Adolescence Peers Teens must achieve self-identity while deciphering their roles in occupation, politics, and religion. Can develop negative identity.
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Intimacy vs. Isolation
Age Important Event Description
Young Adult Relationships The young adult must develop marriage-seeking relationships while combating feelings of isolation. Further career or get married?
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Generativity vs. Stagnation
Age Important Event Description
Middle Adult Parenting Discover a sense of contributing to the world or may feel a lack of purpose.
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Integrity vs. Despair
Age Important Event Description
Late Adult Life Reflection Acceptance of one's lifetime accomplishments and sense of fulfillment. Want control of their lives.
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Social Development

• Identity
• ones sense of self
• the adolescents task is to solidify a sense of
  self by testing and integrating various roles
• Intimacy
• the ability to form close, loving relationships
• a primary developmental task in late adolescence
  and early adulthood

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Social Development

• The changing parent-child relationship.

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Adulthood- Physical Changes

• Menopause
• the time of natural cessation of menstruation
• also refers to the biological changes a woman
  experiences as her ability to reproduce declines
• Alzheimers Disease
• a progressive and irreversible brain disorder
• characterized by a gradual deterioration of
  memory, reasoning, language, and finally,
  physical functioning

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Adulthood- Physical Changes

• The Aging Senses

1.00
0.75
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0.25
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90
Age in years
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Adulthood- Physical Changes

• The Aging Senses

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Age in years
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Adulthood- Physical Changes

• The Aging Senses

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Age in years
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Adulthood- Physical Changes
Fatal accident rate

• Slowing reactions contribute to increased
  accident risks among those 75 and older.

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0
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75 and over
Age
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Adulthood- Physical Changes

• Incidence of Dementia by Age

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Adulthood- Cognitive Changes
100

• Recalling new names introduced once, twice or
  three times is easier for younger adults than for
  older ones (Crook West, 1990).

Percent of names recalled
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Age group
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Adulthood- Cognitive Changes
Number Of words remembered

• In a study by Schonfield Robertson (1966), the
  ability to recall new information declined during
  early and middle adulthood, but the ability to
  recognize new information did not.

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Age in years
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Adulthood- Cognitive Changes
Reasoning ability score

• Cross-Sectional Study
• a study in which people of different ages are
  compared with one another
• Longitudinal Study
• a study in which the same people are restudied
  and retested over a long period

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25
32
39
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74
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Age in years
Cross-sectional method
Longitudinal method
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Adulthood- Cognitive Changes
Intelligence (IQ) score

• Verbal intelligence scores hold steady with age,
  while nonverbal intelligence scores decline
  (adapted from Kaufman others, 1989).

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100
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75
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70
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45
65
Age group
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Adulthood- Cognitive Changes

• Crystallized Intelligence
• ones accumulated knowledge and verbal skills
• tends to increase with age
• Fluid Intelligence
• ones ability to reason speedily and abstractly
• tends to decrease during late adulthood

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Adulthood- Social Changes

• Early-forties midlife crisis?

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Adulthood- Social Changes

• Social Clock
• the culturally preferred timing of social events
• marriage
• parenthood
• retirement

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Adulthood- Social Changes

• Multinational surveys show that age differences
  in life satisfaction are trivial (Inglehart,
  1990).

Percentage satisfied with life as a whole
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Age group