General Psychology

1. General Psychology

2. Scripture • James 1:2-4 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this , that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing..

3. Starting the Path to Personhood: Prenatal Development and the Newborn

4. In the beginning: Sperm and egg unite to bring genetic material together and form one organism: the zygote(the fertilized cell). Conception

5. Prenatal Development The Zygote Stage: First 10 to 14 Days • After the nuclei of the egg and sperm fuse, the cell divides in 2, 4, 8, 16, 100, 1000… • Milestone of the zygote stage: cells begin to differentiate into specialized locations and structures • Implantation: The Embyro, 2 to 8 weeks • This stage begins with the multicellular cluster that implants in the uterine wall. • Milestone of the implantation stage: differentiated cells develop into organs and bones Embryo

6. The Fetus At nine weeks, hands and face have developed; the embryo is now called a fetus (“offspring”). Placenta At 4 months, many more features develop. Milestone of the fetal stage: by six months, the fetus might be able to survive outside the womb

7. Birth Control Pills?

8. Period of the Fetus • Age of viability: 22 to 28 weeks • Is the age at which most bodily systems are functioning and the fetus has a chance to survive if born prematurely. Abortion Question

9. Fetal Life: The Dangers Dangers • Teratogens (“monster makers”) are substances such as viruses and chemicals that can damage the developing embryo or fetus. • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) refers to cognitive, behavioral, and body/brain structure abnormalities caused by exposure to alcohol in the fetal stage.

10. Fetal life: Responding to Sounds • Fetuses in the womb can respond to sounds. • Fetuses can learn to recognize and adapt to sounds that they previously heard only in the womb. • Fetuses can habituate to annoying sounds, becoming less agitated with repeated exposure.

11. After the fetal period, the child is born!

12. Inborn Skills Reflexes are responses that are inborn and do not have to be learned. The Competent Newborn Newborns have reflexes to ensure that they will be fed. • The rooting reflex--when something touches a newborn’s cheek, the infant turns toward that side with an open mouth. • The sucking reflex can be triggered by a fingertip. • Crying when hungry is the newborn talent of using just the right sounds to motivate parents to end the noise and feed the baby.

13. Physical and Prenatal Development

14. More Inborn Abilities • Newborns (one hour old!) will look twice as long at the image on the left.

15. Infancy and Childhood Childhood: toddlers growing almost into teenagers Infancy: newborns growing almost into toddlers • For each of these stages, we will study: • brain development. • motor development. • cognitive development. • social and emotional development.

16. Maturation: not the meaning you might think • In psychology, “maturation” refers to changes that occur primarily because of the passage of time. • In developmental psychology, maturation refers to biologically-driven growth and development enabling orderly (predictably sequential) changes in behavior. • Experience (nurture) can adjust the timing, but maturation (nature) sets the sequence. For example, infant bodies, in sequence, will lift heads, then sit up, then crawl, and then walk. • Maturation, the biological unfolding, will be seen in: • brain development. • motor development. Maturation in infancy and early childhood affects the brain and motor skills.

17. Brain Development: Building and Connecting Neurons • In the womb, the number of neurons grows by about 750,000 new cells per minute in the middle trimester. • Beginning at birth, the connections among neurons proliferate. As we learn, we form more branches and more neural networks. • In infancy, the growth in neural connections takes place initially in the less complex parts of the brain (the brainstem and limbic system), as well as the motor and sensory strips.  This enables body functions and basic survival skills. • In early childhood, neural connections proliferate in the association areas.  This enables advancements in controlling attention and behavior (frontal lobes) and also in thinking, memory, and language.

18. Motor Development • Maturation takes place in the body and cerebellum enabling the sequence below. • Physical training generally cannot change the timing.

19. Baby Memory Infantile Amnesia • In infancy, the brain forms memories so differently from the episodic memory of adulthood that most people cannot really recall memories from the first three years of life. • A birthday party when turning three might be a person’s first memory. Learning Skills • Infants can learn skills (procedural memories). • This three month old can learn, and recall a month later, that specific foot movements move specific mobiles.

20. Social Development Stranger Anxiety Stranger anxiety develops around ages 9 to 13 months. In this stage, a child notices and fears new people. • Explaining Stranger Anxiety • How does this develop? • As children develop schemas for the primary people in their lives, they are more able to notice when strangers do not fit those schemas. However, they do not yet have the ability to assimilate those faces. • Why does this develop?

21. Social DevelopmentLook Up on YouTube • Harlow’s Surrogate Mother Experiments* • Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother, even while feeding from the nourishing wire mother

22. Insecure Attachment Harlow’s studies showed that monkeys experience great anxiety if their terry-cloth mother is removed. Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin

23. Origins of Attachment: • Familiarity • Most creatures tend to attach to caregivers who have become familiar. • Birds have a critical period, hours after hatching, during which they might imprint. This means they become rigidly attached to the first moving object they see.

24. Attachment Variation: Styles of Dealing with Separation Reactions to Separation and Reunion • Secure attachment: most children (60 percent) feel distress when mother leaves, and seek contact with her when she returns • Insecure attachment (anxious style): clinging to mother, less likely to explore environment, and may get loudly upset with mother’s departure and remain upset when she returns • Insecure attachment (avoidant style): seeming indifferent to mother’s departure and return The degree and style of parent-child attachment has been tested by Mary Ainsworth in the “strange situations” test. In this test, a child is observed as: • a mother and infant child are alone in an unfamiliar (“strange”) room; the child explores the room as the mother just sits. • a stranger enters the room, talks to the mother, and approaches the child; the mother leaves the room. • After a few moments, the mother returns.

25. What causes these different attachment styles:nature or nurture? Is the “strange situations” behavior mainly a function of the child’s inborn temperament? Is the behavior a reaction to the way the parents have interacted with the child previously? If so, is that caused by theparenting behavior? • Temperament refers to a person’s characteristic style and intensity of emotional reactivity. • Some infants have an “easy” temperament; they are happy, relaxed, and calm, with predictable rhythms of needing to eat and sleep. • Some infants seem to be “difficult”; they are irritable, with unpredictable needs and behavior, and intense reactions. • Mary Ainsworth believed that sensitive, responsive, calm parenting is correlated with the secure attachment style. • Monkeys with unresponsive artificial mothers showed anxious insecure attachment. • Training in sensitive responding for parents of temperamentally-difficult children led to doubled rates of secure attachment.

26. Child-Rearing Practices HomeWork Option A Option B will be given on Friday