Developmental Psychology

1. Developmental Psychology • Psychology concerned with changes in physical and psychological functioning that occur from conception across the entire lifespan • Psychologist • How and why organisms change • Document and explain

2. Stages • Prenatal-conceptions to birth • Infancy-birth to 18 months • Early childhood-18 months to 6 yrs • Late childhood-6 yrs to 13 yrs • Adolescence-13 yrs to 18 yrs • Early Adult-20 yrs to 30 yrs • Middle Adult-30 yrs to 65 yrs • Late adult-65 yrs +

3. Development • Passive, slow process

4. Normative Investigation Research efforts designed to describe what is characteristic of a specific age or developmental stage finding landmarks

5. Chronological Age • Months/yrs since birth

6. Developmental Age • Chronological age at which most children show a particular level of physical or mental development

7. Longitudinal design/study • Same individuals repeatedly observed and tested over time, often for many years

8. Cross-sectional design • Groups of participants of different chronological ages are observed and compared at a given time

9. Nature-nurture Controversy • Genetics vs. social • Heredity vs. social • John Locke • Empiricism • Blank slate, all learned • Jean Jacques Rousseau • Nativist • Nature or evolution • Jean Marc Itard • Raised wild boy (12 year old) • 1st 5 yrs trained then stopped working

10. Physical Development • Bodily changes, maturation, and growth that occur in a organism starting with conception and continuing across the life span • Zygote • Single cell • Sperm/egg

11. Prenatal period • 3 wks-heartbeat 1/6 in long • 8 wks called fetus-movement • 16 wks mom can feel 7 in long • Brain growth 250,000 neurons/min • Drugs/alcohol abuse

12. Birth • Can hear • Vision but improves • 3 dimensional, color • Elenor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960) • Visual cliff

13. Physical • Head 60% grown @ birth • Weight doubles 6 months • Weight triples 1 year • Age 2 trunk is 50% of adult size

14. Maturation • Continuing influence of heredity throughout development • Age-related physical and behavioral changes characteristic of a species • Roll over 3 months • Sit up 5 months • Crawl 10 months • Walk 12 months

15. Puberty • Attainment of sexual maturity • Girls menarche • Boys production of live sperm and ability to ejaculate • Body image • Subjective view of appearance of one’s body • Issues-anorexia/bulimia

16. Body Image • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

17. Adulthood • Gradual changes into and through adult hood • Vision and hearing decline • Reproductive and sexual functioning • Menopause age 50, women • Viable sperms drops age 40, fluid drops age 60 • Does not drop after 40 if health and relationship

18. Cognitive Development • Process of knowing, imagining, perceiving reasoning, and problems solving

19. Jean Piaget (1929-1977) • Schemes • Mental structures that enable individuals to interpret the world • Assimilation • Modify new environmental information to fit into what is already • Accommodation • Restructuring or modifying cognitive structures so that new information can fit into them more easily

20. Stages of Cognitive Development • (0-2) sensory motor • Child uses body and senses • Object permanence (3 months-8 months) • Objects exist independent of individuals’ action or awareness • Representational thought • Renee Baillargeon (1991) • Possible object permanence earlier 3 than months

21. Object Permanence • http://youtube.com/watch?v=NjBh9ld_yIo

22. Stages of Cognitive Development • (2-7) Preoperational • Child begins to use mental images or symbols to understand things • Egocentrism • Cannot take perspective of another person • Centrism • Early- • Child’s inability to take more than one perceptual factor into account @ the same time • Conservation • Physical properties don’t change when nothing is added or taken away

23. Conservation • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtLEWVu815o

24. Stages of Cognitive Development • Concrete operational stage (7-11) • Able to use logical schemes but limited to concrete objects

25. Stages of Cognitive Development • Formal operational (11+) • Able to solve abstract problems

26. Foundational theories • Frameworks for initial understanding formulated by children to explain their experiences of the world • All ages

27. Social and cultural influences on cognitive dev. • Internalization • process through which children absorb knowledge from social context • Lev Vygotsky • Formal operations cultural

28. Cognitive Dev. In Adults • No evidence of intellectual decline in elderly • Crystallized vs. fluid intelligence • Verbal schooling vs. learn quickly and thoroughly • Fluid declines with age • John Horn

29. Wisdom • Expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life

30. Use it or lose it • Important with age • Warner Schaie 1994

31. Selective optimization with compensation • Strategy for successful aging in which one makes the most of gains while minimizing the impact of losses that accompany normal aging • Paul Bates and Margaret Baltes (1998)

32. Alzheimer’s Disease • A chronic organic brain syndrome characterized by gradual loss of memory, decline in intellectual ability and deterioration of personality • Over 65-10% • Over 85-50%

33. Language • Born with innate capacity

34. Structures • Until 8 months no distinction between phonemes due to language ex. (L) ( R) in Japanese • Child-directed speech • Special form of speech with an exaggerated and high-pitched infonation that adults use to speak to infants and young children • Learn names by 5 months

35. Word meaning • 18 months (word explosion) • Age 6 14,000 words • 9 words/ day • Overextension ex. Milk means all drinks • Mutually exclusive • Each object has only one label ex. Fire engine/truck/vehicle

36. Grammar • Norm Chomsky (1976) • Born with mental structures that facilitate comprehension and production of language ex. Deaf people learn grammar

37. Grammar • Language-making capacity • Innate guidelines or operating principles that children bring to the task of learning a language • Dan Slobin (1985) • Keep track of order and meaning expressed in language • Telegraphic speech • Leaves out verbs, gets point across • For adult to understand must understand context • Example for language making capacity • Overregularization • Grammar error, rules of language are applied too widely • Ex. By adding/ed/ makes past tense add “ed” to do and break or add /s/ to foot

38. Social Development • Ways individuals’ social interactions and expectations change across the lifespan. • Culture and environment play large role • Psychosocial stages • Erik Erikson • Successive developmental stages that focus on an individual’s orientation toward self and others • Incorporate both the sexual and social aspects of a person’s development and the social conflicts that arise from the interactions between the individual and the social environment

39. Socialization • Lifelong process whereby an individual’s behavior patterns, values, standards, attitudes, and motives are shaped to conform to those regarded as desirable in a particular society • Involves friends, relatives, teachers, etc. who exert pressure on individual

40. Attachment • Emotional relationship between a child and the regular caregiver • Early survival • Imprinting • Conrad Lorenz (geese) • Primitive form of learning in which some infant animals physically follow and form an attachment to the first moving object they see or hear

41. Conrad Lorenz • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UIU9XH-mUI

42. Attachment • Proximity-prompting signals • Baby smiling, crying and vocalizing to signal need for care • John Bowl (1973)

43. Attachment • Strange situation test • Mary Ainsworth (1978) • Age 1-2 • Securely attached child • Some distress when parent leaves room, seeks comfort when parent returns - returns to play • Insecurely attached-avoidant • Aloof may avoid parent upon return • Insecurely attached-ambivalent resistant • Becomes upset anxious when parent leaves, upon parent return hard to sooth, shows anger towards parent • Can predict later behavior

44. Parenting Styles • Manner in which parents rear their children • Authoritative seen as best • Authoritarian type • Parents apply discipline with little attention to child's autonomy • Indulgent type • Parents helpful but fail to teach rules about structure or society • Neglecting or permissive type • No discipline, non responsive to child’s individuality

45. Parenting Practices • Behaviors that arise in response to particular parent goals

46. Contact Comfort • Harry Harlow (1965) • Did not believe in going cupboard theory-attachment due to feeling • Comfort derived from an infant’s physical contact with the mother of caregiver • Reuses Monkeys Experiment • Choose contact comfort over food • Other studies show orphaned infants with proper food/water etc. die due to lack of contact

47. Harlow • http://youtube.com/watch?v=fLrBrk9DXVk

48. Social Development in Adolescence • Time of “storm and stress”-myth • Margaret Mead(1928) and Ruth Benedict(1938) • Argue this to be mainly in Western Culture

49. Social Development in Adults • Intimacy and generativity Erikson • Lieben and Arbeiten or love and work-Freud • Love and Belonging- Maslow • Women's health effected by how good marriage is

50. Social Development in Adults • Selective social interaction theory • As people age, they become more selective in choosing social partners who satisfy their social needs • Laura Carstensen (1998) • Helps conserve energy, protects • Ageism • Prejudice against older people • Decremental aging • By number not ability