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Child Development. Child Development. Lecture Outline: What develops? How does it develop? How do we know? What drives development? ----- break----- Nature vs. Nurture? How to make a better baby?. What Develops?. What do babies have at the start?. Reflexes grasp, sucking
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Child Development Lecture Outline: • What develops? • How does it develop? • How do we know? • What drives development? ----- break----- • Nature vs. Nurture? • How to make a better baby?
What do babies have at the start? • Reflexes grasp, sucking • Perception hearing (loudness, pitch, mom) vision (brightness, color, faces?) < 4ft. integration of both (head-turns)
How does development happen? • Differentiation cell division & behavior • Growth bigger brain, bigger body more connections
How does development happen? Orderly and Sequentially… Motor Development (sit up, crawl, walk, etc.) LanguageDevelopment(coo, babble, one-word,etc.)
How does development happen? In stages? According to Piaget: • sensory-motor stage (0-2) • preoperational stage (2-7) • concrete operations (7-11) • formal operations (11-on)
Sensory-Motor Stage (0-2) Child is dealing with: • “object permanence” (peek-a-boo) • “A not B” problem (objects--actions) • “lay physics” (magic & Baillargeon) • beginning of representational thought (words & gestures)
Preoperational Stage (2-7) Child is dealing with: • conservation (liquid, mass, number) • egocentrism (not in an obnoxious way) • “theory of mind” (false-belief, a/r) What do these have in common?
Formal & Concrete Operations Child (adolescent) is working on: • mentally relating representations (4+1= odd & 6+1= odd) • then abstract and hypothetical thoughts (any even number + 1= odd) plus, puberty…
How do we know? • Sucking (HAS) • Looking (preferentially) • Habituation (distinction) • Pointing • Answering questions (task demands) • Affective response (qualitative?) • Brain imaging (ERP’s)
Mechanisms • Biological maturation gene expression (proteins) information processing (packing the trunk) • Learning Piaget-- assimilation and accomodation Vygotsky--scaffolding
THE BIG DEBATE: NATURE VS. NURTURE
NATURE? GENETIC TRANSMISSION: • 23 PAIRS OF CHROMOSOMES • EACH HAS CA. 1,000 GENES • GENE PAIRS--recessive/dominant • POLYGENIC INHERITANCE
NATURE? FROM GENOTYPE TO PHENOTYPE GENES --> PROTEINS --> BIOCHEM SEQUENCES --> TRAITS, HORMONES, & NEUROCHEMICALS --> CHARACTERISTICS & BEHAVIOR
What is inherited? tiger
Twin studies dizygotic monozygotic
NURTURE? EARLY EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT How does each cell with same genes develop into different parts? Physical environment! (salamander) How does each baby with same structures develop into different people?
NURTURE? AFTER BIRTH • Social environment (family, peers) • Economic environment • Cultural environment • Etc…
“BETTER?” • Smarter? • Happier? • Healthier? • More creative? • More athletic? Earlier?
How? • From rat studies to baby toys… (Turner & Greenough, 1985) • What about pre-natal Mozart? (UC Irvine, 1993)
What does the child need? • nutrition • stimulation • care & interaction from parent • certain exposure during sensitive (critical?) periods • good childcare & social interaction
What doesn’t the child need? The “perfect” experiment… …your homework.