Myers’ PSYCHOLOGY For AP

1. Myers’ PSYCHOLOGY For AP Unit 9 Developmental Psychology

2. Prenatal Development and the Newborn • Developmental Psychology • a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive and social change throughout the life span

3. Today’s Fertility • Has become an important social issue as many women are postponing child-bearing and new technologies are emerging to address and deal with infertility. • Why are women waiting ? • What options are available? • Vital stats reveal…(2001) more 50 more boys born per 1000 each year. More babies born in August and on Tuesdays!

4. Prenatal Development and the Newborn Life is sexually transmitted

5. Prenatal Development and the Newborn • 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

6. Prenatal Development and the Newborn 40 days 45 days 2 months 4 months

7. Prenatal Development and the Newborn • 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 woman’s heavy drinking • symptoms include misproportioned head

8. APGAR Test • Is a quick physical test given to every newborn at birth. Scores are given at 1 and 5 minutes. If problem exist, then another is given at 10 minutes after birth. • APGAR stands for • A – Activity or muscle tone • P – Pulse (at least 100 beats per minute) • G – Grimace or reflex irritability • A – Appearance • R - Respiration • Normal scores range from 7-10 • Between 4-6 infants may need resuscitation • Under 3 infants need immediate resuscitation

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

10. Reflexes as signs of Normal Neurological Development • Babinski Reflex – toes flare our and curl back in when bottom of the foot is stroked. • Moro Reflex – arms are thrust out and the back is arched in response to surprise or a sudden noise or movement. • Plantar Reflex – Toes will curl in when the ball of the foot is pressed. • Swimming Reflex – if submerged in water for a short period of time babies will hold their breath and pump their arms and legs. • Stepping Reflex – babies move their feet up and down in a walking motion if held over top of a flat surface.

11. Prenatal Development and the Newborn • Habituation • decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation

12. Habituation & Development • As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner. • Remember, that once the stimulus becomes familiar and expected, our sensitivity to it decreases. We do not respond as strongly to it as we did in the beginning. First watching scary movies…

13. Prenatal Development and the Newborn Having habituated to the old stimulus, newborns preferred gazing at a new one

14. At birth 3 months 15 months Cortical Neurons Infancy and Childhood: Physical Development • Maturation • biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior • relatively uninfluenced by experience

15. Maturational Milestones • Cultural groups in Africa have shown that maturational milestones can occur in the same order but on different schedules. • This means that while the timing of events may differ from culture to culture, the order of development does not. – giving rise to STAGE THEORIES! • Understand that milestones aren’t etched in stone…in some children they occur earlier and in some later. Parents that don’t understand these time ranges may subject themselves to unnecessary worry and heartache as they wait for their child to mature.

16. Sensory Development in Fetuses • 7.5 weeks – fetus will flex its head away from stimulation around the mouth. By months end the ears begin to form. • 12-15 weeks – touch receptors around the mouth begin to form. The fetus can grasp, frown, squint, and grimace. Suck its thumb and swallow. • 20-24 weeks – the senses of taste and smell have now formed. The fetus can feel movement and may respond to sound. • 25-27 weeks – babies born prematurely can survive. Nerve supply to the ears is complete, brain scans show response to touch and light. • 32 weeks – eyes open in the womb fetus may see its environment. Neural circuits have advanced. Brain scans show periods of deep sleep.

17. 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).

18. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development • Schema • a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information Assimilation • interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas Example – Disney’s movie Bambi.  When Thumper is taking the young Bambi through the forest teaching him the names of different objects, they come across a field of flowers.  As Bambi is sniffing the flowers, a skunk pops up out of the flowers.  Bambi exclaims, "Flower!"  Thumper cracks up, telling him that the skunk is not a flower.  The skunk shyly says that Bambi can call him "flower" if he wants to.  I tell them that Bambi tried to assimilate the skunk into his schema of flower, since he associated the skunk with the field of flowers.  This is not quite a a realistic example of assimilation since most children don't confuse animals with plants.

19. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development • Accommodation • adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information • Cognition • All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

20. Typical Age Range Description of Stage Developmental Phenomena Birth to nearly 2 years Sensorimotor Experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, touching, mouthing) • Object permanence • Stranger anxiety About 2 to 6 years Preoperational Representing things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning • Pretend play • Egocentrism • Language development About 7 to 11 years Concrete operational Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations • Conservation • Mathematical transformations About 12 through adulthood Formal operational Abstract reasoning • Abstract logic • Potential for moral reasoning Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

21. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development • Object Permanence • the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived • Once infants have mastered object permanence, they begin to engage in Directed Groping – babies will move in different ways to achieve a goal. They may use sticks or other objects to get other objects.

22. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage • Can be broken down into 3 stages… • Primary Circular Reactions – babies experimenting with their own bodies. Enjoy moving their arms and legs and making noises with their mouths. • Secondary Circular Reactions – occurs when babies respond to other people or objects…they will repeat actions over again until they get the desired response. • Tertiary Circular Reactions – occurs when they explore the outside world…they accidentally cause an event to occur. Ie. Kicking a ball. They will then devise new activities with the object to make it do other things.

23. 4. Possible outcome: Screen drops, revealing one object. 3. Object is removed. 1. Objects placed in case. 2. Screen comes up. 4. Impossible outcome: Screen drops, revealing two objects. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development • Baby Mathematics • Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants stare longer (Wynn, 1992)

24. 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 • Understanding conservation depends on an understanding of reversibility. If children could think about situations forward and backward, they would not have trouble with conservation.

25. Piaget’s Conservation Continued • Children misunderstand conservation in several ways… • Volume – Children believe that different sized containers hold different amounts of liquid. • Length – Children believe that an object’s shape changes it’s mass. • Area – Children believe that rearranging parts of an object changes it fundamentally.

26. Language Development & Preoperational Stage • 2 stages of Language Development occur at the Preoperational Stage: • Holographic Speech – appears around 1 and involved using single words that stand for a whole sentence of meaning. Ie.Ball could mean I want the ball, give me the ball or where is the ball depending on the inflection. • Telegraphic Speech – appears around 2 and involves 2 word phrases that communicate more meaning. Want ball.

27. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development • Egocentrism • the inability of the preoperational child to take another’s point of view • Theory of Mind • people’s 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

28. Egocentrism in Children • Collective monologues – children will appear to be talking to eachother in a dialogue, but they are really talking about 2 completely different subjects. • Animism – children believe that nature is alive and controllable by them or their parents. They often believe that natural things such as trees or the sun have feelings. • Artificialism – children believe that natural phenomena are created by people ie. Mountains are piles of dirt!

29. Concrete Operation vs. Preoperational Thinking • They differ in that concrete operational thinkers can understand the concepts preoperational children cannot. • Conservation makes sense to concrete operational children and they become less egocentric.

30. Lev Vygotsky and the Zone! • Lev Vygotsky Developmental Psychologist who believed that children learn best by interacting with others. His theory was called the “Zone of Proximal Development”. The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a learner has already mastered (the actual level of development) and what he or she can achieve when provided with educational support (potential development). • He theorized that children will not likely move to the next level of understanding without help from their peers or role models. • The peer or role model influence helps the child move through the development zone to the next level of understanding.

31. 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

32. Stranger Anxiety • Approaching a child with stranger anxiety…be aware…take note… • Get permission form his/her parents before approaching. Positive approach! • Approach the child on his/her own level. Crouch down, look in the eyes! • Ask him/her to interact with you in a causal way. Give me 5, What does a cow say? • If the child is shy or nervous…back off and begin playing with is/her toys…child will likely play with you and get over inhibitions.

33. Social Development • Harlow’s Surrogate Mother Experiments • Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother, even while feeding from the nourishing wire mother

34. Harlow’s Experiment • Harlow’s work on parental love came about during a time when psychologists and physicians believed that isolating children would protect them from disease. • The Harlows went against the establishment in psychology, which at the time was centered on a behaviorist view – ifi tcan’t be seen, it shouldn’t be studied.

35. Social Development • Critical Period • an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s 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

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

37. Percentage of infants who cried when their mothers left 100 80 Day care 60 40 Home 20 0 3.5 5.5 7.5 9.5 11.5 13.5 20 29 Age in months Social Development • Groups of infants left by their mothers in a unfamiliar room (from Kagan, 1976).

38. Familiarity & Social Psychology • Familiarity means becoming “attached”, developing a relationship with or to something or someone. • Familiarity relates to the principle of the mere exposure effect – being around an object long enough will cause one to develop an affection for that object. • We tend to find people, places and objects appealing and comfortable because we are around these tings for extended periods of time.

39. John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment • Bowlby developed the idea of separation anxiety. He believed this feeling was different from fear, which resulted from environmental cues, and a different anger or hostility, which resulted from being rejected by parents and family. • What is Attachment? • Attachment is an emotional bond to another person. Psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings" (Bowlby, 1969, p. 194). Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. According to Bowlby, attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child's chances of survival. • The central theme of attachment theory is that mothers who are available and responsive to their infant's needs establish a sense of security in their children. The infant knows that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world. • The Components of Attachment • There are four key components of attachment: • Safe Haven: When the child feel threatened or afraid, he or she can return to the caregiver for comfort and soothing. • Secure Base: The caregiver provides a secure and dependable base for the child to explore the world. • Proximity Maintenance: The child strives to stay near the caregiver, thus keeping the child safe. • Separation Distress: When separated from the caregiver, the child will become upset and distressed.

40. Mary Ainsworth & Theory of Attachment • Ainsworth's "Strange Situation" • In her 1970's research, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby's original work. Her groundbreaking "Strange Situation" study revealed the profound effects of attachment on behavior. In the study, researchers observed children between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers (Ainsworth, 1978). • Based upon the responses the researchers observed, Ainsworth described three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment and avoidant-insecure attachment. Later, researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style called disorganized-insecure attachment based upon their own research. A number of studies since that time have supported Ainsworth's attachment styles and have indicated that attachment styles also have an impact on behaviors later in life.

41. Ainsworth Continued • Characteristics of Attachment Characteristics of Secure Attachment Securely attached children exhibit distress when separated from caregivers and are happy when their caregiver returns. Remember, these children feel secure and able to depend on their adult caregivers. When the adult leaves, the child may be upset but he or she feels assured that the parent or caregiver will return. When frightened, securely attached children will seek comfort from caregivers. These children know their parent or caregiver will provide comfort and reassurance, so they are comfortable seeking them out in times of need. Characteristics of Ambivalent Attachment Ambivalently attached children usually become very distressed when a parent leaves. This attachment style is considered relatively uncommon, affecting an estimated 7-15% of U.S. children. Research suggests that ambivalent attachment is a result of poor maternal availability. These children cannot depend on their mother (or caregiver) to be there when the child is in need. Characteristics of Avoidant Attachment Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers. When offered a choice, these children will show no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. Research has suggested that this attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future. Problems with Attachment What happens to children who do not form secure attachments? Research suggests that failure to form secure attachments early in life can have a negative impact on behavior in later childhood and throughout the life. Children diagnosed with oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently display attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect or trauma. Clinicians suggest that children adopted after the age of six months have a higher risk of attachment problems. While attachment styles displayed in adulthood are not necessarily the same as those seen in infancy, research suggests that early attachments can have a serious impact on later relationships. For example, those who are securely attached in childhood tend to have good self-esteem, strong romantic relationships and the ability to self-disclose to others.

42. Avoidant People & Parenting • Avoidant people find parenting more stressful. • Avoidant personality disorder is a disorder in which people shun relationships with others and avoid social situations. They find socializing with others so uncomfortable that they would rather be alone than with people.

43. 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 one’s identity and personal worth

44. Social Development: Child-Rearing Practices • Authoritarian • parents impose rules and expect obedience • “Don’t interrupt.” “Why? Because I said so.” • The oppressive dictator - Hitler, Hussein • Permissive • submit to children’s desires, make few demands, use little punishment • Laissez Fair – Thomas Jefferson • Authoritative • both demanding and responsive • set rules, but explain reasons and encourage open discussion • Obama, Trudeau (?) – a symbol of democracy, individuals are expected to be rational and law abiding.

45. Social Development: Child-Rearing Practices

46. Adolescence • Adolescence • the transition period from childhood to adulthood • extending from puberty to independence • Puberty • the period of sexual maturation • when a person becomes capable of reproduction

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

48. 1890, Women 7.2 Year Interval 10 20 10 20 Age 1995, Women 12.5 Year Interval Age Adolescence • In the 1890’s the average interval between a woman’s menarche and marriage was about 7 years; now it is over 12 years

49. Height in centimeters 190 170 150 130 110 90 70 50 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 Age in years Boys Girls Adolescence • Throughout childhood, boys and girls are similar in height. At puberty, girls surge ahead briefly, but then boys overtake them at about age 14.

50. Body Changes at Puberty