How Do People Grow, Change, and Develop?

1. How Do People Grow, Change, and Develop?

2. Nature-Nurture Revisited: Biology and Culture • How much does one’s biology or environment impact development? • Nature – heredity, genetic transmission • Nurture – all external environmental events • Family, friends, school, media, culture • Factors interact in a complex manner

3. Prenatal Development: Conception to Birth • Sperm and ova each contribute 23 single chromosomes • Zygote – fertilized egg containing 23 pairs of chromosomes • Half of all fertilized eggs die and are miscarried • 3 stages of prenatal development • Germinal or Zygotic • Embryonic • Fetal

4. The Germinal Stage • First 14 days after conception • Cell division • Fifth day: zygote is 100-cell organism called a blastocyst • Ninth day: blastocyst implants to uterine wall lining

5. The Embryonic Stage • Second through eighth week • Development and formation of all major organs and systems • Cells begin to specialize • Most critical in development; most miscarriages and genetic defects occur during this time

6. The Fetal Stage • Ninth week until birth • Growth and maturation continues • 14 weeks: kicking, swallowing, turn head • 24 weeks: viability outside womb • Responsive to sound, light, and touch during last 3 months

7. The Importance of a Positive Prenatal Environment • Internal/external forces interfere with prenatal development • Chromosomal abnormalities are genetic defects; effects arise during embryonic stage • Down syndrome – extra 21st chromosome • Teratogens: are external environmental agents that can harm embryo • Greatest impact during sensitive periods • Fetal alcohol syndrome • Other drugs

9. Infancy and Childhood: Physical Development • Average neonate (“baby!”) weighs 7 pounds and is 20 inches long • By one year, triples weight and is 29 inches • Genetics lays foundation for how tall and how body fat is distributed • Environment influences this foundation through nutrition, health care, and lifestyle choices

10. Brain Development • At birth, brain has billions of neurons but limited connection and incomplete myelinization • By three years, 1000 trillion connections formed • Experience /activity increase neural connections • Brain prunes, discards unnecessary connections; frequently used connections become permanent • Young brains are highly plastic (“malleable”), and dense with neurons

11. Perceptual Development: Vision • Infants are born very nearsighted and lack convergence (ability to focus both eyes) • Prefer to look at complex stimuli and faces • Helps develop social bond with caretaker • More difficulty processing male faces • Depth perception developed in first year • “Visual cliff” • Acquired about the same time as mobility

13. Perceptual Development: Hearing • React to sounds prenatally around 20th week, particularly mother’s voice • Early discrimination of similar consonant sounds and ability to remember simple speech sounds • Prefer soft, rhythmic sounds (lullabies) and baby talk (exaggerated, high-pitched sounds)

14. Perceptual Development: Other Senses • Prefer sweet tastes at birth (breast milk is sweet) • Detect mother’s smell as early as 3 days old • Very responsive to touch • Touching and caressing stimulates physical and cognitive growth

15. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development • Jean Piaget studied children • Interviewed and observed children while solving problems • Developed theory about how mental abilities develop • Cognition advances in series of distinct stages

16. Schemas, Assimilation, and Accommodation • Schema = Any mental idea, concept, or thought • Formed based on experience in world to fit perceptions of the world • Assimilation = Apply existing schema to current understanding (e.g., call truck a “car”) • Accommodation = Modify existing schemas – or create new ones – to adapt to environmental change

17. Sensorimotor Stage • Birth to 2 years • Acquire knowledge through senses and motor abilities • Form schemas of objects and actions within immediate perception – those seen, heard or touched • Lack representational abilities • Object permanence: an object exists even when not present • usually at 8 months, steadily improves until 24 months

18. Preoperational Stage • Symbolic thinking is the transition between sensorimotor and preoperational • 2 to 6-7 years • Acquiring and using symbols (e.g. language) • Vocabulary and understanding dramatically increases • Pretend play increases

19. Characteristics of Preoperational Thinking • Centration – focusing on one feature of object • Difficulty distinguishing appearance and reality • Lack of conservation – do not understand that object stays the same even if appearance changes • Egocentrism – everyone sees things as they do • Magical quality of preoperational thinking; difference between reality and fantasy

21. Concrete Operations • 6 or 7 through 12 years • Move toward becoming logical thinker • Acquire conservation • Recognize errors in previous thinking; accommodation • Reduction in egocentrism: enables empathy, persuasion, and growing sense of humor • Schemas are limited to actual experiences and concrete objects and situations

22. Formal Operations • Teenage years, for some • Abstract reasoning • Can hypothesize about careers, mathematical concepts, etc. • Piaget contributed to understanding cognition; very accurately identified sequence of development • Criticism – overlooked effect of culture on development and underestimated abilities

23. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development: Culture and Thinking • Mental processes begin externally, with social interactions • Culture profoundly influences mental processing • Cognition proceeds in different directions, not in stages • Conceptual thinking is taught • Zone of proximal development: gap between what children can already do, and what capable of with help

24. Moral Reasoning: How We Think About Right and Wrong • Lawrence Kohlberg • Developed moral dilemmas and had participants give reasons for answers • Created theory of how individuals morally reason and how this changes • Six stages of reasoning with three levels • Preconventional, conventional, and postconventional

25. Stages of Moral Reasoning • Precoventional • Based on avoiding punishment or gaining rewards • Focus on immediate consequences • Conventional • Based on standards of group or society • Understand rules and others’ expectations • Postconventional • Universal principles of morality that are abstract

26. Evaluation of Kohlberg’s Theory • Theory stimulated research, criticism and controversy • Sequence supported • Most adults progress to conventional • Postconventional is less common • Generalizability to other cultures? • Other cultures emphasize group regulation of values

27. Gilligan’s Theory: Gender and Moral Reasoning • Carol Gilligan, A Different Voice • Book in which Gilligan proposed female perspective to moral reasoning • Females emphasize concern, care and relations in moral decisions; men emphasize fairness and justice • Little strong research support; both males and females use both justice and caring

28. Temperament: The Influence of Biology • General innate behavioral styles • Identified easy, difficult and slow-to-warm-up temperaments • Goodness-of-fit between temperament and social relationships influences future development

29. Attachment: Learning About Relationships • Emotional tie between infant and caretaker • Separation anxiety and stranger anxiety • Initially thought related to feeding • Typically by 8 to 9 months • Harlow and Zimmerman – monkey research • Demonstrated infant monkeys preferred comfort contact, beyond food needs

30. Attachment Styles • Mary Ainsworth • Developed “strange situation” to research qualitative differences in attachment • Identified four attachment styles • Secure, avoidant, resistant, disorganized/disoriented • Culture and different child-rearing practices influence attachment

31. Four Attachment Styles • Secure: Parents as base to explore from, quickly soothed when parent returns • Avoidant: Ignore parent, not distressed when leave, or happy when return • Resistant: “clingy,” don’t explore new situation, extreme distress when parent leaves • Disorganized/disoriented: Confused, disoriented, look away while comforted

32. How Does Attachment Influence Development • Research partially supports notion that early attachment is foundation for later relationships • Secure attachment related to better preschool and school-age outcomes • Insecure attachment mixed results • Bonds with other caretakers can compensate for insecure attachments • Early insecure attachment not necessarily related to lifelong pattern

33. Baumrind’s Research on Parenting Styles • Three parenting styles linked to different child outcomes • Authoritarian (high control, low affection) • Children more withdrawn, anxious, conforming • Authoritative (moderate control, warm) • Most confident, happy children • Permissive (low control, warm) • Most immature children, little impulse control

34. Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development: The Influence of Culture • Children and adults progress through eight developmental crises • Unhealthy resolution impairs later development, although damage can be repaired

35. Erikson’s Childhood Stages • Trust vs. mistrust: (1st year) infant’s needs must be met to develop trust in others • Autonomy vs. shame and doubt: (1-3) finding balance between independence and dependence • Initiative vs. guilt: (3-6) explore environment through trial and error; develop schemas of others’ expectations • Industry vs. inferiority: (6-12) form opinions about self based on mastering tasks, feelings of competency or inferiority

36. Identity vs. Role Confusion: Beginning in the teenage years • Identity – figuring out who they are, similarities/differences from peers and parents • Influenced by biology (puberty) and newly acquired cognitive ability (abstract reasoning) • Role confusion – trying out new roles at the cost of not establishing stable identity

37. Intimacy vs. Isolation: Early Adulthood • Intimacy: Refine and modify identity to accommodate values and interests of another • Intimacy involves cooperation, tolerance and acceptance of others’ views and values • Expressed through marriage, long-term romantic partnerships, friendship, work relationships • Isolation: threatened by close relations with others

38. Generativity vs. Stagnation: Adulthood • Generativity: feeling of having made meaningful contribution to society • Marriage, child rearing, service to others, career accomplishments • Stagnation: sense of failure and absence of purpose • May become bitter, disenchanted • Midlife crisis

39. Integrity vs. Despair: Toward end of life • Review life and judge direction life has taken • Positive feelings about choices – integrity • Negative feeling – despair • Facing death with either fear or regret

40. Gender Role Development By 2 or 3 years, children know their own gender and can label that of others At early age, children develop schemas about gender roles Societal expectations for female and male behavior By age 6, children understand that gender is constant – gender permanence Gender schema theory – modeling and reinforcement contribute to children’s construction of gender schemas

41. Puberty: Big Changes, Rapid Growth • Puberty = process of sexual maturation • Body growth and maturation of sex characteristics • Occurs two years earlier in girls (around 10) than boys (around 12) • Timing varies between individuals and within cultures

42. Gender and Reproductive Capacity • Menopause occurs around 50, on average • End of reproductive capability • Decrease in estrogen • Andropause occurs around 60 • Fewer male hormones released • Most older adults remain sexually active • 75% over 65 report being in good health

43. Changes in Memory and Mental Abilities • Fluid intelligence tends to peak at brain maturity, although some remain strong (some decline in areas as early as late 20’s) • Crystallized intelligence, influenced more by culture and experience, tends to increase to the 60’s • Physical and cognitive exercise help sustain cognitive functioning in late adulthood

45. Cohabitation • Living with an intimate partner • Rates increasing over past 20 years • Tend to be short-lived: separate or get married • Reasons for cohabitating: test out compatibility or as alternative to marriage (gay and lesbian couples)

46. Marriage: Adaptation, Satisfaction and Gender Differences • 95% of Americans get married at some point • 60% of marriages worldwide are arranged • Successful marriage involves adaptation • Satisfying marriages: similar backgrounds, waiting to marry, supportive behaviors • Dissatisfying: negative comments, contempt, defensiveness, and criticism

48. Reactions to Death: Kubler-Ross’s Stages • Death is a process, not a single point in time • In current society, death is an isolated process • Elisabeth Kübler-Ross • Researcher on death and dying • Identified five reactions of dying people • Legitimacy, but not sequence, of stages confirmed through research • May be experienced with other losses • Other factors influence experience of death

49. Kubler-Ross Stages • Denial • Anger • Bargaining • Depression • Acceptance

50. Bereavement and Grief: How We Respond to Death • Bereavement = experience of losing loved one • Grief = emotional reaction to loss • Although a personal experience, research has identified common themes within three phases