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Erratum. No paper required in this course anymore. Each MD is worth 25%. Development over the early years. Cognitive development Moral development. Developmental Psychology. Developmental psychologists study lifelong—often age-related—processes of change.
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Erratum • No paper required in this course anymore. • Each MD is worth 25%
Development over the early years • Cognitive development • Moral development
Developmental Psychology • Developmental psychologists study lifelong—often age-related—processes of change.
Issues in Developmental Psychology (LOBJ 10.1) • Nature or Nurture • Genes or environment? • Stability versus Change • Inherited traits that continue or constantly changing? • Continuity versus Discontinuity • Are you just more of the same or completely different?
In a cross-sectional design, individuals of different ages are compared at the same time to see how they differ Quick, cheap Can’t control for extraneous variables (income, nutrition, disease) Groups may have had different “cohort” experiences (war) Research Designs (LOBJ 10.3)
Research Designs- 2 • In a longitudinal design, the same group is studied at specific ages • You get great data • Expensive and time consuming • Lose subjects • Test / retest effect • May have to stop study because of findings • Is change due to development of world experiences?
Physical Development • Developmental events that occur before birth are referred to as prenatal • Those that occur in the month after birth are neonatal
From Conception to the First Year • Agents that cross the placenta • The infant’s world • Attachment • How critical are the early years?
Teratogens • Teratogens are substances that can produce birth defects during the prenatal period
Agents That Cross The Placenta • German measles (Rubella) • X-rays, other radiation, toxic chemicals • Sexually transmitted diseases • Cigarette smoking • Alcohol • Drugs other than alcohol • Diseases other than rubella
Effects of alcohol on the fetus • FAS • FAE • ARBD • Specific effects • Prevalence, Incidence (each year, 350 new cases) • Costs
Iatrogenic effects • Define Iatrogenic • Anesthetic agents • NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatories)
The Infant’s World • Physical abilities • Social skills • Culture and maturation
Newborn reflexes • Infants are born with innate primary reflexes • Physicians use the presence or absence of primary reflexes to assess neurological status at birth
Physical Abilities • Newborn Reflexes • Rooting • Sucking • Swallowing • Moro (“startle”) • Babinski • Grasp • Stepping
Social Skills • Babies will turn their heads towards a face at 9 minutes old. • Synchrony • First conversations involve babies exchanging nonverbal signals with others in a rhythmic pattern.
Culture and Maturation • Many aspects of development depend on cultural customs. • Examples include an infant’s ability to sleep alone. • Recommendation to have babies sleep on their back has affected onset of crawling. • As a result, many babies now skip crawling.
Attachment • Contact comfort • Separation and security • What causes insecure attachment?
Attachment • Attachment • a strong emotional tie a person feels toward special people in his or her life • Contact Comfort • In primates, the innate pleasure derived from close physical contact; it is the basis of the infant’s first attachment.
Bonding • is a process of emotional attachment hypothesized to occur between parents and infants soon after birth
John Bowlby was one of the first modern psychologists to study attachment Bowlby argued that an emotional tie to the caregiver evolved because it promotes survival Attachment in Infants
Separation Anxiety and Attachment • By 7 or 8 months of age, separation anxiety may develop in an infant • This is a fear response in which the infant protests the departure of the caregiver • The strange situation technique, used to study attachment, capitalizes on separation anxiety
Attachment Styles • Secure Attachment Type B • A parent-infant relationship in which the baby is secure when the parent is present, distressed by separation, and delighted by reunion. • Insecure Ambivalent Attachment Type C • A parent-infant relationship in which the baby clings to the parent, cries at separation, and reacts with anger to reunion. • Insecure Avoidant Attachment Type A • A parent-infant relationship in which the baby clings to the parent, cries at separation, and reacts with apathy to reunion. • Disorganized Type D • ‘Atypical' incoherent, contradictory behavior in the presence of the caregiver as if their behavioral strategy collapsed under the stress of the Strange Situation.
Types of Attachment • About 60% of children show secure attachment • About 20% show avoidant attachment • About 15% are resistant • About 5% are disoriented
Other Aspects of Attachment • Time spent with babies promotes secure attachment • “Secure” babies have caregivers who are affectionate and especially responsive • Some researchers argue that secure attachment makes cognitive and social development smoother
Temperament • Temperament refers to long-lasting individual differences in disposition, the intensity and quality of emotional reactions • A major study of temperament is the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) performed by Thomas and Chess
The NYLS • The study found four types of infants • The easy child (40% of children) • The slow-to-warm-up child (15%) • The difficult child (10%) • The unique child (35%)
Inhibition • Kagan found that extremely inhibited (shy) 2- and 3-year-olds tended to remain so for four or more years • Biological factors may play a role in shyness and temperament
The Attachment Theory of Love • Like infants have attachment styles to their caregivers, adults have attachment styles to their partners. • Secure or rarely jealous or worried about being abandoned. • Avoidant or distrustful and avoids intimate attachments. • Anxious ambivalent or agitated and worried that partner will leave. • Adult style is related to infant style.
Thinking • According to Piaget, cognitive development consists of mental adaptations to new observations and experiences.
Piaget’s Central Concepts • A schema is an organized way of interacting with the environment and experiencing the world • Schemata guide thoughts based on prior experiences
Adaptation- Piaget • Adaptation takes two forms: • Assimilation or absorbing new information into existing cognitive structures. • Accommodation or modifying existing cognitive structures in response to experience and new information. previously developed mental structures and behaviors (schemata) are modified to adapt them to new experiences
Piaget’s Stages of Development • Sensorimotor • Preoperational • Concrete Operational • Formal Operational
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth - 2yrs) • Coordinates sensory information with bodily movements. • Newborns are dependent, reflexive organisms • At 2 to 3 months, infants develop memory for past events
Sensorimotor Stage • Major accomplishment is object permanence (around 9 months of age). • The understanding that an object continues to exist even when you cannot see or touch it.
Sensorimotor stage • In the second half of the sensorimotor stage, children begin to use language to represent the world
Preoperational Stage (2yrs – 6 or7yrs) • In this stage, children represent reality through symbolic thought • Focused on limitations of children’s thinking. • Children at this age could not reason. • Children were missing operations • Mental actions that are cognitively reversible.
Preoperational Child • Children cannot grasp the concept of conservation. • Understanding that physical properties of objects can remain the same even when their form changes.
Preoperational Child Children were egocentric. • Seeing the world from only your point of view; the inability to take someone else’s perspective.
Animistic thinking is the attribution of intentions to objects or events At the end of the preoperational stage, the child has moved away from centration, a self-oriented view, failing to recognize the view of others Stages of Development
Concrete Operations Stage (6 or 7 – 11 or 12 yrs) • Children’s thinking is still grounded in concrete experiences and concepts but they can now understand conservation, reversibility and cause and effect.
Formal Operations Stage (12 yrs through adulthood) • Teenagers are capable of abstract and deductive reasoning: • Understanding that ideas can be compared and classified. • Reasoning about situations not personally experienced. • Thinking about the future. • Searching systematically for solutions to problems.
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory • Stage changes are neither as clear-cut nor as sweeping as Piaget believed. • Children sometimes understand more than Piaget believed. • Preschoolers are not as egocentric as Piaget thought. • Cognitive development depends on the child’s education and culture • Piaget overestimated the cognitive skills of many adults.
Vygotsky’s Theory • Emphasized the sociocultural influences on children’s cognitive development. • Child develops mental representations of the world through culture and language. • Adults play a major role in development through guidance and teaching. • Once children acquire language they use private speech, talking aloud to themselves to direct their own behaviour, which later become internalized and silent.
Moral Development • From childhood on, individuals develop morality, a system of learned attitudes about social practices, institutions, and individual behaviour used to evaluate situations as right or wrong • Piaget found young children’s ideas about morality to be rigid and rule-bound
Moral Development • Moral reasoning • Kohlberg’s approach • Gilligan’s approach
Kohlberg divides development into three “levels” The central concept is justice, morality as a balance of individual rights and responsibilities Moral Development
Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s Theory • Preconventional Level • Punishment (avoid it) and obedience (for benefits) • Instrumental relativism • Conventional Level • Good boy-nice girl • Society-maintaining • Postconventional Level • Social contract • Universal ethical principles
Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory • Tends to overlook educational and cultural influences. • Some cultural differences not reflected in this theory. • Moral reasoning is often inconsistent across situations. • Moral reasoning is often unrelated to moral behaviour.
Moral Reasoning: Gilligan’s Theory • Argued that men tend to base their moral choices on abstract principles of law and justice and women based moral decisions on principles of compassion and caring.