Developmental Psychology

7-9% of Exam

Introduction: Your Life Story

Developmental psychology is the study of how people change physically, mentally, and socially throughout the lifespan

Introduction: Your Life Story

At every age and stage of life, developmental psychologists investigate the influence of multiple factors on development, including biological, environmental, social, cultural, and behavioral factors Along with studying common patterns of growth and change, developmental psychologists look at the ways in which people differ in their development and life stories

Introduction: Your Life Story

Developmental psychologists often conceptualize the lifespan in terms of basic stages of development, which are defined by age Some aspects of development, such as prenatal development and language development, are closely tied to critical period

Introduction: Your Life Story

The theme of the typical course of human development is gradually unfolding changes Another important theme is the interaction between heredity and environment, traditionally called the nature-nurture issue

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

Genetic Makeup
The zygote is the single cell formed at conception; it contains the unique set of genetic instructions inherited from your biological parents Chromosomes are long, threadlike structures composed of twisted parallel strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and are found in the nucleus of the cell DNA is the chemical basis of heredity; the DNA code carried on each chromosome is arranged in thousands of segments called genes

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

Each gene is a unit of DNA instructions for making a particular protein molecule. Proteins are used in virtually all of the bodys functions

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

Your Unique Genotype
At conception, the genes carried on the 23 chromosomes contributed by your biological mothers ovum were paired with the genes carried on the 23 chromosomes contributed by your biological fathers sperm, creating your unique genetic makeup or genotype The differences between the different types of body cells are due to which genes are expressed, or activated, at different times

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

The Human Genome Project greatly advanced our knowledge of DNA and gene activity by producing a map of the human genome, the complete set of DNA in the human organism Genes can come in different versions, called alleles
Your genotype includes two copies of each gene- one from each parent. These genes may be identical or different. The range of potential alleles for individual genes varies

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

It is the unique combination of alleles that makes each persons genotype unique The best-known pattern of allele variation is the simple dominantrecessive gene pair. Most characteristics, however, involve the interaction of multiple genes

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

From Genotype of Phenotype
While genotype refers to the underlying genetic makeup of a particular individual, phenotype refers to the characteristics that are actually displayed The analogy of a persons genotype to a blueprint is inaccurate
Genes themselves dont actually control physical development or behavior. A persons genotype can more accurately be described as a cookbook containing a collection of recipes (genes) for building proteins for every conceivable occasion

Genetic Contributions of Your Life Story

Genetic activity is far from fixed or inevitable. Rather, it is flexible, responding to the organisms internal state or external environment

Different genotypes react differently to environmental factors. Thus, behavioral genetics researchers will often speak of genetic predispositions to develop in a particular way Genes can also mutate, or spontaneously change, and DNA can be damaged by environmental factors. Errors in the genetic code can disrupt the production of the correct proteins and lead to birth defects or genetic disorders

Prenatal Development
At conception, chromosomes from the biological mother and father combine to form a single cell- the fertilized egg, or zygote. The prenatal stage has three distinct phases: the germinal period, the embryonic period, and the fetal period

Prenatal Development
The germinal period, also called the zygotic period, represents the first 2 weeks of prenatal development. The zygote undergoes rapid cell division before becoming implanted on the wall of the mothers uterus. By the end of the 2-week germinal period, the single celled zygote has developed into a cluster of cells called the embryo

Prenatal Development
The embryonic period begins with week 3 and extends through week 8
During this time of rapid growth and intensive cell differentiation, the organs and major systems of the body form. Genes on the sex chromosomes and hormonal influences trigger the initial development of the sex organs

Prenatal Development
The embryo is protectively housed in the fluid-filled amniotic sac; the embryos lifeline is the umbilical cord
Via the umbilical cord, the embryo receives nutrients, oxygen, and water and gets rid of carbon monoxide and other wastes The umbilical cord attaches the embryo to the placenta, a disk-shaped tissue on the mothers uterine wall. The placenta prevents the mothers blood from mingling with that of the developments embryo, acting as a filter to prevent some, but not all, harmful substances that might be present in the mothers blood from reaching the embryo

Prenatal Development
Teratogens are harmful agents or substances that can cause abnormal development or birth defects. Known teratogens include:
Exposure to radiation Toxic industrial chemicals, such as mercury and PCBs Diseases, such as rubella, syphilis, genital herpes, and AIDS Drugs taken by the mother, such as alcohol, cocaine, and heroin

Prenatal Development
Beginning with the third month, the fetal period is the final and longest stage of prenatal development
By the end of the third month, the fetus can move its arms, legs, mouth, and head During the 4th month, the mother experiences quickening- she can feel the fetus moving By the 5th month, all the brain cells are present, and the fetus has distinct sleep-wake cycles and periods of activity During the 6th month, the fetuss brain activity becomes similar to that of a newborn baby During the final 2 months, the fetus will double in weight

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The Newborn
Initially, the newborns behavior is mostly limited to reflexes.
Touching a newborns cheek triggers the rooting reflex Touching a newborns lips evokes the sucking reflex Because of the grasping reflex, the baby will grip your fingers so tightly that he/she can be lifted upright

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The newborns senses- vision, hearing, smell, and touch- are keenly attuned to people, helping the infant quickly learn to differentiate between the mother and other humans
Within just hours of birth, newborns display a preference for their mothers voice and face over that of a stranger Vision is the least developed sense at birth. Optimal viewing distance for the newborn is about 6-12 inches, the perfect distance for a nursing baby to easily focus on his mothers face and make eye contact

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Physical Development
At birth, the newborns brain is 25% of her adult weight; the newborns birth weight, by contrast, is 5% of her eventual adult weight The basic sequence of motor skill development during infancy is universal, but the average ages can be a little deceptive. Each infant has his or her own genetically programmed timetable of physical maturation and development readiness to master different motor skills

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Social and Personality Development
Temperamental qualities: Babies are different!
Inborn predispositions to consistently behave and react in a certain way define temperament In the 1950s, Thomas and Chess rated young infants on a variety of characteristics, such as activity level, mood, regularity in sleeping and eating, and attention span
About 1/3 of the infants were characterized as average babies because the did not fit neatly into one of 3 broad temperamental patterns Easy babies readily adapt to new experiences, generally display positive moods and emotions, and have regular sleeping and eating patterns

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Difficult babies tend to be intensely emotional, are irritable and fussy, and tend to have irregular sleeping and eating patterns Slow-to-warm-up babies have a low activity level, withdraw from new situations and people, and adapt to new experiences very gradually

Jerome Kagan has classified temperament in terms of reactivity

High-reactive infants react intensely to new experiences, strangers, and novel objects. They tend to be tense, fearful, and inhibited Low-reactive infants tend to be calmer, uninhibited and bolder. They tend to be sociable and are more likely to show interest than fear when exposed to new people, experiences, and objects

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Virtually all temperament researchers agree that temperament has a genetic and biological basis but that environmental experiences can modify a childs basic temperament. Cultural beliefs can also affect infant temperament

Attachment: Forming emotional bonds

Attachment is the emotional bond that forms between infant and caregivers, especially parents According to the attachment theory developed by John Bowlby and Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, and infants ability to thrive physically and psychologically depends in part on the quality of attachment

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Infant sleeping arrangements reflect cultural goals for child rearing and cultural values for relations among family members.
Infants in the US usually sleep in separate rooms from birth on, or after 36 months of age. Small children and their parents often engage in elaborate bedtime rituals Mayan infants in Guatemala sleep with their mothers until age 2 or 3 and then sleep with another family member. There are no bedtime rituals

Infants can form multiple attachments

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Depending on the parents, infants can form secure or insecure attachments
Secure attachment occurs when parents are consistently warm, responsive, and sensitive to their infants needs Cross-cultural studies have confirmed that sensitivity to the infants needs is associated with secure attachment in diverse cultures Insecure attachment may develop when an infants parents are neglectful, inconsistent, or insensitive to the infants moods or behaviors

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The most commonly used procedure to measure attachment, called the Strange Situation, was developed by Ainsworth. It is typically used with infants between 1 and 2 years old
In the Strange Situation, the baby and mother are placed in an unfamiliar room for a few minutes with a variety of toys, then a stranger enters the room The mother stays with the child for a few moments, then departs, leaving the child with the stranger. After a few minutes, the mother returns, spend a few minutes in the room, leaves, and returns again

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The securely attached infant will use the mother as a secure base from which to explore the new environment, periodically returning to her side. He will show distress when the mother leaves, will greet her warmly when she returns, and is easily soothed. Insecurely attached infants are less likely to explore the environment, appear either very anxious or completely indifferent, and tend to ignore or avoid their mothers when they are present. Some become extremely distressed when the mother leaves the room, and when reunited, are hard to soothe

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The quality of attachment during infancy is associated with a variety of long-term effects during early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence The effects of child care on attachment and development
High quality day care can potentially benefit children, even when it begins in early infancy Low quality day care can potentially contribute to social and academic problems in later childhood

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Language Development
According to linguist Noam Chomsky, children are born with a biological predisposition to learn language; that is, they possess what he calls a universal grammar- a basic understanding of the common principles of language organization
At birth, infants can distinguish among the speech sounds of all the worlds languages By 10 months, they distinguish only the speech sounds that are present in the language to which they have been exposed.

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Encouraging language development: Motherese
People in every culture use a style of speech called motherese, or infant-directed speech, with babies Motherese is characterized by distinct pronunciation, a simplified vocabulary, short sentences, a high pitch, and exaggerated intonation and expression

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The cooing and babbling stage of language development In virtually every culture, infants follow the same sequence of language development, and at roughly similar ages
At 3 months, they coo At 5 months, they babble. Infants all over the world use the same sounds when they babble At 9 months, babies begin to babble more in the sounds specific to their language. Babbling seems to be a biologically programmed stage of language development

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The one-word stage of language development
Long before babies become accomplished talkers, they understand much of what is said to them. Thus, they have a comprehension vocabulary (the words they understand) that is much larger than their production vocabulary (the words they can say). Around their 5th birthday, infants produce their first real wordsusually referring to concrete objects or people that are important to them During the one-word stage, babies use a single word and vocal intonation to stand for an entire sentence

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The two-word stage of language development
Around their 2nd birthday, infants begin putting words together to construct simple sentences. These utterances include only the most essential words, but basically follow a grammatically correct sequence. Children move beyond the two-word stage at around 2.5 years of age. Language production and comprehension increase dramatically thereafter- children may have a production vocabulary of over 10,000 words by school age

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Cognitive Development
The most influential theory of cognitive development is that of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who believed that children actively try to make sense out of their environment rather than passively soaking up information about the world

Development During Infancy and Childhood

According to Piaget, children progress through four distinct cognitive stages: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage As a child advances to a new stage, his thinking is qualitatively different from that in the previous stage; each new stage represents a fundamental shift in how the child thinks and understands the world As children assimilate new information and experiences, they eventually change their way of thinking to accommodate new knowledge

Development During Infancy and Childhood

According to Piaget, the sequence of stages is universal, but heredity and environment can influence the rate at which children progress through the stage

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The sensorimotor stage
During this stage, infants acquire knowledge abut the world through actions that allow them to directly experience and manipulate objects. Infants gradually acquire object permanence (the understanding that an object continues to exist even if it cant be seen) as they gain experience with objects, as their memory abilities improve, and as they develop mental representations of the world, with Piaget called schemas

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The preoperational stage (age 2-7) In Piagets theory, the word operations refers to logical mental activities; thus, the preoperational stage is a prelogical stage. The thinking of preoperational children is characterized by
Symbolic thought- refers to ability to use words, images, and symbols to represent the world Egocentrism- inability to take another persons perspective or point of view Irreversibility- the child cant mentally reverse a sequence of events or logical operations back to the starting point

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Centration- refers to the tendency to focus, or center, on only one aspect of a situation, usually a perceptual aspect, and ignore other relevant aspects of the situation The inability to understand conservation, the understanding that two equal quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one is changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted

Development During Infancy and Childhood

The concrete operational stage (7-11 y/o) is characterized by the ability to think logically about concrete objects and situations The formal operational stage (adolescence to adulthood) is characterized by the ability to think logically about abstract principles and hypothetical situations

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Criticisms of Piagets theory
Generally, scientific research has supported Piagets most fundamental idea: That infants, young children, and older children use distinctly different cognitive abilities to construct their understanding of the world Other aspects of Piagets theory have been criticized:

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of infants and young children
Renee Baillargeon used visual tasks, rather than manual tasks, and found that young children achieve object permanence at an earlier age than Piaget proposed Baillargeon and her colleagues have also shown that infants develop event-specific expectations, rather than general principles

Piaget underestimated the impact of the social cultural environment on cognitive development

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Offering an alternative viewpoint, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is strongly influenced by social and cultural factors such as the support and guidance that children receive from parents, other adults, and older children The zone of proximal development refers to the gap between what children can accomplish on their own and what they can accomplish with the help of more competent others Cross-cultural studies have shown that cognitive development is strongly influenced by the skills that are valued and encouraged in a particular environment

Development During Infancy and Childhood

Piaget overestimated the degree to which people achieve formal operational thought processes
Researchers have found that many adults display abstract-hypothetical thinking only in limited areas of knowledge and that some adults never display formal operational thought processes Some developmental psychologists emphasize the information-processing model of cognitive development, which focuses on the development of fundamental mental processes, such as attention, memory, and problem solving. They view cognitive development as a process of continuous change over the lifespan that is influenced by life experiences