Developmental Psychology Through Childhood

What are the issues in Development?

Nature/Nurture - what accounts for the changes? Are our inherited traits due to DNA in our genes or the experiences and interaction in our environment?

Continuity/Discontinuity - Is development gradual and continuous from start to finish, or is it discontinuous with abrupt changes like a caterpillar to a butterfly?

Stability/Change - Is our personality set at an early age or do we change at each stage of development or over the years?

  1. Early Responses
    1. Birth - senses work well, but infants show preferences for certain stimuli.
      1. Reflexes: Innate or biological behaviors that are consistent across a species. Some reflexes are temporary some are permanent.
        1. Grasping Reflex - grabbing, strong reflex
        2. Rooting Reflex - help find source for sucking by turning the cheek to the side that was touched
        3. Sucking Reflex - eating or suckling movements
        4. Moro Reflex - startle reflex, will react to embrace
    2. After 10 days, infants behavior can be conditioned. They show evidence of remembering; for example; she shows heart rate increase when hearing a new sound, but after presentation of the sound a number of times no increase in heart rate, this is called habituation.
    3. 4-6 weeks smiles at objects, at 2-3 mo. she smiles at human faces, this is called Social Smiling. May imitate human faces.
    4. This is point of communication and beginning of attachments to her/his caretakers.

  2. Perceptual Development
    1. Vision
      1. See clearly faces and objects 8-10 inches away
      2. By four months have full color vision, from physical development of visual system.
    2. Depth Perception
      1. Infants have ability to distinguish depth from about 6-14 months. Used visual cliff experiment (Walk and Gibson 1961)
      2. 5 months, some depth perception present.
    3. Object Perception
      1. 3 mo. can recognize 3-D objects.
    4. Other Senses
      1. Can hear and localize sound direction, partial to high pitched sounds
      2. Develop taste preferences for sweets

  3. Physical Development
    1. Head grows most in first 2 years
    2. Cute Response - adult perception of cuteness from proportion of size of head to body.
    3. Follows pattern of systematic maturation. From head to toe, inside to outside
    4. Note: Development is a qualitative change, while Maturation is a quantitative change from growth and heredity
    5. Motor development follows pattern of Developmental Norms

  4. Cognitive Development -- PIAGET - 4 stages, understanding the world requires constructing themes, mental plans for knowing called Schemas. An infant begins with only 2, sucking and grasping.

    1. Sensorimotor (0 - 2 years)
      1. Piaget believes infants capable of learning at birth, their learning is related to their development. Now behavior is purposeful and non-verbal
      2. Watson looks at it differently, they learn the same as adults, by getting pleasure from their actions.
      3. Learning a combination of sensory input and motor responses
      4. Actions are part of objects themselves, once separated, the child can use a symbol or a word in place of an action. Symbolic Substitution.
      5. Schemas - how they organize their experiences, fitting into categories, first step toward problem solving.
      6. Research suggest that infants can remember for a long period of time, tested this by using faces in experiments.
      7. Metzloff found 14 month old babies to be able to imitate faces they have seen earlier
      8. Differs from Piaget who believes not possible to imitate until 12 months old, and that memory function did not develop until 18-24 months.
      9. Object Permanence: 3 - 5 months, example of out of mind out of sight with infants, a cognitive ability to understand permanence of objects
      10. At this stage time orientation is lacking
      11. Sensorimotor Intelligence - Babies do not think abstractly

    2. Pre-Operational Stage: 2 - 7 years
      1. Child begins to think in symbols, called "Representational Thought" representing things mentally not only limited to action. "Playing make believe" & imitation some time later after stimuli. The child thinks in terms of self, and his or own feelings and applies to others. Perception based understanding.
      2. Some research suggests that compassion is present, from experiment using toddlers involved in helping situations
      3. Egocentrism: Piaget used three mountains on a model demonstrate that children always repeated their own view when asked which view the experimenter saw.
      4. Some researchers question this, suggest only an information processing problem, demonstrated with children some of whom were able to hide a Snoopy doll from view of the examiner.

    3. Concrete Operations: 7 - 11 years
      1. Conservation Concepts -
        1. Mass - using lumps of clay (bigger)
        2. Length - use lengths of yarn, etc. (longer)
        3. Numbers - use marbles, (more)
        4. Volume - beakers, graduate with water (shorter or taller)
        5. Metacognition - The ability to monitor one's own thoughts,
          1. Younger children when asked when they have memorized a series of cards often underestimate themselves when compared to older children.
          2. Reversal - thoughts or operations, 4x2=8 and 2x4=8
          3. Example of asking a boy if he has a brother, and then asking if his brother has a brother as well

    4. Formal Operations - 11 to adult
      1. Symbolic Content, Abstraction, and Reasoning Problem Solving - suggests adults may be able to use them only in their own area of expertise, (the combination of liquids demonstration)
      2. Adolescents engage in hypothesis testing, a form of logical reasoning, thinking of how things might be and then test them.

  5. Social Development
    1. Attachment
      1. Lower animals imprint on caretaker, first organism in their visual environment, present only during critical period
      2. Harlow studied existence of attachment in Rhesus monkeys to determine if attachment was a function of a primary drive satisfaction, for example feeding. In his classic study which exposed the monkeys to surrogate mothers, one cloth covered, the other a wire frame but with a feeding device he demonstrated the monkeys response to stress and preference of mothers. Despite the wire surrogate being a source of food, the infant monkeys attached to the cloth surrogate mother.
      3. Humans differ from imprinting instead they form attachments
      4. 7 months infants form strong attachment
      5. Will recognize their parents, show definite reaction to them. At about 6 months Stranger Anxiety develops around presence of strangers
      6. At some point infants will react to their caretakers absence, called Separation Anxiety. Depends on attachment of infant to caretaker:
      7. Research by Ainsworth investigated attachment and identified differing styles, securely, ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles in children. In general terms we look at children as being securely or anxiously attached to the caretaker.
      8. Securely attached infants reacts negatively when attachment figure leaves, but responds positively when they return, often using them as a secure base for exploration.
      9. Anxiously attached infants respond ambiguously or negatively upon return of the attachment figure

  6. Parenting
    1. Over strict and controlling parents affect children, resulting in a withdrawn and distrustful child
    2. "Authoritative" parents give structure and guidance, self reliant and responsible
    3. Birth order - first higher IQ, later children social skill

  7. Resilience
    1. Can identify factors in children who cope with stress well.
    2. 0-2 yrs. social, active, cuddly and affectionate, elicit and receive a great deal of attention, resulting in affectionate bond with caretaker. Develops into independence by age two, of attempting things on own and asking for help. Appears to be unaffected by mothers employment outside the home.
    3. Early negative experiences can be compensated for by positive experiences. It appears to be an interaction effect between parent and child.

  8. Divorce
    1. Wallerstein and Kelly (1980), followed 60 families for 5 years after divorce.
    2. Found it does not predict any one single reaction, but leads to three patterns (1) 33% - adjusted quite well, happy and healthy (2) 29%- adjusted reasonably well, problems with anger or low self esteem (3) 37% - became depressed, lonely and remained unhappy
    3. Important factors included, how well adjusted before divorce, relationship with mother and father after the divorce. Parents should not remain married for sake of children, but must accept the consequences of the decision
    4. Note that until the 20th century there was no child psychology, children were treated as miniature adults, look at early portraits of children and notice there dress, pose etc..
  9. Moral Development
    1. Piaget
      1. Before 6 yr. only concerned with concrete aspects of behavior, "moral realism", look only at simple consequences.
    2. Freud
      1. From developmental crisis, adopts view of same sex parent during resolution of Oedipus complex. This fails to account for all the gradual changes.
    3. Social Learning Model
      1. From reinforcement for good behavior, and punishment for bad, and from moral models of adults.
      2. Socializing approach can affect the levels of moral development.

Key Terms

Definitions for Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
Culture the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
Gender the characteristics, whether biologically or socially influenced, by which people define male and female
Rooting Reflex The rooting reflex is the newborn's tendency, when his or her cheek is stroked, to move toward the stimulus and begin sucking.
Maturation Maturation refers to the biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior and are relatively uninfluenced by experience Example: The ability to walk depends on a certain level of neural and muscular maturation. For this reason, until the toddler's body is physically ready to walk, practice "walking" has little effect.
Schema In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, a schema is a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Cognition Cognition refers to the mental processes associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering.
Sensorimotor Stage In Piaget's theory of cognitive stages, the sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to about age 2. During this stage, infants gain knowledge of the world through their senses and their motor activities.
Object Permanence Object permanence, which develops during the sensorimotor stage, is the awareness that things do not cease to exist when they are out of sight.
Egocentrism In Piaget's theory, Egocentrism refers to the difficulty that preoperational children have in considering another's viewpoint. "Ego"means "self," and "centrism" indicates "in the center"; the preoperational child is "self-centered."
Preoperational Stage In Piaget's theory, the preoperational stage lasts from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age. During this stage language development is rapid, but the child lacks logical reasoning.
Conservation Conservation is the principle that properties such as number, volume, and mass remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects; it is acquired during the concrete operational stage.
Concrete Operational Stage During the concrete operational stage, lasting from about ages 6 or 7 to 11, children can think logically about concrete events and objects.
Formal Operational Stage In Piaget's theory, the formal operational stage normally begins about age 12. During this stage people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. Operations are mental transformations. Preoperational children, who lack the ability to perform transformations, are "before" this developmental milestone. Concrete operational children can operate on real, or concrete, objects. Formal operational children can perform logical transformations on abstract concepts.
Stranger Anxiety Stranger anxiety is the fear of strangers that infants begin to display at about 8 months of age.
Attachment Attachment refers to the process by which young children develop closeness to a caregiver
Critical Period A critical period is an optimal period shortly after birth during which an organism must be exposed to certain experiences or influences if it is to develop properly.
Imprinting Imprinting is the process by which certain animals form attachments early in life, usually during a limited critical period.
Temperament Temperament refers to the rudiments of personality and a child's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity. Temperament is a trait that is strongly linked to heredity.
Basic Trust According to Erikson, basic trust is a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy -- a concept that infants form if their needs are met by responsive caregiving.
Intimacy In Erikson's theory, intimacy, or the ability to establish close, loving relationships, is the primary task of late adolescence and early adulthood.
Cross-sectional Study In a cross-sectional study, people of different ages are tested at

the same time.
Longitudinal Study In a longitudinal study, the same people are tested and retested over a period of years.
Social Clock The social clock refers to the culturally preferred timing of life events, such as leaving home, marrying, having children, and retiring.
Identical Twins Identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two and therefore are genetically identical.
Fraternal Twins Fraternal twins develop from two separate eggs fertilized by different sperm and therefore are no more genetically similar than ordinary siblings.

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