Unit 2 Lecture Notes October 4 2012 Motor Brain Development Changes in Body Form Proportion o Newborn head is 25 of body length 70 adult size at birth but only 25 of body weight Cephalocaudal head trunk extremities grows in this order Proximodistal organs precede digits Pre bones fuse to fewer o Soft cartilage ossifies or hardens fuse by age 2 o Ossification Babies born with pliability and pointy heads Skull is open to manipulation different cultural practices Babies have structures that turn into more structures baby hands few bones turn into many Height and weight of infants double over the first 3 years however it s an uneven process in all of the systems Brain is 95 of adult size by age 6 body about half and nowhere close to being adult reproductive organs Height growth is fast in first two years slows until puberty and spurts at puberty again Girls have their growth spurts before boys do but boys surpass girls in height Individual Differences Danny 14 6 5 diet effected him Reaction Range the range of possible phenotypes for each genotype Hypothetical reaction ranges for 3 ficticious individuals with 3 different genotypes impoverished average and enriched Overweight children and adolescents in the US has increased majorly over the years cohort effects in obesity of children in SE Asia are underweight food scarcity malnutrition Baby Reflexes emerge very early and then disappear o Grasping o Stepping organismic perspective comes into play o Swimming Motor Development Mile Stones o Chin then chest up o Rolls over o Sits with support o Stands holding on o Pulls self to stand o Stands well alone o Walks well alone Easier for babies to crawl backwards than forward vision of what they want to crawl towards gets smaller they figure it out and start crawling forward Motor Development o Maturational View motor development is an unfolding of skills similar across cultures o Experiential View if you don t use it you ll lose it institutionalized children Maturation is necessary but not sufficient Even reflexes may last longer if practiced o Dynamic Systems infants actively reorganize existing motor capabilities into more complex action systems head turn towards parent skills build and reorganize October 16 2012 Motor Brain Development Cont Optic development babies move away from what they want to reach at first rather than towards this eventually changes as they figure out that the object needs to get bigger in there retinae rather than smaller Motoric development facilitates perceptual development depth perception optic flow Grasping from palm digits Neurons synapse neurotransmitters go to next neuron through this structure dendrites cell body down myelin sheath etc 1000 10 000 connections neuron Growth of neural connections synaptogenesis Glia outnumber neurons they support neurons with a variety of services including removing excess glutamate from the environment Gray matter cell bodies glia White matter axons Fertile Minds look up on ppt o Prenatal brain is already pulsing with electrical activity o Proliferation Plasticity Hemispherectomy remove half of brain other half takes over o Girl with half a brain brandi binder she s 22 she was 4 had contracted a rare form of epilepsy that should have killed her October 18 2012 Actifier babies who are born prematurely are often in grave danger They LOOK UP amygdala activates in adolescents o gut reactions emotional responses o shocked surprised angry o underlies difficulty with adults Cognitive Development Piaget 1896 1980 o Genetic Epistemology How do we come to know what we know o We come to know the world by acting on it o Infants actively seek to assimilate new knowledge with their previous understandings o Organismic Active child o Discontinuous development o Nature interfaces with environment o Genetic Epistemology the experimental study of the development of knowledge Stages Development proceeds through qualitative transformations o An unfolding influenced by environment and cultural factors o Invariant developmental sequence Sensorimotor 0 2 Preoperational 2 7 Concrete Operational 7 11 5 Formal Operational 11 5 Piaget s Key Terms o Schema a mental structure that provides an organism with a model for action in similar circumstances o Adaptation adjusting to the environment Intelligence is a form of adaptation wherein knowledge is constructed by each individual through the two complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation normative development vs individual difference o Assimilation the process by which children incorporate new experiences into their existing schemas o Accommodation process by which children modify existing schemes to incorporate new experiences o Cognitive equilibrium balance between one s thought processes and environment The goal of intellectual activity o Assimilation interpreting new experiences and incorporating them into their existing schemas o Accommodation modifying one s existing schemas in order to adapt to new experiences Stage theorist o Invariant developmental sequence sensorimotor preoperational concrete operational and formal operational Stages are a state of equilibrium derived from previous stage universal Sensorimotor Period coordinating sensory inputs and motor capabilities o Relying on overt actions to generate knowledge a sort of noncognitive learning o Reflex activity 0 1 5mos can accommodate reflexes o Primary Circular Reactions 1 4mos repetition of bodily behaviors for pleasure o Symbolic problem solving 18 24mos beginning of symbolic representation Language words come to stand for familiar objects Insight visualizing the solution object permanence LOOK AT PPT October 25 2012 Piaget Cont Formal Operational Stage 11 12 o Can think rationally about abstract concepts and hypothetical events Where would you put a 3rd eye o Math o Future o Conseequences to Self Other Idealism Angst Can become preoccupied with self A new egocentrism in adolescence David Elkind o Imaginary Audience the egocentric belief that everyone is just as critical of one s actions appearance as oneself is o Personal Fable the belief in the uniqueness of one s self and one s experiences and in one s indestructibility Nobody could possibly understand me or my heartbreak emo Piaget s Contributions to Psychology o Founded the field of cognitive development Children differ qualitatively from adults not just quantitatively They actively contribute to their own development by acting on the world organismic He attempted to