PYSCH CHAPTER 5 DEVELOPING THROUGH THE LIFE CYCLE Developmental psychology examines how people are continually developing physically cognitively and socially from infancy to old age o Nature nurture how doe genetics and experience influence development o Continuity stages Developmental by a gradual process or through stages o Stability change personality traits persist through our life or do we become different as we age PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE NEWBORN Prenatal Development o Zygotes fertilized egg Few survive past first weeks Divide into a mass of 100 cells and then differentiate o Embryo o Fetus o Placenta After the zygote attached to the inner wall the inner cells become the embryo what will later become the fetus 9 weeks post conception by the 6th month organs like the stomach have developed respond to sound during this time this way the infant knows the sound of a mothers voice Provides nourishment to the fetus and therefore the amount and type of nourishment can be an environmental factor Helps transfer oxygen and wastes to and from the fetus Screens out pathogens but not teratogens Which are agents like viruses and drugs Alcohol Depresses the fetuses neural activity Fetal alcohol syndrome fetuses born with impaired features o Born with reflexes like suckling swallowing and breathing Routing reflex stroking check to find food o Habituation the fact that once a stimulus is presented your awareness of it decreases o Novelty preference procedure after a period of time wanted infants to determine whether a cat dog or a dog cat was more stimulating It was the more face like dog cat This shows that infants desire to gaze at faces seek sights and sounds because it inspires social interaction The Competent Newborn INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD Physical Development o Brain Development Brain overproduces neurons When born have the most neurons you will have in your entire life After birth enhancing the neural networks is what allows us to development 3 6 months most rapid growth is in the frontal lobe thinking memory and language are the last neural networks to develop maturation sets the basic course or development but experience adjusts it o Motor Development As a child s muscles and nervous system mature skills advance All children walk before they crawl Back to sleep position putting an infant on its back so it doesn t suffocate Maturation of our cerebellum genes create our readiness to learn Experience before this age has a limited effect Limited bowel and voluntary muscle control o Maturation and Infant Memory Infantile amnesia cannot remember memories before 3 The nervous system can recall associations that we cannot consciously vocalize Baby and mobile o Cognitive development Cognition related to all of the mental activities associated with thinking knowing remembering and communicating Piaget s study of children allowed him to hypothesize that development comes from a series of stages The driving force behind our intellectual progression is an unceasing struggle to understand our experiences The building brain creates schemas concepts of experience When we grow older we adjust our experience by assimilating our new experiences into our schemas or current understandings of the world As we interact with our world we accommodate our schemas to incorporate new experiences Developmental Phenomena Object permanence Stranger anxiety Typical Age Range Birth to 2 years old 2 to 6 7 years About 7 to 11 years Description of Stage Sensorimotor Experiencing the world through senses and actions looking hearing touching mouthing and grasping Preoperational Representing things with words and images using intuitive rather than logical reasoning Concrete operational Thinking logically about concrete events grasping concrete analogies And performing arithmetical operations Formal operational Abstract reasoning Pretend play egocentrism Conservation Mathematical transformations About 12 through adulthood Sensorimotor stage Abstract logic Potential for mature moral reasoning o Take in the world through senses and actions o Out of sight out of mind Once the object is removed from sight the infant thinks it ceases to exist o Lack object permanence The idea that objects continue to exist enough though not perceived to exist o At 8 months develop the idea to look for the object o Some believe that Piaget was wrong and underestimated an infants cognition and infants gradually develop not evolve in stages Babies stared longer at the cube that was more impossible proving that babies have a better understanding than Piaget thought Babies have an idea of numbers surprised when the daffy duck when accustomed to 3 times was only displayed twice Preoperational stage o To young to perform mental functions o No sense of conservation Principle that quantity remains the same despite its shape The bottle to bottle conservation experiment o Egocentrism o Theory of Mind Preschool children Difficulty processing others thoughts Have not developed the ability to understand another s viewpoint Begin to understand others viewpoints when children are developing theory of mind During theory of mind start to understand empathizes and tease other children because to start to understand the basis of other s thoughts Autistic children have difficulty relating to others mental states as Our abilities to perform mental function miraculously appear in well as their own other stages As grow older able to use words and language to solve problems Talking to themselves helps young children grasp self control and solve problems Concrete Operational Stage o 6 to 7 years of age o given concrete objects able to grasp conservation o understand that change in form does not affect quantity o comprehend mathematical transformations and conservation Formal Operational Stage o By 12 evolve from concrete to encompass complex thinking abstract o Hypothetical propositions and deducing consequences if this then what Reflecting on Piaget s Theory o Development is continuous o Children express mental ability and operations at a nearlier age o Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition o Vtoksty theorizes that development grows out of the brains interaction with environment By giving them words etc parents give children tools to reach higher level of thinking SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT As infants develop stranger anxiety o Develop schemas with familiar faces and become confused when new faces disappear o Cannot incorporate new faces into schema and become
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