Chapter 9 Life Span Development 3 26 13 3 28 13 and 4 2 13 3 on Major Concept Sheet Maturation the gradual unfolding of one s genetic blueprint the timing of when certain abilities are developed 5 on Major Concept Sheet Teratogens and Negative Events Teratogen any agent that causes birth defects Maternal illness o Chicken Pox rubella HIV influenza Alcohol and drugs o Alcohol FAS heroin cocaine o Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the 1 leading cause of mental retardation Caffeine and smoking Diet and pollution o Malnutrition o Too much methyl mercury contaminated fish such as tuna o Household products o Beauty products Maternal stressors o When they re stressed the body emits a stress hormone that halts genetic development of the embryo o Leading cause of babies being born underweight o The US has the highest rates of maternal stress in the civilized world 6 on Major Concept Sheet Reflex an automatic response to environmental events 7 on Major Concept Sheet Temperament the inborn part of personality it doesn t change very much o Easy to put on a schedule calm much more likely to grow up to be Approach style Easy calm sociable adults Withdrawal style Difficult o Very easily upset child doesn t deal well with new situations grow into individuals that are more anxious and have difficulty with social interactions Nurturing experiences o When a difficult baby but happens to be raised by a relatively patient mother they will be less difficult when they re older than they were when they were born 8 on Major Concept Sheet Infancy and Childhood Physical and motor development o Cephalocaudal rule 9 on Concept Sheet Perceptual development o Visual perception the Head to Foot rule we learn on how to control our body from Head to Foot the first thing we can do is hold our head up then lastly we learn to walk o Proximodistal rule Center to Outward We are born with being able to control our torso and then we have to learn how to control our arms and legs o Milestones refers to the timing of motor development Our vision has to develop we re born legally blind We are born with an automatic ability to respond to human faces Visual cliff experiment Tracks the development of depth perception Putting a child on a desk and having a piece of glass that extends over the desk the baby wont freak out about being on the glass until they have developed depth perception then they think they re falling Depth perception is developed 3 and 6 months of age long before they can talk or walk Habituation technique Tracks the development of shape and color perception show one particular color up on the board for awhile and then flash a different color up their if their gaze changes they have developed the ability to recognize different colors based on the idea that you are able to recognize what you re looking at Usually developed 6 months 1 year of age o Auditory perception We are born being able to recognize our mother s voice 10 on Concept Sheet Language Development How is language acquired o Behaviorist theories Skinner Language is learned through reinforcement punishment Only actually covers 20 of how we really learn language o Nativist theories Chomsky Biological Language acquisition device LAD An innate or inborn brain mechanism that contains a set of grammatical rules that is seen in every language o Characteristics of language development Child directed speech it is a biological instinct to talk to kids with a high pitched voice and very slowly BECAUSE that s how they learn to speak Critical period a narrow window of time when a certain type of learning or some aspect of development is possible o Basically an age range of when something should happen o For language the critical period is ages 1 5 11 on Concept Sheet Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development Piaget s theory is that we are born cognitively immature o We have an incomplete understanding of the world around us 12 and 13 On Concept Sheet Periods of cognitive development 4 stages of cognitive development that are marked by a particular way of viewing the world o Sensorimotor o Preoperational Age 0 2 years Major achievements to move to the next stage Object permanence objects still exist even when they can t be seen ability to Imitate Major limitation the lack of Object permanence In the first two years of life Out of Sight is Out of Mind Age 2 7 years Major achievement capacity for mental representation picturing a word problem in your mind Limitation Centration Conservation ultimate goal o Centration Both are tied into the capacity of mental representation Centration the tendency to focus on just one property of an object or just one feature of a problem to the exclusion of all others regardless of the fact that the two beakers had the same amount all she was focused on was the height of the water because she is not able to conserve amount o Conservation Certain properties of an object such as amount and mass remain the same even when their appearance changes Ultimate goal of this preoperational stage Limitation Egocentrism Animism o Egocentrism inability to take another person s point of view does not understand that the world appears differently to other people because a child can only take 1 perspective o Animism the belief that all things are living and react the same o Concrete operations way a human would Age 7 11 years The period where you become mathematically mature Major achievements Can take another person s perspective Classifying objects Conservation and other reversible mental operations You can solve problems in your head Only limitation Abstract Thought in this stage children cannot do this If you can take definitions and apply them to some original example requires the ability to think abstractly o Formal operations Piaget s term for logical thought Age 11 years at the earliest 30 of our population doesn t get to this point Major achievements Logic Abstract concepts Reversibility Hypothetical thinking Schema a mental structure that organizes sensory and perceptual input and connects it to the appropriate response our theories of how the world works Assimilation involves fitting new experiences into existing schemas how do I explain this experience that just happened to me using my existing schemas o Example In his mind his schema was if it is red and it is round you put it on your Tee and hit it he didn t really think about how the tomato was something you ate and you shouldn t put them on your tee and hit them like his baseball