Exam III PSY 2012 12 06 2012 Ch 10 Developmental Psychology Developmental Psych the study of how behavior changes over the life span Post Hoc Fallacy The mistake of assuming that because A comes before B A must cause B i e Because nearly 100 of serial killers drank milk as children milk drinking creates mass murderers Bidirectional influences Children s experiences influence their development but their development also influences their experiences i e Children also change their environments by acting in ways that create changes in the behaviors of their parents siblings friends and teachers Unidirectional parents fight with each other their children reacting negatively Children witness violence at school they become more aggressive Cross sectional design a design in which researchers examine people of different ages at a single point in time i e a snapshot of each person at a single age assess some people when they re 24 some when they re 47 others when they re 63 and so on Problem Cohort effects effects due to the fact that sets of people who lived during one time period called cohorts can differ in some systematic way from sets of people who lived during a different time period i e Baby Boomers grew up in a very different technological age that did the members of the Millennial Generation Solution Longitudinal design psychologists track the development of the same group of subjects over time obtain the equivalent of a series of home movies taken at different ages Developmental effects changes over time within individuals as a consequence of growing older o Externalizing behaviors behaviors such as breaking rules defying authority figures and committing crimes Prenatal prior to birth the human body acquires its basic form and structure Zygote when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg Blastocyst a ball of identical cells that haven t yet begun to take on any specific function in a body part Embryo different cells start to assume different functions Limbs facial features and major organs begin to take shape Fetus physical maturation Brain development human brain begins to develop 18 days after fertilization Between 18th day and end of 6th month neurons begin developing at an astronomical rate called proliferation Physical development Rolling over 2 to 5 months Sitting up 5 to 8 months Standing pulling self up 6 to 10 months Standing alone 10 to 14 months Walking 11 to 14 months Cognitive development how we acquire the ability to learn think communicate and remember over time Jean Piaget the first to present a comprehensive account of cognitive development Attempted to identify the stages that children pass through on their way to adult like thinking Children he said are motivated to match their thinking about the world with their observations o Schema her understanding of and expectations about how the world works Mental representations of the world They organize and interpret incoming info and act as Mental filters Children form schemas naturally and change them over the course of development Assimilation the process of absorbing new experience into current schemas If a child believes the earth is flat learns that the earth is round might assimilate this knowledge into her schema by picturing a flat disk like a coin During assimilation the child s cognitive skills and worldviews remain unchanged so she interprets new experiences to fit into what she already knows Make experience fit the schema Accommodation the altering of a schema to make it more compatible with experience Make the schema fit the experience Piaget s Stages of Development Each stage is characterized by a different type of thinking all children advance through the stages in the same order 1 Sensorimotor Stage from birth to about 2 years Children s main sources of knowledge thinking and experience are their physical interactions with the world Major milestone is mental representation the ability to think about things that are absent from immediate surroundings such as remembering previously encountered objects Children lack object permanence the understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of view 2 Preoperational stage from 2 until 7 years Marked by an ability to construct mental representations of experience Children can use symbols such as language drawings and objects as presentations of ideas Limits egocentric self centered inability to see the world from others point of view Lack Conservation the concept that physical properties of an object can remain the same despite superficial changes in appearance 3 Concrete operational stage between 7 and 11 years old The ability to perform mental operations but only for actual physical events They can perform organizational tasks that require mental operations on physical objects like sorting coins by size or setting up a battle scene with toy soldiers 4 Formal operations stage adolescence Become capable of abstract reasoning i e hypothetical situations such as if then statements and either or statements and logic Piaget s theory correct Major criticism cognitive development is much more continuous than suggested by Piaget s stage theory Also children may show some cognitive abilities earlier than Piaget thought Vygotsky Social Cultural influences on Cognitive Develop Noted parents and other caretakers tend to structure the learning environment for children in ways that guide them to behave as if they ve learned something before they have known as scaffolding i e training wheels on a bicycle that eventually get taken off Zone of proximal development the phase when children are receptive to learning a new skill but aren t yet successful at it For any skill children move from a phase when they can t learn it even with assistance to the zone of proximal development during which they re ready to make use of scaffolding Social development Attachment A deep emotional bond that we first develop with our primary caregivers Secure base solid attachments form a secure base from which an individual can explore the world and to which an individual can return to rest and restock depleted resources Contact comfort warmth and comfort are important components of bonds between animals and humans It is the positive emotions afforded by touch baby monkeys wire w food mom vs soft warm mom Parenting Permissive lenient with their children go along with the child s Authoritarian focus on rules and demanding Show little affection demands little punishment toward their children
View Full Document
Unlocking...