Chapter 9 Notes Nature refers to a person s biological inheritance especially his or her genes nurture refers to the individual s environmental and social experiences Judith Harris 1998 author of the book The Nurture Assumption argues that what parents do makes no diff erence in children s behavior Spank them Hug them Read to them Ignore them It will not infl uence how they turn out because genes and peers are far more important than parents in children s development Harris maintains Developmental psychologists debate whether early experiences or later experiences are more important Kagan 2010 Staudinger Gluck 2011 R A Th ompson 2010 Some believe that unless infants receive warm nurturing caregiving in their fi rst year or so of life they will not develop to their full potential Phillips Lowenstein 2011 Sroufe Coffi no Carlson 2010 Other psychologists emphasize the power of later experience arguing that important development occurs later on in life as well Scheibe Carstensen 2010 Life span developmentalists who study both children and adults in fact stress that researchers have given too little attention to adult development and aging Piaget believed that children actively construct their cognitive world as they go through a series of stages In Piaget s view children use schemas to make sense of their experience Recall from Chapter 7 that a schema is a mental concept or framework that organizes information and provides a structure for interpreting it Schemas are expressed as various behaviors and skills that the child can exercise in relation to objects or situations For example sucking is a simple early schema More complex schemas that occur later in childhood include blowing crawling and hiding In adulthood schemas may represent more complex expectations and beliefs about the world Piaget s fi rst stage the sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to about 2 years of age In this stage infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences such as seeing and hearing with motor physical actions hence the term sensorimotor As newborns they have little more than reflexive patterns with which to work By the end of this stage 2 year olds show complex sensorimotor patterns and are beginning to use symbols or words in their thinking Object permanence is Piaget s term for the crucial accomplishment of understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen heard or touched Piaget believed that out of sight literally was out of mind for very young infants Object permanence is an enormous developmental milestone In the absence of object permanence the world and its objects change from one moment to the next Once the infant knows that objects still exist even if he or she cannot see them the infant can think about future events such as When will I see Mommy again Piaget s second stage of cognitive development the preoperational stage lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age Preoperational thought is more symbolic than sensorimotor thought In preschool years children begin to represent their world with words images and drawings Th us their thoughts begin to exceed simple connections of sensorimotor information and physical action Children s thought in the preoperational stage is egocentric not in the sense that they are self centered or arrogant but because preoperational children cannot put themselves in someone else s shoes or take another person s mental state into account Preoperational thinking is also intuitive meaning that preoperational children make judgments based on gut feelings rather than logic Piaget s concrete operational stage 7 to 11 years of age involves using operations and replacing intuitive reasoning with logical reasoning in concrete situations Children in the concrete operational stage can successfully complete the beaker task described above Th ey are able to imagine the operation of reversing the pouring of the liquid back into the wide beaker Individuals enter the formal operational stage of cognitive development at 11 to 15 years of age Th is stage continues through the adult years Formal operational thought is more abstract and logical than concrete operational thought Most important formal operational thinking includes thinking about things that are not concrete making predictions and using logic to come up with hypotheses about the future Unlike elementary schoolchildren adolescents can conceive of hypothetical purely abstract possibilities Th is type of thinking is called idealistic because it involves comparing how things are to how they might be Adolescents also think more logically Th ey begin to think more as a scientist thinks devising plans to solve problems and systematically testing solutions Piaget called this type of problem solving hypothetical deductive reasoning Infant attachment is the close emotional bond between an infant and its caregiver British psychiatrist John Bowlby 1969 1989 theorized that the infant and the mother instinctively form an attachment For Bowlby the newborn comes into the world equipped to stimulate the caregiver to respond it cries clings smiles and coos Bowlby thought that this early relationship with our primary caregiver was internalized so that it served as our schema for our sense of self and the social world Many developmental psychologists concur that such attachment during the fi rst year provides an important foundation for later development Fearon others 2010 Sroufe Coffi no Carlson 2010 Th e term secure attachment means that infants use the caregiver usually the mother as a secure base from which to explore the environment In the strange situation the secure infant is upset when the mother leaves but calms down and appears happy to see her when she returns Th e preconventional level is based primarily on punishments and rewards from the external world Moral reasoning is guided by not wanting Heinz to go to jail or concern for the druggists profi ts At the conventional level the individual abides by standards such as those learned from parents or society s laws At this level the person might reason that Heinz should act in accord with expectations or his role as a good husband or reason that Heinz should follow the law no matter what At the postconventional level the individual recognizes alternative moral courses explores the options and then develops an increasingly personal moral code At this level the person might reason that Heinz s wife s