Chapter 5: Human Development notes PDF

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Fall 2017 Intro Psych with Dr. Rollins
Textbook: Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2015). Psychology, 11th edition. Worth Publishers. ISBN: 1-4641-4081-2...

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Ch 5: Human Development Development – physical, cognitive, emotional, and social changes occurring over the lifespan Infancy o Behavior in infancy 

reflexes – involuntary, automatic, unlearned reactions  sucking, grasping, etc. 

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Babies reflexes disappear over time as the baby becomes more capable of voluntarily controlling its body

motor development – biological maturation and experience 

Voluntary motor control develops as a result of biological maturation and experience

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synaptic growth

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Biological maturation: o Babies are born with all neurons but they haven’t connected o BM is neurons forming synaptic connections

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milestones – timing and sequence 

Because voluntary control is due in part to BM, babies all over the world reach motor mile stones in the same order o However the particular age at which they do them varies o Some kids skip certain motor milestones

o Studying infants 

Babies are hard to study because they can’t follow directions or speak

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But they can turn their heads and look at stuf

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By measuring what they look at and how long they look at it, you can get an idea of what they perceive, know, and remember

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Babies experience habituation

Habituations: decreased response to unchanging or repeated stimuli

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Will look longer at new things and less at things they’ve seen more

 habituation – decreased response to unchanging or repeated stimuli  novel stimuli Cognitive Development During Infancy and Childhood: Piaget’s Theory o Active learners  They don’t just passively absorb things, they try to learn o Stages/periods - qualitative diferences  Each stages thinking is qualitatively diferent  Four main stages in the theory  Sensorimotor (0-2 yrs)  Babies are trying to construct an understanding of their world through their sensory and motor interactions with their environments  Figuring out what diferent sensations mean and how to move their bodies in order to afect their environments and achieve their goals  sensory and motor interactions  lack mental representations o You can close your eyes and picture a green balloon – this is a mental representation o In this period, babies live entirely in the present moment because they lack the ability to form mental representations o For the baby: out of sight, out of mind o object permanence  demonstrated by their lack of object permanence  The understanding that things continue to exist even if you don’t directly perceive them  If a ball rolls away, the baby won’t look for it because to them, the object has ceased to exist  Piaget thought this developed at the end of sensorimotor period, but studies show that babies generally develop object permanence at 6 to 8 months of age o separation anxiety

At about 8 months of age, babies develop separation anxiety – usually upset about being separated from parents  If they didn’t have object permanence, they baby can’t miss the parents when they’re gone because it can’t even think of them if they aren’t there Preoperational (2-7 yrs)  Can use symbols, engage in pretend play  Early on in the period, they have trouble taking on another person’s point of view  Egocentrism o In a young child this involves failing to understand that other people don’t necessarily know what you know or see what you see o Very typical of preschool age kids 

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o They tend to think everyone sees the world through their eyes; can’t take on another person’s perspective  If you ask a preschooler to close their eyes and then ask if they think you can still see them, they will say no o This is contributed to a lack of theory of mind o lack theory of mind – ability to take another’s perspective  Understanding that other people may have thoughts, feelings, information, and desires that difer from yours  People with autism spectrum disorders fail to develop a theory of mind Difficulty with mental operations o Mentally manipulating information; doing work in your head  Using working memory o Working memory of preoperational kids is very limited o Demonstrated by their failure at conservation tasks  Conservation in Piaget’s world is the ability to understand that quantity stays the shape even if shape or appearance changes  Liquid in beaker vs graduated cylinder o Equal, but look diferently

Have difficultly mentally reversing an action Tend to focus on only one dimension at a time o Can think of height but not width o lack conservation - understanding that quantity stays the  

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same even if appearance changes  Concrete operational (7 yrs - adolescence)  Able to form simple mental operations and successfully complete conservation tasks  Can use simple logic tasks  Can only reason logically and perform mental operations with concrete objects  Can’t reason so well with abstract concepts  understand conservation  simple mental operations o applied to concrete objects  Formal operational (adolescence - )  Goes through adulthood  Able to reason logically about abstract concepts  Better able to imagine possibilities  Abstract, hypothetical thinking  Systematic, logical reasoning o Current view of Piaget’s theory  Has held up well to the test of time  Know more sooner  Sequence correct  Definitely got the sequence right  But babies know more sooner than he originally believed  It’s a gradual change, not abrupt  Today some theorist believe stages should be added because teenagers don’t think and reason the same way as adults, and younger vs older adults  He was pretty on the spot about childhood development though Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Childhood o Temperament  

An individual’s behavioral and emotional response style response style  reactivity, sensitivity, intensity

o of an individual  

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Animals exhibit diferences in temperament as well as humans genetic influence  Temperamental diferences are apparent very soon after birth so is thought to be largely genetic  How physiologically reactive an individual tends to be (reaction of the nervous system) foundation of personality  temperament is a big influences on personality, pushes it in a certain direction Classifications  easy babies – predictable, easy-going o cheerful and relaxed, seldom fussy, predictable reactions, easily establish new routines, react well to new situations  difficult babies – irregular, irritable o Opposite of easy babies, lots of negative emotion, fussy, irritable, not as predictable, don’t easily establish routines, don’t like new situations 

slow-to-warm up babies – in between o Somewhere in between easy and difficult o Less emotionally intense, less active, often nervous in new situation at first but come to enjoy

o Attachment  Emotional bond  What causes attachment?  Harlow’s monkeys o Cloth vs wire mother  Monkeys were particularly attached to cloth mother o Contact comfort vs nourishment  If the wire mother had the food they would go get the food and then go back to the cloth mother  Food is not as important part of attachment as scientists once thought  Baby monkeys, when temporarily separated from mother, are much less distressed when can reach through a barrier and touch their mother than when they could just see and hear and smell them o Maternal instinct?

The monkeys in isolation were messed up. They freaked out when with other monkeys and wouldn’t mate  Harlow wanted to know if the monkeys would be good mothers/was there an instinct to mother  The isolated monkeys were terrible, neglectful mothers  This showed that maternity is not instinctual Variations in attachment  Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test o How attachment is usually tested o Put baby in strange situation and ask parent to leave room for a minute, and the researcher sits in the room with the baby o They noted patterns of behavior that they called attachment styles o Secure attachment  Explore, play, check in, distress upon separation  Baby will go play with toys and check in with parent once in a while; when the parent leaves baby gets upset  When the parent returns, baby goes to and is comforted and soothed by parent  Responsive caregivers  Tend to have parents who are sensitive and responsive to their needs o Insecure attachment  Ambivalent/resistant – alternates between clinging and rejecting  Insecure, ambivalent, or resistant  Don’t venture away from parent to play  When parent leaves, they get very upset  When the parent returns, they often approach but resist contact, almost like they’re angry  Don’t calm down as quickly as securely attached  Tend to have caregivers who are inconsistent in attending to the child’s needs  Avoidant – avoid or ignore caregiver  Insecure avoidant attachment style 

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Don’t care when parent leaves or comes back, tends to ignore parent, doesn’t show preference for parent over a stranger Tend to have parents who are neglectful or even abusive

Secure vs. insecure o Competence, persistence, happiness, self-esteem, cooperation, popularity o Adult attachment o Secure: more likely to be confident, cooperative, popular, higher self-esteem, greater drive to achieve  Correlations o These are just correlations o Parenting styles  Authoritative  Parents – afectionate, firm, consistent o Firm and demanding, but consistent in enforcing the rules. Afectionate with their children, understanding, and try to reason with their kids (explain the reasons for the rules)  Kids – responsible, high self-esteem, competent o More successful in school  Authoritarian  Parents – harsh, punitive o Give kids little praise and little warmth, demand unquestioning obedience o “Because I said so”  Kids – low self-esteem, withdrawn o Unfriendly, distrustful, rather withdrawn  Permissive  Parents – freedom, little discipline o Give kids lots of freedom with few rules or discipline  Kids – immature, unhappy, aggressive o Independent  Neglectful  Parents – meet basic needs but uninvolved o Avoid emotional involvement  Kids – low self-esteem, low achievement  Correlations  cause or efect? o Just correlation  other factors o a child’s personality could influence its development along with parenting style 

o Social development  Gender roles  Gender is social, sex is biological  A gender role is societies expectations for what is appropriate behavior for males and females  Cultural expectations o In cultures where males and females have very similar gender roles, they tend to be more equal in status in the culture o Seen as equally capable  culture, status, and role diferences  Diferent treatment and expectations  Gender role socialization o Messages from society as a whole: family, peers, and the media, regarding what they can and should do o males  main characters, solve problems, give orders, rescue  In the media  achievement, competition, independence  Society in general encourages boys to do these things o females  appearance, sexualized, submissive expressive  In the media, less likely to be main characters, less likely to have speaking roles, appearance is sexualized, submissive, worried about finding a relationship  nurturing, dependent, unselfish o toys and play  boys – violence, competition, activity  The boys encourage action and building stuf  Action figures o Tend to come with weapons  girls – beauty, nurturing, domesticity  Dolls o Squishy and encourage cuddling and nurturing 

Adolescence o Between childhood and adulthood  Roughly corresponding to teenage years

o Physical changes  Puberty – body changes, reproductive capability  Brain maturation  Pruning o Brain undergoes a major pruning process during adolescence o Pruning involves eliminating synapses  Generally believed that this makes the brain function more efficiently  Frontal lobes o Not fully developed; poorer judgement less ability to control emotion o Social and psychological changes  Self-esteem  Often correlates with low self-esteem  Maybe because they are going from lower school where they are the best to middle school where they are kind of like little kids  Girl self-esteem drops more than boys do  May realize they are valued for their bodies more than intellect  Usually recovers in later teens  Family conflict  Increased family conflict when an adolescent is in the home  Peers  More important for adolescents to feel accepted by their peers  Ostracized adolescents are at great risk for depression and low self-esteem  Identity crisis  Erik Erikson  Proposed stages of psychosocial development  In each stage the person experiences a certain challenge o The one in adolescence is to create a unique, integrated sense of self o Adolescents behave very diferent depending on who they’re with o In order to find out who they are, they explore diferent identities  Dress diferently, listen to diferent music, have diferent friends  Try to create a unique, integrated identity  Piaget’s formal operational period  Better able to reason logically about abstract concepts  Abstract, hypothetical thinking  Metacognition

o Thinking about thinking o Become better able to think about their own thoughts and spend more time thinking about what other people are thinking o And so spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are thinking about them o Adolescents overestimate the amount that people notice them and are thinking about them o Egocentrism  This makes them pretty egocentric and selfconscious  See themselves as playing the starring role in a drama and everyone else in their life is just supporting cast 

Adulthood o “It’s pretty dull, generally in all respects.” o Look on canvas for notes o Physical changes  Early adulthood (20-39)  peak  Middle adulthood (40-65)  depends on health and exercise  decline in fertility o menopause  stereotypes o male climacteric  Late adulthood (65+)  sensory acuity, strength, reaction times  Immune system  brain (memory areas, frontal lobes)  diet and exercise o Cognitive changes  Early and middle adulthood - improvements  Late adulthood  memory  slowing  mental and physical exercise  Alzheimer’s disease o Social and emotional changes  Early adulthood  Careers and love  Attachment style o Secure

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o Insecure ambivalent o Insecure avoidant  Happy marriages o factors involved o married happier, healthier, more sexually and financially satisfied  Parenting o factors afecting satisfaction  Emotions Middle adulthood  Midlife transition Late adulthood  life satisfaction...