Development Flashcards
Development Science
A field of study devoted to understanding change constancy throughout the lifespan.
The main goal of developmental science
To identify factors that affect consistencies and transformations in people from conception to death.
The human development influenced by
biological, psychological and social factors.
The lifespan perspective on human development assumes that
Humans develop according to
- Lifelong - each period important & powerful
- Multidimensional & multidirectional – biological, social & psychological changes / at every period both decline & growth
- Highly plastic- elderly people respond to special training with substantial gains in mental abilities.
Periods of development
Prenatal - Conception to birth Infancy and toddlerhood - Birth - 2 years Early childhood - 2 - 6 years Middle childhood - 6 - 11 years Adolescence - 11 -18 years Early adulthood - 18 - 40 years Middle adulthood - 40 - 65 years Late adulthood - 65 - death
Major Domains of Development
physical, cognitive and emotional/social development.
Conception & Prenatal Development
Zygote
Embryo
Fetus
Zygote length
from 0 to the 2nd week
Zygote key events
Fertilization (first 7 days)
- First cell duplication (not complete until about 30 hours of conception)
- New cells are added at a faster rate
- 4th day 60 to 70 cells exist that form blastocyst
- Trophoblast protective covering and nourishment
Implantation ( 7th - 9th days)
- Trophoblast forms AMNION & AMNIOTIC FLUID
- The placenta and umbilical cord (9th -14th)
- The end of the second week the placenta starts to develop
Placenta; permits food and oxygen to reach the organism and waste products to be carried away
The placenta is connected to the UMBILICAL CORD containing one large vein that delivers blood loaded with nutrients and two arteries that remove waste products
Embryo length
2nd - 8th week
Embryo key events
Nervous system & skin, muscles, skeleton, circulatory system, internal organs, lungs
The NS develops fastest NEURAL TUBE, which will become the spinal cord and brain, is formed
By the 3,5 weeks production of neurons
The heart begins to pump blood, muscles, backbone & digestive track begins to appear
At the second week; Arms, legs, fingers, and toes;
Eyes, ears, nose, jaw, and neck form
Heart begins beating
Fetus length
8th - 30 week
Fetus key events
Growth and finishing
Organs, muscles, and NS start to become organized and connected
12th week: external genitals are well-formed 🡪 sex of the fetus
Fingernails, toenails, tooth buds, and eyelids (open and close)
Cerebral cortex enlarges
Age of viability: the earliest point which the baby can survive if born prematurely. (22 weeks)
Teratogens
Any environmental agent that causes damage during the prenatal period.
Common examples of teratogens are
Drugs, tobacco, alcohol, infectious diseases, radiation and genetic disruptions.
Drugs (Thalidomine and Accutane)
Thalidomine - a synthetic hormone prescribed to prevent miscarriages, although caused gross deformities on embryo’s arm and legs.
Accutane - prescribed to treat severe acne. Results in eye, ear, skull, brain, heart abnormalities.
Tobacco (Nicotine)
Nicotine: Raises the concentration of carbon monoxide
in the bloodstreams of both mother & fetus.
Carbon monoxide damaging the CNS & slowing the body
growth and causes miscarriage, prematurity, asthma & development of cancer.
Alcohol (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome)
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS): Occurs when a mother uses alcohol during pregnancy. Slow physical growth, facial abnormalities such as thin upper lip, short eyelid openings, small head. Problems related to memory, language, attention, motor coordination.
Infectious disease (Rubella, HIV and Syphilis, diabetes)
Rubella - during the embryonic period, eye
cataracts, deafness, heart, genital abnormalities.
HIV - 20 to 30 per cent of the time. Babies survive for only 5 to 8 months.
Syphilis, diabetes - high blood pressure may
also, produce permanent effects on the fetus.
Radiation
Examples can be about Bombing of Hiroshima- Nagasaki; explosion in Chernobyl that causes miscarriages, underdeveloped brain, physical deformities, slow physical growth, development of cancer later.
Genetic Disruptions
Genetic disorders or random errors negatively influence prenatal development. A single cell is copied with some error/break in the DNA.
The cell goes on to replicate with the error retained resulting in impaired development of organs
Down Syndrome
results from mistakes during the ovum & sperm are formed. (A chromosome pair (21st chromosome) doesn’t separate properly)
How infants learn to use their bodies
through movement starting from the birth
Motor behaviours
bodily motions that occur as a result of the self-initiated force that moves the bones & muscles
Some aspect of motor coordination evident at birth, others develop gradually during infancy & early childhood.
Infants are born with a large set of automatic behaviours (reflexes) such as
Rooting: Stroke cheek near the corner of the mouth. Head turns towards. Becomes voluntary at 3 weeks. Helps the infant to find the nipple.
Sucking: Permits feeding. Becomes voluntary after 4 months.
Palmar grasp: Infant spontaneously grasps a finger. Prepares the infant for voluntary reaching. Disappears at the age of 3-4 months.
Gross motor development
control over actions that help infants get around the environment
-crawling, standing, and walking
Fine motor development
smaller movements
- reaching and grasping
Ulnar grasp
Around 3-4 months; reaching appears & improves in accuracy; ulnar grasp; clumsy motion; fingers close against the palm
Pincer Grasp
At the end of the 1st year; pincer grasp; the use of thumb & index finger to manipulate objects.
Ulnar and pincer grasp correspond to which motor development
Fine Motor development
Grow in spurts
occurring every 30-55 days in children ages 3-16.
Cognitive development
how we acquire the ability to learn, think, communicate, and remember over time.
Schemes
psychological structures referring to the organized ways of making sense of experience./ Organized patterns of functioning. Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge or experience.
Two processes in the account for change of scheme
Adaptation
Organization
Adaptation
building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
*Involves assimilation & accommodation
The motor skill that plays the most important role during infant development
reaching
A motor skill that newborns engage for a short time
Pre-reaching - poorly coordinated swipes & swings toward an object
Rarely contact with the object.
Preaching drops out around 7 weeks
Assimilation
occurs when current (existing) schemes are applied to understand the world.
Understanding experience in terms of the current stage of development & thinking.
Ex: word ‘bird’; baby calls a plane like a bird; assimilates the plane to her existing scheme of the bird.
Accommodation
occurs when new schemes are created or adjusting (changing)old ones after noticing that current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely.
Ex: Child learns motorcyles& bicycles are not cars; excludes them from the category of car.
Organization
The process that takes place internally,
apart from direct from contact with the environment. Internal rearranging and linking schemes; organizing schemes & create a network.
Integrating schemes or behaviours into a higher-order system.
Ex: throwing & dropping &farness & nearness.
Equilibrium & Disequilibrium
When children are not changing much; they use assimilation more than accommodation.
Using assimilation creates equilibrium; steady & comfortable condition.
Disequilibrium prompts accommodation
There is a constant movement btw. accommodation & assimilation during cognitive development.
There is equilibrium when
The child uses both, accommodation and assimilation
Responsible for accelerating accommodation
Disequilibrium
Piaget’s Developmental Theory; Four Stages
- Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
- Preoperational (2-7 years)
- Concrete operational (7-11 years)
- Formal operational (11-adulthood)
* At each step, the quality of children’s knowledge & understanding changes
Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
Building schemes through sensory and motor exploration
Earliest schemes are primarily limited to the reflexes (sucking & rooting)
Through accommodation & assimilation schemes become advanced as infants master their motor capacities.
Sensorimotor stage - Circular Reactions
Are repetitive actions.
Babies try to repeat interesting events in the surrounding environment that are caused by their own actions.
Ex: Baby accidentally drops an object from the table; now she tries to drop everything from the table.
Sensorimotor Stage - Mental representations
At the end of the stage; ability to create mental representations - the ability to think about things that are absent from immediate surroundings; remembering previously encountered objects, people. (internal image of a past event, person or an object.)
Sensorimotor stage - Limitations
Lack of Object Permanence:
Object permanence: understanding that the objects/people continue to exist even when they can not be seen.
Lack of Deferred imitation;
Deferred imitation: the ability to remember & copy the behaviours of models who are not present.
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
Gains in mental representation & symbolic behaviour.
Language; deal with past, present, future at once
Preoperational Stage Make-Believe Play
imaginary play; display of symbolic behaviour
Ex: Child holds a banana; pretends that it is a phone
- imagination, creativity, controlling behaviour, & take another’s perspective
Preoperational Stage - Limitations
Egocentrism: children view the world entirely from their own perspective & assume others perceive, think, feel the same way they do.
*Evident in Piaget’s three mountains problem.
Inability to Conserve: Conservation -certain physical characteristics of the objects remains the same; even when their appearances change.
Centration; Focus on one aspect & neglect others
Concrete Operations Stage (7-11 years)
The thought is more logical, flexible, & organized than it was earlier.
Conversation & Seriation.
Conservation - The ability to pass conservation tasks
Seriation - the ability to order items along a quantitative dimension (length /weight)
Arrange sticks of different lengths from shortest to longest
Concrete operations stage - Limitations
- only when dealing with concrete information (they can perceive directly)
- work poorly with abstract ideas & hypothetical situations.
- They need physical experience while solving problems.
Formal operations (11 – adulthood)
Skills of logical thought, deductive reasoning & systematic planning hypothetical reasoning (if-then statements, deal with abstract questions)
Ex: If I am late for school, I’ll be sent to the principle’s office.
* Children in the formal operational stage will test each variable systematically to see which one(s) affect the period of the swing.
Stranger Anxiety
fear of unfamiliar adults.
- Infants show stranger anxiety 8-9 months/peaks at 12-15 months.
- If a stranger picks up the infant into a new setting, anxiety increases
Infant Temperament
early appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity (quickness & intensity of emotional arousal, attention & motor activity) & self-regulation.
Easy child
40% : pos. moods,cheerful & adaptable & curiosity & emotions low / moderate in intensity
Difficult child– 10%
neg. moods, when confronted with a new experience they react neg.ly & intensely
Slow-to-warm-up
15% inactive, relatively calm reactions to the environment, adjusts slowly to new experiences.
%35 per cent- not categorized- combinations of these characteristics.
Attachment
The strong emotional tie we have with important people in our lives.
(feel pleasure while interacting with them & comforted by their presence in the times of stress)
Around 6 months- infants become attached to familiar - people who have responded to their needs.
What was Harlow & Zimmerman experiment about?
baby monkeys were given the choice of
cuddling to either wire-meshed surrogate mother or soft-terry cloth surrogate mother
Monkeys clung to soft-terry cloth substitute, even though wire-mesh mother held the bottle & infant monkey had to climb onto it to be fed.
What was Ainsworth & Bell experimental technique about?
To measure attachment - Studied 100 infants & caregivers.
The Strange Situation Protocol:
The mother and infant are placed in an unfamiliar playroom equipped with toys & researcher observes/records the procedure through a one-way mirror.
8 sequential episodes (separation from mother, reunion with the mother & presence of an unfamiliar adult)
Ainsworth & Bell - 4 types of attachment emerged
- Secure Attachment (60%)
- Avoidant Attachment (15%)
- Resistant/Ambivalent Attachment (10%)
- Disorganized/ Disoriented Attachment (15%)
Secure Attachment
The child uses the mother as the type of home base.
The child is at ease as long as the mother is present.
Explore the environment & sometimes return to her.
Become upset when the mother leaves &
Happy when she returns & immediately goes to her when she returns.
Avoids stranger while alone; feels OK when mother present.
Mother — sensitive & responsive ( child feels pos. & loved)
Avoidant Attachment
The child does not seek proximity to the mother.
When the mother left; no signs of distress.
When the mother returns; avoids her (indifferent to mother’s behaviours) & unresponsive.
Mother—unresponsive ( child feels unloved & rejected)
Ambivalent/Resistant Attachment
Combination of pos. & neg. Reactions.
When mother present; close contact with the mother- do not explore the environment
Anxious even before the mother leaves; when the mother leaves high levels of distress
When the mother returns- ambivalent reactions (both close to her but also kicks & hits the mother)
Mother—inconsistent (child feels confused & angry)
Disorganized / Disoriented Attachment
No consistent way of dealing with stress. Inconsistent, contradictory & confused behaviour
When the mother returns, the infant runs to her, but not look at her.
Inıtially calm then suddenly starts weeping
The least securely attached children.
Mother—threatening (abused or neglected children)
Erikson’s Theory of personality
ability to capture the essence of personality in the early years.
more focus on social forces & importance of parent-infant rel.s
Personality arises out of 8 stages; in each stage, a conflict occurs.
Resolution of basic conflicts at each stage determines healthy or maladaptive outcomes.
- Basic trust vs. mistrust
Birth - 1 year (Oral)
Warm & responsive care- leads to a sense of trust.
Major Question: Can I trust the people around me?
Infant dependent upon caregivers; the quality of care that the child receives contributes to the child’s personality.
Whether caregiver attends to his needs? Whether someone comforts him?
When needs consistently met —- infant learns he can trust other people.
( feelings of safety & the world is secure and predictable)
When not met ———- the infant will begin to mistrust the people around him, withdrawal from other people.
(feelings of fear and the world is inconsistent & unpredictable) .
Basic Virtue: Hope
Important Event(s): Feeding
- Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt (1-3 years)
Toddlers enter a period of budding selfhood.
Major Question: Can I do things myself or am I reliant on the help of others?
control body functions & feel independence
Toilet training major role; but not limited to that; a child wants to decide for himself not in toileting but also in other situations (e.g. Food choices, toy preferences, clothing etc.)
Parents- should not criticize & attack ; tolerance & understanding.
Overcontrolling parents- the child feels shame & doubts his ability.
Basic Virtue: Will
Important Event(s): Toilet Training
Sensitive, affectionate & caring parenting very important in the early years of life
- Initiation vs. Guilt (3- 6years)
children assert themselves more frequently.
Game playing—-important (the opportunity to explore their interpersonal skills & to initiate activities)
Children begin to plan activities, makeup games, and initiate activities with others.
Leadership and goal achievement roles.
Major Question: Is it okay for me to do, move, and act?
If children are supported by parents—–a sense of initiation, and feel secure in their ability to lead others and make decisions.
If children are criticised or controlled—— a sense of guilt. (lacking in self-initiative)
Basic Virtue: Purpose
- Industry vs. Inferiority (6-12 years)
Both adults expectations & children’s drive for mastery of basic forces.
Major Question: Can I Make it in the World of People and Things?
More reasonable & cooperative to share and cooperate.
Elementary school - critical for the development of self-confidence. (opportunities for recognition, producing things by drawing pictures…)
If children are encouraged to make and do things & praised —— industry
(diligent, persevering at tasks until completed)
If children are instead ridiculed/punished for their efforts
( are incapable of meeting their teachers’ and parents‘) ——-inferiority.
Basic Virtue: Competence
- Identity v. role confusion ( Adolescence ;12-18)
Questioning of self.
Major Question: Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life?
Wants to belong to a society and fit in.
The child has to learn the roles (sexual & occupational) he will occupy as an adult
If parents continually push him/her to conform to their views —–identity confusion. (“I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up”); not being sure about themselves or their place in society.
If the parents allow the child to explore a—- sense of own identity
Basic Virtue: Fidelity
- Love, Intimacy vs. isolation (early adulthood; 20-40):
Dating, marriage, family and friendship — important
Development of self required (unity of senses)
Major Question: W’ill I love & be loved?
successfully forming loving rel. s with other people—–experience love and intimacy.
fail to form lasting relationships — experience of isolated and alone.
Basic Virtue: love
- Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood; 40 - 65 yrs)
develop a sense of being a part of the bigger picture.
Creativity & productivity; contributing to society
give back to society through raising our children, being productive at work, and becoming involved in community activities and organizations.
Major Question: Am I productive ?
Success on the first 6th stage —— generativity
By failing to achieve these objectives, ——-stagnant & feel unproductive.
Basic Virtue: Care.
- Ego Integrity vs. Despair (65+ yrs)
become senior citizens,
slow down our productivity, and explore life as a retired person; contemplate our accomplishments
Major Question: How have I lived my life?
successful life—-ego integrity unproductive, feel guilt about our past or feel that we did not accomplish our life goals—– despair, depression & hopelessness.
Basic Virtue: wisdom
Child-rearing styles
combinations of parenting behaviours that occur over a wide range of situations, creating an enduring child-rearing climate.
Studies of Braumrind (1971); effective child-rearing style can be distinguished on the basis of three features:
(1) acceptance and involvement, (2) control, & (3) autonomy granting.
Four basic rearing styles
Authoritative
Authoritarian
Permissive
Uninvolved
Authoritative child-rearing style
the most successful approach.
High acceptance & involvement, adaptive control techniques, & appropriate autonomy granting.
Parents warm attentive, sensitive to the child’s needs but also exercise firm, reasonable control.
Emphasize maturity; give explanations for expectations & use discipline
Engage in gradual autonomy granting; allowing the child to make decisions if he is ready.
Assoc. with self-control, task persistence, cooperativeness, high self-esteem, social maturity & favourable school performance.
Authoritarian child-rearing style
low in acceptance & involvement, high in coercive control, and low in autonomy granting.
Parents cold & rejecting.& use coercive control (e.g. command, criticize & threaten)
Make decisions for the child, expect the child to accept their word unquestioningly.
If the child resists; use force & physical punishment.
Psychological control, parents intrude on and manipulate children’s verbal expression, individuality, and attachments to parents. (Decide everything for the child; when dissatisfied, they withdraw love & hold high expectations that do not fit the child’s capacities)
Children of authoritarian parents are anxious, unhappy, low in self-esteem, do poorly in school, engage in aggressive behaviour
The permissive child-rearing style
warm and accepting, but uninvolved.
Engage in little control; allow children to make their own decisions at an early age even if they are not capable of doing so.
Ex: children can eat meals, watch tv. & go to bed whenever they want. No need to learn good manners.
Children of permissive parents are impulsive, disobedient, rebellious, and overly demanding & dependent on adults, poor achievement at school & engage in anti-social behaviours
Uninvolved child-rearing style
low acceptance and involvement with little control and general indifference to autonomy granting.
Parents, emotionally detached & depressed; overwhelmed by life stress so they have no time & energy for their children.
Uninvolved parenting amounts to neglect, which disrupts virtually all aspects of development.
Children poor emotional self-regulation, school achievement difficulties, & antisocial behaviour
Authoritative
Acceptance - High
Involvement - High
Control - Adaptive
Autonomy - Low
Authoritarian
Acceptance - Low
Involvement - Low
Control - High
Autonomy - Low
Permissive
Acceptance - High
Involvement - Too high or too low
Control - Low
Autonomy - High
Uninvolved
Acceptance - Low
Involvement - Low
Control - Low
Autonomy - Indifference
