Development Unit IX (9) Flashcards
3 Major Issues of Developmental Psych
- Nature vs. Nurture
- Continuity vs. Stages
- Stability vs. Change
Nature vs. Nurture
Nature: Genes impact
Nurture: Experiences, experimental and developmental AFTER birth
-How do the two interact?
-At every prenatal stage, both genes and environment play a role
-Teratogens
Continuity vs. Stages
- Continuity: Change and development is a gradual, continual process
- Stages: We progress through specific moments (sequence of separate stages)
- Ex: Puberty= stage
Stability vs. Change
- Stability: Do our early traits persist throughout life in same person?
- Change: Do we become different people as we age?
Prenatal Development
- conception –> birth
- Zygote: Fertilized egg
- Fewer than 1/2 survive beyond 1st 2 weeks
- Go through Fallopian tubes and attaches to uterine wall
- Zygote–> Embryo–> Fetus
Milestones
- 1st 2 weeks: cell differentiation begins
- 9 weeks: embryo looks human (now a fetus)
- 6 months:
- Organs develop enough to give a preemie change at survival
- Fetus responds to sound
- Newborns prefer the sound of mom’s voice (familiar)
Newborn Reflexes
- Reflex: automatic things they do from birth (nature)
- Rooting Reflex
- Startle (Moro) Reflex
- Grasping Reflex
- Stepping Reflex
Rooting Reflex
- Touch baby’s cheek and it will turn in that direction and make a sucking motion
- Thinks it is feeding time
Startle (Moro) Reflex
-Moves limbs out and then in when they feel like they are falling
Grasping Reflex
- Reflexive action to close their hand around things in their hand
- Theory: trying to get people to pay attention to them
Stepping Reflex
-Exaggerated stepping motion in the air
Imitation
- Babies imitate/mimic basic facial expressions
- Ex: stick tongue out at baby–> baby will stick tongue out
Infant Experiments
- What can babies sense, perceive, recognize?
- Infant Perception Lab:
- Look at objects more in the video when they have on Velcro gloves
- Babies usually look at faces
Novelty Preference
- Habituated someone to one stimulus
- Present over and over till bored of it
- Present a new stimuli… Which response is more novel?
- New stimuli: slightly different or present two new and let person choose which is more interesting
- Novel: What is more interesting or what stimuli can babies discriminate
- Ex: babies can discriminate between lemur faces
- Like: faces, things that look like eyes, things 8-10” away, speech (especially mom’s), prefer smell of mom
Physical Development of Brain
-We grow new neural connections as adult, not new neurons (have a lifetime supply from birth)
-Newborns:
1 month: neural networks are forming rapidly
9 months to 2years: most rapid growth in frontal lobes (3-6 years)
-FL Gives ability to control impulses starting around this age
2 years to adult:
-Neural pruning process post-puberty
-Association areas start to form
Sense of Self and Scale Error
- Examples of silly mistakes children make
- Sense of self: aware that our body is part of ourself
- Scale Error: Unaware of the size of ourself compared to other things
Ex of Assimilate vs Accomodate
- Child knows what a horse is, sees a zebra, and thinks it is a horse (assimilation)
- Adult tells child that it is a zebra, and creates a new Schema (accomodation)
Piaget’s Stages of Development
- Sensorimotor
- Pre-operational
- Concrete Operational
- Formal Operational
Social Development
-Looks at relationships and how they are formed
Contact Comfort
- Most important cause of attachment
- Causes growth
- Attachment figures give a sense of security and courage to explore the environment
Familiarity
- Who provides contact comfort the most often
- Imprinting
Secure Attachment
- Parent is there for them dependably
- Child trusts caregiver
- Uses parent as secure home base to explore environment
- Outward signs: Shows distress when caregiver leaves room, when caregiver comes back the child is easily soothed
Insecure Attachment
- Parent is there for them sometimes (not dependable)
- Outward signs: Very upset when parent leaves, difficult to calm down, or baby doesn’t care whether parent leaves or not, or avoids parent (holds a grudge)
Parenting Styles
- Authoritarian
- Permissive
- Authoritative
Authoritarian
- Set rules and expect obedience (“because I said so”)
- Exceptions for child behavior
- Hierarchy (parents–> children)
- Children can become overly dependent
- Cannot make decisions for themselves
Permissive
- Permit everything (Little to no rules)
- Children make decisions
- No consequences for actions
- Children become impulsive
Authoritative
- Have rules and expectations, but are open to compromise
- Listen to child’s views and explain their own
- Parents make ultimate decision
- Best because: children become self-reliant, have good self esteem, and social competence (Determined by Diane Baumrind)
Early Onset: Boys and Girls
- Triggers growth and strength, which is correlated with popularity, self-assurance, and independence (Guys)
- Stressful for girls especially if first in their class to mature
- Drugs, alcohol, sex early (risky behavior)
Neural Development in Adolesence
- Frontal lobes still developing
- Myelin growth
- Leads to improved judgement, impulse control, and planning
- Limbic system developing (emotions)
- Hormonal changes
- Impulsivity, risky behavior, emotional storms against frontal lobes
What developmental stage are adolescents in?
-Piaget’s Formal Operational–> con contemplate big ideas
Preconventional
- Right and wrong are based off of rewards and punishments
- Self-centered (how does this affect me?)
- Kids
Conventional
- Norms of society right and wrong based on laws and rules
- How do this affect a group of people?
PostConventional
- Based on self-defined ethical principles
- Ex: Justice, sanctity of life etc
- Thinking through principles and applying them
Criticisms of Kohlberg
- Individualistic vs Collectivist
- I: prize individual voice, find own path, judged as post-conventional
- C: Group harmony, care and concern for others, judged as conventional
Social Intuitionist Theory
- Haidt
- Moral feeling precedes moral reasoning
- Reasons come after the fact
- Said when looking at morality, feelings are first and reasoning is second (why something is moral or immoral)
Stages of Social Development
- Infancy
- Toddlerhood
- Preschool
- Elementary school
- Adolescence
- Young adulthood
- Middle adulthood
- Late adulthood
Infancy
- Birth to 1 year
- Trust vs. Mistrust
- If need are dependably met, infants develop a sense of basic trust
Toddlerhood
- 1 to 3 years
- Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt
- Toddlers learn to exercise their will and do things for themselves, or they will doubt their abilities
Preschool
- 3 to 6 years
- Initiative vs. Guilt
- Learn to inmate tasks and Cary out plans, or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent
Elementary School
- 6 to puberty
- Competence vs Inferiority
- Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks, or they feel inferior
Adolescence (Social Stage)
- Teen years into 20
- Indentity vs Role Confusion
- Work at refining a self of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they will become confused about who they are
Young Adulthood
20s to 40s
- Intimacy vs Isolation
- Struggle to form close relationships and to gain the capacity for intimate love, or they feel socially isolated
Middle Adulthood
- 40s to 60s
- Generativity vs Stagnation
- People discover a sense of contributing to the world, usually through family and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose
Late Adulthood
- 60s and Up
- Integrity vs Despair
- Reflecting on his or her life, an older adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or failure
Adulthood
- Less predictable than adolescence
- Function of decisions, circumstances, luck
- Very few age-related milestones
- Common moments: love, parenting, and career
Love
- Marriage happens to 90% of Americans (20s to 40s)
- We widow down our friendships
- Married or single is equal happiness
- Intimacy vs Isolation (find a relationship or don’t)
Parenting
- Take care of children
- 40s to 60s= Generativity vs stagnation
- How do we generate meaning in our lives, have I done meaningful things?
- If no meaning, decide to do new things
- Find meaning in career and kids
Gender and Aggression
- Men admit to more physical aggression (More men in jail)
- Women engage in slightly more relational aggression
- Malicious gossip
Gender and Social Power
- Men place more importance on power and achievements, are socially dominant
- Leadership tends to go to males
- Traditionally male occupations earn more
- 80% of the world’s governing seats are held by men
- Women perceived as power hungry face voter backlash
Men vs Women
- Men: directive, share options, talk assertively, interrupt, initiate touches, stare
- Women: democratic, offer support, apologize more, smile more
Gender and Social Connectedness
- Women are more interdependent
- Girls play in smaller groups or 1-on-1 (more relational)
- Boys play larger group games
- Women talk face-to-face, men side-by-side (also do activities this way)
- Converse about relationships vs problems
- Women focus on people, men on things
- careers that are oriented towards these things
Gender Differences
- Peak in late adolescence and early adulthood
- Show reemergence after birth of 1st child
Adulthood-Physical abilities
- Peak in mid-twenties
- Rarely notice unless we are in a physically demanding sport/occupation
- Women peak earlier
Middle Adulthood– Physical changes
- Physical decline accelerates
- However, fitness is more of a factor than age for most people
- Menopause: around age 50
- hormonal shift- hot flashes
- No longer Menstruate
Later Life: Life expectancy
- Developing world: age 80 (Increased life expectancy)
- Social security: changes over time because people live longer
- 2050: 35% of European population will be over 60
- Elderly: fastest growing segment of the population
Sensory Decline –Adulthood
- Visual acuity, distance perception, adaptation to changing light levels
- Pupil shrinks, lens becomes less transparent
- 65 year old’s retina receives 1/3 as much light as a 20 year old
- Pupil shrinks, lens becomes less transparent
- Sense of hearing, smell
- High pitched noises are difficult to hear
Adulthood Health
- Immune system weakens
- Susceptible to life-threatening ailments
- Not to short-term ailments (built up immunity over lifetime)
- 1/2 as likely as 20 yr olds to have the flu
- Not to short-term ailments (built up immunity over lifetime)
- Susceptible to life-threatening ailments
Brain- Adulthood
- Slower neural processing
- Memory regions start to atrophy (decline)
- Brain cells start to die in young adulthood
- 5% of brain weight reduction by 80
- Frontal lobe atrophy (why old people say inappropriate things–> judgement)
- Physical fitness/exercise can slow this decline
Recall vs Recognition— Adulthood
- Recall declines (retrieving information)
- Recognition does not (viewing things and remembering them)
- Prospective memory (remember to..) declines, retrieval cues help
- Time-based memory suffers
- Habitual tasks are challenging
Life expectancy: Males vs Females
- Males: more prone to dying
- Male: female
- 126:100 embryos
- 105:100 at birth
- 1st year of life: male death rate exceeds females by 1/4
- Women outlive men by 4 years worldwide, 5-6 years in USA