Module 4 - Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Maturation
Biologically-driven growth and development, enabling a sequence of predictable cognitive and behavioural changes (nature that sets the sequence)
Maturation in infancy
- Brain development - major life events impact pre and post birth (750,000+ synaptic connections per min)
- Motor development - maturation
Cognition
mental activities that help us function
- figuring out how the world works
- storing and retrieving knowledge
- understanding and using language
Piaget’s approach to studying development
We don’t start out thinking like adults, there are stages
Schema
Holds our experiences and organizes them according to similarities and differences
Assimilation
New experiences are absorbed into an existing schema
Accommodation
New experiences lead to the modification of a schema or to create a new schema (brings children to enter a new way of looking at the world)
Piaget’s Approach to Explaining Development
- Combination of nature and nurture
- Development is not one continuous progression of changes but steps
Sensorimotor Stage
- Birth to nearly 2 years old
- experiencing the world through senses and actions
object permanence and stranger anxiety
Preoperational Stage
- About 2 to 6-7 years old
- Representing things with words and images rather than logical reasoning
- Pretend play
- Egocentrism
Theory of Mind
How kids develop out of the egocentric phase and how they gain an ability to understand that others have their own thoughts and perspective
Concrete operational
- About 7 to 11
- Thinking logically about concrete events, analogies and performing arithmetical operations
- Conservation (abstract thinking)
- Mathematical transformations
Formal Operational
- 12 and up
- abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking
- abstract logic (understanding the - why?)
- potential for mature moral reasoning (difference between right and wrong)
The reassessment of Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory
- Development is a continuous process
- Children show mental abilities at an earlier age than he suggested
- Formal logic is a more minor part of cognition
Socialization
- children lean norms and values that regulate social environment
- ability to interact with others
- development of relationships
Attachment
- emotional tie to a person
- desire for physical closeness to a caregiver
Strange Situations Test
- Mother and chile are alone in an unfamiliar room
- Stranger enters the room
- Separation: mother leaves the room
- Reunion: after a moment the mother returns
Secure Attachment
- Most children
- Distress at separation
- Seek contact at reunion
Insecure attachment - anxious style
- Clinging to mother, less exploration
- distress at separation
- remain upset at reunion
Insecure attachement - avoidant style
Seems indifferent to mother
Disorganized
- Caregivers are a source of both fear and confort
- Children exhibit inconsistency
How to create a secure attachment
Sensitive, responsive and a calm parenting style
Temperment
Person’s characteristic style and intensity of emotional reactivity
Authoritarian - Parenting Style
Parents impose rules and expect obedience
Permissive
Parents submit to kid’ desires, not enforcing limits or standards for child behaviour
What happens when a child is deprived of attachement or is abused?
- Resiliency
- Difficulty forming secure attachment
- Increased risk for anxiety and depression
- Lowered intelligence
- increased aggression
Puberty
- time of sexual maturation
- increased sex hormones
- changes in mood and behaviour
- ex. Height changes
3 Neurological Developments During Adolescence
- Brain stops adding new synapses
- Coating the often-used connections in myelin
- Crucial time to acquire knowledge efficiently
3 Cognitive Development changes during adolescence
- Focus on representation
- Plan how to pursue goals
- Change in perspective (reality compared to ideals and how choices can lead to consequence)
Perry’s theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development
- Focus on absolute answers
- Appreciation for complex and incomplete answers to complex problems, but not internalized
- Appreciation for complex and often incomplete answers to complex problems
4 things that maturation, experience and education lead to
- often multiple answers exists to any given problem
- Tolerate intellectual uncertainty
- Assess validity of relative answers using critical thinking
- Accept multiple realistic answers even if they are contradicting
Enhances cognitive abilities allow for…
- moral reasoning
- thinking about meaning, and purposes in deeper terms
Preconventional Morality - Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning
- up to age 9
- punishment after disasters
- risk and reward
Conventional Morality - Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning
- Early adolescence
- focus on societal values
- societal consequences
Postconventional Morality - Kohlberg’s levels of moral reasoning
- Late adolescence and adulthood
- internal morality principles
- selfishnesses
Critics of Kohlberg’s Model
- Cultural Bias
- Low Correlational with moral behaviour
- Casual Direction (moral evaluation rather than emotional response or vise versa)
Infancy Stage - Erikson’s Model
- up to one year
- trust vs. Mistrust
- needs are dependably met, basic trust
Toddlerhood - Erikson’s Model
- 1 to 3 years
- Autonomy vs Shame and doubt
- Toddlers learn to use their will and do things for themselves OR doubt their abilities
Preschool - Erikson’s Model
- 3 to 6 years
- Initiative vs. Guilt
- Initiate tasks and carry out plans OR feel guilty about wanting to be independent
- positive feedback will create motivation
Elementary School - Erikson’s Model
- 6 years to puberty
- Competency vs. Inferiority
- Pleasure of applying themselves to competently accomplishing tasks OR they feel inferior
Adolescence - Erikson’s Model
- Puberty into 20s
- Identity vs. Role Confusion
- Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and integrating them to form a single identity OR they become confused about who they are
Young Adulthood
- 20s to early 40s
- Intimacy vs. Isolation
- Young adults learn to form close relationships and gain the capacity for intimate love OR socially isolated
Middle Adulthood -Erikson’s Model
- 40s to 60s
- Generatively vs stagnation
- Discover a sense of contributing to the world usually through family and work OR feel a lack of purpose/meaning in their life
Late Adulthood - Erikson’s Model
- late 60s and up
- Integrity vs Dispair
- Sense of satisfaction from having successfully gone through the previous stages OR experiences feelings of dispair and failure
Physical changes and decline in abilities
- biological age
- functional age
- psychological age
- social age
Abnormal Cognitive Changes
- Disorders ex. Alzheimer’s
- miss-prescription of medication
- proper prescription of medication and cognitive/behavioural interventions could be helpful
Abnormal Social Changes
- Isolation and Lonliness
- Lack of stimulation declines abilities
- Volunteering can be a solution
