Week 3 & 4: Development Flashcards
What are the 3 stages of prenatal development?
Germinal stage: 0-2 weeks
Embryonic stage: 2-8 weeks
Fetal stage: 9 weeks - birth
What occurs during the germinal stage of prenatal development?
the one-celled zygote divides into two cells, then 4, and so on; the zygote migrates down the fallopian tube and implants itself on the wall of the uterus (about half of zygotes don’t complete this journey)
What occurs during the embryonic stage of prenatal development?
the implanted embryo continues to divide and its cells begin to differentiate; the embryo has arms, legs, a beating heart, and the beginnings of female reproductive organs (if it is a male embryo, it begins to produce testosterone, which will masculinize the sex organs)
What occurs during the fetal stage of prenatal development?
the fetus has a skeleton, muscles, fat, digestive and respiratory systems, axons and dendrites; myelination begins at this stage and continues until adulthood
A newborn’s brain is ___% of its adult size.
25%
Why are babies born with an underdeveloped brain?
- To allow the baby to pass through the birth canal
- To allow the brain to develop within the environments in which it functions, gaining the unique capacities that each environment requires and the ability to adapt
What is a teratogen, and what are some examples?
any substance that passes from mother to unborn child and impairs development; examples include mercury in fish, lead in water, paint dust in the air, alcohol, tobacco, etc.
What is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)?
a developmental disorder that stems from heavy alcohol use by the mother during pregnancy; children born with FAS have a variety of brain abnormalities and cognitive deficits
What evidence suggests that fetuses “listen”?
- Newborns will suck more vigorously when they hear the sound of their mother’s voice than when they hear a female stranger, suggesting they are familiar with their mother’s voice prior to birth
- Newborns who listen to strangers speaking two languages will suck more vigorously when they hear words from their mother’s native language, indicating they are already familiar withs its tempo and rhythm
- Babies’ cries are also influenced by the cadence of their mothers’ native language; for example, French newborns cry with a rising pitch and German newborns cry with a falling pitch
Define infancy
the stage of development that begins at birth and lasts between 18 and 24 months
How far can newborns see, and what is the significance of this distance?
20-30 cm - the distance between a mother’s face and a nursing infant’s eyes
How do researchers know that infants can see?
Infants habituate (respond less intensely each time a stimulus is presented) to visual stimuli
What are motor reflexes? Name some examples observed in newborns.
motor responses that are triggered by specific patterns of sensory stimulation
• Rooting reflex: causes infants to move their mouths towards any object that touches their cheek
• Sucking reflex: causes them to suck and object that enters their mouth
Reflexes present at birth seem to disappear in the first few months as infants learn to execute more sophisticated behaviour
What is the cephalocaudal rule?
“Top-to-bottom”: the tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet
What is the proximodistal rule?
“Inside-to-outside”; the tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the centre to the periphery
Name some factors that influence the timing of the development of motor skills in infants
- Incentive for reaching
- Body weight
- Muscular development
- General level of activity
What is a scale error, in terms of infant development?
a disconnect between an infant’s motor and perceptual skills (ex. trying to slide down a miniature slide; they understand what to do with a slide as far as motor skills, but their ability to perceive that the slide is miniature is not coordinated with their behaviour)
What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development?
- Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
- Preoperational stage (2 to 6 years)
- Concrete operational stage (6 to 11 years)
- Formal operational stage (11 years and up)
What occurs during the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development?
- Infants are focused on using their ability to sense and their ability to move to acquire information about the world
- Infants construct schemas (theories about the way the world works) by exploring their environment, which allows them to predict what happens next after an action
- Assimilation: when infants apply their schemas in novel situations
- Accommodation: when infants revise their schemas in light of new information
- Object permanence: the fact that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible; does not develop until after the first few months of life
What occurs during the preoperational stage of cognitive development?
children develop a preliminary understanding of the physical world
What occurs during the concrete operational stage?
children learn how actions (operations) can transform the concrete objects of the physical world
What is conservation, when it comes to cognitive development?
the understanding that the quantitative properties of an object are invariant, despite changes in the object’s appearance (i.e. can tell that a tall, thin glass of water and a short, wide glass of water hold the same volume); develops in the concrete operational stage
What occurs in the formal operational stage of cognitive development?
children learn to reason about abstract concepts; childhood ends what formal operations begins, and people in this stage are able to reason systematically about abstract concepts (liberty, love, hypotheticals, counterfactuals, etc.)
Define egocentrism
the failure to understand that the world appears different to different people; a hallmark of the preoperational stage
Describe the false-belief task
children see a puppet named Maxi put chocolate in a cupboard and then leave the room, then a second puppet comes in and moves the chocolate to a different cupboard; before age 4-6, children typically say Maxi will look in the second cupboard for the chocolate because that is where they know it is
What is Theory of Mind?
the understanding that the mind produces representations of the world and that these representations guide behaviour; the understanding that oneself and others have minds and that these minds represent the world in different ways
List some factors that can influence the age at which a child acquires a theory of mind
- Number of siblings
- Frequency of pretend play
- Whether the child has an imaginary companion
- SES
- The child’s culture
- Language skills and how caregivers talk to the child, especially when it’s about thoughts and feelings (the most important)
What are 2 general ways that Piaget “got it wrong” about cognitive development?
- Piaget thought that children graduated from one stage to another; modern psychologists see development as a more fluid, continuous, and less step-like progression (ex. children who are making the transition between stages may perform more mature behaviours one day and less mature ones the next)
- The stages by and large happen earlier than Piaget realized (ex. when using an adapted test, even 4 month olds display a sense of object permanence)
What are the 4 main differences between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development?
Difference 1: the period at which learning occurs
• Vygotsky: learning will occur prior to development; in order for a child to develop, learning must occur
• Piaget: development will occur prior to learning
Difference 2: stages of development
• Vygotsky did not believe there were stages of development (more continuous)
• Piaget had a strong emphasis on distinct stages
Difference 3: the construction of knowledge in development
• Vygotsky believes social interaction and participation allow the individual to develop
• Piaget believes an individual develops by themselves through their own experiences and development of schemas
Difference 4: the role of teachers/adults in child’s life
• Piaget believed their role is to support children in exploring the world so children can discover their own knowledge
• Vygotsky believed teachers/adults establish opportunities for children to learn and explore alongside them (i.e. zone of proximal development)
What is the zone of proximal development?
the range of things children cannot do by themselves but can do with guidance and instruction
What 3 skills allow children to learn from others?
- Joint attention: the ability to focus on what another person is focused on; a prerequisite for learning what others have to teach us
- Imitation: when infants/children do what they see adults do
○ Overimitation: when children imitate adults so precisely that they even copy parts of their actions that they know to be pointless (however, they don’t copy parts of their actions that they know to be wrong; ex. a child watching an adult’s hand slip when they take the lid off a jar will instead mimic the intended action of successfully removing the lid) - Social referencing: the ability to use another person’s reactions as information about how they should think about the world (ex. an infant shown a new toy will often stop and look back at their mother, to see how she reacts to it)
Define primary caregiver
the person which an infant deems as responding to their needs/cries first, best, fastest, and most often in the first 6 months of life
Define attachment
the emotional bond with a primary caregiver
Define attachment style
characteristic patterns of reacting to the presence and absence of one’s primary caregiver
What are the four attachment styles?
- Secure attachment: may or may not be distressed when their caregiver leaves the room, but respond positively when they return
- Ambivalent attachment: distressed when the caregiver leaves the room, but respond negatively to them when they return
- Avoidant attachment style: not distressed when their caregiver leaves the room and do not respond to them when they return
Disorganized attachment: show no consistent pattern of response to either their caregiver’s absence or return
What is temperament, and what is the distribution of the different types?
a biologically based pattern of attention and emotional reactivity
- About 40% of infants are easy babies who adjust easily to new situations, quickly establish routines, and are generally cheerful and easy to calm
- About 10% are difficult babies who are slow to adjust to new experiences and are likely to react negatively and intensely to novel stimuli/events
- About 15% are slow-to-warm babies who are somewhat difficult at first but then become easier over time
- The remaining 35% cannot be easily classified
What is an internal working model, and how is it impacted by attachment style?
a set of beliefs about the way relationship work; infants with different attachment styles appear to have different internal working models…
- Secure: confident that their caregivers will respond when they feel insecure
- Avoidant: confident that their caregivers will not respond
- Ambivalent: do not have a clear expectation and seem to be uncertain about whether or not their caregiver will respond
- Disorganized: appear confused about their relationship with their primary caregivers
In which 3 ways did Piaget believe that children’s moral reasoning changes as they develop?
- From realism to relativism: very young children regard moral rules as real, inviolable truths about the world, but as they mature they begin to realize that some moral rules are human inventions and that people can agree to adopt them, change them, or abandon them entirely
- From prescriptions to principles: young children think of moral rules for guidelines for specific actions in specific situations, but as they mature they come to see that rules are expressions of more general principles (ex. fairness, equity) which means that specific rules can be abandoned or modified when they fail to uphold the general principles
- From outcomes to intentions: young children tend to judge the morality of an action by its outcome rather than by the actor’s intentions, but as they mature they begin to see that the morality of an action is critically dependent on the actor’s state of mind
What were Kohlberg’s three stages of moral development?
- Preconventional stage: a stage of moral development in which the morality of an action is primarily determined by its consequences for the actor (where most children are)
- Conventional stage: a stage of moral development in which the morality of an action is primarily determined by the extent to which it conforms to social rules (where most adolescents are)
- Postconventional stage: a stage of moral development in which the morality of an action is determined by a set of general principles that reflect core values (where most adults are)
