WEEK 8 Flashcards
What are some notable theories and the people they originated from, in relation to human development?
John Locke: Argued for nurture. He
believed that experiences provided by the environment during childhood have a profound and permanent effect.
Thought of the new-born as a blank slate- ‘tabula rasa’
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau: claimed that children are capable of discovering how the world operates and how they should behave without instruction from adults. According to Rousseau, children should be allowed to grow as their natures dictate, with little guidance or pressure from parents.
-Arnold Gesell: found that children’s motor skills, such as those involved in standing and walking, picking up a cube and throwing a ball, developed in a fixed sequence of stages. The order of the stages and the age at which they develop, he suggested, are determined by nature and relatively unaffected by nurture. Only under extreme conditions, such as famine, war or poverty, he claimed, are children thrown off their biologically programmed timetable. Used the term ‘maturation’.
-John B Watson: founder of behaviourism. He claimed that the environment, not nature, moulds and shapes development
-Jean Piaget: suggested that nature and nurture work
together and that their influences are inseparable and interactive.
Zygote…
a new fertilised cell, formed from a father’s sperm and a mother’s ovum
Chromosomes…
structures in every biological cell that contain genetic information in the form of genes
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
the molecular structure of a gene that makes up chromosomes and provides the genetic code
What are the stages of pre-natal development?
Embryo (2 weeks-2 months): develops a heart, nervous system, stomach, oesophagus, and ovaries or testes. By two months after conception, when the embryonic stage ends, the 2.5-centimetre-long embryo has developed eyes, ears, a nose, a jaw, a mouth and lips. The tiny arms have elbows, hands and stubby fingers; the legs have knees, ankles and toes.
Foetus (2-9 months): Organs begin to grow and function. By the end of the third month, the foetus can kick, make a fist, turn its head, open its mouth, swallow and frown. In the sixth month, the eyelids, which have until then been sealed, open. The foetus is now capable of making sucking movements, and has taste buds, eyebrows, eyelashes and a well-developed grasp. By the end of the seventh month, the organ systems, though immature, are all functional. In the eighth and ninth months, foetuses respond to light and touch, and they can hear sounds.
Teratogens…
harmful substances, such as alcohol or drugs, that can cause birth defects
Critical period…
an interval during which certain kinds of growth must occur if development is to proceed normally
Vision development for new-borns
Infants can see at birth, but their vision is blurry. Newborns’ eyes are smaller than those of adults, and the cells in their foveas – the area of each retina on which images are focused – are fewer and far less sensitive. Their eye movements are slow and jerky. Pathways connecting the eyes to the brain are still inefficient, as is the processing of visual information within the brain.
They are particularly interested in the eyes, as shown by their preference for faces that are looking
directly at them. They also experience a certain degree of size constancy. This means that objects appear to be the same size despite changes in the size of their image on the eye’s retina. A baby perceives the mother’s face as remaining about the same size whether she is looking over the edge of the crib or coming close enough to kiss their cheek.
By the time they are four months old, infants can categorise objects according to their shape, but they do not experience depth perception until sometime later. It takes about seven months before they begin to use the pictorial cues about depth .
Hearing development for newborns
Infants at birth are not deaf, but they hear poorly. Their hearing is not as sharp as that of adults until well into childhood.
When they hear voices, babies open their eyes wider and look for the speaker.
By four months of age, they can discriminate differences among almost all of the phonetic contrasts in adult languages
Infants also prefer certain kinds of speech. They like rising tones spoken by women or children, and they like speech that is high-pitched, exaggerated and expressive. In other words, they like to hear the ‘baby talk’ used by most adults when they talk to babies. They even seem to learn language faster when they hear ‘baby talk’
Smell development for infants..
They prefer the flavours of food their mothers ate during pregnancy.
In the presence of their mother’s body odours, in fact, babies’ preference for looking at faces (and eyes) is heightened
Reflex and motor-skill development for infants…
In the first few weeks and months after birth, babies demonstrate involuntary, unlearnt motor behaviours, called reflexes. These are swift, automatic movements that occur in response to external stimuli.
Most reflexes disappear after the first three or four months, when infants’ brain development allows them to control their muscles voluntarily. At that point, infants can develop motor skills, so they are soon able to roll over, sit up, crawl, stand, and by about the end of the year, walk.
List the periods of Piaget’s cognitive development theory…
-Sensorimotor (birth-2yrs)
-Preoperational (2-7 yrs)
-Concrete operational (7-11 yrs)
-Formal operational (>11 yrs)
Name some aspects of the sensorimotor stage
Infants discover aspects of the world through their sensory impressions, motor activities and coordination of the two. They learn to differentiate themselves from the external world. They learn that objects exist even when they are not visible and that objects are independent of the infant’s own actions. They gain some appreciation of cause and effect
Discuss the preoperational stage
2-4 years: Children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in logical ways, but they now can think in images and symbols
4-7 years: They become able to represent something with something else, acquire language, and play games that involve pretending. Intelligence at this stage is said to be intuitive because children cannot make general, logical statements
Discuss the concrete operational stage
Children can understand logical principles that apply to concrete external objects. They can appreciate that certain properties of an object remain the same despite changes in appearance, and they can sort objects into categories. They can appreciate the perspective of another viewer. They can think about two concepts, such as ‘longer’ and ‘wider’, at the same time
