Transcript Development

Development
Psychology 1106
7/16/2015
Introduction
Developmental psychologists study
changes in behaviour over time
 They are concerned with three big issues
 Nature vs. nurture
 Continuity vs. states
 Stability vs. change
 I am not really sure how useful these ideas
are
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When a mommy and a daddy….
One egg, one sperm (out of 300 000 000)
 Most cells in your body are diploid, but
gamete are haploid
 Male XY, female XX
 Sperm determines the sex
 Indistinguishable at eight weeks
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The Y chromosome
Triggers the testes to develop, produce
testosterone
 Msculinizes the fetus
 Maybe not just the genitals etc
 CAH
 5 alpha reductase syndrome
 Tuner’s syndrome
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Where do babies come from?
Cells divide and differentiate
 At about 2 months it is called a fetus
 A fetus can hear!
 At birth the mother’s voice is positively
responded to!
 Genetic and environmental factors
constantly at work
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Teratogens
Stuff that is bad for developing babies
 Drugs
 Smokes
 Booze
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FAE
 FAS
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The amazing thing is that the whole
process is so delicate, yet still so robust
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Standard equipment on this model
Newborns have the suck and rooting
reflexes ready to go
 Other rather impressive abilities
 Recognize mother’s smell (MacFarland,
1978)
 Prefer mother’s voice and will work to hear
it (Mills et al, 1974)
 Other operant stuff
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Prefer to look at stimuli that are oriented
like faces (Umilta, 1990)
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Memory and babies
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You are born with essentially all of your CNS
neurons
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Helps explain infantile amnesia
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Not hooked up though
Hard to remember anything from younger than 3
years
Doesn’t mean babies don’t have memory
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Operant stuff
Play
priming
Early brain development
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Early experience affects brain
development
Enriched environment, thicker cortex, in rats
 Better maze running, rats again
 Faster weight gain
 Less illness
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Experience probably stamps in
connections
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Sensitive and critical periods
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Unused brain bits die out
Impoverished kids will score better on IQ tests if
given enrichment
Language learning is way easier early on
Same with musicians
Visual system too
We still develop in adulthood of course, but the
sensitive periods are over
Tends to be lots of plasticity in kids
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Braille, sign language etc
Motor development
Whole body
 Gross motor
 Fine motor
 Environment plays a role as to when they
occur, but not the order, it is fixed
 Much brain developments is done before
the body growth kicks in big time
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Cognitive Development
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Cortex is the last brain area to develop
Memory
 Language
 Thinking
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Piaget realized that incorrect answers to
questions told us a lot about their cognitive
abilities
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Realized that kids are not mini adults
Piaget
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Stages
Schemas tell us a lot
Assimilation and
accommodation
He figured there were
four stages
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Piaget
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Sensorimotor period
0-2 years
Before 6 months, no object permanence
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‘out of sight out of mind’
No abstract ideas
But……
Remember their pacifier at 12 hr old! (Kaye and
Bower, 1994)
Look longer at impossible figures (Bailergeron,
1994)
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I wonder if Piaget drove a
Peugeot?
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Preoperational
2-6 or 7
Can’t do conservation
3 year olds can find a toy when shown it in a
model room (Delouche, 1987)
Piaget though kids were egocentric
True to a point
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Peek a boo
But, theory of mind research
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Band aids and peanuts ( Jenkins and Astington,
1996)
Piaget had more stages than umm,
than some guy with a lot of stages
Concrete operational
 6-12 years
 Can do conservation
 Can do mathematical transformations
 Not abstract stuff though
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I am out of pithy titles about Piaget
Formal Operational
 12 years and up
 Abstract thinking
 Symbols
 Could be earlier though
 He may have had to order right, but
probably more continuous than he
imagined
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Social Development
Kids start making strange at about 6
months, give or take
 Shows schemas
 Shows attachment
 Harlow’s monkeys
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Body contact is important
Bonding, sure, but not some critical period
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Temperament
Emotional 2 year olds become emotional
adults
 Shy 2 year old become shy adults
 Gifted babies become gifted adults
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Parents play a big role of course
Responsive parent, attached child
 Separation anxiety peaks at about 13 months
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 Cross
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cultural!
Why is attachment so important?
Predicts social competence
 Poor attachment leads to other problems
 Disruption is not as big a deal as you
might think (with VERY young kids, < 18
months)
 Lots of kids are in daycare, good daycare
leads to good attachment
 Lots of divorces
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More likely to have problems
Parenting styles
Authoritarian
 Authoritative
 Permissive
 Rejecting-neglecting
 Big cultural differences
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Sex and gender
Gender identity
 Gender typed behaviour
 Social learning important
 Biology is too
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Adolescence
Onset of sexual maturity
 Used to be brief
 Happens later, lasts longer
 Physically the primary and secondary sex
characteristics develop
 Can affect behaviour
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Changes during adolescence
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Reasoning
Piaget’s formal stage
 Abstract thinking, logic etc
 Hypothetical deductive
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Schooling of course also plays a role
 Morality develops too
 Moral reasoning may follow cognitive
development
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Moral Development
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Preconventional
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Conventional
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Avoid punishment, get rewards
Laws and rules should be followed because
they are laws and rules
Postconventional
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rights
Moral Development
Kohlberg though it was like a ladder
 Stages
 Kids do seem to go from preconventional
to conventional
 Both behaviour and reasoning
 However, not everyone gets to the last
stage
 Talk is cheap
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Social Development
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Erikson’s psychosocial tasks or crises
Trust
Autonomy
Initiative
Competence
Identity <- Big one during adolescence
Intimacy
Generativity
integrity
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Social development
Adolescents play lots of different roles
 Which is real?
 Get more positive as time goes by
 Next is intimacy
 Easier for females?
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Closer friends
 Fewer friends
 Easier at detecting emotion
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Adolescents are not as different from their
parents as they may think
 Similar values and goals
 Intensity and priority may be different
 Leaving home is a huge step, emotionally,
behaviourally
 “Graduation” to adulthood is taking longer
 Later marriages
 More education
 Career paths different, changes etc
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Adolescent sexuality
50% of all US high schoolers are sexually
active
 43% of 16 year olds in Canada
 2.5% in China!
 Pregnancy a problem
 Why don’t they use birth control?
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Birth control issues
Ignorance
 Guilt
 Minimal communication
 Drugs and alcohol
 The media….
 Contrary to what some say, sex education
does not lead to more pregnancies
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Adulthood
Adulthood used to be though of as either a
static state, or a gradual decline in
everything
 There is a developmental angle here
 There may be stages
 There IS change
 There is continuity
 Sound familiar?
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Changes in Adulthood
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Menopause
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Not that big a deal for most women
Different with men, gradual decline but still
fertile
 More males than females born, but we
eventually even out at sexual maturity
 Sensory abilities decline
 Fewer small health problems
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Ch ch ch changes
Cognitive processes slow down
 Reaction time
 Memory not as good
 Perception etc
 This is NOT Alzheimer's
 Bigger decline in recall than recognition
 Less decline with intellectually active
 Bigger variation with older folks
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Changes in Intelligence
Cross sectional, big difference
 Longitudinal, little if any
 Depends
 Crystallized vs. fluid
 Crystallized goes up, fluid goes down
 Scientists most active early, artists later
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Social changes in adulthood
Easily as big an effect as cognitive and
intellectual
 Mid life crisis?
 Erikson talked about intimacy and
generativity
 Love is part of the search for intimacy
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Love
Is the search for intimacy
 40% of marriages end in divorce
 Late 20s, well educated last
 Living together does not help!
 Married folks are happier than unmarried
 Positive interactions help
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Generativity
“empty nesters”
 Feel most positive about this task if you
like your work
 Oddly enough, well being is pretty
constant
 Variance decreases though
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Conclusions
Remember, there were three big questions
 Genes vs. environment
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Continuity vs. stages
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Nature vs. nurture is just plain silly
There are jumps, but there is continuity
Stability vs. change
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There is lots of change, yet, extremes seem to
last