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
FAE
FAS
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
You are born with essentially all of your CNS
neurons
Helps explain infantile amnesia
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
Early experience affects brain
development
Enriched environment, thicker cortex, in rats
Better maze running, rats again
Faster weight gain
Less illness
Experience probably stamps in
connections
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Sensitive and critical periods
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
Cortex is the last brain area to develop
Memory
Language
Thinking
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
Stages
Schemas tell us a lot
Assimilation and
accommodation
He figured there were
four stages
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Piaget
Sensorimotor period
0-2 years
Before 6 months, no object permanence
‘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?
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
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
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
Parents play a big role of course
Responsive parent, attached child
Separation anxiety peaks at about 13 months
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
Reasoning
Piaget’s formal stage
Abstract thinking, logic etc
Hypothetical deductive
Schooling of course also plays a role
Morality develops too
Moral reasoning may follow cognitive
development
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Moral Development
Preconventional
Conventional
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
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?
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
Menopause
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
Continuity vs. stages
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