Transcript Introduction to Psychology - Monona Grove School District

Infancy Cognitive
Development
 “Baby Human – Face Recognition”
2 key ideas from birth:
•Born with more neurons
than an adult - “Pruning”
•Hyperattentive - Pay
attention to everything
(usually considered an
inability to focus)
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Schema
 a concept or framework that organizes and
interprets information
 Assimilation
 interpreting one’s new experience in terms
of one’s existing schemas
 Accommodation
 adapting one’s current understandings
(schemas) to incorporate new information
Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development
Typical Age
Range
Description
of Stage
Developmental
Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years
Sensorimotor
Experiencing the world through
senses and actions (looking,
touching, mouthing)
•Object permanence
•Stranger anxiety
About 2 to 6 years
Preoperational
Representing things
with words and images
but lacking logical reasoning
•Pretend play
•Egocentrism
•Language development
About 7 to 11 years
Concrete operational
•Conservation
Thinking logically about concrete
•Mathematical
events; grasping concrete analogies
transformations
and performing arithmetical operations
About 12 through
adulthood
Formal operational
Abstract reasoning
•Abstract logic
•Potential for
moral reasoning
Cognitive Development:
Sensorimotor Stage
 Object Permanence
 the awareness that things continue to exist even
when not perceived
 No object permanence
 A-not-B Error
Cognitive Development:
Sensorimotor Stage
 Circular Reactions
 Primary – baby accidentally does something
and repeats simply because it feels good
 Saliva bubbles, waving arms
 Secondary – similar to primary, but involve
objects in the environment
 Example
 Tertiary – infant devises new ways to act on
objects to produce interesting results.
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Baby Mathematics
 Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants
stare longer (Wynn, 1992)
4. Possible outcome:
Screen drops, revealing
one object.
1. Objects placed
in case.
2. Screen comes 3. Object is removed.
up.
4. Impossible outcome:
Screen drops, revealing
two objects.
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Scale Error in the Judy DeLoache Study
 Found 18 – 30 month olds commonly make
 Scale Errors
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Scale Error
 Typical scale error ages
Cognitive Development
 Self-Awareness – shopping cart study
 Animism – belief that inanimate objects have
lifelike qualities and mental lives.
 Preoperational
 Seriation – Ability to arrange objects in
ascending or descending order based on
characteristic like length or weight
 Concrete operations
 Much later than people think
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Conservation
 the principle that properties such as mass, volume,
and number remain the same despite changes in the
forms of objects
 Preoperational vs. Concrete operational
 Number, Mass, Length, Volume, Area, Weight
Infancy and Childhood:
Cognitive Development
 Egocentrism
 the inability of the preoperational child to take
another’s point of view
 Example in Child’s answers:
Why does the sun shine? To keep me warm.
Why is there snow? For me to play in.
Why is the grass green? Its my favorite color.
Have a 4 year old close her eyes and ask her if
you can still see her. Her answer?
 How many siblings? vs. how many kids do your
parents have?
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Social Development
 Health, happiness, and even survival
depends on forming meaningful, effective
relationships with family peers, and later,
on the job (Zimbardo, 2007)
 Nature brings our 1st step in this direction
– a biological predisposition
to smile.
Social Development:
Temperament
 Temperament – An individual’s
characteristic manner of behavior or
reaction
 Assumed to have a strong genetic basis.
 10-15% babies “born shy”, 10-15% “born
bold”
 Nature / Nurture connection – which
temperaments encourage interaction?
Social Development
 Attachment
 an emotional tie with another person
 shown in young children by their seeking
closeness to the caregiver and displaying
distress on separation
 Develops in phases over 1st 24 months.
 Once attachments are formed, fears and
anxieties also appear.
Social Development
 Stranger Anxiety
 fear of strangers that infants commonly
display
 beginning by about 8 months of age
 Separation Anxiety
 Distress the infant shows when object of
attachment leaves
 Peaks between 14 and 18 months
“The Strange Situation”
 Mary Ainsworth – Attachment studies
 Displays attachment
 Secure Attachment (Ideal) – 60%
 Children show some distress when parent leaves,
seek contact at the reunion, explore when parent
gone, play and greet when parent present.
 Insecure Attachments lack 1 or more of these
traits
 Behaviorists: What should the parent do in this
scenario (assuming its real)?
Social Development
Percentage
of infants
100
who cried
when their
mothers left
80
 Groups of
infants left by
their mothers
in a unfamiliar
room (Kagan,
1976).
Day care
60
40
Home
20
0
3.5 5.5 7.5 9.5 11.5 13.5 20
Age in months
29
Origins of Attachment
 Critical Period
 an optimal period shortly after birth when an
organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or
experiences produces proper development
 Imprinting – Konrad Lorenz
 the process by which certain animals
form attachments during a critical
period very early in life
Origins of Attachment
 Harlow’s Surrogate
Mother Experiments
 Monkeys preferred
contact with the
comfortable cloth
mother, even while
feeding from the
nourishing wire
mother
Social Development
 Monkeys raised
by artificial
mothers were
terror-stricken
when placed in
strange
situations
without their
surrogate
mothers.
Social Development
 Basic Trust (Erik Erikson)
 a sense that the world is predictable and
trustworthy
 said to be formed during infancy by
appropriate experiences with responsive
caregivers
 Self-Concept
 a sense of one’s identity and personal
worth
Social Development: ChildRearing Practices
 Authoritarian
 parents impose rules and expect obedience
 “Don’t interrupt.” “Why? Because I said so.”
 Permissive
 submit to children’s desires, make few
demands, use little punishment
 Authoritative
 both demanding and responsive
 set rules, but explain reasons and encourage
open discussion
Social Development:
Child-Rearing Practices