Transcript UNIT 9 - Our Lady of Lourdes High School

UNIT 9
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Developmental Psychology
 Examines how people are continually developing
 Physically, Cognitively and Socially
 Mainly focuses on three major issues
 Nature vs Nurture – genetics vs environment
 Continuity and Stages- are we constantly, gradually changing
or do we go step by step through our lives
 Stability and Change – Are we destined to be the same person
for our whole life or does our personality change?
Conception
 Women are born with all the eggs they will ever have
 Men start producing sperm at puberty
 200 million sperm released, all trying to get to 1 egg, 85,000x
their size
 Sperm release a digestive enzyme to break down its protective
coating
Prenatal Development
 Zygotes- fertilized eggs
 Inner cells become embryo
 Over 6 weeks time, organs form and heart beats
 By 9 weeks, it’s a fetus
 6 mos, fetus has almost fully developed, and has the highest
chance of survival
 Also responsive to sound, hear the mother’s voice
 Newborns will respond to their mother and recognize their voice
compared to other women
Prenatal Development
 Outer cells of the Zygote become the placenta
 responsible for transferring nutrients and oxygen from mother to
fetus
 Also screens toxins that may harm baby
 Teratogens – harmful agents like viruses and drugs
 Not everything can get filtered out though
 HIV, heroine, smoke, alcohol
 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
 prolonged exposure to alcohol can cause birth defects
(disproportional head) and life long brain abnormalities
The Newborn
 Babies come equipped with certain behaviors
that will ensure their survival
 Withdrawing limbs to avoid pain
 moving head away from something blocking
airway
 touching on the cheek will get their attention for
feeding (rooting reflex)
 Babies can see and categorize things
 Habituation – no longer responding to a stimulus
 Focus on faces
 8 – 12 inches away grabs our attention more
Brain Development
 At birth, you have most of the brain cells you will ever have
 23 billion neurons
 Connections grow as you age
 from 3 to 6 frontal lobes grow rapidly
 Association areas – thinking and memory – are the last to
develop
 after puberty, connections that aren’t used are pruned
 Strengthens pathways that exist
Motor Development
 Movt in babies is almost universal
 Roll over before they sit up
 crawl before they walk
 Identical twins often end up sitting up or walking
on nearly the same day
 Genetic influence
 Muscle control, including toilet training takes time
Infant Memory
Earliest memories usually from about 3 years and
older
Infantile Amnesia – inability to remember or
misremember things before the age of 4
 Babies are also capable of learning
 Mobile Experiment
Cognitive Development
Cognition – all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing,
remembering and communicating
Jean Piaget
Intelligence tests for children
Studied their wrong answers
Many kids got the same questions wrong for the same
reasons
Children reason differently than adults
Cognitive Development
 Schemas
 Concepts or frameworks that we use to interpret
new ideas
 Assimilation – interpreting new ideas in terms of old
ones (schemas)
 Accommodation – adjusting our schemas to new
information
Piaget’s Theory
 Children go through 4 stages of development
 Sensorimotor stage
 Birth – almost 2
 We learn through our senses
 Touching, mouthing, looking, grasping
 Out of sight out of mind
 Object permanence
Piaget
 Preoperational Stage
 2 – 6 or 7
 Using intuitive rather than logical reasoning
 Conservation
 Quantity remains the same despite its shape
 Egocentrism
 Difficulty perceiving things from another’s POV
 Theory of Mind
 Being able to think from another’s perspective
 Teasing, empathy, persuasion
Theory of Mind
 Anne the Doll and Band Aid box experiments
 Lev Vygotsky
 Inner speech
 Children learn better and can work through
problems easier when they are speaking out loud
Concrete Operational
Stage
 7 – about 11
 Changes in understanding
 Grasping of logic and reason
 Understand conservation
 Mathematics and language
 Better understanding of word problems
 Reversing equations
 8 + 4 = 12, so what is 12 - 4 = ?
Formal Operational
 By 12
 abstract thinking
 deducing consequences and hypothetical
questions
 If this, then that
 If John is in school, then Mary is in school. John is
in school, so what can you deduce about Mary?
Piaget Today
One of the most influential researchers
of the 20th century
Researchers think today that
development is more continuous rather
than going through distinct stages
Social Development
 Infant parent bonding
 at about 8 months, there is a development of
stranger anxiety
 hard to assimilate new faces with existing schemas
 Origins of attachment
 Harlow’s monkey experiment
 Attachment – emotional tie with another person
 Monkeys grew attached to blankets in their cages
 Surrogate mothers
Attachment
 Familiarity
 Imprinting
 the forming of attachments during critical periods
of a child’s life
 In some animals, the first moving thing they see
becomes their mother
 Kids like to watch the same movies and tv shows,
read the same books, eat the same foods
 Familiarity is safety
Parenting and
temperament
 secure vs insecure attachment
 Parents who are more sensitive to their children’s
needs tend to have more securely attached
children
 easy babies vs difficult babies
 shy 2 yr olds usually become shy 8 yr olds
 and introverted teens
 Nurturing Nature
 Mothers with training on how to handle difficult
babies
Mother Care vs Father Care
 More research has been done looking at mothers
caring for children than fathers
 Maternal deprivation vs father absence
 A father’s affection and acceptance is
comparable to the mothers when raising a
healthy child
 Erikson’s basic trust
 Kids see the world as predictable and reliable
 Trust rather than fear
Neglect
 Humans and primates who are neglected as
babies grow up without social skills
 Often fear being in environments with others and
can act aggressively
 More likely to commit child abuse
 When placed in homes where they wont be
neglected, most kids can recover
 Day Care – when stimulating can be good for
kids, when boring can have negative effects on
development and grades
Self Concept
 An understanding and assessment of you you are
 Usually have this idea by 12
 Darwin thought it happens when we can
recognize ourselves in the mirror
 happens gradually over the first year
 When make up is applied to kids, they recognize
that it is on their face, not another person in the
mirror
Parenting styles
 1. Authoritarian
 impose strict rules and expect obedience
 “because I said so!”
 2. Permissive
 parents submit to their kids desires
 make few demands and rarely punish
 3. Authoritative
 both demanding and responsive
 Set rules and enforce them, but also explain them
 Allow exceptions to rules when discussing rules
with older kids
Parenting Styles
 Researchers agree that kids with
 highest self esteem
 self reliance
 social competence
all come from parents with authoritative styles
 Why?
 Children’s traits may influence parenting
techniques more than vice versa
 Genetics?
 Competent children the offspring of competent
parents
Gender Development
 We are in most ways, alike
 There are a number of differences
 Women
 enter puberty 2 yrs earlier
 live 5 yrs longer
 carry 70% more fat
 have 40% less muscle
 is 5 inches shorter
 express emotion more freely
 more susceptible to depression
 but less likely to become alcoholics or commit
suicide
Gender Gaps
 men admit to more aggression
 physical vs verbal
 men are perceived as more dominant, forceful
and dominant
 men place more importance on this too
 Social connectedness
 Boys more often play in large groups and engage is
less intimate conversations
 More competitive
 Male Answer Syndrome
Gender Gaps
 Women hold bonds more important as well as
feelings of support
 Men value freedom and self reliance
The Nature of Gender
 X chromosomes come from Women
 Y chromosomes come from men
 Responsible for producing testosterone
 Exposing a female to testosterone in the womb
will have an impact on their development and
behavior
 Tomboys – even with some physical traits
 Still identify themselves as girls
Nurture of Gender
 Gender roles
 Expectations about how sexes are supposed to
behave
 Who does the following
 Drives the car?
 Picks up the check?
 Does laundry?
 Does yard work?
 Cooks dinner?
 Decorates the home?
 Selects gifts?
Child Rearing
 Gender Identity
 Sense of being male or female
 Social learning theory says that we learn this through
our interactions, observing and imitating as well as
being punished or rewarded for these behaviors
 Schemas and cognition also play a role
 Children are aware that 2 different types of people
exist and can categorize behaviors done by these
types
 Forms stereotypes
Parents and Peers
 Genes decide the structure of our brain, but
experience fills in the details
 More experience increases brain development
as infants grow
 Exposure to toys and touch increases brain weight
too
 Pruning
 This is why its easier to learn new languages at
younger ages
Credit or Blame the Parents
 Is it right to blame parents for their kids
shortcomings or give them credit for their
successes?
 Pushy and overbearing vs uninvolved and distant
 Family values show up in political beliefs, religious
beliefs and personal matters
 However, many researchers have found that kids
from the same family are often as different as any
two kids interviewed at random
 Parents may not be the sole reason that kids turn
out the way they do
Peers
 especially during childhood and adolescence
we seek to fit in
 This can have major impacts on our behavior
 Kids who don’t like a type of food, will eat it around
other kids that do
 Accents will be more like the ones they hear at
school than at home
 Teens smoking modeled by friends, even when no
smokers at home
Adolescence
 The years spent changing from a child to an
adult
 Tension between biological maturity and social
dependence
 A time of storm and stress
 Sexual maturation causes a flood of hormones to be
released – mood swings
 Secondary sex characteristics
 Facial hair, breast development, deeper voices
Cognitive Development in
Teens
 Reasoning is usually focused on the self
 “You wouldn’t understand!”
 “You don’t know what its like!”
 Grows to being able to think about others point
of view
 Being able to think hypothetically
 developing morality
Morality
 Preconventional morality
 Kids before 9
 Only do things to avoid punishment or gain a
concrete reward
 Conventional
 early adolescence
 caring for others, following the rules simply because
they are the rules
 Postconventional
 Things are right because others have rights, ethics
come into play
Morals
 Social intuitionist
 Moral feelings precede moral reasoning
 Moral paradoxes
 Runaway trolley examples
 Gut feelings
 Emotional areas of the brain activate differently
depending on the situation
Social Identity
 Identity
 Our sense of self, often found by trying out different
versions through our lives
 Social Identity
 Who am I – based on group memberships
 Erik Erikson
 stages of life each have certain tasks that we must
complete before we can mature and have our
identity
Erikson’s Stages of
Development
 Infancy – up to 1 yr old
 Trust vs Mistrust
 If needs are met, infants will develop a sense of
trust
 Toddlerhood – 1-3 yrs
 Autonomy vs self doubt/shame
 Figuring things out on their own
 Preschool – 3-6 yrs
 Initiative vs guilt
 accomplishing things of feeling guilty about not
Erikson
 Elementary School – 6 – puberty
 Industry vs inferiority
 Applying yourself to a task or feeling like a failure
 Adolescence – teens into 20s
 identity vs role confusion
 refining sense of self or becoming confused about
who you really are
 Young adulthood – 20s-40s
 intimacy vs isolation
 having close relationships or being socially isolated
Erikson
 Middle Adulthood – 40s – 60s
 Generativity vs stagnation
 Contributing to society through work or family, or
feeling worthless
 Late adulthood – 60’s and up
 Integrity vs despair
 looking back at life with satisfaction or regret
Emerging Adulthood
 From 18 to mid 20’s some teens pull away from
parents, but are not completely able to care for
themselves
 Happens more in the West than in other parts of
the world
 In between stage of life
Adulthood
 Development continues as we age
 Physically
 20’s
 Strength, reaction time, sensory keenness are all at
their height
 As we age, physical tasks get harder, sounds
mute, and visual ability declines
 More susceptible to life threatening ailments, less
to colds
Cognitive Ability
 Dementia
 mental erosion
 can be caused by small strokes, tumors, alcohol
dependence
 Alzheimer’s
 affects 3% of the population
 Memory goes first then reasoning
 Physically active, non obese are at less of a risk
 As well as those who continue to challenge their
mind – active readers
Cognitive Ability
 Aging and Memory
 Early adulthood is the peak time for memories
 Prospective Memory
 “Remember to..” remains strong through life
 Recalling information declines with age
Cognitive Ability
 Aging and Intelligence
 Research has been done in phases
 Phase I – Cross Sectional
 Comparing people to one another
 Looking at various age groups
 Phase II – Longitudinal
 Retesting the same people over the course of time
 Sometimes intelligence increased
 Phase III – Depends on various factors
 Maybe smarter people live longer
 Intelligence slows down, doesn’t make you less intelligent
Cognitive Ability
 Crystallized vs Fluid Intelligence
 Crystallized increases over time
 Accumulated knowledge
 Vocab and analogies
 Fluid decreases over time
 Reason quickly and abstractly
 Most mathematicians and scientists produce
their best work in their 20s
 Creative writers tend to produce their best later
in life