Transcript General Psychology: Child Dev (I)

Child Development
Chapter 9
Part I
William G. Huitt
Last revised: May 2005
Summary
•A human being is inherently
– biological
– motivated
– able to be conditioned
– sensing & perceiving
– emotional
– intelligent
– knowledge creating
– think rationally
– language using
– social
– patterned
Basic Issues and Methodology
• Developmental psychology
– The study of how humans grow, develop, and
change throughout the life span
• Controversial issues
– Nature-nurture debate
– Characteristics and environmental variables
interact so that the same environment can have
different effects, depending on the characteristics of
each child
Basic Issues and Methodology
• Approaches to studying developmental change
– Cross-sectional study
• A type of developmental study in which researchers
compare groups of participants of different ages on certain
characteristics to determine age-related differences
– Longitudinal study
• A type of developmental study in which the same group of
participants is followed and measured at different ages
Stages of Prenatal Development
• Germinal stage
– The 2-week stage when the zygote travels to the
uterus and attaches itself to the uterine wall; this is
also when rapid cell division occurs
• Embryonic stage
– When the embryo develops all of the systems,
organs, and structures of the body
– Lasts from the beginning of week 3 through week 8
• Fetal stage
– Lasts from the end of week 8, when bone cells form,
until birth
– Several studies of newborns have shown that they
remember sounds to which they were exposed in
utero
Prenatal Development
• Negative influences on prenatal development
– Smoking and drinking alcohol
– Poor diet (especially protein in last trimester)
– Fetal alcohol syndrome
• A condition, caused by maternal alcohol intake during
pregnancy, in which the baby is born mentally retarded,
with a small head and facial, organ, and behavioral
abnormalities
– Drug addictions
– HIV/Aids
– Low birth weight
• A baby weighing less than 5.5 pounds
Infancy
• Reflexes and motor development
– During the first few days after birth, neonates’
movements are dominated by reflexes
– Neonates
• Newborn infant up to 1 month old
– Reflexes
• Inborn, unlearned, automatic responses to certain
environmental stimuli
Infancy
• Reflexes and motor development
– Most motor milestones result from maturation
– Development also proceeds from the center of the
body outward (proximal – distal)
– Experience may also accelerate motor development
Infancy
Infancy
Sensory and Perceptual
Development
• Vision
– Newborns focus best on objects about 9 inches
away, and they can follow a slowly moving object
– By 2 to 3 months of age, most infants prefer human
faces to other visual images
• Depth perception
– After children beginning crawling, become aware of
depth
• Hearing and other senses
– At birth, the newborn’s hearing is much better
developed than her vision
– Newborns also prefer their own mother’s voice to
that of an unfamiliar female
Learning
• Habituation
– A decrease in response or attention to a stimulus as
an infant becomes accustomed to it
– Major technique in studying infant learning
• Memory
– 3-day-old newborns could retain in memory for 24
hours a speech sound that had been presented
repeatedly the day before
Attachment
• The strong affectionate bond a child forms with
the mother or primary caregiver
• Harry Harlow’s study of infant monkeys
– Studies suggested that physical nourishment alone
is not enough to bind infants to their primary
caregivers
– Found that it was contact comfort – the comfort
supplied by bodily contact – rather than nourishment
that formed the basis of the infant monkey’s
attachment to its mother
Attachment
• Development of attachment in humans
– The primary caregiver holds, strokes, and talks to
the baby and responds to the baby’s needs
– In turn, the baby gazes at, listens to, and moves in
synchrony with the caregiver’s voice
• John Bowlby
– Believes that attachment behavior serves the
evolutionary function of protecting the infant from
danger
Attachment
• Separation anxiety
– The fear and distress shown by toddlers when their
parent leaves, occurring from 8 to 24 months and
reaching a peak between 12 and 18 months
• Stranger anxiety
– A fear of strangers common in infants at about 6
months and increasing in intensity until about 12
months, and then declining in the second year
Attachment
• Ainsworth’s attachment categories
– Identified four patterns of attachment:
•
•
•
•
Secure
Avoidant
Resistant
Disorganized/disoriented
– Secure attachment is the most common
pattern across cultures
Father-Child Relationship
• Children who experience regular interaction
with their fathers tend to
– have higher IQs
– do better in social situations and at coping with
frustration
– Sons display positive parenting when they have
children of their own
• Children whose fathers exhibit antisocial
behavior, such as deceitfulness and
aggression, are more likely to demonstrate
such behavior themselves
Father-Child Relationship
• Father absence is also related to
– children’s reduced self-confidence in
problem solving
– low self-esteem
– depression
– suicidal thoughts
– behavioral problems such as aggression and
delinquency
– early sexual behavior for girls and teen
pregnancy
Father-Child Relationship
• Mothers are more likely to cushion their
children against overstimulation
• Fathers more likely to engage in stimulating
activity
• When the mother and father have a good
relationship, fathers tend to spend more time
with and interact more with their children
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of
Development
• The oral stage (birth to 1 year)
– The mouth is the primary source of an infant’s
sensual pleasure
– Freud claimed that difficulties at the oral stage can
result in personality traits such as either excessive
dependence, optimism, and gullibility or extreme
pessimism, sarcasm, hostility, and aggression
• The anal stage (1 to 3 years)
– During the anal stage, children derive sensual
pleasure, Freud believed, from expelling and
withholding feces
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of
Development
• The phallic stage (3 to 5 or 6 years)
– During the phallic stage, children learn that they can
derive pleasure from touching their genitals
– The latency period (5 or 6 years to puberty)
– The sex instinct is repressed and temporarily
sublimated in school and play activities, hobbies,
and sports
• The genital stage (from puberty on)
– In the genital stage, the focus of sexual energy
gradually shifts to the opposite sex for the vast
majority of people
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• The process of cognitive development
– Schemes
• An cognitive action plan to be used in a specific
circumstance
– Equilibration
• The process of keeping schemes in balance with the
environment
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• The process of cognitive development
– Adaptation
• The process of modifying perceptions or cognitive schemes
in order to attain equilibrium with the demands of the
environment
– Assimilation
• The process by which new objects, events, experiences, or
information are incorporated into existing schemes
– Accommodation
• The process by which existing schemes are modified and
new schemes are created to incorporate new objects,
events, experiences, or information
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• An evaluation of Piaget’s contribution
– Piaget relied on observation and on the interview
technique, which depended on verbal responses
– Newer techniques requiring nonverbal responses
have shown that infants and young children are
more competent than Piaget proposed
– Few developmental psychologists believe that
cognitive development takes place in the general
stage-like fashion proposed by Piaget
– Another criticism comes from research showing that
formal operational thought is not universal
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural View
• Believed language-based spontaneous behaviors
exhibited by children were important to the process of
cognitive development
• Infants have innate capacities
– perception
– ability to pay attention
– capacities of memory
• Believed that talking to oneself – private speech – is a
key component in cognitive development
• Saw a strong connection among
– social experience
– speech
– cognitive development
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural View
• Zone of proximal development
– range of cognitive tasks that the child cannot yet
perform alone but can learn to perform with the
instruction, help, and guidance of a parent, teacher,
or more advanced peer
Information-Processing
Approach
• Processing speed
– Robert Kail
• Found that information-processing speed
increases dramatically as children move from
infancy through childhood
– Increased processing speed is associated with
improved memory
Information-Processing
Approach
• Memory
– Short-term memory develops dramatically during an
infant’s first year
– Children use strategies for improving memory
increasingly as they mature cognitively
– One universal strategy for holding information in
short-term memory is rehearsal
– Organization is a very practical strategy for storing
information in such a way that it can be retrieved
without difficulty
Information-Processing
Approach
• Theory of mind
– A fundamental developmental task for children is
coming to understand how people may differ greatly
in what they know and what they believe
– Reaching a level of cognitive maturity in which an
individual is aware of his or her own thoughts and
has an understanding about their nature of thought
involves acquiring what is referred to as a theory of
mind
– Metacognition—the process of thinking about how
you or others think