Introduction to Psychology Unit Two: The Life Span Chapter Three- Infancy and Childhood

1. Introduction to Psychology Unit Two: The Life SpanChapter Three- Infancy and Childhood

2. The Developing Person • Developmental Psychology • study of physical, cognitive, and social changes across the life span

3. Developmental Issues • Nature versus Nurture • How much is human development influenced by our heredity (nature) and how much by our experience (nurture)? • Continuity versus Stages • Is development gradual and continuous or does it proceed through a sequence of separate stages? • Stability versus Change • Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do we become different persons as we age?

4. Union of Egg and Sperm

5. Prenatal Development • Zygote • fertilized egg • enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division • develops into an embryo • Embryo • developing human organism from 2 weeks through second month • Fetus • developing human organism from 9 weeks to birth

6. Prenatal Development • Teratogens • agents that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm • chemical, e.g., alcohol, some medicines, cocaine, nicotine • viral, e.g., HIV, Rubella • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome • physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking

7. The Competent Newborn • Rooting Reflex • tendency to turn head, open mouth, and search for nipple when touched on the cheek • Preferences • human voices and faces • smell and sound of mother preferred

8. At birth 3 months 15 months Cortical Neurons Infancy and Childhood • Maturation • biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior • relatively uninfluenced by experience • sets the course for development while experience adjusts it

9. Infancy and Childhood • Schema • a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information • Cognition • mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering • Sensorimotor Stage • stage during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impression and motor activities

10. Infancy and Childhood • Object Permanence • the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived • Preoperational Stage • stage during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend mental operations of concrete logic • Conservation • the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects • part of Piaget’s concrete operational reasoning

11. 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 Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations • Conservation • Mathematical transformations About 12 through adulthood Formal operational Abstract reasoning • Abstract logic • Potential for moral reasoning Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

12. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development • Egocentrism • the inability of the preoperational child to take another’s point of view • Theory of Mind • people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states • Concrete Operational Stage • stage during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events • Formal Operational Stage • stage during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

13. Social Development • Stranger Anxiety • fear of strangers that infants commonly display • beginning by about 8 months of age • Attachment • an emotional tie with another person • shown in young children by seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation

14. Harry Harlow’s Surrogate Mother Experiement • infant monkeys were separated from their mothers at six to twelve hours after birth • raised instead with substitute or 'surrogate' mothers made either of heavy wire or of wood covered with soft terry cloth • In one experiment both types of surrogates were present in the cage, but only one was equipped with a nipple from which the infant could nurse • Some infants received nourishment from the wire mother, and others were fed from the cloth mother. Even when the wire mother was the source of nourishment, the infant monkey spent a greater amount of time clinging to the cloth surrogate. • Principles of General Psychology (1980 John Wiley and Sons)

15. Social Development • Harlow’s Surrogate Mother Experiments • Monkeys preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother, even while feeding from the nourishing wire mother

16. Harlow -Results • "...the actions of surrogate-raised monkeys became bizarre later in life. They engaged in stereotyped behavior patterns such as clutching themselves and rocking constantly back and forth; they exhibited excessive and misdirected aggression..." • Sex behavior was, for all practical purposes, destroyed; sexual posturing was commonly stereotyped and infantile. • "The behavior of these monkeys as mothers -- the 'motherless mothers' as Harlow called them -- proved to be very inadequate ... These mothers tended to be either indifferent or abusive toward their babies. The indifferent mothers did not nurse, comfort, or protect their young, but they did not harm them. The abusive mothers violently bit or otherwise injured their infants, to the point that many of them died."

17. Social Development • Critical Period • an optimal period shortly after birth when an organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development • Imprinting • the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life

18. Social Development • Monkeys raised by artificial mothers were terror-stricken when placed in strange situations without their surrogate mothers

19. Percentage of infants who cried when their mothers left 100 80 Day care 60 40 Home 20 0 3.5 5.5 7.5 9.5 11.5 13.5 20 29 Age in months Social Development • Groups of infants who had and had not experienced day care were left by their mothers in a unfamiliar room

20. 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

21. Child’s traits (e.g., self-reliant socially competent) Parenting style (e.g.,authoritative) Harmonious marriage, common genes, or other third factor Social Development • The correlation between authoritative parenting and social competence in children

22. Parenting Styles • Authoritarian (child can not express his/her opinion or exercise his/her own judgment) • Democratic/Authoritative (children are most confident; stems from responding to the child and setting boundaries for the child; children gain responsibility slowly; independence gradual) • Permissive/Laissez-Faire (child has responsibility too soon, child has no boundaries, difficulty with ethics and morals)

23. Child Abuse • Physical or mental injury, sexual abuse, neglect, or mistreatment of a child under the age of 18 by adults entrusted with the child’s care (pg. 81 in textbook) • Many abusive parents were abused children. • Overburdened or stressed parents are more likely to abuse their children. • Low birth weight and hyperactive children are more likely to be abused (more difficult to work with/handle; parent has few parental rewards)

24. Effects of Child Abuse • Loss of childhood • Loss of trust, guilt, anti-social behavior, depression, identity crisis, loss of self-esteem • Severe emotional problems • Potential abuser later in life

25. Source: • Kasschau, Richard, A. Understanding Psychology. McGraw-Hill, Glencoe, New York, New York, 2008.

26. Next class • Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development • Freudian Psychosexual Development • Language Development