Infancy & Childhood

Infancy & Childhood Chapter 8

Objectives • Describe the processes of intellectual development and Piaget’s theory • Discuss the development of language • Compare the theories of social development • Summarize the cognitive-development theory and Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning

Key Terms • Accommodation • Anal stage • Assimilation • Conservation • Critical Period • Developmental psychology • Electra complex • Genital stage • Grasping reflex • Identification • Imprinting • Latency stage • Maturation • Object permanence • Oedipal conflict • Oral stage • Phallic stage • Representational thought • Role taking • Rooting reflex • Schemas • Separation anxiety • Socialization • Sublimation • Telegraphic speech

Developmental Psych • Young children live in a strange world of wonders and delights where doorknobs and table legs are mysterious objects. Mom and Pops are the source of all life’s great pleasures, and many of its pains. Each day there is something new to be learned. • About 15 years ago you were taking your first steps and then playing doctor or writing on the walls. You have changed faster and learned more in childhood than you ever will again

Developmental Psych • Developmental psychology: is the study of the changes that occur as people grow up and grow older. • Covers the entire life cycle from conception to death

Developmental Psych • Questions developmental psychologists seek to answer • What does the newborn know? • How does the infant respond in the early years of life? • How do we learn to walk and talk, to think and feel? • How do we develop our unique personalities?

The Beginning of Life • Development begins long before an infant is born. Expectant mothers can feel strong movement and kicking -even hiccuping- inside them during the later stages of pregnancy. • Birth puts new demands on a baby’s capacity to adapt and survive. • Baby goes from an environment in which he is totally protected from the world to one in which he is assaulted by lights, sounds, touches, and extreme temperature.

Developmental Psych • Newborn is capable of certain inherited, automatic, coordinated movement patterns, called reflexes • Grasping reflex: Is a response to a touch on the palm of the hand • Infants can grasp an object, such as a finger, so strongly that they can be lifted into the air • Rooting reflex: Infant’s response in turning toward the source of touching that occurs anywhere around their mouth • Breast feeding

Developmental Psych • Besides grasping and sucking, newborns look at their bodies and at their surroundings. From birth, unless they are sleeping, feeding, or crying, they direct their gazes toward bright patterns and faces, tracing the outlines of those patterns with their eye movements.

Developmental Psych • How to measure the capabilities of newborn infants who cannot speak or understand the questions of curious psychologists? • Take advantage of things infants can do • Suck, turn their head, look at things, cry, smile, and show signs of surprise or fright • By measuring these stimulations, we can infer how infants perceives the world

More about… • Read reflexes on page 184

How Do Babies Grow • Maturation • At about 3 months baby will lift head • Smile at 4 months • Grasp objects at 5-6 months • Crawling appears at 8-10 months • By this time baby is able to pull self into standing position • 3-4 months later baby will walk, gradually acquiring a sense of balance

Maturation • Maturation: Internally programmed growth • Is as important as learning or experience, especially in the first years • Unless child is underfed, severely restricted in movements, or deprived of human contact and thing to look at, child will develop more or less according to schedule. • No amount of coaching will push a child to walk or speak before child is physiologically ready (maturational readiness)

Maturation • Why? • One twin, but not the other, was given special training in climbing stairs, building with blocks, and the like, The child did acquire some skill in these areas. But in a short time the second child learned to climb and build just as well as his twin, and with much less practice. • Why? • Because he had matured to the point where he could coordinate his legs and hands more easily

Maturation • Process of maturation becomes obvious when you think about walking. An infant lacks the physical control walking requires. However, by the end of the first year the nerves connected to the child’s muscles have grown. He or she is ready to walk

Maturation • By recording the ages at which thousands of infants first began to smile, to sit upright, to crawl, and to try a few steps, psychologist have been able to draw up an approximate timetable for maturation. • This schedule helps doctors and other professionals to spot problems and abnormalities. If the child has not begun to talk by the age of 2 ½ a doctor will recommend tests to determine if something is wrong

Maturation • HOWEVER • Each child is unique, and some start sooner than others while others start later in some stages • Babies have own temperament • Some are active while others are quiet • Some are cuddly and some are stiff • Some cry while others hardly whimper • No 2 are exactly alike or mature according to the same schedule

At a Glance • Ethnic Differences in infants • Read page 186

Funny babies • Video

Sequence of Motor Development • See figure on page 187 • Activity • Recreate schedule for wonderful babies

Learning • Infants and children are exceptionally responsive. Each experience changes the child, teaches him something, pushes him in some direction. • Babies turn head at sound of buzzer, fed bottle • Movie screen and pacifier, focus of picture

Intellectual Development • Oh c’mon! Why does he always have to play with my friends and I, he is too little. • Sound familiar? • How many times has your younger brother or sister played with you and messed up the game of hide and seek? Why couldn’t your brother or sister understand that he or she had to keep quiet or he’d be found right away?

Intellectual Development • Jean Piaget set out to answer that question over 70 years ago • Common sense told him intelligence or the ability to understand develops gradually as the child grows • 4 year old vs. 7 year old

Piaget • Spent years observing, questioning, and playing games with babies and young children • Concluded that young children aren’t dumb, but think in a different way than older children • Use of different kind of logic • Piaget was able to detail the ways in which a child’s thinking changes and says that every child passes through the same predictable stages. Each stage builds on the last, increasing the child’s ability to solve more complex problems

How Knowing Changes • Schemas: Plans for knowing or understanding the world • Assimilation: Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, fitting the world into our schemas • Accommodation: Change of scheme to fit the characteristics of the world • Assimilation and accommodation work together to produce intellectual growth

How Knowing Changes • According to Piaget, newborns have a set of ready made responses • Bright lights= blinking • Objects in hand= grasping • Loss of support= throwing arms and legs out • Object near mouth= sucking • Theses reflexes let babies understand and cope with things

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • STAGE 1: Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) • Thinking is displayed in action, such as grasping, sucking, and looking schemas, Child gradually learns to discover the location of hidden objects at about 18 months, when the concept of object permanence is fully understood

Object Permanence • A baby’s understanding of things lies totally in the here and now. The sight of a toy, the way it feels, the sensation. The baby does not imagine it, picture it, think of it, remember it, or even forget it. When hidden baby acts as if it didn’t exist. • Toy under blanket • 7-12 months, this pattern begins to change. • 12-18 baby will keep searching for toy. Act surprised • 18-24 Toy must be somewhere (Giant step in intellectual development)

Object Permanence • Achievement of object permanence • Piaget calls it representational thought • Representational thought: Intellectual ability of a child to picture something in his or her mind • Child can picture thing in mind • Children will mimic others

Stage 1 • Video

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • STAGE 2: Preoperational Stage (2 – 6 years) • Beginning of symbolic representation. Language first appears; child begins to draw pictures that represent things. Child cannot represent a series of actions in his or her head in order to solve problems

Conservation • Ages 5-7 • Piaget calls conservation: principle that a given quantity does not change when it appearance is changed. • Dimensions

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • STAGE 3: Concrete Operational Stage (6 – 12 years) • Ability to understand conservation problems. Ability to think of several dimensions or features at same time. Child can now do elementary math problems, such as judging the quantity of liquid containers and checking addition of numbers by subtraction

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • STAGE 4: Formal Operational Stage (12 years to adulthood) • Thinking becomes more abstract and hypothetical. The individual can consider many alternative solutions to a problem, make deductions, contemplate the future, and formulate personal ideals and values.

Worksheet • Intellectual Development: Jean Piaget • Front and back

Homework • Crossword • Application of the stages of Cognitive Development

Separation Anxiety • Separation Anxiety: A phase many children experience after 12 months, characterized by fear and anxiety at any prolonged absence of the primary caregiver. • A 5-month old baby does not react this way. Why does a 1-year old? • Disappearance led to uncertainty (Nursery room door/closet)

Imprinting • Konrad Lorenz • Imprinting: A social learning capacity in some species by which attachments are formed to other organisms or to objects very early in life • Geese • Critical period: 13-16 hours after birth, makes a deep impression that resists change

Imprinting • Video

Surrogate mothers • Harry Harlow • Video • Read page 202 • Effects Later in Life • Infant begins to develop a strong attachment to its mother by the age of 6 months

Imaginary Playmate • Page 203

Socialization • Boys vs. Girls!

Socialization • Some rules have gray areas • Boys are encouraged to express aggression but not fear • Girls have been raised to express emotions but not ambitions • Rules have changed over time

Socialization • Story

Socialization • Socialization: Learning the rules of behavior of the culture in which you are born and grow up • To live with other people, a child has to learn what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Sigmund Freud

Freud’s Theory • Psychosexual Development • Freud believed that all children are born with powerful sexual and aggressive urges that must be tamed. • In learning to control these impulses, children acquire a sense of right and wrong • They become “civilized”

Infancy & Childhood