Unit 9

Developmental Psychology

Major Issues

• Nature vs. Nurture• Stability vs. Change• Continuity vs. Stages

Conception / Fetal Development • Sperm production starts at puberty; girls born

will all immature eggs• 200+ million sperm attempt to locate egg

85,000 times larger than it • Zygote – fertilized egg – 1st 10 days• Embryo – 2nd – 9th week – after zygote attachs

to uterine wall – forms placenta to keep out teratogens (FAS)

• Fetus – 9 – 36 weeks

• Until 1960, William James and most people thought babies experienced very little – now realize, they know a lot – just have to ask in ways they understand (gazing, sucking, turning heads) – experiments on pgs. 414-415

• Neural connections increasing throughout puberty, with pruning process that shuts down excess connections and strengthens others

• Maturation – biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

• Maturation sets the basic course of development; experience adjusts it

• Motor development is mostly universal (sitting before walking).

• Not imitation – even blind children crawl before they walk

• Genes play a major role in motor development • Average age of earliest concsious memor is 3.5

years• Babies ARE capable of learning – mobile

experiment – pg. 417

Cognitive Development• Jean Piaget • Schemas – mental representations of world• Assimilation – interpret in terms of current understandings• Accommodation – adjustment to incorporate new understandings • Socks Please Cold Feet (order of stages) • Sensorimotor – 0 – 2 Descriptions and • Preoperational – 2 – 6 or 7 Developmental• Concrete Operational – 7 to 11 Phenomena • Formal Operational – 12 – adulthood (chart)

• Piaget had order correct, but underestimated children’s ability – overestimated how much time was needed

Social Development

• Attachment – Body contact, familiarity, and responsiveness

• Attachments formed during critical period – optimal period when certain events must take place to facilitate proper development

• Imprinting – the process by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period very early in life (rigid in animal kingdom)

Temperament and Parenting• Temperament – a person’s characteristic

emotional reactivity and intensity • Heredity plays a role – bottom 428• Insecure (anxious) vs. Secure (trusting)

attachment – how babies will react differently • Erik Erikson – securely attached children approach

life with basic trust – sense that world is predictable and reliable – said depended on early parenting

3 Parenting Styles

• Authoritarian – impose rules and expect obedience

• Permissive – submit to children’s desires; few demands – little punishment

• Authoritative – both demanding and responsive

–Which do you think is better?