(Part 1)

Developmental Psychology
●​ Definition: the study of continuity and change across the life span (infancy, childhood,
adolescence, adulthood)
●​ Development is often conceptualized as a progression through “stages”
○​ E.g Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development suggest different psychosocial
crises for each age stage:
Approximate age Psycho social crisis

Infant - 18 months Trust vs. mistrust

18 months - 3 years Autonomy vs. shame & doubt

3-5 years Initiative vs. guilt

5-13 years Industry vs. inferiority

13-21 years Identity vs. role confusion

21-39 years Intimacy vs. isolation

40-65 years Generativity vs. stagnation

65 and older Ego integrity vs. despair

Specific areas of development are analysed:

●​ This includes motor, cognitive, language, social, emotional, perceptual, identity, and
personality

Prenatal development
●​ There are 3 prenatal stages:
○​ Germinal stage: conception - 2 weeks
○​ Embryonic stage: 2nd - 8th week
○​ Fetal stage: 9th week - birth

Prenatal environment
●​ Womb is an environment that affects an unborn baby
○​ Teratogens: agents, such as drugs and viruses, that pass from mother and impairs
the process of development
○​ Fetal alcohol syndrom: neurodevelopmental disorder that results from heacy
alchohol use by the mother during pregnancy
■​ Children born with fetal alcohol syndrome have a variety of brain
abnormalities and cognitive deficits
Infancy and early childhood
●​ Infancy: birth to 18-24 months
○​ Infants are capable of much more than initially believed

Perceptual development
●​ Newborns have poor distance vision
●​ Newborns can see things that are 8-12 inches away
●​ Newborns habituate to visual stimuli - they respond less to repeated exposure of the same
stimuli
●​ Newborns are particularly attentive to objects that look like faces
●​ Newborns can see squares, triangles, and diagonal lines
●​ Newborns can mimic facial expressions within the first hour of life

The visual cliff experiment

Motor development
●​ Definition: emergence of the ability to execute physical action
●​ Motor reflexes: specific patterns of motor response that are triggered by specific patterns
of sensory stimulation (e.g rooting, sucking, babinski reflex)
●​ Rules:
○​ Cephalocausal rule: “top-to-bottom” rule that describes the tendency for motor
skills to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet
○​ Proximodistal rule: “inside-to-outside” rule that describes the tendency for
motor skills to emerge in sequence from the center to the periphery
●​ Motor development occurs in an orderly sequence but timing may vary depending on
body weight, muscular development and general activity level

Cognitive development
●​ Definition: emergence of the ability to think and understand
●​ Jean piaget suggested four stages of cognitive development in which infants and
children learn:
○​ How the physical world works
○​ How their own minds work
○​ How other people’s minds work

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development

stage characteristic
 Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) Infant experiences world through movement
and senses, develops schemes, begins to act
intentionally, and shows evidence of
understanding object permanence

Preoperational (2-6 years) Child qcquires motor skills but does not
understand conservation of physical
properties. Child begins this stage by thinking
ecocentrically but ends with a basic
understanding of other minds

Concrete operational (6-11 years) Child can think logically about physical
objects and events and understands
conservation of physical properties

Formal operational (11 years and up) Child can think logically about abstract
propositions and hypotheticals

Piaget: Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years)

●​ Infants acquire information about the world through sensation and movement
●​ Schemas: models of the way the world works
○​ Assimilation: process by which infants apply their schemas in novel situations
○​ Accommodation: process by which infants revise their schemas in light of new
information
●​ Object permanence: idea that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible
●​ During the sensorimotor stage, infants explore with their hands and mouths, learning
important lessons about the physical world

The impossible event

●​ Baillargeon, spelke, & wasserman, 1985

Piaget: preopertational stage (2-6 years)

●​ Egocentrisim: failure to understand that the world appears different to different
observers; observed during preoperational stage
●​ Perceptions and beliefs
○​ 3 year olds fail to realize that other people don’t see or know what they know
○​ E.g false belief task-maxi and hidden chocolates
●​ Theory of mind - the understandin that the mind produces representations of the world
and that these representations guide behavior
●​ Piaget’s “3 mountains” egocentricism test: “draw how the mountains would look from the
doll’s point of view.”
Piaget: concrete operational stage: 6-11 years old
●​ Capable of performing mental actions (operations)
●​ Decline in egocentrisim
●​ Able to seriate
●​ Logic can be applied only in the presence of specific objects or events

Piaget: formal operations (11 years - onwards)

●​ Thought is logical and abstract
●​ Hypothetical reasoning
●​ Systematic and complete approaches to problem solving
●​ Idealism

Piaget criticisms
●​ Newer theories see the stages as continuous not discrete
●​ Children may acquire abilities earlier than proposed

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

●​ Believed that children develop through interactions with members of their own culture rather than
concrete objects.
○​ Cultural tools have a strong influence on cognitive development.
○​ Emphasis on environment and not genetics

●​ The ability to learn from others depends on three fundamental skills:

○​ Joint attention: Ability to focus on what another person is focused on
○​ Social referencing: Ability to use another person’s reactions as information about how
to think about the world
●​ Imitation: Ability to do what another person does

Joint attention
●​ Joint attention allows children to learn from others. When a 12-month-old infant interacts with
an adult (a) who then looks at an object (b), the infant will typically look at the same object
(c)—but only when the adult’s eyes are open (Meltzoff et al., 2009).

Vygotsky: impact on school interventions

●​ Scaffolding: Temporary aid provided by one person to support the learning of another person
●​ Zone of proximal development: Disparity between what a child can do with the assistance of others
and what they can do alone
●​ Guided participation: Tendency for adults to provide scaffolding to children so they can engage
in mature activities
Social development
●​ Harry Harlow (1905–1981) conducted attachment experiments with baby rhesus monkeys.
●​ When monkeys were deprived of social contact in the first 6months, they:
○​ Developed behavioral abnormalities
○​ Were incapable of communicating with or learning from others
○​ Were incapable of normal sexual behavior
○​ Harlow’s monkets preferred the comfort and warmth of a soft cloth mother to the wire mother,
Even when the wire mother was associated with food

Attachment theory
●​ Attachment: Emotional bond that forms between newborns and their primary caregivers
●​ Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989) discovered the concept of imprinting in newly hatched goslings.
●​ John Bowlby (1907–1990) argued that infants innately channel their signals to primary caregivers
to form attachment.
●​ Mary Ainsworth (1913-1999) advanced theory on attachment styles

Ainsworth - the strange situation

●​ Attachment styles: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized
○​ Strange situation: Behavioral test developed by Mary Ainsworth that is used
to determine a child’s attachment style
○​ Cultural differences in some attachment styles

Ainsworth - attachment styles

●​ Secure attachment: The infant may or may not be distressed when the caregiver leaves the room.
When the Caregiver returns the distressed infant goes to them for calming, acknowledges with a
glance or smile.
●​ Ambivalent attachment: The infant is distressed when the caregiver leaves the room, but when
they return, the infant responds negatively to them.
●​ Avoidant attachment: The infant is not distressed when the caregiver leaves and ignores the
caregiver when they return

The origins of attachment styles

●​ NURTURE: How caregivers think, feel, and act has a strong influence on an infant’s
attachment style.
●​ Mother’s sensitivity and responsiveness may cause the child’s attachment style
●​ NATURE: Temperament-biologically based pattern of attentional and emotional reactivity.

The effects of attachment styles

●​ Internal working model of relationships: A set of beliefs about the way relationships work.
●​ Securely attached children do better than do insecurely attached children.
 ●​ They have better:
○​ Academic achievement
○​ Cognitive functioning
○​ Psychological well-being
○​ Success in adulthood
○​ Emotional adjustment

Parenting style
●​ Parenting styles reflect varying degrees of control
●​ Authoritative parents tend to have children with the highest self-esteem, self-reliance
And Social competence.
●​ Permissive parents tend to have children who are more aggressive and immature.
●​ Authoritarian parents tend to have children with less social skills and self-esteem

Moral development: piaget’s theory

●​ Children’s moral thinking shifts from realism to relativism → prescriptions to principles → outcomes
to intentions

Moral development: Kohlberg’s theory

●​ Preconventional stage (childhood): morality of an action is primarily determined by its consequence
for the actor
●​ Conventional stage (adolescence): morality of an action is primarily determined by the extent to
which it conforms to social rules
●​ Postconventional stage (adults): morality of an action is determined by a set of general principles that
reflect core values

Beyond moral reasoning

●​ Stages may not be as discrete as Kohlberg thought
●​ Moral development is not limited to moral reasoning, moral “sense” also a factor
●​ Moral limitations exist, children favor people who have been kind to them in the past, favor people
over strangers, favor members of their own group over members of other groups
●​ Studies suggest moral development is not only reasoning but also of basic psychological tendencies
ex. Fairness, helping and cooperation, may be part of evolutionary heritage.

(part 2)
Developmental stages
●​ Pre-tween
●​ Adolescence
●​ Emerging adulthood
●​ Adulthood
○​ Early, middle, late,

Adolescence
●​ Begins with the onset of sexual maturity (11-14 years of age), last until the beginning of adulthood
(18-21 years of age)
●​ Puberty: bodily changes associated with sexual maturity
○​ Primary sex characteristics: bodily structures that are directly involved in reproduction
○​ Secondary sex characteristics: bodily structures that change dramatically with sexual
Maturity but that are not directly invovled in reproduction
●​ Brain changes: connections between the temporal and parietal lobe, proliferation and pruning
in the prefrontal cortex

The protraction of adolescence

●​ There exists considerable variation in the onset of puberty (between genders, cultures, time periods/eras
●​ The age of puberty has decreased, signs of puberty are much earlier
●​ The age at which people become physically adult has gone down, the age at which they take on adult
roles and responsibilities has gone up

The moody adolescent?

●​ The “moody” adolescent is a myth
●​ Adolescents are no moodier than children, and fluctuations in their hormone levels have a very small
Impact on their moods

Identity development
 ●​ Identity: broad, coherent, internalized view of who a person is and wants to be, and what a person
believes and values
●​ Erikson: major task of adolescence is the development of an adult identity
●​ Adolescents achieve their identities in different ways
○​ Explore a variety of identities
○​ Adopt identities prescribed by family, religion, or culture

From parents to peers

●​ Adolescence marks a shift in emphasis from family relations to peer relations
●​ Teens often do things like their peers because hey like their peers rather than feel peer pressure

Adulthood
●​ Adulthood: stage of development: 18 to death
○​ Emergent adulthood
○​ Early adulthood
○​ Middle adulthood
○​ Late adulthood
○​ Late late adulthood
●​ Changes that take place in adulthood are:
○​ Physical
○​ Cognitive
○​ Emotional

Emergent adulthood
●​ 18 to mid-twenties (“not-yet-settled” phase of life)
●​ Characterized by not yet assuming adult responsibilities and independence and feelings of being “in
Between”
●​ May involve living with and still being emotionally dependent on parents
●​ Found mostly in today’s western cultures

Changing abilities
●​ Abilities and health peak in the 20s and begin to decline between 26 and 30 years onward
●​ Physical changes lead to psychological consequences
●​ Brain changes
○​ Noticeable changes in cognitive tasks that require effort, initiative or strategy
○​ Memory decline-working v. long term
●​ Yet more mature brains compensate by calling on other neural structures

Changing goals
●​ The socioemotional selectivity theory
○​ Younger adults are oriented toward future-pertinent information
○​ Older adults focus on emotional satisfaction in the present
○​ Older adults focus on and remember more positive experiences and emotions
○​ People find adulthood to be one of the happiest and most satisfying periods of life
○​ Adults are willing to forego personal financial gain and contribute to the public good
○​ Older adults choose to spend time with family and a few close friends rather than large groups