Assignment 2

profileSolomon Kane
PSY220_Week_2LectureNotes.ppt
Home>Information Systems homework help>Assignment 2

Chapter 3
Human Development

*

Heredity

  • Developmental psychology: The study of progressive changes in behavior and abilities
  • Heredity (nature): Genetic transmission of physical and psychological characteristics from parents to their children
  • DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): Molecular structure shaped like a double helix that contains coded genetic information

*

Genes

  • Specific areas on a strand of DNA that carry hereditary information
  • Dominant: The gene’s feature will appear each time the gene is present
  • Recessive: The gene’s feature will appear only if it is paired with another recessive gene
  • Still only 25% chance trait will be expressed

*

Polygenic Characteristics

  • Personal traits or physical properties that are influenced by many genes working in combination

Developmental Level

  • An individual’s current state of physical, emotional, and intellectual development

Environment (Nurture)

  • All external conditions that affect a person, especially the effects of learning

Prenatal Issues

  • Congenital problem: A problem or defect that occurs during prenatal development; “birth defect”
  • Genetic disorder: Problem caused by inherited characteristics from parents (e.g., cystic fibrosis)

Teratogens

  • Anything capable of directly causing birth defects (e.g., narcotics, radiation, cigarette smoke, lead, and cocaine)

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

  • Caused by repeated heavy alcohol consumption during pregnancy
  • Infants:
  • Have low birth weight, a small head, body defects, and facial malformations
  • Lack cupid’s bow, the bow-shaped portion of the upper lip (look in the mirror to see)

Sensitive Period

  • A period of increased sensitivity to environmental influences; also, a time when certain events must occur for normal development to take place

Environments: Deprivation and Enrichment

  • Deprivation: Lack of normal stimulation, nutrition, comfort, or love
  • Enrichment: When an environment is deliberately made more complex and intellectually stimulating and emotionally supportive

Reaction Range

  • Limits that one’s environment places on the effects of heredity

Temperament and Environment

  • Temperament: The inherited physical “core” of personality; includes sensitivity, irritability, distractibility, and typical mood (Kagan, 2000)

Easy Children

  • 40%; relaxed and agreeable

Difficult Children

  • 10%; moody, intense, easily angered

Slow-to-Warm-Up Children

  • 15%; restrained, unexpressive, shy

Remaining Children

  • Do not fit into any specific category (Chess & Thomas, 1986)

Newborns (Neonates) and Their Reflexes

Grasping Reflex

  • If an object is placed in the neonate’s palm, she’ll grasp it automatically
  • All reflexes are automatic responses (i.e., they come from nature, not nurture)

Rooting Reflex

  • Lightly touch the infant’s cheek and he’ll turn toward the object and attempt to nurse; helps infant find bottle or breast

Sucking Reflex

  • Touch an object or nipple to the infant’s mouth and she’ll make rhythmic sucking movements

Moro Reflex

  • If a baby’s position is abruptly changed or if he is startled by a loud noise, he will make a hugging motion

Maturation

  • Physical growth and development of the body, brain, and nervous system
  • Increased muscular control occurs in patterns; order of maturation is almost universal
  • Cephalocaudal: From head to toe
  • Proximodistal: From center of the body to the extremities

Emotional Development

  • Basic emotions: Anger, fear, joy; appear to be unlearned
  • Social smile: Smiling elicited by social stimuli; like seeing a parent’s face

Social Development

  • Development of self-awareness, attachment to parents/caregivers, and relationships with other children/adults

Contact Comfort (Harlow)

  • Pleasant and reassuring feeling babies get from touching something warm and soft, especially their mother

Attachment

  • Emotional attachment: Close emotional bond that infants form with parents, caregivers, or others
  • Separation anxiety: Crying and signs of fear when a child is left alone or is with a stranger; generally appears around 8-12 months
  • Separation anxiety disorder: Severe and prolonged distress displayed by children when separated from parents/caregivers
  • Children usually grow out of this

Quality of Infant Attachment (Ainsworth)

  • Secure: Stable and positive emotional bond
  • Insecure-avoidant: Anxious emotional bond; tendency to avoid reunion with parent or caregiver
  • Insecure-ambivalent: Anxious emotional bond; desire to be with parent or caregiver and some resistance to being reunited with mother

Affectional Needs

  • Emotional needs for love and affection

Parenting Styles (Baumrind, 2005)

Authoritarian Parents

  • Enforce rigid rules and demand strict obedience to authority
  • Children tend to be emotionally stiff and lacking in curiosity

Overly Permissive

  • Give little guidance
  • Allow too much freedom, or don’t hold children accountable for their actions
  • Children tend to be dependent and immature and frequently misbehave

Authoritative

  • Provide firm and consistent guidance combined with love and affection
  • Children tend to be competent, self-controlled, independent, and assertive

Language Acquisition

  • Cooing: Repetition of vowel sounds by infants; typically starts at 6-8 weeks
  • Babbling: Repetition of meaningless language sounds (e.g., babababa); uses consonants B, D, M, and G; starts at 7 months

More on Language Acquisition

  • Single-word stage: The child says one word at a time
  • Telegraphic speech: Two-word sentences that communicate a single idea (e.g., “want cookie”)

Noam Chomsky and the Roots of Language

  • Biological disposition: Presumed readiness of humans to learn certain skills such as how to use language
  • Chomsky: Language patterns are inborn

Signal

  • In early language development, any behavior, such as touching, vocalizing, gazing, or smiling, that allows nonverbal interaction and turn-taking between parent and child

Parentese (Motherese)

  • Pattern of speech used when talking to infants
  • Marked by higher-pitched voice; short, simple sentences; slowed speech and exaggerated voice inflections; and repetition

Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development

  • Piaget believed that all children passed through a set series of stages during their cognitive development; like Freud, he was a stage theorist

Piaget: Assimilation

  • Application of existing mental patterns to new situations; new situation is “assimilated” to existing mental schemes

Piaget: Accommodation

  • Existing ideas are changed to fit new requirements; mental schemes are changed to accommodate new information
  • More advanced form of cognitive processing

Four Stages of Piagetian Cognitive Development

The Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 Years)

  • All sensory input and motor responses are coordinated; most intellectual development here is nonverbal
  • Object permanence: Concept that objects still exist when they are out of sight

The Preoperational Stage (2-7 Years)

  • Children begin to use language and think symbolically, yet their thinking is still intuitive and egocentric

Intuitive Thinking

  • Makes little use of reasoning and logic

Egocentric Thinking

  • Child is unable to accommodate viewpoints of others; thoughts are self-centered

Transformations

  • Mentally changing the shape or form of a mental image or idea; children younger than 6 or 7 cannot do this

The Concrete Operational Stage
(7-11 Years)

  • Children become able to use concepts of time, space, volume, and number BUT in ways that remain simplified and concrete, not abstract

Piaget’s Conservation

  • Mass, weight, and volume of matter remain unchanged even when the shape or appearance of objects changes

Piaget’s Reversibility of Thought

  • Relationships involving equality or identity can be reversed
  • If A=B then B=A

The Formal Operations Stage
(11 Years and Up)

  • Thinking now includes abstract, theoretical, and hypothetical ideas
  • Abstract principles: Concepts and examples removed from specific examples and concrete situations
  • Hypothetical possibilities: Suppositions, guesses, or projections

Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

  • Children’s cognitive development is heavily influenced by sociocultural factors
  • Children’s thinking develops through dialogues with more capable people

Zone of Proximal Development

  • Range of tasks a child cannot yet master alone even though they are close to having the necessary mental skills; they need guidance from a skilled partner in order to complete the task

Scaffolding

  • Framework or temporary support. Adults help children learn how to think by scaffolding, or supporting, their attempts to solve a problem or to discover principles
  • Scaffolding must be responsive to a child’s needs

Types of Child Discipline

  • Power assertion: Using physical punishment or a show of force (e.g., removing toys or privileges)
  • Withdrawal of love: Withholding affection
  • Management techniques: Combine praise, recognition, approval, rules, and reasoning to encourage desirable behavior

Effective Parenting

  • Have stable rules of conduct (consistency)
  • Show mutual respect, love, encouragement, and shared enjoyment
  • Have effective communication
  • You-message: Threats, name-calling, accusing, bossing, criticizing, or lecturing (avoid this)
  • I-message: Tells children the effect their behavior had on you (use this)

Consequences

  • Natural consequences: Effects that naturally follow a particular behavior; intrinsic effects
  • Logical consequences: Rational and reasonable effects defined by parents

Adolescence

  • Culturally defined period between childhood and adulthood
  • Puberty: Hormonal changes promote rapid physical growth and sexual maturity

Life Events

  • Developmental tasks: Any skill that must be mastered, or personal change that must take place, for optimal development (e.g., learning to read and adjusting to sexual maturity)
  • Psychosocial dilemma: Conflict between personal impulses and the social world

Lawrence Kohlberg and Moral Development

  • Moral development: When we acquire values, beliefs, and thinking abilities that guide responsible behavior
  • Stage theorist, like Freud and Erikson

Kohlberg’s Three Levels of Moral Development

  • Preconventional moral reasoning: Moral thinking based on consequences of one’s actions (punishment, reward, exchange of favors) or choices
  • Conventional moral reasoning: Reasoning based on a desire to please others or to follow accepted rules and values
  • Postconventional moral reasoning: Follows self-chosen moral principles, not those supplied by outside authorities

Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Dilemmas

Stage One: Trust versus Mistrust (Birth–1)

  • Children are completely dependent on others
  • Trust: Established when babies given adequate warmth, touching, love, and physical care
  • Mistrust: Caused by inadequate or unpredictable care and by cold, indifferent, and rejecting parents

Stage Two: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt (1–3)

  • Autonomy: Doing things for themselves
  • Overprotective or ridiculing parents may cause children to doubt abilities and feel shameful about their actions

Stage Three: Initiative versus Guilt
(3–5)

  • Initiative: Parents reinforce via giving children freedom to play, use imagination, and ask questions
  • Guilt: May occur if parents criticize, prevent play, or discourage a child’s questions

Stage Four: Industry versus Inferiority (6–12)

  • Industry: Occurs when child is praised for productive activities, such as painting and building
  • Inferiority: Occurs if child’s efforts are regarded as messy or inadequate

Stage Five (Adolescence): Identity versus Role Confusion

  • Identity: For adolescents; problems answering, “Who am I?”
  • Role Confusion: Occurs when adolescents are unsure of where they are going and who they are

Stage Six (Young Adulthood): Intimacy versus Isolation

  • Intimacy: Ability to care about others and to share experiences with them
  • Isolation: Feeling alone and uncared for in life

Stage Seven (Middle Adulthood): Generativity versus Stagnation

  • Generativity: Interest in guiding the next generation
  • Stagnation: When one is only concerned with one’s own needs and comforts

Stage Eight (Late Adulthood): Integrity versus Despair

  • Integrity: Self-respect; developed when people have lived richly and responsibly
  • Despair: Occurs when previous life events are viewed with regret; experiences heartache and remorse

Gerontology and the Study of Aging

  • Ageism: Discrimination or prejudice based on a person’s age
  • Gerontologists study aging and its effects
  • Intellectual Abilities:
  • Fluid abilities: Abilities requiring speed or rapid learning; based on perceptual and motor abilities; may decrease with age
  • Crystallized abilities: Learned (accumulated) knowledge and skills; vocabulary and basic facts

Death and Dying; Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

  • Ross was a thanatologist: One who studies emotional and behavioral reactions to death and dying
  • Ross described five basic reactions to death that occur, not necessarily in the following order or experienced by everyone

Five Basic Reactions to Death
(Kubler-Ross)

Denial and Isolation

  • Denying death’s reality and isolating oneself from information confirming that death will occur (“It’s a mistake; the doctors are wrong”)

Anger

  • Asking, “Why me?”
  • Anger may then be projected onto the living

Bargaining

  • Terminally ill will bargain with God or with themselves (“If I can live longer I’ll be a better person”)

Depression

  • Feelings of futility, exhaustion and deep sadness

Acceptance

  • If death is not sudden, many will accept death calmly
  • Person is at peace finally with the concept of death