Developmental Psychology Essay
Developmental Psychology
Developmental Psychology
• The study of physical, cognitive, and social changes throughout the life cycle.
Three Major Problems • Nature/Nurture: How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the nurture we receive) influence our development? • Continuity/Stages: Is development a gradual, continuous process like riding an escalator or does it proceed through a sequence of separate stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder? • Stability/Change: Do our early personality traits persist through life or do we become a different person as we age?
Conception
• Sperm, released during intercourse, approach the egg cell, which is 85000 times its own size and only a handful make …show more content…
it to the egg. The ones that do make it to the egg release a digestive enzyme that dissolves the egg cell’s outer coating, allowing for penetration, but when one sperm cell begins to penetrate the egg’s surface blocks out all other sperm. • Around the sperm, fingerlike projections sprout to pull the sperm in. IN less than 12 hours, the egg nucleus and the sperm nucleus fuse together. Out of 200 million sperm, one has fused with a particular egg to make a baby.
Prenatal Developmental
• Zygote – the fertilized egg. It enters a two week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo. • Embryo – the developing human organism from about two weeks after fertilization through the second month. • Fetus – the developing human organism from nine weeks after conception to birth.
Genetic and environmental factors affect the development of a child at the prenatal stage. • The placenta transfers nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the fetus. The placenta also aids in keeping harmful substances from the fetus, but some slip in. • Teratogens, agents like chemicals and viruses, slip through the placental screen and can cause harm to the fetus. For example, if the mother has AIDS or is a heroin addict, the baby can become a heroine addict or have AIDS. • Alcohol fails to be safe as well. Even with a light drink, alcohol enters the bloodstream of the mother and depresses activity in both of their central nervous systems. • One in 150 babies will be diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which exhibits physical and cognitive abnormalities in children. It sometimes includes noticeable facial disproportions. • Stress has also been seen, in mothers, to negatively affect fetuses. Stressed mothers often have offspring who increased emotionality, learning disabilities, delayed motor development, and alterations in neurotransmitter systems associated with psychological disorders.
Newborn Abilities
• The rooting reflex – a baby’s tendency when touch on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth and search for the nipple. • Habituation – As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner. • Newborns’ rapidly developing senses of sight and hearing seem turned to social events. • To recognize a new stimulus as different, an infant must remember the old stimulus, which indicates a simple form of learning.
Brain Development
• A newborn infant is born with most of the brain cells that he/she will ever have, but the infant’s nervous system still must undergo a rapid growth spurt. From ages three to six, most growth is concentrated in the frontal lobes, which allow for rational planning. The association areas are the last to develop, and they enable thinking, language, and memory. Through puberty, language and agility abilities continue to grow, but a pruning process soon occurs, which shuts down excess connections and strengthens other connection. When not interrupted by abuse or deprivation, maturation- the biological sequence of growth process that is responsible for our similarities- guides infants along the same course of developmental growth.
Motor Development
• Almost all babies follow the same sequence of first rolling over, then sitting unsupported, then crawling, and then walking, even though the timing of these events may vary.
Experience has little influence over this sequence, but maturation enables these events.
Maturation and Infant Memory
• “Infant amnesia” in the memories of a toddler’s first 3.5 years of life is due to the fact that memory organization changes after age three or four. The brain cortex matures and the toddler begins to gain a sense of self and long-term storage increases. In addition, young children’s preverbal memories are not easily transformed into language.
Cognitive Development
• Piaget proposed that children’s reasoning develops in a series of stages, and that children actively construct and modify their understanding of the world as they interact with it. They form schemas, which are concepts or frameworks for organizing experiences. They then assimilate or interpret information by means of these schemas. But if the information does not conform to the schema, they accommodate or adjust the schema to incorporate the new information.
Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking Cognition refers to all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
[pic]
Sensorimotor …show more content…
Stage
• In this stage, babies take in the world through their sensory and motor interactions with objects—through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. • Very young babies seem to live in the present: What is out of sight is out of mind.
Piaget tested this theory by showing young infants a very appealing toy and then flopping his beret over it to see if the infant would search for it. Babies under six months did not. • They lack object permanence, or the awareness that objects continue to exist when not perceived. • By eight months, infants begin exhibiting memory for things no longer seen. • Recently, scientists have taken Piaget’s theory and tested the continuity of the development of object permanence. Infants look longer at an unexpected scene of a car passing through something it’s not supposed to, or a ball stopping in midair. (Baillargeon, 1995, 1998, 2004; Wellman & Gelman, 1992) Babies seem to have more of a grasp of simple laws of physics than Piaget realized. • Babies also have a mind for numbers. Karen Wynn (1992, 2000) showed five-month-olds one or two objects. Then she hid the objects behind a screen, and then visibly removed or added one. When she lifted the screen, the infants sometimes did a double take, staring longer when shown the wrong number of
objects.
Preoperational Stage
• Piaget believed that from preschool to about 6 or 7 years of age, children were too young to perform mental operations. • The child lacks the concept of conservation—the principle that quantity remains constant despite changes in shape. • Though he did not view the transitions through stages as abrupt, symbolic thinking appeared earlier than predicted for Judy Deloache (1987). She showed children a model of a room and hid a model toy in it. The 2½ year olds easily remembered where to find the toy in the model, but failed to use the model to find a real toy in a real room. Three year olds, however, usually went right to the hidden spot showing that they could think symbolically. • Piaget also contended that preschoolers are egocentric. They fail to perceive things from another point of view. For example, three year old Gray makes himself “Invisible” by covering his own eyes, assuming that if he can’t see anyone then they must not be able to see him. Parents sometimes mistake this childhood natural egocentrism as willfully malicious behavior. • Preschoolers, although egocentric, develop the ability to infer others’ mental states when they begin forming a theory of mind. Between ages 3½ and 4½, children worldwide come to realize that others may hold false beliefs. (Callaghan & others, 2005; Wellman & others, 2001; Zimmer, 2003) • Our theory of mind also allows us to infer others’ feelings. Even young preschoolers understand that sad events cause sad feelings (Flavell & others, 2001). • A test used to exercise the theory of mind is where children see one doll, Sally, leave her ball in a red cupboard. Then another doll, Anne, moves the ball to the blue cupboard. Children are then asked what cupboard Sally will return to looking for her ball. Children with autism have a hard time understanding that Sally has a different point of view and doesn’t know that the ball has been moved. • All of these abilities are not absent in the preoperational stage and just appear later. They are accumulated gradually. (Wellman & others, 2001)
Concrete Operational Stage
• In this stage, children begin to grasp conservation. They also enjoy jokes that allow them to use their new found understanding of conservation. (McGhee, 1976) • According to Piaget, children in this stage gain the ability to comprehend mathematical transformations and conservation.
Formal Operational Stage
• By age 12, our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving our actual experience) to encompass abstract thinking. As children approach adolescence, said Piaget, many become capable of solving hypothetical propositions and deducing consequences. Formal operational thinking = systematic reasoning.
Reflecting on Piaget’s theory, scientists have lately studied and come to the conclusion that the stages Piaget created are accurate, yet they seem to be reached at a more continuous rate than he had perceived before. Piaget focused less on age and more on the sequence of stages, which many years later seems to remain correct. Piaget contended that children construct their understandings from their interactions with the world, implying that children are not passive reciprocals waiting to be filled with teachers’ knowledge. It would be better for teachers to build on prior knowledge rather than start where they deem appropriate. Future teachers and parents should understand that young children are incapable of adult logic and that what makes sense to us as adults may not be as obvious to young children.
Developmental Psychology
• The study of physical, cognitive, and social changes throughout the life cycle.
Three Major Problems • Nature/Nurture: How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the nurture we receive) influence our development? • Continuity/Stages: Is development a gradual, continuous process like riding an escalator or does it proceed through a sequence of separate stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder? • Stability/Change: Do our early personality traits persist through life or do we become a different person as we age?
Conception
• Sperm, released during intercourse, approach the egg cell, which is 85000 times its own size and only a handful make …show more content…
it to the egg. The ones that do make it to the egg release a digestive enzyme that dissolves the egg cell’s outer coating, allowing for penetration, but when one sperm cell begins to penetrate the egg’s surface blocks out all other sperm. • Around the sperm, fingerlike projections sprout to pull the sperm in. IN less than 12 hours, the egg nucleus and the sperm nucleus fuse together. Out of 200 million sperm, one has fused with a particular egg to make a baby.
Prenatal Developmental
• Zygote – the fertilized egg. It enters a two week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo. • Embryo – the developing human organism from about two weeks after fertilization through the second month. • Fetus – the developing human organism from nine weeks after conception to birth.
Genetic and environmental factors affect the development of a child at the prenatal stage. • The placenta transfers nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the fetus. The placenta also aids in keeping harmful substances from the fetus, but some slip in. • Teratogens, agents like chemicals and viruses, slip through the placental screen and can cause harm to the fetus. For example, if the mother has AIDS or is a heroin addict, the baby can become a heroine addict or have AIDS. • Alcohol fails to be safe as well. Even with a light drink, alcohol enters the bloodstream of the mother and depresses activity in both of their central nervous systems. • One in 150 babies will be diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which exhibits physical and cognitive abnormalities in children. It sometimes includes noticeable facial disproportions. • Stress has also been seen, in mothers, to negatively affect fetuses. Stressed mothers often have offspring who increased emotionality, learning disabilities, delayed motor development, and alterations in neurotransmitter systems associated with psychological disorders.
Newborn Abilities
• The rooting reflex – a baby’s tendency when touch on the cheek, to turn toward the touch, open the mouth and search for the nipple. • Habituation – As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner. • Newborns’ rapidly developing senses of sight and hearing seem turned to social events. • To recognize a new stimulus as different, an infant must remember the old stimulus, which indicates a simple form of learning.
Brain Development
• A newborn infant is born with most of the brain cells that he/she will ever have, but the infant’s nervous system still must undergo a rapid growth spurt. From ages three to six, most growth is concentrated in the frontal lobes, which allow for rational planning. The association areas are the last to develop, and they enable thinking, language, and memory. Through puberty, language and agility abilities continue to grow, but a pruning process soon occurs, which shuts down excess connections and strengthens other connection. When not interrupted by abuse or deprivation, maturation- the biological sequence of growth process that is responsible for our similarities- guides infants along the same course of developmental growth.
Motor Development
• Almost all babies follow the same sequence of first rolling over, then sitting unsupported, then crawling, and then walking, even though the timing of these events may vary.
Experience has little influence over this sequence, but maturation enables these events.
Maturation and Infant Memory
• “Infant amnesia” in the memories of a toddler’s first 3.5 years of life is due to the fact that memory organization changes after age three or four. The brain cortex matures and the toddler begins to gain a sense of self and long-term storage increases. In addition, young children’s preverbal memories are not easily transformed into language.
Cognitive Development
• Piaget proposed that children’s reasoning develops in a series of stages, and that children actively construct and modify their understanding of the world as they interact with it. They form schemas, which are concepts or frameworks for organizing experiences. They then assimilate or interpret information by means of these schemas. But if the information does not conform to the schema, they accommodate or adjust the schema to incorporate the new information.
Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking Cognition refers to all mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
[pic]
Sensorimotor …show more content…
Stage
• In this stage, babies take in the world through their sensory and motor interactions with objects—through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. • Very young babies seem to live in the present: What is out of sight is out of mind.
Piaget tested this theory by showing young infants a very appealing toy and then flopping his beret over it to see if the infant would search for it. Babies under six months did not. • They lack object permanence, or the awareness that objects continue to exist when not perceived. • By eight months, infants begin exhibiting memory for things no longer seen. • Recently, scientists have taken Piaget’s theory and tested the continuity of the development of object permanence. Infants look longer at an unexpected scene of a car passing through something it’s not supposed to, or a ball stopping in midair. (Baillargeon, 1995, 1998, 2004; Wellman & Gelman, 1992) Babies seem to have more of a grasp of simple laws of physics than Piaget realized. • Babies also have a mind for numbers. Karen Wynn (1992, 2000) showed five-month-olds one or two objects. Then she hid the objects behind a screen, and then visibly removed or added one. When she lifted the screen, the infants sometimes did a double take, staring longer when shown the wrong number of
objects.
Preoperational Stage
• Piaget believed that from preschool to about 6 or 7 years of age, children were too young to perform mental operations. • The child lacks the concept of conservation—the principle that quantity remains constant despite changes in shape. • Though he did not view the transitions through stages as abrupt, symbolic thinking appeared earlier than predicted for Judy Deloache (1987). She showed children a model of a room and hid a model toy in it. The 2½ year olds easily remembered where to find the toy in the model, but failed to use the model to find a real toy in a real room. Three year olds, however, usually went right to the hidden spot showing that they could think symbolically. • Piaget also contended that preschoolers are egocentric. They fail to perceive things from another point of view. For example, three year old Gray makes himself “Invisible” by covering his own eyes, assuming that if he can’t see anyone then they must not be able to see him. Parents sometimes mistake this childhood natural egocentrism as willfully malicious behavior. • Preschoolers, although egocentric, develop the ability to infer others’ mental states when they begin forming a theory of mind. Between ages 3½ and 4½, children worldwide come to realize that others may hold false beliefs. (Callaghan & others, 2005; Wellman & others, 2001; Zimmer, 2003) • Our theory of mind also allows us to infer others’ feelings. Even young preschoolers understand that sad events cause sad feelings (Flavell & others, 2001). • A test used to exercise the theory of mind is where children see one doll, Sally, leave her ball in a red cupboard. Then another doll, Anne, moves the ball to the blue cupboard. Children are then asked what cupboard Sally will return to looking for her ball. Children with autism have a hard time understanding that Sally has a different point of view and doesn’t know that the ball has been moved. • All of these abilities are not absent in the preoperational stage and just appear later. They are accumulated gradually. (Wellman & others, 2001)
Concrete Operational Stage
• In this stage, children begin to grasp conservation. They also enjoy jokes that allow them to use their new found understanding of conservation. (McGhee, 1976) • According to Piaget, children in this stage gain the ability to comprehend mathematical transformations and conservation.
Formal Operational Stage
• By age 12, our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving our actual experience) to encompass abstract thinking. As children approach adolescence, said Piaget, many become capable of solving hypothetical propositions and deducing consequences. Formal operational thinking = systematic reasoning.
Reflecting on Piaget’s theory, scientists have lately studied and come to the conclusion that the stages Piaget created are accurate, yet they seem to be reached at a more continuous rate than he had perceived before. Piaget focused less on age and more on the sequence of stages, which many years later seems to remain correct. Piaget contended that children construct their understandings from their interactions with the world, implying that children are not passive reciprocals waiting to be filled with teachers’ knowledge. It would be better for teachers to build on prior knowledge rather than start where they deem appropriate. Future teachers and parents should understand that young children are incapable of adult logic and that what makes sense to us as adults may not be as obvious to young children.