Child Development Psychology Quiz

Development Overview

• Prenatal Development
• Infancy and Childhood: Brain Development, Motor Development, Cognitive Development, Social Development, Moral Development, Puberty, sexuality and teenage social development, Adulthood and aging

Conception

• A sperm and egg unite to bring genetic material together, forming a zygote (fertilized cell)
• Fertilization typically occurs 1-2 days after intercourse, but can occur up to 5 days later

Prenatal Development: Germinal Stage

• ~2-week period starting at conception
• Zygote: Fertilized egg containing chromosomes from both parents
• Cell division (2, 4, 8, 16...)
• Differentiation of individual cells begins after approximately 100 cells

Prenatal Development: Embryonic Stage

• Period lasting from week 2 to week 8

Prenatal Development: Fetal Stage

• Period lasting from week 9 to birth
• Neuron creation largely complete by 5 months
• Myelination starts but not complete until adulthood
• 6-month-old fetuses potentially able to survive outside the womb

Prenatal Development: Teratogens

• Substances (viruses, chemicals) that can damage a developing embryo or fetus

Prenatal Development: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)

• Cognitive, behavioral, and body/brain structure abnormalities caused by prenatal alcohol exposure
• Associated physical appearance changes (e.g., short palpebral fissures, flat midface, short nose, thin upper lip, indistinct philtrum)
• Lowered intelligence
• Learning difficulties
• Distressing prevalence, particularly in disadvantaged communities

Prenatal Development: Tobacco Smoke Exposure

• Various chemicals in tobacco smoke act as teratogens
• Linked to lower birth weight (health difficulties)
• Increased risk of perceptual, attentional, and learning problems in children
• Increased risk of stillbirth and infant death
• Secondhand and third-hand smoke also dangerous
• Exposure remains a danger during childhood

Prenatal Development: Fetus' Brain

• The fetus' brain starts processing information long before birth
• Fetus responds to sounds and bright lights after 6 months of development
• Fetuses can learn even before birth
• Immediately after birth, infants prefer their mother's voice

Newborn

• Physical and mental abilities are limited
• Newborn brain size is only 25% of an adult brain
• Humans born with limited instinctual knowledge and abilities

Newborn: Reflexes

• Inborn behaviors that don't need learning
• Reflexes ensure infants can feed:
  • Rooting reflex: infant turns toward touched cheek, opens mouth
  • Sucking reflex: infant sucks on things put in mouth
  • Crying when hungry: a strong motivator for caregivers

Maturation

• Biologically driven growth and development enabling predictable behavioral changes
• Experience can adjust the timing, but maturation sets the sequence

Motor Development

• Depends on maturation processes affecting both body (e.g. muscle strength) and brain (e.g., cerebellum, cortex)
• Healthy development and opportunity for exercise affect little the sequence of skills

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

• Most influential researcher of childhood cognitive development
• Children think differently from adults
• Cognitive development is driven by both brain development and interactions with the environment

Learning About the World: Schemas

• Mental frameworks used to organize and hold information about topics or categories
• Piaget believed schema formation and adjustment crucial for learning

Schemas: Assimilation & Accommodation

• Assimilation: applying an existing schema to new information (e.g., classifying a cat as a "dog")
• Accommodation: updating and adding schemas (e.g., separating cats and dogs into separate schemas)

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

• Describes cognitive development as a progression through age-dependent stages
• Children gain new mental abilities in each stage; thinking styles differ qualitatively
• Stages generally occur consistently for healthy individuals

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor (birth-2 years): experiencing world through senses and movement; developing schemas and object permanence
• Preoperational (2-6 years): acquiring motor skills; egocentric thinking initially but develops understanding of others' minds
• Concrete operational (6-11 years): logically thinking about physical objects and events; understanding conservation of properties
• Formal operational (11+ years): logical thinking about abstract concepts; hypotheticals

Sensorimotor Stage

• Babies explore the world through the senses (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, grasping)
• Piaget believed limited knowledge at this stage
• Knowledge grows rapidly
• 8 months: objects are still present even when not visible.

Sensorimotor: Understanding of the World

• Piaget: children under 6 months don't understand object permanence (objects exist regardless of sight)
• Recent research indicates younger children show object permanence understanding

Preoperational Stage

• Stage where children develop internal representations like schemas, words but can't perform mental operations or transformations

Conservation

• Ability to understand that a quantity remains the same even when its arrangement changes

Egocentrism

• Preschool children struggle to understand others' perspectives
• Believing others see the world through their own eyes

Theory of Mind

• Ability to understand others' mental states
• Developing by ages 4-5

Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Associated with difficulties in theory of mind ("mind blindness"): mental mirroring of others' thoughts and feelings
• Difficulties in three areas:
  • Establishing mutual social interaction
  • Using language and symbolic play
  • Displaying flexibility with routines, interests, and behaviors

Concrete Operational Stage

• Children demonstrate ability to perform mental operations for concrete concepts (not abstract)
  • Conservation
  • Simple mathematical operations and reversibility (e.g., 3+7=10, 10-7=3)
  • Concrete transformations

Formal Operational Stage

• Children gain the ability to think abstractly and use symbols to simulate the world
• Develop understanding of abstract concepts (political, religious) and symbolic math (algebra)

Reflecting on Piaget's Theory

• Development is a continuous process, not a series of discrete stages
• Children develop some abilities earlier than Piaget thought
• Formal logic is less central to overall cognition than Piaget proposed

Culture and Cognitive Development

• Lev Vygotsky: children learn in social context
• Development builds on mentoring, language and cognitive support from caregivers
• Children internalize language to develop thinking and inner speech
• Fundamental skills for learning from others:
  • Joint attention
  • Imitation
  • Social referencing

Social Development

• Stranger anxiety: developing at about 8 months of age, an early sign of attachment
• Attachment: emotional bond between infant and caregiver; might involve physical closeness

Imprinting

• In some species, attachment forms during a critical period after birth, with the infant becoming rigidly attached to the first moving object encountered
• Humans do not imprint; familiarity is crucial

Origins of Attachment

• Attachment based on physical affection and body contact, not rewards like food
• Infant monkeys bonded with surrogate mothers who provide physical comfort

Attachment Differences: Separation

• "Strange situations" test: to measure parent-child attachment
• Observations during separation and reunion of mother and infant
• Secure attachment: children show distress when the mother leaves, happily greet the mother's return.
• Insecure attachment styles (ambivalent/resistant, avoidant): varying reactions to the mother's departure and return.

Attachment: Nature or Nurture?

• Temperament (emotional reactivity) influences attachment
• Parenting style (attentive, responsive, sensitive) strongly linked to secure attachment
• Parenting training for difficult children increase secure attachment rates

Separation Anxiety: Nature or Nurture?

• Children develop an internal working model of relationships that shapes their expectations about the caregiver
• Childs expectations about caregivers influence behaviors during separation
• Secure attachment: confident in caregiver's responsiveness
• Insecure attachment: doubtful concerning caregiver's responsiveness

Effects of Environment on Attachment

• Maternal sensitivity and responsiveness strongly influence attachment style
• Sufficient parental time, attentiveness, and caregiving don't affect the attachment style

Attachment Later in Life

• Early attachments strongly influence adult relationships and intimacy
• Secure attachment linked to better relationship skills during adulthood
• Parental gender has no effect on attachment

Parenting Styles

• Authoritarian: parents impose rules and expect obedience
• Permissive: parents submit to child's desires, not enforcing limits
• Authoritative: parents enforce rules, explain, listen, and respect children's ideas

Outcomes with Parenting Styles

• Authoritative parenting linked to high self-esteem, self-reliance, social competence, and low aggression
• Potential confounding factors (child temperament, culture)

Moral Reasoning

• Kohlberg: described moral development by posing dilemmas
• Children and adolescents respond differently throughout moral development

Kohlberg's 3 Levels of Moral Reasoning

• Preconventional (childhood): morality determined by consequences (avoid punishment or gain reward)
• Conventional (adolescence): morality determined by conforming to social rules
• Postconventional (some adults): morality based on general principles reflecting core values
• Moral decisions can differ depending upon the context

Moral Intuition

• Jonathan Haidt: moral decisions often driven by quick, gut-feeling intuitions, not just reasoning
• Emotions (e.g., disgust, elevated feelings) also influence moral choices
• Moral intuition and reasoning can be different processes, but may be intertwined

Adolescent Cognitive Development

• As the frontal cortex develops, teenagers have more abstract reasoning
• Using reasoning to think hypothetically about choices & consequences; understand others' minds, differentiate between reality and ideals

Peer Influences

• Adolescence: shift from family relationships to peer relationships
• Peer pressure forms but influence lessens with age
• Forming same-sex and mixed-sex cliques, crucial for socialization and romantic relationships
• Peer influence important for positive and negative ways

Teenagers' Decisions

• Teens make better decisions when alone versus with peers
• Peer presence strongly influences social risk-taking behavior

Is adolescence a cultural convention?

• About 60% of pre-industrial societies lack a word for adolescence, meaning the period is not necessarily universal
• Krobo culture: adolescents undergo rituals and seclusion during puberty
• The concept of adolescence, and its characteristics, vary significantly across cultures.

Sex and Gender

• Sex: a set of biological traits, often categorized as male or female
• Gender: Socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions, and identities. Can vary significantly
• Cisgender: gender identity matches sex assigned at birth

Sexuality

• Teenagers' interest in sex often precedes their knowledge
• Sexuality education often lacking/ignored
• Teen pregnancy and STIs remain common despite preventative efforts

Sexual Orientation

• A small percentage of individuals identify as homosexual or bisexual
• Awareness of sexual orientation develops normally during or slightly before puberty
• Biology, genetics, and prenatal environment plays a major role
• It is important to recognize that "conversion" techniques don't work

Adulthood

• Development from approximately 18-21 years to the end of life
• Definition into distinct stages is difficult: ongoing change
• Periods:
  • Physical changes (physical decline, sensory changes, health)
  • Cognitive changes (memory, processing speed)
  • Emotional and social development

Adult Physical Development

• Peak physical abilities in mid-20s (muscular strength, cardiovascular output, reaction time, sensory sensitivity)
• Gradual decline in later years partially due to age
• Lifestyle factors (diet, exercise) play a significant role

Impact of Sensory and Motor Decline

• Fatal accident rate increases significantly after age 65 (especially for drivers)
• This is partly explained by the natural decline in visual and motor skills.

Lifestyle Can Slow Aging Process

• Good diet and exercise can contribute to:
  • Stronger muscles and bones
  • Extended life of cells through maintaining telomeres & stimulating neurogenesis
  • Improved cognition
  • Reduced risk of dementia

Cognitive Decline

• Significant cognitive performance declines on some measures begin after 25 years old
• Short-term memory declines more than long-term memory
• Memory for specific events declines more than general knowledge
• Improves through techniques such as mnemonic devices

Brain Adaptation to Aging

• Older adult brains show greater bilateral activation for tasks compared to younger adult brains' unilateral activation
• Older brains may compensate for specific decline by calling upon other neural networks

Social Aspects of Aging

• Older adults experience lower levels of stress, worry, and anger contrasted with younger adults
• Older adults usually focus on and recall positive experiences and emotions more

Social Aspects of Aging: Younger Adults

• Younger adults commonly focused more on future needs, interests and potential
• Orientation often more future-focused