Developmental Psychology: Prenatal Development

• These are study notes for developmental psychology lecture
• Winter semester 2024/2025
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Neubauer
• Topics include prenatal development, the first year of life, social development and cognition, and self and emotions

Prenatal Development

• The development of psychological processes begins before birth, not just after
• Environmental influences during pregnancy can cause harm
• Teratogens can have direct or indirect effects on development
• Direct effects leads to malformations of body structures or organs
  • Example: Contergan can cause limb malformation and alcohol can impair facial and brain development
• Indirect effects affect psychological functions observable later in life, impacting attention, learning, or behavior
• These indirect effects may be due to changes in the fetal nervous system
• Smoking during pregnancy can lead to low birth weight, birth complications, and later learning and behavior problems
• Increased stress during pregnancy can increase cortisol/adrenalin levels in the unborn child
• This can cause irritability, hyperactivity, and sleep or eating disorders
• Learning happens before birth
• Newborns remember stories read during pregnancy (DeCasper & Spence, 1986) and prefer the scent of their amniotic fluid (Schaal et al., 1995)
• These learning processes are facilitated by the maturation of the central nervous system
• This includes increased production of neurons, apoptosis and pruning
• Experiences are stored and used as basis for learning
• Habituation and dishabituation can be observed 32 weeks post conception
  • Habituation: repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to a reduced response
  • Dishabituation: response increases with a novel stimulus

First Year of Life

• The first months involve rapid motor, sensory, and language changes
• These contextual factors causes rapid changes in psychological processes (Piaget's sensorimotor stage)
• Physical and psychological development are interconnected early on
• Individuals have unique differences in body functions, irritability, and self-regulation
• Temperament consists of the intensity and quality of emotional responses, self-regulation, and levels of engagement
• Kagan suggests two key types of temperament
• Type 1: inhibited type is characterized as high reactivity, anxious response to new things
• Type 2: uninhibited type is characterized as low reactivity, exploratory, not anxious
• Temperament exhibits stability, yet is not constant
• Inter-individual differences and expression of emotion are stable
• Temperaments are predictive of behavior during youth
• Irritable and difficult-to-soothe babies are more likely to exhibit behavioral problems
• Behavior is understood by how children elicit different actions from parents
• Reactions of parents and attachment figures shape development

Social Development, Attachment, Social Cognition

• Infants rely on caregivers and social interactions
• Social smiling occurs between 6-8 weeks and infants responds with visual regard to caregiver actions
• Sense of others emerges by 3-4 months using auditory and visual clues
• Stranger anxiety often arises at ~7 months
• Attachment theory is adaptive
• Attachment styles are learned in infancy and act as working models that are used in future scenarios
• Styles evaluated during the Ainsworth "Strange Situation" experiment

Strange Situation

• Caregiver leaves child with a stranger in a strange environment - then returns
• Researchers study children's behavior

Social Cognition

• Social-emotional referencing starts ~ 8 months
• Infants look to others reactions in novel scenarios
• Joint attention emerges ~ 8 months
• Two individuals are focused on same stimuli
• Intentionality of actors understood in the second year through desire
• Theory of Mind (ToM) is attributing mental states to one's self and others
• ToM helps kids to understand that people's actions are founded in internal states
• Around 3-5 years, children are able to understand that others can have false beliefs

Smarties Task

• Children are shown a Smarties box and asked what is inside
• Children reply "Smarties"
• The box is open, revealing pencils instead
• Children are then asked what another child would say is inside
• Children under 3 state "pencils"
• Above 3 they say "smarties" because of understanding other's false beliefs

Self and Emotions

• The development of the "I" begins in the early months
  • Children can distinguish between themselves and the environment
  • Can conduct actions
• Development of a "self" in the 2nd year
• Recognition to themselves from external sources
• Develops through mirror studies
• Development of a self is intertwined with advanced cognitive language
• Emergence of a self is linked to feelings such as shame, pride, guilt
• Infant emotion is first characterized by general unease
• Infants become able to specifically express grief and anger around 4-8 months
• Complex emotion of guilt emerges later in development