Developmental Psychology

• Developmental psychology studies changes in physiology, cognition, emotion, and social behavior across the lifespan.
• Human development begins in the womb and continues into adulthood.
• Conception leads to the development of a zygote, then an embryo, and finally a fetus.

Brain Development

• Specific areas of the brain mature and become functional.
• Regions of the brain communicate through synaptic connections.
• Myelination increases the speed of signal transmission in the brain.
• Synaptic pruning preserves used synaptic connections and eliminates unused ones.

Lasting Effects of Early Experiences

• Nutrition affects brain development from the womb through childhood.
• Environmental factors influence human brain development.
• Stressful early life experiences can lead to mental and physical health disorders later in life.
• Supportive and enriched environments can foster development.

Teratogens and Prenatal Development

• Teratogens include drugs, alcohol, bacteria, viruses, and chemicals.
• Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is a consequence of teratogen exposure.

Influence of Biology and Environment on Motor Development

• Infant reflexes include grasping, rooting, and sucking reflexes.
• Dynamic systems theory suggests that new behaviors emerge from consistent interactions between biological factors and cultural and environmental contexts.

Infant Learning and Perception

• Vision develops more slowly than hearing.
• Visual acuity is the ability to distinguish differences among shapes, patterns, and colors.
• The preferential-looking technique is used to study visual preferences in infants.
• Infants respond more to high-contrast, complex visual patterns.
• Infants show a preference for faces over non-faces.
• Infants have memory for voices.
• Infants prefer their mothers' voices.
• The habituation technique assesses how infants categorize objects, where they look longer at objects from a new category after being habituated to objects from a single category.

Infant Memory

• Infantile amnesia, the inability to remember events from early childhood, may be related to incomplete development of autobiographical memory, language acquisition, and the ability to perceive contexts accurately.

Attachment in Infants

• Attachment is a strong, intimate, emotional connection between people that persists over time and across circumstances.
• Attachment is present in other species through imprinting.

Attachment Style

• The strange-situation test assesses attachment style.
• Most infants display a secure attachment style.
• Attachment style is a complex developmental phenomenon.
• Attachment style is shaped by the cultural context surrounding the infant/caregiver relationship.

Chemistry of Attachment

• Oxytocin plays a role in infant/caregiver attachment and later in romantic relationships.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

• Assimilation is the process of placing new information into an existing schema.
• Accommodation is the process of creating a new schema or drastically altering an existing one to include new information.

The Four Stages of Development

• Sensorimotor
• Preoperational
• Concrete operational
• Formal operational

Defining Piaget's Stages

• Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years): infants acquire information through senses and motor skills and develop object permanence.
• Preoperational stage (2–7 years): children can think symbolically but reason based on intuition rather than logic and do not understand the law of conservation.
• Concrete operational stage (7–12 years): children can think logically and understand the law of conservation.
• Formal operational stage (12 years to adulthood): people can think abstractly, critically, and hypothetically.
• Lev Vygotsky emphasized social relations in cognitive development, contrasting Piaget’s focus on objects.
• Understanding the laws of nature encompasses physics and mathematics.

Learning Through Interaction

• Caregivers use a distinctive speech pattern that helps infants learn the sounds and boundaries of words.
• Theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people have mental states that influence their behavior.
• Understanding social emotions involves insight into other minds, enabling one to predict how others will feel.
• Moral development in childhood is defined by Kohlberg's levels of moral development.
• Preconventional level: moral behavior is determined by self-interest and event outcomes.
• Conventional level: moral behavior is determined by strict adherence to societal rules and the approval of others.
• Postconventional level: moral behavior is based on abstract principles and the value of all life.
• An innate sense of fairness as the basis of morality includes inequity aversion which is the preference to avoid unfairness when making decisions about the distribution of resources.
• Emotions serve as the basis of morality, as described by the social intuitionist model.
• Moral judgments reflect initial and automatic emotional responses.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

• Puberty is the onset of sexual maturity that marks the beginning of adolescence, including the adolescent growth spurt, primary sex characteristics, secondary sexual characteristics, and the interaction between biological systems and environmental experiences.
• The frontal cortex of the brain is not fully myelinated until the mid-20s.

Erikson's Development Stages

• Infancy (ages 0–1): trust versus mistrust
• Toddler (1-3): autonomy versus shame and doubt
• Preschool (3-6): initiative versus guilt
• Childhood (6-12): industry versus inferiority
• Adolescence (12–18): identity versus role confusion
• Young adulthood (18–29): intimacy versus isolation
• Middle adulthood (30s to 50s): generativity versus stagnation
• Old age (60s and beyond): integrity versus despair
• Gender identity is one's sense of being male or female.
• Gender role is a behavior that is typically associated with being male or female.
• Cultural and ethnic identity involves forming a racial or ethnic identity.
• Caregivers and peers shape the adolescent self.
• Peers have influence, and caregivers have substantial influence throughout an individual's life.

Bullying

• Bullying is a complex behavior with many contributing factors.

Effects of Life Transitions

• Physical changes occur from early to middle adulthood.
• Life expectancy in 1900 was 47 years.
• Between ages 20 and 40, people experience a decline in muscle mass, bone density, eyesight, and hearing.
• People in middle age notice changes in their tolerance for alcohol, unhealthy food, and lack of sleep.
• Marriage involves effort in achieving and maintaining satisfying relationships.
• Married people live longer than unmarried, divorced, or widowed individuals.
• Unhappily married people are at greater risk for poor health and early death.
• With age, learning and retrieving memories becomes more difficult.
• Fluid intelligence declines, while crystallized intelligence increases.
• Healthy and mentally active individuals demonstrate less cognitive decline.
• Old age is characterized by deterioration in physical and cognitive abilities.
• Older adults with a dramatic loss in mental ability often suffer from dementia.
• Attitudes toward aging are changing as people live longer, fulfilling lives.
• Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that as people grow older, they view time as limited and shift their focus to meaningful events, experiences, and goals.