Introduction to Human Development

Intro to Human Development

• Human development studies systematic changes and stability in people scientifically
• Developmental scientists study how people change from conception through maturity
• Research findings apply to child rearing, education, health, and social policy

Life-Span Development

• This is a concept where human development is defined as a lifelong process, which can be studied scientifically
• Human development spans from conception to death ("womb to tomb”)
• Timing of parenthood, maternal employment, and marital satisfaction are all studied as part of developmental psychology now

Goals of Studying Human Development

• Goals include to describe, explain, predict, and intervene
• Describe the typical pattern of development
• Explain why a child has a delayed language acquisition
• Predict if the child will develop speech problems
• Intervene with speech therapy

Development Concepts

• Development is complex, multifaceted and shaped by arcs of influence

Domains of Development

• Physical Development: Growth of the body/brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health
• Cognitive Development: Learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity
• Psychosocial Development: Emotions, personality, and social relationships
• All domains are interconnected

Periods of Life Span

• Division of the life span into periods is a social construction, where concepts/practices are invented by a culture/society
• Certain basic needs must be met and tasks mastered for typical development
• Typical Major Developments in Eight Periods of Human Development include:
  • Prenatal Period (conception to birth)
  • Infancy and Toddler (birth to age 3)
  • Early Childhood (ages 3 to 6)
  • Middle Childhood (ages 6 to 11)
  • Adolescence (ages 11 to about 20)
  • Emerging and Young Adulthood (ages 20 to 40 )
  • Middle Adulthood (ages 40 to 65)
  • Late Adulthood (ages 65 and over)

Life-Span Developmentalist

• Focuses on adult development in terms of four “ages” including:
  • First age: Childhood and adolescence
  • Second age: Prime adulthood (20s-50s)
  • Third age: Approximately 60 to 79 years
  • Fourth age: Approximately 80 years and older.
• A key aspect is how development in one period connects to development in another

Influence on Development

• Also study individual differences in characteristics, influences, and developmental outcomes
• Includes gender, height, weight/build, health/energy, intelligence, and temperament, personality, and emotional reactions

Nature vs. Nurture

• Heredity is the genetic roll of the dice consisting of inborn traits and characteristics provided by biological parents
• Environment influences stem from outside the body, starting at conception and continuing throughout life
• It is debated which has more influence (nature/biological processes or nurture/environmental influences )

Stability vs. Change

• Stability-change issue involves the degree to which early traits and characteristics persist through life/change
• One side argues that stability results from heredity/early experiences
• Others believe later experiences produce change
• The roles of early/later experience are an aspect of the stability -change issue that has long been hotly debated

Continuity vs. Discontinuity

• Focuses on the degree to which development involves either gradual cumulative change (continuity) or through distinct stages (discontinuity)
  • Continuity = oak seed to oak tree
  • Discontinuity = metamorphosis (butterfly)

Evaluating Developmental Issues

• Most do not take extreme positions on these issues
• There is spirited debate on how strongly development is influenced by each factor
• Nature and nurture, stability/change, and continuity/discontinuity characterize development

Maturation

• The unfolding of a natural sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns
• Individual differences in innate characteristics/life experiences play a role
• Throughout life maturation continues to influence certain biological processes
• All people undergo rates and timing of development vary

Context of Development

• Nuclear Family: Household with one/two parents and children (biological, adopted, or stepchildren)
• Extended Family: Multigenerational network including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more distant relatives
• Economy plays a large role in these shifts

Socioeconomic Status

• A combination of economic and social factors describe an individual/family, including income, education, and occupation
• Poverty is stressful and can damage children and families physical, cognitive, and psychosocial state
• Threats to well-being multiply/increase the likelihood of a negative outcome if several risk factors are present,
• Supportive parenting/particular temperament profiles can buffer children against ill effects

Post-Test

• Sensorimotor Development: The second stage
• Fine motor skill: scribbling with a pencil
• Sense least developed at birth: vision
• Gross motor skill: swimming across a pool
• Developmental milestones are what a child can do at specific stages of life
• Children in Piaget’s concrete operational thought are in Erikson’s industry vs. inferiority stage
• A permissive parenting style leads to lack of self-discipline
• Changes in mental activities like learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning & creativity exemplifies cognitive development
• The family environment common to all siblings is the shared family environment

Definitions

• Erikson's initial needs are to develop a basic sense of trust
• gross motor abilities are skills using large muscles in the arms and legs, with strength and stamina.
• Insecure attachment: Characterized by children who seek their parent after reuniting and easily comforted.
• Jean Piaget describes mental rules or frameworks used to organize and interpret the surrounding world through the term "schemata"
• Detached: affects developmental process and outcomes through the quality of home and neighborhood environments, nutrition, medical care, and schooling.
• Pre-speech forms: crying, cooing and babbling are examples of this language development stage
• Attachment: intense, enduring, social-emotional relationship that develops between a child and a caregiver
• A girl's first menstrual period: menarche
• Human Development: The scientific study of age-related changes in behavior, thinking, emotion, and personality
• "A behavior we develop as we grow older that does not need to be learned" defines instinct
• Rooting a reflex to have developed for an infant to breastfeed
• Familial socioeconomic status is an environmental factor
• Establishing friendships: a 10 year old would MOST likely prioritize this
• Psycholoical forces: includes all internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors that affect the development
• microsystem: consists of people and objects in an individual's immediate environment such as parents or siblings
• Phallic stange: the child's pleasure focuses on the genitals in this psychosexual stage of development

Erikson's Theory

• Moving to the next stage with issues from the previous stage is what happens if a person does not resolve issues successfully
• Erik Erikson said that personality development is determined by the interaction of an internal maturational plan and external societal demands
• Theory explains phenomena and facilitates predictions through an interrelated, coherent set of ideas
• developing a sence of identity during adolescence was explained by Erickson in his psychosocial development theory
• Anxious-resistant: child who frequently exhibits Freud's acting out is MOST LIKELY have what form of Ainsworth's attachment style?

Additional terms

• The scientific study of age-related changes in behavior, thinking, emotion, and personality is Human development
• An example of permissive parenting style is inconsistent rules and enforcement of consequences
• A predisposing cause: Sandy was physically abused as a child. In adulthood, she develops a substance use disorder following the death of her daughter. Sandy's of her substance childhood trauma could be described as a problem.
• The process by which the zygote burrows into the lining of the uterus that forms the placenta, unbilical cord and embroyo is implantation.
• Pampered lifestyle: " "Cause I'm scared to death. Now that I'm losing you, I'm scared to death. Knowing I can't get through, I'm scared to death. Living this so lonely life without you" shows
• Continuity: A child's first word shows what degree of development
• Neurons are typically formed at week 8.
• Learning Theory: development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they faced at different ages.
• Cognitive: In therapy, to replace misperceptions with accurate interrpretations, use this theoretical approach in this case?
• secured attachment: People who have a secured attachment to their parental figures are MOST LIKELY to move towards people
• Culture: society's or group's total way of life, including customs, traditions, beliefs, values, languages, and physical products- all learned behavior passed on from parents to children
• the whole network of people as well as the social setting to which a developing person must adapt psychologically, which varies across cultures means social ecology by Bronfenbrenner
• B) a predisposing cause of the PTSD: For many years during childhood, Ella was abused by her father. As an adult, she developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Ella's childhood abuse was most likely
• B) Marrying the person you believe complements you: would involve a cognitive process

Freud and Maslow

• Freud views develop fixations that make maturity rare to achieve
• In Psychoanalytic Theory, Behavior is merely a surface characteristic, and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior
• Karen Horney stated that People needs to experience trauma for them to grow as a person.
• Maslow believed that people have the tendency to grow towards self-actualization
• Negitivism: A teenanger's sudden increase in heigh and weight indicates this

Nature vs Nurture

• Joyce's case highlights nature while Michelle's case highlights nurture through mood swings through parents and traumatic events.
• Culture: Which of these factors would not be a contributor in the nature side of the nature-nurture debate?

Animism and socio-economic facts

• Harriette was playing with her dolls as though they were alive illustrating that the dolls possessed animism
• affects developmental process and outcomes through the quality of home and neighborhood environments, nutrition, medical care, and schooling: Socioeconomic status
• D) Socioeconomic status: A context in development that is based on family expenditure and the educational and occupational levels of adults in the households

Piaget, Vygotsky & others

• Assimilation: A young child already uses the word "dog". Then she sees a fox for the first time and she calls the fox a "dog". According to Piaget this would be describing what stage?
• B) Piaget's cognitive development theory: term schemata
• B) Nativist:Dr. Lengua states that individuals are born with an innate capacity to speak and communicate with others.
• Zone of Proximal distance: in the middle of where a child cannot master a skill, and where a child is already able to perform a skill
• a new experience to fit into an existing one: assimilation
• Socialization: childrent learn from others.
• Classical Conditioning -Unconditioned stimulus: naturally triggers a response -extinction: after a period where the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response may be lost. -positive reinforcement: to add a pleasent stimulus to increase a behavior -negative punishment: to remove an pleasent stimulus to decrease a behavior -A preschooler who always asks their parents for a popsicle at the check-out and they do this consistnly: positive reinforcement schedule

Health conditions

• D) The mother sought regular check-ups during pregnancy: LEAST LIKELY to result in having an underweight baby upon birth, but an ill mother, especially at the emergency room due to poisoning makes this more probable of underweight.
• B) Week 8: Neurons are typically formed at which week after prengnacy?

Other

• What is development?: A) the process by which an organism (human or animal)grows and changes through its lifespan
• Kohlberg: postconventional thought goes beyond a concern for the self
• Early childhood trauma: Based on psychodynamic perspective, people develop developmental concerns due to this
• 19. Secure attachment- is characterized by a child who, upon reuniting with their parent, seeks their parent and is easily comforted.
• 14-22 weeks pregnant: sensitive period for hearing
• Learning: C) Learning Theory proposes that development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they faced at different ages. A) Towards people: People who have a secured attachment to their parental figures are MOST LIKELY to:

Needs of the survivor victims?

Survivor victims need these 3 requirements to start off:

• security
• belongingness

The typhoon activated motives for the survivors and the PFA aims to regain their:

• security
• physiological