Introduction to Psychology - Human Development

Introduction to Psychology - Human Development

• Developmental Psychology focuses on how humans develop and change throughout their lifespan.
• Developmental psychology views change as inevitable, occurring across the entire lifespan.
• Change can be continuous (gradual) or discontinuous (in distinct stages).

Core Developmental Issues

• Understanding the interplay of nature (biology) and nurture (environment).
• Maturation refers to biologically determined changes following a predictable sequence.
• Assessing the significance of early experiences, including the concept of critical periods.
• Investigating if development occurs in continuous or qualitative stages.

Critical Periods

• The concept of critical periods suggests a limited time frame for specific brain functions to develop.
• If crucial experiences are absent during a critical period, the development might be impaired or incomplete.
• Examples include the case of Genie, a girl isolated until the age of 13. While she showed some language acquisition, her syntax never reached typical levels. This supports the critical period theory for language acquisition.
• Other examples include diseases such as measles contracted during specific fetal stages, which can cause intellectual impairment.

Developmental Methodology

• Cross-sectional method: compares groups of different ages at the same time. It is helpful for assessing age differences, but not for examining age changes. Different life experiences among cohorts make comparisons unsuitable.
• Longitudinal method: follows the same group across multiple time points. This method, while revealing patterns over time, presents challenges with participant attrition and the influence of cohort effects.
• Sequential studies: involve comparing different age groups at several time points in order to reduce cohort effects. This approach combines cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches.

Prenatal Development

• Prenatal period has 3 phases:
  • Germinal Period: First 2 weeks after conception.
  • Embryonic Period: 3rd to 8th weeks of gestation.
  • Fetal Period: 9 weeks to birth.

Teratogens

• Teratogens are environmental factors (viruses, chemicals, drugs) that can harm a developing fetus during the embryonic stage.
• Examples include:
  • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, caused by the mother consuming alcohol during pregnancy, leading to physical abnormalities and learning disabilities.
  • Fetal exposure to crack cocaine affects motor and emotional development.

Infant Reflexes

• Reflexes are innate motor responses triggered by stimuli and are adaptive.
• Examples include rooting (turning towards a touch on the cheek) and sucking reflexes.

Motor Development

• Motor skills develop in a predictable sequence.
• Stages are presented in an image of infants demonstrating increasingly complex movements.

Emotional Development

• Temperament: An individual's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
• Attachment: Refers to the emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver. There are several types of attachment: Secure, Anxious-Ambivalent, and Avoidant.

Cognitive Development

• Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development focuses on how children's thinking evolves.
• Schemas: organized patterns of thought or behavior that children use to understand the world.
• Assimilation: interpreting new information within existing schemas.
• Accommodation: modifying existing schemas to fit new information.
• Piaget's theory outlined stages of cognitive development from birth to adulthood: Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational.

Issues in Cognitive Development

• Object Permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.
• Egocentrism: Difficulty seeing things from another's perspective.
• Conservation: Understanding that certain properties of an object remain the same despite changes in appearance.

Conservation Tasks

• Visual examples are given depicting liquid amount, number, and mass conservation tasks showing different stages of children's cognitive development.

Personality Development

• Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development are presented as a list, emphasizing conflicts at different life stages.

Explore the fascinating field of developmental psychology, focusing on how individuals grow and change throughout their lives. This quiz covers key concepts such as the nature vs. nurture debate, maturation, and critical periods in development. Test your knowledge on the stages and processes involved in human development.