Psychology Notes on Development PDF

Developing brain -- in utero the brain develop nerve cells at ¼ mil per min at birth there are 28 billion Conception to del is 38 weeks The branching of the neuronal development allow for growth, talking, walking , remembering Brain cells are sculpted by heredity and experience -- 3-6 months is...

Developing brain -- in utero the brain develop nerve cells at ¼ mil per min at birth there are 28 billion Conception to del is 38 weeks The branching of the neuronal development allow for growth, talking, walking , remembering Brain cells are sculpted by heredity and experience -- 3-6 months is the most rapid growth of the frontal cortex -- upper level functions Seeing, hearing, touch, senses Frontal lobes is still developing into adulthood Executive function -- thinking, memory -- last cortical areas to develop -- as develop mental abilities explode -- pruning occurs, get rid of neuronal connection we don't need As the nervous system develops - \*\*\*motor growth happens two ways -- cephalocaudal (top down) and proximodistal (in out -- center out), arms before hands Most babies walk around the first birthday -- but need tummy time, when on back all of the time it can delay walking bc on tummy will eventually lift up on arms and are the beginning stages of walking Rapid development of cerebellum (old brain) at the back of brain creates readiness to walk -- processed input from other areas of brain (spinal cord and senses) to provide smooth movement of muscular skeletal system Proprioception -- understanding where you are in time and spce Infant development -- motor development skills from birth to early childhood Gross motor is larger body movements Fine motor skills include reflexes such as grasping and reaching Stages of motor development -- Newborn (0-2 mon) starts with reflexes (rooting is for feeding, startle is for protection, grasp) , begins to lift head in tummy time 2-4 month -- gains more head control, starts to push up on arms, may swipe at or reach at objects (vision is not acute yet -- not clear) 4-6 mon -- sits with support, palmer grip, rolls tummy to back 6-9 mon -- can sit without support and start to move to sit, starts crawling or moving (bum scoot, army crawl) -- can pass objects from one hand to another 9-12 mon -- pull to stand and start cruising along furniture, fine motor skills develop (picking up with pincher grasp), point, stack objects, more eye hand coordination (like feeding themselves or turning pages) Influences on Motor Development Genetics -- inherent abilities Environment -- opportunities for movement, interaction and exploration Health and Nutrition -- supports muscle and bone development Stimulation -- physical and sensory experiences can enhance motor learning (ex walking on different surfaces like gravel and sand -- swinging by legs feeling without gravity) Memory -begin around 3.5 , prior is infantile amnesia -while infants are capable of learning and making memories they may not be available later in life because it isn't named and the rapid changes in the structure of the brain -- however memory was processing -experiment -- 3 mon old put in a crib and ribbon tied to foot and mobile, as they kicked their legs the mobile moved, once they realized moving their foot caused the mobile to move, after 2 9 min sessions mobile was removed -- when reintroduced to mobile a week later they started kicking, the other half of the group two weeks later did not associate the kicking with moving the mobile as the memory had faded (when mobile was changed there was no association) -nervous system remembers early experiences Cognitive Development -Piaget (1920) started developing questions for intelligence tests for children -- at certain ages the children consistently got the same question wrong -- led him to believe there must be something developmental causing this (1930) 3 stages of cognitive development -children reason differently at different stages -maturing through schemas (mental representation of the world around us - intergrated framework about people, things, names, events etc) -schema -- mental mold based on our judgments and experiences, way of organizing knowledge -- allows to process a large amount of info without analyzing all specific parts -- how we encode sometimes doesn't work Assimilation -- the process of incorporating new experiences into existing schemas -changes our approach when an existing schema doesn't fit -- can modify (accomodat) or create new schemas -can be done by trial and error or correction from parent -a schema may be too broad and needs to be refined -Paget didn't believe knowledge progressed linearly but by leaps and bounds \*\*\*Cognitive development good exam questions Sensorimotor Stage -children younger than 6 mon do not understand "object permanence" (things continue to exist when out of sight) -learning cause and effect -babies take in the world through their mouth -12-24 mon -- making things last (ex hitting something makes a noise, making the activity last by investigating different things) -active investigation seen most during feeding time (experimentation to learn) -18 mon child development mental representation (hold image in mind beyond immediate experience) Preoperational Stage 2-6/7 yr old -rapid development of language -represent objects and experiences mentally with words and images -thinking dominated by perception (all senses) -egocentrism in thought -- everything I know and see you must know and see (can't perceive from another persons point of view) -theory of mind -- childs ability to reason about what another person knows Concrete Operational Stage 6-7 yr -realize people may have feelings or thoughts different from own -differentiate between two things -recognize mathematic functions mentally Formal Operation Age 12 ish \*\*quiz or test -conservation -- will things be conserved or stay the same after a change -learn to think logically -- test hypotheses, become interested in the world -- expands from concrete thinking to abstract thinking -- can use symbols and imagined realities \*\*\*study Piaget's theory and Current thinking slide - 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