PSYA02 Midterm Notes Chapter 12 - Developmental Psychology PDF

PSYA02 MIDTERM NOTES -- CHAPTER 12 Prenatal development: \- Week 1: zygote differentiates into three germ layers: \- Ectoderm: Develops nerve tissue into skin \- Mesoderm: muscle and bone \- Endoderm: source of soft tissue, such as organs and the digestive tract \- Week 4: CNS differentiates i...

PSYA02 MIDTERM NOTES -- CHAPTER 12 Prenatal development: \- Week 1: zygote differentiates into three germ layers: \- Ectoderm: Develops nerve tissue into skin \- Mesoderm: muscle and bone \- Endoderm: source of soft tissue, such as organs and the digestive tract \- Week 4: CNS differentiates into forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, and spinal cord \- Week 6: expression of sex chromosomes \- Week 7: cerebral cortex cells \- Week 9-12: Internal reproductive organs \- Week 21-24: myelination of the NS \- Week 25-28: formation of most brain cells Teratogens: -Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD): group of conditions that occur in an individual if the mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy \- Includes fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS): \- Physical abnormalities: \- Growth retardation \- Skin folds at the corner of the eyes \- Nose and mouth abnormalities \- Small head circumference \- Cognitive and behavioural problems: \- Reduced IQ \- Attention problems \- Poor impulse control Newborn's Reflexes (birth-28 days): \- Grasping: any object placed in their palm \- Rooting: turning their heads towards stimuli that is touching the side of their face \- Sucking \- Swallowing \- Tonic neck reflex: turning their heads in the direction their arms are facing \- Stepping reflex: occurs if parents holds newborns upright with their feet touching a surface NS Development: \- Later months of pregnancy to 18 months old: rapid growth in grey matter \- Gestational month 6: Myelin growth \- 6-13 years old: Spurt in myelin growth \- End of this growth coincides with the end of a sensitive period for language development Motor Development: \- Head-to-toe direction: \- 2 months old: controlling the muscles of the neck and shoulders \- 3 months old: development of the muscles in the torso \- 6-9 months old: crawling, some skipping \- Around 1 year old: muscles of the legs are developed sufficiently to support their weight Jean Piaget: \- Equilibration: the process in which a child engages in assimiliation and accommodation to make sense of the world\\ \- Sensorimotor stage \- Birth to 2 years old \- Focus on the present rather than the past or future \- Sensations immediately evoke motor responses \- Circular reactions (repetitive reactions): \- Primary circular reactions (1-4 months old): involves the infant's body \- Secondary circular reactions (4-8 moths old): objects other than their own body \- Tertiary circular reactions (12 moths old): trial-and-error experimentation \- Object permanence at 8 months old \- Developing language abilities: \- 18 months; 10-50 words \- 2 years: beginning to combine words into short, meaningful sentences \- Preoperational stage \- 2 to 6 years old \- Incapable of engaging in internal mental operations or manipulations \- Develop the concept of conservation and egocentrism \- Limits by beliefs that appearances are real \- Concrete operational stage: \- 6-11 years old \- Problems of conservation are easily solved \- Thinking becomes more logical \- Cannot handle abstract concepts \- Reason best when allowed to engage in hand-on learning \- Formal operational stage: \- About 12 years old \- Ability to handle abstract concepts \- Improvement in problem solving \- Younger children problem solve by trial-and-error \- Adolescents think through several alternatives more strategically \- Abstract thinking stimulates a burst of idealism Alternative Approaches to Cognitive Development:\ - Lee Vygotsky \- Zone of proximal development: tasks that the child can accomplish with assistance \- Believed that what children can do with assistance is more telling than individually \- Scaffolding: being responsive to the child's needs and providing guidance \- Theory of mind (TOM):\ - The understanding that others have thoughts that are differently from our own \- Emerges at 3 to 4 years old Temperament: \- Surgency or extraversion: the degree to which a child is generally happy, active, vocal, and social \- Negative effect: proneness to anger, fear, sadness, and frustration, and the degree to which a child is shy and not easily soothed \- Effortful control: the ability to pay attention and inhibit behaviour Attachment: \- Mobility is a factor in predicting the timing of attachment \- About the same time infants learn to crawl (6 to 8 months) \- Important to social development \- Anxious-avoidant: \- Did not react to mother leaving or returning \- Anxious-resistant: \- Never comfortable, even with the mother around \- Distressed when mother left and interchanged between clingy and rejecting upon return \- Disorganized attachment: \- Seemed confused and not well attached with contradictory behaviour Adolescent Brain:\ - Brain is not fully adult \- Second critical period of brain growth \- Misunderstand emotions \- Early maturation of emotional parts of the brain relative to the logical frontal lobes \- Accounts for risky behaviour \- More vigorous response to pleasure Cognitive and Moral Development:\ - Lawrence Kohlberg stages of moral reasoning: \- Preconventional morality \- Conventional morality \- Post conventional morality Social and emotional Development in Adolescents: \- Erik Erikson: \- Known for his life span model of psychosocial development \- Challenge for adolescents: Identity development \- Challenges for Adults: Intimacy vs Isolation \- Challenges for Late Adults: Integrity or Despair Physical Changes in Late Adulthood: \- Gradual and mild \- Mild changes in the speed of learning and problem solving \- Sensory changes are gradual Cognition in Late Adulthood: \- Intelligence remains relatively stable \- Fluid Intelligence change MISCELLANEOUS: Human Development: \- Examination of continuity and change across the lifespan \- Sensation and perception \- How we detect signals in our environment and how we organize that information \- Cognition and language \- Howe we think of our senses and how we form those thoughts, both internally and externally \- Social and moral behaviour \- Emotion -Four main periods of human development: \- Prenatal and infancy: conception to 2-3 years old \- Childhood: 3 11 years old \- Adolescence: 11 to brain maturation \- Adulthood: brain maturation to death Early Experience in Infancy: \- Crucial to normal development \- Give rise to individual differences \- In utero: \- Can't hear clear speech, but muffled instead (rhythm, pitch, etc.) \- Reacts to the mother being touches or what she is doing \- Taste and smell aren't differentiable (in the brain as well) Prenatal development: \- Conception: when the egg is fertilized to until it implants in the uterine wall \- Embryonic stage: vital organs begin to develop \- Fetal period \- Much experience to learning \- Neurogenesis \- Myelination \- Synaptic pruning and synaptogenesis \- In utero: \- Fetal heartbeat changes in reaction to external voices \- Fetal heartbeat is different in reaction to music than human speech\] \- Newborn babies can recognize their mother's language and voice Infant's Perception: \- Preferential looking: \- Choose to spend more of their time looking at object and events that are interesting, stimulating or familiar \- Grating visual acuity test: \- Relies on the principle that infants prefer to look at stripes than a plain grey surface because they are more visually interesting \- Tests visual acuity \- 1 month old: visual acuity increases from 20/400 to 20/120 \- 6 months old: develop adult-like acuity, including colour and depth perception Motor development in Infancy: \- Cephalocaudal rule: "top-to-bottom" \- Proximodistal rule: "inside-to-outside" \- Has a clear effect on visual development (crawling vs walking) Identity in Childhood: \- Describe themselves in physical terms and almost always positively \- Positivity bias declines quickly at school Erikson's Identity theory for adolescents: -Identity confusion \- 13 to 14 years old \- Incomplete and incoherent sense of self \- Very common \- Identity foreclosure \- University students \- Premature identity of choice \- Negative Identity \- Teenagers doing the opposite of what their parents say \- Identity formed in opposition to others/social norms Other Challenges in Adolescents: \- Emergence of abstract thinking \- Personality traits become more important \- Emergence of self-socialization \- Choosing your won social partners, outside of situation and proximity \- Friends and social groups become of paramount importance \- Personal fable \- Belief that their experiences are unique and that no one understands what they're going through \- Imaginary audience \- Idea that everyone is watching, noticing your flaws, etc. \- Adults still experience this, but they know how to manage it better Adulthood: \- Changes in sensory system and brain structure \- Changes in memory storage and retrieval \- Slowing of cognitive processes \- Employ better cognitive strategies because of their vast experience \- These strategies help make up for their cognitive decline