L3 Developmental Psychology PDF

SS1101 L3 DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OUTLINE FOR TODAY  Development of infants  Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development (Cognitive)  Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (Skills)  Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development (Psychosocial)  Gender, Cultural, and Family influences in Develo...

SS1101 L3 DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY OUTLINE FOR TODAY  Development of infants  Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development (Cognitive)  Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (Skills)  Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development (Psychosocial)  Gender, Cultural, and Family influences in Development DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY  Study how human beings grow and change throughout their lives (Verywellhealth, 2023)  Spans all ages, from fetus (controversial) to death  Multiple aspects, including intellectual, social, emotional, physical..etc. FETUS DEVELOPMENT  At 6 weeks, nervous system is mature enough to make movements  Then sense organs begin to appear, starts to react to stimulus  Takes around 8 weeks zygote to develop into a fetus  Fetal alcohol syndrome  Malformation of face, heart, ears, and nervous system damage  Caused by mother drinking alcohol during pregnancy  How it happens?  Neurons communicate through neurotransmitters  If neurons lack “excitation”, it dies off (pruned)  Alcohol interferes with excitatory neurotransmitters and facilitates inhibitory neurotransmitters INFANCY  At 5-months begins to crawl indiscriminately, later learn to avoid crawling off edges (regardless of experienced falling)  Discussion: Is it the fear of height? Or Are they hesitant because of perception?  “The Visual Cliff” study (Gibson & Walk, 1960)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA  Have to re-learn again with walking INFANCY  Visual  Infants sees the world as full of meaningless sights and sounds  Study eye-movements, we spend more time when we recognize something, or find something interesting INFANCY  Visual  Face recognition  At first they don’t have the concept of a face  At 4-years old, they recognize faces but still have trouble with features  Gradual improvements  Recognizing other faces and depth  Distinguish monkey faces at 6-months old THATCHER EFFECT  A phenomenon where it becomes difficult to detect local feature changes in an upside down face, despite identical changes being obvious in an upright face  We process faces in a holistic manner, instead of just recognizing features, we also recognize the positions and relationships between the features INFANCY  Auditory  Sucking more vigorously when aroused by sound  Habituation of sound (vs dishabituation)  We can use this to find out whether infants detect a difference between sounds  At first, infants have the ability to distinguish all sounds (and accents) in any language  Gradually focus on distinguishing sound in the local language only  Example: r and l in Japanese INFANCY  Measuring learning by sucking  Suck more when they hear mother’s voice (Suggest learning in before birth)  Higher heart rate response to familiar melodies  Learning how to manipulate objects (Attach ribbon to ankle)  Even if forgot, they can quickly relearn COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT JEAN PIAGET (1986 – 1980)  Observed (and studied) his own 3 daughters  Observations  Children tend to solve problems differently at different ages  Children gave same incorrect answer to certain questions  Believes children have different thought process  In addition to accumulating facts, they also construct mental processes  Ideas  Schema – “an organized way of interacting with objects”  Assimilation – “applying an old schema to new objects or problems”  Accommodation – “modifying an old schema to fit a new object or problem”  Equilibration – "the establishment of harmony or balance between assimilation and accommodation" JEAN PIAGET (1986 – 1980)  Proposed that children progress through four stages as they grow  Sensorimotor stage  Preoperational stage  Operational stage  Formal Operational stage  Stage transitions  Often gradual, behavior may represent a blend of two stages during transition  Believes that stages were universal and progression was invariant in order 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Sensorimotor Stage  Simple motor responses to sensory stimuli (e.g. Grasp reflex, Sucking reflex)  Lack “object permanence”  The idea that objects continue to exist even when we do not see them or hear them  Example  Early in this stage, when a ball is rolled under a sofa, children believe it ceases to exist  Later in this stage, children will search under the sofa for the ball 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Sensorimotor Stage  Sense of self  No evidence of self concept until around 1.5 years old (but it could be that we were not able to test it)  Rouge Test (Self recognition experiment)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2I0kwSua44 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Preoperational Stage  Lack “operations”, which are reversible mental processes  Unable to distinguish appearance and reality  Develops several characteristics  Egocentrism  Theory of Mind  Appearance vs Reality  Concept of conservation 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Preoperational Stage  Egocentrism  Seeing the world as centered around himself/herself and cannot easily take another person’s perspective  Unable to understand that others have different information 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Preoperational Stage  Theory of Mind  An understanding that other people have a mind too, and each person knows some things what others don’t know  Gradually develops at around 4 to 5 years old, can exercise in some situations but not in others  Sally-Anne Test (a False Belief Task)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oazK2fkRU1A  Another Example  Show children a candy box full of pennies. How would children without theory of mind respond to the question “What will someone else expect to find in the box?” 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Preoperational Stage  Appearance vs Reality  Unable to distinguish appearance and reality  Example  Placing a white ball behind a blue filter, they will say the ball is blue  Encountering a sponge that looks like a rock, they will say it is a rock. BUT it depends on situation. “bring something to wipe up spilled water” and “bring item to take picture with something that looks like a rock” 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Preoperational Stage  Concept of Conservation  Understand that objects conserve properties after change in shape or arrangement  Numbers, length, volume, area, mass, etc.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Concrete Operations stage  Overcoming issues from previous stage with new thinking skills  Able to perform mental operations on concrete objects but still have trouble with abstract ideas  Develops imaginative ideas  Example  If you can have a third eye anywhere on your body, where would you put it?  Usually between the eyes/forehead, instead of back of head or on your hands, etc. 4 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Formal Operations stage  Develop logical, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning  Become more systematic and thoughtful in their approach to problem solving  Example  Give 5 bottle of clear liquid, ask them to figure out what combination of bottles will mix and form yellow HOW GROWN UP ARE WE?  According to Piaget, we should have grown out of the 4 stages, but have we?  Egocentrism, expecting others know what you know?  Conservation, if given a thin tall glass and a wide short glass, people will pour more in the wide short glass because it feels less SKILLS DEVELOPMENT VYGOTSKY’S ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Cannot do  The gap exists between what a child can do alone and what a Can do with guidance child cannot do  The things that a child can do with some guidance or help Can do  Learn through scaffolding unaided  Breaking down of information or building blocks or parts of a new skill into pieces that are digestible  Example  4-year old may not be able to learn the concept of conservation  6-year old may be able to learn with guidance OTHER INFLUENCES IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Environment differences  Environment may make a difference within each stage of development  Example  Children from pottery-making families learn about conservation earlier than others  Cultural differences  Western cultures encourage pursuit of individual goals, Chinese cultures emphasize group goals (less emphasis emotional expression, less sensitive to negative emotion)  Affect their ability in identifying emotion intensity because lack of training PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ERIK ERIKSON (1902 – 1994)  Divided human lifespan to 8 periods  At each stage, there are specific tasks to master, and will generate social and emotional conflicts  Unable to master the task will have consequences carried forward INFANCY & CHILDHOOD  Attachment – “Feeling of closeness towards another person”  Attachment Theory  Bowlby (survival, innate)  Ainsworth (emotional bonding)  Keller (cultural sensitive) INFANCY & CHILDHOOD  Attachment Theory  The Strange Situation (Mary Ainsworth) 1. Mother plays with infant in a room full of toys. 2. Stranger comes in, then the mother leaves and returns. 3. Then both stranger and mother leaves. 4. Stranger returns first, then mother returns again.  Attachment Styles  Securely attached – Use mother as base of exploration, happy when she returns  Anxious-resistant / -ambivalent – fluctuates between happy and angry when mom returns  Anxious-avoidant – seldom interacts with mom  Styles tend to be stable over time INFANCY & CHILDHOOD  Attachment Theory  Still-Face Paradigm  Parent playing with a child (infant), then suddenly shift to an unresponsive expressionless face  Children who continue looking at parent with little sign of distress are likely to show secure attachment  Why do we have different attachment styles?  Genetically different in temperament (how they react to stimuli), which is fairly consistent throughout life  Those with difficult temperament are frightened more easily, correlates with self control and impulse control  Parent’s responsiveness to infants’ needs (parenting style)  Mostly culturally consistent, except some cultural exceptions (such as Japan (unusually high prevalence of “anxious attachment”)) CHILDHOOD & ADOLESCENCE  Relationship with peers become increasingly important  Become moody and have conflict with parents in early adolescence, but gradually decrease in late adolescence  Increased risk-taking behaviors (drunk driving, unprotected sex, etc.)  Make impulsive, risky decisions under peer pressure  Why risky behaviors?  Prefrontal cortex is slow to mature until late teens or early 20s  Lack of inhibition? Maybe but not entirely  Could also be due to urge for excitement CHILDHOOD & ADOLESCENCE  Identity Development  Adolescence is a time of finding yourself  “Identity Crisis” – concerns with decisions about the future and the quest for self-understanding  Time of exploration and “deciding” who they are  Marcia (1980)  Identity Diffusion - Haven’t given any serious though nor have a clear sense of identity  Identity Moratorium - Have given some though, but haven’t made any decisions  Identity Foreclosure - Made decisions without giving some thought  Identity Achievement - Made decisions after thorough explorations CHILDHOOD & ADOLESCENCE  Personal Fable  Feeling special  Can be optimistic but also believe that they’re invulnerable  Examples  Other people may fail to realize their life ambitions, but I will realize mine  You don’t understand, I LOVE HER/HIM  Tragedy may strike other people but not me  Almost everyone notices how I look or dress  https://youtu.be/4NQKjVj_NTI?si=yUNAigqAlsYBgkpg&t=160 EARLY ADULTHOOD  (Typically) begins when one finds their first full-time job or begin their career  Begin to make life changing decisions, and requires self-initiation (career, marriage, having children, relocating for a job, etc.)  Experience a lot of new difficult and stressful events during Early Adulthood  Lasts until around age 40 MIDDLE ADULTHOOD  Physical strength begin to deteriorate (but still functional)  More accepting of themselves  Less stressed about job, and kids begin to mature (less caring needed)  Lasts until age 65  Midlife transition  Reassessing goals, setting new ones and preparing for the rest of life  Sometimes occur due to a tragic/emotionally taxing event (divorce, sickness, death in family, etc.)  Some wish to pursue dreams but are hesitant to make risky decisions, so they become discouraged or depressed Take action NOW! Don’t wait until midlife transition! LATE ADULTHOOD / OLD AGE  Those who are satisfied with life will experience “ego integrity”, those who are not will feel “despair”  Some deteriorate in different ways (intellect, coordination, self-care), while others remain alert and active  Why?  Declining at different rates  Some will concentrate their efforts on tasks that are more relevant to their own lifestyle, so they do well in things that they’re motivated to do (jobs, daily life stuff) and do poorly when unmotivated  Tips to avoid turning old  Improving memory and cognition through physical exercise (Colcombe & Kramer, 2003; Mattson & Magnus, 2006)  Improve attention and performance with video games (Anguera et al., 2013) FACING DEATH  Do you:  Live everyday as if it was your last day?  Plan your future to live a better life? (in terms of financially and in health)  If you believe in #1, you wouldn’t do #2 FACING DEATH  Existential Psychology  Studies how people come to terms with the basic givens of human existence  Terror management theory  Cope with fear of death by avoiding thoughts about death and by affirming a worldview that provides self- esteem hope, and value in life (Pyszczynski et al., 2000)  When someone reminds you of mortality, you try your best to reduce anxiety by reassuring yourself that you still have many years to live  Example  Genuinely telling yourself that “you’re in good health, and don’t smoke”. If that’s not true, then you’ll find a way to stop smoking FACING DEATH  Reminder of death redoubles your efforts to defend a belief that is important  Example  Reaffirming your religious beliefs or other views that may help you find meaning in life  Repairing damaged relationships  Doing what you can to make it feel like you are in control of your own future FACING DEATH  Keeping people who’s health (physical and mental) have badly deteriorated alive  Should we hasten death (not speeding up but not delaying it) so that the person does not suffer?  As humans prolong life, more people have to face these decisions for themselves and for their family members OTHER INFLUENCES GENDER INFLUENCES  Biological differences  Brain areas are proportionally different between genders  Females are better at recognizing faces and detecting emotional signals  Example  Men misinterpreting a woman’s friendliness smile for sexual interest, or also the other way around!  Behavioral differences  When giving directions, Men to use directions and distances more often, while women tend to use landmarks as references  Women apologize more than men, men may perceive things differently, or unimportant  Often times gender differences are not what they appear to be  Men outperform females in math, but only in countries where men have greater economic and political status than women  More men become Grandmasters in chess, but this may be due to sheer differences in numbers (more boys plays chess) GENDER INFLUENCES  Differences in interests  Males devote all energy to a single interest, whereas female are more likely to develop a variety of interests  May be heavily influenced by parents but also biological tendencies exists (Female monkeys prefer playing with dolls more than ball or cars)  Seems to be affected by testosterone exposure during prenatal development GENDER INFLUENCES  Gender roles  Our activities or behaviors become social stereotypes “boys do this, girls do that”  Some aspects of gender roles are influenced by biology, others are more like customs of society  It also varies by culture and social needs  Cultures who require hunting or fighting, male dominance  Cultures where resources are abundant, more equal status  Gender roles are changing globally! There are more women in politics or leadership positions now than ever! CULTURAL / ETHNIC INFLUENCES  Often compare ”Western” and ”Asian” cultures, may lead to ”overgeneralization”  In general  Western culture are more individualistic, expressive  Asian culture are more collectivists, restraint  Subcultures also influence how we behave  Northern Chinese (wheat farmers) show more independent attitude  Southern Chinese (rice farmers), who show strong collectivist and cooperative attitude because they require sharing of irrigation system CULTURAL / ETHNIC INFLUENCES  Acculturation  Occurs when people learn the culture of the country they immigrated to, maybe stressful to learn customs of another country, especially when big differences in certain domains such as language and family views  Their future generations experience biculturalism, partial identification with two cultures  However, bicultural identification is difficult if the culture belongs to a minority group that is widely distrusted  The younger you are, the easier it is for you to adapt, while maintaining some parts of their original culture, such as food, traditions, etc.  Analogous to biracialism  May lead to an identity crisis, which culture / race should one label themselves? FAMILY INFLUENCES  Family size may influence resources allocated to each child  Birth order, within a family of a given size, is not related to IQ FAMILY INFLUENCES  Parenting styles  Diana Baumrind (1971)  Authoritative - High standards but warm and responsive  Authoritarian - Emotionally distant and strict without explanation  Permissive - Warm but undemanding  Indifferent / uninvolved - Spends little time, doesn’t care much FAMILY INFLUENCES  Parenting styles  Different parenting styles may be more suitable for different children  Does ”indifferent parenting” lead to ”impulsive , out of control children”? Or did parents were left with no choice to be “indifferent” because of the child’s behavior? (Same for authoritative parents)  Inconclusive of whether parenting styles directly affect children, or the other way around  Generally, children who grow up in a happy and supportive family tend to develop better social relationships and skills FAMILY INFLUENCES  Nontraditional families  Single parents (loss of father/mother)  Less resources and time -> potentially less care for child  Same-sex parents  Although children develop the same way, they may face difficulties at school  Parental conflicts  Conflicts  Observing conflict may be traumatic to children → more nervous or anxious, and prone to violent and disruptive behaviors  Divorced parents  Result depends on culture and ethnic group, in some countries its more open, in others it is shameful  Potentially if more common in culture, they may adjust better SUMMARY  Development of infants  Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development  Visual, Hearing  Different stages of life (Infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age)  Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development  Gender, Cultural, and Family influences on  Sensorimotor stage Development  Preoperational stage  Operational stage  Formal Operational stage  Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development NEXT WEEK  Intelligence!  The week after: Quiz 1!  Seating Plan will be posted  Bring a Pen, and your Student ID card