1. Unit 9: Developmental Psychology
Module 9:
Infancy and Childhood

2. The First Two Years
Body proportions change as the torso and limbs grow more quickly, so that the head is less out of proportion to body size.

3. Infancy and Childhood
Infantile Amnesia: No memory of events from age 1 – 3.
By 4 – 5 years old, memories begin to form.
Infants’ memories before they can speak does not translate into their later language.

4. Theory of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget: 1896 – 1980
Swiss developmental psychologist
Theory of Cognitive Development
Along with Freud, Skinner, and Pavlov, he was one of the most influential psychologists of all-time.
Influenced Gardner and Sternberg.

5. Theory of Cognitive Development
Schemas: mental representations that organize and categorize information processed by our brains.
Piaget believed that all knowledge begins with schemas.

6. Theory of Cognitive Development
Assimilation: process by which we incorporate new information into our existing cognitive structures or schemas.
Ex. Pink Lady and Jonagold are…
Apples! Now you can assimilate into your schema for an apple.

7. Theory of Cognitive Development
Accommodation: process by which we modify our schemas to fit new information.
Ex. All four legged animals are dogs.
Change schema for dogs.

8. Theory of Cognitive Development
Cognition: mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Piaget believed children change in cognitive ability as they mature.
Piaget’s developed his “Theory of Cognitive Development” by observing and recording children at various stages.

9. Theory of Cognitive Development

10. Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage:
Piaget’s first stage (0-2 years)
Explore world through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping.
Babies live in the present. If its not in front of them, it doesn’t exist.

11. Sensorimotor Stage
Object Permanence: awareness that objects still exist when out of sight.
Babies gain this ability around 8 to 10 months.

12. Sensorimotor Stage
Stranger Anxiety: the fear of strangers by infants beginning at 8 months.
Demonstrates that babies can recognize faces and add familiar faces to their schemas.

13. Theory of Cognitive Development
Preoperational Stage:
Piaget’s second stage (2-7 years)
Children learn to use language and demonstrates egocentrism.
Does not use logic!
Egocentrism: seeing the world from one’s own perspective; the inability to see reality from the perspective of another person.

14. Preoperational Stage
Theory of Mind: the ability to understand that others have their own thoughts and perspective.
Autistic children have difficulty inferring others’ feelings and thoughts.
Autism: disorder marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding others’ state of mind.

15. Preoperational Stage
Conservation: the ability to understand that a quantity does not change even when it is arranged differently.
Preoperational children cannot do this.

16. Theory of Cognitive Development
Concrete Operational Stage:
Piaget’s Third stage (6 – 11 years)
Children think logically about concrete events.
Gain conservation (change of shape does not change quantity).
Can think mathematically.

17. Theory of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage:
Piaget’s Fourth stage (11+ years)
Children think logically about abstract concepts (justice, truth,…)
Can solve hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences. (If this, then that.)
They can reason!

18. Reflecting on Piaget Today’s researchers believe:
Development is a continuous process.
Children show some mental abilities and operations at an earlier age than Piaget thought.
Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition than Piaget believed.

19. Alternative to Piaget Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) Russian psychologist
Studied kids also, but focused environment and the gradual growth in intellectual functioning.
Known for his Zone of Proximal Development.

20. Alternative to Piaget
Zone of proximal development: the range between the level at which a child can solve a problem working alone with difficulty, and the level at which a child can solve a problem with the assistance of adults or more-skilled children.
Big emphasis on mentors, tutors, teachers, and peers.

21. Attachment Attachment: an emotional tie with another person.
Young children seek closeness with their caregivers (parents) and shows distress when separated.
Bonding: the creation of a close emotional relationship between the parent and baby shortly after birth.

22. Attachment
Harry Harlow found baby monkeys separated from their mothers.
They could choose between a soft cloth surrogate or a bare wire substitute with a feeding bottle.
The baby monkeys chose the soft surrogate, showing attachment isn’t based on feeding.

23. Attachment is based on physical affection and comfortable body contact, and not based on being rewarded with food.

24. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Critical Period: period shortly after birth when certain events must take place to facilitate proper development.
Ex. After hatching, a duckling sees its mother and then follows her.

25. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Imprinting: The process by which certain animals form attachments during critical period.
Ex. If duckling saw someone different first, they form attachment to that person instead of mother. Will follow person now.
Human children do not imprint.

26. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Mary Ainsworth’s “strange situation” research categorized type of attachment based on how baby reacted to, and after, temporary absence of their mother.
Situation: A mother and baby play in a strange room. The mother leaves for a short while, and then returns.

27. Secure & Insecure Attachment
What did Ainsworth find?
Secure Attachment: most children (60%) feel distress when mother leaves, and seek contact with her when she returns.
Insecure Attachment: Cling to mother and may get loudly upset when mother leaves and remains upset when she returns.

28. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Sensitive parents tend to have securely attached infants.
Securely attached babies tend to become socially competent children.
Infancy’s major social achievement is attachment!

29. Secure & Insecure Attachment
What causes different attachment styles: nature or nurture?
Nature:
Temperament: a person’s characteristic style and intensity of emotional reactivity.
Some infants have an easy temperament; happy and calm.
Temperament is mainly inborn.

30. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Nurture:
Ainsworth believed that sensitive, responsive, calm parenting is correlated with the secure attachment style.
Parenting behavior is main cause of baby’s reaction.

31. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Erik Erikson said that securely attached children approach life with a sense of basic trust.
Basic Trust: sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy.
Many researchers believe that our early attachments form the foundation of our adult relationships.

32. Secure & Insecure Attachment
If children live without safe, nurturing, affectionate caretaking, they may still be resilient, bounce back, attach, and succeed.
If a child experiences severe, prolonged deprivation or abuse:
Have difficulty forming attachments.
Have increased anxiety and depression
Have lowered intelligence
Show increased aggression.

33. Secure & Insecure Attachment
Is daycare bad for children?
NO. Children can thrive in a wide variety of life situations.
No major impact of the mother going to work and leaving kids at daycare.
Quality of daycare does matter.

34. Self-Concept
Childhood’s major social achievement is a positive self-concept.
Self-concept: a sense of one’s identity and personal worth.
Children who form a positive self-concept are more confident, independent, optimistic, assertive, and sociable.

35. Three types of parenting styles:
1. Authoritarian: parents impose rules and expect obedience.
“Do what you’re told.”
“Clean your room.”
“Because I said so!”
This parenting style is usually “too hard” on the child.

36. Parenting Styles
2. Permissive: parents submit to kids’ desires, not enforcing limits or standards for child behavior.
No demands or punishments.
“Too soft”
Child controls situation.

37. Parenting Styles
3. Authoritative: Parents enforce rules, limits, and standards, but also explain, discuss, listen, and express respect for child’s ideas and wishes.
Both demanding and responsive.
Encourages open discussion and negotiation of rules.

38. Parenting Styles
Children with highest self-esteem, self-reliance, and social competence usually have warm, concerned, authoritative parents.
Authoritarian parents produce children with less social skills and lower self-esteem.
Permissive parents produce children who are more aggressive and immature.