1. Developmental Psychology
Psychology 40S C. McMurray

2. Developmental Psychology
What is Developmental Psychology?
Watch the clip and write down the definition of Developmental Psychology.

3. Nature vs Nurture The issue: How much of development is the result of
inheritance (heredity…nature)?
How much of development is the result of what
we have learned (environment…nurture)?

4. Twin Studies

5. Fraternal twins, who develop from separate fertilized eggs, are genetically no more similar than ordinary brothers and sisters.
Identical twins, who develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, are genetically identical. They are nature’s own human clones.

6. Developmental Psychologists
Jean Piaget (Cognitive Development)
Erik Erikson (Social Development)
Lawrence Kohlberg (Moral Development)

7. Cognitive Development
Cognition refers to all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating
It is the ability to understand.
It develops gradually as a child grows.

8. Jean Piaget 1896-1980 Who was he? Developmental psychologist
who studied cognitive development
What did he do?
Studied hundreds of children.
Believed that a child’s mind develops through a series of 4 stages
Believed that we learn by making sense of our experiences and by making mistakes!

9. Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking

10. Cognitive Development
Piaget believed that cognitive development is shaped by the errors we make.
Scale errors – 18 to 30 month old children may fail to take the size of an object into account when trying to perform impossible actions with it.
Preview Question 4: From the perspective of Piaget and of today’s researchers, how does a child’s mind develop?
Both photos: Courtesy of Judy DeLoache

11. Cognitive Development: Schemas
A collection of our basic knowledge about a concept.

12. Schemas, Assimilation and Accommodation
Schemas are important building blocks for cognitive development. Our schemas are constantly being modified or changed.
The process of assimilation involves incorporating new experiences into our current understanding (schema).
The process of adjusting a schema and modifying it is called accommodation.

13. Cognitive Development
Schema – A collection of our basic knowledge about a concept. It is a specific plan for knowing the world.
Assimilation – is the process of fitting objects and experiences into one’s schemas.
Accomodation – is the adjustment of one’s schemas to include newly observed events and experiences.

14. Sensorimotor Stage (Stage 1)
In the sensorimotor stage, babies take in the world by looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. Children younger than 6 months of age do not grasp object permanence, i.e., objects that are out of sight are also out of mind.
Doug Goodman

15. Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking

16. No object permanence

17. Sensorimotor Cognitive Milestone: Object Permanence
A child’s realization that an object exists even when he or she cannot see or touch it.
This usually occurs around 6 months of age.

18. Object Permanence

19. Sensorimotor Cognitive Milestone:
Stranger anxiety
the fear of strangers that develops at around 8 months. This is the age at which infants form schemas for familiar faces and cannot assimilate a new face.
Usually occurs around 8 months of age.

20. Piaget’s Theory and Current Thinking

21. Preoperational Stage (Stage 2)
Piaget suggested that from 2 years old to about 6-7 years old, children are in the preoperational stage—too young to perform mental operations.

22. Preoperational Cognitive Milestone: Egocentrism
Egocentrism A young child’s inability to understand another person’s perspective (approx. 2-3 years of age)
Piaget concluded that preschool children are egocentric. They cannot perceive things from another’s point of view. For example, when asked to show her picture to mommy, 2-year-old Gabriella holds the picture facing her own eyes, believing that her mother can see it through her eyes.

23. Egocentric A young child’s inability to understand another person’s perspective
“Do you have a brother?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jim”
“Does Jim have a brother?”
“No.”

24. Preoperational Cognitive Milestone: Theory of Mind
Theory of Mind – The ability to understand what another person is thinking (putting yourself in someone else’s shoes)
(Usually seen by age 4)
Watch:
Theory of Mind Test

25. Concrete Operational Stage (Stage 3)
In concrete operational stage, given concrete materials, 6- to 7-year-olds grasp conservation problems and mentally pour liquids back and forth into glasses of different shapes conserving their quantities.
Children in this stage are also able to transform mathematical functions. So, if = 12, then a transformation, 12 – 4 = 8, is also easily doable.

26. Child in this picture can not conserve yet.
Concrete Operational Cognitive Milestone: Conservation Conservation The principle that a given quantity does not change when its appearance is changed. Child can “conserve” in this third stage.
Child in this picture can not conserve yet.

27. Formal Operational Stage (Stage 4)
Around age 12, our reasoning ability expands from concrete thinking to abstract thinking.
Adolescents can use hypothetical reasoning.
Piaget called this formal operational thinking.

28. Formal Operational Cognitive Milestone: Hypothetical Reasoning
Hypothetical Reasoning The ability to come up with different hypothesis (or solutions) about a problem and to determine the best approach to solve a particular problem. (What “might be” rather than “what is”.)

29. Cognitive Development
Adolescents’ ability to reason gives them a new level of social awareness. In particular, they may think about the following:
Their own thinking.
What others are thinking.
What others are thinking about them.
How ideals can be reached. They criticize society, parents, and even themselves.

30. Piaget Summary
Watch Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

31. Social Emotional Development
Socialization – the process of learning the rules of behaviour of the culture within which an individual is born and will live. The development of self-awareness, attachment to parents or caregivers, and relationships with other children and adults. The real core of social development is found in the emotional attachment, or close emotional bond, that human babies form with their primary caregivers.

32. Attachment
Emotional Attachment – an especially close emotional bond that infants form with their parents, caregiver, or others.

33. Harry Harlow Animal Attachment
Harlow (1971) showed that infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact and not because of nourishment.
Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin

34. Harlow placed baby monkeys in the chamber alone for up to six weeks
Harlow placed baby monkeys in the chamber alone for up to six weeks. Within a few days, they stopped moving about and remained huddled in a corner. The monkeys were found to be pyschotic when removed from the chamber, and most did not recover.

35. Harlow’s discovery surprised many psychologists: The monkeys much preferred contact with the comfortable cloth mother. For many years, developmental psychologists thought that infants became attached to those who satisfied their need for nourishment.

37. Monkeys raised by artificial mothers were terror-stricken when placed in strange situations without their surrogate mothers.

38. Animal Attachment: Imprinting Konrad Lorenz Like bodily contact, familiarity is another factor that causes attachment. In some animals (goslings), imprinting is the cause of attachment.

40. Emotional Development
Critical Period
a period of time when new skills and abilities are most easily learned (Feral Children)
Attachment
a deep, caring, close, and enduring emotional bond between an infant and caregiver
Imprinting
when newborn animals respond with inherited tendencies to new stimuli (Konrad Lorenz and the geese) They attach to the first thing they see move. (usually their mother)

41. Secure Attachment
Relaxed and attentive caregiving becomes the backbone of secure attachment.
Berry Hewlett

42. Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin
Insecure Attachment
Harlow’s studies showed that monkeys experience great anxiety if their terry-cloth mother is removed.
Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin

43. Deprivation of Attachment
What happens when circumstances prevent a child from forming attachments?
In such circumstances children become:
Withdrawn
Frightened
Unable to develop speech

44. Prolonged Deprivation
If parental or caregiving support is deprived for an extended period of time, children are at risk for physical, psychological, and social problems, including alterations in brain serotonin levels.
Watch: Feral Child Video

45. Child-Rearing Practices
Description
Authoritarian
Parents impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive
Parents submit to children’s demands.
Authoritative
Parents are demanding but responsive to their children.

46. Social Development Parenting Styles
Authoritarian Family
Parents are the “bosses”
Very strict, no negotiation
Democratic/Authoritative Family
Children participate in decision making
Lots of discussion
Parents still have final say
Permissive/Laissez-faire Family
Children have the final say
Parents are less controlling

47. Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative parenting correlates with social competence — other factors like common genes may lead to an easy-going temperament and may invoke an authoritative parenting style.

48. Erik Erikson Who was he? What did he do?
Psychologist who focused on Social development
Known for his work on adolescence and identity
What did he do?
He developed a theory involving 8 stages of psychosocial development
Each stage involves a crisis or question

49. Social Development
Preview Question 11: What are the social tasks and challenges of adolescence?

52. Forming an Identity
In Western cultures, many adolescents try out different selves before settling into a consistent and comfortable identity. Having such an identity leads to forming close relationships.
Matthias Clamer/ Getty Images
Leland Bobble/ Getty Images

53. Developing Morality
Kohlberg (1981, 1984) sought to describe the development of moral reasoning by posing moral dilemmas to children and adolescents, such as “Should a person steal medicine to save a loved one’s life?” He found stages of moral development.

54. Lawrence Kohlberg Who was he? What did he do?
Psychologist who researched moral development
What did he do?
Developed 3 levels of moral development (ways people judge what is right or wrong)
“moral ladder”

55. "The Heinz Dilemma"
Kohlberg based his theory upon research and interviews with groups of young children. A series of moral dilemmas were presented to children, who were then interviewed to determine the reasoning behind their judgments of each scenario. The following is one example of the dilemmas Kohlberg presented… The Heinz dilemma

56. "Heinz Steals the Drug”
In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.

57. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963)."
The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife.
Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963)."

58. Kohlberg and Moral Development
Kohlberg was not interested so much in the answer to the question of whether Heinz was wrong or right, but in the reasoning for the participants decision. The responses were then classified into various stages of reasoning in his theory of moral development.

59. Moral Decisions are based on:
At Preconventional Level:
Consequences of the action
Benefits from the action
At Conventional Level:
Love and approval
The law and social rules
At Postconventional Level:
Fairness, justice and the truth
Ethical principles that apply to everyone
(what is right for the world, for ALL people)

60. 3 Basic Levels of Moral Thinking
Preconventional Morality: Before age 9, children show morality to avoid punishment or gain reward.
Conventional Morality: By early adolescence, social rules and laws are upheld for their own sake.
Postconventional Morality: Affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows personally perceived ethical principles. Many people never get to this level!

62. Morality
As our thinking matures, so does our behavior in that we become less selfish and more caring. People who engage in doing the right thing develop empathy for others and the self-discipline to resist their own impulses.

63. “Heredity deals the cards; environment plays the hand
“Heredity deals the cards; environment plays the hand.” Psychologist Charles L. Brewer (1990)

64. Nature vs Nurture
Do you think you are more a product of nature or nurture or both? Why?
Give examples.