1. Human Development
Dancing Baby 1

2. Questions to Consider:
How to cover child development in 1 day?!!!
Top things to know:
What Shapes a Child? How do we know?
What’s so important about attachment anyway?
How Do Children Learn about Their Worlds? 2

3. What Shapes a Child? Development Starts in the Womb
Infants Have Early Knowledge about the World
Brain Development Promotes Learning
Attachment Promotes Survival
Humans Learn from Interacting with Others 3

4. Attachment Promotes Survival
Attachment in other species: 4

5. Attachment Promotes Survival
Attachment is a strong, intimate, emotional connection between people that persists over time and across circumstances
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth described infant behaviors that engage adults and adult behaviors that increase attachment 5

6. Secure Attachment Securely attached infant (68%) Cried very little
Once comforted explored and played readily
Used mother as secure base

7. Babies express Emotions
Why is the expression of emotions of significance?
1) Attracts adult’s attention
2) Brings adult to the infant
3) Helps communicate expressions of affection, annoyance
4) Helps establish relationships
Attracts adult’s attention
Brings adult to the infant
Helps communicate expressions of affection, annoyance
Helps establish relationships 7

8. Joy, Anger and Fear are considered basic emotions
Basic Emotions in Infancy
Joy, anger, and fear are considered basic emotions
Joy, Anger and Fear are considered basic emotions

9. Smiles are important…. because they help infant achieve a goal (keep
caregiver interactive)
2) they reinforce behavior of adult
3) help infant gain control of environment
4) mutual smiling fosters attachment
***In sum, smiling may be an adaptive
(survival) behavior.
Babies laughing

10. What Shapes a Child? How do we know?
Nature AND Nurture
Genie
Infant-research techniques:
Natural Observations
The preferential looking technique
Length of time the infant looks at an object or event

11. How Do Children Learn about Their Worlds?
Perception Introduces the World
Piaget Emphasized Stages of Development 11

12. Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
Children gradually learn more about how the world works by little “experiments” in which they test their understanding
Children pass through predictable stages that allow them to see the world in qualitatively different ways 12

13. Piaget
classify & label
construct knowledge
adapt to environment

14. Adaptation - Scheme file folder = scheme Increase in # & complexity
assimilation
accommodation

15. Piaget’s Account: Assimilation and Accommodation
When new experiences fit into existing schemes it is called assimilation
When schemes have to be modified as a consequence of new experiences, it is called accommodation 15

16. Classify & label
Creating a category

17. Piaget’s Periods of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)
Infancy
Preoperational Period (2-7 years)
Preschool and early elementary school
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years)
Middle and late elementary school
Formal Operational Period (11 years & up)
Adolescence and adulthood 17

18. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor
0-2 years
Take in new knowledge through senses, coordinates with body movements
Object permanence

19. Coming to Know the World: Perception
Newborns have a good sense of smell
Newborns can differentiate between tastes 19

20. Hearing Seeing Babies can hear in the womb during the last trimester
Startle reactions suggest that infants are sensitive to sound
Seeing
Newborn Infants can see approx inches
Respond to light, can track objects
By 1 year, the infant’s visual acuity is the same as adults 20

22. depth perception visual cliff study
2 months - perceive depth
Heart rate slows
7-8 months show fear of depth
Heart rate accelerates
Refuse to cross deep

23. Object permanence
Piaget believed that it developed slowly over the sensorimotor stage

24. Piaget’s Periods of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)
Infancy
Preoperational Period (2-7 years)
Preschool and early elementary school
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years)
Middle and late elementary school
Formal Operational Period (11 years & up)
Adolescence and adulthood 24

25. Preoperational thinking (2-7)
Begins to think symbolically
Appearance is Reality

26. Pre-op limitations
centration
conservation

27. Piaget’s Periods of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)
Infancy
Preoperational Period (2-7 years)
Preschool and early elementary school
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years)
Middle and late elementary school
Formal Operational Period (11 years & up)
Adolescence and adulthood 27

28. Concrete operations (7-11)
Develop the ability to reason but only about concrete items
Learn about self through mental manipulation of concepts in adapting to world
Become more reasonable, logical
Bound by physical reality (what I see, here & now)

29. Formal operations
12 and up
Abstract thinking
Hypothesis, what if…

30. Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory
underestimates cognitive ability in infants
overestimates cognitive ability in adolescents
is vague about mechanisms and processes of change
He does not account for variability in children’s performance
His theory undervalues the influence of sociocultural environment 30