2. Developmental Psychology
• A branch of psychology that studies physical,
cognitive, and social change throughout the life
span.
• Infancy old age
3. 3 Major Issues in Developmental
Psychology
• How do genetic inheritance (our
nature) and our experience (the
Nature/Nurture nurture we receive) influence our
development?
• Is development a gradual, continuous
process like riding an escalator, or does
Continuity/Stages it proceed like a sequence of stages, like
climbing rungs on a ladder?
• Do our early personality traits persist
Stability/Change throughout life, or do we become
different persons as we age?
5. Conception
• Begins when a mature egg is released from a
woman’s ovary.
• When the sperm reaches the egg it releases a
digestive enzyme that eats away at the protective
coating surrounding the egg.
• When one sperm cell penetrates the egg’s
surface, all other sperm cells are blocked.
• After about half a day , the nuclei of the sperm
and the egg fuse.
7. 3 Stages of Prenatal Development
Zygote
• Contraception to 2 weeks
Embryo
• 2 weeks through 8 weeks
Fetus
• 9 weeks to birth
8. Prenatal Development
• Zygote – the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period
of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo
• Embryo – the developing human organism from
about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second
month
• Fetus – the developing human organism from 9
weeks after conception to birth
9. Factors That Effect Development
• Genetic
• Environmental
• Teratogens – agents, such as chemicals and viruses,
that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal
development and cause harm
• Fetal Alcohol syndrome – physical and
cognitive abnormalities in children caused
by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking.
10. The Competent Newborn
• Automatic Responses We Are Born With
• How Babies Feed
• William James’ “blooming, buzzing confusion”
• What Can my Baby see, hear, smell, and think?
• Novelty-Preference Procedure
12. Brain Development
• A developing brain forms nearly one-quarter million
nerve cells per minute.
• A developing brain cortex overproduces neurons, the
number peaks at about 28 weeks, gradually subsides
to a stable 23 billion when you are born.
• At birth, you have all the brain cells you will
ever need in your lifetime.
13. Brain Development cont.
• Association areas – parts of the brain linked with
thinking, memory, and language – are the last to
develop.
• Maturation – biological growth processes that
enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively
uninfluenced by experience.
14. Motor Development
• The sequence of motor development is universal.
• Roll, sit unsupported, creep/ crawl, stand, walk, run.
• Identical twins usually begin sitting up and walking
on nearly the same day.
• What the conscious mind does not know and cannot
express in words, the nervous system
somehow remembers.
15. Cognitive Development
• Cognition – all the mental activities associated with
thinking, knowing, remembering, and
communicating.
• Somewhere in you journey from egg hood to
personhood you become conscious.
• A child's brain is not a miniature model of an
adult’s.
16. Cognitive Development cont.
• A child’s mind develops through a series of stages;
from the newborn’s simple reflexes to the adult’s
abstract reasoning power [ability].
• Piaget’s core idea is that the driving force behind our
intellectual progression is an unceasing struggle to
make sense of our experiences.
• Schema – a concept or framework that organizes
and interprets information.
17. Cognitive Development cont.
• Assimilation – interpreting our new experience in
terms of our existing schemas.
• Accommodation – adapting our current
understandings (schemas)to incorporate new
information.
• Sensorimotor stage – the stage during which infants
know the world mostly in terms of their
sensory impressions and motor activities.
18. Piaget’s Theory and Current
Thinking
• Object permanence – the awareness that things
continue to exist even when not perceived.
19. Piaget’s Theory and Current
Thinking
• Preoperational Stage
– Conservation
– Egocentrism
• Theory Of Mind
• Concrete Operational stage
• Formal operational stage
• Autism
20. Social Development
• Infants come to prefer familiar faces and voices.
• At approximately 8 moths, infants develop stranger
anxiety. Crying when seeing a strange face, seeking
for familiar caregivers
• Children have schemas for familiar faces; when they
cannot adapt the new face into these
remembered schemas, they become
bothered.
21. Origins of Attachment
• By 12 months, infants usually grip tightly to a parent
or guardian when they are either frightened or
expect separation.
• Attachment Bond is a powerful survival impulse that
keeps infants close to their caregivers. (Found on
bottom of page 188)
• Typically infants become attached to those
who satisfy their needs according to
psychologist research, but this reasoning has
been overturned by accidental studies.
22. Body Contact
• University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow,
did an experiment where they bred monkeys in
relationship to infants and separated the infant
monkeys shortly after they were born. They raised
each monkey in different cages with a blanket. They
notice when the blankets where gone to be cleaned,
the monkeys’ became distressed. This showed that
attachment to the blanket contradicted that
attachment derives from an association with
nourishment. Human infants become
attached to parents who are soft, and warm
and who rock, feed, and pat.
23. Familiarity
• Infants and children become familiar with what they
know. Children like to reread same books, rewatch
same movies and even eating the same foods.
24. Attachment Differences
• Children play more comfortably when in the
presence of their mothers.
• When they are gone they become shy or distressed
and may cry out.
• Other infants avoid attachment or show insecure
attachment.
25. Deprivation of Attachment
• Babies abused or trapped in situations with no type of
attention can be withdrawn, speechless or frightened.
• Harlow monkeys put in isolated environments with no
mother, turned out to be aggressive towards their babies
and other adults
• “unloved becomes unloving”
• 30% of abusers agree to being abused as children
• Traumatic events indented in Brain
• Explains why children victim of physical abuse or
witnessing torture, suffer depression, aggression,
drugs etc.
26. Disruption of Attachment
• Separation from family, both humans and monkeys
become upset
• Foster care that moved children often prevented
attachment and is very disruptive
• Adults can also suffer attachment issues
27. Does Daycare Affect Attachment?
• New research states quality matters
• High quality -warm supportive interaction, and safe,
health, and stimulating environments
• Child's temperament, parents sensitivity, family
financial standing, and education level more
important than time spent in daycare
28. Self-Concept
• Major social achievement:
• Infancy-Attachment
• Childhood-Positive sense of self
• by about age 12 most children develop self concept
(understanding and assessment of who they are)
• children with positive self concept are
• confident, independent, optimistic and
• sociable
29. Parenting Styles
• parents raise children definitely ( spanking VS
reasoning)
• investigators identified 3 parenting styles:
Parenting Styles
Authoritarian Permissive Authoritative
• Impose Rules • Few demands • Demanding
• Demand obedience • Little punishment • Responsive
31. Adolescence
• Transition from childhood to adulthood
• Begins with sexual maturity and ends with
independent adult status
• G. Stanley Hall describes adolescence as a period of
'storm and stress'
• For many adolescence is a carefree time away
from the adulthood
32. Bibliography
• Myers, D. G. (2010). Chapter 5: Developing Through
the Life Span . In Psychology (9th ed., pp. 173-196).
New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
