PSY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Teddy Bear, Preschool, Pacifier
29 Apr 2018
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Lecture 5 Notes: Developing Through the Lifespan
-Developmental Psychology:
●The study of how people grow, mature, and change over the life span
●Key themes:
○Nature vs. nurture: how do genetic factors versus situational factors influence our
development?
○Continuity vs. stages: does development occur gradually or within clear stages?
○Stability vs. change: how consistent are we as people from one stage in life to
another?
-Developmental Research Methods:
●Research strategies:
○Cross-sectional: people of different ages are examined at the same time and their
responses are compared
○Longitudinal: same subjects are re-tested at different times in their lives
-The Newborn:
●Q: How is research done with infants? How can we tell what they like, or what they are
paying attention to?
○A: Eye-tracking machines, pacifiers connected to electronic gear, observing head
turns.
●Habituation:
○An infant will indicate interest with its gaze
○An infant will become habituated to a visual stimulus=way to assess
perception/memory
●Turns toward human voices. An infant will suck on a pacifier more vigorously when it
hears its mother’s voice.
●Prefers objects 8-12 inches away. This is the typical distance of mother to infant when
nursing.
●Recognizes mother’s smell. A baby will turn towards the smell of its mother.
●Prefers objects that look like human faces...preference for “beautiful” faces
●Prefers higher-pitched voices and “baby talk.” Parents in many cultures use exaggerated
speech and high-pitched voices dubbed “parentese.”
-The Infant: Neural Development
●Babies have the most brain cells they will ever have
●But their nervous system is still developing, so they have fewer neural connections
○Growth spurt from 3-6 years old in frontal lobes that enables rational planning
○Association areas are the last to develop
○Neural pathways for language/agility surge until puberty when pruning process
occurs
●Children’s memories are processed differently after age 4
-Cognitive Development:
●How do children incorporate new information with what they already know?
○They form schemas: mental representations of the world
○They assimilate new information into schemas and adjust schemas
(accommodate) to fit new info
○Theory: children are curious, active, intelligent, and constructive thinkers with a
different type of logic
●Piaget’s stages of development:
○Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
○Preoperational (2-6 years)
○Concrete operational (7-12 years)
○Formal operational (12 years-adult)
-Sensorimotor Stage:
●Experience the world through sensory and motor interactions
○Looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, grasping
●Key aspects:
○Lack of object permanence: awareness that objects continue to exist when not
perceived
■You acquire object permanence at 8 months old
○Separation anxiety: acquisition of object permanence=misses mother
-Preoperational stage (2-6 years):
●Children too young to perform mental operations. Words and images are used to
symbolize objects.
●2 key aspects:
○Conservation: no understanding of conservation–physical properties of an object
stay the same
○Egocentrism: unable to adopt another perspective, self-centered
-Concrete operational stage (7-12):
●Defined by acquisition of:
○Logical reasoning: grasp the idea of conservation
○Perspective taking: no longer egocentric
○Grouping (subgroups/serialization)
○Can add and subtract without counting
-Formal Operational Stage (12+):
●Reasoning expands from concrete to:
○Reasoning on a logical, hypothetical level
○Abstract thinking
○Systematic reasoning, but may occur earlier than Piaget had thought
●Self-concept develops
-Piaget’s Legacy:
●First to realize that children actively construct meaning
●Children aren’t developmentally ready for certain tasks until they are at the
stage...cognitive milestones
●BUT: development is more continuous than Piaget thought. Evidence of each stage
occurs earlier than Piaget thought.
-Cognitive Development: Child Witnesses
●Experiment, 1995:
●Nursery school children were told about a clumsy man named Sam Stone who broke
things
●A month later, Sam visited the classroom without incident
●The next day, the kids were shown a ripped book and dirty teddy bear and were asked
what happened...no one blamed Sam
●Over the next 10 weeks, they were asked leading questions
●When asked again what happened, 72% of students blamed Sam and 45% said they
actually saw Sam do it
-Social Development: Attachment Styles
●Harlow:
○Studied attachment in primates
○Separated infant rhesus monkeys from mothers after birth and provided them with
two dummy “mother” options...wire mother with feeding bottle or cloth mother.
The monkeys preferred the cloth mothers.
-Social Development:
●What happens when babies are deprived of social contact?
○When monkeys reared in total isolation were placed with other monkeys their age,
they either cowered in fright or lashed out aggressively
○When they reached sexual maturity, many were incapable of mating
○If artificially impregnated, they were neglectful and sometimes murdered their
offspring
-Results of Harlow’s Study:
●Research findings suggest the importance of mother/child bonding:
○Child looks to caregiver for basic needs, like food, but also needs to feel love,
acceptance, and affection
○Suggest long term psychological physical effects of delinquent or inadequate
attentiveness to child’s needs
-Attachment Style with Children (John Bowlby):
●The first important relationship is with our mother/primary caregiver
●Leads infants to develop internal working models of themselves
●Working models=expectations
Document Summary
The study of how people grow, mature, and change over the life span. Cross-sectional: people of different ages are examined at the same time and their responses are compared. Longitudinal: same subjects are re-tested at different times in their lives. A: eye-tracking machines, pacifiers connected to electronic gear, observing head turns. An infant will indicate interest with its gaze. An infant will become habituated to a visual stimulus=way to assess perception/memory. An infant will suck on a pacifier more vigorously when it hears its mother"s voice. This is the typical distance of mother to infant when nursing. A baby will turn towards the smell of its mother. Prefers objects that look like human facespreference for beautiful faces. Prefers higher-pitched voices and baby talk. parents in many cultures use exaggerated speech and high-pitched voices dubbed parentese. Babies have the most brain cells they will ever have. But their nervous system is still developing, so they have fewer neural connections.
