PSYC 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Prenatal Development, Blastocyst
Chapter 9: Lifespan Development
Chapter Overview
●Special considerations in development
●Physical development
●Cognitive development
●Social and moral development
Developmental Psychology
●The study of how behavior changes over the life span
Challenges
●Post hoc Fallacy- logical error where you assume that A causes B, just because B came
after A
●Bidirectional Influences- children’s development influences their experiences, but their
experiences also influence their development
●Cohort Effects- sets of people who lived during one period can differ in some systematic
way from sets of people who lived during a different period
○Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal designs
■Cross-sectional: researchers examine people of different ages at a single
point in time
■Longitudinal: track development of same group of participants over time
○Normative approach- to understand what's normal, or how something's supposed
to go
Influence of Early Experience
●Early input from the world exerts a significant impact on development
●But so does all other input throughout life
●Myths of infant determinism and childhood fragility
○Infant Determinism- everyone's seems to assume early experiences determine
exactly how you'll turn out as an adult
○Childhood Fragility- when your parents are very protective of you when you
were little, but you are more resilient than people thing. The environment plays a
large role
The Nature-Nurture Debate ex. Mom during alcohol while pregnant
●Both play large roles in shaping development
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●Not an “either-or” issue anymore
●Gene-environment interaction
○Impact of genes on a behavior depends on the environment where the behavior
develops
●Nature via nurture
○Children with certain genetic predispositions (for certain traits) often seek out and
create their own environments
●Gene expression
○Activation or deactivation of genes by environmental experiences throughout
development
Conception and Prenatal Development
●Most dramatic changes occur during early prenatal development
●A zygote is formed when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg
●After this, three stages of development occur
Germinal Stage
●A zygote begins to divide and double
○Forms a blastocyst; climates growing for first 1.5 week s
●By mid-2nd week, cells begin to assume different functions
○Blastocyst becomes an embryo
Embryonic Stage
●Lasts until 8 weeks
●Limbs, facial features and major organs begin to form
Fetal Stage
●By week 9- major organs are formed, heart starts beating
●Embryo becomes a fetus
●Physical maturation and “bulking up” occur for the rest of pregnancy
Brain Development
●Between day 18 and month 6, neurons grow at a an incredible rate
○Up to 250,000 neurons per minute at times
○Called proliferation
●Then cell migration occurs
Obstacles to Development
●Environmental Influences:
○Teratogens- environmental factors that can exert a negative impact on prenatal
development
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■Examples: cigarette smoking, drugs, chickenpox
○Alcohol consumption can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome
●Genetic disruptions:
○Can be from disorders or random errors in cell division
●Prematurity:
○Being born prior to 36 weeks
○Viability point
Motor Development
●Infants are born with a large set of automatic motor behaviors (reflexes)
○Sucking and rooting reflexes
●Motor behaviors- bodily motions that occur as a result of self-initiated force that moves
the bones and muscles
●Wide range in the rate and manner in which children achieve motor milestones
●Influenced by physical maturity, as well as cultural and parenting practices
●But they are always achieved in the same developmental sequence
Physical Development in Childhood
●The relative size of our body parts changes dramatically during our first 20 years
Adolescence
●Transitional period between childhood and adulthood commonly associated with the
teenage years
●This is when our bodies reach full maturity, in part due to hormonal release
○Estrogens and androgens
○Triggers puberty
Physical Development in Adults
●Most of us reach our physical peaks in early 20s
○Strength, coordination, speed of cognitive processing, physical flexibility
●Declines in this begin shortly after, including muscle, sensory processes, and fertility
Theories of Cognitive Development
●Cognition: thinking, learning, communication, and memory
●Cognitive Development: how cognition changes over the life span
●Theories differ in three ways:
○Stage-like vs. continuous changes in understanding
○Domain-general vs. domain-specific
○Principal source of learning
Jean Piaget
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Document Summary
The study of how behavior changes over the life span. Post hoc fallacy- logical error where you assume that a causes b, just because b came after a. Bidirectional influences- children"s development influences their experiences, but their experiences also influence their development. Cohort effects- sets of people who lived during one period can differ in some systematic way from sets of people who lived during a different period. Cross-sectional: researchers examine people of different ages at a single point in time. Longitudinal: track development of same group of participants over time. Normative approach- to understand what"s normal, or how something"s supposed to go. Early input from the world exerts a significant impact on development. But so does all other input throughout life. Myths of infant determinism and childhood fragility. Infant determinism- everyone"s seems to assume early experiences determine exactly how you"ll turn out as an adult.
