AP Psychology Chapter 9 Developmental Psychology

Chapter 9: Developmental Psychology ● Research Methods o Cross-Sectional Research: uses participants of different ages to compare how certain variables may change over the life span 1. Produces quick results 2. May be affected by historical events or cultural trends o Longitudinal Research: examines one group of participants over time 1. Time consuming, expensive 2. Precisely measures the effects of development on a specific group Prenatal Development ● Prenatal Stages o Conception: an egg drops and roughly 200 million sperm penetrate it o Zygote: a cluster of cells that rapidly divide for 2 weeks and after 1, attaches to the uterine wall 1. The outer part becomes the placenta 2. 1 out of 5 pregnancies end here o Embryo: lasts a month and a half, vital organs develop (heart, brain, spine), most vulnerable stage (miscarriages, birth defects) o Fetal: lasts from the end of the second month until birth 1. By 6 months, the child reaches the age of viability (other organs develop enough for theoretical sustenance) 2. The baby can hear and recognize sounds and respond to light ● Prenatal Influences on Development o Genetics: determine which abilities we are born with (ex: process of developing motor skills) o Teratogens: can cause harm if ingested by the mother and pass through the placental barrier o Alcohol: heavy drinking during pregnancy can cause FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome), which leads to mental retardation 1. Fetal alcohol effect: caused by moderate drinking, leads to learning disabilities and behavioral problems o Psychoactive drugs: newborns can share their mother’s drug addiction and withdrawal symptoms can lead to death o Nutrition: helps support the baby’s growth, malnutrition links to heart disease and other psychiatric disorders ● Motor Development o Reflexes: inborn, automatic responses to specific stimuli 1. Rooting reflex: when touched on cheek, baby turns head and seeks to put the object in his mouth 2. Sucking reflex: when object is placed in baby’s mouth, he will suck it 3. Grasping reflex: a baby will try to grasp an object that is placed on his hand or foot 4. Moro reflex: when startled, baby will fling out and then retract his limbs, making his or herself as small as possible 5. Babinski reflex: when a baby’s foot is stroked, he will spread out the toes 6. Motor Development: ● Roll over: five and a half months old ● Stand: eight-nine months ● Walk alone: fifteen months ● The Newborn’s Senses o Hearing: babies can hear before birth and minutes after birth, baby will try to turn head toward mother’s voice (hearing is the dominant sense) o Taste and smell: same basic preferences as we do (like loving sugar) o Vision: can see well 8-12 inches in front of them, everything else is a blur 1. normal vision by 12 months old 2. prefer face-like objects Parenting ● Attachment Theory: the reciprocal relationship between caregiver and child o Harry Harlow raised baby monkeys with two artificial wire frame figure “monkeys”, one figure was fitted with a bottle the infant could feed from and the other wrapped in soft material 1. when frightened, infants preferred soft mom, which demonstrated the importance of physical comfort in formation of attachment 2. monkeys raised by real mothers were less frightened in new situations o Mary Ainsworth observed infants’ reactions when placed into strange situations when parents left for a short time (Strange Situation) 1. Secure attachment: explored environment when parents were present, distressed when parents were absent ● 66% of babies in experiment ● came to parents when they returned 2. Anxious avoidant: explored environment, resisted being held by parents ● 21% of participants ● don’t go to parents for comfort when they return ● involves strict parenting, fear, self-image issues, and hiding emotions 3. Anxious/ambivalent: may show extreme stress when parents leave but still resist their comfort when they return ● 12% of participants ● involves strict parenting, unpredictable love, and predisposition to outbursts 4. Anxious disorganized: involves confusion about love and safety (such as feeling unworthy of love) & difficulty connecting with others ● Parenting Styles o Authoritarian: set strict standards for their children’s behavior with no discussion about the rationale behind them 1. Punishment is used more than reinforcement 2. Children are less trusting and more withdrawn with others o Permissive: don’t set clear guidelines for their children, rules are constantly changed and rarely enforced 1. Permissive/indulgent: parents have few rules and expectations but still give the kids what they want (very free and allowing) 2. Permissive/negligent: parents are absent/lack responsiveness (some kids become self-sufficient, some just struggle) 3. Children have emotional control problems o Authoritative: set consistent standards for their children that are both reasonable and explained, encourages their children’s independence 1. praise as often as they punish 2. Children are more socially and academically capable Stage Theories ● Continuity vs. Discontinuity o Continuity: develop at a steady rate from birth to death o Discontinuity: development happens in fits and the rate is variable ● Sigmund Freud: we develop through four psychosexual stages and if we fail to resolve a significant problem in our lives in one of these stages, we become fixated in the stage & remain occupied with behaviors associated with that stage o Oral stage: infants seek pleasure through their mouths (put many objects into mouth) 1. Fixation: overeating, smoking, childlike dependence on things and people o Anal stage: develops during toilet training 1. Fixation: retentive- overly controlling or expulsive- out of control o Phallic stage: babies realize their gender/Oedipus complex and Electra complex (obsession with parent of opposite sex) 1. Fixation: problems in relationships o Latency stage: period of calm/low psychosexual energy (age 6- puberty) o Genital stage: focus of sexual pleasure is genitals, remains so forever 1. Fixation: normal Fixation: a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking activities ● Erik Erikson: A neo-freudian who believed in the basics of Freud’s theory but adapted it to fit his own observations and make the psychosexual stage theory based on the idea that our personalities are profoundly influenced by experiences with others o Trust vs. Mistrust: babies need to learn that they can trust their caregivers to fulfill their needs and that their requests are effective 1. sense of trust or mistrust carries for life o Autonomy vs. shame/doubt: toddlers begin to exert their will over their bodies (autonomy) 1. potty training is an early effort at this 2. learn to control temper tantrums 3. if we learn how to control ourselves and our environment in reasonable ways, we develop a healthy will and can control our reactions to social challenges o Initiative vs. guilt: natural curiosity about our surroundings 1. asking many questions 2. if our curiosity is encouraged, we will feel comfortable expressing it always but if not, we feel guilty and will not express it o Industry vs. inferiority: starting in first grade, we are asked to produce work that is evaluated 1. if we perform as well as our peers, we feel competent but if not, inferiority complex and anxiety about our performance in that area o Identity vs. role confusion: in adolescence, our main social task is to discover what social identity we are most comfortable with 1. identity crisis: if an adolescent doesn’t figure out a sense of self, they might have one later in life o Intimacy vs. isolation: young adults figure out how to balance time and effort between work, relationships, and self 1. the patterns we choose become relatively permanent o Generativity vs stagnation: we look critically at our life path and try to ensure that our lives are going the way we want 1. if not, we try to change it by controlling others or changing our identity o Integrity vs. despair: toward the end of life, we look back at our accomplishments and decide if we’re satisfied 1. if so, we can step outside society and offer wisdom but if not, we may fall into despair over lost opportunities ● James Marica: the criteria for attainment of a mature identity are based on crisis and commitment o Crisis/exploration: actively examining existential questions like values, goals, and beliefs o Commitment: the extent to which an individual is aligned with goals, values, and beliefs Cognitive Development ● Jean Piaget: hypothesized children think in similar ways which differ from the ways of adults, leading to the theory of cognitive development (specific progression of knowledge) o Theory of cognitive development: children view the world through schemata, which are cognitive rules we use to interpret the world o Cognitive equilibrium: harmony between thought processes and environment o Assimilation: we incorporate our experiences into an existing schemata and when info violates our schemata, we make it fit into it o Accommodation: adapting existing schema/knowledge to fit new information o Piaget’s four stages: 1. Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years): we explore the world through our senses, behavior is governed by reflexes until we develop our first cognitive schemata ● major challenge- developing object permanence (the idea that objects continue to exist even when out of our sensory range) 2. Preoperational stage (2 years-7 years): object permanence prepares us to use symbols to represent real world objects but there is no sense of conservation (a change in shape makes them assume change in mass) ● the beginning of language (we speak our first words) ● animism: assigning human traits to nonhuman objects ● centration: they have the tendency to only focus on one part of something ● egocentric: can only see world from their perspective ● forming theory of mind: the ability to understand others’ feelings and thoughts as well as their own and predicting behavior 3. Concrete operational (7/8 years-12 years): we learn to think more logically about complex relationships between different characteristics of objects ● Conservation: the realization that properties of objects remain the same even when their shapes change (ex. volume, area, number) ● Decreased egocentrism, decentration, new conservation 4. Formal operations (12 years-adulthood): we gain metacognition (the ability to think about the way we think) and abstract reasoning ● hypothesis testing: someone in this stage can reason and form a hypothesis ● we can manipulate objects in our minds without physically seeing them ● we can contrast ideas in our minds without real world correlates o Criticisms of Piaget: Information Processing Model ▪ He underestimated children- many go through the stages faster and enter them earlier than he thought ▪ His tests relied too heavily on language use; results biased in favor of older kids; also too rigid ● Lev Vygotsky: sociocultural perspective, zone of proximal development (what people can do with help, in between what they can’t do at all and what they can) o Countered Piaget’s notion that development precedes learning and said learning and development occur together; emphasized parenting, culture, and language ● Information-processing model: a more continuous alternative to Piaget’s stage theory o our abilities to memorize, interpret, and perceive gradually develop as we age, not in stages (ex: attention span) o could explain some apparent cognitive differences Piaget attributed to different cognitive stages Moral Development ● Lawrence Kohlberg: escribed how our ability to reason about ethical situations changes over our lives by asking children to think about specific moral situations o Heinz dilemma: Heinz must make a moral choice about whether to steal a drug he can’t afford to save his wife’s life o Preconventional: youngest children, they focus on making the decision most likely to avoid punishment ▪ moral reasoning limited to how the choice affects themselves o Conventional: look at the moral choice through the eyes of others and make the choice based on how others will view them ▪ try to follow conventional standards of right and wrong (ex: lawful choices) o Postconventional: moral reasoning that examines the rights and values involved in the choice ▪ self-defined ethical principles involved ▪ the morality of societal rules are examined, not blindly accepted o Criticisms of Kohlberg ▪ Carol Gilligan: said Kohlberg developed the model based on responses of boys and that there gender differences in development of morals and ethics: according to her research, boys have a more absolute view of what is moral and girls pay more attention to the situational factors Gender and Development ● Biopsychological (Neuropsychological) Theory: concentrates on the nature element in the nature/nurture combo that produces our gender role o behaviors that a culture associates with a gender o look for more subtle gender differences o Women have larger corpus callosums, which may affect how the brain hemispheres communicate ● Psychodynamic Theory (Freud): always focuses on the unconscious o Oedipus complex and Electra complex (obsession with parent of opposite gender) o Proper gender development: child realizes that they can’t beat their same sex parents for the attention of the other parent so child identifies with the same sex parent instead ● Social-Cognitive Theory: concentrating on the effects of society and our own thoughts about gender on role development o Social psychologists- look at how we react to boys and girls differently o Cognitive psychologists- focus on the internal interpretations we make about the gender messages we get from the environment o Gender-schema theory- we internalize messages about gender into cognitive rules about how each gender should behave Intelligence ● Intelligence theories o Spearman’s theory (S+S+S=G) ▪ S factor: specific intelligence/the ability to excel in certain areas ▪ G factor: general ability to reason and problem solve ▪ Factor analysis: statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items, used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s general intelligence o Thurstone: 56 personality tests to subjects, then used them to identify 7 clusters of mental abilities ▪ High scores in one usually meant good in the others (backed up g factor) o Howard Gardner’s theory: 8 types of intelligence ▪ Linguistic (ex: J.K. Rowling) ▪ Logical (ex: Einstein) ▪ Musical (ex: Motzart) ▪ Spatial (ex: Picasso) ▪ Bodily-kinesthetic (ex: Lebron) ▪ Intrapersonal- knowledge of the self (ex: introspective people) ▪ Interpersonal (ex: Michelle Obama) ▪ Naturalist (ex: Darwin) o Sternberg’s theory: 3 intelligences ▪ Analytic: assessed via intelligence tests ▪ Creative: arts, adaptation ● Expertise (knowing a lot about a lot, good knowledge base) ● Imaginative thinking (unique idea) ● Venturesome personality (new experiences, risk, perseverance) ● Intrinsic motivation ● Creative environment (sparks, supports, refines ideas) ▪ Practical: everyday knowledge, street smarts ● Intelligence tests: o Alfred Binet developed the first test ▪ Mental age: score typical of a given performance for an age ▪ IQ=mental age/chronological age x 100 (100 is average score) ▪ Doesn’t really work for adults since ages are not as distinct o David Wechsler made the current IQ test (WAIS) ▪ The tests can be biased towards white Americans ▪ Environmental effects have impact on intelligence o Standardization: consistent and standard test administration which allows for a comparison group whose scores allow comparison with others o Validity (accuracy) and reliability (consistency) o Low scores: ▪ 50-70: people can do basic functions (mild) ▪ 35-50: 2nd grade level abilities (moderate) ▪ 20-35: simple work tasks with close supervision ▪ <20: need constant aid (extreme) o Causes of low IQ: ▪ Unhealthy conditions (like lead poisoning) ▪ Deficits (malnutrition, no health care) ▪ Biological causes (down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome) ▪ Complications at birth (lack of oxygen, disease in womb) ▪ Genetics (twins raised separately had a .7 correlation) o Flynn effect: substantial and long-sustained increase in IQ (Scores from 1930present) o Early intervention: early neglect from caregivers has children unable to do things, low IQ Emotional Intelligence ● John Mayer defined it as the ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions o Perceiving emotions: labelling o Understanding: predicting, empathizing o Managing: handling your own, reacting o Using: knowing how to help others and put it into play