Ch. 4. - The Developing
Person

Cognitive Development
• Jean Piaget
 Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
 ObjectPermanence
 Preoperational (2-7 years)
 Conservation of Matter
 Egocentric
 Concrete operations (7-12 years)
 Concrete objects
 Formal operations (12 to adult)
 Abstract thought

Social Development
• How do we develop social bonds?
 Body contact
 Familiarity
 Self Concept

Body contact
• Harlow monkey studies
• Wire mother & terrycloth mother
 Preferred nonnourishing cloth mother

Familiarity
• Critical period
• Imprinting
 Birds forming attachment during the critical period

Parental attachment
• Toddlers with secure attachments to parents:
 More sociable
 More enthusiastic and persistent in tackling challenging tasks.

Self concept
• Parenting
 Authoritarian
 Impose rules & expect obedience
 Permissive
 Go along with child’s desires
 Authoritative
 Discusses and negotiates rules
 Produce more self-confident children

Moral Development
• Kohlberg - Moral development
• Preconventional
 Obey to gain rewards or avoid punishment
• Conventional
 Respect for laws and rules simply because they are there
• Postconventional
 Abstract reasoning-rights and ethics

Morality and social influence
• Social influence effects whether or not we will act on our morality.
• Eg. The best predictor of a H.S. student using drugs, is the number of the student’s friends that use drugs.

Erickson’s eight stages of
Psychosocial Development
• Infancy = Trust vs mistrust
• Toddler = Autonomy vs Shame & doubt
• Preschooler = Initiative vs guilt
• Elementary school =
 Competence vs inferiority
• Adolescence = Identity vs. role confusion
• Young adult = Intimacy vs. isolation
• Middle adult = Generativity vs. stagnation
• Late adulthood = Integrity vs. despair

Adulthood and aging
• Alzheimer’s disease
 Deterioration of the brain
 Effects memory and thinking
 Difficulty in naming familiar objects or people
 Linked to genetic abnormalities
 Linked to activity (Use it or lose it)

Aging and memory
• Crystallized intelligence
 Accumulated knowledge
 Increases with age
• Fluid intelligence
 Ability to reason and solve problems
 Decreases with age

Aging and Society
• The “social clock”
 The feeling that events in life regularly occur at specific ages.
 Graduation, marriage, children, retirement, etc.
 Varies greatly from culture to culture
 No biological basis for timing of events

Loving and society
• Should you live together to reduce your chances of divorce?
 Couples who live together before marriage are
 initially less committed to marriage
 Increasingly less marriage supportive while cohabiting

Late adulthood
• Erickson’s theory
 Integrity achieved in late adulthood
 One’s life has been meaningful