Developmental Psychology:
Infancy to Adolescence
Ch 11
Psyc103
Dr. Jen Wright
infant brain
one of the last organs to develop…
How much brain
development has been
completed at birth?
A) 100%
B) 75%
C) 25%
developmental processes
patterns of brain growth
effect of deprivation
effect of deprivation
importance of sleep
• REM sleep – critical for neural
development in brain, esp. for activitydependent development
– E.g. visual system
– Facilitates learning/memory
• Sleep deprivation linked with later
problems
– E.g. ADHD, learning disabilities
• Babies most at risk of disruption
– Premature infants in IC units
importance of sleep
stress and brain development
• Exposure to excessive stress hormones is bad for
brain development.
• Early symptoms of PTSD
• The brain can become incapable of producing
normal stress responses.
– Hyper-vigilance (Ghosts in the Nursery)
– Emotional flatness
• Physical/emotional abuse and neglect can be
equally damaging.
attachment
attachment theory
• Attachment refers to the close,
emotional bond between an infant
and his/her primary caregiver.
• Psychoanalytic Theory (Freud)
– Driven by oral needs during the first
year
– Emphasized early experiences on later
outcomes
• Behaviorist Perspective (Skinner)
– Driven by the need for food
– Learns to associate contact with
mother with food
• Mother’s closeness continually reinforced
attachment theory
• Ethology (Lorenz)
– Rooted in Darwin’s
evolutionary theory
– Focused on the adaptive
value of behavior
– Imprinting
• Bond necessary for survival
primary criticisms
• Love (i.e., attachment) seen as
secondary to instinctive or survival
needs
• John Bowlby: observations of
children in institutionalized care
– Harlow believed that the need for
love and affection was necessary for
survival
Harlow’s monkeys (1958)
• Early work with monkeys
• Cloth & wire mother
– Only one equipped with feeding
apparatus
– Monkeys randomly assigned
– Observed for 5 months
• Both groups preferred cloth
mother
24
Mean
hours
per
day
18
.
.
.
.
. .
.
12
.
.
6
0
Infant monkey fed on
cloth mother
Infant monkey fed on
wire mother
Hours per day spent
with cloth mother
Contact Time with
Wire and Cloth
Surrogate Mothers
.
.. . .. .. . Hours
per day spent with
wire mother
.
.
1-5
11-15
21-25
6-10
16-20
Age (in days)
Harlow’s monkeys (1958)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec6
dAI
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caM4f6ZZBE&feature=related
attachment theory
• Serves 2 purposes
– Secure base
– Internal working model
• Mary Ainsworth (1979)
– Developed Strange Situation
– Work revealed 4 types of attachment behavior
•
•
•
•
Securely Attached
Insecure Avoidant
Insecure Resistant
Insecure Disorganized
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU
internal working model
cultural variation
social learning
facial recognition
mirror neurons
• Found in the frontal and parietal
lobes
• Fire when you
A) You engage in an activity (reaching out
one’s hand)
B) You observe someone else engaging in
the same activity.
C) Both
D) Neither
• True/False: Fire more strongly when
action has some purpose or content
– reaching out one’s hand for a cup.
emotional development
crying
• Crying – communication of emotion
• Response to distress
– Development of emotional self-regulation
• Mastery of environment – agency
• Biofeedback loop
• Soothing
–
–
–
–
–
Swaddling – tight wrapping of baby in cloth
Touch
Sweet taste
Soft, rhythmic sounds
Vibration
crying disorders
• Colic (1 in 10 infants; birth – 12 weeks)
– Extended periods of intense crying
– Cause unknown
• Digestive problems
• Immature nervous system
– Hyper-sensitivity
• Prolonged crying (beyond 12 weeks)
– Exhibit developmental and behavioral disorders
– PTSD symptoms in babies
• Stress hormones damage hippocampus
• Cause hyper-vigilance
early emotional expression
• Earliest emotion
– global arousal states of attraction and withdrawal
– set the stage for further development
– develop into well-organized, sustained signals
• Basic emotions
– emotions that can be directly inferred from facial
expressions.
• happiness, interest
• surprise, fear, anger
• sadness, disgust
Basic emotions:
A) Universal across all human cultures
B) Present in other advanced species
C) Include guilt, shame, embarrassment
D) A&B
E) All of the above
emotional self-regulation
•
Strategies for adjusting emotional state to a
comfortable level of intensity in order to
accomplish goals
•
•
•
•
Infants: withdrawal, distress, crying -- need soothing
4 mos: shift focus of attention
1 year: approach/retreat from stimulus
Parents response to distress is important
•
Sympathetic
– child more easily soothed, more self-regulated
•
Non-responsive (wait to intervene)
– child enters into rapid, intense distress
– harder to soothe
– doesn’t develop self-regulation
emotional self-regulation
• When an infant’s needs are met, they can
focus on the world around them and explore.
– Their brains take in and adapt to stimulation from
the external world.
• When they aren’t met, they become fixated
on trying to get their needs met.
– They stop exploring and shut out other
stimulation from the external world.
emotions of others
• Emotional contagion: babies match the
emotional expressions of caregiver
– Still face experiment
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
• Social referencing: relying on another person’s
emotional reaction to appraise situation
– Visual cliff
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyxMq11xWzM
Mirror neurons help infants experience others’ emotions:
A) Yes, because they help them match emotional facial expressions
B) Yes, because they stimulate a matching internal experience
C) Yes, because they allow infants to empathize with others.
D) A&B
E) No, because mn’s are only involved in imitation of physical behavior
emotions and self-development
Emotions are important in the emergence of selfawareness
• Self-efficacy
– awareness that you can affect events in your surrounding
• Self-control
– learning to modulate emotional reactions
• Self-concept
– episodic memories
– external vs. internal characteristics
emergence of the conscience
• Self-regulatory emotions
–
–
–
–
Guilt/Shame
Embarrassment
Pride
Disgust
• Awareness of expectations/reactions of others
• Important distinction between shame and guilt.
• What is the difference?
• Why do we call these emotions “moral emotions”?
– moral awareness - sense of good vs. bad
– Inhibition of bad behavior, promotion of good behavior
empathy
• May be more important for moral
socialization than negative emotions
• Global distress in infants
– Emotional contagion
• Egocentric empathy (2 yrs)
• Non-egocentric empathy (3 yrs+)
• Cognitive empathy (middle childhood)
– Abstract perspective-taking
temperament
temperament
• Constitutionally based individual differences in
–
–
–
–
Emotion
Motor function
Attentional reactivity
Self-regulation
• Influences the way that children develop,
display, and control emotions
– Foundation for later personality
temperament styles
• Types
– Easy
– Difficult
– “Slow to warm up”
Which child will be harder
to reward/punish?
A) Easy child
B) Difficult child
• Differences in sociability
• Differences in punishment/reward
temperament styles
• What else affects the development of
temperament?
• Gender
• Cultural differences
• Goodness of fit (with
parents/environment)
body development
eating habits
• 2-6 year olds eat less than infants and older
children.
• “Just right” phenomenon – picky eaters!
– Like: salty/sweet foods
– Dislike: bitter/sour foods
• Learning what is appropriate and not
appropriate to eat
• Early signs of disgust
– Infants show “disgust” facial expression
– Strong food preferences
role of disgust
• Protection against dangerous substances
– Poisonous foods often bitter
– Rotten foods often sour
– Disgust expression functions as warning
• Protection against contamination
– Children not sensitive to contamination until early
childhood
• Protection against deformity and disease
role of disgust
• Higher-order disgust
• Physical contamination  social
contamination
– 7-8 year olds “cooties”
• Physical contamination  moral
contamination
• Examples?
obesity
• Early signs of obesity as young as 2 years old
• Obesity rates among 2- to 5-year-olds
– rose to 14% for the years 2003-2006
– compared with 5% in 1980
• Need less food than did as an infant
– Problem for forcing child to “clean their plate”
– Especially w/ desert as an incentive!
• Attraction to salty and sweet foods
• Other contributors?
consequences
• Type II diabetes
– 50% of some children in low-income areas
• Bone development problems
– Stunted hip/leg bone growth
•
•
•
•
Cardiovascular disease
HBP, High cholesterol
Lower IQ
Obesity programs for toddlers?
– http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=5602922&page=1
developing cognition
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWW1vp
z1ybo&feature=related
sort by color
sort by shape
• Increase in “executive function”
• Results in increased impulse control
– Delayed gratification
– Perseverance
• Results in ability to override current intentions
given new information
– Color/shape card sorting game
• Memory development
– Still better memory for content than context
• No memory of when/where something is learned
Maxi “false-belief” tasks
?
?
succeeding at the false belief task…
Requires understanding that Maxi
• A) has a mental state (belief) that is different
from the child’s mental state.
• B) has a mental state (belief) that is different
from reality.
• C) neither
• D) both
appearance-reality tasks
• What is the driving force behind this
development?
• Brain maturation
– Plasticity
• Cognitive exploration
– Piaget
– Vygotsky
Piaget
• Child as Scientists
• Children learn on their own
• Children are intrinsically
motivated to learn
• Language and education
play only minimal roles
Vygotsky
• Children as Apprentices
• Child learns through social
interaction
• Children are socially
motivated to learn
• Language and education
play central roles
• Children as
apprentices
– guided
participation
scaffolding
• temporary support
that is tailored to a
learner’s needs and
abilities
• aimed at helping the
learner master the
next task in a given
learning process
zone of proximal development (ZPD)
• The skills that we can
exercise only with
assistance, not yet
independently.
• ZPD applies to the ideas or
cognitive skills we are
close to mastering as well
as to more apparent skills.
• Examples?
Get into the “zone” –
otherwise known as “flow”.
parenting
parenting styles
• Authoritarian: restrictive style in which parents demand
obedience and respect
• Parent places firm limits and does not allow discussion
• Parent rigidly enforces rules but rarely explains them
• Children are often unhappy, fearful, and anxious
• Authoritative: encourages children to be independent
while placing limits and controls on actions
• Extensive verbal give-and-take
• Parents expect mature, independent, age-appropriate behavior
• Children are often cheerful, self-controlled, and self-reliant
parenting styles
• Neglectful: parent is very uninvolved in child’s life
• Children feel that other aspects of the parent’s life are more
important than they are
• Children tend to be socially incompetent, immature, and have low
self-esteem
• Indulgent: parents are highly involved but place few
demands or controls on the child
• Children never learn to control their own behavior and always
expect to get their way
Two Dimensions:
• Responsiveness
• Demandingness
The best parenting style is:
A) Indulgent
B) Authoritarian
C) Neglectful
D) Authoritative
Authoritative parenting
mirrors Vygotsky’s zone of
proximal development.