Myers’ PSYCHOLOGY
(7th Ed)
READ
Chapter 4
Human
Development
Psychology: Movie Review
extra credit
50 First Dates
The Fisher King
As Good As It Gets
What about Bob?
The Breakfast Club
Benny and Joon
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Dead Poet’s Society
Psycho
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
3 pages
typed
doublespaced
Human
Development
Human Development
 Developmental Psychology
 a branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive
and social change throughout the life span
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
Life is sexually transmitted
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
sex organs develop in the second month
40 days
45 days
2 months 4 months
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
 Zygote
 the fertilized egg
 enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division
 develops into an embryo
 Embryo
 the developing human organism from 2
weeks through 2nd month
 Fetus
 the developing human organism from 9
weeks after conception to birth
Human
Development
•Prenatal Development
•Conception to birth
• Infancy
•0-2 years
•Childhood
•2-12 years
•Adolescence
•12-18 years
•Adulthood
•18 years to death
What is development?
 Physical development
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Weight
Height
Refinement of motor skills
Physiological changes such as puberty and
aging
Infancy and Childhood:
Physical Development
 Babies only 3
months old can
learn that
kicking moves
a mobile--and
can retain that
learning for a
month (RoveeCollier, 1989,
1997).
What is development?
 Cognitive development
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thinking
memory
Acquisition of language and language skills
problem-solving
What is development?
 Personality & social development
 personality
 social functioning
 emotions
Human Development:
Methods of study
 Longitudinal Method
 observes the same group of people
repeatedly over time
 may last for years, decades, or over an
entire lifetime of a group of study
participants
 researchers conduct longitudinal studies
to examine how personality and
behavior change over time
Human Development:
Methods of study
 Cross-sectional Method
 because of the limitations of longitudinal
studies, a study in which different
people of different ages are compared
with one another
 researchers compare groups of people
who are similar in background but
different in age
Child development: “A
little history”
 Middle-ages in Christian Europe
 infants were considered mini-adults
 development was only a matter of physical
growth
Child development: “A
little history”
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
 children are innately good
 naturally endowed with a “blue-print” for
development infants were considered miniadults
Child development: “A
little history”
 John Locke
 Nurture, or environment, was stressed as
important for development
 “Tabula Rasa”- children are born as a
“blank slate” and that environmental
experiences would determine their course of
development
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
 Rooting Reflex
 tendency to open mouth, and search for nipple when
touched on the cheek
 Sucking Reflex
 the rhythmic sucking action that occurs when an
object is placed in the baby’s mouth
 Palmar grasp Reflex
 the curling of the fingers around an object that
touches the palm of the baby’s hand
Infancy and Childhood:
Physical Development
 Maturation
 biological growth
processes that
enable orderly
changes in
behavior
 relatively
uninfluenced by
experience
At birth
3 months
15 months
Cortical Neurons
Visual Cliff apparatus:
Depth Perception
Visual Cliff
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
 Preferences
 human voices and
faces
 facelike images-->
 smell and sound of
mother
preferred
Prenatal Development
and the Newborn
 Teratogens
 agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can
reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal
development and cause harm
 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
 physical and cognitive abnormalities in children
caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking
 symptoms include misproportioned head
Infancy and Childhood:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development
 Schema
 a concept or framework that
organizes and interprets
information
 Assimilation
 interpreting one’s new experience
in terms of one’s existing
schemas
Infancy and Childhood:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development
 Accommodation
 adapting one’s current
understandings (schemas) to
incorporate new information
 Cognition
 All the mental activities associated
with thinking, knowing,
remembering, and communicating
Infancy and Childhood:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development
 Object Permanence
 the awareness that things continue to exist
even when not perceived
Infancy and Childhood:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development
 Conservation
 the principle that properties such as mass,
volume, and number remain the same despite
changes in the forms of objects
Infancy and Childhood:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development
 Egocentrism
 the inability of the preoperational child to take
another’s point of view
 Theory of Mind
 people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental
states- about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts
and the behavior these might predict
 Autism
 a disorder that appears in childhood
 Marked by deficient communication, social interaction
and understanding of others’ states of mind
Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development
Typical Age
Range
Description
of Stage
Developmental
Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years
Sensorimotor
Experiencing the world through
senses and actions (looking,
touching, mouthing)
•Object permanence
•Stranger anxiety
About 2 to 6 years
Preoperational
Representing things
with words and images
but lacking logical reasoning
•Pretend play
•Egocentrism
•Language development
About 7 to 11 years
Concrete operational
•Conservation
Thinking logically about concrete
•Mathematical
events; grasping concrete analogies
transformations
and performing arithmetical operations
About 12 through
adulthood
Formal operational
Abstract reasoning
•Abstract logic
•Potential for
moral reasoning
Social Development
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: Stages of Dying
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Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Giraffe stages of Death & Dying video
Social Development
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: Stages of Dying
Terminally ill and bereaved people do not go
through predictable stages.
 Given similar circumstances, some people
grieve for a long time while others grieve more
briefly.
Social Development
 Critical Period
 an optimal period shortly after birth
when an organism’s exposure to certain
stimuli or experiences produces proper
development
 Imprinting
 the process by which certain animals
form attachments during a critical period
very early in life
Social Development
 Harlow’s Surrogate
Mother Experiments
 Monkeys preferred
contact with the
comfortable cloth
mother, even while
feeding from the
nourishing wire
mother
Social Development
 Monkeys raised
by artificial
mothers were
terror-stricken
when placed in
strange
situations
without their
surrogate
mothers.
Social Development
 Attachment
 an emotional tie with another person
 shown in young children by their seeking closeness
to the caregiver and displaying distress on
separation
Social Development
 Stranger Anxiety
 fear of strangers that infants commonly display
 beginning by about 8 months of age
Social Development
Psychologist Mary Ainsworth, Ph.D.
The Strange Situation
 Secure type- 70%
 Insecure-avoidant type- 20 %
 Insecure-resistant type- 10 %
 Disorganized (disoriented) attachment
Effects of attachment
 Secure attachment predicts social competence
 children identified as securely attached between the
ages of 12 and 18 months were more outgoing,
more confident, and more persistent in solving
challenging tasks when restudied as 2 and 3 year
olds
Effects of attachment
 Deprivation of attachment is linked to negative
outcomes
 Babies who grow up in institutions without a
caregiver’s regular stimulation and attention do not
form normal attachments and often appear
withdrawn and frightened
 physical and emotional abuse often disrupts
attachment as well
 While most abused children do not grow up to be
violent criminals or abusive parents, most abusive
parents were battered or emotionally abused as
children
Effects of attachment
 A responsive environment helps most infants
recover from attachment disruption
 children who have been neglected but who are later
adopted between 6 to 16 months of age at first
have trouble sleeping, eating, and relating to their
new parents
 However, by age 10, this same group of adopted
children showed virtually no negative effects from
the earlier neglect
Effects of attachment
 The evidence is consistent and clear about the
effects of attachment:
 children who have a warm relationship with familiar,
responsive caregivers reap the benefits of secure attachment
 Most often, attachment is a direct result of the parenting
children receive
Social Development: ChildRearing Practices
 Authoritarian
These parents are not very loving and warm
parents impose rules and expect obedience
Discipline is strict and often physical
Communication is high from parent to child
but low from child to parent
 Maturity expectations are high
 “Don’t interrupt.” “Why? Because I said so.”
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Social Development: ChildRearing Practices
 Permissive
 These parents are loving and warm, but they
rarely discipline their children
 submit to children’s desires, make few
demands, use little punishment
 Communication is low from parent to child,
but high from child to parent
 Expectations of maturity are low
Social Development: ChildRearing Practices
 Authoritative
these parents are loving and warm
Discipline is moderate
both demanding and responsive
Lots of talking & negotiating
These parents exert control by setting rules and
enforcing them, but explain reasons behind the rules
 Communication is high from parent to child and from
child to parent
 Maturity expectations are moderate
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Social Development: ChildRearing Practices
 Does one form of parenting have a clear
advantage over the other two?
 Authoritative parents (the third style) often produce
children high in:
 Self-esteem
 Self-reliance
 Social competence
 Authoritative parents produce children that are more
successful, happy, and generous with others
 Authoritative parents produce children feel a sense of
control over their lives making them more motivated
and self-confident
Human Development
 Freud
 developed the
first
comprehensive
theory on
personality
development
The Psychoanalytic
Perspective
 Unconscious
 according to Freud, a reservoir of
mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes,
feelings and memories
 contemporary viewpoint- information
processing of which we are unaware
Chapter 15 (p.596-599)
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Stage
Focus
Oral
(0-18 months)
Pleasure centers on the mouth-sucking, biting, chewing
Anal
(18-36 months)
Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder
elimination; coping with demands for
control
Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with
incestuous sexual feelings
Phallic
(3-6 years)
Latency
(6 to puberty)
Dormant sexual feelings
Genital
(puberty on)
Maturation of sexual interests
Chapter 15 (p.596-599)
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
 Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
 the childhood stages of
development during which the
id’s pleasure-seeking energies
focus on distinct erogenous
zones
Personality Structure
 Id (follows the pleasure principle)
 contains a reservoir of unconscious
psychic energy
 strives to satisfy basic sexual and
aggressive drives
 operates on the pleasure principle,
demanding immediate gratification
Personality Structure
 Ego (follows the reality principle)
 the largely conscious, “executive” part
of personality
 mediates among the demands of the id,
superego, and reality
 operates on the reality principle,
satisfying the id’s desires in ways that
will realistically bring pleasure rather
than pain
Personality Structure
 Superego ( our internal moral
guardian; our conscience)
 the part of personality that presents
internalized ideals
 provides standards for judgement (the
conscience) and for future aspirations
Human Development
 Oedipus Complex
 a boy’s sexual desires toward his
mother and feelings of jealousy and
hatred for the rival father
 Electra Complex
a girl’s sexual desires toward her
father and feelings of jealousy and
hatred for the rival mother
Human Development
 Identification
 the process by which children incorporate
their parents’ values into their developing
superegos
 Fixation
 a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies
at an earlier psychosexual stage, where
conflicts were unresolved
anal-compulsive (a.k.a.- anal-retentive)
 a child who had difficulty with toilet-training
can become overly concerned with neatness,
rules, and control
Free Response Essay:
Human Development
 Paragraph 1- What is a stage theory?
(p. 74-75)
What is a stage theory?
 Stage theories emphasize the idea that human development occurs in a
series of very specific phases, periods, or points in the growth process of a
child.
 According to stage theorists, children are developing cognitively, sexually,
emotionally, and morally as they pass through the stages of childhood into
adolescence and later into adulthood.
Free Response Essay:
Human Development
 Paragraph 2- Explain the main focus of
Piaget’s stage theory (p. 63-68)
 Paragraph 3- What would Piaget identify as
a major issue or concern for a seven-yearold child?
Free Response Essay:
Human Development
 Paragraph 4- Explain the main focus of
Freud’s stage theory (p. 480-486)
 Paragraph 5- What would Freud identify as
a major issue or concern for a seven-yearold child?
Free Response Essay:
Human Development
 Paragraph 6- Explain the main focus of
Erikson’s stage theory (p. 88-93)
 Paragraph 7- What would Erikson identify
as a major issue or concern for a sevenyear-old child?
Free Response Essay:
Human Development
 Paragraph 8- Explain the main focus of
Kohlberg’s stage theory (p. 85-88)
 Paragraph 9- What would Kohlberg identify
as a major issue or concern for a sevenyear-old child?