UNIT III
CHAPTER 12
Lecture 18: Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Text Assignments: Chapter 12 pp. 529-540
Life Span: Conception to Birth
I. The beginnings of life – normal genetic make-up
1. Every normal person has 23 pairs of chromosomes, one member of each pair coming from the egg and the other from the sperm
2. All cells in the body with the exception of the gametes (eggs and sperm) contain all 23 pairs of chromosomes
3. Each Gamete (egg or sperm) contains only a single member of each chromosome pair
4. In the egg, one of these 23 is an X chromosome. The corresponding chromosome in a sperm is either an X or a Y chromosome
5. If the male’s X chromosome from the sperm unites with the X chromosome of the female’s egg, then the result will be a girl
6. If the male’s Y chromosome from the sperm unites with the X chromosome of the female’s egg, then the result will be a boy
7. Therefore, it is the male who always determines the sex of the offspring
II. Trimester Periods of Development
1. The Zygote Period – the Zygote is the fertilized egg. The period of the Zygote is from 0 to 2 weeks after conception
2. The Embryonic Period (Period of the Embryo): from 2 weeks until 8 weeks
3. The Fetal period (Period of the Fetus): 8 weeks to birth
III. Environmental Influences during Development in the Womb (in utero or in the
uterus)
1. Teratogens: a chemical, virus, or type of radiation that can cause damage to the zygote, embryo, or fetus
2. Generally, the first eight weeks following conception is a critical period for the development of the Nervous system – damage at this time can have severe effects on later intelligence. For example, Rubella (German Measles) if contracted at this time can lead to mental retardation.
3. About one third of babies born to mothers with HIV-positive contract the HIV virus
4. Many drugs can pass through the placenta membrane and effect the developing fetus including heroin, cocaine, and alcohol
5. Regular alcohol use can lead to the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which is often associated with mental retardation
6. Mother’s who smoke run an increased risk of miscarriage, lower birth weights, smaller head size of the infant, stillbirths, and SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)
7. One study indicated that mothers who drink three or more cups of coffee with caffeine a day or more likely to have miscarriages or babies with low birth weight and symptoms of irritability
8. Stressors: prolonged stress tends to be associated with childhood problems with attention, anxiety, and difficulties in social behavior
IV. Positive Influences
1. One study reported that mothers who had waistbands during pregnancy that allowed the playing of an average of 70 hours of violin music had offspring with better vocal skills and motor control during the first six months of life
V. The Newborn -Sensory Capabilities and Reflexes
1. Newborns are sensitive to a wide range of women’s voices and a relatively sensitive sense of smell
2. Newborns have a wide range of reflexes. When infants are startled, they throw back there arms widely – this is called The Moro Reflex. When you stroke the sole of an infants foot, the big toe will flex while the other toes fan out. This is called the Babinski Reflex. If this happened in an adult, it could be a sign of neurological problems (in the normal adult, the toes should curl down
VI. Conditioning and Learning in the newborn – surprisingly, efforts to classically condition Newborns have failed consistently – for example, efforts
to pair a tone (conditioned stimulus) with a puff of air which causes blinking (Unconditioned stimulus) have failed to lead to a conditioned
response (blinking to the tone alone).
VII. Temperament: Innate inclinations to engage in a certain style of behavior
1. Some babies are considered “easy” and others who cry a lot and make demands on their caretakers can be described as “difficult”.
2. Early environmental influences contribute to modifying temperament. Research finds suggest that touching infants can enhance growth and development, and reduce right frontal lobe EEG activation that is associated with depression, and boost immune functions.
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UNIT III
CHAPTER 12
Lecture 19: Thursday, November 5, 2009
Text Assignment : pp 541-561
Lecture Topic: Infancy and Childhood
I. Physical and Motor Development
1. In general, motor development develops in an orderly fashion from the head down the trunk to the arms and finally to the legs. At the same time motor development extends from the center of the body to the periphery
2. Fine motor development, such as finger dexterity, develops later
3. Limited research suggests that premature infants who slept on their backs, showed more difficulty in lowering and holding their heads up than premature infants who slept on their bellies
4. Generally, many infants begin crawling between 6 and 9 months, standing and walking with support between 10 and 12 months, and walking unaided between 13 and 18 months
II. Perceptual Development
1. Walk and Gibson’s Visual Cliff Research: the authors invented a Visual cliff with a shallow side and a deep side, both covered by a thick sheet of glass. As soon as infants are able to crawl – around six months, they will consistently crawl to the shallow side of the visual cliff and avoid the deep side
2. Campos found that even two month old babies, when placed over the deep side of the cliff showed slower heart rates than when placed over the shallow side
3. In summary, research indicates that human infants can detect depth as early as two months
4. Compared with visual perception, auditory perception is more fully developed at an earlier age. For example, four month old infants appear to prefer consonant sequences of tones to dissonant sequences.
III. Language Development
1. Mothers appear to intuitively adjust their speech to provide clear messages for the baby. They speak in what has been called “Motherese” (now called Child-directed Speech (CDS). This involves short sentences, pauses between phrases, careful enunciation, and exaggerated intonation spoken in a high voice
2. Initial babbling by the infant includes all the sounds named in every language. However, as the infant is exposed to one language, the range of sounds narrows until by one year of age, the babbling sounds begin to have adult like intonation patterns
3. Most children begin to speak around one year of age and can understand about 50 words at 13 months of age
4. Overextensions: young children sometimes use words over broadly, such as calling a cat a cat, but also calling a dog a cat, a horse a cat, etc.
5. Underextensions: using words too narrowly, for example, referring to dogs only as animals and not using the term dogs or the term animals to apply to other animals as well as dogs)
IV. Grammar: the set of rules that allow people to combine words into an infinite number
of acceptable sentences
1. Telegraphic Speech: like telegrams, it involves the simplest possible sentences such as “give candy” or “dog bad”
2. Overregularization Errors: mistakes caused by the misapplication of the rule for regular verb formation – using the rule inappropriately. For example a child may say “I ran away” one week, then the next week may say “I runned away”
3. Critical period for language development: research suggest that children who are not exposed to language before puberty, never grasps the rules of grammar fully
V. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
1. Schemas: very simple innate mental structures that organize perceptual input and connect it to the appropriate responses. For example, the young infant may have a schema that triggers sucking the nipple
2. Assimilation: allows the infant to take in new stimuli and respond accordingly. For example, the schema for sucking a breast can be used for sucking a bottle
3. Accommodation: schemas can change as necessary to cope with a broarder range of situations. For example, a schema for sucking might be used for drinking out of a cup or eating solid food if accommodation is made.
VI. Piaget’s Periods of Development
1. Sensorimotor Period: birth until approximately two years
(1) Object Permanence: according to Piaget, infants during the sensorimotor phase have not learned that if an object is removed from sight, that it does not cease to exist – for example if ta toy is no longer in sight, an infant will not continue to look for it – presumably because toy only exist when the infant perceives it. By age two, the infant has achieved Object Permanence
(2) An ability achieved at around 9 months is the ability to imitate
2. Preoperational Period: from age 2 to age 7
(1) By the Preoperational Period, most infants have achieved Object Permanence – they know that object still exists even when it is removed from the senses
(2) Conservation: the ability to know that such things as volume, size, or shape remain the same even though the appearance of the container changes. According to Piaget, children during the preoperational period have NOT achieved conservation. For example, if you pour the same amount of liquid from a short fatty jar into a tall skinny one, the child will typically say that there is more liquid in the tall skinny one
(3) During both the Sensorimotor Period and the Preoperational period, most children may be characterized as Egocentric – which does not mean selfishness, but rather the inability to take another’s point of view
3. Concrete Operations Period: age 7 to age 11
(1) During this period children develop the ability to take another’s perspective
(2) They also develop the ability to achieve conservation
(3) During this period, a child can reason logically. For example, they can reason that the liquid in the small squatty jar will be the same in a tall slender container
4. Formal Operations Period: ages 11 on up
(1) During this period a child develops the ability to use abstract reasoning
(2) They are capable of Formal Operations – reversible mental acts that can be performed even with abstract concepts. For example, a child at this age should be able to figure out that if you add 1 to any even number, the result will always be an odd number
VII. Brief comments on Piaget’s Theory
1. In General, Piaget has stimulated a huge volume of research in developmental psychology
2. There are many studies to indicate that children are capable of solving conceptual problems at earlier periods than those proposed by Piaget
3. Some research indicates that many children do not enter the Period of Formal operations by high school and some never reach this stage
VIII. Social and Emotional Development
1. The Concept of Attachment: an emotional bond that leads us to want to be with someone and to miss that person when there is a separation
2. Harry Harlow’s Research: Harry Harlow found that baby Rhesus monkeys when fed by a bottle from a wire monkey mother, would taken their nourishment from that monkey but would spend all their time clinging to a wire monkey mother covered with a Soft terry cloth, but that never was a source of food
3. John Bowlby’s concept of Separation Anxiety: between 6 months and 2 years , children are assumed to be characterized by Separation Anxiety – a powerful fear of being away from the primary care giver
4. Ainsworth’s research on Attachment revealed four types of attachment:
(1) Secure Attachment – about 60 to 70 % of American babies will be upset when the mother leaves, do not adapt well to a stranger caregiver, but quickly calm down when the mother returns. In general, infants with secure attachments in infancy were more likely at age 11 to have closer friendships and better social skills.
(2) Avoidant attachment: 15 to 20 % of American babies don’t seem to care much if the mother is absent or present
(3) Resistant Attachment: about 10 to 15 % of American babies become very angry when the mother leaves and may even hit her when she returns
(4) Disorganized/ disoriented Attachment: about 5 to 10% of children become depressed when the mother is absent and have periods of unresponsiveness. This type of attachment is more likely at age 18 months if the mother took drugs during pregnancy
IX. Self Concept – refers to beliefs, desires, values and attributes that define a person to
himself or herself
1. Preschoolers tend to think of themselves in very concrete terms – their behaviors and physical appearance
2. By three years of age, children begin to recognize that they have distinctive psychological characteristics such as being happy in some situations but not in others
3. At ages 8 to 11, children begin to describe themselves in terms of personality traits such as being energetic
X. Moral Development : Kolberg has proposed three levels of moral development
1. Preconventional Level – the premise is that good behaviors are rewarded and bad behaviors are punished. For example, what is correct is what an authority figure says is correct
2. Conventional Level – rests on the role of rules that maintain social order and allow people to get along. For example, the Golden Rul
3. Postconventional Level – rests on the development of abstract principles that govern the decision to accept or reject specific rules For example, human life has the highest priority and everything else must be secondary
4. Criticisms of these levels involve the fact that persons may use different forms of moral reasoning in different situations
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UNIT III
Lecture 20: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Text Assignments: Chapter 12 pp. 562-581
Life Span: Adolescence, Adulthood, and Elderly
1. Puberty: the onset of changes begin between 8 to 14 in females and 9 to 15 in males
2. Today, girls generally experience Menarche (the first period) between 12 and 13 years of age. This should be contrasted with the fact that around 1850 – about ten years before the Civil War – the average age of Menarche was 17.
3. Earlier pubescence probably is a result of a number of factors: better health care, better nutrition, and less strenuous lives
4. In general, earlier puberty is occurring in almost all cultures for both males and females. Females consistently undergo puberty about two years before males
5. Diet alone as well as other proposed factors cannot fully explain the trend toward earlier pubescence.
6. Generally, most American males stop growing around age 16 and most American girls stop growing around age 13
II. Cognitive Development in Adolescence
1. The major change in adolescence is the ability by many – not all – to reason abstractly
2. Adolescence and the Imaginary Audience: in some – not all adolescents - they view themselves as actors and everyone else as the audience. This is thought to be one basis for the relatively extreme self-consciousness regarding physical appearance as well as behavior.
3. Adolescence and the Personal Fable: some adolescence believe that they are living a story in which the are the star. As a star, they can do as they please with reckless disregard of consequences.
4. Despite the Imaginary Audience and Personal Fable appear to be descriptive of some adolescents, most adolescents remain influenced by their families and parents with regard to basic values and goals
III. Social and Emotional Development in Adolescence
1. There appears to be a tendency for adolescents to have three types of problems:
(1) Adolescents tend to have conflicts with their parents. The frequency of conflicts is higher in early adolescence, but the intensity of conflicts tends to be the greatest in mid adolescence
(2) Adolescents tend to experience extreme mood swings. About one third of adolescents by the mid teens are seriously depressed
(3) Adolescents are prone to taking risks – adolescents are often likely to commit crimes, drive recklessly, and have high risk sex
While all of the above are much more likely during adolescence, many do not experience these emotional and social conflicts. It is conceivable that hormonal factors predispose adolescents to have more problems such as those mentioned above
IV. Adolescence and Peer Relationships
1. Generally, adolescents who have a good relationship with their parents, tend to have more positive intimate interactions with others
2. Most adolescents develop predominantly same gender relationships
3. Women’s friendships tend to be stronger than men’s
4. Young gay men are less attached in their relationships than young heterosexual men
V. The Adult Years: Physical changes in the Early Adult Years
1. By age 20, most physical changes have stabilized and changes until age 50 are relatively minor
2. Aging has two aspects, genetic processes programmed by the genes and environmental events
3. Lack of adequate nutrition can result in fragile bones as occurs with osteoporosis the related calcium deficiency
4. In women menopause usually occurs between ages 45 and 55. Following menopause, eggs are no longer released
5. Men show a reduction in sperm after age 40 but continue to produce sperm for nearly all of their life. However, a decline in sexual vigor may affect sexual performance and decrease the possibility of causing a pregnancy
VI. Perception and Cognition in the Adult Years
1. Cognitive abilities remain relatively stable throughout the adult years, but by age 50 there begins to be a decline in some abilities
2. Terminal Decline: shortly before death, particularly if the cause will be cerebrovascular disease such as strokes and heart attacks, many people show a dramatic decline on a wide range of cognitive tests.
3. Cataracts: more than half of the population age 65 and older has cataracts
4. Older individuals have greater difficulty in seeing contrasts between let and unlit surfaces – this may cause accidents, like stumbling on stairs
5. After age 50, persons have a decrease in their ability to hear high frequency sounds
6. Older people also have difficulty in shutting out background noise
VII. Memory
1. Parts of the brain that produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine become impaired with age. Acetylcholine is important for normal functions of the hippocampus, which plays a key role in memory
2. Semantic Memory – memory for facts, words, meanings, and other information that is not associated with a particular time and place remain relatively intact
3. The elderly tend to have difficulties with the recall of specific information – if they are read a list of words, for example, they have greater difficulty in recalling the words than younger persons – this probably reflects some degree of frontal lobe impairment
VIII. Intelligence
1. Some research on Fluid Intelligence (which involves flexibility in reasoning and ability to respond to novel situations) and on Crystallized Intelligence (which involves using knowledge as a basis for reasoning) indicates that both forms remain stable until some time between the mid-50’s and early 70’s, at which point both kinds of intelligence begin to show a decline
2. Other research suggests that Fluid Intelligence begins to decline as early as the late 20’s, whereas crystallized intelligence appears to grow with age, declining only in late life
3. Some research indicates that older adults told better, more informative stories than younger adults
IX. Social and Emotional Development During Adulthood
1. Erik Erikson has proposed three stages of adult life:
(1) Intimacy versus Isolation: the younger adult needs to develop meaningful intimate relations and avoid becoming socially isolated. Failure at this stage leads to a profound sense of isolation
(2) Generativity versus Self-absorption: during the middle adult years, the person needs to contemplate their future and decide what their contributions will be to society and their family. People who fail at this are faced with a feeling of meaninglessness.
(3) Integrity versus Despair: during old age, persons need to reflect back on life and believe that it was worthwhile, thereby avoiding feelings of despair and fear of death
X. Maturity in the Elderly
1. Some research indicates that as people enter old age, they tend to experience periods of highly positive emotions and less enduring spells of negative emotions than do younger people
2. With age, people become better able to regulate their emotions – they tend to respond less to emotionally arousing stimuli
3. In general, as people age, they tend to interact with fewer people, but these interactions tend to be more intimate
4. In younger years, more time is spent with friends than relatives. In older years, more time is spent with relatives than friends
5. Older couples tend to resolve their differences with less negative emotion than younger people
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TEST 3: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009
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