Chapter 9: Human Development Flashcards
What is developmental psychology?
A subfield that examine how genes interact with early experiences to make each of us different
From about 2 weeks to 2 months, the developing human is known as …? What happen during that phase?
Embryo. During this stage, the organs and internal systems (such as the nervous system) begin to form
After 2 months of prenatal development, the growing human is called…? What happen during that stage?
Fetus. All the organs are formed and the heart begins to beat. Also survival is possible outside the womb (between 22 to 42 weeks)
Early brain growth has two important aspect. What are they?
1) First, specific areas within the brain mature and become functional.
2) Second, regions of the brain learn to communicate with one another through synaptic connections.
What is one important way that brain circuits mature ?
Myelination. The myelinated axons form synapses with other neurons.
What is synaptic pruning? Why is it important for the brain developpement?
When connections are used, they are preserved. When connections are not used, they decay and disappear. “Use it or lose it.”
It eliminates unused synaptic connections, which allows for adaptation to any environment.
What are two important aspects of nutrition for the brain developpement?
1) For the myelination
2) Malnourished children might also lack the energy to interact with objects and people, which impact their brain growth. Very few synaptic connections will be made
What factor can diminish an environment for brain developpement ?
Poverty. (e.g., stress, poor nutrition, exposure to toxins and violence)
What are Teratogens ? Give some examples.
Teratogens are agents that harm the embryo or fetus. Teratogens include drugs, alcohol, bacteria, viruses, and chemicals
What are the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)?
The symptoms of this disorder are low birth weight; face and head abnormalities; deficient brain growth; and evidence of impairment, as indicated by behavioral or cognitive problems or low IQ
What are the symptoms of newborn withdrawal?
These symptoms include irritability, high-pitched crying, tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, and rapid breathing
Does life experiences and environmental circumstances can be passed along in sperm as epigenetic information ?
Yes !
Why does babies have the grasping reflex?
From our primate ancestors. Young apes grasp their mothers, and this reflex is adaptive because the offspring need to be carried from place to place
What is the rooting reflex?
The turning and sucking that infants automatically engage in when a nipple or similar object touches an area near their mouths
What is sucking reflex?
If they find an object, through the rooting reflex, they will suck on it.
What are the uses of rooting and sucking reflexes?
These reflexes pave the way for learning more-complicated behavior patterns, such as feeding oneself or walking
What is the Dynamic systems theory?
It views development as a self-organizing process, in which new forms of behavior emerge through consistent interactions between:
- a biological being
- cultural and environmental contexts
What is the baby first social interaction?
Imitation
True or false? The baby brain doesn’t already has specific neural circuits for identifying biological motion and inanimate object motion, along with specific circuits to identify faces and facial movement
False. Babies are born categorizing, and newborns already understand they are in the people category, not the object category
What sense develop more slowly than the others?
When does the infant reach that sense close to the adult’s level ?
The sense of vision develops more slowly, it increases rapidly over the first six month.
Infants do not reach adult levels of acuity until they are about 1 year old
What is visual acuity?
The ability to distinguish differences among shapes, patterns, and colors
Through research, what is the preferential-looking technique?
In using this technique, the researchers show an infant two things. If the infant looks longer at one of the things, the researchers know the infant can distinguish between the two and finds one more interesting.
Why does the development of memory helps children learn about the world around them?
Children are able to use new information to build on what they already know
What is infantile amnesia (Freud)?
The inability to remember events from early childhood
Why are many toys for infants black-and-white?
Infants have poor color vision and low visual acuity, so they most easily perceive objects with stark contrasts, such as black against a white background.
What are the reasons that the original “Mozart effect” study does not support playing music to children to increase their cognitive abilities?
There are a few reasons. 1) In the original study, “intelligence” was tested in relation to a motor skill; the test results might have been influenced by the mood-enhancing qualities of the situation;
2) And the participants were college students, so there was no way to know whether the results applied to infants.
What is an attachment ?
Why is it important?
It’s a strong, intimate, emotional connection between people that persists over time and across circumstances.
Such emotional bonds are the building blocks of a successful social life later on. The attachment process draws on humans’ innate tendency to form bonds with others
Why attachment is an adaptive trait?
Forming bonds with others provides protection for individuals, increases their chances of survival, and thus increases their chances of passing along their genes to future generations. Human infants cannot even hold up their own heads or roll over
Between 4 and 6 weeks of age, most infants display a first social smile. Why is it important for further developpment?
That attachment behaviors motivate adult attention. This expression of pleasure typically induces powerful feelings of love in caregivers
What is imprinting?
A behavior where animals (and humans) will attach themselves to an adult (usually to their mothers) and then follow the object of their attachment
What did Harlow discovered through his research on monkeys?
Harlow’s findings established the importance of contact comfort—the importance of physical touch and reassurance—in aiding social development, and that the mother figure was not only food related.
How do you measure the attachment quality with the caregiver (like through the strange situation by Ainsworth)
The extent to which the child copes with distress and the strategies he uses to do so indicate the quality of the child’s attachment to the caregiver.
What defines secure attachment
1) A secure child is HAPPY to play alone and is friendly to the stranger AS LONG as the attachment figure is present
2) When the attachment figure leaves the playroom, the child is DISTRESSED, whines or cries, and shows signs of looking for the attachment figure
3) When the attachment figure returns, the child usually reaches his arms up to be picked up and then is HAPPY and quickly COMFORTED by the caregiver
So caregiver = source of security in times of distress
What are the two types of insecure attachment, and what defines them ?
1) Avoidant attachment: do NOT get upset or cry at all when the caregiver leaves, and they MAY PREFER to play with the stranger rather than the parent during their time in the playroom
2) Ambivalent attachment style : may cry a great deal when the caregiver leaves the room BUT then be INCONSOLABLE when the caregiver tries to calm them down upon return
So caregiver = NOT available to soothe them when distressed or is only inconsistently available
What is the role of oxytocin?
It plays a role in maternal tendencies, feelings of social acceptance and bonding, and sexual gratification. It promotes behaviors that ensure the survival of the young
According to Bowlby, how is attachment adaptive?
Attachment motivates infants and caregivers to stay near each other, increasing the likelihood that the infants will survive and thrive.
What are Piaget’s four stage of development ?
Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational
What is Piaget’s version of the Schemes ?
For Piaget, schemes were organized ways of making sense of experience, and they CHANGED as the child learned NEW information about objects and events in the world
What is Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation with schemes?
1) assimilation: new experience is placed into an existing scheme
2) accommodation : a new scheme is created or an existing one is dramatically altered to include new information that otherwise would not fit into the scheme
When does sensorimotor stage happens?
Between Birth and 2 years old
Why is it called sensorimotor phase?
Cause children acquire information through SENSES and MOTOR exploration
What important cognitive concept is developed during the sensorimotor stage?
Around what age is it happening?
The object permanence. This term refers to the understanding that an object continues to exist even when it is hidden from view
It happens around 9 months.
At what age does the preoperational stage takes place?
Between 2 and 7 years old
What happen during the preoperational stage?
Children can begin to think about objects not in their immediate view. Having formed conceptual models of how the world works, children begin to think SYMBOLICALLY.
Why is it called preoperational stage?
Cause children cannot do at this stage is think “operationally.” That is, they cannot imagine the logical outcomes of performing certain actions on certain objects. They do not base their reasoning on logic
ex: Law of conservation of quantity in glasses full of water
What is the cognitive limitation characteristic of the preoperational period?
Egocentrism. They can understand how others feel, and they have the capacity to care about others. BUT , they tend, to engage in thought processes that revolve around their own perspectives
Why does egocentrism is useful in the preoperational stage?
A clear egocentric focus prevents them from trying to expand their schemas too much before they understand all the complex information inside their own experience
At what age does the concrete operational stage takes place in the child life?
Between 7 to 12 years old
Why is it called the concrete operational stage?
A concrete operational child is able to think logically about actual objects. A classic operation is an action that can be UNDONE.
