Developmental Psychology

Explores how all of us grow and change across the phases of our lives, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Physical domain of psychology

Change in hormones, body and brain growth

Socio-emotional domain

How we understand ourselves, interact with others, experience, and regulate emotions

Cognitive domain

How we think, reason, and communicate

Conception

Where sperm and egg unite to create a fertilized egg

Zygote

A fertilized egg

When does implantation happen

By the seventh or eighth day

Embryo

The organism from about the start of the third week to the end of week 8

Embryonic period

The most critical time for the physical development of the spinal cord, brain, and all internal organs

Fetal period

From the start of week 9 until the baby is born - At about 16 weeks the fetus begins to move which the mother can feel at around 20 weeks - In the last 12 weeks of prenatal growth, the fetus gets a layer of fat under the skin and increases dramatically in length and weight. - The brain begins to process sensory and motor input

Teratogens

Substances that can harm prenatal development

Impact of teratogens

Depends on when exposure occurs, the amount of exposure, and how long the exposure lasts

Effects of teratogens

Intellectual disabilities, and physical deformities

Common teratogens

Drug and alcohol

Fetal alcohol syndrome symptoms

Small head, malformations of the face and limbs, heart defects, abnormal brain development, behavioral problems, cognitive problems and low IQ.

Myelinated Axons

Form synapses with other neurons

Pruining

When synaptic connections don't get used

Maturation

Physical development of the brain and body that prepares an infant or child for voluntary movements

What is presented at birth?

Taste and hearing

What is vision like for newborns

Can see things about 8-12 inches from their faces and have almost no ability to discriminate colors - Can see simple high-contrast patterns better than pastel colors, grey tones or complex patterns

Early attachment

Infants innately behave in ways that motivate adults to care for them over time and across situations

Harlow

Studied whether attachment was due to feeding or comfort.

Secure attachment ( 60-65%)

Caregiver is home base; child will leave their side to explore; but child will return to them periodically for comfort or contact, upset when they leave; glad and comforted when they come back

Avoidant attachment ( 35-40%)

Where the child is indifferent or avoids the caregiver

Ambivalent attachment

Where the child gets very upset about caregiver leaving but is inconsolable upon their return

Jean Piaget

Swiss psychologist who presented the first complete account of cognitive development

Assimilation

Taking in information by using existing schemas

Acommodation

Having to change a schema to fit in with new learning

Sensorimotor stage

Focus on the here and now - A major milestone is mental representation - Mental activity and schemas are initially confined to sensory functions and motor skills

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of view

Mental representation

The ability to think about things that are absent from the immediate surroundings. - Before acquiring object permanence, infants do not search for objects placed out of sight.

Preoperational stage

A stage marked by the ability to construct mental representations of experiences. Children begin to understand, create, and use symbols. - They become to play ''pretend'' - They then begin to make guesses about how things work, though are not yet able to tell imagination apart from reality.

Egocentrism

An inability to see the world from another's point of view

Conservation

The ability to recognize that important properties of things remain constant despite a change in appearance.

Concrete operational

Children now have the ability to perform mental operations - Use simple logic, sort things into categories, and perform simple mental manipulations on things. - Kids in this stage can only perform their logical operations on real concrete objects, not on abstract concepts.

Formal Operational stage

Ability to engage in abstract and hypothetical thinking, including the imagining of logical consequences - Can now think systematically and logically about abstractions as well as concrete things

Morphemes

The smallest unit of meaning in a language

Phonemes

All the different sounds that our vocal apparatus produces for a spoken language

Cooing

From birth to 5 months - Noises

Babbling

About 4 to 9 months Ex: Dadada, mamamama

Adolescence

Age 11-14 - Self-realization - Physical, socioemotional, and cognitive change

Puberty

Changes within the body

Primary sex characteristics

Reproductive organs, genitals

Secondary sex characteristics

Breast development, voice changing, pubic hair, fat distribution, muscle development

Increased estrogen

Breast growth, uterus and vaginal maturation, and hips broadening in girls

Increased testosterone

Muscle tissue, face and body hair, broadening of shoulders in boys, body hair in boys and girls

Helicopter Parents

Hover over their kids and bulldoze career paths in front of them - Check up on their kids in college to make sure they are doing their homework

Authoritarian parents

High demandingness, low responsiveness

Neglectful parents

Low demandingness, low responsiveness

Permissive parents

Low demandingness, high responsiveness

Authoritative

High demandingness, high responsiveness

Preconventional

The right choice is what helps us avoid punishment

Conventional

The right choice is what everyone else does

Postconventional

The right choice is the one that places human rights over other rights; laws and rules can be wrong

Early to middle adulthood

Experience steady decline in muscle mass, body density, eyesight, and hearing

Old age (baby boom)

Brain loses more mass more in the frontal lobes than other areas, and processing speed declines