Week 1: Development Psychology - Human Development

Developmental psychologists: Learn about the way humans change throughout their life span.

Development: Age related changes that occur as an individual progresses from conception
to death.

Prenatal Development
● Prenatal development: Progress before birth. The prenatal period of gestation refers
to foetal development over the period of pregnancy from conception to childbirth.
● Science and society continue to consider the roles of genetics, environment and
parental (particularly maternal) factors on child development.
● As a result, the debate about the relative importance of biological and
environmental factors is ongoing.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE_lI86boUU

The Course of Prenatal Development

The prenatal period is divided into three phases: (1) the germinal stage (the first 2 weeks),
(2) the embryonic stage (2 weeks to 2 months), and (3) the foetal stage (2 months to
birth).

The germinal stage (0-2 weeks of gestation):

● During this stage, rapid cell division occurs, and the mass of cells migrates to the
uterus and implants into the uterine wall, forming a placenta during the
implantation process.

The embryonic stage (2-8 weeks):

● It is the period when most of the vital organs and bodily systems such as the heart,
spine and brain emerge.
● The embryonic period is a time of great vulnerability; if anything interferes with
development during this time period, the effects can be devastating.
The foetal stage (8-38 weeks):
● During the early parts of this stage, the muscles and bones begin to form. The
body continues to grow and function, with sex organs developing in the third
month and brain cells multiplying during the final three months.
● Somewhere between 22 and 26 weeks, the age of viability is reached − when the
baby could survive if born prematurely.
● At 22 or 23 weeks, the chances of survival are slim, but by 26-28 weeks, the
chances improve to a survival rate of about 85%.

Influences on Prenatal Development

Genetic disorders:
● Gene abnormalities are the consequences of defective genes.
● Chromosome abnormalities refers to a segment of chromosomal DNA that is irregular.

Maternal nutrition:
● Performs a vital role in perinatal growth.

Maternal stress and emotion:

● Correlation between stress hormones (epinephrine, norepinephrine and
adreno-corticotropic hormone) in the foetal bloodstream and maternal stress.
● Effect of blood pressure and immune system.

Maternal drug use:

● Alcohol use in the perinatal period is the main source of severe mental and physical
deficiencies in children.
● There is an association between smoking during pregnancy and a newborn's birth
weight.
● Other substances such as marijuana and cocaine are widespread illegal drugs abused
by pregnant women. Exposure is associated with infants with low birth weight,
preterm birth, withdrawal symptoms, extreme crying, tremors, and hyperemesis
(severe and chronic vomiting).
● Prenatal exposure to prescription and over-the counter drugs can result in foetal
abnormalities.
Maternal illness and psychopathology:
● Many illnesses pose high risk for damaging brain development – lead to
intellectual and other disorders (eg: rubella, syphilis and HIV).
● In 2007, 600 deaths per 100 000 live births (nearly double the rate of maternal
deaths in 2001).

The influence of culture and family:

● The impact of culture on people's thoughts, feelings and behaviours, as well as on
the way they define death, growth, birth and life cycles, is clearly demonstrated in
African culture, where many people have a strong connection with their ancestors.
Culture influences thoughts and decisions around pregnancy and child-rearing.
● Miscarriages
● Changes in family structure over time.

Environmental toxins:
● Environmental toxins (air pollution and radio-activity) can affect a developing
foetus.

Motor, Language and Socio-Emotional Development in Childhood

Motor development:
● Motor development refers to the progression of muscular coordination required for
physical activities.
● A basic number of principles are apparent in motor development. The cephalocaudal
trend (head to foot direction of motor development) describes the fact that children
tend to gain control over the upper part of their bodies before the lower part.
● The proximodistal trend (centre outwards tendency) describes the fact that children
gain control over their torsos before their extremities.
● Motor development depends in part on physical growth, as well as on the process
of maturation (the gradual unfolding of one’s genetic blueprint), and the infant’s
ongoing exploration of the world.
● Developmental norms: Typical age (mendian) at which individuals display various
behaviours and abilities.
● Cultural variations: Rapid vs slow motor development.
Emotional development – Temperament and Attachment
● Temperament refers to characteristics of mood, activity level and emotional
reactivity.
● Infants show consistent differences in emotional tone, tempo of activity and
sensitivity to environmental stimuli very early in life.
● Individual differences in temperament appear to be influenced to a considerable
degree by heredity. Although temperament tends to be fairly stable over time,
theorists emphasise that it is not unchangeable.
● There appear to be some modest cultural differences in the prevalence of specific
temperamental styles.
● Some babies are cheerful while others are irritable.

Easy Difficult Slow to Warm Up

Happy, adaptable, regular Adapts slowly, distractible, Adapts slowly, reactions

and easy to soothe. inflexible, intense reactions are not as intense.
and crying.

Attachment anxiety: Refers to the close, emotional bonds of affection that develop between
infants and their caregivers.

Separation anxiety: Emotional distress seen in many infants when they are separated from
people with whom they have formed an attachment.

Attachment:
● Attachment is the cornerstone of all relationships. It is made up of the emotional,
social, cognitive and physical connection of infants and young children with their
primary caregivers, generally the mother and father.
● Attachment theory illuminates those basic processes of functioning that are
universal in human nature.
● Attachment is not just a “special affection”.
● Attachment: Endearing bond that one person has for another who fulfils needs for
safety and comfort.
Functions of an attachment figure:
● Seeking, monitoring and attempting to maintain proximity to protective
attachment figures.
● Using attachment figures as a “secure base”.
● Fleeing to attachment figures as a "safe haven" in situations of fear or alarm.
● While actual physical availability is important, so is a child’s appraisal of
caregiver’s availability which is experienced as “felt security”.

Theories of attachment (John Bowlby):

● One of the most dominant theories of attachment was proposed by John Bowlby, a
prominent British psychoanalyst.
● Ethological theory (attachment has evolutionary mechanism).
● Bowlby asserted that attachment has a biological basis.
● According to Bowlby, infants are programmed by evolution to exhibit endearing
behaviour − such as smiling, cooing, and clinging − that triggers an affectionate,
protective response from adults.
● Behaviours (crying, clinging, proximity seeking) – keeps carers nearby.

Stages of attachment:
● Asocial or pre-attachment Stage (birth to 3 months): This is the stage where the baby
is forming bonds but relationships with objects and humans are similar.
● Indiscriminate attachment (6 weeks to 7 months): This is the stage where babies
display more observable social behaviour. Preference for people over objects and
prefer familiar adults, however do not show stranger or separation anxiety.
● Specific or discriminate attachment (7 months to 11 months): This is the stage where the
majority of babies display stranger anxiety and separation anxiety from one
particular adult.
● Multiple attachments (24 months +): Shortly after the babies start to show attachment
to one adult usually extend to multiple attachments with other adults who regularly
spend time with them.

Patterns of attachment (Mary Ainsworth):

● One of Bowlby’s colleagues, Mary Ainsworth, eventually showed that attachments
vary in character. Ainsworth developed a method called the strange situation
procedure to assess the quality of attachment between 1 to 2 year old infants and
 their caregivers. The strange situation procedure puts infants through a series of
short separations from, and reunions with, their caregivers.
● As a result, Ainsworth concluded that attachment falls into three patterns: secure,
anxious−ambivalent and avoidant.
● Ainsworth found that most infants have a secure attachment, playing and exploring
comfortably when mom is present, becoming visibly upset when she leaves and
calming quickly upon her return. Correlational evidence suggests that babies with
secure attachment tend to show favourable traits as they develop through
childhood, such as resilience, self-reliance, curiosity and leadership.
● Some babies, however, show anxiety even when mom is near and protest
excessively when she leaves, but are not particularly comforted when she returns,
which is known as anxious–ambivalent attachment.
● Finally, some babies sought little contact with their mothers and were not
distressed when she left, a pattern Ainsworth labelled avoidant attachment.

Emotional development, attachment (culture):

● Separation anxiety emerges in children at about 6-8 months and peaks at about
14-18 months (seen in many cultures, suggesting attachment is universal).

Language Development
● Language seems to develop at the same pace for most children, continuous
process, not in stages.
● Sound structures: Learn vowel sounds in the womb.
● 0-6 months: Cry, coo and laugh.
● 6 months >: Babble, and babbling overtime becomes more complex and resembles
language spoken at home.
● 6-9 months: Begin to understand the meanings of words.
● 10-13 months: Begin to utter sounds that resemble and respond to words.

Vocabulary:
● Slow development over the next few months. Toddlers can say around 50 words
by 18 months, but from then onwards a vocabulary spurt begins.
● By age 2: Combine words into sentences.
● By age 3: Complex ideas, plurals and past tense (over-regularisation, grammatical
errors such as “I eated the apple”).
 ● By age 6: ~10 000 words
● By age 10: ~40 000 words

Personality and Cognitive Development in Childhood

Erikson’s stage theory:
● Early childhood experiences leave a permanent stamp on adult personality.
● Evolve not only until 5 year, but across lifespan and how social experiences play a
role.
● 8 stages of psychosocial development of personality.
● Each stage builds on the preceding stage and paves the way for the periods of
development to follow.
● Each stage (8 stages) has a ‘psychosocial crisis’ (not an emergency but a crucial
turning point).
● Personality is shaped by how an individual deals with these crises that involve
social relationships.
● Each crisis entails a struggle between two opposing tendencies, which represent
personality traits in varying degrees later in life.
● Conflict dealt with successfully will serve as a strength throughout life (mastery or
ego strength), and if not dealt with effectively can result in struggles and poor
sense of self (inadequacy in specific areas of development).
● Personality, he held that there is a specific psychosocial crisis during each stage,
the outcome of which determines the balance between opposing polarities in
personality.

The 8 stages of Erikson’s stage theory:

● Stage 1 (trust vs mistrust), first year of life: Is my world predictable and
supportive? The infant in its first year of life must depend solely on its caregiver,
which should lead to a trusting view of the world (or distrusting and pessimistic).
● Stage 2 (autonomy vs shame and doubt), second and third years of life: Can I do things
myself or must I always rely on others? The child begins to take personal
responsibility and should acquire a sense of self-sufficiency and autonomy (or
doubt, shame and not good enough).
● Stage 3 (initiative vs guilt), fourth through sixth years: Am I good or am I bad?
Children should learn to get along with family members, experiment, and take
initiative, leading to self confidence (or guilt for taking initiative).
 ● Stage 4 (industry vs inferiority), age 6 through puberty: Am I competent or am I
worthless? Children must function socially outside of the bounds of their family
which is less nurturing and emphasises productivity from which a sense of
competence should evolve (or struggles with competence can lead to low self
esteem).
● Stage 5 (identity vs confusion), adolescence: Who am I and where am I going?
● Stage 6 (intimacy vs isolation), early adulthood: Shall I share my life with another or
live alone?
● Stage 7 (generativity vs self-absorption), middle adulthood: Will I produce something of
real value?
● Stage 8 (integrity vs despair), late adulthood: Have I lived a full life?

Cognitive Development
Cognitive development: Is the transition in children's pattern of thinking, including reasoning,
remembering and problem solving.

Piaget stage theory:

● Jean Piaget made a landmark contribution to psychology’s understanding of
cognitive development, asserting that interaction with the environment and
maturation gradually alter the way children think.
● This progression in thinking occurs through the complementary processes of
assimilation (interpreting new experiences in terms of existing mental structures
without changing them) and accommodation (changing existing mental structures
to explain new experiences).
● Piaget proposed that children’s thought processes go through a series of four major
stages.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhcgYgx7aAA

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development:

Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years):
● A child progressively develops coordination of sensory input and motor responses.
● Child begins to make use of memory, imitation and thought.
● Moves from reflex action to goal directed activity.
● Learn by doing (look, touch and sucking).
● Primitive understanding of cause and effect.
 ● Object permanence, or the recognition that objects continue to exist even when
they can’t be seen or heard.

Preoperational stage (2-7 years):

● Children engage in symbolic thought, with characteristic flaws in their reasoning
such as irreversibility (inability to envision reversing an action), centration, the
tendency to focus on just one feature of a problem, and egocentrism, the limited
ability to share another’s viewpoint. This results in animism, the belief that all
things are living, just like oneself.
● Develops use of symbols such as language.
● Able to think operations logically in one direction.
● Eg: Preoperational child (aged between 2-7) when given a shorter and taller glass
will say the taller glass has more water as they have not yet developed the ability
of conservation which develops at the concrete operational stage.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyhK9beGuQU

Concrete operational stage (7-11 years):

● Characterised by the ability to perform operations with symbolic thought such as
reversing or mentally undoing an action. Children in the concrete operational stage
are able to focus on more than one feature of a problem simultaneously, a process
called decentration. These new cognitive skills lead to conservation, or
recognising that amount of a substance does not change just because appearance is
changed.
● Able to solve concrete problems.
● Mature understanding of cause and effect.

Formal operational stage (11 years to adulthood):

● Marked by the ability to apply operations to abstract concepts such as justice, love,
and free will.
● Able to solve abstract problems in a logical way.
● More scientific in thinking (logic, comparisons and classification).
● Concerns about social issues.

Evaluating Piaget’s stage theory:

● Underestimated young children’s development (ability for object permanence and
symbolic thought much earlier, and not as egocentric).
 ● Stages seem to be more gradual than abrupt, and children often mix stages,
suggesting that thinking occurs in overlapping waves as opposed to distinct stages.
● Underestimated influence of cultural factors on rate at which children pass through
stages. Sequence is similar, but timetable on when they pass through stages varies
across cultures.

Piaget vs Vygotsky:

Piaget Vygotsky

Child is an agent of change and Guided participation: Cognitive development

development is fueled by exploration of is fueled by social interaction with parents,
the world. teachers and older children who provide
guidance.

Cognitive development is a universal Culture exerts greatest influence on

process that will unfold in largely the cognitive development and how it unfolds.
same way across many cultures (in SA
with diverse cultures).

Viewed children’s gradual mastery of Language acquisition plays a crucial

language as another aspect of cognitive central role in fostering development.
development.

Limitations of Piaget theory have meant developmental researchers have explored

alternative theories for guidance. Piaget and Vygotsky have much in common, but also
have differences (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I2hrSRbmHE).

The Development of Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg’s stages theory:
● Lawrence Kohlberg devised a stage theory of moral development based on
subjects’ responses to presented moral dilemmas.
● Kohlberg was interested in a person’s reasoning, not necessarily their answer.
● He theorised that people progress through a series of three levels of moral
development, each of which can be broken into two sublevels.
● Each stage represents a different way of thinking about right and wrong.
Kohlberg’s stage theory:
● Stage 1, punishment orientation (preconventional level): Right and wrong is determined
by what is punished.
● Stage 2, naive reward orientation (preconventional level): Right and wrong is
determined by what is rewarded.
● Stage 3, good boy/good girl orientation (conventional level): Right and wrong is
determined by close others approval or disapproval.
● Stage 4, authority orientation (conventional level): Right and wrong is determined by
society's rules and laws, which should be obeyed rigidly.
● Stage 5, social contract orientation (postconventional level): Right and wrong is
determined by society’s rules, which are viewed as fallible rather than absolute.
● Stage 6, individual principles and conscience orientation (postconventional level): Right and
wrong is determined by abstract ethical principles that emphasise equity and
justice.
● Younger children at the preconventional level think in terms of external authority −
acts are considered wrong or right based on whether or not they are punished for
them.
● Older children who have reached the conventional level of moral reasoning see rules
as necessary for maintaining social order, it gains them approval and they believe
rules should be applied rigidly.
● Adolescence represents the move to the postconventional level of moral reasoning,
where acts are individually judged by a personal code of ethics. At this stage
someone might allow for the possibility that an individual may not comply with
society's rules if they are in conflict with personal ethics.

Heinz’s dilemma:
● Woman near death from cancer and the only drug that might save her is a newly
discovered form of specialised treatment.
● Dr is selling the treatment for 10 times more than the cost to make it.
● Husband only has half the money and asks Dr for a cheaper price or to pay it off.
● Dr refuses and Heinz then breaks into the Dr office and steals the medicine for his
wife.
● Should the husband have done this?
Required reading:
● Chapter 11, pg 431-452: Psychology, Themes and Variations