What do Developmental Psychologists Do?

• Study physiological (physical, biological) changes over the lifespan.

• Study cognitive (thinking, learning, memory) changes over the lifespan.

• Study socialization: how we learn what society expects of us.

Development

• Used to be a field looking at humans from conception through adolescence.

• People used to do the same things in the same sequence (go to school, get married…).

• Now… we see the entire life cycle as a process of development. This is known as the…

• You and your friends are done with adolescence. Are you done changing?

Lifespan Development Perspective

Prenatal Effects on Development

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and others

• mental retardation; blindness; physical disorders

• genital herpes can be transmitted through vaginal birth

• HIV/AIDS, especially if untreated

Prenatal Effects on Development

Smoking (during pregnancy)

• low birth weight• Miscarriage• SIDS (Sudden Infant

Death Syndrome)• Asthma• Hyperactivity• learning disabilities

Prenatal Effects on Development

Alcohol (during pregnancy)

• leading cause of non-genetic retardation

• lesser cognitive problems due to death of neurons

• fetal alcohol syndrome – smaller brains, facial deformities, uncoordinated, mental retardation

Babies need human contact

Some evidence that babies recognize human faces as early as 9 minutes old – that’s very early!!!

Violet, at 30 minutes

When do babies recognize faces?

Clear evidence that babies have a preference for human faces by 2-3 months old

What happens if babies don’t get human contact?

Harry Harlow’s Wire Monkeyshttp://users.rcn.com/napier.interport/cwm/experim.html

• Separated infant monkeys a few hours after birth

• Infant monkeys liked soft cloth caregivers better, even when they didn’t offer food

• But the absence of a living caregiver had devastating effects on sexual, caregiving and other social development

Is this experiment ethically OK with you?

Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

• Observes babies in a lab full of toys, when a stranger comes in, Mom leaves and comes back again

• Securely Attached: Cries when Mom leaves, happy when she returns.

• Insecurely Attached: Don’t care much if Mom leaves and ignore her when she returns or mostly ignore her but still cry when she leaves

What causes insecure attachment behavior?

• Abandoned or deprived from birth to 2 years old

• Abusive or neglectful parenting (by irresponsible or very depressed parents)

• Genetic temperament

• Temporarily, this behavior might be caused by stressful family circumstances

When/how do we learn to talk?

• Parents’ “baby talk” (vs cat and dog talk) exaggerates vowels

• So by 4-6 months…– Lose ability to make/recognize sounds from

other languages

When/how do we learn to talk?

More at 4-6 months…

– Lose ability to make/recognize sounds from other languages

– Recognize emotionally important, frequent words: Mommy, Daddy

When/how do we learn to talk?

• 6 months – 1 year

– Can tell the difference between nonsense and real words and sentences

What does this suggest about babies’ ability to understand compared to what they can say?

When/how do we learn to talk?

• About 1 year: Naming things

• About 18 months: 2-3 word ‘sentences’

(a full year since they’ve known about sentence structure)

Do babies have a “Language Acquisition Device?”

Proposed by Noam Chomsky. Evidence:• Similar stages around the world: active nouns

first• Invented word combinations• Toddlers learn (best!) without being corrected• If there’s no language around, we make one up

Or are babies natural “statisticians” – keeping track of familiar patterns?

Jean Piaget

• A “stage theorist”

• We now know stages aren’t so rigid, but…

Piaget’s stages

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2) – Learning by touching

Object permanenceObject permanence – peek-a-boo; separation anxiety

• Preoperational stage (2-7) – Language, make-believe: symbols

• Concrete operations (7-12) - cause/effect; order; categorization

• Formal operations (adolescence)- abstract, hypothetical

What Piaget Missed

• Stage changes aren’t sudden – It depends who’s asking, where, how…changes come gradually with some back and forth

• Kids understand people well by 3 or 4 – Slow down for younger children, can think about thinking and knowing

• Babies know a lot! – will study images of ‘impossible’ events longer than possible ones

• Cognitive processing speed helps changes (adolescence)- abstract, hypothetical

• Education and culture shape knowledge – Children in hunting cultures develop spatial skills sooner than children in farming cultures

Where Does Good Behavior Come From?

“Power Assertion” (Authoritarian) don’t work very well.

• “because I said so”• punishment (and therefore anxiety, fear,

anger and very little learning)

Spanking usually doesn’t work well for this reason. Especially because parents often use it when they don’t know what else to do!

Where Does Good Behavior Come From?

Recognize: positive intentions. “I know you care about your sister.”

Induction: AuthoritativeInduction: AuthoritativeExplain: “Sam might get hurt if you keep swinging that stick.”

Authoritative parenting and induction

Is NOT… Is…

permissive clear, consistent

Motivated by anger

Motivated by desire to teach

“because I said so”

Listening and explaining

Unreasonable expectations

Appropriate, high standards

Good Outcomes of Induction: A Longitudinal Study (of children

aged 2-4 years and their Moms)

• Greater Self-regulation

• Fewer aggression problems (incidents of getting into trouble)

• Greater “conscience” (self-report, self-ratings, observed behavior for combined score)

Coming on Friday

• Gender development

• Adolescence

• Adulthood and aging