Chapter 4
HOW DO PARENT-INFANT ATTACHMENT BONDS FORM
-Attachment: Emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver, and showing distress on separation. -At about 8 months, soon after object permanence develops, children separated from their caregivers display stranger anxiety. -Infants form attachments not simply because parents gratify biological needs but, more importantly, because they are comfortable, familiar, and responsive.
Adolescence: Psychosocial Development
Identity versus role confusion—Erikson's term for the fifth stage of development, in which a person tries to figure out "Who am I?" but is confused as to which roles to adopt
Attachment Styles and Later Relationships
-Basic trust develops in securely attached children -Basic trust: A sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy •Said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers (Erik Erikson, 1902-1994) -Insecure-anxious attachment: People constantly crave acceptance but remain alert to signs of rejection -Insecure-avoidant attachment: People experience discomfort getting close to others, and use avoidant strategies to maintain distance from others
Maturation
-Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior •Relatively uninfluenced by experience •Severe deprivation or abuse can slow development, yet genetic growth patterns are inborn -Maturation (nature) sets the course of development; experience (nurture) adjusts it
Piaget Stage 2: Preoperational (2 - 7 yrs)
-Children have a preliminary understanding of the physical world. -Theory of mind—people's ideas about their own and others' mental states—about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.
Egocentrism
-Children have difficulty perceiving things from another's point of view. •Even as adults we may overestimate the extent to which others share our perspectives (the curse of knowledge)
Piaget Stage 3: Concrete Operational (7 - 12 yrs)
-Children learn how various actions or "operations" can affect or transform "concrete" objects -Conservation—the notion that properties such as a mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
Researchers see development in two ways, depending on whether they emphasize experience and learning or focus on biological maturation
-Continuous: as in learning, where development is a slow, continuous process -Stages or steps, as predisposed genetically: •Progress through various stages may be quick or slow, but everyone passes through the stages in the same order
Familiarity
-Critical period: Optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development. -Imprinting: Process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life (Lorenz, 1937).
Aging and Intelligence
-Crystallized intelligence—our accumulated store of knowledge and verbal skills—tends to increase with age. -Fluid intelligence—our ability to reason speedily and abstractly—tends to decrease during late adulthood.
Culture and Child Raising
-Cultural values vary from place to place and from one time to another within the same place. -Children have survived and flourished throughout history under various child-raising systems. -Diversity in child raising should be a reminder that no single culture has the only way to raise children successfully.
Attachment
-The emotional bond that forms between newborns and their caregivers -Stranger anxiety—the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months
Zygote
-The life cycle begins at conception, when one sperm cell unites with an egg to form a zygote—a fertilized egg. Less than half survive the first two weeks, but those that do enter a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develop into an embryo
Embryo
-The zygote's inner cells become the embryo, and the outer cells become the placenta. The embryo is the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month
Continuity and stages
-What parts of development are gradual and continuous and what parts change abruptly in separate stages?
Stability and change
-Which of our traits persist and which change through life?
Work
-Work provides a sense of competence, accomplishment, and self-definition for many adults. -"Who are you?" often depends a great deal upon the answer to "What do you do?" -Few students in their first two years of college or university can predict their later careers. -Happiness is about having work that fits your interests and about which you can be proud.
Autism spectrum disorder
-a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors -fixated interests and repetitive behaviors -Children with ASD have impaired theory of mind; reading faces and social signals is challenging for those with ASD. -Underlying source of ASD's symptoms seems to be poor communication among brain regions that normally work together to let us take another's viewpoint.
Senescence
A gradual physical decline related to aging. Senescence occurs in everyone and in every bodypart, but the rate of decline is highly variable within and between persons.
Health
Immune system weakens and susceptibility to life-threatening disease increases, though people over 65 suffer fewer short-term ailments
Insecure attachment
Infants avoid attachment or show insecure attachment, marked by either anxiety or avoidance of trusting relationships. They are less likely to explore their surroundings. When their mother leaves, they might cry loudly and remain upset, or seem indifferent to her departure and return. Insensitive, unresponsive mothers often had infants who were insecurely attached.
FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF PIAGET, VYGOTSKY, AND TODAY'S RESEARCHERS, HOW DOES A CHILD'S MIND DEVELOP?
Jean Piaget was a pioneering developmental psychologist who studied children's cognitive development -Children are active thinkers -Minds develops through series of universal, irreversible stages from simple reflexes to adult abstract reasoning -Children's maturing brains build schemas: concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information -Schemas are used and adjusted through
Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Thinking
preconventional morality, conventional morality, postconventional morality
conventional morality
second level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the child's behavior is governed by conforming to the society's norms of behavior
Developmental Psychology
the study of physical, cognitive, and social change over the lifespan
postconventional morality
third level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the person's behavior is governed by moral principles that have been decided on by the individual and that may be in disagreement with accepted social norms
Conception
§Conception occurs when a woman's ovary releases a mature egg and one of millions of deposited sperm cells penetrates its wall. §A series of chemical events begin that cause sperm and egg to fuse into a single cell.
Adulthood's Commitments
§Generativity—being productive and supporting future generations §Intimacy—forming close relationships
Developmental psychology
•A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span -Focuses on three major issues: -Nature and nurture -Continuity and stages -Stability and change
Temperament
•A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity -Difficult: Irritable, intense, and unpredictable -Easy: Cheerful, relaxed, and feeding and sleeping on predictable schedules -Early attachment has impact on later adult relationships and comfort with affection and intimacy -Adult relationships seem to reflect the attachment styles of early childhood, lending support to Erik Erikson's idea that basic trust is formed in infancy by our experiences with responsive caregivers.
Accommodation
•Adapting current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information
HOW IS ADOLESCENCE DEFINED, AND HOW DO PHYSICAL CHANGES AFFECT DEVELOPING TEENS?
•Adolescence is the transition from childhood to adulthood •Extends from puberty to independence •Tension between biological maturity and social independence creates a period of "storm and stress" (Stanley Hall, 1904)
WHAT ARE THE SOCIAL TASKS AND CHALLENGES OF ADOLESCENCE?
•Adolescence struggle involves identity versus role confusion, a struggle that continues into adulthood. •Identity: Our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles. •Social identity: Involves the "we" aspect of self-concept that comes from group memberships. •Healthy identity formation is followed by a capacity to build close relationships. •Intimacy: In Erikson's theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in young adulthood.
WHAT ARE THREE PARENTING STYLES, AND HOW DO CHILDREN'S TRAITS RELATE TO THEM?
•Parenting styles reflect varying degrees of control (Baumrind, 1996, 2013) -Authoritative parents are warmly concerned and confrontive, and tend to have children with the highest self-esteem, self-reliance, and social competence. -Permissive parents are unrestraining, and tend to have children who are more aggressive and immature. -Authoritarian parents are coercive, and tend to have children with less social skills and self-esteem.
HOW DO PARENTS AND PEERS INFLUENCE ADOLESCENTS?
•People seek to fit in with and are influenced by their groups, especially during childhood and teen years. Influence of parents and peers is complementary. •Parents: Parent-child arguments increase but most adolescents report liking their parents. Argument content is usually over mundane things, and tends to be greater with first-born than with second-born children. •Peers: Peers influence behavior, social networking is often extensive, and exclusion can be painful or worse.
-Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
•Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features. -Alcohol has an epigenetic effect, as does smoking
Secure attachment
Shown by 60 percent of infants In their mother's presence, they play comfortably, happily exploring their new environment. When she leaves, they become upset. When she returns, they seek contact with her. Sensitive, responsive mothers had infants who were securely attached.
HOW DID PIAGET, KOHLBERG, AND LATER RESEARCHERS DESCRIBE ADOLESCENT COGNITIVE AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT?
-Develop new abstract thinking tools (formal operations) -Reason hypothetically and deduce consequences -Detect inconsistencies in others' reasoning, sometimes leading to heated debates with parents and silent vows to never lose sight of their own ideals -Reason logically and develop moral judgment Lawrence Kohlberg proposed a stage theory of moral reasoning, from a preconventional morality of self-interest, to a conventional morality concerned with upholding laws and social rules, to (in some people) a postconventional morality of universal ethical principles.
Infancy and ChildhoodPhysical DevelopmentMotor Development
-Developing brain enables physical coordination; as nervous system and muscles mature, skills emerge -Largely universal in sequence, but not in timing -Guided by genes and influenced by environment -The recommended infant back to sleep position (putting babies to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of a smothering crib death) has been associated with somewhat later crawling but not with later walking
•Prevalence of ASD
-Four boys for every girl -Risk greater when there are higher levels of prenatal testosterone; Simon Baron-Cohen suggests ASD represents an "extreme male brain" -Higher when identical co-twin has ASD; younger siblings of those with ASD sibling also at heightened risk -Random genetic mutations in sperm-producing cells may also play a role; over-40 fathers have much higher risk fathering a child with ASD than do men under age 30
Concrete Operational Stage
-From about 7 to 11 years -Children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. -They begin to understanding that a change in form does not mean a change in quantity and become able to understand simple math and conservation.
Formal Operational Stage
-From about age 12 through adulthood -Children are no longer limited to concrete reasoning based on actual experience. -They are able to think abstractly.
Nature and nurture
-How is our development influenced by the interaction between our genetic inheritance and our experiences?
Fetus
-In the next 6 weeks, body organs begin to form and function, and by 9 weeks, the fetus is recognizably human
WHAT IS EMERGING ADULTHOOD?
-Includes the time from about age 18 to the mid-twenties, when in many Western cultures young people are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults; they are in a not-yet-settled phase of life -Characterized by not yet assuming adult responsibilities and independences and by feelings of being "in between" -May involve living with and emotionally dependent upon parents
Body Contact
-Infant monkeys used "cloth mothers" as secure base to explore and as a safe haven when distressed -Similar to human infants, who also become attached to parents who are soft and warm—much parent-infant communication occurs via touch
Piaget Stage 1: Sensorimotor (Birth - 2 yrs)
-Infants acquire information about the world by sensing it and moving around within it. -Object permanence— the idea that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible
Theory of Mind
-Involves ability to read mental state of others -Between ages 3 and 4½, children worldwide use theory of mind to realize others may hold false beliefs -By age 4 to 5, children anticipate false beliefs of friends -Children with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty understanding that another's state of mind differs from their own.
Moral Reasoning
-Jean Piaget: Children's moral judgments build on their cognitive development. -Lawrence Kohlberg: Agreed, and sought to describe a moral reasoning that develops in universal sequence to guide moral actions
Moral intuition
-Jonathan Haidt: Much of morality rooted in moral intuitions that are made quickly and automatically
HOW HAVE PSYCHOLOGISTS STUDIED ATTACHMENT DIFFERENCES, AND WHAT HAVE THEY LEARNED?
-Mary Ainsworth designed strange situation experiments, which showed that some children are securely attached and others are insecurely attached -Infants' differing attachment styles reflect both their individual temperament and the responsiveness of their parents and child-care providers
Moral action
-Moral action feeds moral attitudes. -Walter Mischel: Ability to delay gratification linked to more positive outcomes in adulthood
HOW DOES CHILDHOOD NEGLECT OR ABUSE AFFECT CHILDREN'S ATTACHMENTS?
-Most children growing up in adversity or experiencing abuse are resilient, withstanding trauma and becoming well-adjusted adults. -Those who are severely neglected by their parents, or otherwise prevented from forming attachments at an early age, may be at risk for attachment problems.
WHAT ARE SOME NEWBORN ABILITIES, AND HOW DO RESEARCHERS EXPLORE INFANTS' MENTAL ABILITIES?
-Newborn arrives with automatic reflex responses that support survival: Sucking, tonguing, swallowing, and breathing -Cries to elicit help and comfort -Prefers sights and smells that facilitate social responsiveness -Sees close objects (such as faces) and smells well, and uses sensory equipment to learn Researchers usehabituationstudies to learn what newborns and infants can see, hear, smell, and think
Conservation
-Principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. -Children engage in pretend play
AdolescencePhysical Development
-Puberty: the period of sexual maturity, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing -Early maturing boys: More popular, self-assured, and independent; more at risk for alcohol use, delinquency, and premature sexual activity. - Early maturing girls: Mismatch between physical and emotional maturity may encourage search for older teens; teasing or sexual harassment may occur. -The teenage brain: Frontal lobe development and synaptic pruning occur. Maturation of the frontal lobes lags behind that of the emotional limbic system; this and puberty's hormonal surge may produce irrational and risky behaviors.
Research reveals that we experience both stability and change
-Some characteristics, such as temperament, are stable across the life span -Some characteristics, such as attitudes, are less stable
Critical period
An optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development -Lacking exposure/experience results in abnormal development -The brain's amazing plasticity reorganizes brain tissues in response to new experiences
Cognitive Development and Jean Piaget
Cognition: all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
How do developmental researchers study age?
Developmental researchers study age-related changes such as in memory with cross-sectional studies (comparing people of different ages) and longitudinal studies (retesting the same people over a period of years).
Psychosocial Development and Identity Formation
Erik Erikson (1902 - 1984)—His landmark theory of psychosocial development stressed the importance of social and cultural influences on personality throughout the stages of life. -Erikson: Social development unfolds in a series of stages, each of which involves resolving a psychosocial task as identity is formed.
Exercise and Aging
Exercise slows aging and stimulates brain cell development and neural connections; aids memory by promoting neurogenesis; helps maintain telomeres (tips of chromosomes)
Emerging Adulthood
For some people in modern cultures, a period from the late teens to mid-twenties, bridging the gap between adolescent dependence and full independence and responsible adulthood
The Aging Brain
Neural processing lag occurs; brain regions related to memory begin to atrophy; inhibition-control from frontal lobes may decline, leading to blunt questions and comments
Adolescence: Physical Changes
Puberty—Period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing
Adolescence
The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence
Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development
Table 4.4
Temperament and Attachment
Temperament—a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity
Sensory Abilities, Strength, and Stamina
Visual sharpness, distance perception, and stamina diminish; pupils shrink and the lens becomes less transparent
preconventional morality
first level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the child's behavior is governed by the consequences of the behavior
Love
•Adult bonds of love are most enduring when sealed with commitment (marriage or civil unions), with satisfaction related to shared interests and values, mutual emotional and material support, and self-disclosure. •Marriage is predictive of happiness, sexual satisfaction, income, and physical and mental health. •Compared with their counterparts of 30 years ago, people in Western countries are better educated and marrying later; this may help explain why the American divorce rate, which surged from 1960 to 1980, has since leveled off and even slightly declined in some areas. •Trial marriages related to higher rates of divorce and marital dysfunction. •More and more people meeting their partners online.
Teratogens
•Agents, such as a chemical or virus, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Peers
•Are more important for learning cooperation, for finding the road to popularity, for inventing styles of interaction among people of the same age
Parents
•Are more important when it comes to education, discipline, charitableness, responsibility, orderliness, and ways of interacting with authority figures
Neural development
•Brain cells are sculpted by heredity and experience. -Birth: Growth spurt of neural networks -Ages 3 to 6: Rapid frontal lobe growth and continued growth into adolescence and beyond -Early childhood is a critical period for some skills (e.g., language and vision). Tens of billions of synapses form and organize, while a use-it-or-lose-it pruning process shuts down unused links. -Throughout life: Learning changes brain tissue
AdulthoodSocial DevelopmentDeath and Dying
•Contrary to popular misconceptions: -Immediately expressed grief is not necessarily purged faster. -Adjustment time with or without grief counseling is about equally effective. -Terminally ill and grief-stricken people do not go through identical stages. •Strong expressions of emotion do not purge grief, and bereavement therapy is not significantly more effective than grieving without such aid. Erikson viewed the late-adulthood psychosocial task as developing a sense of integrity (versus despair).
WHAT PHYSICAL CHANGES OCCUR DURING MIDDLE AND LATE ADULTHOOD?
•Early adulthood -Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory keenness and cardiac output peak in our mid-twenties. •Middle adulthood -Physical vigor more closely linked to health and exercise habits than age -Physical decline is gradual; gradual decline in fertility -Females experience menopause, the time of natural cessation of menstruation; the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines -Males experience a gradual decline in sperm count, testosterone level, and erection and ejaculation speed
HOW DOES MEMORY CHANGE WITH AGE?
•Early adulthood is peak time for some types of learning and remembering. •Middle adulthood shows greater decline in ability to recall rather than recognize memory. •Late adulthood is characterized by better retention of meaningful than meaningless information, which rich web of existing knowledge will help retain; longer word and information production time.
Stages of adulthood
•Early adulthood: Roughly twenties and thirties •Middle adulthood: To age 65 •Late adulthood: Years after 65 •People vary widely in physical, psychological, and social development within each of these stages
Preoperational Stage
•From about 2 to 6 or 7 years -Child learns to use language but cannot yet perform the mental operations of concrete logic
Sensorimotor Stage
•From birth to nearly 2 years •Infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities •Infants lack object permanence -Awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived -Mastered around 8 months, when infants begin exhibiting memory for things no longer seen
Autism spectrum disorder's biological factors
•Genetic influences •Abnormal brain development •Prenatal maternal infection, inflammation, psychiatric drug use, or stress hormones •Childhood MMR vaccines do not lead to ASD
Piaget's view of cognitive development
•In Piaget's view, cognitive development consists of four major stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
Babies learning development
•Infants are capable of learning and remembering. •Waning of infantile amnesia by age 7 or so may reflect brain's increasing capability of conscious memory.
Assimilation
•Interpreting new experiences in terms of existing understandings (schemas), and
WHAT THEMES AND INFLUENCES MARK OUR SOCIAL JOURNEY FROM EARLY ADULTHOOD TO DEATH?
•Midlife transition occurs in the early forties, when people realize that life will soon be mostly behind them instead of ahead of them •Social clock: The culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement •Social clock varies from era to era and culture to culture •For the 1 in 4 adults who report experiencing a life crisis, the trigger is not age but rather a major event, such as illness, divorce, or job loss •Chance events have lasting impact, deflecting us down one road rather than another
A LOVED ONE'S DEATH TRIGGERS WHAT RANGE OF REACTIONS?
•Most of us will suffer and cope with the deaths of relatives and friends. For most people, the most difficult separation is the death of a spouse, a loss suffered by four times more women than men. •Grief is severe when a loved one's death comes suddenly and before its expected time on the social clock. •Grief reactions vary by culture and individuals within cultures.
AdulthoodCognitive Development Sustaining Mental Abilities
•Our brains remain plastic throughout life. •Cognitive training (memory, visual tracking, problem-solving exercises) can sharpen the mind, but the effects are limited •Brain training may produce some benefits, but generally short-term gains alone, and only for the trained tasks, not for cognitive abilities in general •Developmental researchers study age-related changes such as in memory with cross-sectional studies (comparing people of different ages) and longitudinal studies (retesting the same people over a period of years). •Age is less a predictor of memory and intelligence than is proximity to death. As death approaches, cognitive decline typically accelerates; this is referred to as terminal decline.
Piaget's theories extended
•Piaget emphasized that children's minds grow through interaction with the physical environment, but Vygotsky focused on how the child's mind grows through interaction with the social environment. •By age 7, children are able to think and solve problems with words. •By mentoring children, parents and others provide a temporary scaffold to facilitate a child's higher level of thinking. •Language, an important ingredient of social mentoring, provides the building blocks for thinking. •Piaget identified significant cognitive milestones and stimulated global interest in cognitive development. •Research findings suggest that the sequence of cognitive milestones unfold basically as Piaget proposed. •Development is more continuous than Piaget theorized. •Children may be more competent than Piaget's theory revealed.
HOW DOES OUR WELL-BEING CHANGE ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN?
•Positive feelings grow after midlife and negative feelings decline. •Older adults report less anger, stress, and worry and have fewer social relationship problems. •Brain-wave reactions to negative images diminish with age. •At all ages, people are happiest when they are not alone.
Nurture
•experiences -Influence of family, peers, environment -We are formed by the interaction of nature and nurture -Biological, psychological, social-cultural forces interact
Nature
•unique gene combination -responsible for shared humanity and our individual differences