Cognitive Development
Brain Development
- Born with all the brain cells we will ever have
- Nervous system still immature at birth
- Connections between neurons still forming
Infantile amnesia: the general tendency for people to have poor memory
for events in their lives occurring before the age of three
- Infant Memory
- Memory does exist in infants
- Difficult to retrieve when older
- Implicit memories of images, sounds, and emotions
- Recall can be improved with cues and repetition
- Experience
- Learning environment
- Enriched environment
- Leads to heavier and thicker brain cortexes (in
rats)
- Determines neuronal connections
- For optimum brain development, the early years are critical
- Experience
- Affects neural tissues throughout life
- Experience develops stronger pathways
- Disuse results in smaller/weaker pathways
Stages of Cognitive Development
- Jean Piaget
- Interested in cognitive development
- Observed common mistakes made by children of same age
- Schemas
- Concepts we form for commonly occurring events, objects, and
situations
in our world
- Children as active thinkers
- Assimilation
- Involves the creation of a new schema
- Accommodation
- Involves adapting existing schemas to understand and
explain the particulars
of new experiences
- Stages
- Acquisition of basic schemas for understanding the world
- Sensorimotor stage
- World understood through sensory and motor actions with
objects
- No grasp of object permanence
Object permanence: develops when a child recognizes that
objects continue
to exist even when they are no longer visible
- Transition from behavior dominated by reflex actions to being able to
use mental symbols to represent objects
- Preoperational Stage
- Unable to perform mental operations (reversible mental
processes)
- Lack essential concepts
Conservation: the awareness that physical quantities remain
constant despite
changes in their shape or appearance
Reversibility: the ability to envision reversal of an action
- Can’t mentally “undo” and action
- Egocentric thinking
- The tendency for the child to see the world as centered
around his or
herself
- Cannot take the perspective of another person
- A notable feature of egocentrism is animism
Animism: the belief that all things are living just like
oneself
- Preoperational children seem to reason concretely if only they are
tested
in a certain fashion
- Concrete Operational Stage
- Can perform mental operations on concrete objects
- Have trouble performing mental operations with abstract or
hypothetical
ideas
- Gain the mental ability to comprehend mathematical transformations
- Can perform operations only on images of tangible objects and actual
events
- Formal Operational Stage
- Typically begins around 11 years of age
- Children begin to apply their operations to abstract concepts in
addition
to concrete objects
- Thinking begins to encompass imagined realities and symbols
- Become capable of logical deductive reasoning and systematic planning
- Developmental changes after this point are more in the degree of
thinking
rather than in the nature of thinking
Adolescence
- Begin to be capable of abstract logic
- Can reason hypothetically and deduce consequences
- Enables them to detect inconsistencies in others’ reasoning and
between
their ideals and their actions
Adulthood
- Young adulthood
- Peak time for some types of learning and remembering
- Memory for names
- Crook & West (1990)
- Videotaped introductions
- 14 videotaped people said their names
- Results
- Recall versus Recognition
- Memory ability
- Depends on the type of information to remember and the
tests given
- Schonfield and Robertson (1966)
- Asked adults of various ages to learn a list of 24 words.
- Free recall test
- Younger adults had better recall
- Recognition test
- No decline in memory with age
- Type of information
- Meaningless material
- Memory declines with age
- Meaningful material
- No decline with age
Physical Development
Infants
- Research Techniques
- Limited range of possible responses
- Capitalize on what babies can accomplish
- Habituation
Habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated
stimulation
- New stimuli receive more attention
- Stimuli receive less attention with exposure
- Gaze
- Vision
- Memory
- Sucking
- Increased rate of sucking when aroused
- Hearing
- Senses
- Vision
- Hearing
- Smell
- Physical reflexes
- Used to test for neurological or developmental
abnormalities
- Adaptive
- Rooting reflex
– Stimulus
- Gentle touch on cheek
- Response
- Turns towards source of the stroking
- Adaptive value
- Sucking reflex
– Stimulus
- Insertion of nipple or finger into infant's mouth
- Response
- Sucks on object inserted
- Adaptive value
- Grasping reflex
– Stimulus
- Pressing an object against the palm of the infant's
hand
- Response
- Grasps object
- Adaptive value
- Orienting reflex
– Stimulus
- Sudden changes in environment
- Response
- Orienting towards source of the change
- Adaptive value
- Motor Development
- Direction
Cephalocaudal trend: the head-to-foot direction of motor
development
- Infants gain control over upper parts of their bodies
before the lower
parts
Proximodistal trend: the center-outward direction of motor
development.
- Infants gain control over their torsos before they gain
control over
their extremities
- Sequence
- Developmental milestones
- Lifting head
- Rolling Over
- Sitting without support
- Standing
- Walking
Adolescent Physical Development
- Puberty
Puberty: the process by which the body becomes sexually mature
- Hormones
- Intensification of moods
- Rapid physical development
- Consistent changes
- Timing varies
- Puberty: Growth Spurt
- Boys
- Begins around age 13
- Will grow about 5 inches a year
- Girls
- Begins around age 11
- Will grow 3 about inches a year
- Puberty: Physical Changes
- Primary sex characteristics
- Reproductive organs
- External genitalia
- Secondary sex characteristics
- Non-reproductive traits
- Girls
- Enlarged breasts and hips
- Boys
- Facial hair and a deepened voice in boys
- Landmarks of Puberty
- Boys
- First ejaculation
- Usually occurs by the age of 14
- Girls
- First menstrual period
- Typically occurs by age 13
Adulthood
- Physical abilities
- Peak in early to mid twenties
- Decline slow and gradual
- Athletes first to notice
- Physical vigor
- Less to do with age
- More to do with health and exercise
Old Age
- True/False Quiz
- Life expectancy
- Increase in last 45 years from 49 to 67
- Women outlive men from 3 to 7 years
- Sensory abilities
- Vision
- Pupil shrinks
- Lens becomes less transparent
- Reduces amount of light entering the retina
- Lens less flexible
- Difficult to focus on near details
- Reading glasses
- Hearing
- Sensitivity to high frequencies decreases with age
- 30 years old
- 50 years old
- 70 years old
- Health
- Immune system weakens
- Lifetime accumulation of antibodies
- Managed health care
- Age and traffic fatalities
Social Development
Stages of Psychosocial Development
Erik Erikson (1963)
Infant
Trust versus Mistrust
“Is my social world predictable and supportive?”
Toddler
Autonomy versus Shame/Doubt
“Can I do things by myself or must I always rely on others?”
Preschool child
Initiative versus Guilt
“Am I good or bad?”
Preadolescence
Competence versus Inferiority
“Am I successful or worthless?”
Adolescence
Identity versus Role Confusion
“Who am I? Who will I be?”
Young adulthood
Intimacy versus Isolation
“Shall I share my life with another person or live alone?”
Middle adulthood
Generativity versus Stagnation
“Will I produce something of value? Will I succeed in my life?
Will I
in
some way give something back to society”
Old age
Integrity versus Despair
“Have I lived a full life or have I failed?”
Attachment
Trust and mistrust
Child forms bonds with their caregivers
Attachment: the close, emotional bonds of affection that
develop between
infants and their caregivers
Characteristics
Likely to approach caregivers for comfort
Most easily soothed by caregivers
Show little fear of caregivers
Origins of Attachment
Satisfaction of biological needs
Satisfaction of emotional
Harry Harlow (1950's)
Isolated 8 infant rhesus monkeys
Wire "mother"
Terry cloth "mother"
4 monkeys bottle fed by wire mother
4 monkeys bottle fed by terry cloth mother
Examined time spent clinging to each "mother"
- All preferred cloth mother.
Contact comfort: comfortable skin sensations
Key to attachment
Providing a secure base from which to explore the world and a
safe haven
in times of stress
Infants can also become attached to fathers and others
providing
emotional
comfort and support
Attachment Paradigm
Child comes into lab already attached to caregiver
Need to measure degree of attachment
Strange situation paradigm
Children's behavior in this paradigm provides an operation
definition of
attachment
- Baby & caregiver enter playroom
- After time, caregiver leaves and a stranger enters and sits
down
- Stranger leaves and caregiver returns
- Cycle repeats itself again
Types of Attachment Relationships
Secure attachment
Uses caregiver as a base for exploration
Anxious attachment
Responses towards the caregiver fluctuate between happy and
angry
Anxious and avoidant attachment
Parenting styles and attachment
Parent interaction with child correlated with attachment style
of child
Secure
- Responsive to their infants signals from the very beginning
Anxious
Attend to the infant when it suits caregiver but ignored them
at other
times
Anxious/Avoidant
May be impatient and frustrated with child rearing
Harlow’s wire-fed monkeys
Effects of emotional deprivation
Novel situations
Terrified
Don't have the courage to explore
Don't know how to interact with others
Don't know how to engage in sexual relations
Awful parents
Adolescence: Identity formation
Separation from parents
Arguments occur
Small issues
Most adolescents closely reflect the social, political, and
religious
views
of their parents
Early twenties
Emotional ties continue to loosen.
Many still lean heavily on their parents
– Continued education
Late twenties
Most feel comfortably independent of their parents
Better able to empathize with parents as fellow adults
Graduation from adolescence to adulthood
Taking longer
Finish college
Leave the nest
Establish careers
Age of first marriage
Increased 4 years in the last 40 years
Adulthood: Job satisfaction
For adults identity depends on job
Career choices are difficult to predict
Shift majors
Post college employment in fields not directly related to majors
Change careers at some point in life
Best training for today's graduates
Broad liberal education
Service producing industries will account for most of the new jobs
Business, health, and education
Jobs requiring the most education and training
Fastest growing
Highest paying
Most important skills for today's graduates
Communication skills
Interpersonal skills
Teamwork skills
Jobs and Life Satisfaction
Adults satisfied with their job are usually satisfied with
their life
85%-90% of workers satisfied with job
Could easily imagine being more satisfied.
Level of satisfaction varies with age
Younger workers less satisfied than older workers
Death and Dying
Most of us will suffer and cope with the deaths of relatives and
friends
Difficult separations
Spouse
Untimely death of loved one
Cultural reactions to death
Reflects perceptions of death
American culture
Soul lives on
Buddhist and Hindu cultures
Reincarnation
Soul is born again in a new human body
Gond culture of India
Death is believe to be caused by magic and demons
React to death with anger
Tanala culture in Madagascar
Death is thought to be caused by natural forces
Peacefully react to death
Stages in Facing Death
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1969)
“On Death and Dying”
Suggested that people go through five stages of adjustment to
death
Loved ones or own impending death
Move through stages in any order
Sometimes skip stages
Denial
The refusal to accept the information about having an
incurable condition
Anger
Rage against doctors, nurses,relatives, circumstances in life
that brought
them to this state
“Why Me??”
Bargaining
Promising good behavior in the future in return for recovery
Depression
Sadness about losing life
Some people become very depressed, but not all do
Acceptance
A readiness to die
Lose interest in most of what is happening around them
Loosening their ties with life