Chapter 10: Development Over the Lifespan

How did we get to where we are today?

Nurture vs. nature - it’s both!

• Tabula rasa (blank slate) → extreme nurture perspective
• Hard-wiring
  • Infants are startled by loud noises
  • Infants are surprised by physically improbable events (magic)
  • Infants can see (with very limited range)

Prenatal Development

• At 4-8 weeks, male embryos’ rudimentary testes secrete testosterone. Otherwise, all embryos would be anatomically female.
• Stressed mother → underweight babies with abnormal cortisol levels.
• Father over 50 → higher risk of child with schizophrenia.
• Teenage father → higher risk of premature babies or low birth weight.

The Infant’s World

• Babies are born with motor reflexes, such as searching for something to suck on.
• How to study babies:
  • Habituation: show something over and over until it becomes a habit, then change the stimulus and see whether the baby can tell.
  • Preferential looking: present two things and see which the baby looks at.

From Conception Through the First Year

• Attachment: strong, intimate, long-lasting bond (often first one is the mother).
• Separation anxiety: around 6-8 months, babies become wary or fearful of strangers.
• Predictors of insecure attachment:
  • Abandonment and deprivation in the first year
  • Abusive/erratic parenting
  • Genetics
  • Stressful family circumstanceS (parent is ill, etc)

Attachment

• Attachment is a strong emotional connection to others.
  • It begins at birth (if not earlier).
  • Attachment is important because it motivates infants and parents to stay in close contact.
  • It occurs across species.
  • It’s not just about securing access to food.
  • Animals, humans included, have a need for emotional bond and comfort.
• Imprinting: ducks attach to the first large moving thing that they see (usually mother duck).
• Harlows’ Monkeys Experiment
  • Physical touch is important to social development.
  • Monkeys prefer cloth “mother” to wire “mother”.

Attachment style

• Babies develop different models of bonding to others (and dealing with threats to bonds).
• As long as family and life circumstances are consistent, attachment style is constant.
• Tested with “Strange Situation”.
  • Child is brought in with caregiver, stranger enters, caregiver leaves.

Secure attachment

• Infant plays while caregiver present
• Departure of caregiver leads to distress, searching
• Infant reacts positively to caregiver
• Prefers caregiver to stranger

Insecure avoidant

• Not upset when caregiver leaves
• No preference for caregiver/stranger
• Doesn’t seek comfort upon reunion

Insecure-ambivalent / insecure-anxious

• Anxious even when caregiver present
• Inconsolable even upon return
• Seeks and resists contact with caregiver

Social Roles and Gender Roles

• Social Roles: societal expectations regarding behavior or tendencies of a particular “type of person.”
• Gender Roles: characteristics society associates with different genders.
  • Children pick up on these gender expectations as they grow up.
  • How much of later gender differences are due to nature vs. nurture?

Thinking

• Babies assimilate (gather) and accommodate (make updates in response to new experiences) information.

Piaget’s Stage Model

• Sensorimotor Stage
  • Birth - 2 years
  • Month 1: all reflex
  • Months 2-4: accidents happen and get repeated
  • Months 4+: intentionally try to manipulate world
  • Year 2: trial and error
  • Takes until 15-18 months to differentiate self from others
  • Major skill: object permanence
• Preoperational Stage
  • Ages 2-7
  • Abstract thought (fantasy play)
• Concrete Operational Stage
  • Ages 7-12
  • Theory of Mind (put yourself in others’ perspective)
  • Actions are reversible
  • Focused on concrete, not abstract/hypothetical
• Formal Operations
  • Ages 12+
  • Abstract thought
  • Logically test hypotheses instead of trial and error
  • Can do long-term planning

Criticisms of Piaget

• Stage model assumes all children in stage are the same
• Some argue Piaget underestimated kids’ cognitive abilities
  • Kids seem to have some object permanence very young

Language

• Children may have an innate mental module for language.
  • Deaf children invent sign languages that show similar sentence structures to actual languages.

Morality

• Preconventional morality, not doing things for fear of punishment is seen in young children.
• Conventional morality, based on conformity and approval of others as well as law, is seen around age 10+.
• Postconventional morality, reasoned based on abstract principles and universal human rights, is seen in some adults.

Getting Children to be Good

• Power assertion (physical punishment, taking things away, “because I said so”) are not effective and can backfire (child becomes angry and resentful).
• Induction (appealing to child’s own empathy and sense of responsibility) is more effective.

Parenting styles

• Authoritative
• Authoritarian
• Permissive
• Uninvolved

The Physiology of Adolescence

• Adrenarche: ages 6-12, children’s adrenal glands pump out hormones that affect brain development, particularly an androgen called DHEA.
  • Divert glucose to brain to mature brain regions important to interpreting social and emotional cues.
• During puberty, synapses in the prefrontal cortex (impulse control and planning) are pruned.

Stages and Ages

• Trust vs mistrust
• Autonomy vs shame and doubt (young children learning to be autonomous without feeling too certain of their actions)
• Initiative vs guilt
• Competence vs inferiority (school age)
• Identity vs role confusion (adolescence)
• Intimacy vs isolation
• Generativity vs stagnation (middle adulthood - do you sink into complacency and selfishness?)
• Ego integrity vs dispair

Cognitive Aging

• Cognitive deficits are observed in older individuals
  • Decreased working memory
  • Short-term memory declines more than long-term
• Good health and socially active predict positive cognitive abilities
• Some things improve:
  • Wisdom
  • Crystallized intelligence