Transcript Psychological development

Psychological development
Ottilia Boross
McDaniel College Budapest
2008
Capacities of
the
newborn
Cognitive
development
in childhood
Personality
and social
development
Nature – nurture debate
maturation
- innately determined growth
and change
- fixed schedule
- different rates
- some environmental influence
(e.g. motor development)
Environmental Influence
Experience affects
brain development
Impoverished
environment
Rat brain
cell
Enriched
environment
Rat brain
cell
Capacities of the newborns
Vision
– short-sightedness
– poor visual acuity
– double-vision
Prefer
– big contrasts (edges)
– complex features
– curved lines
Excellent
Recognizes mother’s milk
Sweet-preference
Taste
and
smell
Hearing
excellent at birth
6 weeks-4 months –
shift
sensitive to
•tones (Mozart)
•speech (foreign
languages)
Learning
and
memory
• fast and
excellent
• even
remember
their fetal
experiences
Experimental methods with babies
Conditioned
kicking
3-6
months
Eye-tracking
Stages of development
infancy – childhood – adolescency –
adulthood

behaviors are organized at a given theme /
a coherent set of characteristics

are qualitatively different from behaviors
at later or earlier stages

All children go through the same stages in
the same order
Windows of opportunity
Sensitive period
– time-window for the brain
– the individual is particularly receptive to certain types of
stimuli or interactions
– begins and ends gradually
– period of maximal sensitivity
If missed
the brain has progressed past the point
at which information can be simply absorbed
•attachment
•mental modeling of the environment
•music
•sports
• Critical period:
– time-window for the brain
– exclusive period for acquiring a specific
ability
– the relevant stimuli must be there
– begins and ends abruptly
– Like: binocular vision (1-3 years)
– hearing
– language acquisition
• Influenced by Kant's
constructivist theory
of knowledge
• Are children just
young adults?
• Is development just a
lot of learning?
• Children are born with
some genetically
inherited (and evolved)
mental structure ...
• ... all subsequent
learning and knowledge
is based on it
Jean Piaget
1896-1980
Children are active
builders of their
knowledge
Like little, inquiering,
naive scientists, children
constantly construct
and test their own
theories of the world
Schemas
(theories)
to understand
features of
the world
Assimilation:
– incorporating
new
materials
from the
environment
into a
schema
Accomodation
changing the
schema to
better fit the
environment
experience fails to
conform to existing schema
operation: logical thinking
Sensorimotor stage: (birth to 2 years)
adapting to &
exploring the environment
•
•
•
•
•
brain makeup
sucking and visual orienting reflexes
innate tendencies to adapt to environment
learn through senses
repetitions with variations
„Out of sight, out of mind”
• 8-10 month - Object permanence
• Understanding that objects exist independently of
our thoughts and actions
Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years)
Magical thinking
there are witches, fairies ...
... and
„Santa Claus is coming
tonight”
Animism: attributing life and
thinking to inanimate objects (see
religions and mythology!)
The sun is shining directly on to them ...
.. and there is a spirit in every tree ....
•Egocentrism: the inability to take another
person's perspective or point of view.
• Centration: The tendency to focus or center on
only one aspect of a situation and ignore other
important aspects. Unable to see that objects alike in
one property might differ in others
Pick the yellow triangles!
• Conservation: Two equal physical quantities
remain equal even if the appearance of one is
changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted.
Centration (height OR width) and lack of conservation
Irreversibility: The inability to mentally reverse a sequence of
events.
• Make-believe play
• Pretend-play and
imitation
– cooking,
– mum-and-daddy
play
Thinking is literal and concrete
(do not understand proverbs)
Theory of mind
… understanding, that:
• others have feelings and
thoughts, different from ours
• they are intentional agents ...
•
Autistic children do not have a theory of mind
Concrete operational stage
Class inclusion
• Classifying and generalizing on observable properties
(all dogs are animals but that not all animals are dogs).
Serial ordering
• Arranging a set of objects according to an observable
property; establishing a one-to-one correspondence
between two observable sets (the smaller the animal
the faster its heart beats)
Reversibility
• Mentally inverting a sequence of steps.
Conservation
• Realizing that a quantity remains the same if nothing
is added or taken away, though it may appear
different.
Formal operational stage
Theoretical Reasoning
• Thinking scientifically, being capable of mental
operations such as drawing conclusions, constructing
tests to evaluate hypotheses.
Combinatorial Reasoning
• Considering all combinations of abstract items.
Proportional Reasoning
• Stating and interpreting functional relationships in
mathematical form.
Control of Variables
• Recognizing the necessity of an experimental design
that controls all variables but one.
• Probabilistic and Correlational Reasoning
• Interpreting observations that show unpredictable
variability and recognizing relationships among
variables.
Piaget’s theory of moral development
(moral reasoning)
morality =
developmental
process
interpersonal
interactions
parallel play - no rules
• "heteronomous" stage
– strict adherence to rules and duties
– obedience to authority
– moral realism (objective responsibility,
when the letter of the law is above the
purpose of the law; the outcomes of actions
are above the intentions of the person)
– immanent justice (punishments
automatically follow acts of wrong-doing).
• „autonomous” stage
– consider rules critically
– apply them in a selective way
Lawrence
Kohlberg’s
theory of moral
development
moral reasoning
continues
throughout the
lifespan
Levels of moral behaviour
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
1. Obedience and punishment orientation
2. Reward orientation
Level 2 (Conventional)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity ( The good
boy/good girl orientation)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (
Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience)
Personality and social development
Temperament:
– mood-related
personality
characteristics
– can predict
emotional and
behavioral
characteristic
features later in
life
Easy (40%)
Difficult (10%)
Slow to warm up
(15%)
Emotional
development
Love Between
Mothers
and Babies:
are mothers
only a mere source
of food ...?
attachment
tendency to seek
closeness to
important others
Separation anxiety – 8. months
tested the idea
TERRY-CLOTH MOTHER
• well proportioned and
streamlined monkey
body made of wood
• covered with rubber,
sheathed in cotton
towelling (soft to
touch)
• light bulb behind made
her warm
WIRE-MASH MOTHER
made of wire mesh
lacked contact comfort
had breasts
the young monkeys clung to the terry-cloth
mother whether it provided them
with food or not
„got” protection and comfort
Strange Situation
• Parent and child are alone in a room
• Child explores the room without
parental participation
• Stranger enters the room, talks to
the parent, and approaches the child
• Parent quietly leaves the room
• Parent returns and comforts the child
Mary Ainsworth
1913-1999
Strange Situation
Securely attached
Insecurely attached,
ambivalent
Insecurely attached,
avoidant
Parental attitude
• Goodness of fit
(matching
temperament)
• Sensitive
responsiveness
(tayloring the
answers to the
babies’ needs)
gender identity:
a firm sense of being a member
of one of the sexes
• Psychoanalytic theory
• Social learning theory
• Cognitive developmental
theory
• Gender schema theory
sex-typing
culturally determined stereotyped attitudes
towards men and women
PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
Oral
Anal
Phallic
• Boys (Oedipus complex/castration
complex identify with father,
develop stronger sense of morality
• Girls penis envy, weaker
identification with mother, less
developed sense of identity)
Latency
IDENTIFICATION
HOMOSEXUALITY:
WRONG IDENTIFICATION
Psychoanalytic theory
Rewards and pubishments of
gender-appropriate and
inappropriate behavior by
adults and peers
(reinforcement)
It is like any other of behavior
(so it is subject of
modification)
Observation and imitation of
models’ feminine and masculine
behavior
Social learning theory
Lego for boys
Barbie for girls
Cognitive developmental theory
• children learn gender (and
gender stereotypes) through
their mental efforts to
organize their social world (not
because they are rewarded or
punished).
Gender constancy: to
understand that people cannot
change genders the way they
can change their clothes,
names, or behavior (it is a
function of cognitive
development)
Gender-schema theory
Three key “gender lenses” (hidden assumptions):
– gender polarization (men and women are different and these
differences constitute a central organizing principle of social
life)
– androcentrism (males are superior to females; male experience
is the normative standard)
– biological essentialism (the first two lens are due to biological
differences between the sexes).
gender acquisition =
self-fulfilling prophecy