Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Week 3 Lecture 6
Issues in Developmental Psychology
Nature and nurture- how do genes and experience develop over our
lifespan?
Change and stability- In what ways do we change as we change and in
what ways do we stay the same?
Continuity vs. changes- Is development gradual change or are there
some leaps to a new way of thinking or behaving
Research methods- how can we study infants and children?
I. Starting the Path to Personhood: Prenatal Development and the
Newborn
Conception- sperm and egg unite to bring genetic material together
and form one organism. The zygote- the fertilized egg
Prenatal Development
The zygote stage: first 10 to 14 days
After the nuclei of the egg and the sperm fuse, the cell divides in
2,4,8..
Milestone of the zygote stage: cells begin to differentiate into
specialized locations and structures
Implantation: the embryo, 2 to 8 weeks
This stage begins with the multicellular cluster that implants in
the uterine wall
Milestone of the implantation stage: differentiated cells develop
into organs and bones
The fetus
At nine weeks, hands and face have developed; the embryo is
now called a fetus
At 4 months, many more features develop. Milestone of the fetal
stage: by six months, the fetus might be able to survive outside
the womb
Fetal life: responding to sounds
Fetuses in womb can respond to sounds
Fetuses can learn to recognize and adapt to sounds that they
previously heard only in the womb
Fetuses can habituate to annoying sounds, becoming less
agitated with repeated exposure
Capabilities of Newborn
Reflexes
Rooting- when something touches the babys cheeks, baby look
around
Schemas- theories about how the physical and social worlds operate
Used and adjusted through assimilation and accommodation of new
experiences
Baby sees a picture of dog, sees a cat and calls it a dog. Baby
adapts schemas
Jean Piaget Stages of Cognitive Development
I. Sensorimotor stage- birth to 2 years
Experiences the world through senses and actions
Developmental phenomena
Object permanence
Stranger anxiety
II. Preoperational stage- 2 to 7 years
Learns to use language
Represent things with words and images
Uses intuitive rather than logical reasoning
Developmental phenomena
Pretend play
Egocentrism- cant look things from another perspective
because they think their lives are centered around them
Conservation- objects conserve their own properties even
after they change properties, but they cant tell
Maturing beyond egocentricism- The theory of mind refers to
the ability to understand that others have their own thoughts
and perspectives.
III. Concrete operational stage- 7 to 11 years
Thinks logically about concrete events
Grasps concrete analogies and performs arithmetic operations
Developmental phenomena
Conservation
Mathematical
IV. Formal operational stage- 12 years
Reasons abstractly
Test hypothesis systematically
Developmental phenomena
Abstract logic
Potential for mature and moral reasoning
Lev Vtgotsky: alternative to Jean Piaget
Vygotsky studied kids too, but focused on how they learn in context
of social communications
Principle: children learn thinking skills by internalizing language
from others and developing inner speech
Week 3 Lecture 7
Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development
Lev Vygotsky: Alternative to Jean Piaget
o Studied kids to, but focused on how they learn in the context
of social communications
o Principle: children learn thinking skills by internalizing
language from others and developing inner speech
o Vygotsky saw development as a building on a scaffold of
mentoring, language, and cognitive support from parents and
others
Lecture 8
In the inner ear, waves of fluid move from the oval window
over the cocleas hair receptor cells. These cells send
signals through the auditory nerves to the temporal lobe of
the brain
o Sound Perception: Loudness
Loudness refers to more intense sound vibrations. This
causes a greater number of hair cells to send signals to the
brain
Soft sounds only activate certain hair cells; louder sounds
move those hair cells and their neighbors
o Sound Perception: Pitch- How does the inner ear turn sound
frequency into neural frequency?
Place theory- at high sound frequencies, signals are
generated at different locations in the cochlea, depending
on pitch. The brain reads pitch by reading the location
where the signals are coming from
Frequency Theory- at low sound frequencies, hair cells
send signals at whatever rate the sound is received
Volley Principle- at ultra-high frequencies, receptor cells
fire in succession, combing signals to reach higher firing
rates
o Smell
Odorants bind to receptors
Olfactory receptor cells are activated and send electric
signals
The signals are relayed via converged axons
The signals are transmitted to higher regions of the brain
o Sensing body position and movement
Kinethesis (movement feeling)- refers to sensing the
movement and position of individual body parts relative to
each other
Vestibular sense- refers to the ability to sense the position
of the head and body relative to gravity, including the
sense of balance