Development

Development_AUH 1
Developmental Psychology
The branch of psychology that studies the
patterns of growth and change that occur
throughout life.

Development_AUH 2
The Fetus and the
Newborn

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Prenatal and Postnatal
Development
 Development before birth is called prenatal
development.
 Development after birth is called postnatal
development.

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Three Stages of Prenatal
Development
1. Germinal stage (conception to
implantation of the fertilized egg in the wall
of the uterus)
2. Embryonic stage (implantation to the end
of eight week)
3. Fetal stage (ninth week until birth)

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Germinal stage
 Zygote: The new one-celled entity formed by
the union of an egg and sperm.
 Immediately begins to develop.

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Embryonic Stage
 Embryo: A developed zygote that has a heart,
a brain, an intestinal tract, and other organs.
 all these organs are at a primitive stage of
development.

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Fetal stage
 Nervous system becomes mature enough to
produce a few spontaneous movements.

4 months 6 months 8 months

Development_AUH 8
Fetal Movement

Development_AUH 9
Fetal stage
 The spontaneous movements are essential
for the development of spinal cord.
 Later, the sense organs appear, the head and
eyes begin to turn toward sounds, and the
brain alternates between waking and
sleeping.

Development_AUH 10
Age of viability
 The point at which a fetus can survive if
born prematurely.
 At about prenatal age 22 weeks.

Development_AUH 11
Age of viability
 Born before week 30: less than a 50-50
chance of survival.
 If they do survive they may later experience
significant developmental delays.

Born at 22
weeks

Development_AUH 12
PRENATAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
INFLUENCES
Teratogens: Environmental agents such
as a drug, chemical, virus, or other factor
that produce a birth defect.
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Mother’s nutrition
Seriously undernourished mothers:
– Give birth to underweight babies
– Babies become more susceptible to
disease
– Adverse impact on the baby’s mental
development

Development_AUH 14
Mother’s illness
Rubella (German measles)
Syphilis, Permanent,
lifelong effects on
Diabetes,
the fetus
High blood pressure

Rubella

Development_AUH 15
Mother’s emotional state

Anxious and tense

mothers (during Irritable infants
the last months of who sleep and
their pregnancies) eat poorly

Development_AUH 16
Mother’s use of drugs (e.g.
cocaine)
 High risk of giving birth to addicted babies.
 Newborns suffer painful withdrawal
symptoms.
 Permanent physical and mental impairment.

newborn cries
for heroin
instead of milk

Development_AUH 17
Alcohol
Infants are likely born with fetal alcohol
syndrome (FAS), a condition resulting in below-
average intelligence, growth delays, and facial
deformities.

Development_AUH 18
Nicotine use (smoking while
pregnant)
 Miscarriage
 Infant death
 Premature birth
 Lifetime negative consequences

Development_AUH 19
Infancy (Birth – 2
years)

Development_AUH 20
Infants’ Vision
 Infants have the ability to recognize faces
which continues developing for years with
experience.
 After the age of 5 months, infants start to
crawl which gives them a sense of depth and
distance.

Development_AUH 21
Infants’ Hearing
 At first, infants appear to distinguish among
all sounds that occur in any language.
 Within a few months, they get better at
distinguishing among sounds important in
their language, and worse at distinguishing
sound differences meaningless in their
language.

Development_AUH 22
Infants’ Learning and Memory
 It is likely that infants learn the sound of the
mother’s voice before birth.
 Memories can form during prenatal stage
which can last for several weeks.
 Infants can learn a response and remember it.

Development_AUH 23
Jean Piaget’s View
of Cognitive
Development

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Piaget’s terminology
a) Schema
• An organized way of interacting with
objects
• Behavior is based on schema
b) Assimilation
• Applying an old schema to new objects or
problems

Development_AUH 25
Piaget’s terminology (Cont.)
c) Accommodation
 Modifying an old schema to fit a new object
or problem.
d) Equilibration
 Establishment of harmony or balance
between assimilation and accommodation.

Development_AUH 26
How does intellectual growth
occur?
 We assimilate new problems to an old
schema (i.e. we try several familiar
methods until we find one that works).
 If the new problem is sufficiently different,
we modify (accommodate) our schema to
find a solution.

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Development_AUH 28
Piaget’s four major
stages of intellectual
development

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Stage 1: Sensorimotor (birth to
2 years)
Major characteristics:
 Development of object permanence
 Development of motor skills
 Little or no capacity for symbolic
representation
 Little use of language

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Object permanence
 It is the idea that objects continue to exist
even when we do not see or hear them.
 Piaget argued that infants in the first few
months of life lack this concept.

Development_AUH 31
Development_AUH 32
Stage 2: Preoperational
(2–7 years)
Major Characteristics
 Development of language
 Symbolic thinking (i.e. can represent objects
mentally by words and other symbols)
 Egocentric thinking
 Difficulty distinguishing appearance from
reality
 Lack of the concept of conservation
Development_AUH 33
Egocentric thinking
A child sees the world as centered around
himself or herself and cannot easily take
another person’s perspective.

Development_AUH 34
Distinguishing Appearance
from Reality

White ball

Child: “the
Blue filter ball is blue”

Development_AUH 35
During preoperational stage, children
apparently do not distinguish clearly between
appearance and reality.

Development_AUH 36
Developing the Concept of
Conservation
Preoperational children say
that the second row has
more coins.

Preoperational children say

that the taller, thinner
container has more water.
Development_AUH 37
Preoperational children fail to understand
that objects conserve such properties as
number, length, volume, area, and mass
after changes in the shape or arrangement
of the objects.

Development_AUH 38
Stage 3: Concrete operational
(7–12 years)
Major Characteristics
 Development of conservation
 Mastery of concept of reversibility
 Has trouble reasoning about abstract
concepts and hypothetical situations

Development_AUH 39
The principle of reversibility
Children learn that some changes can be
undone by reversing an earlier action.

A ball of Long sausage A ball of

clay shape clay

Development_AUH 40
Stage 4: Formal operational
(12 years - adulthood)
Major Characteristics
 Development of logical and abstract
thinking (e.g. a > b; b > c; then a > c)
 Develops strategies
 Plans actions in advance

Development_AUH 41
Social and Emotional
Development

Development_AUH 42
Attachment
A feeling of closeness toward another
person.

Development_AUH 43
Ainsworth (1993) and others have
identified 4 basic types of attachment
relationships
1. Secure Attachment
2. Insecure/Resistant
3. Insecure/Avoidant
4. Insecure/Disorganized
Infants with and without
strong attachments:
 Infants who  Infants without
develop good strong attachments
attachments have have trouble
a sense of security developing close
and safety. relations later as
well.

Development_AUH 45
Secure attachment
 Secure attachment is a relationship of trust
and confidence.
 During infancy this relationship provides a
secure base for exploration of the
environment.
 This group seems to say “I missed you
terribly, but now that you’re back, I’m okay.”

Development_AUH 46
Insecure resistant/ambivalent
Attachment
 Infants or young children are clingy and
stay close to their caregivers rather than
exploring their environment.
 The baby is upset when the mother leaves
and remains upset or even angry when
she returns, and is difficult to console.

Development_AUH 47
Avoidant attachment
 Infants or young children seem somewhat
indifferent toward their caregivers and may
even avoid their caregivers.
 If they do get upset when left alone, they
are as easily comforted by a stranger as
by a parent.
 As if to say, “you left me again, I always
have to take care of myself!”
Development_AUH 48
Disorganized attachment
 Infants or young children have no
consistent way to coping with the stress of
a situation.
 The baby seems confused when the
mother leaves and when she returns.
 This leads to problems with emotional
regulation, social function and severe
emotional problems.
Development_AUH 49