‫صفية الجلبي‬.

‫د‬
Lec. 1,2,3

‫علوم سلوكية‬
Life Cycle
Growth and Development
Is the scientific study of the changes that occur
in people as they age, from conception until death.
Nature versus nurture
• Nature: refers to heredity, the influence of inherited characteristics on:
• Personality

• Physical growth

• Intellectual growth, and

• Social interactions

• Nurture: refers to the influence of the environment on all of those same things and
includes:

• Parenting stile,

• Physical surroundings,

• Economic factors, and

• Anything that can have an influence on development that does not

come from within the person.

• Most developmental psychologist agree that the most likely explanation for
most human development is based on the interaction between nature and
nurture.

• Behavioral genetics: is relatively new field that attempts to identify genetic

basis of behavior. (try to determine how much of behavior is the result of
genetic inheritance and how much is due to a person’s experiences).

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 Prenatal development
• From conception to the actual birth of the baby

• It is a period of approximately 9 months,

• during which a single cell becomes a complete infant.

• It is also during this time that many things can have a positive or negative influence
on the developing infant.

Infancy and childhood development

Preferential looking:
• The longer an infant spends looking at stimulus, the more the infant prefers that
stimulus over others.

Habituation:
• Is the tendency for infant (and adult) to stop paining attention to a stimulus that
does not change.

Physical development
• Respiratory system begin to function.

• The blood circulate only within the infant’s system.

• Temperature regulated by:

• Infants own activity

• Body fat (act as insulation).

• The digestive system takes the longest time to adjust to life outside the womb.

Reflexes
• Innate,

• Involuntary behavior

• existing from birth

• It is a means of interaction with the surrounding world.

• Help the infant to survive

• Used to determine whether nervous system is working properly.

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• It is a five reflexes:

1. Grasping

2. Startle (moro)

3. Rooting

4. Stepping

5. sucking

Motor development
• Infant manage a tremendous amount of development in motor skills from birth to
about 2 years of age (milestone).

• An infant may reach these milestones earlier or later than the average and still be
considered to be developing normally.

Infant sensory abilities

• Touch

• Skin to womb contact in the last months of pregnancy

• Smell

• Differentiate between Mother’s milk scent & another woman’s milk scent
within few days after birth.

• Taste

• At birth preference for sweet.

• At 4ms preference for salty.

• Hearing

• Vision

Cognitive development
• 2 years • 5 years
• Brain triples its wt
• Brain : 90% of its
• Brain: 75% of its adult wt adult wt

• Development of:

• #Thinking

• #Problem solving

• #memory

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 Piaget’s theory
• Pioneered by Jean Piaget.

• Jean Piaget developed his theory from detailed observations of infants and children
most especially his own three children.

• Piaget believe that children form mental concept or “schemes” as they experience
new situation or events.

• Piaget also believe that children first try to understand new things in terms of
schemes they already possess, a process called “assimilaton”.

• The process of altering or adjusting old schemes to fit new information and
experiences is “accommodation”.

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

Stage Age Cognitive development
1 Sensorimotor Birth Children explore the world using their senses and ability to move. They develop
 2yrs object permanence & the understanding that concepts and mental images
represent objects, people, and events (symbolic thought).
2 Preoperational 27 Young children can mentally represent and refer to object and event with
yrs words or pictures (use language) and they can pretend .however, they can’t
conserve , logically reason, or simultaneously consider many characteristic of an
object (centration), or unable to mentally reverse actions ( irreversibility).
Another limitation is “ egocentrism”, the unability to see the world through
any one else’s eyes but one’s own.
They believe that any thing that move is alive (animism).
They tend to believe that what they see is literally true, (e.g. Santa Claus)
3 Concrete 712 Children at this stage able to conserve, reverse their thinking, and classify
operational yrs object in terms of their many characteristic.
They can also think logically and understand analogies but only about concrete
events.

4 Formal 12yrs People at this stage can use abstract reasoning about hypothetical events or
operational  situation, think about logical possibilities, use abstract analogies, and
adult- systematically examine and test hypotheses. Not everyone can eventually
Hood
reason in all these ways.

Language Development

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• Child directed speech: the way adults and older children talk
to infants and very young children, with higher pitched,
repetitious, sing-song speech pattern.

• Receptive-productive lag: Infants seem understand far

more than they can produce.

Autism spectrum disorder

• It is a neurodevelopmental disorder.
• It cause problems in
• Thinking
• Feeling
• Language
• Social skills
• Causes are still being investigated but do not
appear to be linked childhood immunization.

Psychosocial development
• Temperament
• The behavior and emotional characteristics that are
fairly established at birth.

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Thomas and Chess have identified three basic temperament
styles of infant:

Easy: easy babies are

Regular in their schedule of waking, sleeping and eating.

Adaptable to change
Happy babies
When distressed easily soothed.

Difficult: difficult babies tend to be

Irregular in their schedules

Very unhappy about change of any kind
They are loud, active
Crabby rather than happy

Slow to warm up:

More regular than difficult children

Slow to adapt to change
Less grumpy
Quieter

Attachment
The emotional bond that forms between an
infant and primary care giver.
• Attachment is an important first step in forming
relationships with others.
• Usually forming with in the 1st 6 ms.
• During the 2nd 6 ms can be showing up in a no. of ways:
• Stranger anxiety (wariness of stranger)
• Separation anxiety (fear of being
separated from the caregiver)

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 Harlow and contact comfort
• Psychologist at first assumed that attachment to the mother
occurred because the mother was associated with satisfaction of
primary drives (hunger & thirst).
• food __________ 1ry reinforcer
(primary drive).
• mother __________ 2ry reinforcer
(pleasurable feeling).
• Psychologist Harry Harlow felt that attachment had to be
influenced by more than just the provision of food.
• Harlow and his colleagues conclude that contact comfort was an
important basic affectional or love variable.
• Harlow ‘s work represent one of the earliest investigations into
the importance of touch in the attachment process and remains
an important study in human development.

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 adolescence
It also concern how a
It is a period of life from person deals with life
about age issues such as
13  early 20s work, family and
relationships.

The end of adolescence

may come earlier or later
for different individuals.

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Physical development in adolescence

Growth spurt
Rapid period of growth 10-> female, 12 -> male

Puberty (after 2 yrs)

Rapid & dramatic changes 1ry & 2ry sex characteristic

Puberty complete ( after 4 yrs)

Brain development -> adulthood (30s) ---------impulse control, decision

making, & organization & understanding of information

Cognitive development in adolescence

• Piaget’s formal operations revised

• Abstract thinking become possible

• Thinking about hypothetical situation (teenagers).

• Egocentric thought (preoccupied with their own thoughts).

• They do a lot of introspection (turning inward).

• Convinced that their thoughts are as important to others as they

are to themselves.

• Personal fable (they are special, they feel unique).

• Imaginary audience (every one is looking at them, they are the

center of everyone else world, just as they are the center of their
own).

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 Psychosocial development of adolescents

Consistent sense of
Erikson’s identity
self & personal Parent-teen conflict
versus role confusion
identity

Adulthood

Early 20s --> old

age & death

Young
Middle age Late adulthood
adulthood

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 Physical development
)use it or lose it(
skin wrinkles
Oil gland in the neck and around the eyes begin to malfunction near the end of 20s
and beginning of 30s.

vision decline around age 40s

Hardening the lens of the eyes.

hearing lose begin around age 40s  50s

become noticeable at age 60s 70s

weight
height

Menopause
In female

Andropause
In male

Cognitive development
Intellectual
abilities Memory

Slow down speed Difficulties in

of processing retrieval.
Longer time for Thinking positive
problem solving .  formation of
newer memory.

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Psychosocial development
Erikson’s intimacy
vs isolation Forming relationships

Erikson’s
generativity vs Parenting
stagnation

Erikson’s Ego
integrity vs dealing with mortality
despair

Parenting style
Permissive
parenting

Parent Children
Authoritarian
Stern,
parenting
Insecure

Rigid Timid

,Controlling, Withdrawn
Uncompromising, Resentful
Demands perfection, Delinquency
Overly concerned with Drug use
rule,
Use physical punishment Premarital sex

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