Conception

Sperm and egg unite to form one organism

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The zygote (fertilized cell/egg)

Fertilization occurs in the fallopian tube

Zygotic stage: first 10 to 14 days
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Cells duplicate, begin to differentiate
Embryonic period: 2 to 8 weeks
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embryo
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Miscarriages occur, males more likely
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Blastocyst implants in the uterine wall
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Milestone: differentiated cells develop into organs and bones (heart
& nervous system)
Fetal period
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Week 7, sexual differentiation (XX,Xy)

Xy release of testosterone, leads to development of penis,

brain, etc.

Complex sequence of steps

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Week 9

Hands and face have developed

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Milestones of fetal stage - size and weight, age of viability 22
weeks, survival rate is 2%
Placenta functions as the lungs and liver for the fetus
Prenatal Life: The Dangers
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Teratogens: substances such as viruses and chemicals that
can damage embryo or fetus
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Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: cognitive behavioral, and body/brain
structure abnormalities cause by exposure to alcohol in the fetal stage
Fetal Life: active participation
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Fetuses learn and adapt to sounds in the womb
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Fetuses habituate - gradual decrease in response over
repeated presentations

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Neonatal period (birth to 1 month)

Sensory abilities
Chemical sense of smell and taste
Hearing
Sight is not fully functioning or adult like until 4 or 5 months
reflexes - automatic unlearned response pattern
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Rooting, sucking, swallowing, moro or startle, Babinski (foot),
grasp, stepping

Problem if continues longer than 6 months

Maturation
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In developmental psychology, maturation refers to

biologically-driven growth and development enabling predictable changes in behavior
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Motor skills
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Experience (nurture) is critical but maturation (nature)
provides a sequence
Brain development: Building and connecting neurons
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Womb
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Neurons increase by about 750,000 new cells per minute
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Infancy
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Connects form in lower parts of the brain (the brainstem & limbic
system), as well as the motor and sensory strips

This enables body functions and basic survival skills

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Childhood
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Neural connections proliferate in the association areas

Enabling changes in attention and behavior (frontal lobe)

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Experience and brain development

"Enriched" environment (more special interaction and
physical play) vs. "impoverished" environment
Baby memory

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Infantile amnesia
Lack of person recall birth - age 3
Theories: lack of "self", poor language skills, neural maturation
Learning skills
Infants can learn skills (procedural memories)
A 3-month old can recall a month later that specific foot movements
move specific mobiles

Cognition - mental activities that help us function

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Problem solving
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Developing models and concepts
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Understanding and using language
Cognitive development: JEAN PIAGET
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Piaget studied errors in cognition to understand how they
think differently than adults

Mind is constructed through interaction with the environment

Schemas

A concept or framework that organizes information

Assimilation and accommodation

She can assimilate experience into her schema by referring
to the car as a dog
OR
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She can accommodate her animal schema by separating the
cat, and even different types of dogs, into separate schemas
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Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to age 2)

Infants/ toddlers explore by looking, touching, hearing,
mouthing, and grasping
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Object permanence

The idea that objects exist even when they can't be seen

Preoperational stage (age 2 - 7)

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Operation > mental or internal manipulation
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Represent their schema with words and images (can use internal
memories)
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Perform pretend play
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Overtime children show egocentric thinking.. Replace with theory of
mind
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Use intuition, but not logic and abstraction yet
Egocentrism *OCCURS DURING PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
Egocentrism does NOT mean selfish
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See the world from one perspective and doesnt appreciate
other perspectives
Maturing beyond Egocentrism
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Theory of mind
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Ability to understand that others have their own thoughts and
perspective

NOT ABLE TO DO IN PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

Conservation - the ability to understand that a quantity is
conserved (does not change) even when it is arranged in a different shape
Rates of ASD have gone up 1 in 2500 to 1 in 110
Awareness by parents and doctors

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Fewer kids are getting diagnosed with MR or ID

Older parents (fathers)
Environment changes
ASD

Children have difficulties in three general areas

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Establishing mutual social interaction
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Using language and play symbolically
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Displaying flexibility with routines, interests, behavior, stare at lights
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Self-injurious behavior
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Have more difficulty mentally, mirroring the thoughts and
actions of others; called "Mind Blindness"
The concrete operational stage (ages 6/7 to 11)
Dont have problems with conservation
Children now grasp conservation and other concrete
transformations
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Things you can see and touch, not abstract
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Understand simple mathematical transformation like
reversibility
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Piaget's Theory
Helps us understand kids:
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Children learn via active engagement
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Cannot see other viewpoints on issues
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Over rely on intuition and are often captured by what they
see "centration"
Today researchers believe

Development is a continuous process

Children show mental abilities at an earlier age than Piaget thought

Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition, even for adults, than

Piaget believed
Lev Vgotsky

Focused on Culture & context of social communication

Children learn thinking skills by internalizing language from others
and developing inner speech
Development as building on a scaffold of mentoring, language, and
cognitive support from parents and others
Social development: Attachment
Enduring and reciprocal emotional tie to another person
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John Bowlby

Origins
Experiments with monkeys suggest that attachment is based
on physical affection and body contact and not based on food

Social Development: Stranger Anxiety

Ages 9 to 13 months, a child notices and fears new people
Children develop schemas for people in their lives
Develops because of evolution
Strange situation tests child's attachment - Mary Ainsworth
Attachment:

Strange situation test:

Relies on reparation and reunion episodes (stress on child)
Reactions to separation and reunion
Secure attachment: mild distress at separation, seek contact

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at reunion
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Insecure attachment (anxious or avoidant): little exploration

& extreme atypical actions at separation or reunion

Nature or Nurture?
Is the strange situations behavior mainly a function of the child's
inborn temperament>
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Temperament's a person's characteristic style and intensity
of emotional reactivity
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"easy" temperament happy relaxed and calm with
predictable rhythms of hunger and sleep
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"difficult" they are irritable, unpredictable needs and behavior
and intense reactions
Is the child's behavior actually caused by previous parenting
behavior
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Ainsworth: sensitive, responsive, calm parenting correlated
with the secure attachment
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Training in sensitive responding led to doubled rates of
secure attachment
Children in Daycare
Day care does not significantly increase or decrease separation
anxiety

Warm interaction anywhere can result in healthy attachments

Time in day care correlates with advance thinking skills and with
increased aggression and defiance
Deprivation of Attachment
If children live without safe nurturing, affectionate caretaking, they
may still be resilient, and bounce back, attach, and succeed
Prolonged deprivation or abuse may lead to
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Having difficulty forming attachments
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Have increased anxiety and depression
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Have lowered intelligence
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Show increased aggression
Childhood: parenting styles
Style

Warmth and control

Authoritarian "Too hard" - low

Low warmth, high control

Permissive "too soft"

High on warmth, low control

Authoritative "just right"

Moderate warmth, moderate control

Outcomes with parenting styles

Authoritative
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High self-reliance
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High social competence
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High self-esteem
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Low aggression
Adolescent Development
Puberty is the time of sexual maturation (able to reproduce)
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Increased sex hormones lead to

Primary and secondary sex characteristics

Some change in mood and behavior

As with other maturation, the sequence is more predictable than the timing
Effects of early physical maturation
Boys who become strong/ athletic early

Often more popular and confident

Greater risk of substance abuse, delinquency, early sexual activity

Girls whose bodies mature early may associate with older teens or be teased or
taunted
Adolescent brain development

During puberty, blooming and pruning of synapses

The frontal loves are still maturing, myelination (speed and
efficiency)

The adolescent brain is not fully able to inhibit impulses (good

accelerator, bad breaks)
Building toward Moral Reasoning
Lawrence Kohlberg's Levels of moral reasoning
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Preconventional morality (up to age 9): self-interest, obey
rules to avoid punishment
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Conventional (early adolescence): upholds laws to gain
social approval, maintain social order
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Postconventional morality (later adolescence and
adulthood): belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles
Adolescents see justice and fairness in terms of merit and equity instead of in terms
of everyone getting equal treatment
Moral Intuition: Our reasoning may be directed by emotions

Psychological Development: Erikson's Stages

Each are involves an issue, a psychological challenge in managing
our interactions with the social world
The "vs" part: tension between two opposing tendencies
Successfully resolving this tension gives us strengths that help us
move to the next stage
Not resoling this tension can lead to lifelong emotional and social
difficulties
Infancy
Trust vs. mistrust
Toddlerhood

Autonomy vs. shame and doubt

Preschool

Initiative vs. guilt

Elementary school

Competence vs. inferiority

Adolescence

Identity vs. role confusion

Young adulthood

Intimacy vs. isolation

Middle adulthood

Generativity vs. stagnation

Late adulthood

Integrity vs. despair