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14 views3 pages

U2, CH4,DP (1)

Uploaded by

Saqib Nehal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Priya Deora

Assistant Professor

Unit II: How Life Begins: Prenatal Development

Chapter 4- Prenatal Period and Hereditary Endowment: Conception to


Birth

History - Early research studies in developmental psychology ignored the prenatal period.
Some studies started with the preschool child but most with the school age child. Later studies
extended downward to the time of birth, but it was not until the mid-1940s that developmental
psychologists turned their attention to the prenatal period.

It was recognized that knowing what happens before birth is essential to a complete
understanding of the normal pattern of development and to a realization of what can happen
when it distort this pattern.

Most of the development that takes place before birth has been investigated by physiologists
and members of the medical profession, and the results of these studies have been extensively
borrowed by developmental psychologists.

Prenatal Development- development that occurs between the moment of conception and
the beginning of the birth process. This period, which begins at conception and ends at birth, is
approximately 270 to 280 days in length, or nine calendar months.

Characteristic of prenatal development -

The prenatal period has six important characteristics, each of which has a lasting effect on
development during the life span. They are as follows:

1 The hereditary endowment, which serves as the foundation for later development, is fixed,
once and for all, at this time. While favorable or unfavorable conditions both before and after
birth may and probably will affect to some extent the physical and psychological traits that make
up this hereditary endowment, the changes will be quantitative not qualitative.

2. Favorable conditions in the mother's body can foster the development of hereditary potentials
while unfavorable conditions can stunt their development, even to the point of distorting the
pattern of future development.

3. The sex of the newly created individual is fixed at the time of conception and conditions within
the mother's body will not affect it, as is true of the hereditary endowment.
4. Proportionally greater growth and development take place during the prenatal period than at
any other time throughout the individual's entire life. During the nine months before birth, the
individual grows from a microscopically small cell to an infant who measures approximately
twenty inches in length and weighs, on the average, 7 pounds. At birth, the newly born infant
can be recognized as human even though many of the external features are proportionally
different from those of an older child, an adolescent, or an adult.

5. The prenatal period is a time of many hazards both physical and psychological.it certainly is a
time when environmental or psychological hazards can have a marked effect on the pattern of
later development or may even bring development to an end.

6. The prenatal period is the time when significant people form attitudes toward newly created
individuals. These attitudes will have a marked influence on the way these individuals are
treated, especially during their early, formative years.

Hereditary Endowment

The first important happening at the time of conception is the determination of the newly created
individual's hereditary endowment. The contribution to this endowment from both
parents and from both maternal and paternal ancestors. Because the hereditary endowment is
determined once and for all at the time of conception. The determination of hereditary
endowment affects later development in two ways.

First, heredity places limits beyond which individuals cannot go. if prenatal and postnatal
conditions are favorable, and if people are strongly motivated, they can develop their inherited
physical and mental traits to their maximum potential, but they can not go further.

The second important thing about the hereditary endowment is that it is entirely a matter of
chance: there is no known way to control the number of chromosomes from the maternal or
paternal side that will be passed on to the child.

Conception to birth :

Prenatal development is the process in which an embryo or fetus gestates during pregnancy
from fertilization to birth. The course of prenatal development falls into roughly three periods.

Period of the zygote


● Conception to 2 weeks.
● The cell in this period is called zygotes.
● lasts from conception through implantation, when the developing zygote becomes firmly
attached to the wall of the uterus.
● As the zygote passes down the Fallopian tube to the uterus, it divides many times and
separates into an outer and an inner layer.
● The outer laver later develops into the placenta, the umbilical cord. and the amniotic sac.
And the inner layer develops into a new human being.

Period of the embryo


● 2 weeks to 6 weeks.
● The cell in this period is called embryo.
● The embryo develops into a miniature human being.
● Major development occurs, in the head region first and in the extremities last.
● All the essential features of the body, both external and internal, are established.
● The embryo begins to turn in the uterus, and there is spontaneous movement of the
limbs.
● The placenta, the umbilical cord develop; these protect and nourish the embryo.
● This is the time when virtually all the major organs are formed and the heart begins to
beat

Period of the fetus


● Approx 8 week to birth
● The cell in this period is called fetus
● all the major organ systems begin to function, and the developing organism grows
rapidly
● Changes occur in the actual or relative size of the parts already formed and in their
functioning. No new features appear at this time.
● By the end of the third month, some internal organs are well enough developed to begin
to function. Fetal heartbeat can be detected by about the fifteenth week.
● By the end of the fifth month, the different internal organs have assumed positions nearly
like the ones they will have in the adult body.
● Nerve cells, present from the third week, increase rapidly in number during the second,
third, and fourth months. Whether or not this rapid increase will continue will depend
● upon conditions within the mother's body such as malnutrition, which adversely affects
nerve cell development-especially during the latter months of the prenatal period.
● By the end of the seventh month, the fetus is well enough developed to survive, should it
be born prematurely.
● By the end of the eighth lunar month the fetal body is completely formed, though smaller
than that of a normal, full-term infant.

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