Human

Develop
ment
Development
consists of
changes in
behavior and PAGE 1
We will cover these
 Human
Development: How
Does It All Begin?
 Physical, Cognitive
and Psychosocial Topic
Development in Outline
Infancy and
Childhood
 Physical, Cognitive
and Psychosocial
Changes in PAGE 2
 Human Development:
How Does It All Begin?
 Psychologists study development to understand changes that humans
experience from conception to end of life.

 Because development covers such a long time span, developmental

psychologists specialize by limiting their investigations to a particular
period of life, such as infancy, childhood, adolescence, or adulthood.

 Within any one of these age stages, psychologists may focus on different
aspects of development: physical, mental, social, or personality
development.
PAGE 3
 Human Development:
How Does It All Begin?
 One developmental psychologist may study how language develops in
infants while another may research how peer pressure affects drug use in
adolescents.

 Explaining developmental changes is not easy. Part of the difficulty is that

some but not all of human development is predictable, and it is the
combinations of these life events that add to the complexity and
uniqueness of each person’s story.

 Knowing about developmental processes, therefore, has numerous real-

world applications.
PAGE 4
 How Biology and
Culture Lead to
 Diversity
Nature-nurture issue is the degree to which biology (nature) or the
environment (nurture) contributes to a person’s development.

 Psychologists are interested in how much one’s biology, or nature,

contributes to a person’s development versus how much one’s
environment and culture, or nurture, influence this process.

PAGE 5
 How Biology and
Culture Lead to
 Diversity
Nurture is the total effect of all external environmental events and
circumstances that influence development. It includes your family, friends,
how others perceive and behave toward you, events that happen to you,
television programs that you watch, music that you listen to, the customs
and rituals of your ethnic background, your gender, your culture, your
schooling, etc.

 It is not a case of nature or nurture. Rather, it is the interaction of these

two forces that influences behavior.

 Genes may moderate the influence of environmental forces; likewise, gene

PAGE 6
expressions may be altered by the environment.
 Prenatal
Development
 All genetic material for development is
inherited from your biological parents at the
time of conception.

 Male sperm cell, containing 23 single

chromosomes, fertilizes female ovum, also
containing 23 single chromosomes, to create
a fertilized egg, called a zygote, that has 23
pairs of chromosomes.

 Next 38–40 weeks, average gestation period

for a human, the zygote will experience PAGE 7
 Prenatal
Development
 So many changes occur during this time that
scientists divide the prenatal period into three
stages:

1. Germinal or zygotic stage,

2. Embryonic stage, and

3. Fetal stage.

PAGE 8
  First 14 days after conception are the germinal
stage of development.

 Major characteristic is cell division where the

Germina zygote starts to replicate itself and divide.

 This process ensures that all cells of organism

l Stage contain the same genetic material.

 Zygote divides into 2 cells, which then replicate

and divide again, creating a 4-cell organism.

PAGE 9
  Cells continue replicating and dividing, and around
the 5th day after conception, zygote has become a
100-cell organism, called a blastocyst.
Germina  During this process of cell division, the mass of
cells travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus.

l Stage  On approximately the 9th day after conception, the

blastocyst implants itself in the uterine wall lining.
Cell division continues through the 2nd week.

PAGE 10
  Covers development of the organism, called an embryo,
from the 3rd through the 8th week.

 After blastocyst attaches to uterine wall, its outside cells

develop into support structures: placenta, umbilical cord,
Embryo and amniotic sac. Inner cells become the embryo.

 Major characteristic is formation and development of

nic major organs and systems. Cells start to specialize into

bone, muscle, and body organs.

Stage  Major biological systems – cardiovascular system,

digestive system, skeletal system, excretory system,
respiratory system, and nervous system – are forming.

 Precarious stage of prenatal development; miscarriages

PAGE 11
  Embryo’s development may also be harmed by outside
environmental factors, producing devastating effects.

 All basic bodily structures and systems have formed at

end.
Embryo  About 4 weeks after conception, heart is beating, spinal
cord is forming, liver is producing red blood cells, and

nic ovaries or testes have formed (but the embryo’s sex is

not apparent by ultrasound until between 12 and 18

Stage weeks).

 Although only an inch long, the embryo already looks

human. Facial features, such as the eyes, lips, nose, and
jaw, have taken shape. Short stubs represent arms and
PAGE 12
legs, and the beginnings of fingers and toes are apparent.
  Third prenatal development period, fetal stage, begins
9th week after conception. From now until birth,
organism is referred to as a fetus.

 Major characteristic is continued growth and maturation;

Fetal
fetus grows larger and starts to move.

 By 14 weeks, fetus can kick, open its mouth, swallow, and

turn its head. Its lungs and external sex organs have
Stage developed.

 End of the 6th month (24 weeks), organs are sufficiently

formed that the fetus has reached viability – possibility of
surviving outside the womb (only in a neonatal intensive
care unit). PAGE 13
  During last 3 months, the fetus is responsive to sound,
light, and touch.

 From the union of a single sperm cell and egg, the fetus
has undergone significant and complex changes over the

Fetal course of 40 weeks. However, not all zygotes experience

these changes.

Stage  About half of all fertilized eggs die and are miscarried,
usually before the woman knows she is pregnant.

 Of pregnancies that the mother knows about (because of

a missed menstrual cycle), approximately 15% to 20%
end in miscarriage.
PAGE 14
Importance of a Positive Prenatal
Environment
 Support structures of the intrauterine environment are designed to
protect the developing organism. However, internal and external forces
can still interfere with this natural defense system and cause birth
defects.

 When internal chromosomal abnormalities are present at conception,

their effects arise during the embryonic stage.

PAGE 15
Importance of a Positive Prenatal
Environment continues
 E.g., Down syndrome results from an extra 21st chromosome. Babies
with Down syndrome are characterized by distinct facial features (such
as almond-shaped eyes or a flat nose) and are more likely to experience
heart defects and varying degrees of intellectual disability.

 Medical tests can identify the presence of Down syndrome and hundreds
of other inherited genetic disorders so that parents can discuss their
options. This possibility highlights the importance of regular prenatal
consultations with a physician.

PAGE 16
Importance of a Positive Prenatal
Environment continues
 Birth defects may also be caused by outside environmental forces.

 Any environmental agent that has the potential to harm the embryo is
referred to as a teratogen.

 May be a drug that the mother takes, such as cocaine or alcohol; a disease,
such as German measles (rubella); or chemicals that the mother inhales,
such as certain cleaning fluids. These substances have the potential to
cause birth defects.

 Critical factor seems to be when mother is exposed to these agents. These

sensitive periods emphasize the complex interplay of nature and nurture onPAGE 17
Importance of a Positive Prenatal
Environment continues
 Prenatal exposure to teratogens may also have long-term effects. Children
exposed to drugs during pregnancy tend to be more impulsive, less
adaptable, and have behavioral problems later in life than children not
exposed to drugs during pregnancy.

 In southern Japan, adults whose mothers took in high levels of methylmercury

(found in fish) during pregnancy have shown accelerated rates of aging.

 Maternal stress and anxiety during pregnancy may influence offspring’s

development. High levels of maternal stress hormones during pregnancy
increase the risk of preterm birth and are associated in childhood with higher
PAGE 18
blood pressure, behavioral and emotional problems, and a higher risk of
Physical  Average neonate, or newborn up to 28 days old, enters
the world 20 inches long, weighing 7 pounds.

Develop  One year later, average infant is 29 inches long and

will have tripled in weight.

ment in  Physical growth and developmental changes result

from complex interaction of forces of nature and
nurture.
Infancy  Our genes lay the foundation for how tall we grow and
how our body fat is distributed.
and  Environmental factors of nutrition, health care, and
lifestyle also influence our height and build. A similar
Childhoo interplay of nature and nurture is seen in brain and
motor development. PAGE 19
Brain Development
What is your very first childhood memory? How old were you then?

 Most people do not recall events in infancy or before 3 years old. Lack of
memory may be related to the nervous system development.

 At birth, an infant’s brain has billions of neurons, but connections

between neurons are very limited, and myelin is incomplete.

 Neural pathways grow rapidly. A 2-month-old has very few neural

connections compared to the billions a 2-year-old has. More experience
plus increased activity equals more neural connections.

PAGE 20
 Brain Development
continues
 During childhood and early adolescence, the brain prunes and discards
unnecessary connections, reducing the total number of synapses. Those
connections that are used repeatedly become permanent, whereas those that
are used infrequently or not at all are unlikely to survive.

 This discovery has altered researchers’ thinking on infant care and early
education. Providing stimulating age-appropriate activities fosters and
strengthens brain development.

 Impoverished environments weaken neural connections – fewer connections

are made, and unexercised connections are likely to be discarded.
PAGE 21
 Brain Development
continues
 A young child’s brain is highly plastic, or changeable, and very dense with
neurons when compared to adults’ brains.

 If a certain area of the brain is damaged in infancy, other areas can

compensate by reorganizing neural connections. However, there are individual
inherited differences in this process; some brains may be better able to adapt
than others.

 As children age, the brain is less able to change and adapt because neural
connections have already been formed, and in some cases discarded, although
some plasticity remains throughout adulthood. The plasticity and density of
the brain ensure a child’s best chance of adapting to his or her environment. PAGE 22
 Reflexes and Motor
Development
 Infants are born helpless creatures. They cannot feed themselves and are
unable to walk.

 They do have certain sensory abilities, a good set of lungs that enable them to
cry, and a set of reflexes, all of which biologically prepare them to get the help
they need to survive.

 A reflex is an automatic response to a particular stimulus.

 They enable infants to learn about their environment, thus establishing

important neural connections for voluntary motor behaviors.

PAGE 23
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 They serve as the foundation for behaviors such as walking, eating, crying,
smiling, and grasping.

E.g., Infants are born with a sucking reflex. They will automatically suck on any
object that touches their lips. They also have a rooting reflex. When you touch
the side of infants’ cheeks, they will turn in that direction and open their mouth.

PAGE 24
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 These two reflexes teach infants how to use their mouths to get food. They are
also born with a grasping reflex. When an object is placed on their palm, they
will automatically grasp it.

 Grasping reflex is the foundation of prehension, when infants learn to handle

items with their hands. Their brains and bodies learn, through grasping;
necessary skills that will later be used to write with a pen, play a musical
instrument, tie their shoes, or give a parent a hug.

PAGE 25
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 Infants are biologically prepared to communicate, despite lacking formal
language skills. A crying reflex – automatically crying when distressed – alerts
caretaker to infant’s needs.

 Matter of weeks, the baby learns to use crying to get the caretaker’s attention.
Infants are also born with a smiling reflex to use when they are pleased (which
also serves as reinforcement for their caregivers).

 This reflex evolves into a social smile during the second month of life, when
the infant smiles at everybody. Infants’ smiles then become more
discriminating; by 6 months of age, they reserve their smiles for familiar
voices and faces. PAGE 26
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 Reflexes also initiate locomotive ability, or the ability to move around.
Crawling and stepping reflexes prepare brain and body for motions involved in
pulling oneself up, crawling, and walking.

 These abilities develop in much the same sequence for all infants worldwide, as
evidence of our genetic heritage.

 Cross-cultural research suggests that child-rearing practices and environmental

variations may speed up or slow down this process.

E.g., despite living in poverty and poor sanitary conditions, Ugandan infants sit
independently on average at 4 months compared to 6 months for U.S. infants.
PAGE 27
This advantage is lost when Ugandan infants are raised in Western culture –
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 By age 2, most infants are walking, running, and getting into everything.
However, motor development, the changes in a child’s body activities, does
not end there.

 As children age, gross motor skills become more proficient.

 Gross motor skills refer to behaviors that involve large muscle groups such as
the biceps or quadriceps. These include running, walking, jumping, and
hopping.

 This proficiency is apparent when you watch a toddler, a preschooler, and an 8-

year-old run. The toddler waddles and is unsteady on her feet. Preschooler is
PAGE 28
more coordinated compared to the
 Reflexes and Motor Development
continues
 Similar changes occur in fine motor skills, which involve small muscle groups.

 Fine motor skills include such activities as writing, using utensils, and playing
a musical instrument.

 Toddlers and preschoolers are less adept at tasks involving fine motor skills, but
as the school years approach, children become much more proficient.

 Table 9.1 shows average age ranges for specific gross and fine motor skills
achieved in infancy and early childhood in the United States.

PAGE 29
PAGE 30
 Cognitive Development in Infancy
and Childhood
 Television shows, movies, and comic strips capitalize on the way in which
children develop mentally (their cognitive development).

What is it about children’s thinking that makes adults laugh?

PAGE 31
 Perceptual Development: Gathering
Information
from the Environment
 Infants are hard to study. They sleep most of the time, and they can’t talk
much.

 We can’t remember what it’s like to be an infant. Researchers must therefore

study infants when they are awake and active, and devise clever ways to
measure what infants know.

 Best way to gather information about what infants can and cannot perceive
seems to be to measure certain behaviors and see how those behaviors change
under particular conditions.

 E.g., researchers may measure how long an infant spends looking at a stimulus
PAGE 32
 Vision
 Babies are very nearsighted at birth. Objects need to be close in order for
babies to see them, and even then, the objects look blurry.

 Additionally, a baby’s eyes lack convergence, or the ability to focus both eyes
on an object. This may be why newborns typically look cross-eyed in
photographs. However, as the eye structure and neural connections in the brain
mature, babies attain visual convergence.

PAGE 33
 Vision continues
 Newborns show a preference for looking at complex, high-contrast stimuli. If
given a choice among various complex visual stimuli, infants will spend most of
their time looking at faces.

 Preference is adaptive, as it helps foster a social bond with primary caretaker.

 By 3 months old, a baby can tell the difference between its primary caretaker’s
face and that of a stranger and more easily recognizes faces from its own race.

 Infants also have more difficulty processing male faces than female faces.

PAGE 34
 Depth Perception
 1st year, infants develop depth perception. In 1960, Eleanor Gibson and Richard
Walk created an apparatus called a “visual cliff”. They then observed at what
age infants would or would not cross over the surface where it appeared to drop
off.

 Infants as young as 6 months of age hesitated when approaching this perceived

cliff. Babies acquire depth perception at about the same time they become
mobile.

 Because depth perception and body coordination may not yet be developed in
some infants, it is important to never leave a baby unattended. Immature depth
PAGE 35
 Hearing
 Unborn babies react to sounds in the intrauterine environment around the 20th
week.

 A mother’s voice is one of those sounds, which may explain why babies are
likely to recognize their mothers’ voices soon after birth.

 Infants can locate the direction of sounds. They learn difference between
similar consonant sounds, such as /d/ and /p/, and appear to remember simple
speech sounds a day after hearing them.

 Research suggests that these abilities to discriminate sounds and familiar

voices from unfamiliar ones may also be present in fetuses.
PAGE 36
 Babies prefer soft and rhythmic sounds.
 Other Senses
 Taste, touch, and smell are other ways that infants gather meaning from their
environment. Infants’ taste buds are functional at birth, and infants prefer
sweet tastes. Infants are also born with an acute sense of smell.

 3 days after birth, breastfed infants can discriminate the smell of their own
mother from that of an unfamiliar female.

 Infants are also very responsive to pleasant touch. Touching and caressing
infants stimulates their growth, promotes social development, and can improve
brain development and cognitive development.

PAGE 37
 Other Senses
continues
 Infants’ perceptual abilities allow them to gather information from the
environment – how their caretakers look, sound, and smell, where the food is,
and what sounds contribute to language.

 From these beginnings, infants develop the abilities to know, think, and
remember, a process called cognition.

PAGE 38
 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
 Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980) observed infants and children,
including his own, to discover and describe the changes in thinking that occur
in childhood.

 He gave children certain tasks to perform, observed their problem-solving

strategies, and then asked them how they came to their conclusions.

 From these observations and interviews, he developed a theory about how

children acquire their mental abilities.

 His theory traces the shifts in thinking from infants’ reflexes to a teenager’s
reasoning abilities. He believed that cognition advances in a series of distinct
stages, and that how a preschooler thinks differs dramatically from how an PAGE 39
Concepts to Piaget’s
Theory
 Three concepts central to Piaget’s theory are:

1. Schemas,

2. Assimilation, and

3. Accommodation.

Schemas: a mental idea, concept, or thought.

Assimilation: process by which an existing schema is used to understand

something new in the environment.

Accommodation: process by which a schema is changed, modified, or

created anew in order to understand something new in the environment. PAGE 40
Example of Schemas
A baby may have a sucking schema, “Is this object suckable?” or a mother
schema, “Does this person fit with my cognitive framework of mother?”

A preschooler may have the schema “The sun follows me wherever I go.”

Adults’ schemas may be very simple – “A key will start a car” – or more
complex, such as individual ideas of justice, morality, or love.

Piaget believed that our brains are biologically programmed to seek

understanding of our world. So we form schemas to fit with our perceptions of
the world. When we achieve this fit, so that our cognitions correspond with
the environment, we have mental equilibrium.
PAGE 41
 Mental Equilibrium Example
An infant may grab her pacifier, put it in her mouth, and suck it – an experience
that confirms her schema that a pacifier is suckable.

PAGE 42
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development

PAGE 43
Mental Disequilibrium Example
When there is not a fit between our schemas and the world, we experience
mental disequilibrium, an uncomfortable state that we are motivated to
get rid of so our mental harmony can be restored.

For example, an infant may grab a fistful of sand at the beach, put it in his
mouth, and determine it is not suckable; therefore, he will not suck on sand
in the future.

PAGE 44
Example of Assimilation
A young child is traveling in a car with her parents. As they pass an open
field, the child sees some cows. The only schema the child has for a four-
legged animal is dog. So, the child points and says, “Doggies!” The parents
may correct the child – “No, those are called cows” – but she may persist in
calling them “doggies” because that is her framework for understanding
four-legged animals.

The child has assimilated her experience of “cow” into her existing schema
of “dog.” However, many times our existing schema will not fit our new
experiences.

PAGE 45
 Example of Accommodation
Suppose the child in the previous example sees a dog and a cow side by side.
Differences in the animals cannot be ignored and will create disequilibrium in
the child’s mental state.

In this situation, she may come to call the new animal “cow.” Her existing
schema for four-legged animals has now been modified. The child will go
through the same process when she sees a horse, a cat, or a hippopotamus.

PAGE 46
 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development
• According to Piaget, assimilation and accommodation create shifts in
mental processing that allow the child to progress through four stages
of cognition:
1) Sensorimotor,
2) Preoperational,
3) Concrete operations, and
4) Formal operations,
• Each stage has characteristics that permit the child to conceptualize
the world in a unique fashion.
PAGE 47
 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development continues
Sensorimotor stage: Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, in which
infants learn schemas through their senses and motor abilities.

Object permanence: understanding that an object continues to exist even

when it is not present

Symbolic thinking: understanding that objects can be represented with

symbols such as bodily gestures or language.

Preoperational stage: Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development,

characterized by the use of symbols and illogical thought.

PAGE 48
 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development continues
Centration: act of focusing on only one aspect or feature of an object

Conservation: understanding that an object retains its original properties even

though it may look different.

Egocentrism: belief that everyone thinks as you do.

Concrete operations: Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development,

characterized by logical thought.

Formal operations: Piaget’s final stage of cognitive development,

characterized by the ability to engage in abstract thought.

Private speech: Vygotsky’s term describing the behavior of young children PAGE 49
PAGE 50
 Piaget’s Influence on Cognitive
Development Research
 Piaget’s theory revolutionized our understanding of children’s thinking abilities
and stimulated much research in cognition.

 Changes in thinking that he proposed do not always proceed according to the

precise stages and timetable he originally suggested.

 Children’s mental abilities develop at different ages. Nurture, culture, or

experience can facilitate growth and change in these abilities.

 Piaget accurately described the sequence in which these changes occur, even
in diverse societies.

 Final criticism of Piaget’s theory is that it overlooks the important effects of

PAGE 51
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: Culture and Thinking
 Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), a Russian psychologist ideas have influenced
how psychologists and educators think about children’s cognitive
development and have provided an alternative to Piaget’s theory.

 In contrast to Piaget’s emphasis on internal origin of schemas, Vygotsky

emphasized that mental processes begin externally with our social
interactions with others.

 E.g., babies smile at caretakers or toddlers raise their arms to signal that
they want to be picked up. A child internalizes these mental processes to
create a cognitive framework for understanding the world.
PAGE 52
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: Culture and Thinking
continues
 For Vygotsky, private speech represents an internal monitor that guides
the child’s actions. Private speech, or self-talk, as sometimes called, is
common among preschoolers and peaks around 5–7 years of age.

 Around 9 years, children internalize these spoken words as silent lip

movements. They think thoughts rather than saying them.

 Private speech can return at any age when we are confused or having
difficulties in problem solving or learning new skills. Such inner speech
guides our thinking and can help regulate our behavior.

PAGE 53
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: Culture and Thinking
continues
 Self-talk strategies that support Vygotsky’s ideas on private speech have
been developed to help children who are deaf use sign language, help
students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and to enhance sports
performance.

 It makes sense, therefore, to allow and even encourage children and adults
to use self-talk when problem solving or learning new skills.

 According to Vygotsky, culture has a profound influence on our mental

processing.

 Language, measurement systems, rituals, beliefs, and technology of a PAGE 54

Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development: Culture and Thinking
continues
 According to Vygotsky, cognitive development does not occur in fixed stages
as Piaget theorized. Rather, it may proceed in any number of directions,
depending on our culture, social interactions with others, and the
environment we live in.

 Representing concepts is not achieved by having these tools. Conceptual

thinking is taught to children by parents, teachers, siblings, coaches, and
other important people in their lives.

 This instruction is most helpful when it is within a child’s zone of proximal

development (ZPD) –gap between what a child can already do and what
PAGE 55
 Scaffolding
A process in which adults
initially offer guidance and
support in helping a child to
reason, solve a problem, or
master a task; as the child
becomes more proficient and
capable, the adult helps less
and less until the child can
master the task on his or her
PAGE 56
own.
Example of
Scaffolding
 When teaching a child how to dress, an adult first supports the child by
holding the shirt out as the child puts her arms into the sleeves and then
buttons the shirt for the child.

 When the child seems ready, less support is given until the child is putting
the shirt on by herself and buttoning it on her own.

 It is through these interactions with others that children internalize

strategies, reasoning skills, and problem-solving abilities.

 Vygotsky believed that a child’s cognitive development benefits most from

interactions with people who are more capable or advanced in their thinkingPAGE 57
Moral Reasoning: How We Think About
Right and Wrong
 Moral reasoning: how you decide what is right and what is wrong.

 Consider this situation: An automatic teller machine (ATM) dispenses $10,000

to you, and there is no way that this error would ever be discovered. You keep
the money, but you donate half of it to the soup kitchen in your town. Should
you have kept the money? How did you decide what to do? Your answer to
this situation would provide clues to psychologists about your level of moral
reasoning, or how you distinguish right from wrong.

PAGE 58
 Theories on Moral Development
 Two well-known theories on moral development are:

1. Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning and

2. Carol Gilligan’s ethic of care.

PAGE 59
 Theories on Moral Development
 Two well-known theories on moral development are:

1. Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning and

2. Carol Gilligan’s ethic of care.

PAGE 60
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning

PAGE 61
Lawrence
Kohlberg PAGE 62
Carol Gilligan
PAGE 63
Carol Gillian’s Stages of the Ethic of
Care

PAGE 64