TOPIC 9 NOTES: DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Day 1 - Prenatal and Newborn Development

Do Now: Make a list of things you want to accomplish or experience in your lifetime.

Intro to Developmental Psych

Developmental Psychology 3 Major Issues

Nature/Nurture How do genetic inheritance (our

nature) and experience (the nurture
we receive) influence our behavior?

Continuity/Stages Is development a gradual,

continuous process or a sequence of
separate stages?

Stability/Change Do our early personality traits

persist through life, or do we
become different persons as we age?

Stages of Human Development Adolescence

Prenatal Development Emerging Adulthood

Infancy & Toddlerhood Early Adulthood

Early Childhood Middle Adulthood

Middle Childhood Late Adulthood

Ways of Studying Development

Cross-Sectional

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Longitudinal

Cross-Sequential (Cross-Sectional + Longitudinal)

Prenatal Development: Development in the womb before birth

Three stages: GERMINAL EMBRYONIC FETAL

Germinal Stage: The stage of development that occurs from _____________________ to _______________________.

After conception, the fertilized egg, called the _______________ moves toward the uterus.

● Zygote has all the ___________________________________ for new individual

● Less than _____________ survive to ___________________

● Undergoes rapid _______________________________, producing about ___________ identical cells in the first
week
● Then cells start to ___________________________ and ___________________________

Implantation: The process where a ________________ Placenta: Specialized organ that __________________

attaches to the _____________________. __________________ of the ___________________.

● Baby stays attached throughout pregnancy, eventually ● Develops out of outer cells of the zygote.
via the:
● Transfers:

● Removes:

● Secretes:

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Embryonic Stage: The stage of development that occurs from ___________________________ to

_______________________________________.
● Considered an embryo after implantation. Develops out of inner cells of zygote.

Fetal Stage: The stage of development that occurs from _______________________________________________

to ____________________________________.
● Fetus is recognizably human, but continues to gain weight and strength.
● Organs further develop.
● Rapid production of neural cells in the brain - about 250,000 per minute.

Age of viability:

Teratogens

Teratogen:

Effects vary, depending on timing, amount of exposure, etc. Some examples of effects include:

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Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:

Infant Development

Neonates: Infants <4 weeks old

● Born preferring sights/sounds that facilitate social responsiveness.
● Ex:

Reflexes: Set of innate behavior patterns infants are born with, to help them survive (either to get food, or to cling to
caregiver)

Maturation:

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Motor Milestones: As an infant’s muscles and nervous system mature, motor skills emerge.

HOLD UP CHIN > HOLD UP CHEST > Roll over > SIT >
CRAWL > STAND > WALK > CLIMB STAIRS > RUN > JUMP

Brain Development: Infantile Amnesia: Our tendency to not remember

● In womb, neurons overproduced (quarter million detailed or episodic memories from early childhood,
per minute) generally before age 3 or 4.
● At birth, most brain cells present but neural
networks increase dramatically in But, infants can learn:

___________________ over time, resulting in

and retain some memory of
increased physical/mental abilities.

Brain parts important in memory like

continue developing into childhood/adolescence - over time

we remember more.

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Day 2 - Infancy & Childhood: Cognitive Development

Do Now: AP PREP - Write down everything you remember about each of the terms below.

CONFOUNDING VARIABLE ABRAHAM MASLOW

AGONIST AFFILIATION NEED

Intro to Cognition

Cognition:

Piaget’s core idea:

Our intellectual progression reflects a constant struggle to make sense of our experiences and interactions with the world around us.

Schema: Assimilation:

Accommodation:

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Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development: SENSORIMOTOR (birth - 2) PREOPERATIONAL (2 - 6 or 7)

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL (7 - 12) FORMAL OPERATIONAL (12 - adult)

Sensorimotor Stage: (Birth - 2)

Key tasks/milestones/features:

Object permanence: Stranger anxiety:

Preoperational Stage: (2 to 6 or 7)

Key tasks/milestones/features:

Egocentrism: Conservation:

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Concrete Operational Stage: (7 - 11)

Key tasks/milestones/features:
● Can perform the mental logic to master conservation
● Reversibility:

Formal Operational Stage: (12 - adult)

Key tasks/milestones/features:
● Abstract logic
● Potential for mature moral reasoning

Although we find Piaget’s observations and stages to be useful, today’s researchers believe:

1) Development is a _______________________ process.

2) Children show some __________________________ and ____________________ at an _________________

age than Piaget thought.

3) Piaget underestimated how early _____________________________ and _____________________________

emerge.

4) Formal logic is a smaller part of cognition than Piaget thought, even for adults.

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Lev Vygotsky: Russian developmental psychologist - developed theory on how child’s mind grows
through interaction with their:

Big Ideas:
● Children learn best by:

● _________________ forms the building blocks for effective ___________________ and

_____________________.

Zone of Proximal Development: The zone between what Scaffolding:

a child can do independently and what she cannot do
independently - the zone where she can:

This is the goal, for teachers/parents to create opportunities

for kids to be in their ZPD - this is the sweet spot for
learning.

Retrieval Challenge Grid!

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

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Day 3 - Infancy & Childhood Social Development

Do Now: Describe a close, trusting relationship you had with an adult when you were young. What did they do to create that
bond with you?

Attachment

John Bowlby: British developmental psychologist who developed attachment theory.

Attachment Theory: An ________________________ theory suggesting that infants are biologically predisposed to form

attachments with caregivers early in life as a means to:

Imprinting: The process by which certain animals form _________________________ during a

______________________________ early in life.

Konrad Lorenz: Investigated the attachment of baby geese to a mother-like figure

● Baby birds imprint best to their own species but they will also imprint to another
moving object if presented during the critical period.
● Ex:

● Once an attachment is formed:

Human attachment: Human children do not imprint like birds do, but they do become attached to what they’ve known.

● Humans don’t have a strict critical period but seem to have a longer _____________________________________
during which attachment forms.

● Mere ___________________ to people and things fosters ____________________.

● Familiarity makes babies feel ____________ and __________________.

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Harry and Margaret Harlow: Conducted studies in the 1950s on _______________________________ and the

importance of __________________________________________ (physical closeness with a

caregiver) using infant monkeys.

Note: At the time, many thought that attachment bonds formed because:

Results: Monkeys spent significantly more time with:

____________________, _____________________, and _______________________ made cloth mothers even more

appealing.

Key takeaway:

Mary Ainsworth: Believed children use their parents as __________________________

from which to explore the world.
Kids form different types of attachments with parents, which impact whether or not they have
that secure base.

Designed the _____________________________________ studies to explore these

attachments.

Secure attachment:
● With mother present:

● When she left:

● When she returned:

● Formed by:

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Insecure attachment: (Ambivalent or avoidant)

● With mother present:

● When she left/returned:

● Formed by:

Temperament is apparent in babies very early - does this contribute to attachment?

● __________________ impacts temperament, and temperament impacts ____________________________.

Temperament: A person’s relatively stable pattern of:

(apparent in babies early on)

● Easy:

● Difficult:

● Slow to Warm Up:

Effects of attachments:

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Parenting Style

Parenting Style: (Diana Baumrind) A parent’s pattern of interacting with their children, based on how
responsive and demanding they are.

Authoritarian: Permissive:

Child outcomes: Child outcomes:

Authoritative: Neglectful:

Child outcomes: Child outcomes:

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Attachment Deprivation

Harlow Attachment Deprivation Studies: Found that monkeys raised in isolation with no real or artificial mother:

Abuse-Breeds-Abuse Phenomenon:

Orphanage Studies: Babies raised in institutions without the care and attention of a regular caregiver, and babies raised at
home in conditions of abuse/neglect tend to experience:

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Day 4 - Adolescent Development

Do Now: Read the following scenario and decide whether the husband made the morally correct choice. Explain why or why
not.

A woman with cancer was near death. One drug might save her, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town recently
discovered. The druggist was charging $2000, ten times what the drug cost to make. Her husband went to everyone he knew to
borrow money, but he could only get half together. He asked the druggist to sell it cheaper or let him pay later, and was told
“no.” The husband broke into the man’s store and stole the drug.

Adolescence

Adolescence: The transition from ___________________ Emerging adulthood: Period from _______ to __________

to ___________________, ranging from _____________

where many in ___________________________________
to ______________________.
are no longer adolescents, but also not yet truly independent.
● Length varies by __________________ and

____________________________.

Adolescent Development - Physical

Puberty: The period of ________________ ___________________________, during which a person becomes capable of

_______________________
● Sequence of changes is ______________________, but timing ________________________
● Shifting earlier, due to hormone changes due to:

● Early maturation correlated with increased risk taking, bullying, etc. but can sometimes be positive for:

● ___________ have earlier growth spurt, but ___________ keep growing and eventually become taller

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Brain development:

● Pruning of:

● Increased __________________________________ ---> speeds ______________________________________.

● Frontal lobe continues developing up to age ___________.

● Frontal lobe development slower than development of _________________________.

○ Helps explain:

Adolescent Development - Cognitive

Developments in Reasoning:
● Recall - Piaget said we enter the _________________________________________ around age 12 and become
capable of reasoning logically about abstract concepts

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development:

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Critiques of Kohlberg’s Stages:

● It’s _____________________ biased because people in ____________________________ societies are less likely
to reach final stage.
● Carol Gilligan:

● Jonathan Haidt: We tend to make moral decisions not through:

but through:

● Moral __________________ is more important than moral _____________________________ and

__________________________

Adolescent Development: Social

Self:
● According to Erikson, core task of adolescence is resolving the crisis of:

● Identity: Our sense of __________. According to Erikson, during adolescence we form our identity by:

● Social identity: The portion of our identity that comes from:

● Usually by _____________________________________ we have a clearer identity and more positive

_____________________________ than when they started.

Adolescent egocentrism: Imaginary audience:

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Parents:
● During adolescence, parental influence ____________________ while peer influence _____________________

● There’s a stereotype of constant conflict between parents and adolescents but in reality:

● More conflict with ________________, and more conflict between parents and ________________________.

● Correlation between _____________________ and ______________________________________.

● Parents are influential in developing kids’:

Peers:
● Personality is mostly influenced by ______________________, with some ______________________________

● Adolescents tend to act, dress, talk like friends.

● When with friends, tend to focus:

● Peer approval tied to _______________________________ in the brain - very influential/motivating.

Sexual:
● Open communication about _________________________ increases chances of using it.

● Sexual decisions may be impulsive/emotionally charged; later, _________ of sexually active girls regret having sex.

● Alcohol involved in most hook-ups - often happen without ________________ and without _______________

● Viewing sexual content in media skews perception of peers’ behavior, and increases ________________________

Correlates with sexual restraint:

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Day 5 - Gender and Sexual Development

Do Now: AP PREP - Write down everything you remember about each of the terms below. Please actually attempt to do this
from memory, and please actually write it down.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE HANS SELYE

CORPUS CALLOSUM STEREOTYPE THREAT

Sex/Gender Development

Sex: The biological status of being: Intersex: A condition present at birth characterized by:

based on:

How do we develop our sex?

● _________ __________________________ contain the genes that determine our biological sex.

● XY results in: ; XX results in:

Prenatal: Adolescence:

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Gender: The __________________ defined characteristics by which people define male/female, boy/girl, man/woman.

Gender identity:

● A person’s gender identity may or may not align with:

Transgender:

Gender roles:

Masculine: Feminine:

Gender socialization: Process in which children learn these gender roles.

● Occurs through:

● Children are ________________of gender roles by age _______________ and are

___________________________________________ in gender roles by age _________________.

FAMILY EDUCATION PEER GROUPS MEDIA

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How do we develop our gender?

Social learning theory: We learn social behavior by: Gender schema theory: Children learn schemas for
male/female early in life. After these schemas have developed
children will:

then by being:

Gender differences: Men and women are more alike than they are different - they share 45 of 46 chromosomes. But we often
focus on the differences:

● Men are more _________________________ aggressive; women are more __________________________

aggressive

● Women are more often _________________________ and ___________________; they are 10 times more likely to

develop an ________________ ________________________.

● Men are 4 times more likely to _______________ ______________________ and become ___________________

● More men are:

● Men spend more time ________________; women spend more time __________ ____________________.

● Men are more _________ ___________________ than women.

● Men are less _______________________ than women.

● Men have higher ________ ________________.

Is gender development a product of our nature or our nurture? Both.

Ex: David Reimer Case Study

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Sexual Orientation

Sexual orientation:

Proportions of people who are exclusively homosexual are pretty consistent worldwide: ________ of men, ________ of women,

but more report some same-sex contact at some point in their lives: ________ of men, ________ of women

How do we develop our sexual orientation? We have found little to no evidence linking sexual orientation to environmental
factors like parenting, peer influences, etc. But there is a lot of evidence supporting biological influences.
Sexual orientation is neither willfully chosen nor willfully changed.

Evidence of biological influences:

Other correlates: Spatial abilities, fingerprint ridge counts, auditory system development, handedness, relative finger lengths,
gender nonconformity, age of puberty onset, face structure, birth size, sleep length, physical aggression, walking style

These may seem random, but highlight a biological foundation for sexual orientation.

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Day 6 - Adult Development

Do Now: Social clock is defined as the culturally preferred timing of social events like marriage, parenthood, etc. What would
you say is our society’s preferred age for each event below?

First serious romantic relationship: First part-time job: First full time job:

Marriage: Buy a house: First child: Retirement: First grandchild:

Adult Development - Physical

Middle Adulthood:

Late Adulthood:

Life expectancy:
● Life expectancy varies by country but has __________________ over time.

● Women outlive men by average of __________ years. By age 100, women outnumber men _______ to 1.

● Death deferral phenomenon:

Physical decline:
● Sensory abilities decline - ex:

● Immune system weakens

● Brain:

BUT exercise protects against much of this physical decline:

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Adult Development - Cognitive

Wide range of cognitive abilities - wider range than in young adults.

Memory: Memory over the life span varies by type of memory.

● We remember some things well, for example, events from our _______________

● Ability to _______________________ words remains stable, but ability to _____________ words declines

● Two types of memory tasks especially difficult for older adults:

● Meaningful information is easier to remember because:

Neurocognitive disorders: (formerly dementia)

Alzheimer’s:

Biology of Alzheimer’s:

Adult Development - Social

Work: Love: Relationships are most likely to last when:

● Choosing a career path is difficult - college students
don’t accurately predict their career
● We have a sense that career paths are linear but this is
only true for a very small minority of people
● We are happiest when we find a job that:

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Children:

Death and Dying

● As older adults approach the end of their life, they tend to be more positive than we imagine they will be, especially if:

● For most people, the most difficult loss to cope with is:

● Grief is also more severe when death comes:

● Grief is variable within and across cultures, and there is no common trajectory of grief that we all go through.

● There doesn’t seem to be one way of grieving that works best but grief is prolonged when we:

● Some helpful ways of grieving:

Development Across the Lifespan

Wellbeing over time:

● From adolescence to adulthood, increases in:

● Adolescents experience emotion in a more _________________ but less ___________________________ way.

● Adults have more:

● Older adults tend to have:

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Erik Erikson: Developmental psychologist who argued that each stage of life has its own:

Retrieval Challenge Grid!

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

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Directions: Connect the lyrics to the psychosocial tasks in Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.

“7 Years” – Lukas Graham

Once I was seven years old my mama told me,

Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely
Once I was seven years old

It was a big, big world but we thought we were bigger

Pushing each other to the limits, we were learning quicker
By eleven smoking herb and drinking burning liquor
Never rich so we were out to make that steady figure

Once I was eleven years old my daddy told me,

Go get yourself a wife or you'll be lonely
Once I was eleven years old

I always had that dream like my daddy before me

So I started writing songs, I started writing stories
Something about that glory just always seemed to bore me
‘Cause only those I really love will ever really know me

Once I was twenty years old my story got told

Before the morning sun when life was lonely
Once I was twenty years old

I only see my goals I don't believe in failure

‘Cause I know the smallest voices they can make it major
I got my boys with me, at least those in favor
And if we don't meet before I leave I hope I'll see you later

Once I was twenty years old my story got told

I was writing 'bout everything I saw before me
Once I was twenty years old

Soon we'll be thirty years old, our songs have been sold
We've traveled around the world and we're still roaming
Soon we'll be thirty years old

I'm still learning about life, my woman brought children for me

So I can sing them all my songs and I can tell them stories
Most of my boys are with me, some are still out seeking glory
And some I had to leave behind, my brother I'm still sorry

Soon I'll be sixty years old, my daddy got sixty-one

Remember life and then your life becomes a better one
I made a man so happy when I wrote a letter once
I hope my children come and visit once or twice a month

Soon I'll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold
Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me
Soon I'll be sixty years old

Once I was seven years old my mama told me,

Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely
Once I was seven years old

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