Some notes about development

Theoretical Issues: Ongoing Debates

• Nature versus Nurture
• Continuity versus Stages

• Stability versus Change

Prenatal development

• Germinal period

• Embryonic period

Fetal period

Early motor development

Cognitive Development

Schema –cognitive structures or patterns consisting of a number of organized ideas that grow and differentiate with experience

Assimilation – absorbing new information into existing schemas

Accommodation – adjusting old schemas or developing new ones to better fit with new information

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor stage

Birth to about age 2
Child relies heavily on innate motor responses to stimuli
Mental representations


Object permanence

Preoperational stage

--About age 2 to age 6 or 7
--Marked by well-developed mental representation and the use of language

Egocentrism (video)




Animistic thinking




Concrete Operational Stage
--About age 7 to about age 11
--Child understands conservation but is incapable of abstract thought


Conservation

Formal Operational Stage

--From about age 12 on
--Abstract thought appears


Theory of Mind

Imprinting (Konrad Lorenz)
Harlow's attachment study
Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Temperament –An individual’s characteristic manner of behavior or reaction
Socialization –The lifelong process of shaping an individual’s behavior patterns, values, standards, skills, attitudes and motives to conform to those regarded as desirable in a particular society
Most approaches to child rearing fall into one of the following four styles:
Authoritarian parents: parenting style emphasizing control and obedience
Authoritative parents: parenting style blending respect for a child's individuality with an effort to instill social values
Permissive parents: parenting style emphasizing self-expression and self-regulation

Uninvolved parents
Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages (see handout)
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning
I. Preconventional morality
II. Conventional morality
III. Postconventional (principled) morality


Chapter 5 part 1
Chapter 5 part 2
Chapter 6 part 1
Chapter 6 part 2
Chapter 6 part 3
Chapter 7 part 1