developmental psychology

• The sensorimotor stage is the first stage of Piaget's theory, during which infants learn about the world through their senses and motor actions.
• In the 1590s, the invention of the microscope led to advancements in understanding prenatal development.
• Nicolaas Hartsoeker and the preformation theory of development proposed in 1695 suggested that embryos were miniature versions of adults.
• Optical improvements in the 19th Century revealed that embryonic development involved substantial differentiation, not just growth.
• The Germinal Period, from conception to implantation, includes the formation of the blastocyst and implantation into the uterine wall.
• The Period of the Embryo, from implantation to ~2 months, involves cell differentiation into ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm, and the formation of major organ systems and body structures.
• The Period of the Fetus, from 2 months to birth, involves continued growth and development of organ systems and the ability to react to touch, sound, and movement.
• Variations in prenatal development can be caused by genetics, environment, and nutrition.
• Chromosomal variations include Trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome), Trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome), Trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome), and various combinations of extra or missing sex chromosomes.
• Depression is characterized by consistent negative self-perceptions and a lack of positive self-perceptions.
• Females have significantly more negative self-concepts than males.
• The gender difference in self-concepts has been suggested as one possible explanation for mental health problems being significantly more prevalent in women.
• Ratings of self-perceptions are as good at identifying the presence of depression diagnosis as a depression symptom questionnaire.
• Poor self-image in adolescence can predict depression later in life.
• Early Onset Psychosis is characterized by a number of studies finding that adolescents at high risk of psychosis endorse negative self-beliefs more than healthy controls.
• Adolescents at high risk of psychosis endorse negative self-beliefs more than healthy controls.
• The development of a dysfunctional self-concept could play a role in the development of psychosis symptoms.
• Negative beliefs about self are consistently linked with chronic psychosis.
• Teratogens are substances that can cause birth defects, with different organ systems having different vulnerability periods during prenatal development.
• Both social learning and cognitive theories are consistent with children being influenced by having same- or other-sex siblings.
• Parents hold gender-differentiated beliefs about girls' and boys' competence.
• The sex of an older sibling is associated with gender-role behaviour of the younger sibling.
• Boys with older brothers and girls with older sisters are more gender-typed than children with other-sex siblings.
• Parents of boys rate natural talent as a more important reason for maths success than effort, while parents of girls rate effort as a more important reason for maths success than natural talent.
• For second-born siblings, greater evidence for sibling influences than for parent influences is found, while for first-born siblings, there is more evidence of parental influence (and less evidence of sibling influence) compared to the second-born sibling, indicating that first-born siblings become increasingly less like their siblings (de-identification process of sibling influence).
• Having an older brother is associated with more masculine behaviour and less feminine behaviour for both boys and girls, while boys with an older sister are more feminine but not less masculine, and girls with an older sister are less masculine but not more feminine.
• Father absence actually seems to make little difference in the gender-role development of children.
• According to Social learning theory, children learn gender roles because social agents teach them.
• Gendered attributional patterns are important mediators of gender-stereotyped perceptions of children's competence.
• Parents' perceptions of their children's competence are influenced by their child's actual performance and by their beliefs about maths competence, which are influenced by their child's gender independent of the child's actual performance.
• The Thalidomide tragedy resulted in thousands of children being born with severe birth defects, and Thalidomide is not approved in the United States due to the efforts of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey.
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a condition resulting from exposure to alcohol during pregnancy, with symptoms including microcephaly, vision, and hearing problems.
• Prenatal perception of speech research shows that newborns can recognize familiar stories heard during pregnancy.
• Fathers are not a requirement for normative gender development.
• Infants have a preference for faces from birth, and their preference for face-like stimuli increases with age.
• Gender influences how parents perceive their children’s abilities, and these beliefs impact on their children’s self-concepts and the experiences that parents provide for their children.
• Very young infants have a preference for faces, and their ability to discriminate socially important faces from a stranger increases with age.
• The type of experience matters in face discrimination, as evidenced by studies on newborns and bullying.
• Girls show a wider range of preferences than boys.
• Siblings appear to play an important role in the gender-role socialisation process.