Human Development

• What is Human Development:

  • Observed patterns of changes across the lifespan, from conception to death
• Notable Figures:

  • Charles Darwin studied children's development to understand evolution
  • G. Stanley Hall used questionnaires and interviews to track children's development and proposed norms
  • Arnold Gesell used movie cameras to study children's behavior and developed norms based on Hall's data
• The Life-Span Perspective:

  • By Paul Baltes
  • Characteristics:
  • Lifelong: starts from conception to death
  • Multidimensional: biological, cognitive, and socioemotional aspects influence each other
  • Multidirectional: includes growth and decline of abilities
  • Plastic: ability to change
  • Multidisciplinary: involves multiple fields of practice
  • Contextual: changes depending on context
• Periods of Development:

  • Prenatal Period: conception to birth
  • Infancy: birth to 18-24 months
  • Early Childhood: 3-5 years
  • Middle and Late Childhood: 6-10/11 years
  • Adolescence: 10-12 to 18-21 years
  • Early Adulthood: 20s and 30s
  • Middle Adulthood: 40s and 50s
  • Late Adulthood: 60s-70s to death
• Aging:

  • Developmental Patterns of Aging:
  • Normal Aging: standard aging pattern
  • Pathological Aging: concerning chronic illnesses and disease
  • Successful Aging: maintaining positive characteristics as a person ages
  • Age & Happiness: adults are happier as they age
  • Conceptions of Age:
  • Chronological Age: number of years since birth
  • Biological Age: functional capacities of vital organs
  • Psychological Age: adaptive capacities
  • Social Age: connectedness with others and social roles
• Issues in Lifespan Development:

  • Nature vs Nurture: genetic inheritance vs environmental experience
  • Stability vs Change: do early traits persist or change?
  • Continuous vs Discontinuous Development: gradual process vs distinct stages
• Influences on Development:

  • Factors Influencing Development:
  • Heredity
  • Health and Well-being
  • Sex
  • Parenting
  • Education
  • Sociocultural contexts and diversity
  • Social Policy
  • Technology
• Freud's Psychosexual Stages:

  • Oral stage: Focus on weaning, oral behavior (smoking, overeating), passivity, and gullibility
  • Anal stage: Focus on toilet training, orderliness, obstinacy or messiness, disorganization
  • Phallic stage: Focus on resolving Oedipus/Electra complex, vanity, recklessness, sexual dysfunction or deviancy
  • Latency stage: Developing defense mechanisms, identifying with same-sex peers
  • Genital stage: Achieving mature sexual intimacy
• Freud's stages progression: Oral -> Anal -> Phallic -> Latency -> Genital
• Erikson's Psychosocial Stages:

  • Trust vs. Mistrust: Consistent security from parent and child, trust in primary caregiver, basic virtue of hope
  • Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt: Allowing infant to decision-make, developing self-care skills, important tasks like picking clothes, toileting, choosing toys
  • Initiative vs. Guilt: Ability to organize activities, assertiveness, aggressiveness, basic virtue of purpose
  • Industry vs. Inferiority: Cultural skills, school skills, tool use, basic virtue of competence
• • Identity vs. Role Confusion: Adaptation of self to pubertal changes, consideration of future choices, basic virtue of fidelity
  • Intimacy vs. Isolation: Developing intimate relationships, basic virtue of love
  • Generativity vs. Stagnation: Rearing children, focus on occupational achievement, basic virtue of care
  • Integrity vs. Despair: Conducting a life review, integrating earlier stages, basic virtue of wisdom
• Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory:

  • Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to 2 years, exploration with senses, object permanence
  • Preoperational Stage: 2-7 years, mental representation with words and images, symbolic thinking
  • Concrete Operational Stage: 7-11 years, logical reasoning about concrete events, classification of objects
  • Formal Operational Stage: 11 years and beyond, abstract thinking, idealized scenarios
• Vygotsky's Sociocultural Cognitive Theory:

  • Focus on culture transmission, social interaction, cooperative dialogues, scaffolding
  • Zone of Proximal Development: Range of tasks child can't handle alone but can with help, learning through social interactions
• Information Processing Theory by George Miller:

  • Uses computer as a model to explain how the mind manages information
  • Emphasizes individuals manipulating, monitoring, and strategizing about information
  • Development not described as stage-like
• Individuals develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills
• When individuals perceive, encode, represent, store, and retrieve information, they are thinking
• Model of Information Processing involves holding information in three parts of the mental system for processing: sensory register, short-term memory store, and long-term memory store
• Sensory Register:

  • Picks up all the sensation of stimuli reaching our receptors
  • Information first enters the sensory register, where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly
  • An image of what you saw persists momentarily, but then it decays, or disappears, unless you use mental strategies to preserve it
  • Sensory info lasts for only milliseconds
• Short-term Memory:

  • We retain attended-to information briefly so we can actively “work on” it to reach our goals
  • Temporary store (15-30 seconds) for a limited amount of information (7 pieces of info ± 2 items)
  • Contemporary view of short-term memory is called working memory
  • The more effectively we process information in working memory, the more likely it will transfer to long-term memory
• Long-term Memory:

  • Our permanent knowledge base, which is unlimited
  • Has 3 types: episodic, semantic, and procedural memory
• Strengths of the Model of Information Processing:

  • Helps explain how much information people of different ages can manage at one time and how they process it
  • Provides a useful framework for studying individual differences in people of the same age
• Limitations of the Model of Information Processing:

  • The theory doesn’t provide an overall picture of development
• Observational learning involves different models:

  • Live Model: actual seeing of the action or behavior
  • Symbolic Model: behavior is read about or watched
  • Verbal Instruction Model: instructions are written down or delivered through a podcast
• Steps in observational learning and modeling process:

  1. Attention to the model

  2. Retention

  3. Reproduction

  4. Motivation
• Key points:

  • People cognitively represent others' behavior and adopt it if positive reinforcements are received
  • Behavior, environment, and personal/cognitive factors interact bidirectionally
  • People acquire thoughts, behaviors, and feelings by observing others' behavior
  • A person can learn through observation and imitation without experience
  • Personal efficacy is the foundation of human efficacy and affects behavior
• Reciprocal Determinism involves the interaction of person, environment, and behavior

  • Behavioral Capability is a person's ability to perform a behavior
  • Observational Learning is the reproduction of behaviors witnessed
  • Reinforcements aim to maintain behavior
  • Expectations are anticipated consequences of a behavior
  • Self-Efficacy is the level of confidence in one's ability to perform a behavior
• Observational learning and modeling:

  • People learn faster by observing others' behavior
  • Bandura's "Bobo Doll Experiment" showed how children imitated aggressive behavior they observed
  • Four components must be present for observational learning and modeling to occur
• Four components of observational learning:

  • Attention Processes: models attract attention due to distinctive qualities
  • Retention Processes: events are remembered through verbal codes
  • Motor Production Processes: necessary motor skills are required for accurate replication
  • Reinforcement & Motivational Processes: acquisition and performance of new responses are influenced by different factors
• Self-Efficacy:

  • People practice self-observation to regulate their behavior
  • Sources of self-efficacy include actual performance, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological cues
• Limitations of Social Cognitive Theory:

  • Changes in the environment may not directly result in changes in the person
  • Focuses on the interplay between person/cognition, behavior, and environment
  • Disregards biological and hormonal influences on behavior
  • Does not extensively address emotion and motivation
  • Broad-reaching and challenging to operationalize without sub-theories
• Attachment Theory:

  • Emphasizes behavior's adaptive and evolutionary aspects
  • Infants have an innate tendency to form emotional ties with others
  • Attachment Styles include secure, insecure-resistant-anxious, and insecure-avoidant
  • Maternal Deprivation Theory highlights the importance of consistent care for typical psychological development
• Limitations of Attachment Theory:

  • Overemphasis on the mother-child bond
  • Quality of attachment bond is crucial
  • Social factors can impact attachment
  • Cultural variations in attachment patterns and styles
• Examples:

  • Konrad Lorenz's work with greylag geese
  • Bowlby's attachment phases and styles
  • Cultural variations in attachment patterns
• Konrad Lorenz divided eggs laid by a greylag goose into two groups:

  • One group hatched by their mother, leading them to trail around her right away
  • The second batch hatched in an incubator and started to follow Lorenz
• A sensitive and loving bond between a mother and a baby can lead to an organized and secure attachment
• Disruptions like maternal deprivation and neglect can lead to emotional, social, and cognitive problems
• Attachment concept rooted in Konrad Lorenz's work on imprinting has shaped our understanding of dynamics between caregivers and children
• Bowlby proposed a theory that children have a biological predisposition to form emotional relationships as a survival instinct
• Ecological Theory by Urie Bronfenbrenner considers influences of all systems impacting an individual's experiences
• Ecological Systems Theory includes Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem, and Chronosystem