Developmental Psychology 1

• Development


  Systematic continuities and changes in the individual that occur between conception and death
• Conception


  When the father's sperm penetrates the mother's ovum by creating a new organism
• Maturation


  Unfolding of the biological traits
• Experience


  Social, psychosocial in nature
• According to the definition of Herlock, when we study development, these are changes that are products of our biological nature & our psychosocial experiences
• Biological predisposition


  • Genetic inheritance to biological disorder
  • If it is not triggered by psychosocial experience/s, a person won't develop it
• As Van den Daele has pointed out, "Development implies qualitative change"
• Teratogens


  Monsters in development because they affect the physical development of the zygote/baby inside the mother's womb
• Systematic continuities

  • Orderly
  • Patterned
  • Relatively enduring
• Behavior


  Observable actions, outer reflections / the things that we do
• Personality


  A structure, different from behavior
• Defense mechanisms


  • There to assist us; to facilitate what is happening right now
  • Help us cope with pain, but some are immature
  • Too many can lead to issues like schizophrenia
  • Lack of can cause anxiety disorder
• Developmental continuities

  • Physical development
  • Cognitive development
  • Psychosocial development
• The prefrontal Cortex - the last to develop that is a part of the brain, develops after adolescence and is responsible for executive functioning (able us to think rationally, being able to plan ahead) and rational decisioning
• Empathy can be learned (empathic people know when or when not to speak)
• Developmentalists can be any scholars to seek and understand mental processes (psychologists, anthropologists, socialists, historians, etc.)
• How we feel can affect our physical state—and vice versa; all aspects can affect one another
• Two essentially antagonistic processes in development

  • Growth or evolution
  • Atrophy or involution
• The human beings are never static. Change is constantly taking place in physical and psychological capacities
• Developmental science


  Study of "womb to tomb" phenomena, a multidisciplinary enterprise
• Human development as a continual and cumulative process


  • The first six to seven years will be the determining factor in later age
  • Life span meaning kung ano yung experience/s mo early in life is as important as experience/s later in life, lahat ng stages ay important regardless of the age
  • Childhood plays a very meaningful role in forecasting the future; a major phase in life
  • Kapag hindi maganda/healthy experience/s in the past, it would actually reflect later / future character
  • Basically implies that the only constant thing is change
• Human Development as a life-span process

  • A life-long process
  • Multidirectional (not one direction; can go up and down; there are things that u gain and u lose)
  • Selection (we make choices throughout our lifespan)
  • Plasticity (developmental changes occur throughout the lifespan)
  • Embedded in history
• The brain is plastic because it is able to change and grow. When they grow, they develop neural pathways
• Synaptic booming


  Neural pathways grow or connect to support a trait/capacity
• Synaptic pruning


  Cut, the things we can do in the best that doesn't serve us in the present; reason of pruning: para magcreate ng bagong neural pathways for the present abilities
• Three types of influences

  • Normative age-graded influences
  • Normative history-graded influences
  • Nonnormative life-events
• Paul Baltes and colleagues pointed out that development has the characteristics of growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss, and that development is a co-construction of biology, culture and the individual
• Certain developmental periods with their characteristics

  • Prenatal (conception to birth)
  • Infancy (Birth to 2 years)
  • Early Childhood (2 to 6 years)
  • Middle childhood (7 to 11 years)
  • Adolescence (12 to 18 years)
  • Early adulthood (19 to 34 years)
  • Middle Adulthood (35 to 64 years)
  • Later Adulthood (65 +)