Human Development

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Chapter 3Human Development
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Prenatal Development Occurs in Three Stages

• Zygote stage (lasts two weeks)
• Embryonic stage (lasts from week 3 to week 8)
• Fetal stage (lasts from week 9 until birth)

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Prenatal Development Occurs in Three Stages

• Zygote stage (lasts two weeks)
• The sperm fertilizes the egg and forms a new
  cellthe zygote.
• The zygote travels down the fallopian tubes to
  embed itself in the wall of the uterus.

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Prenatal Development Occurs in Three Stages

• Embryonic stage (lasts from week 3 to week 8)
• When the zygote embeds itself in the uterine
  wall, this living tissue is called an embryo.

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Prenatal Development Occurs in Three Stages

• Fetal stage (lasts from week 9 until birth)
• The last and longest stage in prenatal
  development in which tremendous growth occurs.

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The Fetus Can Be Harmed by Parental and
Environmental Factors

• Parental age and maternal nutrition
• The ages of both the mother and the father can
  affect prenatal development.
• Harmful environmental agents
• Teratogens In Greek this word means monster
  makerany disease, drug, or other noxious agent.

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A Childs Brain Grows at an Immense Rate

• The brain of an 8-month-old human fetus
• Has more than twice as many neurons as an adult
  brain (Kolb, 1989).
• Produces new neurons at a rate of hundreds of
  thousands per minute.
• Early neural development results in the brains
  weight ballooning.
• Most added mass is due to the growth of new
  dendrites and the myelin sheath around axons.

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Neural Network Growth During Infancy
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Physical Growth and Motor Development Occur
Together

• During year 1 the body almost triples in weight
  and increases in length by about one-third.
• In North America, infants
• Lift their heads at 2 months,
• Sit up without support at 6 months, and
• Walk by the end of the first year.

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Physical Growth and Motor Development Occur
Together

• Newborns have a number of reflexes.
• A reflex is an automatic, involuntary response to
  sensory stimuli.

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Attachment

• Attachment the strong emotional bond a young
  child forms with its primary caregiver
• An important ingredient in developing attachment
  is receiving contact comfort.

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Attachment

• Attachment bonds develop in stages
• 36 months Clear preference for primary
  caregivers but do not become upset when separated
  from them
• 79 months An attachment bond forms toward a
  specific caregiver, and children become extremely
  upset following separation (separation anxiety).
  Children develop a fear of strangers (stranger
  anxiety).

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Attachment

• Individual differences in attachment style
  develop as infants interact with their parents
• Secure attachment belief that one is worthy of
  others love and that people are trustworthy
• Insecure attachment belief that one is unworthy
  of others love and that people are untrustworthy
• Securely attached children find it easier to form
  satisfying relationships with others than those
  with insecure attachment.

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Influences on Attachment Style

• Parenting style
• Parents who are responsive to their childrens
  emotional needs and provide sufficient contact
  comfort tend to foster secure attachment.
• Temperament
• Infants with an easygoing temperament often
  foster positive parental reactions and these
  children tend to develop a secure attachment,
  while children with a difficult temperament may
  foster negative parental reactions and develop an
  insecure attachment.
• Culture
• Collectivist cultures are more likely to foster
  secure attachment than individualist cultures.

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Possible Causes of Childrens Attachment Style
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Children Can Handle Parental Separation Under
Certain Conditions

• Day care and attachment
• A number of studies have found children who are
  in full-time daycare to tend toward less secure
  attachment.
• However, meta-analytic research found no overall
  differences in attachment between children who
  stayed home and those who attended day care.

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Children Can Handle Parental Separation Under
Certain Conditions

• Divorce is a better predictor of adult function
  than attachment
• A 23-year longitudinal study of more than 17,000
  British infants found that parental divorce had a
  moderate, long-term negative impact on the mental
  health of about 12 percent of the children after
  they grew up.

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Self-Concept Is the Primary Social Achievement
of Childhood

• Self-concept the theory or story a person
  constructs about herself or himself through
  social interaction.
• Self-awareness a psychological state where an
  individual takes himself or herself as an object
  of attention. Once self-awareness develops at 18
  months, a child begins to develop a self-concept.

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Self-esteem

• Self-esteem stability
• Is relatively low during childhood,
• Increases throughout adolescence and young
  adulthood, and
• Declines during midlife and old age.

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Children Learn the Right Way to Think about
Gender

• Gender is constantly changing and being
  redefined.
• Behaviors or interests considered masculine in
  one culture may be defined as feminine in others.

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Children Learn the Right Way to Think about
Gender

• Gender identity the knowledge that one is a male
  or a female and the internalization of this fact
  into the self-concept
• Shortly after children develop self-awareness
  they begin to develop their gender identity.
• Gender identity is one of the basic elements in
  self-concept.

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Eriksons Stages

• Developing a sense of trust versus mistrust is
  the crisis of the first psychosocial stage (birth
  to 1 year)
• Developing a sense of autonomy versus shame and
  doubt is the crisis of the second psychosocial
  stage (12 years)
• Developing a sense of initiative versus guilt is
  the crisis of the third psychosocial stage (35
  years)

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Eriksons Stages

• Developing a sense of industry vs. inferiority is
  the crisis of the fourth stage (6-12 years)
• Developing a sense of identity versus role
  confusion is the crisis of the fifth stage (1318
  years)

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Eriksons Stages

• Developing a sense of intimacy versus isolation
  is the crisis of the sixth stage (1945 years)
• Developing a sense of generativity versus
  stagnation is the crisis of the seventh stage
  (4665 years)
• Developing a sense of integrity versus despair is
  the crisis of the eighth and last stage (66
  years and up)

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development - Four
Stages

• Jean Piaget contended that cognitive development
  occurs as children organize their structures of
  knowledge to adapt to their environment.
• A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge
  that people use to understand and interpret
  information.

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development - Four
Stages

• Acquisition of knowledge occurs through the
  complementary processes of assimilation and
  accommodation.
• Assimilation the process of absorbing new
  information into existing schemas
• Accommodation the process of changing existing
  schemas to absorb new information

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Piagets Stages

• Sensorimotor stage (birth2 years)
• experience the world through actions (grasping,
  looking, touching, and sucking)
• One of the major accomplishments at this stage is
  the development of object permanence.
• Preoperational stage (26 years)
• represent things with words and images but
  having no logical reasoning

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Piagets Stages

• Concrete operational stage (711 years)
• think logically about concrete events
  understanding concrete analogies and performing
  arithmetic operations
• Formal operational stage (12 yearsadulthood)
• develop abstract reasoning

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The Three-Mountains Problem
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Conservation of Liquid, Mass, and NumberLiquid
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Conservation of Liquid, Mass, and NumberMass
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Conservation of Liquid, Mass, and NumberNumber
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Some of Piagets Conclusions Have Been Questioned

• Development may be less stagelike than he
  proposed.
• Children may achieve capabilities earlier than he
  thought.
• All adults may not reach formal operational
  thought.

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Evaluating Piaget

• Despite criticisms, most developmental
  psychologists agree that Piaget has generally
  outlined
• An accurate view of many of the significant
  changes that occur in mental functioning with
  increasing childhood maturation and
• That children are not passive creatures merely
  being molded by environmental forces, but that
  they are actively involved in their own cognitive
  growth.

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Vygotskys Theory of Cognitive Development

• Private speech and internalization
• According to Vygotsky, learning occurs through
  the social instrument of language.
• Children listen to people, observe their actions,
  and then internalize this knowledge and make it
  their own through private speech.
• Zone of proximal development
• In assessing cognitive development, Vygotsky
  maintained that you need to identify childrens
  zone of proximal development (ZPD).
• The ZPD is the cognitive range between what a
  child can do on her or his own and what the child
  can do with the help of adults or more-skilled
  children.

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The Information-Processing Approach

• The information-processing approach contends that
  a number of important changes occur in childrens
  information-processing system that directly
  affect their ability to learn.
• The increase in information-processing speed
  appears to be due to the maturation of the brain.

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Adolescence

• Adolescence, as a stage in life, is a relatively
  recent phenomenon.
• Most societies have always viewed young people as
  needing instruction and time to develop.
• In North American culture, the length of the
  adolescent period has gradually increased over
  the past 40 years, partly due to our societys
  emphasis on attending college.

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Figure 3-6 Median Age at First Marriage, United
States
Source Fields, Jason. (2001). Americans
families and living arrangements March 2000
(Current Population Reports, P20-537).
Washington, DC U.S. Government Printing Office.
Available online at http//www.census.gov/prod/200
1pubs/p20-537.pdf.
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Heightened Self-Consciousness Is a Hallmark of
Adolescence

• imaginary audience belief that other people are
  constantly focused on their thoughts, feelings,
  and behavior.
• personal fable the tendency for teenagers to
  believe that no one has ever felt or thought as
  they do.
• Despite these self-focused tendencies, in most
  areas of their lives, adolescents are as well
  adjusted as children and adults.

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Parenting and Job Responsibilities Often Provide
Conflicts

• Most adults devote tremendous time and effort to
  pursuing careers and/or raising children. Despite
  a historical shift toward gender equity
• Women are much more likely than men to receive
  mixed societal messages concerning their ability
  to juggle these dual responsibilities.
• Womens fear of conflict between occupational and
  family goals is less of an issue among Black
  women than White women.

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Parenting and Job Responsibilities Often Provide
Conflicts

• Modern society has failed to adequately encourage
  men to expand their responsibilities within the
  household.
• When families have actively involved and caring
  fathers, everyone benefits.

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Certain Intellectual Abilities Increase While
Others Decrease as We Age

• Despite the physical toll of aging, mental skills
  remain fully functional throughout most of adult
  life.
• Around the age of 65, some adults experience a
  slight decline in certain intellectual abilities.

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Certain Intellectual Abilities Increase While
Others Decrease as We Age

• Older adults reduced neural processing speed
  does not adversely affect their ability to
• Reason through everyday problems,
• Understand mathematical concepts, or
• Learn new information.