Chapter 3: Human Development

1. Chapter 3: Human Development

2. Chapter Outline • Physical and Prenatal Development • Social Development • Cognitive Development • Moral Development • Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood • Adulthood

3. Physical and Prenatal Development (Slide 1 of 3) • Prenatal development occurs in three stages. • Germinal stage: the first 2 weeks of prenatal development, from conception until the zygote implants itself in the wall of the uterus • Embryonic stage: the second stage of prenatal development, lasting from the third week through the 8thweek of pregnancy • Fetal stage: the last and longest stage in prenatal development, extending from the 9th week after conception until birth

4. Physical and Prenatal Development (Slide 2 of 3) • The fetus can be harmed by parental and environmental factors. • Parental age • Maternal nutrition • Harmful environmental agents • Teratogens (any disease, drug, and other noxious agent that causes abnormal prenatal development)

5. Physical and Prenatal Development (Slide 3 of 3) • Neurons in an infant’s brain compete for survival. • The brain develops its complexity through two simple processes: • Producing way more brain cells than can possibly survive • Creating a fierce competition between these cells for survival • Physical growth and motor development occur hand in hand. • Reflexes: automatic, involuntary response to sensory stimuli

6. Table 3-2: Reflexes of the Newborn Baby (Slide 1 of 2)

7. Table 3-2: Reflexes of the Newborn Baby (Slide 2 of 2)

8. Social Development (Slide 1 of 8) • Attachment is a basic need. • Attachment: the strong emotional bond a young child forms with its primary caregiver • Harlows’ attachment studies (1962) • Separation anxiety: the fear and distress that infants display when separated from their primary caregiver • Stranger anxiety: the fear and distress that infants often display when approached by an unfamiliar person

9. Social Development (Slide 2 of 8) • Parental responsiveness, initial temperament, and culture shape attachment style. • Parental responsiveness • Parents who are sensitively responsive to their children’s needs and emotional signals and provide a great deal of contact comfort tend to foster secure attachment. • Temperament • Easygoing • Slow-to-warm-up • Difficult • Culture

10. Social Development (Slide 3 of 8) • Self-concept is the primary social achievement of childhood. • Self-concept: the “theory” or “story” that a person constructs about herself or himself through social interaction • Socialization: learning the ways of a given society or group well enough to be able to function according to its rules

11. Social Development (Slide 4 of 8) • Self-awareness: a psychological state in which you focus on yourself as an object of attention • Self-esteem: a person’s overall evaluation of his or her self-concept

12. Social Development (Slide 5 of 8) • Authoritative parent: a parent who sets rules for proper conduct for her or his children, consistently enforces those rules, yet allows the children a fair amount of freedom • Authoritarian parent: a parent who imposes many rules, demands strict obedience, and harshly punishes his or her children for rule breaking or even questioning the parent’s decisions • Permissive parent: a parent who allows his/her children to set their own rules, make few demands, and submit to their children’s desire

13. Social Development (Slide 6 of 8) • Social roles: clusters of socially defined expectations that people in given situations are supposed to fulfill, such as the role of son, daughter, student, or employee

14. Social Development (Slide 7 of 8) • Children learn the “right way” to think about gender. • Masculinity: a set of attributes, behaviors, and social roles culturally defined as being typical of or appropriate to males • Femininity: a set of attributes, behaviors, and social roles culturally defined as being typical of or appropriate to females

15. Social Development (Slide 8 of 8) • Ambivalent sexism: sexism directed against women based on both positive and negative attitudes rather than uniform dislike • Gender identity: the knowledge that one is a male or female and the internalization of this fact into the self-concept • Erikson developed a stage model of social development.

16. Figure 3-5: Possible Causes of Children’s Attachment Style

17. Cognitive Development (Slide 1 of 3) • Piaget’s theory of cognitive development consists of four distinct stages. • Sensorimotor stage: infants develop the ability to coordinate their sensory input with their motor actions (birth to age 2) • Preoperational stage: the full emergence of representational thought (ages 2 to 7) • Concrete operational stage: a time when children can perform mental operations on tangible objects or events and gradually engage in logical reasoning (ages 7 to 11) • Formal operational stage: the time when a person is able to reason abstractly and make predictions about hypothetical situations (ages 11 or beyond)

18. Table 3-6: Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

19. Cognitive Development (Slide 2 of 3) • Some of Piaget’s conclusions about children’s mental capabilities are incorrect. • Children are more cognitively advanced and adults are less cognitively sophisticated than Piaget outlined. • Cross-cultural research suggests that cognitive development is more influenced by social and environmental factors than Piaget thought. • Cognitive development doesn’t occur in the sequential manner Piaget described.

20. Cognitive Development (Slide 3 of 3) • Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development stresses instruction and guidance. • Zone of proximal development (ZPD): 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 • The information-processing approach examines age-related differences in how information is organized and manipulated. • Metacognition: an awareness and understanding of one’s own cognitive processes

21. Moral Development • Kohlberg identified three levels of moral development. • Pre-conventional morality: avoiding punishment and seeking rewards • Conventional morality: conforming to societal norms and laws • Post-conventional morality: making moral judgments based on abstract universal principles • Culture shapes moral reasoning.

22. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood (Slide 1 of 3) • Adolescence is a bridge between childhood and adulthood. • Adolescence: the transition period between childhood and adulthood • Emerging adulthood: a stage of life for some individuals from the late teens to the mid-twenties when they are relatively free from adult responsibilities and expectations

23. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood (Slide 2 of 3) • Puberty signals important physical changes and new neural wiring. • Puberty: the growth period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing • Primary sex characteristics: the body organs that make sexual reproduction possible • Secondary sex characteristics: the non-reproductive physical features that distinguish the two sexes from one another

24. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood (Slide 3 of 3) • Some teenagers experience heightened self-consciousness. • Imaginary audience: adolescents’ belief that their thoughts, feelings, and behavior are constantly being focused on by other people • Personal fable: the tendency for adolescents to believe that their experiences and feelings are unique • Ethnic identity development often occurs during adolescence. • Ethnic identity: a person’s sense of personal identification with a particular ethnic group

25. Figure 3-7: Conservation of Liquid, Mass, and Number

26. Adulthood (Slide 1 of 4) • Friendship is an important emotional bond throughout life. • Gender differences in friendship patterns: the level of emotional expressiveness within same-sex friendship • Cross-sex friendships • Intimacy level • Men tend to be more emotionally open with their female friends than they are with their male friends. • Women are not as intimate with their male friends as they are with their female friends. • Parenting and job responsibilities can conflict.

27. Adulthood (Slide 2 of 4) • Most adults do not experience a midlife crisis. • Midlife crisis: a stressful period when adults review and reevaluate their lives • The body begins a slow process of physical decline after early adulthood. • Aging: the progressive deterioration of the body that culminates in death • Menopause: the ending of menstruation • Activity theory of aging: a theory that keeping physically and mentally active is important for life satisfaction in late adulthood

28. Adulthood (Slide 3 of 4) • Intimate relationships both endure and change in later life. • Certain intellectual abilities increase while others decrease as we age. • Alzheimer’s disease: a progressive and irreversible brain disorder that strikes older people, causing memory loss and other symptoms • Wisdom: expert knowledge and judgment about important, difficult, and uncertain questions associated with the meaning and conduct of life

29. Adulthood (Slide 4 of 4) • People differ in how they cope with dying. • Are there psychological stages of dying? • Communicating with the dying person • Research indicates that open discussion and disclosure about dying are always beneficial. • Spirituality and meaningfulness • Solace in religious or spiritual beliefs • Searching for meaning in one’s life