Child Development

Child Development
Book authors:
R. H. Ettinger
Chapter 11
Conception through Childhood
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Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Basic Issues and Methodology
 Developmental psychology
– The study of how humans grow, develop, and
change throughout the life span
 Controversial issues in developmental
psychology
– Some developmental psychologists have argued
that the best way to resolve the nature-nurture
debate, and to explain why some children exhibit
resilience in response to unsupportive or harmful
environments, is to think of each child as born with
certain vulnerabilities, such as a difficult
temperament or a genetic disorder

 Controversial issues in developmental

psychology (continued)
– Through childhood and adolescence, vulnerabilities
and protective factors interact with variables in the
environment so that the same environment can
have different effects, depending on the
characteristics of each child

 Approaches to studying developmental change

– Cross-sectional Study
 A type of developmental study in which researchers
compare groups of participants of different ages on certain
characteristics to determine age-related differences
 At different ages, different subjects are studied
– Longitudinal Study
 A type of developmental study in which the same group of
participants is followed and measured at different ages
 At different ages, same subjects are studied

Prenatal Development
 Stages of prenatal development

– Conception
 Occurs the moment a sperm cell fertilizes the ovum
 Zygote
– The single cell that forms when a sperm and egg unite
 Sometimes the zygote divides into two cells, the result of
which is identical, or monozygotic, twins
 There are also times when more than one egg and sperm
unite, resulting in fraternal, or dizygotic, twins

 Stages of prenatal development

– Germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages
 Germinal stage
– The 2-week stage when the zygote travels to the
uterus and attaches itself to the uterine wall; this is also
when rapid cell division occurs
 Embryonic stage
– When the embryo develops all of the systems, organs,
and structures of the body
– Lasts from the end of week 2 through 2nd month
 Fetal stage
– Lasts from the end of 2nd month, when bone cells form,
until birth
 Fetal behavior
– Several studies of newborns have shown that they
remember sounds to which they were exposed in
utero
– DeCasper and Spence
 Had 16 pregnant women read The Cat in the Hat to their
developing fetuses twice a day during the final 6 weeks of
pregnancy
 After the births, the children showed a preference for the
familiar sound of The Cat in the Hat

 Negative influences on prenatal development

– When the mother suffers from a viral diseases such
as rubella, chicken pox, or HIV, she may deliver an
infant with physical and behavioral abnormalities
– Teratogens
 Harmful agents in the prenatal environment, which can
have a negative impact on prenatal development or even
cause birth defects
 Critical periods
 A period that is so important to development that a harmful
environmental influence at that time can keep a bodily
structure from developing normally or can impair later
intellectual or social development

 Negative influences on prenatal development

(continued)
– Fetal alcohol syndrome
 A condition, caused by maternal alcohol intake during
pregnancy, in which the baby is born mentally retarded,
with a small head and facial, organ, and behavioral
abnormalities
 Low birth weight
 A baby weighing less than 5.5 pounds

Infancy
 Reflexes and motor development

– During the first few days after birth, neonates’
movements are dominated by reflexes
– Neonates
 Newborn infant up to 1 month old
– Reflexes
 Inborn, unlearned, automatic responses to certain
environmental stimuli

Infancy
 Reflexes and motor development (continued)

– Most motor milestones result from maturation
– Development also proceeds from the center of the
body outward
– Experience may also accelerate motor development

Infancy

Infancy

Infancy
Sensory and perceptual development

– Vision
Newborns focus best on objects about 9 inches
away, and they can follow a slowly moving object
By 2 to 3 months of age, most infants prefer
human faces to other visual images

Infancy
Sensory and perceptual development
– Vision
Depth perception
– Gibson and Walk
 Designed an apparatus called the
visual cliff to measure infants’ ability to
perceive depth
– Visual cliff
 An apparatus used to test depth
perception in infants and young
animals

Infancy
 Sensory and perceptual development

(continued)
– Depth perception (continued)
 Campos and others
– Found that 6-week-old infants had distinct changes in
heart rate when they faced the deep side of the cliff,
but no change when they faced the shallow side
– The change in heart rate indicated interest and showed
that the infants could perceive depth
– Hearing and other senses
 At birth, the newborn’s hearing is much better developed
than her vision
 Newborns also prefer their own mother’s voice to that of an
unfamiliar female
Infancy
 Learning
– Habituation
 A decrease in response or attention to a stimulus as an
infant becomes accustomed to it
– Swain and others
 Demonstrated that 3-day-old newborns could retain in
memory for 24 hours a speech sound that had been
presented repeatedly the day before
 Meltzoff
 Demonstrated observational learning in 14-month-olds

Infancy
 Temperament
– A person’s behavioral style or characteristic way of
responding to the environment
– Defining temperament
 Thomas, Chess, and Birch
– Studied 2- to 3-month-old infants and followed them
into adolescence and adulthood
– Three general types of temperament emerged from the
study
 Easy
 Difficult
 Slow-to-warm-up
Infancy
 Temperament (continued)
– Defining temperament (continued)
 Thomas, Chess, and Birch (continued)
– Three general types of temperament
– Easy – had generally pleasant moods, were adaptable,
approached new situations and people positively, and
established regular sleeping, eating, and elimination
patterns
– Difficult – had generally unpleasant moods, reacted
negatively to new situations and people, were intense
in their emotional reactions, and showed irregularity of
bodily functions
– Slow-to-warm-up – tended to withdraw, were slow to
adapt, and had a medium mood

Infancy
 Temperament (continued)
– Origins and significance of temperamental
differences
 Research indicates that temperament is strongly influenced
by heredity
 Environmental factors, such as parents’ childrearing style,
also affect temperament
 Studies suggest that the various dimensions of
temperament can predict behavioral problems that may
appear later in childhood or in adolescence

Infancy
 Attachment
– The strong affectionate bond a child forms with the
mother or primary caregiver
– Attachment in infant monkeys
 Harry Harlow
– Conducted studies on attachment in rhesus monkeys
– Studies suggested that physical nourishment alone is
not enough to bind infants to their primary caregivers
– Constructed two surrogate monkey mothers
– One was a plain wire-mesh cylinder with a wooden
head; the other was a wire-mesh cylinder that was
padded, covered with soft terry cloth, and fitted with a
somewhat more monkey-like head
– A bottle could be attached to either for feeding
Infancy

Infancy
 Attachment (continued)
– Attachment in infant monkeys (continued)
 Harry Harlow (continued)
– Found that it was contact comfort – the comfort
supplied by bodily contact – rather than nourishment
that formed the basis of the infant monkey’s
attachment to its mother
– Development of attachment in humans
 The primary caregiver holds, strokes, and talks to the baby
and responds to the baby’s needs
 In turn, the baby gazes at, listens to, and moves in
synchrony with the caregiver’s voice

Infancy
– Development of attachment in humans (continued)
 John Bowlby
– Believes that attachment behavior serves the
evolutionary function of protecting the infant from
danger
 Separation anxiety
– The fear and distress shown by toddlers when their
parent leaves, occurring from 8 to 24 months and
reaching a peak between 12 and 18 months
– Stranger anxiety
– A fear of strangers common in infants at about 6
months and increasing in intensity until about 12
months, and then declining in the second year

Infancy
– Ainsworth’s attachment categories
 Ainsworth and others
– Identified four patterns of attachment: secure, avoidant,
resistant, and disorganized/disoriented
– Secure attachment is the most common pattern across
cultures

Infancy
– Origins and significance of attachment differences
 Researchers have studied infant-caregiver attachment in
foster relationships
 In these settings, the primary factor affecting attachment
seems to be the age of the infant at the time of placement
in a foster home
 In childhood and adolescence, securely attached infants
are likely to be more socially competent than less securely
attached infants

Infancy
 Father-child relationship
– Children whose fathers exhibit antisocial behavior,
such as deceitfulness and aggression, are more
likely to demonstrate such behavior themselves
– Children who experience regular interaction with
their fathers tend to have higher IQs and to do
better in social situations and at coping with
frustration than children lacking such interactions
– Positive father-son relationships are also associated
with parenting behavior by sons when they have
children of their own

Infancy
 Father-child relationship (continued)

– Because the effects of fathers on development are
overwhelmingly positive, father absence is
associated with many undesirable developmental
outcomes
– Father absence is also related to children’s reduced
self-confidence in problem solving, low self-esteem,
depression, suicidal thoughts, and behavioral
problems such as aggression and delinquency
– For girls, father absence predicts early sexual
behavior and teen pregnancy

Infancy
 Father-child relationship (continued)

– Mothers are more likely to cushion their children
against overstimulation, while fathers tend to pour it
on, producing a wider range of arousal
– When the mother and father have a good
relationship, fathers tend to spend more time with
and interact more with their children

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
 Schemes: the foundation of cognitive
development
– Organization
 Piaget’s term for the mental process that produces
schemes
– Schemes
 An action plan to be used in a specific circumstance
– Assimilation
 The process by which new objects, events, experiences, or
information are incorporated into existing schemes

Development
 Schemes: the foundation of cognitive
development (continued)
– Equilibration
 The process of keeping schemes in balance with the
environment
– Accommodation
 The process by which existing schemes are modified and
new schemes are created to incorporate new objects,
events, experiences, or information

Development
 Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
– Sensorimotor stage
 Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development (ages birth to
2 years), culminating in the development of object
permanence and the beginning of representational thought
 Object permanence
– The realization that objects continue to exist even
when they can no longer be perceived
– Preoperational stage
 Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development (ages 2 to
7 years), characterized by rapid development of language
and thinking governed by perception rather than logic

Development
(continued)
– Preoperational stage (continued)
 The ability to use symbols greatly advances the child’s
ability to think beyond what was possible in the
sensorimotor stage
 Centration
– A preoperational child’s tendency to focus on only one
dimension of a stimulus and ignore other dimensions
 Because of egocentrism and centration, children in this
stage have problems understanding any activity that is
governed by rules

Development
(continued)
– Concrete operations stage
 Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development (ages 7 to 11
years), during which a child acquires the concepts of
reversibility and conservation and is able to apply logical
thinking to concrete objects
 Reversibility
– The realization that any change in the shape, position,
or order of matter can be reversed mentally

Development
(continued)
– Concrete operations stage (continued)
 Conservation
– The concept that a given quantity of matter remains the
same despite rearrangement or change in its
appearance, as long as nothing is added or taken
away
– Formal operations stage
 Piaget’s fourth and final stage (ages 11 or 12 years and
beyond), characterized by the ability to apply logical
thinking to abstract problems and hypothetical situations

Intellectual Development
 If at first you do not succeed,
 Too many cooks
 The early bird
 Better safe than
 Where there is a will
 Don’t put off until tomorrow
 Early to bed, early to rise,
 An apple a day
 Don’t count your chickens
 All work and no play
 A penny saved
 When the cat is away
 Don't cut off your nose
 He who hesitates
 Don’t cry over
 A watched pot
 Strike while the iron
 Time flies when
Copyright © HorizonCopyright
Textbook ©Publishing
Allyn & Bacon
2007 2005
Development
(continued)
– Formal operations stage (continued)
 Because of their ability to construct an imaginary reality
that is linked to present reality, adolescents exhibit types of
thinking that are virtually nonexistent in younger children
 Teenagers also have an exaggerated sense of their own
uniqueness: the personal fable
 They cannot fathom that anyone has ever felt as deeply as
they feel or has ever loved as they love

Development

Development

Development

Development

Development
An evaluation of Piaget’s contribution
– Today’s developmental psychologists point out that Piaget
relied on observation and on the interview technique, which
depended on verbal responses
– Newer techniques requiring nonverbal responses have shown
that infants and young children are more competent than
Piaget proposed
– Few developmental psychologists believe that cognitive
development takes place in the general stage-like fashion
proposed by Piaget
– Another criticism comes from research showing that formal
operational thought is not universal

Other Approaches to Cognitive
Development
 Vygotsky’s sociocultural view
– Lev Vygotsky
 Believed language-based spontaneous behaviors exhibited
by children were important to the process of cognitive
development
 Maintained that human infants come equipped with basic
skills such as perception, the ability to pay attention, and
certain capacities of memory not unlike those of many
other animal species
 Believed that talking to oneself – private speech – is a key
component in cognitive development
 Saw a strong connection among social experience,
speech, and cognitive development
Development
 Vygotsky’s sociocultural view (continued)
– Lev Vygotsky (continued)
 Maintained that a child’s readiness to learn resides within a
zone of proximal development
 This zone is a range of cognitive tasks that the child cannot
yet perform alone but can learn to perform with the
instruction, help, and guidance of a parent, teacher, or
more advanced peer

Freud’s Psychosexual
Development
 The psychosexual stages of development
– Psychosexual stages
 A series of stages through which the sexual instinct
develops
– Fixation
 Arrested development at a psychosexual stage occurring
because of excessive gratification or frustration at that
stage

Development
(continued)
– The oral stage (birth to 1 year)
 During the oral stage, the mouth is the primary source of
an infant’s sensual pleasure
 Freud claimed that difficulties at the oral stage can result in
personality traits such as either excessive dependence,
optimism, and gullibility or extreme pessimism, sarcasm,
hostility, and aggression
– The anal stage (1 to 3 years)
 During the anal stage, children derive sensual pleasure,
Freud believed, from expelling and withholding feces

Development
(continued)
– The phallic stage (3 to 5 or 6 years)
 During the phallic stage, children learn that they can derive
pleasure from touching their genitals, and masturbation is
common
– The latency period (5 or 6 years to puberty)
 The sex instinct is repressed and temporarily sublimated in
school and play activities, hobbies, and sports
– The genital stage (from puberty on)
 In the genital stage, the focus of sexual energy gradually
shifts to the opposite sex for the vast majority of people
Development
 Information-processing approach
– Processing speed
 Robert Kail
– Found that information-processing speed increases
dramatically as children move from infancy through
childhood
 Increased processing speed is associated with improved
memory
– Memory
 Short-term memory develops dramatically during an
infant’s first year
 Children use strategies for improving memory increasingly
as they mature cognitively

Development
 Information-processing approach (continued)
– Memory (continued)
 One universal strategy for holding information in short-term
memory is rehearsal
 Organization is a very practical strategy for storing
information in such a way that it can be retrieved without
difficulty
– Theory of mind
 A fundamental developmental task for children is coming to
understand how people may differ greatly in what they
know and what they believe

Development
 Information-processing approach (continued)
– Theory of mind (continued)
 Reaching a level of cognitive maturity in which an
individual is aware of his or her own thoughts and has an
understanding about their nature of thought involves
acquiring what is referred to as a theory of mind
 More broadly, the process of thinking about how you or
others think is known as metacognition

Socialization of the Child
 Socialization
– The process of learning socially acceptable
behaviors, attitudes, and values
 Parents’ role in the socialization process
– To be effective, socialization must ultimately result
in children coming to regulate their own behavior
– Diane Baumrind
 Studied the continuum of parental control and identified
three parenting styles—the authoritarian, the authoritative,
and the permissive (later added neglectful)


(continued)
– Authoritarian parents
 Parents who make arbitrary rules, expect unquestioned
obedience from their children, punish transgressions, and
value obedience to authority
 Most American families have at least one authoritarian
parent
 Found preschool children disciplined by authoritarian
methods to be withdrawn, anxious, and unhappy
 Parents’ failure to provide a rationale for rules makes it
hard for children to see any reason for following them


(continued)
– Permissive parents
 Parents who make few rules or demands and allow
children to make their own decisions and control their own
behavior
 Children raised in this manner are the most immature and
seem to be the least self-controlled and self-reliant
 These children seem to be given too much responsibility
too soon and as a result it appears these children get over
their head and question their own skill and decision making
abilities


(continued)
– Authoritative parents
 Parents who set high but realistic standards, reason with
the child, enforce limits, and encourage open
communication and independence
 Knowing why the rules are necessary makes it easier for
children to internalize and follow rules, whether in the
presence of their parents or not
 Most independent, behave but able to challenge rules
appropriately through communication and most importantly
behave when parent is not present
 Does one Authoritarian parent and one Permissive parent
make a Authoritative parents? Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

(continued)
– Neglecting parents
 Parents who make few rules or demands because they are
not involved in their children’s lives
 These are permissive parents that do not express love for
their children well. I know you are there but quite frankly
just do not want to deal with you!
 Infants of neglecting parents are more likely than others to
be insecurely attached and continue to experience
difficulties in social relationships throughout childhood and
into their adult years

Baumrind’s Parenting Model
Neglectful Authoritarian Permissive Authoritative
Limits NO YES NO YES

Love NO NO YES YES
Angry, Withdrawn, immature and Independent,
anxious and anxious, seem to be challenges
rebellious unhappy and the least self- rules
because learns to controlled appropriately
they remain misbehave and self- through
Effect unsure of behind reliant communication
their worth parent’s back (seems to behaves when
and social (lil’ sneak think rules parent is not
rules. syndrome) are made for present
others)
 Peer relationships
– Infants begin to show an interest in each other at a
very young age
– Friendships begin to develop by 3 or 4 years, and
relationships with peers become increasingly
important
– By middle childhood, friendships tend to be based
on mutual trust, and membership in a peer group is
central to a child’s happiness
– The peer group serves a socializing function by
providing models of behavior, dress, and language
 Peer relationships (continued)

– Physical attractiveness is a major factor in peer
acceptance even in children as young as 3 to 5
years, although it seems to be more important for
girls than for boys
– Low acceptance by peers is an important predictor
of later mental health problems
– Most often excluded from the peer group are
neglected children, who are shy and withdrawn, and
rejected children, who typically exhibit aggressive
and inappropriate behavior and who are likely to
start fights
 Television as a socializing agent

– Surveys indicate that parents are keenly aware of
the potentially damaging effects of television,
especially violent programs, on their children’s
development
– Literally thousands of studies suggest that TV
violence leads to aggressive behavior in children
and teenagers
– Other studies show that excessive TV viewing is
linked to childhood obesity

 Television as a socializing agent (continued)

– The socializing effect of television begins before that
of schools, religious institutions, and peers
– Singer and Singer
 Suggest that such programming can lead to a shortened
attention span
– Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood has been found to
increase prosocial behavior, imaginative play, and
task persistency in preschoolers

 Culture and child development

– Urie Bronfenbrenner
 Proposes that we think of the environment in which a child
grows up as a system of interactive, layered contexts of
development
 Contexts of development
– Bronfenbrenner’s term for the interrelated settings in
which a child grows up
 At the core of the system are what he calls microsystems,
which include settings in which the child has personal
experience
 The macrosystem includes the larger culture

Child Development

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Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Controversial issues in developmental

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Approaches to studying developmental change

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Stages of prenatal development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Stages of prenatal development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Negative influences on prenatal development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Negative influences on prenatal development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Reflexes and motor development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Reflexes and motor development (continued)

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Sensory and perceptual development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Sensory and perceptual development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Sensory and perceptual development

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Father-child relationship (continued)

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Father-child relationship (continued)

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Parents’ role in the socialization process

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Parents’ role in the socialization process

Copyright © Horizon Textbook Publishing 2007

 Parents’ role in the socialization process