Human Development Emotional Stage & Intellectual Stage March 2014

5. Emotional Development: An individual’s awareness and expression of an affective (emotional) experience. Children become attached to specific people & care about how they think or feel.

Harry Harlow: We discussed this experiment in Sociology previously. Harlow studied the relationship between “mother and child” in Rhesus monkeys. The young monkeys were given choices – a wire framed pseudo-monkey mother and a terry-cloth pseudo- monkey mother. With the exception of food, the young monkeys spent all their time with the terry-clothed covered pseudo- mother. Harlow concluded that it was the “touching” reflex which resulted in the young monkey’s comfort.

Harlow’s Results – Applied to Humans: When an attachment bond has been formed, disruption can be disturbing to an infant. Attachment – A deep, caring, close and enduring emotional bond between an infant & their caregiver. Stranger Anxiety – Fear of strangers that infants display. Separation Anxiety – Distress that is sometimes experienced by infants when they are separated from their primary caregiver.

Ainsworth & Bowlby experiment: Developed a technique called “Strange Situation” to measure levels of attachment. The discovered that children display four patterns of attachment: Mary Ainsworth John Bowlby

Experiment:

Secure Attachment: – Balance the Need to Explore with the Need to Stay Close Welcomed the mother back when she returned to the room and were free of anger for her departure.

Avoidant Attachment: – Avoided or Ignored mother when she left & when she returned

Ambivalent Attachment: – Not upset when mother left, but either avoided her or displayed anger toward her when she returned

Disorganized Attachment: – Behaved inconsistently; they were not angry when their mother left; but they avoided her upon her return Least secure of all forms.

Emotional conclusion: When we are young, our emotions are tied to the world around us; as we age (through middle-age) we become less aggressive & by the time we reach old age, our emotions are centered on ourselves, instead of the social world. We all experience FEAR (young children don’t until they can recognize the possible dangers) – “baby and a rattlesnake”

6. Intellectual Development: Development of an individual’s mental abilities – Theories based on the research of Swiss Psychologist, Jean Piaget. He had four Basic Assumptions:

Assumptions 1 & 2: Children are Active Thinkers, they are Inherently Motivated to Learn and Understand. – Present a child with a situation & they’ll figure it out. Qualitative Differences in perception & understanding exists between Adults & Children Airplane based on viewpoint:

Assumptions 3 & 4: Knowledge is intricately organized into Schemas which can be understood as “units of understanding” – From the specific to the elaborate Plants > Crops > Foods > Corn> Sweet Corn> Cornbread All learning is either based on: – Assimilation Understanding objects & events based on Prior Learning – Accommodation Objects & events which produce new learning