1. Developmental Issues: Prenatal Development, and the Newborn
Module 7
Developmental Issues: Prenatal Development, and the Newborn
Prenatal development video – saniyeye kadar
Last time we talked about how humans’ genes make up who they are- how are they influenced by the environment starting within the time they were in the womb of their mother ... What happens after the baby is born. What kind of a development path a baby experiences – changes in congition, emotions and behaviors.

2. Developmental Psychology
A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive and social change throughout the life span
Life span --- including pre-natal and old age.
Change continous all throughout our life. Does not end when we reach adolescence or adulthood.

3. Three major issues Nature / Nurture Continuity / Stages
How do genetic inheritance and experience influence our development?
Already covered in behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology
Continuity / Stages
Is development a gradual and continuous process or does it proceed through a sequence of distinct stages?
Stability / Change
Do early traits [e.g., personality] persist throughout life or do we change through the life span?
intelligence
When the sperm and the egg unite development of the newborn starts and follows a relatively ordered stage until the baby is born.
By birth, infants are equipped with perceptual and behavioral abilities that faciliatate their survival.
In this lecture – focus is on the newborn. Early stages of life.
Much of the topics studied by developmental psychologists fall under three basic issues:
Nature / Nurture
How do genetic inheritance and experience influence our development? ---- talk about throughout the lectures
Continuity / Stages
Is development gradual, continuous or does it proceed through a sequence of stages?
Stability / Change
Do early [personality] traits persist througout life or do we become different persons as we age?

4. Continuity or Stages?
Development through experience and learning occurs as a continuous process.
Biological and genetically determined maturation can be studied as a series of predetermined stages.
Stages: Although process through these staged relatively quickly or slowly--- everyone passes through these stages inorder.
Stages: Although process through these stages relatively quickly or slowly--- everyone passes through these stages inorder.
Are we talking about gradual differences btween babies and children, children and adolescents, adolecsnts and adults – or a categorical difference - as if they are from different breeds.
Are there clear –cut differences of pcyhological development?
Several theoreticians talk about stages – one of the most important theories of human cognitive development, by PİAGET, explains human development as series of stages. These stages are age-linked.
Subsequent, more recent studies– suggested that even though there is an inherent order of development, these are more gradual changes. More continous. Some changes may occur at stages earlier than piaget suggested through early stimulation.
Still stage theories have been usefeul in understanding the capacities and capablities of children – esp during childhoos and adolescence.

5. Figure 1.2 Cole, Cole, and Lightfoot: The Development of Children, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2005 by Worth Publishers

6. Stability and/or Change?
First two years provide a poor basis for eventual traits
Older children and adolescents also change but to a lesser extent.
Some characteristics are more stable than others
Temperament, personality versus political attitudes
All individuals change through the life span
Stability provides our identity
Change motivates us - means hope about a brighter future, adapt to the present, and benefit from experience
What happens to those changes over time?
Once your persoanlity develops – does it stya the same or does it continue changing?
Researchers who have followed individuals through life span have found evidence for both stability and change.
Why is this important ---- there is stilll hope for those who did not have good experiences in early childhood.
Trubled children can and do blossom into successful adults.
However, as people grow older, personality stabilizes --- also related to the stimulation coming from the environment.
The social/cultural context, friends, life styles stabilize.
2. But attitudes may also become more stable with age.
3. We all change as we grow older. But your positon relative to others’ at your age may stay the same. YOu may start life being a shy person, and even though the level of syness changes in time, you may still be shyer than people of your age.
This is good for our life. We want both stability and some room for change.
Think about how your personal and social lives would be if people constantly changed.
On the other hand the possibilty for change motivates us.

7. Nature or Nurture?
At each developmental stage, genetic and environmental factors affect development
Newborns come to world equipped with reflexes (and may be a lot more) suited for survival and adaptation to the world.
E.g., Rooting Reflex
tendency to open mouth, and search for nipple when touched on the cheek
Teratogens
agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm (Aids, addictions... )
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman’s heavy drinking
There is no known safe amount of alcohol for a pregnant woman. Alcohol enters the woman’s bloodstream and deprsses activity in both the mother’s and the embryo’s central nervous system --- may affect brain developments– result in seere mental retardation. Even a single case of binge drinking during the brain grwoth can kill millios of brain cells.

8. Prenatal Development
An ovum is 85,000 times the size of a sperm
Fertilized egg: zygote
10 days after conception, the inner cells of zygote form the embryo
At 4 weeks – 4 mm
At 8/9 weeks – Fetal stage - 30 mm
Fetus
By the 8th week - Rapid growth of the zygote that has developed a heart, brain, intestinal tract, and other organs

9. Prenatal Development At 18 weeks – 20 cm - moving At 29 weeks – 37 cm
At 38 weeks – 50 cm - mature

10. Prenatal Development
Both genetic and environmental factors influence prenatal development
Teratogens – Harmful agents that can cross the placenta
Opiates such as heroine
Nicotine
Alcohol
Mother’s nutrition and emotional state
Mother’s illness
Mother’s drug use
Alcohol and nicotine
Fetal alcohol syndrome
  Attention deficits   Memory deficits   Hyperactivity   Difficulty with abstract concepts   Inability to manage money   Poor problem solving skills  Difficulty learning from consequences   Immature social behavior   Inappropriately friendly to strangers   Lack of control over emotions   Poor impulse control   Poor judgment

11. The Newborn A set of reflexes that help survival –
For food – rooting & sucking
Grasping
A set of preferences that facilitate responsiveness
Crying
Gazing into preferred patterns such as face
Sound of a heartbeat
Mother’s voice
Preference for sights and sounds that facilitate social responsiveness--- at least guarantee building a bond with the food source.
How is it studied? By measuring how long babies stare at stimulus. --- that show prefernce.
Newborns --- turn their heads to human voices.
Gaze longer at a shape that resembles human face.
Can differentiate their mom from other similar looking females -- -voice & smell.

12. Using habituation to understand infant cognition
Habituation is a decrease in responding with repeated stimulation
It enables researchers to assess what infants can see and remember. Studies using habituation indicate that infants can discriminate colors, shapes, and sounds and understand some basic concepts of physics and numbers.
The tendency for attention to a stimulus to wane over time (often used to determine whether an infant has “learned” a stimulus
Another way to study babies cognition is habituation.
If they get habituated – decrease responding to repeated stimualtions --- it means thay they have learned.
Then when they see a novel stimulus, should show more interest!
Zimbardo – 6 to 9 ---

13. Newborns prefer face-like objects

14. Development Physical Development Cognitive Development
Brain & motor development
Cognitive Development
Social Development

15. Module 8 Infancy and Childhood
For specific periods of life – we will talk about physical, cogntive and social development (changes).

16. Infancy and Childhood: Physical Development
The brain is immature at birth
As the child matures, the neural networks grow increasingly more complicated
Rapid growth is observed in the frontal lobes
Association areas are the last areas to develop
Developing brain also enables physical coordination (maturation)
At birth
3 months
15 months
Cortical Neurons
From infancy on – neural hardware and cognitive software develop at the same time.
Neural networks get complex ---
At the same time association areas within the cortex develop – enabling thinking, memory and language formation.
Even though most of the brain cells (nurons) are formed when you are born ---- they were not connected to each other.
Connections of neurons – neural networks – occur through sitmulation.
Esp. Development in the frontal lobe --- rational planning, abstract thinking etc.
Lack of these neural connections actually explain why we have difficulty in remembering our early memories.

17. Infancy and Childhood: Physical Development
Maturation
biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in physical coordination & behavior
Sit, stand, walk, run  maturation of the cerebellum
relatively uninfluenced by experience, the sequence of motor/physical devepment is universal.
This biological growth is called maturation.
Cannot perform some of the acts – if not have the hardware developed.
That is why there is in order in many of our processes.
Stand – walk –run --- maturation oıf the nervous system , strength of the neurons etc.
Say nouns first – than adjectives – than build sentences.
Severe deprivation at these stages will retard development
Identical twins usually start sitting up and walking on the same day.
there are individual differences but experience has a limited effect.

18. During the First Year Rolls over at 3 months
Sits without support at 6 months
Stands alone at about 11 months
Walks at just over one year old

19. Prop up to get a stronger back

20. Sit up without support

21. Crawling

22. Standing supported

23. Standing unsupported

24. Cruising

25. Walking

26. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

27. What is the driving force of cognitive development? Jean Piaget
Mind develops through a series of stages
Cognitive capacity develops through children’s constant trials to make sense of the world.
Mind develops using schemas
a concept or mental framework that organizes and interprets information/experiences
E.g. Animal, dog, etc.
Famous psychologist who studied children’s cognitive development in 1920s.
Children think /process in different ways than adults.
Children’s cognitive abilities develop through a sequence- a series of stages.
This capacity changes, develops through children’s constant trials to make sense of the world.
Schemas:
mental representations of the world that guide the processes of assimilation and accommodation

28. Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development, J. Piaget
Concept of Assimilation
New cognitive elements are fitted in with old elements or modified to fit more easily
Concept of Accommodation
Restructuring cognitive structures and building new schemas so that new information can fit into them more easily
Our congition develops through creating and differentiating schemas.
Create mental representations of the world and mental adaptations to new observations and experiences.
Assimilation –
New experiences are fitted into already existing schemas.
Accommodation
May sometimes need to change the already existing schemas or form new scemas to incorporate new information
adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information

29. Assimilation --- all four legged animals are dogs.
Accomodation – differentiate between dogs and cats.

30. Infancy and Childhood: Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Typical Age
Range
Description
of Stage
Developmental
Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years
Sensorimotor
Experiencing the world through
senses and actions (looking,
touching, mouthing)
Object permanence
Stranger anxiety
About 2 to 6 years
About 7 to 11 years
About 12 through
adulthood
Preoperational
Representing things
with words and images
but lacking logical reasoning
Egocentrism
Language development
Concrete operational
Thinking logically about concrete
events; grasping concrete analogies
and performing arithmetical operations
Conservation
Mathematical transformations
Formal operational
Abstract reasoning
Abstract logic
Potential for moral reasoning
Sensorimotor --- experience the world through sensory and motor interactions with objects.
Looking, touching, smelling, tasting etc.
Preoperational – up until school age.
Too young to perform mental operations.
Are egocentric. Can see things from others’ perspectives.
That is why when they hide behind a curtain, they think you also don’t see you.
I don’t see you – I am also invisible.
Stand between you and the TV --- because think that since he can see the TV, you should be as well.