1. PSYC 206
Lifespan Development
Bilge Yagmurlu

2. Chapter Overview Physical Growth Brain Development Motor Development
Cognitive Development
Conceptual Development
The Growth of Attention and Memory

3. Physical Growth During the first year, babies:
Triple in weight
Grow about 10 inches
Changes in body proportions

4. Body Proportions

5. Musculoskeletal System
Bones ossify (harden)
Increase in muscle mass, length and thickness
Gender difference in physical growth

6. Brain Development Cerebral cortex development
Increased myelination of neurons
Development of prefrontal cortex
Voluntary behavior
7-9 months of age
Growth of language-related areas: frontal and temporal
Increased synchrony among the brain areas

7. Brain and Behavior
Neural development approaches adult status by the end of infancy
As a result,
More systematic problem solving
Voluntary control of behavior
Acquisition of language

8. Brain and Experience Effects of prolonged deprivation
Example: Romanian orphans
Effects of lack of experience till 24 months
Periods of plasticity
Experience-expectant and experience-dependent neural connections

9. Development of the Brain
Experience-expectant process
Species-universal experiences are required for fine-tuning neural connections. When expected experiences lack in sensitive periods, then the brain will fail to develop normally
Experience-dependent process
Have evolved to allow the organism to take advantage of new and changing information in the environment.

10. Motor Development
Fine Motor Skills
Gross Motor Skills

11. Fine Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills: Reaching and grasping
Involve the development and coordination of small muscles
Reaching and grasping
Manual dexterity

12. Major Milestones

13. Reaching and Grasping

14. Fine Motor Skills By age 2, feed and dress themselves turn book pages
cut paper
string beads

15. Gross Motor Skills Gross Motor Skills:
Involve the large muscles of the body and make locomotion possible

16. Progression of Locomotion

17. Gross Motor Skills Crawling By 8 to 10 months Wariness of heights
Visual Cliff

18. Control of Elimination
Maturation of sensory pathways
From reflex to control
Must learn to associate sensory signals with need to eliminate.
When to “hold it”

19. Cognitive Development: The Great Debate
When does conceptual understanding begin?
Piaget’s explanation
Other developmentalists’ explanation

20. Piaget’s Stage Theory
Sensorimotor intelligence at birth: understanding the world through one’s own actions and perceptions
Representational thinking begins around 18 months
Acquisition of knowledge
Motor actions
Environment
Senses

21. Alternative Explanation
Representational thinking begins as early as birth
The conceptual system develops separately from the sensorimotor system

22. Sensorimotor Substages

23. Sensorimotor Substages
Substage 1 ( months): Exercising reflex schemas.
infants learn to control and coordinate inborn reflexes
Substage 2 ( months): Primary circular reactions. New forms of behaviors appears.
accommodation first appears, with infants’ prolonging pleasant sensations arising from reflex actions

24. Sensorimotor Substages
Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions
4 to 8 months
Repeating actions that involve objects
Children’s actions begin to center on objects and events outside their own bodies
Infants will try to manipulate objects in order to repeat an accidental occurrence that they find interesting in the external environment
e.g., drop an object to hear a sound, vocalize by cooing

25. Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions
no explicit goals, but repetition of accidentally discovered interesting events
at some level, the infant understands that his own actions can have external results
Discoveries have accidental quality

26. Sensorimotor Substages
Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
8 to 12 months
Displaying intentionality, engaging in goal-directed behavior
Earliest form of problem solving behavior 26

27. Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
discover that behaviors can be means for achieving particular ends (Means-ends relationships)
can intentionally apply old behavior patterns to new situations
pull a string (means) to get the doll (end)

28. Sensorimotor Substages
Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions
12 to 18 months
Deliberately varying actions to reach goals, thus experimenting
e.g.: pull the pillow (i.e., create new means) to reach an object (a familiar goal)
but cannot yet imagine the consequences of these actions
all based on physical actions

29. Sensorimotor Substages
Substage 6: Beginning of Symbolic Representation
18 to 24 months
Basing their actions on representations
Stage of Representation and Symbolizing: the child uses mental images that can represent actions that are not actually occurring and things not actually present
the child uses images, words and actions to stand for objects
Important for problem solving, symbolic play, deferred imitation, and the use of language 29

30. Problem Solving
Infant in substage 5 carries out deliberate problem solving, but still relies principally on trial and error
Infant in substage 6 pictures a series of events in her mind before acting (i.e., via inference)

31. Sensorimotor Development
Cross cultural studies
Piaget’s observations have been widely replicated around the world.
Challenges
-Theories and Methods

32. Conceptual Development
Object Permanence
The understanding that objects maintain their identities when they change location, and ordinarily continue to exist when out of sight.
The existence of other objects is fundamentally independent of our psychological contact, that is, perception of and interaction with the object
Out of sight does not mean out of existence

33. Piaget’s Theory Object Permanence Representational competence
Active searching starts at 8 months

34. Object Permanence

35. Piaget’s Theory Object Permanence
Representational competence is mature only at substage 6.
A-not-B Error: when the child looks in place A, where the object had been previously found, even though the child just observed the object hidden at location B.