1. Nick, Kenzie, Kyliegh, Dallas
Child Development
Nick, Kenzie, Kyliegh, Dallas

2. Perceptual and Motor Development
Habituation is the tendency for organisms to respond less intensely to a stimulus as the frequency of exposure to that stimulus increases, and babies habituate just like the rest of us do.
Motor Development: the emergence of the ability to execute physical actions
Reflexes: Specific patterns of motor response that are triggered by specific patterns of sensory stimulation
Rooting reflex: The tendency for infants to move their mouths towards any object that touches their cheek
Sucking reflex: The tendency to suck any object that enters their mouth
There are two general rules that allow for the development of more sophisticated behaviors:
Cephalocaudal Rule(top-to-bottom rule): The tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the head to the feet
Proximodistal Rule (inside-to-outside rule): The tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the center to the periphery
They don’t emerge on a strict time table but are influenced by factors such as body weight, muscular development, the baby’s incentive for reaching and general level of activity

3. Jean Piaget
The main scientist behind the idea or theory of cognitive development
Studied the perceptual and cognitive errors of children in order to gain insight into the nature and development of the human mind
Theorized that younger children lack a particular cognitive ability that older children contain

4. Lev Vygotsky
He believed that cognitive development was largely the result of children’s interaction with members of their own cultures rather than interaction with objects
Children use cultural tools (i.e. language and counting systems) to exert a strong influence on cognitive development.
Believed that at any age a child is capable of acquiring a range of skills. He called this the child’s zone of proximal development
Children who interact with teachers tend to acquire skills at the top of this range and children who did not, acquire skills at the bottom.
We use a couple of basic communicative abilities to accomplish this task:
Social Referencing: Infants look at adults to gauge their reactions (also requires adults to focus on the same objects and not just on each other)
Joint Attention: The child will focus on the same point in space to which the adult’s eyes are directed
These two abilities prepare humans to learn from more skilled members of their species

5. Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development: the emergence of the ability to understand the world
Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development:
Sensorimotor
Birth - 2 years
Preoperational
2-6 years
Concrete operational
6-11 years
Formal operational
11 and up

6. Sensorimotor Stage
Stage of development that begins at birth and lasts through infancy
Infants at this stage, use their ability to sense and their ability to move to acquire information about the world
Schemas: theories about or models of the way the world works
Actively explore their environment using their eyes, mouths, and fingers
Assimilation: a process which occurs when an infant applies their schemas in novel situations
i.e. If the baby tugs on a stuffed animal, it will realize that the stuffed animal will come closer.
Accommodation: infants revise their schemas in light of new information
i.e. The child learns that if you pull on a cat’s tail, it will run away, but an inanimate object will come closer.
Object Permanence: the idea that objects continue to exist, even when they are not visible
Childhood: the stage of development that begins at eighteen to twenty-four months and lasts until adolescence (which begins between 11 and 14 years of age)

7. Preoperational Stage
The stage of development that begins at about two years and ends at about six years. The child learns about physical(or “concrete”) objects.
Child acquires motor skills but does not understand conservation of physical properties
Child begins this stage by thinking egocentrically but ends with a basic understanding of other minds

8. Concrete Operational Stage
Concrete Operational Stage: begins at about six years and ends at about eleven years.
Child can perform “concrete operations”, the child learns how actions (or “operations”) can affect or transform objects
Conservation: the notion that quantitative properties of an object are stable despite changes in the object’s appearance

9. Formal Operational Stage
Formal Operational Stage: begins around eleven and lasts through adulthood
Child can solve non-physical problems with ease
Childhood ends when this stage begins
Are able to reason systematically about the abstract concepts such as liberty, love and about events that will happen, might have happened, and have happened.
Egocentrism: the failure to understand that the world appears differently to different observers
Theory of mind: the idea that human behavior is guided by mental representation
Meaning the realization that the world is not always the way it looks and that different people see it differently.

10. Social Development
Attachment: An emotional bond that forms between newborns and their primary caregivers
Internal working model of attachment: A set of expectations about how the primary caregiver will respond when the child feels insecure
Temperaments: Characteristic patterns of emotional reactivity

11. Moral Development
Moral Development: The distinction between right and wrong
Psychologist Florence Kohlberg offered a detailed theory of the development of moral reasoning and it’s broken down into three major stages.
Knowing What’s Right:
Preconventional Stage: the stage of moral development in which the morality of an action is primarily determined by its consequences for the actor
Conventional Stage: The stage of moral development in which the morality of an action is primarily determined by the extent to which it conforms to social rules
Postconventional Stage: The stage of moral development at which the morality of an action is determined by a set of general principles that reflect core values (i.e. life, liberty and the pursuite of happiness)

12. Moral Development Cont…
Feeling What’s Right:
In judging moral dilemmas, we don’t think, we also feel.
Some scientists believe that the way we judge this is we use a moral intuitionist perspective.
We have evolved to react emotionally to a small family of events that are particularly relevant to reproduction and survival and we’ve developed the distinction between right and wrong as a way of labeling and explaining these emotional reactions

13. Test Question: What are the four stages of Cognitive Development?
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete Operational
Formal Operational