Outline Chapter 4

•Development psychologists- study physical, cognitive, and social changes

Throughout the human life cycle, and find common patterns which are important.

Prenatal Development and the Newborn

•Only 1 of 5000 ofa woman’s eggs will be mature enough to be released
•Men can produce over 1000 sperm in a second, this rate will decrease over age
•The mating of the egg and sperm include Sperms going up to an egg which is 85000
times bigger than itself
° The sperm releases digestive enzymes to dissolve the egg’s protective Layer
° The egg will block other sperm out once one sperm penetrates the Protective layer
° Fingerlike projections will sprout around the sperm and full it in
° By the end of the day, they will fuse

Prenatal Development
- Zygotes are fertilized eggs
- In the first week, the cell divides to produce a zygote of about 100 cells
•After the first week, the cell will differentiate and specialize in structure and
function
•After ten days, the zygote will attach to the mother’s uterine wall
•The placenta and the embryo are then formed
•After nine weeks, the embryo is known as the fetus
•After six months, the organs like the stomach will be able to function and perform
•The fetus starts to respond to noise during the sixth month
•Both genetic and environmental factors can affect the prenatal development
•Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is usually seen with children born with mental as well as
physical deformities. Over 1 in 750 kids are born with this syndrome
•FAS is the leading cause of mental retardation
•Pregnant women who have been stressed during their pregnancy have children
who are less competent in motor skills, emotional as well as learning deficiency.
Increased proclivity of depression

The Competent Newborn

•the rooting reflex is when newborns are prompted to open their mouth and turn
towards the nipple when touched on the cheek
•William James presumed that newborns experiences where similar to that of
buzzing confusion
•Research from the 1960’s revealed that newborns were born preferring sights andsounds
which facilitate social responsiveness. They are more drawn into picturesthat are
associated to humans (Mondlock’sstudy)
•Habituation is the decrease in responding with repeated stimulation
•Janine Spencer and Paul Quinn did a study which revealed that 4 year olds like
adults focused on the faces of animals. (cat and dog experiment)
•Alan Slater explained that in order to recognize a new stimulus as different, an
infant must remember the initial stimulus.
Brain Development
•Over 23 billion neurons were produced in the child by birth
•From age 3-6, the brain’s neural system starts to grow in the frontal lobes,
enabling rational planning
•Maturation sets the basic course of development. It is the genetically designed
biological growth process.
•Maturation is uninfluenced by experiences
•While genetic growth tendencies are inborn

Motor Development
•The order in which physical coordination occurs like crawling before walking is
due to the maturing of the nervous system and has nothing to do with imitation
•Individual differences in timing occur
•Genes play a role in the timing of each coordination. Identical twins would be
able to walk more or less on the same day
•Biological maturation includes the rapid development of the cerebellum at the
back of the brain
•Experiences will not have a major effect on the child’s physical skills until after
age 1

Maturation and Infant Memory

•Pillemer’s study concluded that the average age of earliest conscious memory was
3.5 years of age
•Starting at 4 years old, a child can start to remember their experiences
•From age 3-4 , the brain cortex matures , thus enabling toddlers to increase their
long-term storage
•However , the child’s memories during this time may not be interrupted properly
later on in life
•Association can be remembered for the maximum time of a month fora 3 month
old child.
•When the conscious mind does not know and cannot express in words, the
nervous system may remember through increased physiological responses like
through skin perspiration

Cognitive Development
•Jean Piaget’s works revolved around the errors give by children by each age.
•Before Piaget, people thought that children “simply knew less, not differently
than adults.”
•Later it was discovered that “children reason in wildly illogical ways about
problems whose solutions are self-evident to adults.”
•A child’s mind also develops through many stages
•Piaget revealed that schemas develop when the brain builds concepts. The
schemas are mental molds into which we pour our experiences.
•There are two ways which we could adjust our schemas. By assimilating as well
as accommodating them.
•When we assimilate new schemas, we interpret them into our current schemas
 •When we accommodate our schemas, we adjust our present schemas to fit the
particulars of new experiences. You refine the category.

Piaget’s theory and Current Thinking

•Cognition refers to all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing ,
remembering and communicating.
•The sensory motor stage is from birth to age 2. This is when the babies will take in
the world through their sensory and motor interactions interacting with objects
•Object Permanence is the awareness that objects continue to exist when not
perceived
•Before 8 months, the child lacks object permanence
•Many argue that Piaget underestimated the intelligence of a child. He claimed that
children did not have the ability to think. Today’s researchers see development as more
continuous than Piaget. However, his views were contradicted when babiesseem to have
a more intuitive grasp of objects, when it was found that toddlershad a sense of numbers
(Karen Wynn’s study).
•The preoperational stage is Piaget’s theory that from age 2 to about age 7, a child
learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of
concrete logic.