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Capacities of the newborn

Cognitive development in childhood

² Piaget
² Kohlberg

Personality and social development

² attachment
² gender development

Adolescency
ðature ² nurture debate

maturation
- innately determined growth
and change

- fixed schedule

- different rates

- some environmental influence

(e.g. motor development)
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ãision
² short-sightedness
² poor visual acuity
² double-vision

Prefer
² big contrasts (edges)
² complex features
² curved lines
Excellent
Recognizes mother·s milk
Sweet-preference
maste
and
smell
§earing
excellent at birth

6 weeks-4 months ²
shift

sensitive to
‡tones (Mozart)
‡speech (foreign
languages)
Êearning
and
memory
‡ fast and
excellent

‡ even
remember
their fetal
experiences
 Experimental methods with babies

Conditioned
kicking

3-6
months
Eye-tracking
ë




infancy ² childhood ² adolescency ²
adulthood

º behaviors are organized at a given theme /

a coherent set of characteristics

º are qualitatively different from behaviors

at later or earlier stages

º All children go through the same stages in

the same order
 Windows of opportunity
Sensitive period
² time-window for the brain
² the individual is particularly receptive to certain
types of stimuli or interactions
² begins and ends gradually
² period of maximal sensitivity

If missed
the brain has progressed past the point
at which information can be  
absorbed
- attachment
- mental modeling of the environment
- music
- sports
Critical period:
² time-window for the brain
² exclusive period for acquiring a specific ability
² the relevant stimuli must be there
² begins and ends abruptly

Êike:
² binocular vision (1-3 years)
² hearing
² language acquisition
 D
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‡ Influenced by Kant's 
constructivist theory
of knowledge

‡ Are children just

young adults?

‡ Is development just a
lot of learning?

‡ Children are born with

some genetically
inherited (and evolved)
mental structure ...

‡ ... all subsequent

learning and knowledge
is based on it
Children are active
builders of their
knowledge

Êike little, inquiering,

naive scientists, children
constantly construct
and test their own
theories of the world
 ë
 




to understand
features of
the world
  :
² incorporating
new
materials
from the
environment
into a
schema
  
changing the
schema to
better fit the
environment




    
  

operation: logical thinking
ë
   
(birth to 2 years)
adapting to &
exploring the environment

‡ brain makeup
‡ sucking and visual orienting reflexes
‡ innate tendencies to adapt to environment
‡ learn through senses
‡ repetitions with variations
 å ut of sight, out of mindµ

‡ 8-10 month - bject permanence

‡ Understanding that objects exist independently of

our thoughts and actions
 |

 
(2 to 7 years)

Magical thinking
there are witches, fairies ...

... and
åSanta Claus is coming
tonightµ
 Animism: attributing life and
thinking to inanimate objects (see
religions and mythology!)

mhe sun is shining directly on to them ...

ÄÄand there is a spirit in every tree ....

‡Egocentrism: the inability to take another
person's perspective or point of view.
‡ Centration: mhe tendency to focus or center on
only one aspect of a situation and ignore other
important aspects. Unable to see that objects alike in
one property might differ in others

Pick the yellow triangles!

 ‡ Conservation: mwo equal physical quantities
remain equal even if the appearance of one is
changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted.

Centration (height R width) and lack of conservation

Irreversibility: mhe inability to mentally reverse a sequence of

events.
 ‡ Make-believe play
‡ Pretend-play and
imitation
² cooking,
² mum-and-daddy
play

mhinking is literal and concrete

(do not understand proverbs)
 mheory of mind

... understanding,that

² others have feelings

and thoughts,
different from ours
² they are intentional
agents ...

Autistic children do not have a theory of mind

 Concrete operational stage
Class inclusion
‡ Classifying and generalizing on observable properties
(all dogs are animals but that not all animals are dogs).
Serial ordering
‡ Arranging a set of objects according to an observable
property; establishing a one-to-one correspondence
between two observable sets (the smaller the animal
the faster its heart beats)
Reversibility
‡ Mentally inverting a sequence of steps.
Conservation
‡ Realizing that a quantity remains the same if nothing
is added or taken away, though it may appear
different.
 Formal operational stage
mheoretical Reasoning
‡ mhinking scientifically, being capable of mental
operations such as drawing conclusions, constructing
tests to evaluate hypotheses.
Combinatorial Reasoning
‡ Considering all combinations of abstract items.
Proportional Reasoning
‡ Stating and interpreting functional relationships in
mathematical form.
Control of ãariables
‡ Recognizing the necessity of an experimental design
that controls all variables but one.
‡ Probabilistic and Correlational Reasoning
‡ Interpreting observations that show unpredictable
variability and recognizing relationships among
variables.
 Piaget·s theory of moral development
(moral reasoning)

morality =
developmental
process
interpersonal
interactions

parallel play - no rules

‡ "heteronomous" stage
² strict adherence to rules and duties
² obedience to authority
² moral realism (objective responsibility,
when the letter of the law is above the
purpose of the law; the outcomes of actions
are above the intentions of the person)
² immanent justice (punishments
automatically follow acts of wrong-doing).

‡ åautonomousµ stage
² consider rules critically
² apply them in a selective way
Êawrence
Kohlberg·s
theory of moral
development

moral reasoning

continues
throughout the
lifespan
 Êevels of moral behaviour

Êevel 1 (Pre-Conventional)
1. bedience and punishment orientation
2. Reward orientation

Êevel 2 (Conventional)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity ( mhe good
boy/good girl orientation)
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
( Êaw and order morality)

Êevel 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience)
Personality and social development
m


:
² mood-related
personality
characteristics
² can predict
emotional and
behavioral
characteristic
features later in
life

Easy (40%)
Difficult (10%)
Slow to warm up
(15%)
 Emotional
development

Êove Between
Mothers
and Babies:
are mothers
only a mere source
of food ...?
 


tendency to seek
closeness to
important others

ë
 

! " 





mERRY-CÊ m§ M m§ER

‡ well proportioned and

streamlined monkey
body made of wood

‡ covered with rubber,

sheathed in cotton
towelling (soft to
touch)

‡ light bulb behind made

her warm
 WIRE-MAS§ M m§ER

made of wire mesh

lacked contact comfort

had breasts
the young monkeys clung to the terry-cloth
mother whether it provided them
with food or not
ågotµ protection and comfort
 Strange Situation
‡ Parent and child are alone in a room

‡ Child explores the room without

parental participation

‡ Stranger enters the room, talks to

the parent, and approaches the child

‡ Parent quietly leaves the room

‡ Parent returns and comforts the child

—
 - -
-

Strange Situation
Securely attached

Insecurely attached,
ambivalent

Insecurely attached,
avoidant
Parental attitude
‡ Goodness of fit
(matching
temperament)

‡ Sensitive
responsiveness
(tayloring the
answers to the
babies· needs)
gender identity:
a firm sense of being a member
of one of the sexes

‡ Psychoanalytic theory
‡ Social learning theory
‡ Cognitive developmental
theory
‡ Gender schema theory




culturally determined stereotyped attitudes

towards men and women
PSYC§ SEXUAÊ DEãEÊ PMEðm |




ral
Anal
Phallic
‡ Boys ( edipus complex/castration
complex identify with father,
develop stronger sense of morality

‡ Girls penis envy, weaker

identification with mother, less
developed sense of identity)
Êatency

IDEðmIFICAmI ð

§ M SEXUAÊImY:
WR ðG IDEðmIFICAmI ð
 ë



Rewards and pubishments of
gender-appropriate and
inappropriate behavior by
adults and peers
(reinforcement)

It is like any other of behavior

(so it is subject of
modification)

bservation and imitation of

models· feminine and masculine
behavior
 Ê 

Barbie for girls

 Cognitive developmental theory
‡ children learn gender (and
gender stereotypes) through
their mental efforts to
organize their social world (not
because they are rewarded or
punished).

Gender constancy: to
understand that people cannot
change genders the way they
can change their clothes,
names, or behavior (it is a
function of cognitive
development)
 Gender-schema theory
mhree key ´gender lensesµ (hidden assumptions):

² 

#(men and women are different and these
differences constitute a central organizing principle of social
life)

²  
 (males are superior to females; male experience
is the normative standard)

² 

 (the first two lens are due to biological
differences between the sexes).

gender acquisition =
self-fulfilling prophecy