Chapter 5 - Human Development
Stages of prenatal development
- Human development is the process of how genotype becomes phenotype and therefore how we change and remain the same over the
course of a lifetime, from conception to death
- Life before birth is commonly divided into three distinct stages: germinal, embryonic, and fetal
Germinal Stage
- The germinal stage begins at conceptions and lasts for 2 weeks
- At conception, the fertilized egg is a single-celled zygote which starts dividing rapidly around 36 hours after conception
- If implantation is successful, the second stage of prenatal development begins, at about 2 weeks after conception, at this point the
growing bundle of cells is officially an embryo
Embryonic stage
- Marked by the formation of the major organs: nervous system, heart, eyes, ears, arms, legs, teeth, palate, and external genitalia
- Embryonic development continues until about 8 weeks after conception
Fetal stage
- Formation of bone cells at 8 weeks after conception
- All major organs have already begun to form
- Between 8 and 12 weeks into development
- Heartbeat can be detected with a stethoscope
- Organs continue to grow and mature while the fetus rapidly increases in size
Prenatal programming
- The process by which events in the womb alter the development of physical and psychological health (COE & LUBACH 2008)
- A particular concern is teratogens or substances that can cause permanent damage to the developing embryo or fetus
Temperament
- begins before birth
- Biologically based tendency to behave in particular ways from very early in life
- Temperament involves unique behaviors
- Personality involves unique traits, feelings, beliefs, attitudes,
goals, and motivations
- Personality develops out of temperament differences
Early Motor Development
- Changes in physical movement and body control
- The exact age at which children reach each milestone is predictable
but also varies
- Fine motor skills involve the coordination of many smaller
muscles and info from the eyes, drawing skills
Early brain development
- With learning and experience, synaptic connections strengthen
- If something doesn’t receive stimulation, it will die off, this is known as pruning
- Pruning nature’s way of making the brain more efficient
- Pruning is required for normal brain development
- Problems with neural pruning may result in neurological disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia
, Model of general cognitive development
- Proposed by Jean Piaget (1954) model from infancy to adulthood > principals of cognitive development from birth throughout
childhood outline stages at which certain cognitive capacities appear
- Relied on observations of his own three children
Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage
- Characterizes the way infants learn about the world through their senses and their own movements
- Young children sense more than they “think” and come to understand the world by manipulating and moving through it
- During the first 8-9 months, a child has no concept of object permanence
- Object permanence is the ability to realize that objects still exist when they are not being sensed
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage
- Around age 2, the emergence of symbolic thought, lasts until about age 5-6
- Symbolic thinking involves using symbols, words, or letter to represent ideas or objects
- Cognitive limitations include animistic thinking, egocentrism, and lack of conservation
- Animistic thinking refers to the idea that inanimate objects are alive
- Egocentrism is the tendency to view the world only from one’s own perspective
- Conservation is the ability to recognize that, when some properties (such as shape) of an object change, other properties (such as
volume) remain constant
Stage 3: concrete operational stage
- Ages 6-11, children can perform mental operations on real, or concrete, objects, and events
- Still have trouble with abstract ideas and reasoning
- A child can reason that the amount of liquid they see go from one glass into the other, must remain the same,
Stage 4: Formal operational stage
- The onset of adolescence, gain the ability to reason about abstract concepts and problems
- Theory of mind refers to our knowledge and ideas of how other people’s minds work
Moral reasoning
- Lawrence Kohlberg (1981), studied development moral reasoning in children and adults by giving them a moral dilemma and
recording the reasons they provided for their responses
- Second level, conventional level, person values caring, trust, relationships, social order, and lawfulness
Easy child
- Predictable in daily functions, happy most of the time, adaptable, 40% of children
Difficult child
- Unpredictable in daily functions, is unhappy most of the time, and is slow to adapt to new situations
- 10% fall into this category
Slow to warm up child
- Mildly intense in his or her reactions to new situations, mildly irregular in the daily patterns of eating, sleeping, and
eliminating
Strange situation
- Consists of a 20-minute laboratory session that creates a mildly stressful situation for the baby
- Designed to see how much the caregiver is a safe haven when the infant is distressed and a “secure” from which to explore
- After a one minute introduction, the caregiver and her 12-month-old infant are left alone in a playroom
- A stranger comes into the room, after a few minutes the stranger begins a brief interaction with the infant
- The caregiver then leaves for two separate 3-minute periods
Stages of prenatal development
- Human development is the process of how genotype becomes phenotype and therefore how we change and remain the same over the
course of a lifetime, from conception to death
- Life before birth is commonly divided into three distinct stages: germinal, embryonic, and fetal
Germinal Stage
- The germinal stage begins at conceptions and lasts for 2 weeks
- At conception, the fertilized egg is a single-celled zygote which starts dividing rapidly around 36 hours after conception
- If implantation is successful, the second stage of prenatal development begins, at about 2 weeks after conception, at this point the
growing bundle of cells is officially an embryo
Embryonic stage
- Marked by the formation of the major organs: nervous system, heart, eyes, ears, arms, legs, teeth, palate, and external genitalia
- Embryonic development continues until about 8 weeks after conception
Fetal stage
- Formation of bone cells at 8 weeks after conception
- All major organs have already begun to form
- Between 8 and 12 weeks into development
- Heartbeat can be detected with a stethoscope
- Organs continue to grow and mature while the fetus rapidly increases in size
Prenatal programming
- The process by which events in the womb alter the development of physical and psychological health (COE & LUBACH 2008)
- A particular concern is teratogens or substances that can cause permanent damage to the developing embryo or fetus
Temperament
- begins before birth
- Biologically based tendency to behave in particular ways from very early in life
- Temperament involves unique behaviors
- Personality involves unique traits, feelings, beliefs, attitudes,
goals, and motivations
- Personality develops out of temperament differences
Early Motor Development
- Changes in physical movement and body control
- The exact age at which children reach each milestone is predictable
but also varies
- Fine motor skills involve the coordination of many smaller
muscles and info from the eyes, drawing skills
Early brain development
- With learning and experience, synaptic connections strengthen
- If something doesn’t receive stimulation, it will die off, this is known as pruning
- Pruning nature’s way of making the brain more efficient
- Pruning is required for normal brain development
- Problems with neural pruning may result in neurological disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia
, Model of general cognitive development
- Proposed by Jean Piaget (1954) model from infancy to adulthood > principals of cognitive development from birth throughout
childhood outline stages at which certain cognitive capacities appear
- Relied on observations of his own three children
Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage
- Characterizes the way infants learn about the world through their senses and their own movements
- Young children sense more than they “think” and come to understand the world by manipulating and moving through it
- During the first 8-9 months, a child has no concept of object permanence
- Object permanence is the ability to realize that objects still exist when they are not being sensed
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage
- Around age 2, the emergence of symbolic thought, lasts until about age 5-6
- Symbolic thinking involves using symbols, words, or letter to represent ideas or objects
- Cognitive limitations include animistic thinking, egocentrism, and lack of conservation
- Animistic thinking refers to the idea that inanimate objects are alive
- Egocentrism is the tendency to view the world only from one’s own perspective
- Conservation is the ability to recognize that, when some properties (such as shape) of an object change, other properties (such as
volume) remain constant
Stage 3: concrete operational stage
- Ages 6-11, children can perform mental operations on real, or concrete, objects, and events
- Still have trouble with abstract ideas and reasoning
- A child can reason that the amount of liquid they see go from one glass into the other, must remain the same,
Stage 4: Formal operational stage
- The onset of adolescence, gain the ability to reason about abstract concepts and problems
- Theory of mind refers to our knowledge and ideas of how other people’s minds work
Moral reasoning
- Lawrence Kohlberg (1981), studied development moral reasoning in children and adults by giving them a moral dilemma and
recording the reasons they provided for their responses
- Second level, conventional level, person values caring, trust, relationships, social order, and lawfulness
Easy child
- Predictable in daily functions, happy most of the time, adaptable, 40% of children
Difficult child
- Unpredictable in daily functions, is unhappy most of the time, and is slow to adapt to new situations
- 10% fall into this category
Slow to warm up child
- Mildly intense in his or her reactions to new situations, mildly irregular in the daily patterns of eating, sleeping, and
eliminating
Strange situation
- Consists of a 20-minute laboratory session that creates a mildly stressful situation for the baby
- Designed to see how much the caregiver is a safe haven when the infant is distressed and a “secure” from which to explore
- After a one minute introduction, the caregiver and her 12-month-old infant are left alone in a playroom
- A stranger comes into the room, after a few minutes the stranger begins a brief interaction with the infant
- The caregiver then leaves for two separate 3-minute periods
