Development
Developmental Psychology: Studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span.
Social Development
Attachment: an emotional tie with another person
According to Bowlby and Ainsworth, children develop an attachment style to their primary caregiver early in development.
Secure Attachment: A strong attachment; the infant is distressed by the mother’s absence and immediately seeks contact with her when she returns (70% of infants)
Avoidant Attachment: The infant does not seek contact with the mother, and shows little distress when separated from her. The infant avoids contact upon her return. (20% of infants)
Ambivalent/Resistant Attachment: Insecure in the mother’s presence, becomes very distressed when she leaves, and resists contact upon her return (10% of infants)
Authoritarian Parents: impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive Parents: Submit to their children’s desires, make few demands, and use little punishment
Authoritative Parents: both demanding and responsive. They exert control not only by settling rules and enforcing them but also by explaining the reasons and encourage open discussion.
Children with highest self-esteem, self-reliance, and social competence usually have warm, concerned, authoritative parents.
Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
Trust vs. Mistrust: Infancy (up to 1 year)
Autonomy vs.Shame and Doubt: Toddlerhood (1 to 2 years)
Initiative vs Guilt: Preschooler (3 to 5 years)
Competence vs Inferiority: Elementary School (6 years to puberty)
Identity vs Role Confusion: Adolescence (teen years into 20s)
Intimacy vs Isolation: Young Adulthood (20s to early 40s)
Generativity vs Stagnation: Middle Adulthood (40s to 60s)
Integrity vs Despair: Late Adulthood (late 60s and up)
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage: Experiencing the world through senses and actions; birth to nearly 2 years
Preoperational Stage: Representing things with words and images; use intuitive rather than logical reasoning; do not understand the notion of conservation; 2 to about 6 or 7 years
Concrete Operational Stage: Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetic operations.
Formal Operational Stage: Abstract Reasoning; about 12 through adulthood
Assimilation: Interpreting one’s new experiences in term of one’s existing schemas
Accommodation: adapting one’s new current understanding (schema) to incorporate new info
Artificialism: the tendency to consider that physical objects and events were created by people
Animalistic: The tendency to endow physical objects and events with psychological qualities
Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Thinking
Preconventional Morality: Before age 9, most children have a preconventional morality of self-interest. They obey either to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards.
Conventional Morality: By early adolescence, morality usually evolves to a more conventional level that cares for other and upholds laws and social rules s imply because they are the laws and codes.
Postconventional Morality: some of those who develop the abstract reasoning of formal operational thought may come to a third level. Postconventional morality affirms people’s agreed-upon rights or follows what one personality perceives as basic ethical principles.
Fluid Intelligence: One’s ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood
Crystallized Intelligence: One’s accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
