INTRODUCTION TO

PSYCHOLOGY
SPRING 2024
Hajrah Rahman

WEEK 3: Psychological Development

Maturation
• A process of biological growth that we go through
• i.e. the changes we see as we age

When did you

• Start crawling?
• Start walking?
• Say your first words?
Nature vs. Nurture
What factors will impact your development?
What heredity factors?
What environmental factors?

Developmental psychology
• The study of how and why people change over the
course of their lives with regards to physical,
cognitive and psychosocial abilities
Nurture
John Locke (1632-1704)
 Tabula rasa (1690) – ‘blank slate’
 Newborn infants learn everything with
experience

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

 Remember Behaviourism?
 Believed children could be moulded into
anything
• ‘Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed,
and my own specified world to bring them up in,
and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and
train him to be any type of specialist I might
select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief,
and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless
of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
Nature
Dr Arnold Gesell (1880-1961)
 The Maturational Theory
 Children have a genetically determined
maturation process
• i.e. what will happen at a certain age group and
what parents can expect

Genetic determinism
 Genes directly control our
development; nurture could not change
who we would be
 Led to the rise of the eugenics
movement in the 20th century
The Interactionist Perspective
Both nature and nurture combined
play a role in our development

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

 Theory of evolution (1859)
 Natural selection would carry on those
qualities by genetics that are important
for our survival
 Psychological Development

Physical Cognitive Psychosocial

• Biological • Thinking • Emotions
development • Language • Attachment
• Motor • Sensation • Temperament
development
• Perception • Moral
• Hormonal development
changes • Intelligence
Stages of Human Development
• Pre-natal
• Infancy
• Childhood – early and middle
• Adolescence
• Adulthood – early, middle and late
Critical Period vs Sensitive
Period
Critical Period
• Very short and precise
• Vital for future development
• Rare in humans

Sensitive Period
• First few years of life
• Abilities can be learnt later in life
too
Prenatal Development
Prenatal development consists of three trimesters

 Trimester 1
• (Week 1-12)

 Trimester 2
• (Week 13 – 26)

 Trimester 3
• (Week 27 – 40)
Prenatal Development
Fertilisation of the egg to a zygote will happen if the sperm
reaches the ovum within a few days of ovulation
This process is called conception

Gestation – the period from conception to birth

• Lasts about 280 days from the mother’s last menstruation cycle

Ovulation – the process by which the ovum travels to the uterus

• Normally every 21-28 days
• When a single sperm reaches the ovum, it closes shut with a
protective layer
The first trimester (week 1 -12) of prenatal development has
three periods

The Germinal The Embryonic The Foetal Period

Period Period
Prenatal Influences
Teratogens
Substances that have negative effects on
the foetus following exposure
• e.g. can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, defects

Examples
• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• Medications
• Pollutants (e.g. lead, mercury) The thalidomide-affected babies of
the mid-20th century brought
• Infectious diseases (e.g. rubella, syphilis) awareness to the impact of
teratogens
• Radiation
Cognitive Development
Cognition
All mental processes related to thinking, knowing,
remembering etc.

Is a child’s mind the same as an adult’s?

• i.e. do they understand the world the same way?
• What do they do with new information?
Piaget’s Cognitive Development
With infants, new information is:
 Assimilated – adjusted to fit our schemas
 Accommodated – our schemas adjusted to fit new
information

Piaget described four stages of cognitive development:

• Sensorimotor (Birth – 2 years)
• Preoperational (2 – 7 years)
• Concrete operational (7 – 11/12 years)
• Formal operational (11/12 years onwards)
Sensorimotor Stage
• From birth to 2 years
• The child experiences the world through the senses and
motor movements
• e.g. touching, looking
• Develop a self-concept separate from the external world
• Object permanence is also acquired after 8 months
• i.e. an object still exists even if you cannot see or hear it
 Preoperational Stage
• 2 – 7 years
• Learn how to categorise
• Children tend to use egocentric thinking
• i.e. cannot perceive things from another’s point of view

• Lack of conservation
• i.e. that the quantity of a
substance is the same if its shape
changes

The Three Mountain Problem

Which has more water?
B

A B

All the water in glass B is

C
emptied into bowl C
Now which has more water?

A C
In the early preoperational stage, children cannot show
reversibility either
Concrete Operational Stage
• 7 – 11/12 years
• The child is able to use reason and logic…
• …But only towards concrete (i.e. real) objects they
can perceive or have sensory access to
• The child still has trouble with abstract thinking

The child is now capable of:

• Conservation
• Classification
• Spatial reasoning
Formal Operational Stage
From age 11/12 onwards
The adolescent is now capable of
• Abstract and scientific thinking
• i.e. things which are not concrete
• Coming up with a hypothesis and deducing a
solution by using logic and testing
• Understanding logical conclusions from verbal
statements
Theories of Language Development

The Nativist Perspective

• All children are born with an innate language
acquisition device (LAD) to understand the
rules of language
• This is how children are able to learn a native
Noam Chomsky
language

The Interactionist Perspective

• Children develop language skills by way of their
inner capacities and social/environmental
interactions
• e.g. learning from adults
• Reinforcement would help the child learn
about the language Lev Vygotsky
Theory of Mind

• Attributing different mental states to others

• i.e. being aware that others may not feel/perceive the same
way as you
• Autistic individuals may have impaired ToM
Early Language
What do you think the baby’s first words would be?
• Cries and screams
• Cooing (‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’) and babbling (‘mama’ and ‘baba’)

Infants may demonstrate:

• Under-extension – applying a word too narrowly e.g. ‘bear’
only for your teddy
• Overextension – applying a word to more situations than
appropriate e.g. ‘car’ for all vehicles
• Telegraphic speech – only the important words are used and
other less important ones omitted
What is Attachment?
The tendency of infants to stay
close to caregivers
• i.e. those that help them survive
Body contact plays a role
Harlow’s controversial study
John Bowlby with infant monkeys raised
• Important figure in attachment away from their mothers in
isolated cages
studies in the 1950s-60s
• Lack of early attachments can affect
later relationships in adulthood
 The Strange Situation

Developed by Mary Ainsworth, an associate of Bowlby’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&&v=QTsewNrHUHU
Attachment Styles
Ainsworth found three attachment styles after the
Strange Situation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_6rQk7jlrc

1) Secure attachment
2) Insecure-Avoidant attachment
3) Insecure-Ambivalent attachment

Later, a fourth style was added for children who did

not meet the other three
4) Disorganised attachment
Parenting Styles
Child-rearing styles can be:
 Authoritarian
• Expecting complete obedience; rigid, strict
 Authoritative
• Firm but reasonable and responsive; explain rules and rationale
 Permissive
• Warm but too relaxed with little demands or punishment
 Uninvolved
• Emotionally detached with little interest or investment other than basic
needs being fulfilled
Bibliography
• Berk, L. E. (2018). Development through the lifespan (7th ed.). Pearson.
• Feldman, R. S. (2015). Understanding Psychology. McGraw-Hill.
• Myers, D. G. (1992). Psychology. 3rd Edition. Worth Publishers, Inc.
• Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Fredrickson, B. L., Loftus, G. R., & Wagenaar, W. A. (2009). Atkinson &
Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology. Cengage Learning EMEA.
• Rahman, H. (2022). Human Development. Week 2. IBA.
• Rahman, H. (2022). Human Development. Week 3. IBA.
• Rahman, H. (2022). Human Development. Week 4. IBA.
• Rahman, H. (2022). Human Development. Week 5. IBA.
• Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (Seventeenth edition. International student).
McGraw-Hill Education.
• Weiten, W. (2022). Psychology : Themes and Variations (11th ed.). Cengage.