Life Stages Review Human Growth Infancy Through Late Childhood

Chapter vii. Growing and Developing

seven.ii Infancy and Childhood: Exploring and Learning

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the abilities that newborn infants possess and how they actively interact with their environments.
2. Listing the stages in Piaget's model of cognitive development and explain the concepts that are mastered in each stage.
3. Critique Piaget'due south theory of cognitive development and depict other theories that complement and aggrandize on it.
4. Summarize the of import processes of social development that occur in infancy and childhood.

If all has gone well, a baby is born sometime around the 38th week of pregnancy. The fetus is responsible, at least in office, for its own birth because chemicals released past the developing fetal brain trigger the muscles in the mother's uterus to start the rhythmic contractions of childbirth. The contractions are initially spaced at about 15-minute intervals simply come more rapidly with fourth dimension. When the contractions reach an interval of ii to 3 minutes, the mother is requested to assist in the labour and help push the babe out.

The Newborn Arrives With Many Behaviours Intact

Newborns are already prepared to face the new earth they are almost to experience. Every bit you can encounter in Table seven.2, "Survival Reflexes in Newborns," babies are equipped with a variety of reflexes, each providing an power that will assist them survive their first few months of life as they continue to learn new routines to help them survive in and manipulate their environments.

Table 7.ii Survival Reflexes in Newborns.

[Skip Table]
Name	Stimulus	Response	Significance	Video Instance
Rooting reflex	The baby's cheek is stroked.	The baby turns its head toward the stroking, opens its rima oris, and tries to suck.	Ensures the infant'southward feeding will be a reflexive habit	Watch "The Rooting Reflex" [YouTube]
Blink reflex	A light is flashed in the baby'due south eyes.	The baby closes both eyes.	Protects optics from strong and potentially dangerous stimuli	Watch "Baby Blinking" [YouTube]
Withdrawal reflex	A soft pinprick is practical to the sole of the babe'southward pes.	The baby flexes the leg.	Keeps the exploring babe away from painful stimuli	Watch "Baby Withdraw Reflex" [YouTube]
Tonic neck reflex	The baby is laid down on its dorsum.	The baby turns its head to one side and extends the arm on the same side.	Helps develop hand-middle coordination	Watch "Tonic Neck Reflex" [YouTube]
Grasp reflex	An object is pressed into the palm of the baby.	The baby grasps the object pressed and can even hold its own weight for a brief period.	Helps in exploratory learning	Lookout "Grasp reflex" [YouTube]
Moro reflex	Loud noises or a sudden drop in tiptop while belongings the baby.	The infant extends arms and legs and apace brings them in as if trying to grasp something.	Protects from falling; could take assisted infants in holding on to their mothers during rough travelling	Watch "Moro Reflex" [YouTube]
Stepping reflex	The babe is suspended with bare anxiety but to a higher place a surface and is moved forward.	Infant makes stepping motions as if trying to walk.	Helps encourage motor development	Watch "Stepping Reflex" [YouTube]

In add-on to reflexes, newborns have preferences — they like sweet-tasting foods at outset, while condign more open to salty items past four months of age (Beauchamp, Cowart, Menellia, & Marsh, 1994; Blass & Smith, 1992). Newborns also prefer the scent of their mothers. An infant merely six days old is significantly more than probable to turn toward its own mother's breast pad than to the breast pad of some other babe's mother (Porter, Makin, Davis, & Christensen, 1992), and a newborn also shows a preference for the face of its own mother (Bushnell, Sai, & Mullin, 1989).

Although infants are born prepare to engage in some activities, they also contribute to their own evolution through their own behaviours. The kid'south knowledge and abilities increase equally it babbles, talks, crawls, tastes, grasps, plays, and interacts with the objects in the surround (Gibson, Rosenzweig, & Porter, 1988; Gibson & Choice, 2000; Smith & Thelen, 2003). Parents may aid in this process by providing a variety of activities and experiences for the child. Research has found that animals raised in environments with more novel objects and that engage in a diversity of stimulating activities take more brain synapses and larger cerebral cortexes, and they perform better on a diverseness of learning tasks compared with animals raised in more than impoverished environments (Juraska, Henderson, & Müller, 1984). Similar effects are likely occurring in children who take opportunities to play, explore, and interact with their environments (Soska, Adolph, & Johnson, 2010).

Inquiry Focus: Using the Habituation Technique to Study What Infants Know

It may seem to y'all that babies have little power to view, hear, understand, or remember the earth effectually them. Indeed, the famous psychologist William James presumed that the newborn experiences a "blooming, buzzing confusion" (James, 1890, p. 462). And yous may think that, even if babies do know more than James gave them credit for, it might non exist possible to find out what they know. After all, infants tin't talk or reply to questions, so how would we always find out? Only over the past two decades, developmental psychologists have created new ways to determine what babies know, and they have constitute that they know much more than you, or William James, might have expected.

One way that nosotros can larn most the cognitive development of babies is by measuring their behaviour in response to the stimuli around them. For example, some researchers have given babies the run a risk to control which shapes they get to encounter or which sounds they go to hear according to how hard they suck on a pacifier (Trehub & Rabinovitch, 1972). The sucking behaviour is used equally a measure of the infants' interest in the stimuli — the sounds or images they suck hardest in response to are the ones we can assume they prefer.

Some other approach to understanding cognitive development by observing the behaviour of infants is through the use of the habituation technique. Habituation refers to the decreased responsiveness toward a stimulus later on it has been presented numerous times in succession. Organisms, including infants, tend to be more interested in things the kickoff few times they feel them and go less interested in them with more frequent exposure. Developmental psychologists have used this general principle to assist them understand what babies remember and sympathise.

In the habituation procedure,^[1] a baby is placed in a loftier chair and presented with visual stimuli while a video camera records the infant's centre and face movements. When the experiment begins, a stimulus (eastward.chiliad., the face of an adult) appears in the infant'south field of view, and the amount of time the infant looks at the face is recorded by the camera. Then the stimulus is removed for a few seconds earlier information technology appears again and the gaze is again measured. Over fourth dimension, the baby starts to habituate to the face, such that each presentation elicits less gazing at the stimulus. Then a new stimulus (east.g., the face of a unlike adult or the same confront looking in a different direction) is presented, and the researchers discover whether the gaze time significantly increases. Y'all can see that if the infant's gaze fourth dimension increases when a new stimulus is presented, this indicates that the infant tin differentiate the two stimuli.

Although this procedure is very simple, it allows researchers to create variations that reveal a great bargain well-nigh a newborn's cognitive power. The trick is just to modify the stimulus in controlled means to come across if the infant "notices the difference." Research using the habituation process has found that babies can notice changes in colours, sounds, and even principles of numbers and physics. For example, in i experiment reported by Karen Wynn (1995), vi-month-former babies were shown a presentation of a puppet that repeatedly jumped upward and down either 2 or three times, resting for a couple of seconds betwixt sequences (the length of time and the speed of the jumping were controlled). After the infants habituated to this display, the presentation was changed such that the puppet jumped a different number of times. As you tin can see in Figure 7.two, "Can Infants Do Math?" the infants' gaze time increased when Wynn changed the presentation, suggesting that the infants could tell the difference between the number of jumps.

Effigy vii.2 Tin Infants Do Math? Karen Wynn found that babies that had habituated to a boob jumping either two or three times significantly increased their gaze when the puppet began to jump a different number of times.

Cerebral Evolution During Childhood

Childhood is a time in which changes occur quickly. The child is growing physically, and cognitive abilities are besides developing. During this time the child learns to actively dispense and command the surround, and is first exposed to the requirements of society, specially the demand to command the bladder and bowels. According to Erik Erikson, the challenges that the kid must attain in childhood relate to the development of initiative, competence, and independence. Children need to learn to explore the earth, to go cocky-reliant, and to make their own fashion in the environment.

Figure vii.3 Portrait of Jean Piaget. Jean Piaget developed his theories of kid evolution by observing the behaviours of children.

These skills practice non come up overnight. Neurological changes during babyhood provide children the ability to practice some things at certain ages, and yet brand information technology impossible for them to do other things. This fact was fabricated apparent through the groundbreaking work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (Figure 7.3). During the 1920s, Piaget was administering intelligence tests to children in an endeavor to decide the kinds of logical thinking that children were capable of. In the process of testing them, Piaget became intrigued, not and so much by the answers that the children got right, but more past the answers they got wrong. Piaget believed that the incorrect answers the children gave were not mere shots in the dark but rather represented specific means of thinking unique to the children's developmental stage. Just every bit almost all babies larn to roll over before they learn to sit up by themselves, and acquire to crawl before they learn to walk, Piaget believed that children gain their cerebral power in a developmental order. These insights — that children at different ages think in fundamentally different ways — led to Piaget's phase model of cognitive development.

Piaget argued that children do non just passively acquire but besides actively try to make sense of their worlds. He argued that, every bit they larn and mature, children develop schemas — patterns of knowledge in long-term retentiveness — that assistance them recall, organize, and respond to data. Furthermore, Piaget idea that when children feel new things, they endeavour to reconcile the new noesis with existing schemas. Piaget believed that children utilise ii distinct methods in doing so, methods that he called assimilation and adaptation (run into Figure seven.4, "Absorption and Accommodation").

Figure 7.4 Assimilation and Accommodation.

When children apply assimilation, they use already adult schemas to empathize new data. If children have learned a schema for horses, and so they may call the striped animal they see at the zoo a horse rather than a zebra. In this case, children fit the existing schema to the new data and characterization the new data with the existing knowledge. Accommodation, on the other hand, involves learning new information and thus changing the schema. When a mother says, "No, honey, that's a zebra, not a horse," the kid may adapt the schema to fit the new stimulus, learning that in that location are different types of four-legged animals, simply one of which is a horse.

Piaget'south most important contribution to agreement cognitive development, and the fundamental aspect of his theory, was the thought that development occurs in unique and distinct stages, with each stage occurring at a specific time, in a sequential manner, and in a way that allows the child to recall about the world using new capacities. Piaget'due south stages of cognitive development are summarized in Table vii.3, "Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development."

Tabular array 7.3 Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development.

[Skip Table]
Phase	Guess age range	Characteristics	Stage attainments
Sensorimotor	Birth to about 2 years	The kid experiences the world through the key senses of seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting.	Object permanence
Preoperational	2 to 7 years	Children acquire the ability to internally stand for the world through language and mental imagery. They also start to run across the world from other people's perspectives.	Theory of mind; rapid increase in language power
Physical operational	7 to eleven years	Children become able to think logically. They can increasingly perform operations on objects that are only imagined.	Conservation
Formal operational	11 years to machismo	Adolescents can think systematically, can reason about abstract concepts, and can understand ethics and scientific reasoning.	Abstract logic

The showtime developmental stage for Piaget was the sensorimotor stage, the cognitive stage that begins at birth and lasts until around the historic period of two. Information technology is defined past the direct physical interactions that babies have with the objects effectually them. During this stage, babies form their showtime schemas by using their chief senses — they stare at, listen to, reach for, concur, milkshake, and gustation the things in their environments.

During the sensorimotor phase, babies' use of their senses to perceive the globe is so central to their agreement that whenever babies do not directly perceive objects, as far every bit they are concerned, the objects do non exist. Piaget found, for instance, that if he first interested babies in a toy and then covered the toy with a blanket, children who were younger than 6 months of age would act every bit if the toy had disappeared completely — they never tried to notice it under the blanket but would nevertheless smile and reach for it when the blanket was removed. Piaget found that it was non until about 8 months that the children realized that the object was just covered and not gone. Piaget used the term object permanence to refer to the child's ability to know that an object exists even when the object cannot be perceived.

Children younger than nearly eight months of age exercise not empathise object permanence.

Watch: Object Permanence [YouTube]: http://www.youtube.com/v/nwXd7WyWNHY

At about two years of age, and until about seven years of age, children move into the preoperational stage. During this stage, children begin to use language and to think more abstractly about objects, with capacity to course mental images; however, their understanding is more intuitive and they lack much ability to deduce or reason. The thinking is preoperational, meaning that the child lacks the ability to operate on or transform objects mentally. In ane study that showed the extent of this inability, Judy DeLoache (1987) showed children a room within a small dollhouse. Inside the room, a small toy was visible behind a small couch. The researchers took the children to another lab room, which was an exact replica of the dollhouse room, merely full-sized. When children who were 2.five years sometime were asked to find the toy, they did not know where to expect — they were only unable to make the transition across the changes in room size. Three-year-old children, on the other hand, immediately looked for the toy behind the couch, demonstrating that they were improving their operational skills.

The inability of young children to view transitions as well leads them to be egoistic — unable to readily see and understand other people's viewpoints. Developmental psychologists ascertain the theory of mind as the ability to take some other person'south viewpoint, and the ability to practice so increases chop-chop during the preoperational stage. In one demonstration of the development of theory of mind, a researcher shows a child a video of another child (allow's call her Anna) putting a ball in a cerise box. Then Anna leaves the room, and the video shows that while she is gone, a researcher moves the ball from the red box into a blue box. Equally the video continues, Anna comes back into the room. The child is and then asked to point to the box where Anna volition probably await to discover her brawl. Children who are younger than 4 years of age typically are unable to understand that Anna does non know that the ball has been moved, and they predict that she will look for information technology in the blue box. Later four years of age, however, children have developed a theory of mind — they realize that dissimilar people tin can have dissimilar viewpoints and that (although she will be incorrect) Anna volition nevertheless remember that the ball is all the same in the red box.

After about 7 years of historic period until 11, the kid moves into the concrete operational phase, which is marked by more frequent and more accurate use of transitions, operations, and abstract concepts, including those of time, space, and numbers. An important milestone during the concrete operational stage is the evolution of conservation — the agreement that changes in the form of an object do not necessarily hateful changes in the quantity of the object. Children younger than seven years by and large think that a glass of milk that is tall holds more than milk than a glass of milk that is shorter and wider, and they go along to believe this even when they see the same milk poured dorsum and forth between the glasses. It appears that these children focus just on one dimension (in this case, the acme of the drinking glass) and ignore the other dimension (width). However, when children reach the concrete operational stage, their abilities to sympathise such transformations make them aware that, although the milk looks unlike in the dissimilar glasses, the corporeality must be the same.

Children younger than about seven years of age practise not empathise the principles of conservation.

Watch: "Conservation" [YouTube]: http://world wide web.youtube.com/watch?5=YtLEWVu815o&feature=youtu.be

At about 11 years of historic period, children enter the formal operational phase, which is marked past the ability to remember in abstract terms and to use scientific and philosophical lines of thought. Children in the formal operational stage are better able to systematically examination alternative ideas to decide their influences on outcomes. For instance, rather than haphazardly changing different aspects of a situation that allows no clear conclusions to be drawn, they systematically make changes in i thing at a time and observe what difference that particular change makes. They learn to use deductive reasoning, such equally "if this, and so that," and they become capable of imagining situations that "might be," rather than just those that actually exist.

Piaget's theories accept fabricated a substantial and lasting contribution to developmental psychology. His contributions include the idea that children are not merely passive receptacles of information merely rather actively appoint in acquiring new knowledge and making sense of the world around them. This general idea has generated many other theories of cerebral evolution, each designed to aid us better empathize the development of the child's information-processing skills (Klahr & MacWhinney, 1998; Shrager & Siegler, 1998). Furthermore, the all-encompassing research that Piaget's theory has stimulated has more often than not supported his beliefs about the order in which noesis develops. Piaget's work has also been applied in many domains — for instance, many teachers make utilize of Piaget's stages to develop educational approaches aimed at the level children are developmentally prepared for (Driscoll, 1994; Levin, Siegler, & Druyan, 1990).

Over the years, Piagetian ideas take been refined. For instance, information technology is now believed that object permanence develops gradually, rather than more than immediately, as a true phase model would predict, and that information technology can sometimes develop much before than Piaget expected. Renée Baillargeon and her colleagues (Baillargeon, 2004; Wang, Baillargeon, & Brueckner, 2004) placed babies in a habituation setup, having them picket as an object was placed backside a screen, entirely hidden from view. The researchers and then bundled for the object to reappear from behind another screen in a different place. Babies who saw this design of events looked longer at the display than did babies who witnessed the same object physically being moved betwixt the screens. These information suggest that the babies were aware that the object still existed even though information technology was hidden behind the screen, and thus that they were displaying object permanence as early as three months of age, rather than the eight months that Piaget predicted.

Another cistron that might accept surprised Piaget is the extent to which a child's social surroundings influence learning. In some cases, children progress to new ways of thinking and retreat to onetime ones depending on the type of chore they are performing, the circumstances they find themselves in, and the nature of the language used to instruct them (Courage & Howe, 2002). And children in unlike cultures testify somewhat different patterns of cognitive development. Dasen (1972) found that children in not-Western cultures moved to the side by side developmental stage about a year subsequently than did children from Western cultures, and that level of schooling also influenced cognitive development. In curt, Piaget's theory probably understated the contribution of ecology factors to social evolution.

More than recent theories (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 1990; Tomasello, 1999), based in large part on the sociocultural theory of the Russian scholar Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978), argue that cerebral development is non isolated entirely within the kid but occurs at to the lowest degree in part through social interactions. These scholars contend that children'south thinking develops through constant interactions with more competent others, including parents, peers, and teachers.

An extension of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is the idea of community learning, in which children serve as both teachers and learners. This approach is frequently used in classrooms to improve learning as well equally to increase responsibility and respect for others. When children piece of work cooperatively in groups to learn material, they can help and support each other's learning as well equally larn nearly each other every bit individuals, thereby reducing prejudice (Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, & Snapp, 1978; Dark-brown, 1997).

Social Development During Childhood

Information technology is through the remarkable increases in cognitive ability that children learn to interact with and understand their environments. Merely these cognitive skills are simply part of the changes that are occurring during childhood. Equally crucial is the development of the child'due south social skills — the ability to sympathise, predict, and create bonds with the other people in their environments.

Knowing the Self: The Development of the Cocky-Concept

1 of the important milestones in a child'south social development is learning about his or her own self-being (Figure vii.5). This self-awareness is known as consciousness, and the content of consciousness is known as the self-concept. The cocky-concept is a noesis representation or schema that contains knowledge about us, including our behavior almost our personality traits, physical characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well equally the knowledge that nosotros exist as individuals (Kagan, 1991).

Figure 7.5 Recognizing Oneself in a Mirror. A simple test of cocky-awareness is the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror. Humans and chimpanzees can pass the test; dogs never practise.

Some animals, including chimpanzees, orangutans, and perchance dolphins, take at least a primitive sense of self (Boysen & Himes, 1999). In one study (Gallup, 1970), researchers painted a red dot on the foreheads of anesthetized chimpanzees and then placed each beast in a cage with a mirror. When the chimps woke upwardly and looked in the mirror, they touched the dot on their faces, not the dot on the faces in the mirror. These actions propose that the chimps understood that they were looking at themselves and not at other animals, and thus we tin can assume that they are able to realize that they exist as individuals. On the other hand, about other animals, including, for instance, dogs, cats, and monkeys, never realize that it is themselves in the mirror.

Infants who have a similar red dot painted on their foreheads recognize themselves in a mirror in the aforementioned manner that the chimps do, and they practice this past nigh 18 months of age (Povinelli, Landau, & Perilloux, 1996). The child's cognition well-nigh the self continues to develop as the kid grows. Past age two, the baby becomes enlightened of his or her sexual activity, as a male child or a daughter. By age 4, self-descriptions are probable to be based on physical features, such as hair color and possessions, and by near age six, the child is able to sympathise basic emotions and the concepts of traits, being able to make statements such equally "I am a prissy person" (Harter, 1998).

Soon after children enter school (at most age v or vi), they begin to make comparisons with other children, a process known as social comparing. For instance, a child might describe himself every bit being faster than 1 male child but slower than another (Moretti & Higgins, 1990). According to Erikson, the of import component of this process is the development of competence and autonomy — the recognition of one's own abilities relative to other children. And children increasingly show awareness of social situations — they understand that other people are looking at and judging them the same fashion that they are looking at and judging others (Doherty, 2009).

Successfully Relating to Others: Attachment

One of the near important behaviours a kid must learn is how to be accepted past others — the development of shut and meaningful social relationships. The emotional bonds that we develop with those with whom we feel closest, and particularly the bonds that an infant develops with the mother or main caregiver, are referred to as zipper (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999). Run across examples in Figure 7.half dozen.

Effigy 7.6 Children's Attachment to Caregivers. Children develop appropriate attachment styles through their interactions with caregivers.

As late as the 1930s, psychologists believed that children who were raised in institutions such as orphanages, and who received good physical care and proper nourishment, would develop usually, even if they had little interaction with their caretakers. But studies by the developmental psychologist John Bowlby (1953) and others showed that these children did not develop unremarkably — they were ordinarily sickly, emotionally slow, and generally unmotivated. These observations helped make it clear that normal infant development requires successful zipper with a flagman.

In one classic report showing the importance of attachment, Wisconsin University psychologists Harry and Margaret Harlow investigated the responses of young monkeys, separated from their biological mothers, to 2 surrogate mothers introduced to their cages. One — the wire mother — consisted of a round wooden head, a mesh of common cold metallic wires, and a canteen of milk from which the baby monkey could drink. The second mother was a foam-rubber form wrapped in a heated terry-cloth coating. The Harlows establish that although the infant monkeys went to the wire female parent for nutrient, they overwhelmingly preferred and spent significantly more fourth dimension with the warm terry-cloth female parent that provided no food merely did provide comfort (Harlow, 1958).

The studies past the Harlows showed that young monkeys preferred the warm female parent that provided a secure base to the common cold mother that provided food.

Watch: "The Harlows's Monkeys" [YouTube]: http://www.youtube.com/sentry?v=MmbbfisRiwA

The Harlows's studies confirmed that babies take social also as physical needs. Both monkeys and man babies need a secure base that allows them to feel safe. From this base of operations, they can gain the confidence they need to venture out and explore their worlds. Erikson (Tabular array seven.one, "Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson") was in agreement on the importance of a secure base, arguing that the nigh of import goal of infancy was the evolution of a basic sense of trust in i'due south caregivers.

Developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, a student of John Bowlby, was interested in studying the development of attachment in infants. Ainsworth created a laboratory exam that measured an infant'southward attachment to his or her parent. The test is called the strange state of affairs — a measure out of attachment in immature children in which the child'south behaviours are assessed in a situation in which the caregiver and a stranger move in and out of the environment — because it is conducted in a context that is unfamiliar to the child and therefore likely to heighten the child'due south demand for his or her parent (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). During the procedure, which lasts about 20 minutes, the parent and the babe are showtime left alone, while the infant explores the room full of toys. And so a strange adult enters the room and talks for a minute to the parent, after which the parent leaves the room. The stranger stays with the infant for a few minutes, and then the parent again enters and the stranger leaves the room. During the unabridged session, a video camera records the kid's behaviours, which are subsequently coded by trained coders.

In the strange situation, children are observed responding to the comings and goings of parents and unfamiliar adults in their environments.

Watch: "The Strange State of affairs" [YouTube]: http://www.youtube.com/scout?v=QTsewNrHUHU

On the footing of their behaviours, the children are categorized into i of four groups, where each group reflects a dissimilar kind of attachment human relationship with the caregiver. A child with a secure attachment manner commonly explores freely while the mother is nowadays and engages with the stranger. The child may be upset when the female parent departs but is also happy to see the female parent render. A child with an ambivalent (sometimes called insecure-resistant) zipper fashion is wary almost the situation in full general, specially the stranger, and stays close or even clings to the mother rather than exploring the toys. When the female parent leaves, the child is extremely distressed and is clashing when she returns. The child may blitz to the mother but and then fail to cling to her when she picks up the kid. A child with an avoidant (sometimes chosen insecure-avoidant) zipper way volition avoid or ignore the mother, showing picayune emotion when the female parent departs or returns. The kid may run away from the female parent when she approaches. The child will not explore very much, regardless of who is there, and the stranger will not be treated much differently from the female parent.

Finally, a child with a disorganized attachment fashion seems to take no consistent way of coping with the stress of the strange situation — the child may cry during the separation merely avoid the mother when she returns, or the kid may approach the female parent but and then freeze or fall to the flooring. Although some cultural differences in attachment styles have been found (Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000), research has also constitute that the proportion of children who fall into each of the attachment categories is relatively constant across cultures (meet Figure 7.vii, "Proportion of Children With Different Attachment Styles").

Figure 7.7 Proportion of Children With Different Attachment Styles. The graph shows the approximate proportion of children who have each of the four zipper styles. These proportions are fairly constant across cultures. [Long Description]

Yous might wonder whether differences in zipper style are adamant more by the child (nature) or more than by the parents (nurture). Nigh developmental psychologists believe that socialization is primary, arguing that a kid becomes securely fastened when the female parent is available and able to see the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate way, merely that the insecure styles occur when the mother is insensitive and responds inconsistently to the child'due south needs. In a directly exam of this idea, Dutch researcher Dymphna van den Boom (1994) randomly assigned some babies' mothers to a training session in which they learned to improve reply to their children's needs. The enquiry found that these mothers' babies were more than likely to testify a secure attachment mode compared with the babies of the mothers in a command group that did not receive preparation.

Merely the attachment behaviour of the child is likewise probable influenced, at to the lowest degree in part, by temperament, the innate personality characteristics of the infant. Some children are warm, friendly, and responsive, whereas others tend to be more irritable, less manageable, and difficult to console. These differences may also play a role in attachment (Gillath, Shaver, Baek, & Chun, 2008; Seifer, Schiller, Sameroff, Resnick, & Riordan, 1996). Taken together, it seems safe to say that attachment, like almost other developmental processes, is afflicted by an coaction of genetic and socialization influences.

Research Focus: Using a Longitudinal Research Design to Assess the Stability of Attachment

You might wonder whether the zipper style displayed by infants has much influence afterward in life. In fact, inquiry has found that the attachment styles of children predict their emotions and their behaviours many years afterward (Cassidy & Shaver, 1999). Psychologists have studied the persistence of zipper styles over time using longitudinal inquiry designs — research designs in which individuals in the sample are followed and contacted over an extended period of time, often over multiple developmental stages.

In 1 such study, Waters, Merrick, Treboux, Crowell, and Albersheim (2000) examined the extent of stability and change in attachment patterns from infancy to early on adulthood. In their enquiry, 60 middle-class infants who had been tested in the strange situation at one year of age were recontacted 20 years later and interviewed using a measure of adult zipper. Waters and colleagues constitute that 72% of the participants received the same secure versus insecure attachment classification in early on adulthood equally they had received every bit infants. The adults who changed categorization (usually from secure to insecure) were primarily those who had experienced traumatic events, such as the decease or divorce of parents, severe illnesses (contracted by the parents or the children themselves), or physical or sexual abuse past a family fellow member.

In add-on to finding that people more often than not display the aforementioned attachment style over time, longitudinal studies accept also found that the attachment classification received in infancy (as assessed using the foreign situation or other measures) predicts many childhood and adult behaviours. Securely attached infants take closer, more harmonious relationships with peers, are less anxious and aggressive, and are ameliorate able to sympathize others' emotions than are those who were categorized as insecure every bit infants (Lucas-Thompson & Clarke-Stewart, 2007). And securely attached adolescents also have more than positive peer and romantic relationships than their less securely attached counterparts (Carlson, Sroufe, & Egeland, 2004).

Conducting longitudinal research is a very difficult task, merely one that has substantial rewards. When the sample is large enough and the time frame long enough, the potential findings of such a study can provide rich and of import information about how people change over time and the causes of those changes. The drawbacks of longitudinal studies include the price and the difficulty of finding a large sample that tin exist tracked accurately over time, and the time (many years) that information technology takes to get the data. In addition, because the results are delayed over an extended period, the enquiry questions posed at the first of the study may get less relevant over time as the research continues.

Cross-sectional research designs represent an alternative to longitudinal designs. In a cross-sectional enquiry design, age comparisons are made between samples of different people at different ages at i time. In one example, Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (1996) studied two groups of identical and nonidentical (fraternal) twins, one group in their 20s and the other group in their 50s, to determine the influence of genetics on personality. They found that genetics played a more significant role in the older group of twins, suggesting that genetics became more significant for personality in afterward machismo.

Cantankerous-exclusive studies have a major reward in that the scientist does not accept to expect for years to pass to get results. On the other paw, the interpretation of the results in a cross-sectional written report is not as clear as those from a longitudinal study, in which the same individuals are studied over time. Most of import, the interpretations drawn from cross-sectional studies may be confounded past cohort furnishings. Cohort effects refer to the possibility that differences in cognition or behaviour at two points in time may be acquired by differences that are unrelated to the changes in historic period. The differences might instead be due to environmental factors that affect an entire age grouping. For instance, in the study past Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (1996) that compared younger and older twins, accomplice effects might be a problem. The two groups of adults necessarily grew up in different time periods, and they may have been differentially influenced by societal experiences, such as economical hardship, the presence of wars, or the introduction of new technology. As a result, it is difficult in cantankerous-sectional studies such as this i to determine whether the differences betwixt the groups (e.g., in terms of the relative roles of surroundings and genetics) are due to historic period or to other factors.

Key Takeaways

• Babies are born with a variety of skills and abilities that contribute to their survival, and they also actively learn by engaging with their environments.
• The habituation technique is used to demonstrate the newborn's ability to think and larn from feel.
• Children utilize both assimilation and accommodation to develop functioning schemas of the world.
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes that children develop in a specific serial of sequential stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, physical operational, and formal operational.
• Piaget's theories accept had a major touch on, only they accept also been critiqued and expanded.
• Social development requires the evolution of a secure base from which children experience free to explore. Attachment styles refer to the security of this base and more than generally to the type of relationship that people, and especially children, develop with those who are important to them.
• Longitudinal and cross-sectional studies are each used to test hypotheses near development, and each approach has advantages and disadvantages.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

1. Give an example of a situation in which you or someone else might bear witness cerebral absorption and cognitive accommodation. In what cases do you think each process is most likely to occur?
2. Consider some examples of how Piaget'south and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development might exist used by teachers who are didactics young children.
3. Consider the attachment styles of some of your friends in terms of their relationships with their parents and other friends. Practise you think their style is secure?

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Prototype Attributions

Figure 7.two: Adapted from Wynn (1995).

Figure seven.3: Jean Piaget by Anton Johansson, http://world wide web.flickr.com/photos/mirjoran/455878802 used under CC By ii.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/).

Effigy 7.5: "Toddler in mirror" by Samantha Steele (http://www.flickr.com/photos/samanthasteele/3983047059/) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ii.0/deed.en_CA). There's a monkey in my mirror" by Mor (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmoorr/1921632741/) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/past-nc/2.0/deed.en_CA). "mirror mirror who is the near beautiful domestic dog?" by rromer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rromer/6309501395/) is licensed nether CC By-NC-SA 2.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/ii.0/deed.en_CA).

Figure vii.6: Source: "Maternal Bond" by Koivth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MaternalBond.jpg) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/act.en_CA). "An beauteous dad" by Julien Harneis (http://www.flickr.com/photos/julien_harneis/6342076964/in/photostream/) is licensed nether CC By-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/two.0/deed.en_CA). "Szymon i Krystian" by Joymaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Szymon_i_Krystian_003.JPG) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/past-sa/iii.0/deed.en_CA).

Long Descriptions:

Figure seven.vii long description: Childrens' Attachment Styles. 60% are secure. 15% are disorganized. 15% are avoidant. 10% are ambivalent. [Return to Figure 7.7]

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