Dr Nesif Al-HemiaryMBChB – FICMS(Psych)
understand the effects of nature and nurture in human development.understand cognitive development according to Piaget’s theoryunderstand development of moral system according to Piaget’s and Kolberg’s theoriesunderstand early social developmentThe question of whether heredity (nature) or environment( nurture) is more important in determining the course of human development has been debated for centuries. John Locke (17th century) rejected the prevailing notion that babies were miniature adults who arrived in the world fully equipped with abilities and knowledge and simply had to grow for these inherited characteristics to appear. Locke believed that the mind of a newborn is a blank slate, what gets written on this slate is what the baby experiences.
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (1859) which emphasizes the biological basis of human development led many theorists to emphasize heredity.With the rise of Behaviorism in the 20th century ,however, the environmentalist’s position once again dominated.
Today ,most psychologists agree not only that both nature and nurture play important roles but also that they interact continuously to guide development. 100 billions of neurons in the brain of the newborn infant. The connections between neurons develop rapidly after birth and the infant brain triples in weight in the first 3 years. Brain development is heavily influenced both by genetic factors and by the stimulation or deprivation the child receives from the environment in the early years. The environment affects the rate at which children acquire the skills, not the ultimate skill level.
Jean Piaget( 1896-1980), a Swiss psychologist, contributed greatly to the understanding of cognitive development in children.Piaget’s Stage Theory: Piaget divided cognitive development into four stages:Sensorimotor stage (birth-2years)The preoperational stage (2-7 years)Concrete operational stage(7-12years)Formal operational stage (12- upwards)
Birth – 2 years.The infant is busy discovering the relationship between their actions and the consequences of those actions.They discover for example how far they have to reach to grasp an object and what happens when they push their dish over the edge of the table.They begin to develop a concept of themselves as separate from the external world.An important discovery during this stage is the concept of object permanence ,the awareness that an object continues to exist even when it is not present.
2 – 7 years.Begin to use symbols. Words can represent things or groups of things and one object can represent another.A 3 year old may treat a stick as a horse and ride it around the room.But although 3 and 4 years old can think in symbolic terms ,their words and images are not yet organized in logical manner.The child does not yet comprehend certain rules or operations.( an operation is a mental routine for separating, combining and otherwise transforming information in a logical manner.)
Preoperational children have not yet attained conservation – the understanding that the amount of a substance remains the same even when its form is changed.Thinking is dominated by visual impressions. A change in the visual appearance of a clay influences the child more than changes in mass or weight.Egocentricism :they are unaware of perspectives other than their own. They believe that everyone else perceives the environment the same way they do.
7 – 12 years.Start to master the various conservation concepts and begin to perform other logical manipulations.They can place objects in order on the basis of a dimension such as height or weight.They can form a mental representation of a series of actions.5 year old can find his own way to a friend’s house but cannot direct you there or trace the route with paper and pencil, while 8 year old can readily draw a map of the route.
11 or 12 and upwards. Adult model of thinking. The child is able to reason in purely symbolic terms. The child become able to generate a hypothesis and test it.
Piaget was interested in how children develop moral judgment( that is the children’s understanding of moral rules and social conventions).He believed that children’s overall level of cognitive development determined their moral judgment.He proposed that children’s understanding of rules develops in a series of 4 stages :
Emerge at the beginning of the preoperational period. During this period the child follows certain rules in his play. But these rules although give his play some regularity ,these rules are frequently changed and serve no collective purpose such as cooperation or competition.
Beginning at about 5 years of age. The child develop s sense of obligation to follow rules. Treating these rules as absolute moral imperatives handed down by some authority such as God or the parents. Rules are permanent ,sacred and not subject to modification.
The child begins to appreciate that some rules are social conventions (cooperative agreements that can be arbitrarily changed if everyone agrees).Children’s moral realism also declines : when making moral judgments, children in this stage give weight to subjective considerations such as person’s intentions. And they see punishment as a human choice rather than as an inevitable ,diven retribution.
Coincides with the beginning of the formal operation stage. Youngsters show an interest in generating rules to deal even with situations they have never encountered. This stage is marked by an ideological mode of moral reasoning which addresses wider social issues rather than just personal and interpersonal situations.
Lawrence Kolberg , an American Psychologist ,extended Piaget’s work to include adolescence and adulthood.He proposed three levels of moral judgment:Pre conventional level (until age of 10 years): actions are evaluated right or wrong on the basis of anticipated punishment.Conventional level (age 10-13 ): actions are evaluated in terms of other people’s opinion.Post conventional level (from 13 and above): actions are evaluated in terms of higher – order ethical principles. The last stage of this level requires the ability to formulate abstract ethical principles and uphold them in order to avoid self –condemnation.
As early as the first weeks of life ,infants show individual differences in activity level, responsiveness to change in environment and irritability.The term temperament is used to refer to such mood –related personality characteristics.
The observation that temperamental differences arise early in life challenges the traditional view that all of an infant’s behaviors are shaped by its environment.Research with newborns has shown that many temperamental differences are inborn and that the relationship between parents and infants is reciprocal ,in other words, the infant’s behavior also shapes the parent’s response.There is evidence that temperament is at least somewhat influenced by heredity.
Researchers emphasize that continuity or discontinuity of temperament is a function of the interaction between the child’s inherited characteristics and the environment.In particular they believe that the key to a healthy development is a good fit between the child’s temperament and the home environment.When parents of a difficult child provide a happy ,stable home life, the child’s negative ,difficult behaviors decline with age.
By 2 months of age ,the average child smiles at the sight of its mother’s face.Delighted with this response, parents go to great lengths to encourage it.Indeed, the infant’s ability to smile at such an early age may have evolved precisely because it strengthened the parent-child bond.Infants all over the world begin to smile at about the same age, suggesting that maturation plays an important role in determining the onset of smiling.Blind babies also smile at about the same age as sighted infants, indicating that smiling is an innate response.
By their third or fourth month infants show that they recognize and prefer familiar members of the household by smiling or cooing more when seeing these familiar faces or hearing their sounds, but they are still fairly receptive to strangers. At about 7 or 8 months ,however many infants begin to show wariness or distress at the approach of a stranger and protest strongly when left in an unfamiliar setting or with an unfamiliar person. Although not all infants show this stranger anxiety; the number of infants who do increases dramatically from about 8 months of age until the end of the first year.
Similarly, distress over separation from the parent reaches a peak between 14 & 18 months and then gradually declines.By the time they are three years old , most children are secure enough in their parent’s absence to interact comfortably with other children and adults.How do we explain the systematic timing of these fears? -Two factors seem to be important in both their onset and their decline: 1-growth of memory capacity. 2-growth of autonomy ( the child independence from caretakers).
The term attachment is used to describe an infant’s tendency to seek closeness to particular people and to feel more secure in their presence.Psychologists at first theorized that attachment to the mother developed because she was the source of food, one of the infant’s most basic needs.But some facts did not fit; for example ducklings and baby chicks feed themselves from birth, yet they still follow their mothers.Mother – infant attachment is more than a nutritional need.
John Bowlby work in the 1950s & 1960s was very important.His research convinced him that a child’s failure to form a secure attachment to one or more persons in the early years is related to an inability to develop close personal relationships in adulthood.
In attempting to account for differences in attachment among babies, researchers have directed most of their attention to the behavior of the primary caregiver, usually the mother.The main finding is that a caregiver’s sensitive responsiveness to the baby’s needs produce secure attachment.