Human Development

Human Development Emotional Stage & Intellectual Stage March 2014

5. Emotional Development: • An individual’s awareness and expression of an affective (emotional) experience. • Children become attached to specific people & care about how they think or feel.

Harry Harlow: • We discussed this experiment in Sociology previously. • Harlow studied the relationship between “mother and child” in Rhesus monkeys. • The young monkeys were given choices – a wire framed pseudo-monkey mother and a terry-cloth pseudo-monkey mother. • With the exception of food, the young monkeys spent all their time with the terry-clothed covered pseudo-mother. • Harlow concluded that it was the “touching” reflex which resulted in the young monkey’s comfort.

Harlow’s Results – Applied to Humans: • When an attachment bond has been formed, disruption can be disturbing to an infant. • Attachment – A deep, caring, close and enduring emotional bond between an infant & their caregiver. • Stranger Anxiety – Fear of strangers that infants display. • Separation Anxiety – Distress that is sometimes experienced by infants when they are separated from their primary caregiver.

Ainsworth & Bowlby experiment: • Developed a technique called “Strange Situation”to measure levels of attachment. The discovered that children display four patterns of attachment: John Bowlby Mary Ainsworth

Experiment:

Secure Attachment: • Balance the Need to Explore with the Need to Stay Close • Welcomed the mother back when she returned to the room and were free of anger for her departure.

Avoidant Attachment: • Avoided or Ignored mother when she left & when she returned

Ambivalent Attachment: • Not upset when mother left, but either avoided her or displayed anger toward her when she returned

Disorganized Attachment: • Behaved inconsistently; they were not angry when their mother left; but they avoided her upon her return • Least secure of all forms.

Emotional conclusion: • When we are young, our emotions are tied to the world around us; as we age (through middle-age) we become less aggressive & by the time we reach old age, our emotions are centered on ourselves, instead of the social world. • We all experience FEAR(young children don’t until they can recognize the possible dangers) – “baby and a rattlesnake”

6. Intellectual Development: • Development of an individual’s mental abilities – Theories based on the research of Swiss Psychologist, Jean Piaget. • He had four Basic Assumptions:

Assumptions 1 & 2: • Children are Active Thinkers, they are Inherently Motivated to Learn and Understand. • Present a child with a situation & they’ll figure it out. • Qualitative Differences in perception & understanding exists between Adults & Children Airplane based on viewpoint:

Assumptions 3 & 4: • Knowledge is intricately organized into Schemas which can be understood as “units of understanding” • From the specific to the elaborate • Plants > Crops > Foods > Corn> Sweet Corn> Cornbread • All learning is either based on: • Assimilation • Understanding objects & events based on Prior Learning • Accommodation • Objects & events which produce new learning

Human Development