Instructor Information

Instructors:       Andrew Corrigan-Halpern, M.A.           Timothy J. Nokes, M.A.
Office:              1015 BSB                                             1079 BSB
Office Hours:    Tuesday 12:30-1:30                               Thursday 12:30-1:30
                         and by appointment                               and by appointment
E-mail:              ahalpe1@uic.edu                                   tnokes@uic.edu
Web page:        www.uic.edu/~ahalpe1                          www.uic.edu/~tnokes/home.htm

Class

Webpage:     http://www.uic.edu/classes/psych/psych320tjn
Lecture:        Tuesday & Thursday 1:30 - 4:00
Classroom:    BSB 381

Book:  Siegler, R., Deloache, J., Eisenberg, N. (2003). How Children Develop (1st Ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Course Goal: To provide an overview of developmental psychology with a focus on cognitive development. In this class you will develop a deep understanding of developmental theories and concepts, and their applications in psychological science.

Course Notes: Outlines for each lecture will be provided on the course website at least a day before each lecture.

Course Requirements

Assignments: You need to do 60 points worth of assignments for this course. There will be two types of assignments, journal article summaries (10 points each) and developmental activities (20 points each). You can do any combination of assignments as long as they add up to 60 points. There are due dates for each developmental activity, see course schedule below. Journal article summaries will be accepted throughout the semester, but must be turned in by Tuesday, July 13. The description of each developmental activity is linked from the schedule, but here are the general guidelines. Many of the developmental activities require working with children, and the journal article summaries require library research, so don't wait until the last minute to do them. You can turn in assignments early, but no late assignments will be accepted.

Quizzes: There will be five quizzes worth 10 points each. The quizzes will be comprised of multiple choice and short answer questions. The lowest quiz score will be dropped for a total of 40 possible quiz points. There will be no make-up quizzes. See course schedule for quiz dates.

Tests: There will be two tests worth 50 points each. Tests will have the same format as quizzes. There will be no make-up tests. See course schedule for test dates.

Participation Points: We won't take attendance, but there will be in class disscussions and activities. Occasionally there will be points awarded for participation (maximum of 10 points).

Grading
Point breakdown table

Scale

Additional Notes

1. College Drop Policy.During the summer semester, students may drop courses without penalty during the first five days of the semester (through Friday of week 1) using UIC Express or the Student Access System. Between week 2 and Friday of week 5, undergraduates are entitled to a total of four optional date drops for the duration of their enrolment in LAS. Optional late drops require an appointment with an LAS advisor (996-3366). LAS advisors (third floor UH) are also available on walk-in days (8:30-11:30, 1:00-3:30 on Tuesdays).

2. Students with Disabilities.Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have a documented disability.Please notify the instructor during the first week of class of any accommodations needed for the course.Late notification may cause the requested accommodations to be unavailable. Students with disabilities who require accommodations for access and participation in this course must be registered with the Office of Disability Services (ODS).Please contact ODS at 312/413-2103 (voice) or 312/413-0123 (TTY).

Class Schedule

Updates

6/10/04

Two important questions were raised at the end of class last Thursday. The first was regarding whether fetuses develop consciousness and the second was regarding the types of causes or factors that facilitate pre-term births.

The question as to when consciousness develops is an interesting and provocative question. What we know from a developmental science perspective is that developing fetuses react to stimuli in their environment and can show prenatal learning (see the section in your book on habituation studies). The difficult question at hand is determining what consciousness is and how it is defined. If it is solely the ability to learn or to react to the environment, then many organisms fall under this classification including people, chimpanzees, birds, and fish, even down to the most simplistic organisms such as bacteria. However, many philosophers and psychologists who think about such questions attribute consciousness to intentionality (Dennet, 1987, 1991 and Gergely, 2002). In particular an important advance is thought to occur around 9 months after birth when “joint” attentional skills start to appear. We will further discuss the evidence concerning the children’s development for understanding themselves and others intentional mind states, and in particular discuss the development of a “theory of mind” as the class progresses.

Developmental scientists have a pretty good idea as to the complex interactions involved in the facilitation of the normal labor processes, the basic story of which goes something like this: (1) development of fetal pituitary and adrenal systems serve as the major pathway for delivering the signals that initiate the birthing process, (2) the release of hormones associated with these systems trigger a host of complex fetal-mother interactions including: stimulating the development of the fetal lungs for air breathing after birth, stimulating the mothers production of estrogen and other associated hormones (e.g., oxytocin) that initiates uterine activity that affect the contractures and contractions of the uterine muscles (i.e., the labor process begins).

The question as to what factors effect or facilitate pre-term pregnancies is a complex and multi-factorial. One well understood simple mechanism is structural abnormalities in the cervix. Other not so well understood factors include: infection and maternal stress. Infection in the reproductive tract stimulates the mother’s immune system to trigger a number of responses, including the production of prostaglandin’s that may stimulate the uterine muscles. Infection is hypothesized to account for 1/3 to 1/2 of all pre-term births. Maternal stress has been correlated with increased incidence of low birth weight. It is thought that maternal stress may activate the mother’s adrenal cortex and result in the production of androgen, which is the precursor for estrogen production, which thus may facilitate contractions.

Thus important preventative measures are to ensure the health of the mother during pregnancy and reduce stress.

These findings were reported in the "From The Future of Children, an online publication of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation." http://futureofchildren.org
Nathanielsz, P. W. (1995). The Role of Basic Science in Preventing Low Birth Weight, Journal of Low Birthweight, Volume 5, Number-1.

6/10/04 later

Check out the schedule above, the quiz has been moved from Tuesday 6/15 to Thursday 6/17. We will finish up discussion of theories of Cognitive Development on Tuesday and move on to discuss Infancy.

Also, check out these cool websites on gene theory and heredity topics covered last week.
http://www.mendelweb.org/
http://www.athro.com/evo/gen/genefr2.html
http://www.genetics.gsk.com/kids/heredity01.htm

6/11/04
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*Class Announcement - Reminder* The office of Disability Services is recruiting an individual to work as a note taker for this class. The note taker will receive a bookstore credit voucher of $25.00 per credit hour ($75.00 @ 3 credits) from the Office of Disability Services. If you are graduating or not returning to UIC, Disability Services can pay you cash. If you are interested please email the Instructor(s). Thank you for your assistance and service.
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Regarding library resources for the journal article assignemnts. All of the recommend journals are available on-line, including Psychological Science (the journal I mentioned in class). Remember start your assignments early and often! :)

6/23/04
Reminder that test 1 is NOW scheduled for July 1st. It will cover the material from lecture and Chapters 1-8. Also a reminder that you can turn in your Developmental Assignment write-ups or Journal summaries early for feed-back. The first developmental activity is DUE next Tuesday June 29th.

In addition, grades will be posted as link as soon as everyone creates a 5-letter/digit code. If you have not created a code yet see Andrew or Tim at the beginning of class tomorrow. Thanks.

7/20/04
There is now a link to the answers from the quiz today. See the schedule above for link from Quiz 5.

7/21/04
There are links to all note outlines.

7/26/04
Final grades have been posted, check them out on the grades page. Nice work!!
Remember to come pick up your papers this week -- 1079 BSB.
Tim will be in his office on Tuesday, 9-5 and on Thursday afternoon, and maybe more ...