PSYC2700 focuses specifically and deeply on childhood — the period where the pace of physical, cognitive, and social change is more rapid and dramatic than at any other life stage.
Physical and cognitive development in early childhood
PSYC2700 covers the rapid physical growth and motor development of infancy and early childhood, alongside Piaget's sensorimotor and preoperational cognitive stages, examining specific cognitive milestones like object permanence and the development of symbolic thought and language acquisition.
Socioemotional development and attachment
The course covers attachment theory in depth — secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment patterns — and how early caregiver relationships shape a child's socioemotional development, along with the development of self-regulation, peer relationships, and moral reasoning through middle childhood.
Key topics in PSYC2700
- Physical growth and motor development in infancy and early childhood
- Piaget's sensorimotor and preoperational stages: object permanence, symbolic thought
- Language acquisition milestones in early childhood
- Attachment theory: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized attachment patterns
- Development of self-regulation and emotional understanding
- Peer relationships and moral reasoning development through middle childhood
Working on a child development milestones paper or an attachment theory analysis?
Our psychology experts build PSYC2700-level coursework with genuine child development depth.
Worked example: attachment patterns and their behavioral signatures
- Secure attachment: Child is distressed when caregiver leaves but is easily soothed and happily reunites upon their return, using the caregiver as a secure base for exploration
- Anxious attachment: Child is highly distressed at separation and remains difficult to soothe even after the caregiver returns, showing ambivalence toward the caregiver
- Avoidant attachment: Child shows minimal distress at separation and avoids or ignores the caregiver upon return, having learned that expressing need doesn't reliably get a responsive reaction
- Research implication: These early patterns, identified through Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure, are linked to differences in later relational and emotional functioning, though not deterministically
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Frequently asked questions
Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can't be directly seen, heard, or touched — an infant who hasn't yet developed object permanence behaves as if a hidden object has simply ceased to exist, showing no search behavior, while an infant who has developed this understanding will actively search for an object hidden from view. Piaget identified this as a major milestone typically emerging during the sensorimotor stage (roughly the first two years of life) because it represents a fundamental shift in how an infant mentally represents the world — moving from experiencing reality only through immediate, direct sensory contact toward being able to mentally represent objects and their continued existence even in their absence, which is considered a foundational building block for later, more sophisticated cognitive abilities like symbolic thought and memory.
Attachment patterns develop based on the consistency and responsiveness of early caregiving — a caregiver who reliably responds to an infant's needs tends to foster secure attachment, while inconsistent, unresponsive, or frightening caregiving patterns tend to be associated with anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment respectively. PSYC2700 teaches that while attachment research has found meaningful associations between early attachment patterns and later relational and emotional functioning, attachment style is not simply deterministic or fixed for life — subsequent relationships, therapeutic intervention, and changed life circumstances can shift a person's relational patterns over time (a concept sometimes called "earned security"), meaning an early insecure attachment pattern represents an important, well-evidenced risk factor and area for potential intervention, rather than an unchangeable life sentence, which is an important nuance to understand rather than treating attachment classification as permanently fixed destiny.