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Lecture Notes for Developmental Psychology
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Lecture notes for Developmental Psychology (1st year) at the University of Nottingham.
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Developmental PsychologyLecture 1
How does development occur
Continuous
- Continuous development from childhood through adulthood
- Children are not qualitatively different from adults, they simply have less knowledge than adults.
- Children are mini-adults.
Stages
- Development from childhood to adulthood through a succession of discrete stages
- Children and adults are qualitatively different in psychological terms
- Emotional relationships qualitatively different from adults.
What influences development: nature or nurture
• Nature
- Development is product of genetic inheritance
• Nurture
- Development is product of environment and life experiences
Both influence development, but:
- To what degree are they different from each other?
- How do they overlap/differ?
- Relative contribution of nature/ nurture?
- What stance of nature/nurture in major perspectives?
Behaviourism
- B.F. Skinner
- Strong believer of nurture
- States that development is continuous
- Radical empiricism – takes an extreme view that what we are is shaped by our experiences
- Denies importance of nature/nativism
- Says cognitive processes are irrelevant, not something we need to think about in order to
understand what the individual is like.
- The mind is like a ‘black box’ – can’t understand it and don’t need to understand it. Just constantly
recording things. States that the mind doesn’t exist.
- Children same as adults
- Even for non-human animals – therefore can understand humans from studying animals.
- Children just have less knowledge than adults do.
- Reinforcement is very important – positive and negative
- Shaping behaviour – from reinforcement: e.g. language
- Agrees that babies babbling is innate – NATURE
e.g. Baby babbles and by chance sounds like a real word e.g. mama-> parents get excited and stress
the excitement -> baby is rewarded (unwittingly) -> baby more likely to make same utterance in
future.
- Successive approximations: As saying same thing, parents excitement decreases – negative
reinforcement - so tries to say other words/ better pronunciation of word to get more rewards.
Childs behaviour becomes more like adult behaviour through successive approximation.
- Skinner states that this is what language is: it has been shaped.
,- The value of comparative psychology
Naturism and maturation
- Noam Chomsky
- Genetically determined behaviour (opposite view to Skinner) such as innate reflexes, crawling,
babble, walking, talking.
- Some innate behaviours may develop at later stages of infancy e.g. 1 year, appear in the individual
as a consequence of maturational unfolding.
- Says learning language like the way Skinner explains is implausible because the erratic nature of the
reinforcement is unfit for purpose of learning language.
- Says the basis for learning language and other things is innate.
- Can’t be innate: E.g. foreign baby brought over doesn’t stick to birth language, learns English
instead. However, have innate maps that make you more likely to learn your birth language
- Innate faculties and modules: Language, perception, object permanence and solidity of the physical
world and reality, other people’s mind.
- Abilities and temperament - Intelligence, motivation, placidity = also innate features
Constructivism
- John Piaget
- The child as an active participant in her own development – humanistic account.
- The child discovers the physical and social world through their active participation in the world:
therefore you achieve a higher level of adaptation.
- Nature and nurture interact which allows the individual to control their own development.
- Discontinuous development – not mini-adults.
- Qualitative differences in thought processes of child than adults.
- In order to become an adult, you must successfully pass through stages of development.
- These stages are driven by a move from the subjective to the objective: start out life in a profound
state of egocentrism – only know about the world from what you can see, your own world
Development is about escaping from your own perspective and understand that the world has some
kind of existence that is independent from your own and populated by other people who have
different views from your own.
- Intracognitive conflict
- Intercognitive conflict and dialectical clash – through an argument with someone, it helps you to
understand and adopt a new view of the world.
- In order to understand the world, you need to be challenged intellectually. Need to be provoked
and stimulated by something that is challenging and conflicts with your own thoughts. This challenge
can come in the form of an unexpected experience or someone presenting you with a view different
from your own. This can then lead to further insights and a higher level of knowledge.
- This is what drives development.
Evolution and Ethology
- Linked with nativist view except that stresses the importance of biological preparedness to learn
critical things during critical periods.
- The learning you experience is biologically prepared learning.
Konrad Lorenz
- Imprinting – geese – genetically programmed to follow first moving organism it sees – usually its
mother – assumes it was his mother as normally first thing you see – have to learn who its mother is.
- This is an example of biologically prepared learning
- Critical/sensitive period
, • Bowlby
- Attachment in humans
- Separation, maternal deprivation and monotropy: leads to affectionless psychopathy
- Leads to a lifelong personality disorder
- More vulnerable to delinquency
- Cycles of abuse – more vulnerable to abuse their children/wives, especially if they were abused.
- Patterns of attachment and the Strange Situation: Secure, insecure resistant, insecure avoidant.
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