Summary of all topics of developmental psychology with slides, college notes and literature: theories on moral, cognitive, social, motor and languague development, nature-nurture debate, prenatal development, attachment and developmental disorders
Samenvatting Developmental
Psychology
Lecture 1 – Theories and psychological assessment
Theories
Theory = a coherent set of ideas, hypotheses and explanations
Characteristics of a theory are:
• It is descriptive
• It explains a phenomenon or a broader concept
• It's predictive; can predict data or observations
• Makes assumptions: otherwise it's just a description
• It is a reduction of reality
• A theory is generalizable: this is a problem with lab experiments because it is not always
generalizable to real life contexts
• A theory needs to be testable
Science is needed to collect data and to create order in this data. This is what theories are for: give
structure.
A theory can also be replaced. This happens when:
• The theory is falsified on the basis of observations / data
• A new theory explains the observations/data better
A theory needs to be testable, but how do you test a theory? The empirical cycle is needed to test a
theory. This gives you information about whether the data is consistent with your theory.
During the induction phase you go from your observation to a
more general pattern.
In the deduction phase you create an experiment that could
test this general pattern.
During the testing phase you perform the experiment and
afterwards you evaluate the results and whether these are
consistent with your theory.
There are minor and major theories:
1. Minor theories are about a single phenomenon, such as how children learn to see depth?
2. Major theories are broader, such as the development of cognition.
a. Example: Piaget
,Characteristics of a good developmental theory are:
- That it relates to ontogeny: individual differences
- It focuses on change over time
- Explains the emergence of new properties, such as how a child can walk or grasp something?
- It is useful in education or in interventions
Dimensions in developmental theories
There are three dimensions that are applicable to developmental theories:
• Nature – Nurture
• Continuous – Stages
• Passive – Active
Nature – Nurture
There are three positions on this spectrum:
1. Nature/endogenous: on the far-left end of the spectrum
a. (some) Knowledge is innate and this knowledge gets expressed during the course of
development
2. Nurture/exogenous: far-right
a. Only learning mechanisms are innate, the rest of development is determined by the
environment
3. Nature & Nurture: middle
a. Both innate predispositieons and the environment shape development
Continuous – Stages
Three positions:
1. Continuous: development is gradual, children and adults are similar and the only difference is
the lack in experience
a.
2. Stages: development occurs in transitions, children are qualitatively different from adults (and
you can observe this)
a. Example: Piaget
, b.
3. Continuous & stages: development is gradual but some behaviors dominate temporarily and
that's why development appears stagewise in some observations
Continuous & stages theories are also called contemporary developmental theories: are more about
abilities and strategies. Strategies that are used differ from time to time and eventually
children/adolescents use similar strategies as adults:
Passive – active
Three main positions on this spectrum:
1. Passive: child plays a passive role and development occurs automatically. The child absorbs
information that's coming to them
2. Active: child plays an active role in its own development and constructs its own knowledge by
picking up knowledge/information they find interesting
3. Passive & active: some processes develop automatically and other processes need an active
role of the child
Theory of development = a scheme or system of ideas that is based on evidence and attempts to
explain, describe and predict behavior and development
Theories about motor development
Milestones motor development: there are certain
milestones and the sequence of these are mostly the same
for every child. The timing can be different between
individuals
Maturational theory of Gesell
, • Maturation is biologically directed
• People show the same developmental patterns independent of environmental input
• Maturation of the central nervous system (CNS) determines the development of the child and
the behavioral development follows this CNS development.
• There is a cephalocaudal trend: head -> foot. The head develops first etc.
• Another important trend is the proximodistal trend: centre of the body -> periphery
• The pace of development is influenced by the child's temperament
• The role of the parents is limited, they provide the right environment but development can't be
accelerated
Criticisms of Gesell's theory:
• Not all children follow the same pattern
o Examples for this: some children show backward crawling and butt sliding
• The theory is not generalizable to all cultures: there is not a universal pattern of development
• Environment can play guiding role
On the three dimensions: nature, stages, passive
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