Content Study Guide to
Lectures 1-10 (Weeks 1-5)
Lecture 1: Introduction to developmental theories
theories
Learning objectives:
• Understand the difference between nativism and empiricism
• Appreciate the variety of theories in developmental science
Empiricism: Dates back to ideas of John Locke. Everything comes from senses, there are no
hard-wired, inbuilt, innate abilities; children are essentially born as a blank slate. What an
individual becomes is not pre-determined but rather emerges throughout the
developmental process by association, repetition, imitation, reward and punishment. So,
the environment and society shape an individual, and the focus of this approach is on social
learning.Children are born as tabula rasa. Evidence for empiricism is the myth of the Nobel savage, who was actually disturbed and uncapable.
Nativism: Dates back to ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Children are born with pre-
existing, innate cognitive and emotional capacities, and should be left alone by the parents
and educators to develop as naturally and freely as possible. So the focus of this approach is
on autonomous learning and exploration. Rousseau also laid the foundation for
developmental psychology with outlining the stages of natural development, which exerted
a strong influence on theorists such as Jean Piaget. Unlike Locke, Rousseau saw the child
not shaped by external forces but developing according to an inner biological
timetable that resulted in distinct developmental stages. The idea that children at
different ages should be educated in an age-appropriate manner with specific games
and questions was a revolutionary insight for educational theory.
The ideas of major developmental theorists, such as Piaget and Vygotsky, do not perfectly
map on the empiricism and nativism approaches. While Piaget, for example developed his
constructivism theory of cognitive development in Rousseau’s tradition, he cannot be
deemed a nativist.
Likewise, the more recent, 20th century approaches, like behaviourism, ethology and
information processing, do not directly correspond to empiricism or nativism, but
nevertheless emerged from this useful dichotomy.
To gain full appreciation of the variety of theories and how they fit with the empiricism and
nativism approaches, you are encouraged to read Chapters 1 and 2 of the Harris &
Westermann textbook which is posted in your Resources List on Moodle. This will provide
you a great overview of various theories. You will not be assessed on your knowledge of any
particular theory which as not covered in the lectures explicitly.
Age of nature = 0-2 years. Exploring and learning
through senses.
smog 3
Piaget constructivism: 1896-1980.
Age of strength = 3-12 years. Increased exploration, = not born with innate capabilities but gradually construct
imitation, concrete thinking. knowledge of the world. This experience is represented in a series
Age of reason = 12-15years. reason. need for of schemas. Also Interested in speci c errors children make.
instruction. Assimilation: incorporation of info into an existing schema.
, Lev Vygotsky sociocultural theory
= knowledge arises from social activity. Language is crucial in I
learning processes: it helps to organize higher psychological functions.
The integration of speech and practical activity is fundamental.
The zone of proximal development: more knowledgeable other,
Mozart of psychology. .
Lecture 2: Introduction to methods in developmental psychology
Learning objectives: Methods
• Become familiar with the various measurement techniques used in developmental
research, particularly experimental behavioural and neuroimaging methods
• Understand the principles of preferential looking and habituation paradigms
• Develop skills to be able to read and evaluate research papers using different
developmental psychology methods
The focus of your revision should be on behavioural experimental methods. The most
important take-away is to appreciate the variety of methods and the need to choose the
appropriate method for each study and research question.
Preferential looking paradigmRobertFanta1961 visualinteresttest thyself Infants
Prefer
Given the constrains in measuring infants behaviours, the most common and also reliably Complex
measurable behaviour of infants is looking. It is based on the basic assumption that where Patterns
and for how long infants look can be taken as an index of perceptual and cognitive
processing. At its most simple form, the preferential looking paradigm allows researchers to
reason that if an infant consistently turns her gaze toward some stimuli more often than
toward others, then the infant must be able to perceive those and distinguish one from
another. This way, researchers found that infants discriminate face-like from non-face-like
stimuli, for example, or different patterns. The intermodal preferential looking paradigm
combines the visual stimulus with the linguistic prompt, which allows studying infants
language comprehension – if they are able to match a visual to the label, it can be inferred
that they have a knowledge of the label. In looking behaviour, there are several
complementary measure, such as duration, latency, cumulative, anticipatory, first, social
jog
looks, etc.
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Habituation paradigm
Fantz1964
It builds on the preferential looking, but capitalizes on infants’ preference for novel stimuli.
To habituate infants to one stimulus, they are repeatedly exposed to the same stimulus,
until they essentially become ‘bored’ and are no longer willing to look at it (and are said to
have reached the habituation criterion), at which point a novel stimulus is presented. If
infants are able to discriminate the two stimuli, their looking behaviour after the
habituation has been reached will indicate that – they will regain interest in looking at the
novel stimulus.
For an illustration, you can view this video: logic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlilZh60qdA it's
against
Violation of expectation paradigm argues
Critism
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VoE is a modification of a classic habituation paradigm. This practice essentially turns the
logic of a habituation experiment on its head. In this paradigm, the perceptual novelty of an
event is pitted against the impossibility of an event. Instead of the experimenter knowing a
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priori which test stimulus is more novel or unexpected for the infant, the infants’ looking
time will indicate to the experimenter which stimulus is more novel or unexpected. Looking
a time here is interpreted as surprise, rather than interest as in habituation paradigm. In many
iterations of the VoE paradigm, infants look longer at the impossible events, compared to
normal, physically possible events, suggestion that they arrived to the experiment with an
existing expectation of what is possible (e.g., that objects cannot go through the solid wall).
Eye-tracking
While traditionally, the looking time measures have to rely on manual coding, with the
emergence and accessibility of eye-tracking technology, things have gotten much easier.
Here, there is no need for timer, or offline video recording to code frame by frame, which
allows more precise measurement and thus makes research process much faster. Eye-
tracking uses infrared light to measure where the participant is looking at the screen at any
moment. It detects fixations (duration of looks) and saccades (rapid eye movements from
one area to another as an index of a change in attention). Allows to investigate which part
of an image infants are more interested in, and can be quite precise if you pre-define areas
of interest. For example, if there are two novel animals presented on the screen side by
side. We can define AOI as full image (one or the other), but we can also define AOIs more
specific to features of animals, e.g., tail, head, legs, if this is what we want to detect. In
addition, a more sophisticated technique is time course analysis, which can show you how
the looking behaviour unfolds in time, as stimuli sequences are presented. Advances in eye-
tracking techniques now allow to measure looking time in free play, non-screen based
studies with head-mounted eye-trackers, and with gaze-contingent paradigms, researchers
can measure the active, real time selection of stimuli by infants to understand their
intrinsically motivated information-seeking.
While widely used and very helpful measures, looking time based techniques are criticised
for being not sensitive enough and over-reliance on a single non-verbal behaviour.
Research designs:
longitudinal:
Pros = provides a developmental analysis. No invidual differences.
Cons = expensive. Takes a long time. Participants attrition. Possibly practice effects. Cannot examine cohort effects.
Cross- sectional:
Pros = examines changes between participants of different ages at the same point in time. Provides info on age related change
Cons = cannot examine chnage over time. Cannot examine cohort effects.
Sequential:
Pros= examines changes within individuals over time, Examines change at diffferent ages, can examine cohort effects.
Cons= may be expensive. Possibly practice effects.
Critism of looking time measures:
• assumption that the cognitive organization of infants corresponds to that of adults.
• Overall looking time to a stimulus does not allow us to differentiate between active attention and blank stares.
• Active informatIon processing vs blank stare?
• What is the operational de nition of a look?
Conclusions:
No methodology is ideal: the best way is using multiple methods.
Some methods are more practical or ethical, better for infants, but each has pros and cons.
It’s important to carefully consider hidden issues such as details of the method and derived measures ( familiarity
vs notelry preference may be due to individual differences such as temperament.
, th
Lecture 3: Prenatal and neonatal development
Learning objectives:
• Understand the main concepts of prenatal development
• Recognise major teratogens
• Understand the key tenets of foetal motor and sensory development
• Become familiar with methodological principles of investigating cognition in foetuses
and newborns
1. Main concepts of prenatal development in3rd trimester
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• Zygote: first two weeks of life
• Embryo: beginning of 3rd week of gestation until the end of 2nd month
• Foetus: from 2-3 months of gestation until birth
• Age of viability: period between 22-26 weeks of gestation: foetus’s systems are
sufficiently developed (reflexes, can open and close eyes, etc.), so if born
prematurely, has good chances of survival
• Premature birth: before full-term gestational period of 38 weeks (full gestation
range is 37-41)
•
ActivityPulseGrimace Apperance Respiration
APGAR scale: Method of evaluating physical condition/well-being of a newborn;
focussed on 5 signs: heart rate, respiratory rate, muscle tone, reflexes and skin tone
As foetal brain undergoes vast development, from undifferentiated growth of neurons to
neuros mapping onto the main areas of cortex, two competing hypotheses have been
proposed:
Protomap: final brain mapping configuration is there prenatally and development is
genetically predetermined (a nativism-inspired approach)
Protocortex: stimuli from outside (postnatal development input) affect development (an
empiricist view)
Maternal smoking: Maternal mental health:
Nicotine passes the placenta Stress and depression can both…
barrier.fortis hyperventilates Increase the chance of premature birth Maternal malnutrition:
and a low birth weight.
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Extreme malnutrition
2. Major teratogens
results in apnea: sudden
cessation of breathing But remember: comorbidity ( fewer than 1000 calories
a day ) dying 1st and 3rd
r
Associated with lower birth trimester can…
weight
Foetal alcohol increase risk of
schizophrenia and
syndrome: affects 1 in
100 live births. - maternal alcoholism, heavy smoking, severely affected mental health, malnutrition, antisocial personality
disorder.
Distinctive facial
features: small eye
environmental hazards, major stressful events. Often these co-occur, resulting in
openings, smooth
philitrum, thin up lip.
comorbidity issues in trying to disentangle specific effects.
Restricted growth
Intelligence
restrictions 3. Key tenets of foetal motor and sensory development Prenatal brain in 3rd trimester:
250,000 neurons generated
Early intervention can each minute!!
help
- Foetal smell, taste, hearing and vision undergo development at different rates.
Auditory system becomes very mature already in utero, hence, research into hearing
has been very active. We know that foetuses can detect sounds because the foetus
responds differentially to sound through heart rate accelerations and body
movements. Or that they detect visual stimulation and may respond to it
differentially.
Hearing: Infants Auditory System matures between 23-25 weeks to detect acoustic stimuli
at all frequencies. They can respond to ALL external stimuli at 5 months although Internal
stimuli easier to hear ( mothers voice or heartbeat)
Vision: optic nerve is formed by 9 weeks, retinal layering in period of 12-28 weeks,
