1.1: Understand the importance of Developmental psychology helps to understand what babies are capable
developmental psychology of:
- What they are born with (nativist view)—i.e. what mechanisms are
they born with
- What do they learn (empiricist view)—i.e. what is the potential
developmental dejectory and how does the environment impact
this?
Helps understand something about ourselves i.e. what are the origins
of our skills and knowledge? In order to understand the MATURE form of
a skill we must know about its development
Helps create important understanding of biological and social factors
help prevent as well as creating early interventions for developmental
disorders (e.g. autism, depression, future criminality)
Helps inform social policy e.g. understanding mental functioning of
children and understanding experiences of those w/healthy
development
1.2: Describe different types of DEVELOPMENTAL PERIODS:
development Prenatal (conception-birth)—looks at experience in womb i.e. prenatal
environment (e.g. listening to music and its impact on shaping the child)
Infancy
Preschool (18months-4yrs)—rapid development of social skills, lang,
memory and reasoning—rapid brain growth at this period
School age (young [5-7yrs] and old [8-12yrs])—understanding more
complex ideas, use of abstract reasoning such as maths etc., gaining
greater experience, delayed gratification responses i.e. rapid impulsivity
decreases
Adolescence (13-20yrs)—affects puberty, impulse control, complex
reasoning, sexual reasoning
Adulthood (21+)
- Young (21-30yrs): entering job force or going uni gaining
knowledge of skills about life
- Middle (31-60yrs): career should peak, childbirth
- Late (60yrs-death): decline in some skills
1.3: Describe different ways to PERSPECTIVES ON DEVELOPMENT:
classify development Individual characteristics and contextual influences
Cultural contexts—e.g. differences of development and skill sets from
different cultures
Ecological contexts—i.e. influence from different spears of life such as
the environmental systems which may influence the child
- e.g. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems of development— this
model is said to show how different systems such as family, friends
and culture etc. can impact the child
Lifespan perspective— Views development as process that continues
throughout life cycle from infanthood through adulthood + old age
1.4: Describe different disciplines ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY:
of developmental psychology - Origins inheritance (usually look at twin studies) vs environment=
i.e. nativism (dp patterns thoughts result from genetics) vs. nature
(do patterns thought and bhvr result from experiences)
, Ppl also look at interaction between the two
e.g. Do we have a language acquisition device that develops at a
certain age or do we learn language OR is it an interaction between
both?
- Continuity vs discontinuity
e.g. pathway to morality—in order to become a moral individual, we
can look at deindividuation in children and how they develop to
learn to become moral through a developmental cascade
Discontinuous development= more abrupt approach suggests
development happens more rapidly
- Critical vs sensitive periods SP= age where specific experiences
are optimal for development
- Domain general vs. domain specific DEV
- DG= Idea that development can impact wide range of abilities such
as verbal reasoning or maths
- DS= Idea that development of various abilities occur independently
(separately) + have little impact on other skills/abilities
ROLE OF THEORIES
To organise and integrate info into coherent plausible ideas about how
children develop
Generate testable hypothesis
John Locke suggest children are born into the world as tabula rasa (blank
slate)
Descartes contradicts Locke and suggests mind imposes order on
environment
William James (psychologist in late 1800’s) suggest child born into the
world and they learn to understand the world
Behaviourism
- Focus on measurable bhvr and learning— behaviourists proposed
that principles of learning in adults can be used to understand
development
- Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
UCS UCR NS+CS CR CS CR
- (Watson)—Baby Albert—looked at whether emotions such as fear
could be conditioned
CS (rat) + UCS (loud noise) CR (crying)
- Operant conditioning (Skinner)
- Rewards and punishment
Maturation theory
- Contrasts to behaviourist view
- Believed emergence of infants’ abilities are dictated by GENETIC
influence (inspired by Darwin)
- Estimated trajectory of skills developed at certain timescales—i.e. a
biological timetable
Psychodynamic theory
Developed by Freud— focus on personality (id, ego and superego) and
development of self
, Emphasised importance of early experience, suggests personality is
formed within first 6yrs
Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory—
- ORAL STAGE (0-1yrs) (id develops)—focus on gaining pleasure in
mouth
- ANAL STAGE (1-3yrs) (ego develops)—individual becomes co-
dependent
- PHALLIC STAGE (3-6yrs) (superego develops)— Increasing sexual
urges arouse + alert child to gender differences—period critical in
gender formation
- LATENCY STAGE (6-12yrs) sexual urges become repressed—
emphasis on education and start of concerns for others
- GENITAL STAGE (12+) Altruistic love joins self-love—need for
reproduction of species underlies adult responsibility
Erikson’s Psychosocial theory—
- Infancy (0-1yrs) develop basic trust in self + others
- Early childhood(1-3yrs) learn self-control + develop autonomy
- Play age (3-6yrs) develop initiative in mastering environment
- School age (6-12yrs) develop industry, if not risk feelings of
inferiority over real/imagined failure to master tasks
- Adolescence (12-20yrs) achieve sense of identity
- Young adulthood (20-30yrs) achieve intimacy with others
- Adulthood (30-65yrs) express self through generativity
- Mature age (65+) achieve sense of integrity—if not then
unfulfilled desires and doubts are said to lead to despair
Ethological theory
- Suggests bhvr should be understood as occurring in particular
context as having an adaptive/survival value
- Uses animal studies to understand bhvr in humans
- Bowlby looked at adaptive value of bhvr
- Lorenz looked @imprinting in gosling ducks and its adaptive value—
Bowlby then applied these findings to attachment (i.e. early human
relationships between PCG and infant)
THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Interested in memory, logic and language
Piaget proposed that cognitive development goes through qualitative
stages and believes development is discontinuous
Piaget’s stages of Cognitive development
- Sensorimotor (0-2yrs)— infants only aware of what is visually in
front of them
- Pre-operational (2-7yrs)— young children begin to develop in
memory and imagination
- Concrete operational (7-12yrs)— Children begin to demonstrate
logic and concrete reasoning
- Formal operational (12+)— Children begin to use symbols and
abstract concepts
, Vygotsky believed Piaget did not look at social and cultural impacts of
development— therefore decided himself to look at cultural impact of
development
Zone of proximal development= suggests when you don’t know how to
do something you should get near someone who does know how to do it
in order to ensure you get appropriate assistance—i.e. this can be seen
with a PCG and infant= when infant in unsure they look to PCG
Evolutionary theory
Suggests we need to look at how brain has evolved
Fodor- Modulated brain (1983) book suggests many cog functions come
from modules which are independent – i.e. certain aspects of our brain
modules mature as we develop
Some aspects of cognitive development take time to mature and some
are innate where as others come from learned experience (i.e. nature vs
nurture)
Information-processing theories
Looks at internal mental processes through cognitive systems from input
(stimulus) to output (response) e.g. attention, memory, processing,
planning and even aggression
Connectionist models of development
- Looks at machine learning— uses large sets of interconnected nodes
that have an influence upon each other to model connections in the
brain
- Suggests learning occurs by either altering strength of connections
or weighting correct responses
Developmental neuroscience
e.g. EEG, fMRI, NIRS look at function and structure of the brain—look at
maturational vs interactive specialization
1.5: Appreciate different methods -Impossible for children and babies so therefore researchers have to change
for studying development their approach particularly for prelinguals
Have to develop new innovative methods to conduct certain techniques
Methods for data collection:
- Children’s self-reports
- Reports from family, teachers and peers
- Interviews
- Brain imaging, measures of peripheral NS (use marker tasks e.g.
present different faces with different emotions to see how ppt
responds neutrally)
- Observational studies—observe children in naturalistic setting= high
ecological validity but use of correlational method may involve a
series of confounding variables and does not enable causation i.e.
establishing cause and effect of bhvr
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