1 - Developmental psychology Flashcards
What is developmental psychology?
The study of how behaviour changes over the lifespan
- Discipline of the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development of humans
What are some major theories of development?
Psychoanalytic theory: Freud and Erikson
- Cognitive developmental theory: Piaget and Kohlberg
- Social cognitive theory: early behaviourist thoeries through to Bandura’s social cognitive theory - Kay Bussey
- Ethological theory: Attachment theories of Ainsworth and Bowlby
What is change and continuity in developmental psychology?
Involves identifying the factors that have changed over a period of time
- Change: systematic changes are orderly, patterned and enduring i.e. crawling to walking, milestones, thinking changes
- Continuities: refers to ways we remain the same or consistent over time e.g. attachment from infancy to adulthood, temperament
What are early experiences in childhood the womb?
Blastocyst, embryo, foetus, baby
- Things that may go wrong: problematic genes, environmental agents i.e. teratogens, placental failure, alcohol use, premature birth
What are early experiences in childhood sensitive periods
Early years are vital in the first 2 years
- “teratogens” timing of exposure is critical e.g. facial anomalies in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, hearing/rubella virus
- EMPIRICAL SUPPORT FOR SP: Neurological development 1st 3 years, language development acquisition, studies of Romanian orphans
- Development of biological systems can be actuely timely sensitive
- Cognitive impairments in later years related to timing AND the duration of deprivation
Early brain development and support for children
Sense & Interact!
- responding adult
1. Share talks, builds curiousity
2. Support and encourage
3. Name it - language connection
4. Take turns, back and forth
5. Practice endings and beginnings
Oversimplification of child development
(conceptual challenges)
Bidirectional influences from parent and child
- Some children may give obvious signals or less to implicate possible disability, temperament
Critical and sensitive periods of early experiences
(conceptual challenges)
While early life matters, it can be oversimplifcation and is most applicable to biological aspects of development
Areas of study in Developmental Psychology
- Physical development: body changes, motor skills, puberty, physical signs of ageing
- Cognitive development: perception, language, learning, memory, problem-solving
- Psychosocial development: personality, emotions, gender identity, moral behaviour, interpersonal skills, roles
Developmental theories require
- A framework; to organise thinking
- A lens; guide collection of new facts which can also limit which facts we notice
- Different theories dominate at different times
- FOLK PSYCHOLOGY; impact of parent’s thoeries;parental locus of control and efficacy, representations of the child, discipline approaches
Nature and Nurture
- There are universal genetically determined capacities for language, motor developement - stage theorists
- But expression influenced by envrionment - what babies need to know to survive/do well and what is valued and what is possible - individual differences/cultural differences
What is maturation? (MOTOR DEVELOPMENT)
The unfolding of geneticalyl programmed behaviour patterns
- But environment (childrearing customs) has an impact; swaddling, carrying on baby, “baby” containers, experience in prone-SIDS prevention
Key theories of cognitive development
Piaget
- Constructivist theory, Stages, Classic discoveries
Vygotsky
- Social and cultural influences on learning
Sense of Self and Theory of Mind
- SOCIAL COGNITION, Classic discoveries - rouge/sticker, false belief task
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Children’s minds are not miniature versions of the adult mind, there are profound differences (qualititative and quantitative)
- The child is action/not passive - constructs an understanding of the world through exploration and experience: maturation/nature/innate drives
Developmental progress
Process:
- equilibration: balance between new experiences and what we already know or think we know
- assimilation: new information “assimilated” into existing schemas — integrates and interprets new experiences in terms of existing schemas
- accomadation: schemas updated to accommodate new information — modify or create new schemas in response to our experiences
Piaget: Four main stages of intellectural growth
At each stage, children think in qualitatively different ways
- Sensori-motor intelligence (birth - 2 years): object permanence
- Pre-operation period (2-7 years): mental representations, but pre-logical/egocentric, conservation a challenge
- Concrete operations (7-11 years): mental operations, but only for physical/concrete mateirals - e.g. add/subtract
- Formal operations (11 years-onwards): hypothetical reasoning - mental operations on abstract concepts e.g. algebra, hypothesis e.g. pendulum, see-saw
Object permanence
- Infants < 8 months: out of sight, out of mind - no effort to retrieve hidden objects
- Infants ~ 9-12 months: search BUT where last found - A not B effect - object does not exist indepedent child’s actions
- Infants 12-18 months: understand not only that objects continue to exist, but that they can be moved while out of sight - invisible displacements
Strengths and limitations of Piaget’s Theory
Strengths:
- Landmark thoery - not just minature adults, fascinating aspects of pre-logical thinking
- Learning as an active process -influences
- Processes cross domains e.g. conservation
Critiques (more next year):
- Stages too rigit/prescriptive
- Under-estimated children’s abilities
- Methodological issues - tasks demands/language
Universality:
- Western bias
- Many don’t reach higher levels
- Context not sufficiently considered
Other theoretical approaches to cognitive development
Vygotsky - sociocultural theory:
- learning collaborative - social contexts
- social - role of siblings, peers, scaffolding
- zone of proximal development
Information
Information Processing Approach:
- increased capacity of neural systems such as: the processing of information, effortfl to automatic (e.g. driving), more sophisticated memory strategies
Influences on developing a Theory of Mind: Nature and Nurture
- Brain maturation - age threshold
- Relations with langauge development
- Pretend play
Social interactions: - parental use of mental state language: parents who explain and discuss
- quality of parent child relationship
- prescence of older siblings
Classic experiments and developmental breakthroughs:
The importance of mental states and perspective taking for relationships
- Things exist indepdent of my actions upon them
- Objects/people have an essence indepdent of appearance
- Objects follow the laws of Physics
- Symbols (words, dolls, drawings) represent things
Social cognititon: mini psychologist - rouge test, others may think/see things differently to me - breaking down egocentrism –> perspective taking, playing tricks
- Symbols can be “manipulated” the thoery of mind
Overview of attachment theory
- Origins of attachment theory: animal work; Ethology
- Individual differencs: assessing attachments - The Strange Situation Procedure
- How do individual differences come about: sensitive response parenting
- Temperament - tailoring parenting
An ethological basis
- Based on work of Lorenz, Harlow - evolutionary biology, critical/sensitive periods
- Primary function - protection of the young
- Specifies specific attachment behaviour systems with proximity to the caregiver (safety/protection) as set goal
Balance between exploratory and attachment systems is fundamental (Bowlby/Ainsworth)
- Naturalistic observations of mother-child interactions
- Concepts of “safe haven” and “secure base”
- Reaction to separation and reunion reveals individual differences
- Developed “Strange Situation Procedure”
- Observational studies of prescursors of secure attachment - sensitive caregiving
Scoring dimensions
- Proximity and contact seeking
- Contact maintaing
- Resistance
- Avoidance
- Search
- Distance interaction
Individual differences in Attachment
- Secure (50-60%) - separation distress, reunion terminates - resume exploration
- Insecure anxious-ambivalent (15-20%) - extreme separation distress, not terminated by reunion - unable to resume exploration
- Insecure avoidant (15-20%) limited separation distress, limited response to mother on reunion - exploration focus
- Disorganised (5-10%) - no coherent strategy, confusing/contradictory or bizarre behavour
Developmental Sequelae
Secure attachment; protective and resilience
- better relations with peers
- more leadership
- better emotion regulation
- relate better to teachers: Sroufe anmd colleagues Minnesota study
Disorganised attachment - clinically significant problems later in development
Limitations and conceptual clarifications of attachment
- A “relationship construct” is a different attachment to different parents is possible
- Stability of SSP classifications variable - espcially if life circmstance change
- Note other approaches to assesment - Q sotrt - ecological validity
- Need different measurement approaches as child develops - key aspect of SSP - “activation of the attachment system”
How do individual differences in attachment come about?
NATURE AND NURTURE (transactional)
Parenting and attachment
- parents differ in how they respond to their infants
- infants differ in what they bring to relationships - temperament - evocative
Parent challenge is to modulate their responses to match the baby they have
Ainsworth’s Core Features of Sensitivity
- Does parent notice and receive infant signal cues?
- Does parent interpret these accurately?
- Does parent respnd promptly and appropriately/flexibly?
Gender stereotypes
- Set of beliefs about being a boy or a girl
- Beliefs about behavioural patterns that are appropriate for each gender
- Gendered parental practices: colour of clothing, room decorations, toys, parental domestic activities and occuptions
- Others also respond to boys and girls differently (e.g. teachers, peers)
Infancy
- There are few differences except obvious anatomical ones
- Newborns are labelled as girls or boys and gender stereotypes affect how they are perceived and treated
Infancy - 2 years
By the time a child is 2 years old, the groundwork for later gender-role development has been established
- Others view a child’s sex as important and boys and girls are seen as different
- Infants begin to form categories of “male” and “female”
- They establish a basic gender identity and pursue gender stereotypical activities
Childhood
- Gender development proceeds rapidly
- Upon entering school children have acquired many stereotypes about how the sexes differ
- Children prefer gender stereotypical activities and same-sex playmates
- Behaviour for boys, especially, becomes highly gender stereotypical
- Gender segregation is strong in middle childhood
Adolescents
- After going their separate ways in childhood, in adolescence boys and girls come together in intimate ways - the beginning of romantic relationships
- Biological changes and social pressures in adolescnece are related to an intesification of gender differences
- Stimulates the formaton of an adult gender identity
Aggression
Boys engage in more rough and tumble play than do girls
- Adolescent males are arrested for violent crimes five times more often than are adolescent females
- Men are more violent than women, and boys engage in more physical aggression than girls
- Girls engage in relational aggression (manipulation of peer relationships): social exclusion, rumour spreading, talking behind their back
- Girls engage in more relational aggression than physical aggression but so do boys
Cognitive abilities
- Men perform better than women on spatial tests involving mental rotation
- It is assumed that men’s superior visuospatial abilities underlie the difference in quantitative aptittude and achievement
- However, women perform better on some of these tasks e.g. those that require memory for shapes and perceptual speed
- Gender differences in mathematics performance are small
- Recent meta-analyses show that the gap between men and women for maths and science and academic performances has
reduced over time (Bursal, 2013; Hyde et al, 2008; Voyer & Voyer, 2014). - More support for the similarity hypothesis (Hyde, 2014).
Gender difference in Verbal Ability
Gender difference in verbal performance is also small
- Slight female superiority
Gender theories
- Psychoanalytic theory (identification - Oedipus complex, Electra complex)
- Biological basis (chromosomes, hormones, evolutationary theory)
- Cognitive devleopmental theory (Kohlberg, gender schemas)
- Gender schema theory (martin and halverson - gender schemas)
- Social cognitive theory (Bandura and Bussey - social influences via parents, peers and the media (enactive experience, direct tuiton, modelling) affect personal factors (outcome expectations, self-evaluations, and self-efficacy beliefs)
What is gender identity?
- Kohlberg (1966, 1969) used the term gender constancy to refer to the concept that a person’s sex is a permanent attribute that is tied to underlying biological properties (i.e. the person’s genitals and genetic constitution)
- It does not depend on surface characteristics such as the person’s hair length, style of clothing, choice of play activities, and so on
What is gender constancy?
Comprised of 3 components:
- Gender identity
- Gender stability
- Gender consistency
Moral development
A series of stages of increasingly complex thinking about what is right and wrong in specific situations
- societal prohibitions - learning not to do wrong
- internalisation and self-punishment
- parenting practices
- doing good
- empathy
- prosocialness
Moral conduct
- Children learn the rules of moral conduct initally from their parents
- They learn what they should not do and what they should do
Theories of Morality
- Piaget’s theory
- Kohlberg’s theory
- Freud’s theory of conscience
- Social cognitive theory (Bandura)
Piaget’s theory of morality
- Morality of constraint, morality of cooperation, intentions versus consequences
“Paul was stealing a biscuit from the cookie jar when he broke a cup and saucer”
“Peter was sweeping out the kitchen when he knocked
over a tray and broke 15 cups and saucers”.
1. “either-or stage”
2. “simultaneous coordination stage”
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
preconventional, conventional, postconventional
- Moral development proceeds through a universal and invariant sequence of three broad moral stages; each is composed of two levels
- Kohlberg asked 10-, 13- and 16-year-old boys questions about moral dilemmas to study moral reasoning
Kohlberg - Stage 1
PRECONVENTIONAL MORALITY
Focus on satisfying their own needs: avoiding punishment and obtaining personal awards
Level 1: Avoid punishment – I won’t do it, because I don’t want to get punished
Level 2: Reward – What can I get out of this?
Kohlberg - Stage 2
CONVENTIONAL MORALITY
Focus on social approval: right and wrong are defined by the convention and by what people will say
Level 3: Gain approval and avoid disapproval of others:
“I won’t do it because if I do people won’t like me”
Level 4: Rigid codes of “law and order”
“I won’t do it, because I don’t want to break the law”
Kohlberg - Stage 3
POSTCONVENTIONAL MORALITY
- Focus on abstract ideals: Broad principles of justice and internalisation of personal moral principles
Level 5: “Social contract” agreed upon for the public good
“I will do it because it is my duty, because I’m obliged to do it”
Level 6: Abstract ethical principles that
determine one’s own moral code I will do it because it is the right thing to do regardless of what others think
Moral Reasoning and Moral Conduct
Can we predict how people will act if we know
how they reason morally?
• Delinquents score lower on moral reasoning
than do non-delinquents
• Those who score higher on moral reasoning are
less likely to cheat than those who score lower
• Overall, however, espousing moral principles
does not mean abiding by them
Moral Disengagement
A concept used to explain the mismatch between adopting moral standards and not behaving in accord with those standards (Bandura, 2002).
• Selective activation and disengagement of internal control permits different types of conduct with the same moral standards.
Self sanctions in Moral disengagement
by:
- reconstruing the conduct (moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison),
- obscuring personal causal agency (displacement of
responsibility, diffusion of responsibility),
- misrepresenting or disregarding the injurious consequences of one’s actions (distorting the consequences of action), and
- vilifying the recipients of maltreatment by blaming
(attribution of blame) and devaluing them (dehumanization)
- Enables good people to behave badly without feeling any self-loathing or remorse.
Types of Parenting styles
- Authoritative - high warmth, high control (but “democratic” control - perspective taking, reasoned discipline) - most analogous to sensitivity
• Authoritarian - low warmth, high control - “I am the boss” - may become abusive…
• Permissive - high warmth, low control - parent like a peer….
• Uninvolved (Maccoby & Martin, 1983) - low warmth, low control - neglect
Adolescence
Teenagers first described in 1950s
• Became a prominent force in 1960s
• Became an extended phase of the lifespan
in the 21st century - “adultescence”
• Delayed “adult milestones”
• Issues of identity formation - Erik Erikson
Key Changes in Adolescence
Biological - hormonal changes - oestrogens & androgens
• Puberty - sexual characteristics
• Menarche and spermarche
• Timing varies - some genetic contribution, but also
environmental - health, nutrition
• Cognitive - thinking - Piaget -Formal Operations, PostFormal thinking - no absolutes
- but frontal lobes not fully mature - limited impulse
control
Erikson’s Developmental Tasks
• Trust vs mistrust (birth-1 yr) → hope
• Autonomy vs shame & doubt (1-3 yrs) → will of their
own
• Initiative vs guilt (3-6 yrs) → purpose
• Industry vs inferiority (6-11 yrs) → competence
• Identity vs role confusion (adolescence) →fidelity &
belonging
• Intimacy vs isolation (young adulthood) →love
• Generativity (midlife)→ care
• Integrity vs despair (late adult) → wisdom
“Social Clock” Neugarten
Emphasis on timing of major life events - On time vs. Off time
-Examples
• Normative life transitions - occur to most people
can be on time or off time
- Examples
• Non-normative - unusual, unexpected events, or a timing not sanctioned by
society
