Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Define development
Development: ‘the study of systematic changes and continuities in an individual that occur between consumption and depth’
- Carol Sigelman
What is Developmental psychology?
- The study of human behaviour as a function of age
- How and why change
- Change as a function of:
- Physical maturation
- Cognitive development
- Social experience
Areas of study in developmental psychology
Physical development, Cognitive development, Psychosocial development
What does Physical development consist of?
Body changes, motor skills, puberty, physical signs of ageing
What does cognitive development consist of?
Perception, language, learning, memory, problem-solving
What does Psychosocial development consist of?
- Personality, emotions, gender identity, moral behaviour, interpersonal skills, roles…
- Societal role
Define change
- Change: Systematic changes are orderly, patterned, and relatively enduring
- Developmental Psychology, focuses on change over the lifespan
Define continuities
- Continuities: Refer to ways in which we remain the same or consistent over time
- Developmental Psychology, focuses on tempermant, characteristics that come as a child which continue over the lifespan
Overview of development in the womb
- Egg & Sperm → Genes from mother and father combine (Zygote)
- Blastocyst → Cluster of cells start to divide and multiply (days 5-9)
- Embryo → Early stage: formation of body structures, tissues, organs (to 8 weeks)
- Foetus → The unborn offspring: has major body organs, though not fully developed
What is a teratogen? (Examples)
Teratogens: Any agent that can cause a birth defect and disrupt development
↳ E.g. radiation, chemicals, nicotine, alcohol, recreational drugs, etc;
Early Experience Sensitive periods
- Impairments are related to timing and duration of deprivation
- Examples
↳ Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder → Facial anomalies, developmental deficits
↳ Rubella virus → Hearing loss
- Examples
Why is Embryonic period most susceptible?
- Embryonic period:
- Lasts up to 8 weeks
- Period of greatest susceptibility to the embryo:
↳ Rapid development
↳ Person who’s pregnant is not aware
↳ Higher chance of accidental exposure
Evidence supporting sensitive periods (Summary)
- Neurological development →1-3 years
- The development of biological systems can be acutely timing sensitive
- Later cognitive/regulatory impairments are also related to timing but also duration
- Critical and sensitive periods are useful ideas and certainly matter BUT can be an oversimplification
Sensitive periods in Neurological Development
- Extensive myelination (development of white matter) of the nervous system
↳ Positive experiences, during those early years has a lasting impact on the developing brain
↳ Negative experiences such as trauma, stress, exposure to drugs and alcohol also have a lasting impact
↳ Because it’s happening at such a rapid time of brain development - Language development - early deprivation important
↳ If children miss early stages of language development → and are introduced to that later in life, they can’t compensate for missed time in language development
Sensitive periods in relation to cognitive/regulatory impairments
- Ability to think, regulate, stress depends on the duration of that exposure → Longer the exposure, the bigger the outcomes
Example of how sensitive periods can be an oversimplification
- E.g. bonding
↳ Children who are adopted → Removed from families and move can work
↳ Children born prematurely → Overcoming negative experiences
What do theorists refer to as nature
Universal genetically determined capacities for language, motor development (stage theorists)
What do theorists refer to as nurture
Expression is influenced by environment → what babies need to know to survive/do well and what is valued and what is possible o Individual differences/cultural differences
Role of both nature and nurture
Nature (genes) and nurture (environment) work together in complex ways -see different child skills and needs in different cultures…
Developmental theories (& Theorists)
- Psychoanalytic theory → Freud, Erikson
- Social Cognitive theory → Bandura
- Cognitive Developmental theory→ Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson
- Ethological Attachment theory → Ainsworth, Bowlby
Piaget
- Constructivist theorists → Believed children constructed meaning from their own words
- Outlined stages of development → Believed they were qualitatively different from one another
- Piaget found that children think in qualitatively different ways in each of these stages, not just qualitatively
Theory of cognitive development
- Children’s minds are not miniature versions of the adult mind
- The child is active and constructs an understanding of the world through exploration and experience → Way they were exposed to them
↳ Prompted creativity in young children - Maturation/nature/innate drives:
↳ Role for innate drives to learn and cognitive capacities that could enable this
↳ Nurture assisted by providing an environment in which the children could thrive and develop ← Was an interactionist (Believed in the importance of both nature and nurture)
Define development:
Development: A process of development from one phase of thinking to the next through equilibration
- Piaget
What is the Assimilation?
Assimilation: New information “assimilated” into existing schemas
↳ Integrates and interprets new experiences in terms of existing schemes
What is Accommodation?
Accommodation: Schemas updated to accommodate new information
↳ Modify or create new schemes in response to our experiences
↳ When the new experiences did not fit with the pre-existing view of the world
What are the 4 stages of intellectual growth
- Sensori-motor intelligence (birth-2 years)
- Pre-operational period (2-7 years)
- Concrete operations (7-11 years)
- Formal operations (11yrs…)
What occurs in the sensori-motor stage?
- Physical encounters
- Object permanence
What occurs in pre-operational period?
- Mental representations, but pre-logical/egocentric
- Object permanence is achieved
- Conservation a challenge
What occurs in concrete operation stage?
- Mental operations, but only for physical/concrete materials –eg., add/subtract
- Struggle with abstract concepts
What occurs in formal operations stage?
Hypothetical reasoning –mental operations on abstract concepts (e.g., algebra), hypothesise(e.g., pendulum, see-saw)
When does symbolic or representational thought occur?
- Emerging capacity from 18-24 months
- One object can represent another -this capacity allows deferred imitation and make-believe play
- Preschool years (age 2-6)
- Further gains in mental representation
- Symbols → represent the concrete world
- Drawing
What are the stages of Object Permanence
- Infants < 8 months
- Infants ~ 9 months -12 months
- Infants 12-18 months – breakthrough
Object Permanence when < 8 months
Out of sight, out of mind –no effort to retrieve hidden object
Object Permanence when 9 months -12 months
- Search for item, but only where it was last found
- Object does not exist independent of child’s actions
Object Permanence when Infants 12-18 months
Understand that:
↳ Objects continue to exist (independent of the child’s interaction with them)
↳ Objects can be moved while out of sight – invisible displacements
Challenges to Object Permanence
- Conducted with very rudimentary resources
- Belief that children do develop capacity for this earlier in life, but the motor demands for this capacity in life, but the motor demands of the Piaget’s task made it seem like it may have not been developed
What is Conservation
- An extension of object permanence
- The “logical” understanding that objects have a fundamental essence that continues to exist, irrespective of changes in form, presentation, appearance
Why may a child struggle with conservation
- A child may struggle with this due to disintegration
- Piaget would say → A child before the concrete operation stage struggles to focus on more than one dimension at a time
↳ A child may struggle with transformations and can’t undo or reverse them in their head, so they are stuck on the original representations
Limitations of Piaget’s theory
- Under-estimated children’s abilities
↳ When alternate tasks have been created that remove these demands, the child’s abilities are a bit greater - Universality
- Western bias? Children learn what is useful in their cultural setting
↳ Learning in non-western environment may change, the context is important
- Western bias? Children learn what is useful in their cultural setting
Other theoretical approaches to cognitive development
- Sociocultural –Vygotsky
- Learning collaborative – social contexts
- Role of siblings, peers → Act as scaffolding
↳ Influences what a child learns - “Zone of proximal development”
↳ How can we work with what a child knows and scaffolds then move it to increasing their knowledge in a supportive way
Information Processing Approach of cognitive development
- Increased capacity of neural systems → On a biological basis leads to:
- Processing of information
- Effortful to automatic (e.g., driving)
- More sophisticated memory strategies
