Developmental Psychology Flashcards
What is developmental psychology?
explaining the nature and processes involved in human development from infancy to adulthood
How does developmental occur? 2 ways
Continuous:
- development from childhood through adulthood
- Children are not qualitatively different from adults, they simply have less knowledge
In stages:
- Development from childhood to adulthood through a succession of stegs
- Children and adults are qualitatively different in psychological terms
What is nature and nurture?
Nature: development is a product of genetic inheritance
Nurture: development is a product of experience and environment (tabula rasa ‘blank slate’)
What is behaviourism? and its key principles
explained by only focusing on behaviour and the environment in which it occurs (B F Skinner)
- Reinforcement (positive or negative)
- Shaping behaviour
- Successive approximations (e.g. babies speaking to get parents attention)
- The value of comparative psychology
What is nativism? Noam Chomsky
- Genetically determined behaviour
- Innate knowledge of language
- Same mechanisms underline both child and adult behaviour
What is evolution/ ethology in terms of development? Konrad Lorenz
- Imprinting- describes the process of attachment of baby animals with the first thing they encounter at birth
- Critical period (10-30 hours)
- Biological preparedness- a genetically determined readiness to learn specific skills (e.g. walking)
- Maturational unfolding and stages- a genetically determined developmental progression
Evolution & Attachment: Bowlby and Ainsworth
- They suggested attachment is a natural process under maturational control
- Disruption of this process can have detrimental consequences (Separation distress from 8 months old)
- Long-term separation may lead to slower development (emotionally and physically)
What is constructivism? Piaget
- Knowledge is actively generated by the individual rather than transmitted by another person through one’s gernes
- Development as a product of nature and nurture
- Occurs in stages
- Egocentrism- difficulty taking on board another persons’ perspective
What are Piagetian stages of development?
- Sensori-motor (0-2 years) – failure to determine between self and surroundings
- Pre-operational (2-7 years) – mental imagery without principled thought
- Concrete operational (7-12 years) – principled thought confined to real-life problems
- Formal operational (12 years upwards) – principled thought applied to abstract problems
1st stage: Sensorimotor stage (0-2yrs)
Lack of mental imagery= ability to imagine the existence of things even when they are not directly accessible to the senses.
Solipsism = failure to distinguish between the self and the rest of the universe.
Don’t have object permanence = understanding that things continue to exist even when we can’t sense them directly.
At 18-24 months the infant is able to conceive the existence of an object independently of self and thus is no longer in a state of solipsism.
The infant understands there is “self” and there is the “world” – process through acquisition of mental imagery.
2nd stage: Preoperational stage (2-7 years)
- Mental imagery without principle thought
- Egocentrism: difficulty taking another person’s perspective
- Operational intelligence: the process of solving a problem by working through logical principles
- Failure to decenter: broaden attention to the various aspects of a problem instead of fixating on just one
- Conservation: understanding that changing the form or location of an object foes not change its mass, volume or amount. The child gives an intuitive answer instead of working out the correct response based on operational thought
3rd stage: Concrete operational stage (7-12 years)
- Children give the correct answer in conversation tasks and are able to provide logical justifications to their answer
- However, this is confined to real-life problems and they struggle to apply principle thought to abstract problems
- Justifications include: compensation, inversion and identity
4th stage: Formal operational stage (12 years onwards)
- Systematic logical thinking and reasoning
- Abstract thinking
Issues with Piaget’s stages of development: - Margaret Donaldson (1926-2020)
challenged Piaget’s theory and findings. Argued that Piagetian task did not make ‘human sense’ and showed that when problems are re-phrased, children are able to pass conservation tasks much earlier than previously thought (e.g. Naughty teddy version: the teddy moves the objects so a third-party was involved)
Issues with Piaget’s stages of development: - Inference by elimination: (Rai & Mitchell 2006
the 4-year olds could appreciate that the unfamiliar name belongs to the unfamiliar character. This suggests a level of logical reasoning well beyond what Piaget would have expected
Issues with Piaget’s stages of development: - Inter-cognitive conflict (Russell 1982)
asked two children which pencil was longer and both children said the same. But when the person was moved, the children both said that the one further away from them was longer. Dominance influenced the pairs’ decision
- Young children are capable of making logical inferences
Key ideas of Vygotsky: Social transmission and social constructivism
- Emphasised the role of the environment in development and argued that cognitive abilities are socially constructed
- Proposed that learning is motivated by a need to interact with others
- Suggested the role of culture and language are fundamental for development
What is Linguistic relativity,
Zone of proximal development and Scaffolding?
Linguistic relativity: language shapes the culture and culture shapes the language
Zone of proximal development: in order to learn something, the child needs to be cognitively ready
Scaffolding: the parent creates support structures to aid children’s learning
Contrasting views of development: Piaget vs Vygotsky
Piaget’s View
- Stress the internal control of cognitive development
- Personal discovery
- Child engages in active learning and searchers for understanding
- Learning driven by own curiosity
Vygotsky’s view
- Stresses external influences of cognitive development
- Social construction
- Mentors aid in guiding through steps of learning
- Learning motivated by need for social interaction
Issues with developmental research
- Relying on subjective interpretation
- Cannot assume children perceive instructions like adults
- Tasks are too arbitrary and out of context
What is adolescence?
- Period between childhood and adulthood
- Period of physical changes related to general maturity (Puberty)
- Age between 10-19 according to WHO (World Health Organisation)
- Different answer depending on time and culture
Is adolescence a distinct stage in development? 3 reasons
- Specific behaviours (e.g. risk-taking, peer influence and self-consciousness) – universal across cultures
- Adolescent period in non-human animals – during that period, animals exhibit similar behaviours to human adolescents (e.g. risk taking, novelty seeking)
- Evident across history (e.g. ‘lacking in sexual self-restraint, passionate and impulsive’ – Aristotle 384-322 B.C.)
Overview of adolescent egocentrism
(Elkind 1966)
- Ability to engage in abstract thinking, recognise other people’s mental states and perspectives
- Egocentrism in childhood: oblivious to other people’s views
- Egocentrism in adolescence: aware of other people’s view but assume own views are universal
What are the 6 features of Elkind’s adolescent egocentrism?
- Focus on mental life becomes excessive – awareness that can reflect upon thoughts and feelings. Become more aware of one’s own inner world and extreme preoccupation with one’s thoughts and feelings
- Imaginary audience – a false belief that others are scrutinising you and are observing everything about you the way you do. Could be negative or positive (adolescent as the centre of attention)
- Illusion of transparency – feeling that everyone knows what you are thinking/feeling. Overestimate the degree that others can ‘read’ you and illusion that inner states and feeling ‘leak out’ and can easily be detected
- Self consciousness – individuals feel shame or seek privacy due to the constant feeling of being observed or criticised
- Personal fable and private god – belief that one is special/chosen and feeling that are placed on earth to fulfil a special mission. Preferential relationship with a private god that will protect one from harm
- Risk-taking – Involved in risk-taking behaviours and assume one cannot be harmed as they have a special status (substance abuse, dangerous activities and unprotected sex)