DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Flashcards
the main themes of developmental psych?
NATURE VS NURTURE CONTINUITY VS DISCONTINUITY ACTIVITY VS PASSIVITY MECHANISMS OF CHANGE UNIVERSALITY VS CONTEXT SPECIFICITY INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES RESEARCH AND CHILDRENS WELFARE
NO CAT ACTUALLY MEOWS UNTIL I ROAR
What did Urie bronfenbrenner bring to developmental psych?
- that it could vary from culture to culture, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and from home to home.
- Bronfenbrenner formulated a model to describe environmental influences on development – a Bio-Ecological Model.
State the bio ecological model
Microsystems Meosystems Exosystems Macrosytems Chronosystems
How did bronfenbrenner explain his system?
Bronfenbrenner conceptualizes the environment as a set of nested structures, each inside another.
Each structure emphasizes a different level of influence.
The environmental forces at each level vary in effect on each child.
There is complex interconnectedness among the levels, which are called systems.
Psychoanalytic theories of developement
Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development
Learning theories of development
Watson and classical conditioning
Skinner and operant conditioning
Social learning theory and Bandura
Cognitive development theories
Piaget’s cognitive development theory
Vgotkskys sociocultural theory
information processing perspectives
Systems theories of development
Gottlieb and ethological and evolutionary theories
Bronfenbrenner and his bioecological model
Freuds psychoanalytic theory
.emphasised on early experiences and the discovery of ones unconscious
.there are 3 basic structures of personality; the id, the ego and the superego
Id, Superego and the ego
id - ruled by the pleasure principle and stands for ‘untamed passions’
superego - controls behaviours and develops morally
ego - stands for reason and good sense
Five stages to Freuds theory
oral 0-18 months anal18-36 months phallic 3-6 years latency 6-11 genital 11+
Erik sons theories of psychosocial development
his stages are characterised by a crisis or a task that individual must resolve to proceed into the next task otherwise their progression will be impeded
Eriksons stages (8)
trust vs mistrust (to develop trust 0-1)
autonomy vs shame (1-3 to feel supported not punished or ashamed)
initiative vs guilt (4-6 children learn from parents need a healthy balance)
industry vs inferiority (6 - puberty)
identity vs confusion (adolescence to early adulthood - one must understand themselves to progress happily)
intimacy vs isolation
generativity vs stagnation
integrity vs despair
weakness of both freud and eriksons theories?
they are testifiable
what is the main assumption of learning theories in development?
emphasise on the role of others and what is taught and internalised
Watson’s classical conditioning
- believed that childrens development is determined by their social environment e.g. parents
- proved this with his experiment Little Albert where he conditioned him to fear white fluffy objects by banging symbols to scare him
Skinners operant conditioning
- he believed that behaviour was under environmental control and changes in ones development are in response to contingencies of reinforcement
- we are reinforced to gain rewards and avoid ppunishment
Bandura
-demonstrated that children learn a response and reproduce this behaviour/he showed this through his BOBO doll experiment
What is vicarious reinforcement?
the tendency to imitate when the behaviour was rewarded
What is reciprocal determinism?
a person’s behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.
who are the cognitive theorists in development?
Piaget
Vygotsky
Information processing
assimilation and accomodation
assimilation - the individual deals with a new event by incorporating it into existing structures
accommodation = the individuals structures change to deal with a new event
Piaget’s stages of development (cog.)
sensori motor stage (0-2) by 2 years old they are performing internal actions and object permanence
- the pre operational stage (2-7 years old they begin to develop tools for logic thought where operations are internalised and can be manipulated and transformed and thus returned to their original form refer to the mountain task (egocentrism - all about their perception))
- concrete operations - logical thoughts are concreted/ decantation: freed from dependence on perceptually important features. they too can now reverse an action back to its point and develop the skill of conservation (samueal and bryant) )
- formal operations; they can now isolate variables, mentally manipulate
criticisms of piaget
little emphasis on the role of adults and environmental factors
underestimates young children’s reasoning abilities
Vygotskys theory in basic (sociocultural)
- cognitive growth is socially mediated activity/learning through others with knowledge
- importance of society and culture
- adults in society help the child by engaging them in meaningful activities
Information-processing theory
sees the human as a computer with an input and output/the mind is always changing
-info flows in - is operated on and flows out with answers and solutions etc
systems theories of development
ethology - evolution (e.g. predators)
- darwinism
- certain genes predispose individuals to behave that enhances survival
define imprinting within the systems theory
- is a process in which newborns of many species become attached to the mother at first sight and stay near
Gottlieb (studied evolution in psychology) - systems theories of development
- developed the epigenetic psychobiological systems perspective which assumes that development is the product of interacting biological and environmental forces
- genes do not dictate how development occurs they only participate along with environmental factors
how do genes and environment interact to produce particular outcomes?
through EPIGENESIS
What is heritability
a statistic that describes the proportion of observed variance in a population
- change in the variety within environments will alter the heritability environments
example of heritability
her edibility of number of fingers on one hand;
1) genetic determination of number of fingers on one hand is high
2) heritability (variance) of numbers being other than 5 is very low
nature/nurture and the 3 key elements of development
1 - genotype
2 - phenotype
3 - environment
1 - the genetic material and individual inherits
2 - phenotype - the observable expression of the genotype e.g. brown hair
3 - environment is all other aspects of than the genetic material itself that can play a role in our development