Developmental Psychology Flashcards
Developmental Psychology
- Study of how (and why) physical, cognitive and emotional abilities develop throughout childhood
- How the mind develops in early years and what happens in development to make your mind change
Importance of studying development
- Children’s abilities are very important precursor to what you will be able to do as an adult
- Interesting to isolate when things that we do automatically do as adults immerge in childhood (e.g. lie)
- Helps understand why disorders like autism is different from someone who has dyslexia
Infant development begin
- When children are in Utero
- Gestation: roughly 40 weeks
Infant development: by birth
- Brain is similar in structure to an adult brain
- Brain is only about 1/4 in size compared to adult brain
- Brains neurons are not fully myelinated or connected
Myelination and synaptogenesis is
- The forming of synapses between neurons
Myelination and synaptogenesis continues
- Until about 2 years
Consequences of a synapses not being used regularly
- If after the age of 2 the synapse is not regularly used then its trimmed away throughout development
Neural Plasticity
- the ability of the brain to form and maintain synapses
- Diminishes with age
Child brain damage or harmful experience (infant development)
- Will have every lasting consequences
- Damage can occur before the child is born
Teratogens
- Substances which cause atypical development for a child if they are exposed to them in utero
Types of Teratogens
- Alcohol and tobacco
Teratogens in pregnancy
- Have an adverse effect on development
Example studies on Teratogens
- Perera et al. (2002) = air pollutions leads to genetic mutation in newborns
- Latini et al. (2003) = exposure to PVC elements can shorten pregnancy leading to early development
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD)
- A more specific type of teratogen is Alcohol
- The consequences of Alcohol on a child in utero is had been grouped into FASD
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Potential outcomes
- Can’t say what is going to happen as there are many potential outcomes
- The baby can experience physical, mental, and behavioural impairments
Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Cognitive and Behavioural impairments
- Infancy: Longer reaction times
- Pre-schoolers: Decreased attention, hyperactivity
- Childhood: Learning problems, memory deficits
- Adulthood: Impaired problem solving and higher rates of substance dependence
Psychologist who invented the stage theory
- Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
- Constructivist
- Founding researcher for developmental Psychology
- Wanted to know how children formed knowledge, how they learn and how people get to know things
Stage theory
- Like Sigmund Freud’s developments from the oral/anal/phallic stages of childhood
- Children go through a series of stages through their cognitive development
Jean Piaget formation of the Stage Theory
- Tracked at what age children would make similar mistakes and at what age they started doing specific patterns of behaviour = forming Stage Theory from this
Piaget argument
- That you can track at what stage a child is at by asking them to do certain things
Piaget view on children
- As a progressing through a series of cognitive stages towards adulthood
All stages of the Stage Theory
- Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
- Preoperational (2-7 years)
- Concrete (7-12 years)
- Formal Operational (Beyond 12 years)
Sensorimotor Stage (Stage Theory)
- 0-2 years
- Infants can sense things and can move their bodies
- Little cognition between the two (can’t think yet)
- Key cognition ability that children can’t do is object permanence
Object Permanence
- The idea that things exists in the world, even when we cannot perceive them
- The concept that even though you can’t see something, you still know it’s there.
- Recognise that objects permanently exists (water bottle example)
Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error
- You ask a child to search for an object hidden at a set location a number of times
- Then change the location where the object is hidden
- Children will search for the object in the original location even if they have seen it being moved to a new location
Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error results
- Under the age of 9 months, children fail at this experiment
- Found that children can’t separate the location of an object from the object itself
Sensorimotor Stage: The A-not-B error: Infants display
- Perseverative reaching
- Usually until they are 10-12 months old
Perseveration
- When infants persist with a response, even when this response is no longer appropriate
- Piaget argued that this was because infants did not understand object permanence
The end of sensorimotor stage
- Around 2 years
- Infants begin to use mental imagery
- They understand things exist independently of themselves and can exist in different location
- Children begin to understand symbols (Things which represent or stand for other things)
- They are starting to relate what they see with what they know = moving onto next stage
Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory)
- 2-7 years
- Children still struggle with egocentrism
- Children are biased by their perceptions and cannot use ‘operations’
Egocentrism
- an ability for children to see/understand things from another person’s point of view
Egocentrism ≠ Selfishness
- Egocentrism= A cognitive inability to understand how things appear to other people
- Selfishness= Attitude of always wanting things your own way
Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget argues
- Until the age of 7 children can’t associate what they know and what they see from what they believe other people know and see
Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task
- A child is asked to sit in front of a doll
- There are 3 mountains on the table in front of the child
- The child is given a series of pictures and is asked to say which of these pictures best describes the view that the doll has
Preoperational Stage (Stage Theory): Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task: Results
- Found that until the age of about 6/7, children couldn’t do this task
- Still suffer from egocentrism in their perspective
Operation
- A set of logical mental rules that can be applied to solve a problem
Water in different size jugs task: Piaget argument
- In order to pass this task, you need to be able to preform the operation of conservation
Conservation
- Understanding that changes to the way something looks does not necessarily mean the underlying reality is different
Preoperational Stage: Children’s failures
- Children do not yet use operations, and so fail when judging things like quantity and perspective because they are biased by the ways things look
Concrete Operational Stage (Stage Theory)
- 7-12 years
- Children begin to be able to solve problems and preform operations, providing that these problems are concrete (real in some way)
Formal Operational Stage (Stage Theory)
- Beyond 12 years
Children preform operations in systematic, rigorous ways, and employ the use of hypothetical situations - We learn how to conduct experiments
- You can use hypothetical scenarios and use them to imagine ways to solve problems
Formal Operational Stage (Stage Theory): Big difference
- The way you solve problems has changed
- You no longer need to focus on visible problems, but can go beyond what you see (scientific reasoning in abstract problems)
Constructivism
- A child does not blindly absorb information from the world but actively constructs their understanding of the world
- Piaget believes children are constructivists
Stages of development illustrates
- A learner’s shift from an egocentric point of view to an objective, decentred view of the world
Piaget Theory: Criticism
- Sometimes known as ‘Piaget Bashing’
- When you take an ability
- You see what age Piaget said children could do that ability
- Then knock a few years off it
Issues with Piaget’s ideas
- He did not consider all the influences that affect children’s learning
- He tended to measure things in limited ways
- Most of his developments he observed focussed on the child by themselves
Vast majority of children learn by
- Learn from their peers and observing other people
Psychologist who had a different approach to Piaget
- Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)
- Russian
- Social constructivist
Social constructivist
- Children construct knowledge through interactions with other people; learning is guided by communication and relationships with others
- Type of support you get from others will effect how well you will do something and learn
Difference between Piaget and Vygotsky about how children learn
- Piaget tended to think that if children cant succeed the task then they wont do it as they don’t have the ability
- Vygotsky said that maybe if you gave the child a bit of support they will be able to do it
Vygotsky’s ZOPED stand for
- Zone of Proximal Development (ZOPED)
Vygotsky’s ZOPED
- The difference between what a child can do by themselves and what they can achieve with adult supervision or with peers