Developmental Semester 1 Week 1: Introduction And Research Methods Flashcards
Define developmental psychology
The study of how we change physically, cognitively, behaviourally, and socially over time due to biological, individual and environmental differences.
What is the organismic world view?
The idea that people are inherently active and continually interacting with the environment, and therefore helping to shape their own development. Piaget’s theory is an example of this world view.
What is the mechanistic world view?
The idea that a person can be represented as being like a machine (such as a computer), which is inherently passive until stimulated by the environment.
What are the developmental stages?
Prenatal - Conception to birth
Infancy - Birth to 2 years
Preschool - 2 to 4 years
Childhood - 5 to 12 years
Adolescence - 12 to 18 years
Young adulthood - 18 to 40 years
Middle adulthood- 40 to 65 years
Late adulthood - 65 years and over
What are the two types of development that developmental psychologists are interested in?
Ontogenetic development - the development of an individual over their lifetime.
Microgenetic development - changes that occur over very brief periods of time.
What are the three domains of development?
Physical, cognitive, and psychosocial
What are the types of changes studied in developmental psychology?
Quantitative changes - easily measurable and quantifiable aspects of development
Qualitative changes - changes in functions or processes
Stability - not all development is change. Some processes remain stable and are more enduring characteristics such as temperament.
What are the two factors that affect development?
Nature - genetics and maturation (biologically determined development)
Nurture - the environment including parents/caregivers, family, friends, socio-culture, nutrition, physical activity, and institutions.
Continuity vs discontinuity
Continuity - development is a series of gradual small continuous changes
Discontinuity - development involves abrupt transformations or discontinuous stages
What are the steps of the scientific method?
Observation, hypothesis, test hypothesis, analyses, report the findings.
What should we consider when studying development?
- reliability and validity
- When does the change actually occur?
- WEIRD samples: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
Methods from studying change
- cross-sectional studies
- longitudinal studies
- microgenetic studies
- results can show something different depending on which method you use
Cross-sectional studies
- children of different ages studied at the same time
🟢 Strengths - least time consuming
🔴 Weaknesses - can’t look at how individual children change, just averages
Longitudinal studies
- the same children are tested repeatedly, at multiple time points, as they grow older.
🟢 Strengths - Can look at both individual change and across children change.
🔴 Weaknesses - Intensive to run and costs a lot of money and time and dropout rates can be high. Children may also show change just because they are getting practice on the tasks (practice effects).
Microgenetic studies
- an extreme version of a longitudinal study where changes are examined as they occur. This involves individual children being tested repeatedly over a short period of time.
🟢 Strengths - Very precise descriptions are taken due to the high intensity of measurements.
🔴 Weaknesses - Extremely intensive to run and so it often only results in small samples (small number of children). Practice effects.
