Lecture 1 Flashcards
What are the three main areas that developmental psych is used for? Give an example through Lily’s kid learning to read.
- to describe development → to identify what
development looks like; to
understand what humans at different
ages do, think, feel, etc. The process of stability or change. What do people at different ages think or feel about things? her kid is trying to read. Look at reading from a description perspective. What does acquiring reading look like. How does it look different at different ages etc. - to Explain development→ to determine what factors
contribute to development. In the process of learning to read what is it that helps us get there. How do we explain how it is that they can learn to read. What are the mechanisms at play? - to Apply development → to utilize findings for
programs, policies, advice that can
improve the lives of children and
youth. taking our knowledge about reading development and putting that in schools and creating programs that utilize this research.
DEA acronym
What are the 2 major approaches to looking at development? Does everyone agree on this? Do these 2 approaches ever interact? example?
there tend to be 2 major approaches for approaching development. One is looking at broad stages of development to conception.
Here at UBC we separate our courses by stage of development.
stage 1: prenatal and infancy
stage 2. early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence
stage 3. early/emerging adulthood, adulthood
there are always debates on where the boundaries of these stages might be.
the other approach is by looking at different domains of development. Asking about physical development (brain changes, neurobiology etc), cognitive development (thinking, memory, attention, language etc.), social emotional (feeling, emotions, social relationships). this class is approached in a domain way but these still do all interact with each other. It is hard to disentagle one type of development from the other.
a good example of this is puberty. The way you interact with the world and the way you physically look changes, your brain changes, this impacts things like peer interactions, romantic interests, sexual interests, cognitive development (how we think about the world, how we think abotu other people0). They do often all intertwine together.
What is the nature nurture debate/question that underlies dev psych?
- Do humans enter the world with innate biases and tuning? Or is who we are determined by our experiences?
this is the classic. a lot of it comes down to the question of when we develop do we enter the world with innate biases , are you who you are from birth? do you have the abilities that we have innately at birth? is who we are determined by our experiences? are we learning things through our interactions with the world. This relates to trying to understand serial killers, are they born that way or made? Also helpful to think about aggression, is aggression born, are babies aggressive or is it something we learn through our interactions with other people. This is something philosophers etc have been debating for a long time.
Who are the major figures associated with the nature/nurture debate?
John Locke (1632-1704):
John Locke talked about children as a tabla rasa. A blank slate that will be written on through experiences This is a very nurture side of things.
John Jaques Rousseau (1712-1788):
Reausseau said we are born as noble savages. We are born innocent, we are born good and/or bad. There is a an innate tuning and will develop based on this nature.
Dive into the arguments on either side of the nature/nurture debate. Do we have to treat it as a dichotomy? What is the current view of the debate?
- Nature: Biological endowment; genes
now when we talk about nature we are usually talking about our biology. Chromosomes, genes etc. All the cells in our bodt have 23 pairs of chromosomes that are each made up of our DNA and the codes in our genes can lead to th creation of proteins that contribute to our development and how we get these chromosomes and genes are passed down to us from our biological parents. So now when we are thinking about nature we think about how these biological pieces contribute to our development.
- Nurture: Physical & social environment
when we talk about nurture we tend to be thinking about everything beyond your biology. Your physical environment. Your social environment. Could be pollution in the air around you, the weather where you grew up.
- Current view: nature and nurture
interplay with each other to influence
development - Example: epigenetics- changes in gene
expression not caused by DNA
in developmental psychology we often see this debate, this push and pull. Now we don’t really focus on the binary of this anymore we more think about how these things interact. Later we will talk about intelligence. Like sure there are genetic and environmental influences but how do they interact wirh each other. We also have a lot of study in the field of epigenetics now. Like our gene expression can be changed by things other than our DNA. Genes don’t always automatically make proteins. There are things that contribute to whether or not that gene is actually turned on or off. BUT there are also a lto of environmental influences. Your diet, what you eat, stress, medication, parenting etc. All of that gets in to the idea of epigentics. Our genes might be a recipe that help contribute to our development. BUT the environments contributes to how we do that recipe.
