Lecture 1 Flashcards
The study of developmental psychology
* 4 bullet points
- usually involves measuring and observing children’s behaviour
- observes changes in human behaviour overtime
- often has to distinguish or explain interactions/ influences between multiple aspects of development
- physical/ emotional/ social/ cognitive and communicative development
areas of development: adults and children
- easy to conceptualise an area of development from an adults perspective but not a child’s
- this causes issues for validity of methodologies and conclusions drawn from data
- children cannot communicate the same as adults
how to measure a child’s communication overtime?
- comparing young kids to older ones
- assessing same child over long time period
- individual differences will disrupt the results*
2 key principles of developmental psychology
- DESCRIBE (what develops?)
2. EXPLAIN (How does it develop?)
describing development
physical development
- reflexes/ sensory input
- brain
- motor skills
innate influences
- child temperament
- genetic primers
what is physical development?
- enables us to explore the world, thus provides and important foundation for subsequent psychological development
- genetic influences are important as our temperament explains differences in our behaviour and ability to form relationships with others
what is emotional development?
- forming a relationship with your caregiver
- processing and regulating emotions
- understanding the self
in early childhood: we rely on our parents to regulate our emotions for us
what is social development?
- the influences of parenting and family (socio-cultural context)
- peers, friendships and intimate relationships
- the social world provides many benefits
- also raises the problem of risk factors and whether we can protect against them
what is cognitive development?
- how we process and understand the world
- interpretive
- communicative
- reasoning and problem-solving
- social cognitive development/ moral understanding
for a developmental psychology theory to be useful, it needs to be able to predict change and explain how the change occurred
major themes:
- Nature v Nurture
- individual differences
- N v N
- gene-environment correlations/ interplay - I.D
- substantial variation in kids of same age
- genetic differences
- differences in treatment
- different choice of environments
- role of risk factors/ resilience
DIVORCE: effects Childs self-esteem/ conduct/ adjustment
major themes:
- the active child
- continuity vs. discontinuity
- critical periods
- active child
- children shape their own development
- bidirectional relationships exists between child and their environment - continuity vs discontinuity
- are kids of different ages qualitatively different?
- stage theories - critical periods
- more “sensitive” periods
e. g. Genie could still develop aspects of language/ motor skills after all
what is the problem with case studies?
case studies are non-generalizable extreme examples, which while providing a rare opportunity to examine deprivation
CANNOT EXTRAPOLATE FINDINGS
major themes:
6. the sociocultural context
- cultural universals or context dependent
- effect of ecological systems
- socio-economic context
the zone of proximal development is a good example of how a more knowledgeable other can influence what a child is able to achieve, thus shaping their developement
methods of testing in developmental psychology
5 answers
- interviews
- questionnaires
- observations
- hypothetical scenarios
- lab tests/ tasks
designs in developmental psychology
need to be able to predict change across age groups (identifying developmental change)
also within age groups (understand individual differences)
