Topic 1: Introduction to Developmental Psychology Flashcards
What is Developmental psychology?
The study of continuity and change across the lifespan
What are the two main objectives in developmental psychology?
- To accurately describe the significant psychological transitions between states of stability that occur over a lifetime.
- To explain the nature of those changes in terms of mechanisms.
What is cognition?
the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses.
What is the nature vs nurture argument?
The naive distinction about whether development is genetically determined or dependent on the environment.
Who supported the nature side?
Plato - born with innate knowledge of world and how they need to develop
Chomsky - born with innate knowledge of language structure
Who supported the nurture side?
John Locke - child mind has no innate knowledge, must discover and develop on their own
William James - ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’
What are the two types of developmental change?
Quantitative - the amount or quantity of change
Qualitative - the type or quality of change
What’s an example of a quantitative and qualitative change?
Quant - An increase in the number of words an infant can say
Qual - the emergence of their ability to produce new sentences
What kind of periods does developmental change go through?
Periods of stability and instability
What are the different ways in which periods of change can be graphed?
- continuous development function (increasing/decreasing ability) - quantitative change.
- discontinuous/step-like function - qualitative change.
- Inverted U-shaped curve - get worse before better
- Upright U-shaped curve - get better before get worse e.g. memory
- subsets of qualitative change - Atypical development: delayed (quantitative), deviation (qualitative)
Example of continuous developmental change?
- weight and height gain throughout childhood - increasing function
- loss of functions e.g. losing ability to discriminate phonemes in a foreign language - decreasing function
Example of discontinuous step or stage-like developmental change?
They reflect the combination of periods of stability and change. Most aspects of development follow this pattern as development shows qualitative and quantitative change.
Example of inverted u-shaped developmental change?
attention, memory, speed of processing - these steadily increase through childhood then decline in old age.
Example of upright u shaped developmental change?
infant has stepping reflex that is present at birth but then drops out after a few months to re-emerge as part of mature walking.
- more unusual change - reflect decline in some function that then re-emerges later on.
What are the two types of developmental designs?
- Longitudinal research - based on a representative sample of children who are then studied repeatedly over time. use tool called ‘repeated measure’.
- Cross-sectional research - based on groups of children who represent a cross section of the population
