WKS 2.0 - FOR STUDENTS - Developmental Psychology

Themes:

• Explain the nature and purpose of theories in developmental psychology

• Discuss the impact of early experience in the womb on development, including the concept of “sensitive periods”

• Describe normative development of children across a range of domains, including:

  • Physical and motor development
  • Cognitive development Primarily: We use Longitudinal Design for accurate developmental psychology. It is a type of study which takes Data from a cohort periodically to make inferences. Changes over time.

Watch out for:

Common Fallacies when Studying Developmental Psychology

The Post-Hoc Fallacy. -> A comes before B, therefore A must cause B. Or All Serial Killers drank milk, therefore all Milk Drinkers are Serial Killers. Or a more common one would be, I ate X and got a stomache ache after, so it must be X.

Occam’s Razor -> Does a simpler explanation fit data well

Bi-directional Influences

The idea that human development is a two-way street. A parent will affect the child, the child will affect the parent, the parent will then affect the child in a different way.

Uni-directional Psychology do tell part of the story, but its always better to have both.

Cross-Sectional Designs

-> Data collected from many different people at a single point in time, observe the variables without influencing them -> Produces Cohort Effects -> Participant circumstances are varied -> Not experimental designs and cant be cause-effect

-> Pros: Straightforward Data, Cheaper in Cost, Comparative

1.0 Conception

Prenatal (Prior to Birth) Sperm to Egg -> Zygote — Germinal Stage -> Blastocyst (Lump of identical cells) -> Embryo -> 2nd to 8th Week development of major organs -> 9th Week Fetus

2.0 - Sensitive Periods

Emrbyonic Period is most Sensitive -> Also highly likely mom dont know they preggo

Fetal Development Obstacles

1. Teratogens -> Environmental Factors influencing prenatal development. Eg: Xrays, Anxiety/Depression, Alcohol Etc. -> Timing is also important
2. Genetic Disorders -> Eg: Down Syndrome, missing a chromosome or random errors in cell division
3. Premature Birth -> Delays in cognitive and physical development fewer than 36 weeks of gestation. Viability point is 25 weeks

3.0 - Motor Development

1. Sucking Reflex -> Built in feature.

Reflexes are built in but development is deeper. Takes a lot of physical adjustment and brain firing Neurons to explain how infants learn how to move. Its no wonder it takes 2 Years for them to learn how to run.

But there are also cultural practices which play a role in motor movement:

Eg: Wrapping cloth around baby would slow down motor development but they sleep sounder.

Some tribes in Africa stretch infants.

Hormones and puberty -> Reach physical peak in early 20s.

Cognitive and physical decline after -> Many of the changes we attribute to aging are just diseases correlated to age eg Heart or Arthritis etc which invariably produces physical decline.

4.0 Cognitive Development

Many different cognitive models:

But they differ in three essential ways

1. Stagelike vs continuous understanding -> Sudden spurts in knowledge vs continuous improvement
2. domain general vs specific -> cross cutting changes in a child’s development that affect everything at once vs skills which independently develop at different rates eg language, reasoning, counting
3. Principal source of learning -> Social, Biology, physical experience.

Piaget -> Stage based cognitive development.

4.1 Assimilation and Accommodation

Absorbing new experience -> Assimilation Alteration of schema to acommodate new experience -> Acommadation

He calls this process equillibration -> Where there is a balnace between new experiences and what we already know or think we know

Piaget emphasized that at each stage, children think in qualitatively different ways. Their cognitive development is not just about acquiring more knowledge but involves changes in the way they understand and interact with the world.

4.2 Piaget’s Stages of Development

1. Sensorimotor -> Physical interactions with the world and remembering other objects, lack object permeance -> Out of sight out of mind
2. Preoperational (2 - 7) -> Construct mental representations through drawing, pretending a banan is a phone, understanding of imaginary roles. Is egocentric
3. Concrete Operational (7-11) -> Organizational Tasks, performing mental operations for physical tasks, sorting etc, still need physical experiences
4. Formal Operations (adolescence) -> Hypothetical reasoning and understanding of logical concepts

Although it is somewhat reasonable to assume, it is also inaccurate. According to numerous studies, much of psychological development appear to be continuous.

We use the scientific method to refute and debate his claim.

1). Falsifiability -> Some kids are smarter in certain cognitive domains than others -> Piaget then rebutted “Horizontal decalge” which are special cases -> But its inconsistent with his theory.

2). Replicability -> Very difficult to replicate the developmental progression and especially since he asked kids to explain what they were thinking.

But he did discover accurately

• children were different from adults
• learning is an active processes
• underlying certain cognitive processes

4.3 Vygotsky

4.4 Theories of Cognitive development

1. General Cognitive Accounts -> The more general ones are acquired rather than innate knowledge and believe learning is gradual
2. Sociocultural Accounts -> Experience based learning and focusing on how a child interacts with the social world as how they develop
3. Modular Account -> Domain-Specific learnig , seperate spheres of knowledge in different domains.

5.0 Social Development

Early infantile attachments:

1. Imprinting -> WIth human development, we “imprint” or form tight bonds with whoeveer took care of us the most

Typical attachment styles of infants:

1. Secure (60%) -> Infant becomes upset when parent leaves and when returns, happy. Solid source of comfort and support
2. Insecure-Avoidant -> Indifference
3. Insecure-Anxious -> Panic and mixed when she leaves but when return trys to get away..?
4. Disorganized -> Confused and dazed

4 types of parenting

• Authoritarian -> Strict, punishing when they dont respond appropriately to parental demands
• Permissive -> Lots of love and super lenient
• Authoritative -> Mix of both
• Neglectful -> Gone to get milk

6.0 Moral Development

Moral Understanding could be traced to fear -> Associate right with reward and Wrong with Punishment. We then fear the moral judgement of parents and authrity figures, then we fear our own moral udgement as we get older. Thus responsibiliity

-> Children below 12 would judge Objective responsibility -> Above would develop subjective responsibility

Kohlberg believed there were three stages of Moral Development

1. Preconventional -> Basic punishment and reward
2. Conventional -> Societal value
3. Postconventional -> Fundamental human rights