U1 AOS1: DP1 The Complexity of Psychological Development

Psychological development

is the development of human beings' emotional, cognitive, and social capabilities and functioning over the course of the lifespan

Heredity

involves the transmission of characteristics from biological parents to their offspring via genes

The biological perspective is the view

that heredity primarily determines our psychological development.

Attachment

describes the psychological bond between a child and their caregiver during development.

Attachment is formed

during infancy, particularly in the first 12 months of life.

Attachment has a considerable

influence on a person's emotional development throughout the lifespan.

Bowlby's 4 characteristics of attachment

•Proximity maintenance
•Safe haven
•Secure base
•Separation distress

Proximity maintenance

the infants desire to be near the person(s) to whom it is attached

Safe haven

the ability to return to the attachment figure for comfort and safety when scared or feeling threatened

Secure base

the ability to perceive the attachment figure as a base of security from which the infant can explore the environment

Separation distress

anxiety experienced when the attachment figure leaves or is absent.

Without attachment?

Emotional, social and cognitive
problems occur:
• Anxiety, depression and anger

Secure Attachment

• Infants feel safe, showing a balance between dependence and exploration.
• Use the caregiver as a safe base from which to explore an unfamiliar environment
• Show some distress and decrease exploration when their caregiver departs
• About 65% of one-year-olds are securely attached.

Avoidant Attachment

• Infant does not seek closeness or contact with the caregiver and treats them much like a stranger
• Rarely cries when caregiver leaves the room and ignores them upon their return
• About 20% of one-year-olds are in this category

Anxious/Resistant Attachment

• Infant appears anxious when their caregiver is near.
• Become very upset when separated from the caregiver.
• When the caregiver returns, the infant cries to be picked up, then squirms or fights to get free, as though they are unsure about what they really want.
• Thought to result from caregivers who aren't very responsive to their infant's needs.
• About 12% of one-year-olds in this category

Harry Harlow - Conclusions

Harlow concluded that contact comfort was more important than feeding in the formation of an infant rhesus monkey's attachment to its mother.

Strange Situation Test

A parent-infant "separation and reunion" procedure, testing the security of a child's attachment

Harry Harlow

Studied theory of attachment in infant rhesus monkeys

Harry Harlow - Why use monkeys?

• most closely related to humans behaviorally, anatomically, and physiologically.
• Nonhuman primates can offer tremendous insights into human development.
• Rhesus monkeys share over 90% of their genes with those of humans

The view that the environment

in which an individual is raised and lives is primarily responsible for determining what they will become.

Environment

refers to a combination of all the objects and events to which we are exposed throughout our lifetime

interactionist approach
nature vs nurture

trying to understand how heredity and environmental factors combine or interact in influencing our thoughts, feelings and behaviour

Fraternal twins

- develop from 2 sets of egg and sperm
- same sex or one of each

identical twins

- develop from same egg and sperm
- same sex

Development

is a combination of both nature and nurture.

Developmental Norms.

We develop certain skills and abilities at a set time

sensitive period

is a period of time when an individual is more responsive ('sensitive') to certain influences from their environment

Emotional development

refers to the way our emotions change and develop over time with a close focus on attachment

Attachment theory:

states that an infant needs a secure relationship with an adult caregiver in order to have healthy emotional development

Attachment Target

Infants cannot discriminate, so behaves similarly with everyone
After that infants usually form a strong attachment with one particular person (attachment target)
They can form attachments with multiple people

Bowlby considered attachment to be important for two reasons:

1. Bond forms the foundation for healthy emotional development
2. The bond has an 'evolutionary' function, which improves infant's chances of survival.

Bowlby proposed infants form attachments with those people

most closely involved with them, usually the main caregiver.

Factors influencing attachment

Parenting style
• Consistently available, sensitive, and responsive caregivers tend to have babies that are securely attached
Infant temperament
• Difficult
• Easy

Cognitive Development

The process of acquiring intelligence and increasingly advanced thought and problem-solving ability from infancy to adulthood.

Stages of Development

Stage 1: Sensorimotor (0-2 Years)
Stage 2: Pre-Operational (2-7 Years)
Stage 3: Concrete Operational (7-12 Years)
Stage 4: Formal Operational (12+ Years)

Piaget suggested that at each stage

there are certain cognitive limitation as well as specific major achievements.
These achievements would signal the end of one stage, and the child's movement to the next stage of cognitive development.

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 Years)

infants learn about their world primarily through their senses (sensori-) or through physical action or movement (motor).

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 Years)
Key Achievements:

At approximately 9 months, children develop:
OBJECT PERMANENCE
GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOUR

object permanence

• Understanding that objects still exist when they cannot be sensed (seen, felt, heard)

GOAL-DIRECTED BEHAVIOUR

• Behaviour carried out with a specific purpose in mind

Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7 Years)

Children begin to think symbolically (will use words or pictures to represent objects),but thinking remains very intuitive (can't think very abstractly)

Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7 Years)
Key achievements:

• Egocentrism
• Animism
• Centration
• Transformation

Egocentrism

Children are unable or have difficulty seeing things from another person's perspective

Animism

The belief that everything has a consciousness
e.g. toys have thoughts and feelings.

Centration

The child can only focus on one quality or feature of an object at a time

Transformation

A child can understand that something can change from one state (form or structure) to another but not understand/explain the process.

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 Years)

Characterised by a clear understanding of cause and effect.
Thinking revolves around what they know and what they can experience through their senses; that is, what is concrete.

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 Years)
Key achievements:

• Reversibility
• Conservation
• Classification

Reversibility

Ability to follow a line of reasoning back to its original starting point.

Conservation

Idea that an object does not change its weight, mass, volume or area when the object changes in shape or appearance.

Classification

Ability to organise information (things or events) into categories based on common features that sets them apart from other classes or groups (categories).

Stage 4: Formal Operational Stage (12+ Years)

Characterised by evidence of higher order thinking

Stage 4: Formal Operational Stage (12+ Years)
Key Achievements:

• Logical thinking
• Abstract thinking

Logical Thinking

Able to develop strategies to solve problems, identify solutions to problems, develop hypotheses, and systematically test solutions.

Abstract Thinking

A way of thinking that does not rely on being able to see or visualise things in order to understand concepts

Piaget proposed the 4 stages were sequential. However,

individuals may pass through at different rates.

Stages of Development - Criticisms

- Children are getting 'smarter', and may be achieving these stages earlier today than in the 1970's
- May have overestimated children's language abilities - they didn't understand the task
Sample size - primarily based on observations of his own children

Later Piaget state that formal operations was influenced by

experience

adoptive studies

assess hereditary influence by examining the resemblance between adopted children and both their biological and their adoptive parents

twin studies

assess hereditary influence by comparing the resemblance of identical twins and fraternal twins with respect to a trait

Ethical Guidelines in Psychology

• Confidentiality

• Voluntary participation

• Informed consent procedures

• Withdrawal rights

• Use of deception in research

• Debriefing

These guidelines:

PRIMARILY: ensure the wellbeing of participants is safeguarded. The

overriding principle being that there is no physiological or psychological

harm done to participants.

SECONDARILY: promote research that will benefit the community or

humankind (maximise beneficence)

Role of the experimenter

It is the role of the experimenter to ensure that the no harm principle is upheld when designing and conducting psychological experiments.

No harm principle

Experimenters must ensure that participants do not experience physical and psychological harm ae result of their involvement in research.

Confidentiality

• The participants must not be identified in any way in terms of their test results, their involvement in the study, or any other confidential data.

Voluntary Participation

Participants have the right to refuse to take part in the study. They must only consent to partake on a voluntary basis and must not be placed under any pressure to take part in the study, nor should they be ‘conned’ or tricked into it by deception.

Informed Consent

Participants must be given adequate information about their rights, the risks and the procedure, before agreeing to take part in the study.

Withdrawal Rights

• Participants have the right to leave the study at any stage, regardless of the possible effects on the results.

Deception

misleading participants about the true purpose of a study or the events that will actually transpire

• Participants must be debriefed when the study is complete.

Beneficence

The researcher has the responsibility to maximise possible benefits of

the research and minimise potential risks, harm or discomfort to the

research participants

Personality

refers to an individual’s unique pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that are relatively stable over time and across situations.

personality incorporates

attitudes, values, morals, motivations, wishes, loves, fears and so on...

personality theory

is an approach to describing and explaining the origins of personality, focussing on how people are similar, how they differ and why every individual is unique.

The underlying belief of psychodynamic theories of personality

is that personality is a result of unconscious psychological conflicts and how effectively these are resolved by the individual.

These conflicts

have their origins in childhood experiences during which an individual’s instinctive urges and society’s view of what is ‘acceptable’ behaviour often clash.

Psychoanalysis

focused on the roles of unconscious conflicts and motivations in understanding and explaining behaviour and mental processes

Freud suggested the mind is very much like

an iceberg – most of it is beneath the surface, hidden from ourselves.

The Unconscious

Storage place for all the information that is not acceptable to the conscious mind’

● “Skeletons in the closet”

● Unacceptable thoughts, feelings, experiences, images, impulses and ideas

are buried

Three components of personality

Id

Ego

Superego

Id

operates on the pleasure principle represents biological needs e.g. sex, sleep, hunger

Ego

operates on the reality principle. Realistic, logical and orderly.

■ Mediating role, operates on the reality

Superego

operates on the moral principle, judgemental

■ What is right/wrong?

■ Main function: block urges of the id, persuade the ego to be moralistic

According to Freud, a ‘balanced’ personality can develop only if

there is a balance between the id, ego and superego, and if one is not more dominant than another.

If the Id is stronger,

the developing personality will be self-centred, childish, sulky and demanding.

If the Ego is more powerful,

the personality will be logical and practical but not very playful or spontaneous

If the Superego is overdeveloped

the personality will be more strict, moralistic, judgemental, have constant feelings of guilt and will not be very social

According to Freud, our personality is fully formed by the time we are about

5 or 6 years old.

Personality development is sequential and progressed through a series of five stages which Freud called

psycho-sexual stages.

An important role of the ego is to

protect itself against anxiety (an uncomfortable or unpleasant psychological feeling)

defence mechanism

the unconscious process by which the ego defends or protects itself against anxiety arising from unresolved internal conflicts.

Freud proposed that defence mechanisms reduce anxiety by

by denying, falsifying or distorting reality at an unconscious level.

The ego interprets the events in a way which changes reality so that we can believe

there is no need to feel anxious

Defence mechanisms types

● Denial

● Suppression
● Displacement

● Regression

Denial

You completely reject the thought or feeling.

Suppression

You are vaguely aware of the thought or feeling, but try to hide it.

Displacement

You redirect your feelings to another target that is less threatening.

Personality tests

An assessment device used to evaluate or measure aspects of personality, such as factors (dimensions) and specific traits

Personality tests types

1. Inventories

● Self-report

● Online tests (Costa and McCrae’s Big 5 Test)

2. Projective tests

Projective tests

A personality test in which people are shown ambiguous images or neutral stimuli and asked to interpret them.

Looking for individuals unconscious wishes, desires, fears, thoughts, needs and any hidden aspects of personality.

Rorschach Inkblot Test simple

● Created by Hermann Rorschach in the 1920s

● 10 stimulus cards

● Used to describe mental illness/

personality

● Completed individually