Psych 2021: Section 1 & 2

Development

Systematic continuities and changes between conception and death

Maturation

Hereditary influences on the aging process

Learning

Change in behaviour due to experience

Goals of Development

Describe, Explain, Optimize

Normative Development

Outlines the typical, universal sequence of milestones that characterize most individuals within a species

Ideographic Development

Highlights the unique, individual variations in the rate, extent, or direction of those changes, reflecting how personal differences shape a developmental trajectory

Child Development

A field of study devoted to understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence

Developmental Science

A larger, interdisciplinary field that includes all changes we experience throughout the life span

Domains of Development

Pyschical, cognitive, emotional, and social

Periods of Development

Prenatal, Infancy and Toddlerhood, Early Childhood, Middle Childhood, Adolescence, Emerging Adulthood

Theory

An orderly, integrated set of statements that describes. Explains, and predicts behavior. It helps us understand development and improve the welfare and treatment of children and depends on scientific verification.

Continuous Development

A process of gradually adding more of the same type of skills that were there to begin with (quantitative)

Discontinuous Development

A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times.

Stages

Qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development.

Nature-Nurture Controversy

A debate over the relative influence of genetic and environmental factors. The theory's position on nature and nurture affects how it explains individual differences. Theorists disagree on the question of stability versus plasticity.

Stability

Heredity and early experiences are key to establishing a lifelong pattern of behaviour

Plasticity

Development is open to change in response to influential experiences

Resilience

Ability to adapt effectively in the face of threat to development. Factors in resilience are personal characteristics, warm parental relationships, social support outside the immediate family, and community resources and opportunities.

Normative Approach

By G. Stanley Hall and Arnold Gesell, age-related averages of measures of behaviour taken on large numbers of individuals are computed to represent typical development

Psychoanalytic Perspective

Children move through stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations

Psychosexual Theory

By Sigmund Freud, ID, ego, and superego become integrated during 5 stages: Oral (birth - 1 year) Anal (1 -3 year) Phallic (3 - 6 years) Latency (6 - 11 years) Genital (adolescence)

Psychosocial Theory

By Erik Erikson, this theory emphasizes the ego’s positive contribution to development through these stages: Basic trust Vs. mistrust (birth - 1 year) Autonomy Vs. shame and doubt (1-3 years) Initiative Vs. guilt (3-6 years) Industry Vs. inferiority (6-11 years) Identity Vs. role confusion (adolescence) Intimacy Vs. isolation (emerging adulthood) Generativity Vs. stagnation (adulthood) Integrity Vs. despair (old age)

Behaviourism

Views directly observable events, stimuli and responses, as appropriate focus on study.

Social Learning Theory

By Albert Bandura, where modeling through imitation and observational learning is used as a powerful source of development

Social-Cognitive Approach

Posits that people learn behaviours by observing others, and that human behaviour is determined by a continuous, dynamic interaction between personal factors (thoughts and beliefs), behavioral factors, and environmental

Applied Behavior Analysis

Observations of relationships between behaviour and environmental events, followed by systematic changes based on conditioning and modeling

Cognitive-Developmental Theory

By Jean Piaget’s, children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world within these stages: Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years), Preoperational (2-7 years), Concrete operational (7-11 years), and Formal operational (11 years on)

Information Processing

Views the human mind as a symbol-manipulating system. From input to output, information is actively coded, transferred, and organized

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Studies the relationship between changes in the brain and the child's cognitive processing and behaviour patterns.

Developmental Social Neuroscience

Studies the relationship between changes in the brain and emotional and social development.

Ethology

Concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history

Imprinting

A rapid, innate learning process during a critical developmental period where an organism establishes a lifelong behavioral response, attachment, or identification with a specific object or figure

Critical Period

A specific, biologically determined window in early development during which the brain is uniquely sensitive to specific environmental stimuli. If the organism does not receive the appropriate input during this time, it may be impossible or highly difficult to develop those associated functions or skills later in life

Sensitive Period

Time span that is biologically optimal for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is especially responsive to environmental influences

Evolutionary Developmental Psychology

Seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as these competencies with age

Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky’s perspective, focusing on how culture (values, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group) is transmitted to the next generation

Ecological Systems Theory

Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem) of the surrounding environment. Urie Bronfenbrenner characterized his perspective as a bioecological model.

Dynamic Systems Perspective

View that the child's mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills

Hypothesis

A prediction drawn directly from a theory

Reliability

The consistency of results

Validity

How accurate the test is to the measure

Naturalistic Observation

Observation of behaviour in the natural environment

Structured Observation

Observation of behaviour in a laboratory, where conditions are the same for all participants

Clinical Interview

Type of self report, flexible interviewing procedure in which the investigator obtains a complete account of the participants thoughts

Structured interveiew

Self report instrument in which each participant is asked the same questions in the same way

Clinical/Case Study

Provides a full picture of a single individual's psychological functioning and includes interviews, observations, and sometimes test scores

Ethnography

descriptive, qualitative technique, directed toward understanding a culture or distinct social group and conducted through participant observation

Participant Observation

months or years of participation in the daily life of the cultural community

Correlational Design

Information on individuals is gathered in natural life circumstances without altering participants' experiences. Reveals relationships between participants’ characteristics and their behaviour or development, and does not permit researchers to infer cause and effect.

Correlation Coefficient

Number describing how two variables are associated with each other that includes the magnitude, or size, or the number, shows strength of the relationship. The sign of the number (+ or -) shows the direction of the relationship.

Experimental Design

Researchers use an evenhanded procedure to assign people to two or more treatment conditions and permits inferences about cause and effect

Independent Variable

The one the investigator manipulates and expects to cause changes in another variable

Dependent Variable

The one the investigator expects to be influenced by the independent variable

Confounding Variable

A variable that is so closely associated with the independent variable that the researcher cannot tell which one is responsible for changes in the dependent variable

Random Assignment

An unbiased procedure to more equally distribute participant characteristics across treatment groups

Ecological Validity

Assesses whether conclusions drawn from laboratory studies apply to the real world

Field Experiments

Make use of rare opportunities for random assignment in natural settings

Natural, or Quasi-, Experiments

Compare differences in effects of treatments that already exist

Longitudinal Design

Participants are studied repeatedly, and changes are noted as they get older

Cohort Effects

Children born at the same time are influenced by particular cultural and historical conditions that may not apply to children developing at other times

Cross-Sectional Design

Groups of people differing in age are studied at the same point in time and does not provide evidence about change at the individual level and is also subject to cohort effects

Sequential Design

Researchers conduct several similar cross-sectional or longitudinal studies (called sequences)

Microgenetic Design

Adaptation of the longitudinal approach where children are presented with a novel task, and their mastery is tracked over a series of closely spaced sessions