Tilburg toelatingstoets - developmental psychology book chapters

behaviourism

assumes that it’s possible to explain psychological phenomena by focusing only on behaviour and the environment in which it occurs (no reference to the mind/brain)

Pavlov & Skinner are behaviourist → nurture plays an important part & children are seen as mini-adults. Development is quantitative & continuous (adults have the same kind of knowledge as children, just more of it)

conditioning (Ivan Pavlov)

controlling behaviours by manipulating stimuli within the environment

example: Pavlov & classical conditioning: individuals learn associations between pairs of stimuli when they are presented at (roughly) the same time

(in his experiment, the bell and the food are stimuli in the environment that are manipulated, controlling the salivating behaviour of the dogs. the dogs learn the association between the bell and the food)

reinforcement (B.F. Skinner)

any stimilus that, when following behaviour, increases the probability that the organism will emit the same behaviour in the future

reinforcers can be both positive (i.e. a reward) or negative (i.e. a punishment).

You reinforce with a positive reinforcer when someone shows behaviour and you reward them. The person works for the reward

You reinforce with a negative reinforcer when someone shows the right behaviour, and you don’t punish them. The person works so that they avoid the punishment

shaping (B.F. Skinner)

selective reinforcement is capable of shaping the few simple reflexes available to us in early infancy into the complex/sophisticated behaviour typical of adults

e.g. language learning: a baby starts to naturally (by reflex) babble at 8-10 months old. Parents excitedly respond to this behaviour, reinforcing it. After a while, they will only respond excitedly when the baby produces sounds that sound like words = selective reinforcement. The baby learns that some sounds (similar to words) are good, and others (not similar to words) are less good.

nativism (Noam Chomsky)

the core faculties (abilities) that underly adult behaviour are innate (with us from birth = nature)

e.g. infants are born with an innate knowledge of language (we’re born with knowledge of language on a general level, not specific for one language)

He claims that all languages have a deep structure: an innate grammatical structuring of language that is both universal among humans and unique to humans as a species. When we interpret language, we translate into the deep structure; when we speak, we translate from the deep structure

nativists → nature plays an important role & children are mini-adults, because infants have the same innate faculties as adults. Development is quantitative and continuous; adults learn proficiency with their innate capacities over the years

maturational unfolding

a genetically determined developmental progression; characteristics/behaviour presents itself when the individual is “mature” enough

depends on biological preparedness: a genetically determined readiness to learn specific skills

e.g. the ability to walk is innate, but because of maturational unfolding an infant only starts walking when he’s strong enough (at a certain age)

this means discontinous development: there’s different maturational stages, that transform us from a baby into an adult in different steps. An infant is qualitatively different from an adult, because an adult has different capacities. Children are not mini-adults.

Konrad Lorenz (ethologist)

researcher of animals in their natural habitat

he studied biological preparedness & maturational unfolding in goslings:

He got the idea that goslings attach themselves to the first moving object they see (usually mother goose). He hatched eggs in an incubator and moved his boots around them in the ensuing hours. The goslings attached themselves to the boots, following them around. After the goslings had formed the attachment, their capacity for attachment had switched off (i.e., the goslings couldn’t attach themselves to anything else after the boots)

a maturational clock set the temporal limits on learning attachment → he introduced biological preparedness to learn something specific, the timing of which is under matiorational control.

John Bowlby (attachment in humans)

he suggested that humans form a bond of attachment with their parents as a natural process under maturational control. Any disruption could be detrimental to development

e.g. at age 8-9 month a baby starts to show separation distress when separated from their mother. This means the baby has formed a bond of attachment which only happened when the baby was biologically prepared at 8 months old (= maturational unfolding)

Babies who were separated from their parents for a long time and weren’t able to form any other attachment (e.g. in an institution without love) failed to thrive and exhibited serious developmental delay

how maturational unfolding happens is dependent on the environment & experiences → when an environment/experience is not conducive to development (e.g. there’s no moving object after the goslings hatched), the biological preparedness comes to nothing (they don’t learn to attach because there’s nothing to attach to)

development is discontinous & qualitative. An infant is not a mini-adult

Sigmund Freud (stage theorist)

Suggested that personality development largely depends on sexual fixations → this depends on the erogenous zone: the area of the body that has sexual focus

1. oral stage: erogenous zone is in the mouth

2. anal stage: erogenous zone is in the anus

3. phallic stage: erogenous zone is in the genitals

Jean Piaget (stage theorist)

Suggested that children pass through a series of stages on the way to adulthood:

1. sensorimotor stage: severe egocentrism

2. preoperational stage: mild egocentrism

3. concrete operational stage: principled thought in real-life situations

4. formal operational stage: principled thought in real-life and hypothetical situations

each successive stage confers better adjustment to the environment → you can’t skip a stage, because each new stage is an adjustment on the previous one. Each new mode of adaptation completely replaces the old adaptation

one thing stands in the way of this adjustment: egocentrism: difficulty taking on board another person’s perspective

He considered development discontinous. Children are not mini-adults because they are qualitatively different from adults (in each stage they get new qualities)

overlapping- waves theory (Robert Siegler)

Suggested that when children adapt, their old way of understanding can linger for a while and can co-exist with the new adaption (unlike Piaget, who thought they cannot co-exist)

At the point of transition, children switch between new and old strategies for solving problems, and because the new way proves to be a better adaptation, that eventually takes precedence → the new and old strategies overlap like waves

he used a microgenetic approach: repeated testing over a short period (days or weeks)

sensorimotor stage

age 0-2 years (infancy)

has no object permanence: understanding that things in the world continue to exist even when you can’t sense them directly

they are in a state of solipsism: failure to distinguish between yourself and the rest of the universe

there’s 6 substages in which the infant transitions out of the stage of solipsism & eventually develops mental imagery: the ability to imagine the existence of things even when they’re not directly accessible to the senses

Substage 3 (4-8 months): when an item is hidden from view, the baby no longer conceives of its existence → if they can’t sense it, it doesn’t exist (no object permanence)

Substage 4 (8-12 months): the infant doesn’t have full object permanence; they have a primitive notion that objects may exist if they cannot be sensed directly → this child fails the A not B task, because they connect the existence of the object to the action of retrieving it. The existence of an object depends on their actions.

Substage 5 (12-18 months): the infant still doesn’t have full object permanence; they no longer think an object just exists in terms of their own actions, but they can’t conceive that an object can move/change when they don’t directly experience it

Substage 6 (18-24 months): the infant is no longer in a stage of solipsism; they can conceive the existence of an object independently of self, they know the difference between self - the world. The infant develops mental imagery (they can imagine a mental picture of things and also mentally imagine what may happen to those things → this allows the use of symbols like language)

preoperational stage

Aged 2-7 years

Operational intelligence = the process of solving a problem by working through logical principles → this is necessary to get rid of egocentrism

The preoperational child is still egocentric and can’t use principles/logic to solve problems → The child’s thinking is dominated by surface appearance

they fail to conserve: they don’t understand that a change in appearance need not result in a shift in the underlying reality (the underlying reality remains constant, and is therefore “conserved” even though it looks different)

e.g. they fail the conservation of quantity task ( w/ glasses of water) because they fail to use an operation (principle) like “no water was added or taken away, so it must be the same” → they cannot decenter: broaden attention to the various facets of a problem instead of fixating on just one. They’re fixated on the height of the water.

They also don’t have transitive inference: the ability to use previous knowledge to determine a missing piece, using logic/principled thought → e.g. if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, which one’s the tallest?

concrete operational

age 7-12 years (middle childhood)

the child has operational intelligence, so they can use principled thought (logic) to solve a problem, but only if this problem is in the “real world”. They cannot solve imagined/hypothetical problems

they can solve all the tasks the preoperational children couldn’t, and they can provide justifications for their answers that suggest logic/principled thought. There are 3 types of justifications:

1. compensation: the water in the thin glass is taller, but the water in the wide glass is broader. The broadness compensates for the tallness, so they’re the same

2. inversion: the water in the thin glass is taller, but if you pour it back into the original wide glass (=inverse transformation: retracing your steps), the amount will be the same

3. identity: you didn’t add to or take anything from the water, so the amount is the same

formal operational

age 12+ (adolescence & adulthood)

the individual has operational intelligence and can use principled thought in both real and hypothetical situations. They’re able to reason with abstract terms (like X and Y in maths)

in the pendulum problem, they can use principled thought to imagine how the problem should be solved to get the best results. They can logically think about this in their minds before they’ve even started the experiment, which makes it hypothetical/imagined.

A concrete operational child wouldn’t be able to do this. They just start changing random factors of the pendulum because they cannot use principled thought in advance to imagine the situation in their minds; they need to experience it in real life to solve it.

schemes

a mental operation that guides action or allows us to work thought a problem in a principled way (the “building blocks” of thinking)

at birth, we are equipped with a set of action schemes (reflexes)→ these develop and multiply → eventually they form intelligent thought processess (formal operational intelligence)

each developmental stage has different types of schemes → the old ones remain and/or adapt:

• sensorimotor: motor schemes (physical movement)

• preoperational: mental imagery schemes

• concrete operational: schemes proceed through a series of mental actions to arrive at the solution in a principled way

• formal operational: same as concrete operational, but now problems need not have a physical basis

assimilation

applying an existing scheme to a new task

e.g. a baby has a scheme: the grasping reflex. They first use this to grab the mother’s finger. Another time, they use it to hold onto a toy → that is assimulation, because they use the same scheme (grasping reflex) for a different task (holding the toy instead of the finger)

overassimulation: pretence. Existing schemes are applied to things/tasks that have no relation to the scheme in the real world. E.g. pretending that a hairbrush is a microphone → the scheme of singing into a microphone is applied to a hairbrush, even though a hairbrush has nothing to do with a microphone in our world

accomodation

modifying a scheme to adapt it to a new application.

E.g. when the baby holds the toy, they need to do it in a slightly different way than when they hold the finger → information about this adjustment is sent back to the scheme → the scheme gets modified.

When the scheme is modified, it means that when the baby grasps the finger, the scheme is activated in a slightly different way than when holding the toy → the scheme adapts to the different tasks it gets used for

overaccomodation: imitation. the child modifies an existing scheme with little understanding of why; they just copy what someone else does

coordination of schemes

combining schemes to carry out an elaborate tasks, such as driving a car (steering, using the brake, shifting gear, etc. → these are all schemes that fit into the scheme of “driving”)

equilibration

a motivational process that compels us to strive for logical consistency

e.g. with the conservation of quantity task, the child eventually starts to learn that width is just as important as length, but they can’t immediately bring these 2 thoughts together → this causes internal cognitive conflict → this activates equilibration, which functions to remove that conflict → equilibration generates new schemes that function on a higher cognitive level → the child can now use these better schemes to solve the task

David Elkind (on adolescencents)

Suggested that, though adolescents know about other people’s thoughts, they often egocentrically assume that their own thoughts will be shared by others: they recognise that others can think differently from themselves, but they assume that their own views are universally experienced.

They assume that what’s of interest to them is of interest to everyone (e.g. their appearance)

imaginary audience: a fantasy that people are watching your actions with great intrigue → the adolescent thinks everyone will be as admiring or critical towards them as they are to themself → this causes self-consciousness

personal fable: a fantasy that you have a privileged position on earth and that you’re being watched over & protected by a supernatural being → the adolescent believes they always triumph and that they have unique feelings/experiences

Toward the end of adolescence & in adulthood, the imaginary audience & personal fable will fade and eventually disappear; the imaginary audience is a prediciton about how people will react, but the reality is often much different → they learn that they’re not the center of everyone’s attention and that they’re not unstoppable

Lapsley & Murhpy (on adolescents)

They point out an anomaly in Elkind’s reasoning: even pre-adolescents are perfectly capable of differentiating the content of others’ thoughts from their own (e.g. concrete operational children solving the mountain task)

They say the imaginary audience & personal fable stem from an acute enlightment of others’ thoughts, in contrast to Elkind’s view that it stems from failure to differentiate between their own thoughts and those of others

The imaginary audience and personal fable fade once they realise that what others think of them is mostly harmless. They learn to care less about the fact that they exist in the thoughts of others.