L1 Introduction To Developmental Psychology and Research Methods

What Is Development?

• Systematic continuities and changes between conception and death

• What contributes to development?

  • Maturation: hereditary influences on aging process.

  • Learning: change in behavior due to experience

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• are changes systematic or developmental or just an opinion/observational?

Goals of Developmentalists

• Describe development

  • Normative development

  • Ideographic development

• Explain development

  • Why do individuals develop differently?

• Optimize development

  • Apply research findings to “real world”

  • Role of cultural context

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• dev psychologists look at patterns + shared characteristics across groups of people

Nature of Development

• Continual, lifelong process

• Holistic

  • Physical, cognitive, psychosocial aspects of a human

• Plasticity - depends on resilience level/adaptation levels (how much they can change based on the env)

• Historical/cultural context (e.g., political conflicts)

Chronology of Development

• adolescence (during puberty) - changes in PFC, amygdala, all the brain changes

• primary periods are also important but not as significant

Early Philosophical Perspectives on Childhood

• 17th and 18th century philosophers

• not scientific, philosophical but strongly influenced later childhood theories

• Thomas - adults take part in shaping children’s behaviour

• Jean - children are naturally good, learn by exploring + interacting w env, play an active role in their own development

• John - blank slate, children born w/o any innate ideas, and experience shapes who they become, passive role b/c they are shaped by experience rather than environment

Children as Subjects of Study

• The baby biographies and diaries

  • Recorded development of own children

    • Charles Darwin, Clara and William Stern, Jean Piaget

• Problems with this method

  • Subjective → bias

  • Lack of generalizability; often only one or a small number of children studied

Example of Early Child Diaries: William and Clara Stern (Children’s Talk)

• The diaries William and Clara Stern recorded for their children led to the publication of Die Kindersprache (Children’s Talk), which became a classic in the language acquisition literature.

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• early important work on language dev

Research Methods in Developmental Psychology

• Theories lead to hypotheses

• Scientific method is followed

  • Investigators must be objective and replicable

  • Data determine merits of theory; Scientists don't collect evidence to prove themselves right, they collect evidence to test whether their ideas are correct.

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• if data doesn’t support theory, it must be revised or rejected

Basic Fact-Finding Strategies

• Is a particular test a good measure of development?

• Must be both reliable and valid

  • Reliability: Does the test give consistent outcomes each time? (consistency - administering measure under the same conditions should yield the same results)

  • Validity: Does the test really measure what it purports to measure? (assesses what you’re interested in)

Contemporary Methods of Measuring Development

• Self-report methods

• Observational methods

• Case studies

• Ethnography

• Psychophysiological methods

Self-Report Methods

• Self-report methods (relies on participants and their own thoughts/feelings)

  • Structured interviews: researcher asks set series of questions

  • Structured questionnaires: questions/answers are written (e.g., strengths/difficulties questionnaire SDQ)

  • Clinical method: free-form interview (questions are asked to gain more info)

• Limitations

  • Not useful with very young children

  • Honesty/accuracy?

  • Interpretation of question

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• pros: easy to administer

• parents often overrate their children

Example of Self-Report Methods: ParentReport on the Child

• Strengths and difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

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• SDQ often administered in longitudinal studies to see changes during different environments (e.g., changing schools, etc.)

Observational Methods

• Observational methods

  • Naturalistic: observing children in natural surroundings (e.g., home, school)

  • Structured observation: a laboratory situation designed to elicit specific behavior (controlled setting to illicit certain behaviours like exposure to toys, objects, etc. and to see their responses)

  • Time-sampling: frequency of behaviour recorded in brief observation intervals

• Limitations

  • Observer influence; Children may behave differently simply because they know someone is watching them

  • May be difficult to determine cause of behaviour (although it provides effective observations?)

Case Studies Method

• Case studies

  • Detailed record of an individual/group’s development

    • Interviews

    • Observations

    • Generally not standardized

• Limitations

  • Difficult to make comparisons

  • Generalizability

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• methods used not always standardized

• good for providing insight into development, especially rare conditions

• small sample size makes it difficult to compare

Ethnography Method

• Ethnography

  • Common method in anthropology

  • Researcher lives in community for period of time

  • Goal is to understand effect of culture on development

• Limitations

  • Highly subjective

  • Generalizability to other cultures

Psychophysiological Methods

• Psychophysiological methods

  • Goal to understand biological processes involved in perception, cognition, emotion

  • Measures used include (heart rate; ERPs event related potential; fMRI; eye tracking.)

• Limitations

  • Expensive

  • May be difficult to determine which aspect of stimulus drives biological response

  • Susceptible to interference from other biological processes

Detecting Relationships

• Correlational design

  • Goal: to determine whether two things/variables are related

  • Is viewing violence on TV related to aggressive behaviour in children?

  • 1. Gather data: interview about TV habits, make observations of aggressive behaviours

  • 2. Calculate correlation coefficient, r

Detecting Relationships

• What is r?

  • Index of strength and direction of relation

  • Varies from −1.00 → +1.00

  • Strength indicated by absolute value – +0.70 and −0.70 are equally strong, and both are stronger than +0.35 and −0.35

  • Which is stronger: +0.25 or −0.64?

• r = 0.0 means no relationship exists.

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Cross-sectional design

• People of different ages studied at the same point in time

• One task; multiple age groups participate

• Disadvantages:

  • • Is there a difference between age groups? Cohort effects?

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• how diff age groups respond to different measures

• gives data simultaneously w/o having to wait for children to grow

• cohort effect - specific groups may be more advantaged/outperform other groups due to their experiences (may not be due to age)

Longitudinal design

• Same participants observed repeatedly over time

• Time period may be brief (6 months–1 year)

  • Some have lasted decades.

• Disadvantages: Practice effects? Selective attrition? Nonrepresentative sample? Cohort effect?

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• tracks dev changes + provide valuable insight into how people evolve over time

• practice effect - participants become habituated to the measure (so some measures are age-specific to follow w the same measure but increasing difficulty based on age)

• selective attrition - cannot maintain the sample size over time → leads to nonrepresentative sample that may not effectively represent the broader population

• cohort effect - sample size may be too small to be representative in certain studies

Sequential design

• Combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal

• Participants of different ages selected at outset (like cross-sectional)

• All participants observed repeatedly for a period of time (like longitudinal)

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• identifying age-related effects + cohort effects

Ethical Considerations

• All children who participate in research have the right to:

  • protection from harm (physical/psychological)

  • informed consent (from the parent/guardian as well as child themself if they are a youth)

  • confidentiality

  • debriefing (explanation of research)

  • knowledge of results

  • also ensuring incentive doesn’t influence their participation

Nature of Scientific Theories

• A set of concepts and propositions that describe, organize, and explain a set of observations

• What makes a theory good?

  • Must be parsimonious - simple as possible while also still explaining observations

  • Must be falsifiable - should be possible to prove it wrong, allows possibility for testing + challenging theory through research/observations

  • Must have heuristic value - supports future research (e.g., Paget theory of cog development inspired many studies + future developments, it is foundational and still referred to as of today)

Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

• Conflict of individual’s instinctual impulses and societal norms for behaviour

• Role of the unconscious (most behaviours influenced by unconsciousness)

• Sexual and aggressive drives

• emphasized significance of early childhood experiences in adulthood

Three components of personality

• Id: innate, compelled by drives (operates pleasure principle) - hunger, sex, aggression, seek immediate gratification of impulses without thinking of consequences

• Ego: conscious, rational (reality principle) - balances needs of id with reality and what is socially acceptable (context)

• Superego: internalized moral standard (Perfection) - societal values + moral rules, judging actions + thoughts → often leads to feelings of pride or guilt

Freud’s stages of psychosexual development

• Concept of “sex” very broad

• Stages propose shifts in focus on parts of body

• 1. Oral (birth–1 year)

• 2. Anal (1–3 years) (bowel - potty control)

• 3. Phallic (3–6 years) (awareness of body parts)

• 4. Latency (6–11 years) (sexual impulses are dormant, but social relationships emerge here)

• 5. Genital (12 years onward) (sexual interests, relationships)

• Fixation (can occur if a stage is not properly resolved, leading to issues in adulthood) - conflicts during one stage remains unresolved which may influence child’s personality later in life in adulthood

  • e.g., excessive feeding (oral) or ignoring during a stage → may develop personality or behaviour related to mouth in adulthood (smoking, overeating, nail biting as an example)

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• pleasure shifts to different parts of body during development

Psychosocial Theory - Freud’s psychosexual theory

• Contributions

  • Idea of unconscious motivation - much of behaviour influenced by unconscious desires + conflicts

  • Focus on later consequences of early experiences (e.g. childhood abuse may shape behaviour in adulthood)

• Criticisms

  • No empirical evidence of early conflicts affecting adult personality

Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development - expanded Freud’s legacy

• A neo-Freudian - expanded on Freud’s ideas but introduced significant changes

• Viewed children as more active and adaptive in developmental process than Freud

• Far less emphasis on sexual urges

• More emphasis on social and cultural influences on development

• Lifespan perspective of development (not just childhood experiences)

• More accepted + popular than Freud’s theory

Learning Theory - John B. Watson’s behaviourism

• Only overt behaviours should be measured and analyzed. (rather than internal states like thoughts + feelings, as they are difficult to measure)

• Strong emphasis on environmental influences in shaping behaviour

  • Recall Locke’s tabula rasa - we’re born as blank slates and we learn from environmental experiences

• Development is continuous and based on learning.

• “Little Albert” experiment - conditioned response (loud noise) to neutral stimulus (rat)

Learning Theory - B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviourism

• Outlined principles of operant conditioning (method of learning focusing on consequence of behaviour)

• Focus on outcome of behaviour for predicting future occurrences of that behaviour (repeated behaviours)

  • Reinforcers ↑ probability of behaviour occurring again. (praising for hw)

  • Punishers ↓ probability of behaviour occurring again.

Learning Theory - Albert Bandura’s cognitive social learning theory

• More emphasis on cognitive processes

• “Bobo experiment” - show adult punching the toy to child, adult exits, and child carried out the same action

• Observational learning stressed

  • Learning by observing others (models) - through imitation (siblings doing hw)

  • Not dependent on reinforcement

• Proposed reciprocal determinism

  • • Environment <-> Child (2-way interaction) - env influences child’s behaviour and vice versa

Learning Theories - Contributions + Criticisms

• Contributions

  • Precise and testable

  • Knowledge about basic learning from well-controlled tests

  • Practical applications (behaviour modification)

• Criticisms

  • Oversimplified - focuses exclusively on observations and doesn’t consider cognitive development, genetic influences, and ecological context (social/cultural factors that influence behaviour), cognitive changes over time (how thinking, memory, problem solving develops)

  • Ignores genetic contributions to behaviour

  • Ignores ecology

  • Ignores changes in cognitive abilities

Cognitive-Developmental Theories - Jean Piaget

• Schemes become more complex with development. (mental framework to understanding the world)

  • An organized pattern of thought or action a child uses to make sense of experience (schemes become increasingly complex)

  • Create new schemes to adapt to disequilibriums experienced in the environment and in response to biological maturation (diseq do not fit in current schemes - brain would make a new scheme or make one adapt to the env)

  • Interpretation of the world changes with age.

Cognitive-Developmental Theories - How do children use schemes?

• Assimilation

  • Using an existing scheme to interpret a novel experience (observing a dog vs cat → stored in same memory “folder”)

• Accommodation

  • Modifying an existing scheme to incorporate new experiences (dog barks, cat meows/is more quiet, dog bigger, cat smaller, etc.)

Cognitive-Developmental Theories - Overview of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

• Cognitive dev stored in 4 stages:

• Sensorimotor / Birth–2 years / Exploration using senses, motor coordination improves

• Preoperational / 2–7 years / Usage of symbols → not fully logical and still struggle with perspectives outside of their own

• Concrete Operations / 7–11 years / Logical thought - mental operations on concrete objects + events

• Formal Operations / > 11 years / Abstract thought

Cognitive-Developmental Theories - Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory

• Contributions

  • Focus on how children think

  • Field of social cognition (diff behaviours toward parents, peerds)

  • Educational applications

  • Strong influence on other theories

• Criticisms

  • Underestimates abilities of children - may perform well at younger ages

  • Children can be trained. - to develop certain skills earlier than Piaget’s predictions

Cognitive-Developmental Theories - Kohlberg’s Stage Theory of Moral Development

• Lawrence Kohlberg

  • Applied Piaget’s cognitive-developmental approach to moral development

  • Formulated a stage theory of moral development

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• interested in how people develop right/wrong + how this develops w age

• expanded on Piaget’s ideas - huge impact on psychology + education

Sociocultural Theories - Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective

• Children acquire their culture’s values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through interacting with knowledgeable members of society. (parents, teachers, peers, etc. help them internalize tools + ways of thinking to develop cognitively)

• highlights that learning is a deeply social process, and that the development of higher mental functions is rooted in the cultural context in which a child is raised.

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• important of social interactions + culture on development

Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective - Contributions + Criticisms

• Contributions

  • Cognitive development varies across cultures

  • Culture influences every aspect of development

• Criticisms

  • Heavy emphasis on role of language in instruction (will underestimate role of individual cognitive processes, ignores that every child is unique)

  • Difficult to test empirically. (due to dependence on cultural context)

Theories are Not Facts, They are Lenses

• Why does behavior change with age?

• Theory → explanation

• Freud → Early conflicts

• Erikson → Social challenges

• Behaviorism → Reinforcement history

• Bandura → Models + cognition

• Piaget → Cognitive restructuring

• Vygotsky → Social + cultural mediation

Same behaviour, multiple possible causes

• photo - July 3rd

• use of theories through different lenses/perspectives

• which theory/combination of theories effectively explains behaviour based on evidence → and how do you collect evidence? through interviews, valid + reliable measures, etc.

• good to look at all perspectives