Developmental Psychology (copy)

Developmental Psychology

• The study of change and continuity in the things that fundamentally affect how people understand and interact with the world.

• the study of how people change and how they stay the same across their life.

• examining how people's life pathways converge to one event (that event could be being in this psychology lecture) and how that will impact your life experience. how your life experience helps you interpret what's happening now and then how you go and diverge onto your own pathways after the event

Why study developmental psychology?

• To understand human nature,

• shape social policy,

• enrich human life

Child development

the premise that the beginning of life has consequences for later life, and therefore it needs our attention.

Lifespan development

the premise that development continues throughout the lifespan, and we need to understand how to aid that

Reasons to Study Child Development and Lifespan development in these aspects:

• To understand human nature,

• shape social policy,

• enrich human life.

• To understand human nature: How do genetics and environment affect children’s development?

• shape social policy: How can we conduct research with children while protecting their human rights?

• enrich human life: What can psychology tell us about effective child-rearing and child mental health?

Reasons to Study Lifespan development in these aspects:

• To understand human nature,

• shape social policy,

• enrich human life.

• To understand human nature: How do we change across our life span? How do we stay the same?

• shape social policy: How do we recover from trauma? What supports are effective, for whom?

• enrich human life: To what extent do we actively shape our lives or passively respond to surroundings?

What are the 7 enduring themes of developmental psychology?

1. Continuity and discontinuity

2. Mechanisms for change

3. Universality and context specificity

4. Individual differences

5. Research and children’s welfare

6. Nature and nurture

7. The active child

Continuity and discontinuity

A change in well being

continuity and continuous change

• stability (e.g. a person’s name)

• measurable, quantitative, reversible (e.g. height, capacity for memory)

discontinuity and discontinuous change

• change (e.g. a person’s title, Miss, Ms, Dr)

• qualitative, irreversible (e.g. puberty, caterpillar → cocoon → butterfly, Theory of Mind [ToM], learning)

Theory of Mind (ToM)

The understanding that others have their own internal worlds and thoughts. once a child comes to understand that other people in the world have their own internal worlds, there's no returning to thinking about the world in a different way, such as everyone having the same thoughts as you

Mechanisms for Change

Mechanisms needed for developmental change to occur:

1. Environmental factors (e.g. migration, genetic drift, natural selection)

2. Theoretical model for behavioural change

   1. For example, what are the mechanisms in place to change our behaviour?

Theoretical model for behavioural change in Mechanisms for Change

• In pre-contemplation, you're not aware that you need to change something.

• contemplation, where you're starting to recognise that there's something in your behaviour that needs to change and get motivation to change.

• preparation is planning the steps to make that change happen.

• You then put that in action.

• maintenance, where you're consolidating and maintaining those new behaviours, putting plans in place to prevent relapse of your undesirable behaviour

• in some cases, you might tend to go back to the behaviour you would try to avoid before, and that will then begin the same cycle over and over.

Universality and Context Specificity

• The influence of social and cultural contexts on development.

• To what extent is development:

  • universal across contexts and cultures

  • exclusive to specific contexts and cultures

Individual Differences

• How children with shared backgrounds become different from each other.

• Two people’s interpretation of the experiences of any given event are never the same

Research and Children's Welfare

• How research can promote children's welfare and protect their rights.

• How can researchers conduct meaningful research with infants & young people?

• How can we protect infants’ & young people’s welfare in research?

Nature and Nurture

How nature (genetics) and nurture (environment) shape development.

The Active Child

• How children shape their own development through their choices and actions.

• Their choices might be sort of constrained in a way but the child is still making that final choice, and that's showing agency and showing their own active participation in their development.

• The extent to which children shape their own lives and the extent to which they are passive respondents to their surroundings.

Wellbeing

a multidimensional concept that shapes and is shaped by developmental pathways;

... wellbeing can be measured in a variety of ways.

Why Wellbeing Matters

wellbeing contributes to, and is affected by, our developmental experiences.

This links to the developmental themes:

• continuity and discontinuity

• mechanisms for change

Change in wellbeing over time

the line is showing the change in wellbeing over time and there’s a point of discontinuity, which means that something happened (e.g. an intervention that improves wellbeing) that results in some people’s wellbeing going up (aka the dotted lines)

Wellbeing as a dependent variable

to answer what improves or diminishes our wellbeing

Wellbeing as an independent variable

to know what a high or low wellbeing affects. for example, higher well being predicts level of productiveness, or social understanding

Wellbeing and student’s experiences

university experiences → student wellbeing and resilience → healthy professional practice

Types of Wellbeing

• hedonic

• eudemonic

• hedonic and eudemonic

• uni-dimensional

• indigenous

Hedonic Wellbeing

Purely emotion, The level of pleasure and enjoyment in life. it’s about how positive and negative you feel.

Example of hedonic wellbeing

PANAS

PANAS (example of hedonic wellbeing)

a measurement that combines a score of the positive and negative affect to give you an overall score of your wellbeing

Eudemonic Wellbeing

The amount of meaning and purpose derived from life.

Example of Eudemonic wellbeing

Social Determination Theory (SDT)

Social Determination Theory (SDT)

• example of eudemonic wellbeing

The theory that encompasses someone's intrinsic pursuit for goals and volition/control, as well as their ability to fulfill three basic psychological needs, which are competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Three basic psychological needs in social determination theory

• competence

• autonomy: someone's ability to feel like they are in control of their own lives and make their own decisions,

• relatedness: one’s sense of belonging but also relationships with others

Two Social Determination Theory (SDT)

• Growth / wellbeing = a person’s autonomy, relatedness, & competence

• Growth / wellbeing = intrinsic motivation

Autonomy, competence, relatedness

The first SDT theory says that someone's growth, or well-being, is determined by:

• their autonomy, which is someone's ability to feel like they are in control of their own lives and make their own decisions,

  • The kid has his own fishing rod, and he makes the choices about where to fish.

• their social relatedness to other people,

  • the sense of belonging but also relationships with the people around the kid. he's doing this with his dad and building that relationship with him.

• and their feeling of competence.

  • he is catching the fish or perhaps he at least has the perception that he can catch fish in the future. he feels that he is able to do these things.

Uni-dimensional Wellbeing

A single score measuring overall wellbeing.

Example of uni-dimensional wellbeing

WEMWBS (wellbeing) and WHOQOL (quality of life)

WEMWBS

• Example of uni-dimensional wellbeing

• WEBMWBS is asking you to specifically reflect on the past two weeks (compared to PERMA and Ryff which were more general) for hedonic and eudemonic qualities.

  • not grounded in any specific theory, so while it might be reliable, there are questions about the validity

hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing

encompasses both hedonic and eudemonic elements in them

• hedonic: Purely emotion, The level of pleasure and enjoyment in life

• eudemonic: The amount of meaning and purpose derived from life

example of hedonic and eudemonic wellbeing

PERMA and Ryff’s wellbeing scale

PERMA

• measures positive emotion, engagement, flow, relationships, meaning, accomplishment

Ryff’s wellbeing scale

• similar to PERMA but has a lot more theoretical underpinning.

• they used a lot of theories from different theorists to determine what exactly determines someone’s wellbeing, when developing the scale

Issues of having different versions of the Ryff’s wellbeing scale (84, 54, 42 and 18 items long)

• it’s very multifaceted, however, when you're taking so many elements to conceptualise well-being, it creates a very long measure that encompasses many things.

• completing a measure that has 84 items can be exhausting and isn't good for your psychological well-being.

• the 18 item version is not recommended because it has a few issues with its reliability and validity, such as whether the scale is accurately reflecting what it is intending to.

Overlap with PERMA and Ryff’s wellbeing scale

mastery, purpose and autonomy

Indigenous Wellbeing

• The concept of Balit Murrup (strong spirit) and its role in protecting against negative impacts and promoting resilience in Indigenous communities, and can mitigate risks of poor mental health in that population

• this collaborative framework depicts the first nation community and their connection to culture and to each other:

• Social

• Emotional 

• Physical 

• Cultural 

• Spiritual

Why is it important to study wellbeing at university?

fostering students’ wellbeing and resilience during their time at university will increase their capacity to maintain their wellbeing and resilience during their careers.

Well-being Measures in MSPS study with university students

PERMA and WEBMS questionnaires were used to test well-being, while K10 and DAS 21 were used to measure distress.

Students’ narratives contribute to wellbeing

• positive academic and social positively contribute whereas negative social and emotional negatively contribute to wellbeing

• these dotted lines here indicate that positive emotional non-academic and ideograph and negative academic and negative non-academic experiences were included in the model, but they weren't shown to be a significant predictor of well-being, so we still need to be aware of them, but it is not directly influencing well-being.

Students positive experiences

• Academic experiences (tutorials)

• Social experiences (being with friends, community)

• Emotional experience (accomplishment, happiness)

• Non-academic experiences (clubs/events, discussions)

Students negative experiences

• Academic experiences (assessments and exams, lectures, deadlines)

• Social experiences (no friends or classmates, language and cultural barriers)

• Emotional experience (stressed, frustration)

• Non-academic experiences (events, costs, future plans)

Vu and Brooker (2019) investigated the relationship between student’s positive narratives and their wellbeing. What did they find?

Students’ positive academic experiences affected their wellbeing more than their negative academic experiences.

Well-being and Student Success study

Researchers want to understand how students measure success at university and how it relates to their well-being.

Relationship between Well-being and Student Success

Well-being doesn't actually directly predict success but they did find that people's perceived success in these areas predicted their levels of well-being. Variable success leads to the outcome well-being, but well-being doesn't lead to success.

How does self-rated success relate to wellbeing?

Self-rated success mediated the relationship between personal and future success and well-being. Students who define success as future were less likely to be achieving success, and consequently more likely to report lower well-being, so it's not directly. It's saying you need to look at that middle mechanism (the self-rated success). This makes sense because it’s a future goal so the success hasn’t happened yet.

Takeaway Messages for Students from the two studies of wellbeing at university and student wellbeing and university success

• Engage with academic life,

• talk with likeminded people,

• think about what success means,

• feeling alone, address overwhelming difficult experiences.

Takeaway Messages for Teachers from the two studies of wellbeing at university and student wellbeing and university success

• Create opportunities for meaningful relationships

• be aware and prepared for negative academic experiences.

Research on factors that contribute to university student wellbeing

• evidence suggests both academic and non-academic experiences matter.

• evidence suggests that personal and future success affect student wellbeing more than academic success

Intelligence

The capacity to learn from experience and adapt to one's environment.

Intelligence as a developmental concept

Intelligence is a concept that changes over time because as we learn from experience and gain experience, we’re adapting our behaviours to thrive in our environment.

Factors of intelligence

• AMAPPESI

• attention

• memory

• analysis

• planning

• persistence

• emotional control

• social awareness

• inhibition

Intelligence in different ages

• if intelligence is developmental, then intelligence means different things at different ages

• we can also recognise intelligence as being able to change with context,

• for example, how well you would be in communicating through a phone would be different for people who never used a phone or young children

Types of Intelligence

• Cultural: cultural variations in what people consider to be intelligent

• emotional

• intellectual (general intelligence)

General Intelligence

A person's overall intelligence that influences their performance on intellectual tasks.

Other terms for general intelligence

• Cognitive ability

• General mental ability

• General intelligence factor

• Intelligence

Implication of having different terms for general intelligence

• there are different ways of measuring, defining and thinking about general intelligence.

• impacts our theories, and the sort of consequences and outcomes of intelligence that we can evaluate

Dimensions of Intelligence

Intelligence can be measured as:

• One dimension (e.g. g, IQ)

• Two dimensions (e.g. Crystalized & fluid)

• A few dimensions (e.g. Thurstone 7, Gardner 7)

• Many dimensions (e.g. Carroll’s 3-stratum model)

Mental Age (MA)

the average age at which children achieve a given score on Binet and Simon’s test

Mental Age (MA) by Binet and Simon

• a test to measure intellectual development in children, to identify children who need help by intervening

• maps onto the idea of continuity and discontinuity

• blue dotted line: children gradually developing in the way we expect. typical developmental line (continuous change)

• red dotted lines: children who aren't developing at all (idea of continuity)

• yellow dotted lines: if we intervene the red kids at the age two, we could change their trajectory to the yellow dotted line so they're still a bit behind of their peers but they are progressing rather than not at all

Typically developing child and mental age (MA)

They should be able to answer questions typical for their chronological age

Intellectually impaired child and mental age (MA)

should answer fewer questions than typical for their chronological age

Simon and Binet study of mental age assumption

• This model assumes that developmental trajectory of intelligence can be changed (maybe through intervention over time)

• assumes that intelligence is developmental and a child's mental age might be similar, lower or higher than their peers, but it can still progress with the right supports.

Binet & Simon’s initial measure lead to the development of other well-known measures

• Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)

• Stanford-Binet Scales

• British Ability Scale

IQ (Intelligence Quotient)

A standardized score that compares an individual's mental age to their chronological age. A score of 100 is where we expect to see people, it means their mental age is the same as their chronological age.

Eugenics and IQ

Terman, who developed IQ, believed in eugenics — that a person’s skills are predetermined by their genes and they aim to improve human capacity by identifying and promoting those genes.

IQ Formula

(mental age/chronological age) x 100

Problem with IQ

• IQ is a stable number and does not represent intelligence as a developmental concept.

• it informs people's assumptions about someone's abilities (how likely someone are to be successful), and it has a consequence of potentially limiting people's opportunities

Intelligence as two dimensions

crystalized and fluid

Crystalized Intelligence

Factual knowledge, word meanings, arithmetic, etc. gained over time.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to think on the spot by drawing inferences understanding relations between concepts that we haven't previously encountered.

Relationship of crystalized and fluid intelligence over time

• Crystalized intelligence increases over the lifespan, fluid intelligence decreases

• this is strong evidence for two dimensions of intelligence because they have completely different trajectories. if it was just one type, you’d expect the trajectory to look the same

Two examples of intelligence as a few dimensions

• Thurstone 7

• Gardner 7

Howard Gardner's 7 Domains of Intelligence

• Spatial

• Kinesthetic

• Musical

• Linguistic

• Interpersonal

• Logic / mathematical

• Intrapersonal

  SKILLIM

Howard Gardner's 7 Domains of Intelligence criteria

• should involve distinct cognitive processes

• should be relevant from an evolutionary perspective, a type of intelligence should be important for survival in some way.

• should depend on identifiable brain structures, for example you should be able to verify this type of intelligence is impaired when those brain structures are damaged in some way (e.g. through traumatic brain injury)

• needs to exist in case studies of exceptional people, there needs to be someone that has an exceptional ability in that task

Spatial

Ability to visualize and manipulate objects in space. Example:Pablo Picasso.

Kinesthetic

Ability to control body movements and perform physical tasks. Example:Martha Graham.

Musical

Ability to understand and create music. Example:Stravinsky.

Linguistic

Ability to use language effectively. Example:TS Elliot.

Interpersonal

Ability to understand and interact with others. Example:Gandhi.

Logic / mathematical

Ability to reason logically and solve mathematical problems. Example:Einstein.

Intrapersonal

Ability to understand oneself and one's emotions. Example:Freud.

Criticisms of the Howard’s 7 domains of intelligence

• doesn't allow for development so it assumes that intelligence is set from birth, it’s some innate gift rather than something that’s developed over time

• misused in pseudopsychology, people tend to self diagnose their intelligence in these domains without demonstrating it

• hard to prove that there’s evidence of an impairment of that function, so its not falsifiable.

• hard to prove these areas of intelligence with the criteria that Gardner specified. this theory is tempting but not scientific.

Thurstone belief

Whereas Gardner is interested in areas in which people show their intelligence, Thurston says that the area doesn't matter because you're just talking about the same underlying neurocognitive processes (primary mental abilities) for the skills that facilitate those types of intelligence

Thurstone’s 7 primary mental abilities

• word fluency

• verbal comprehension

• inductive reasoning

• spatial visualization

• number facility

• associative memory

• perceptual speed

  wavnips

Thurstone’s evidence of intelligence as multi-dimensional

• Thurston showed that people with similar IQ scores had different profiles of these primary mental abilities so intelligence isn’t just one dimension or that's not the only way you can measure it, because if it was, then everyone would have the exact same profile on these primary mental abilities.

• Thurstone's view is more precise and complex than the two dimensions of crystallized or fluid intelligence.

Word fluency

• being able to articulate the right words to others

• In the next minute, say as many words as you can that begin with “G”

verbal comprehension

• understand what others are saying

• Read this passage of text out loud…

inductive reasoning

• being able to work out people’s intentions

• Which of these words in this list does not belong? Cat Bat Ball Mouse

spatial visualisation

• being aware of someone and your own physical space relative to others as you don’t want to invade other people’s personal space

• Which of these shapes is a rotated version of the shape on the left?

number facility

• performing basic arithmetic and accurately manipulating numbers

• If John has 7 apples and he gives 1 to Jenny and 2 to James, and Fred gives him one apple, how many apples does John have?

associative memory

• being able to remember what people tell you

• Repeat as much numbers as you can … 3 6 5 2 8 7 1 1 9 7 2 5 2 2

perceptual speed

• interpreting what is happening around you quickly, you want to be quick witted

• Which of these pictures is the same as this other picture?