PSYCH200

Development definition

Systematic changes and continuities in an individual that occur between conception and death

Broad domains of development

Physical, cognitive and psychosocial

Why is development not a fixed concept?

The way we conceptualise periods of development differs across time and cultures

Why is thinking across time and space a challenge of studying development?

Need to think about processes unfolding across different levels of analysis and different time scales

Nature

• Influences of heredity

• emphasis on the process of maturation

• biological development

Nurture

• The influences of environment

• emphasis on learning

• experiences cause changes

What does Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model emphasise?

Biology and the environment interact to produce development

Bronfenbrenner - microsystem

Immediate physical and social environment, eg. immediately family in home, school

Bronfenbrenner - mesosystem

Linkages between microsystems, eg. issues at home influencing performance at school

Bronfenbrenner - exosystem

Linkages between social system, eg. government changes influencing school curriculum

Bronfenbrenner - macrosystem

Larger cultural context, eg. Western, technological culture

Bronfenbrenner - chronosystem

Changes occur in a timeframe

Goals of studying development

Describing normal development/individual differences, explaining typical vs individually different development, predicting factors causing people to develop typically/differently, optimising positive development/preventing + overcoming difficulties

Rene Spitz - orphanage

Solitary confinement, lack of long term interactions with nurses - reduced exploration/motor action, extreme fear of strangers, repetitive/self-injurious behaviours, vacant expressions/lack of interest/awareness, 37% of these babies died by age 2.

Rene Spitz - prison nursery

Infants could interact, contact with mothers, not particularly clean, 0% died by age 2

Cross cultural perspective - Western vs Chinese culture

Individualist culture vs collectivist culture

What are the characteristics of a good theory?

• Internally consistent (doesn’t generate contradictory hypotheses)

• falsifiable (able to be proven wrong)

• supported by data

Karl Popper - falsifiability

If a theory cannot be tested in a way that could show the theory to be wrong, it is not useful for science - studies don’t prove theories to be correct, they either falsify a hypothesis or fail to falsify a hypothesis.

Reporting examples

Questionnaires, interviews, achievement tests, personality assessments

Strengths of reporting

• Data collection with large groups

• Ability to collect many resources

Limitations of reporting

• can’t be used with infants, young children, or those with reading/language difficulties

• difficult to equate questions across age groups

• self-presentation concerns

Naturalistic observation

Observing behaviour in natural settings

Strengths of naturalistic observation

• Reflects behaviour in the real world

• helpful for generating research questions and theories

Limitations of naturalistic observation

• Difficult to identify causation

• behaviours of interest might occur rarely

• Children may behave differently when being observed

• observations can be biased

Structured observation

Creating special conditions to elicit behaviours of interest

Strengths of structured observation

• More control, less noise

• Allows for more direct comparisons between children

Limitations of structured observation

• Concerns about whether behaviours in controlled environments will generalised to natural settings

Strengths of neural, physiological or biological measures

• Hard to fake (or strategically change)

• Don’t require language or complex behaviours

Limitations of neural, physiological or biological measures

• Can be difficult to interpret (eg. does increased heart rate reflect anger or excitement)

Case studies

In-depth examination of an individual or small number of individuals (can use a variety of data collection techniques (eg. observation, testing, interviews)

Strengths of case studies

• Rich information about complex or rare aspects of development

Limitations of case studies

• Often difficult to generalise findings to other situations or groups

Correlational studies

Determining wheher two or more variables are related in a systematic way (correlation coefficient reflects strength and direction of relationship)

Limitations of correlational studies

• Cannot establish a causal relationship

• Directionality problem

• Third variable problem

Strengths of correlational studies

• Can be used when it is unethical to manipulate variables of interest

• allows for multiple factors to be examined

Experiments

Variable manipulated in order to see what effect this has on the measured variable

Critical features of true experiments

• Random assignment

• manipulation of an independent variable

• experimental controls

Strengths of experiments

• Can establish cause and effect

• Allows for careful controls

Limitations of experiments

• Concerns about generalisability to real world conditions

• Interventions raise ethical concerns

Meta-analyses

Results of multiple studies addressing the same question are synthesised to produce overall conclusions

Cross-sectional designs

Compare the performances of people of different cohorts

Strengths of cross-sectional designs

• quick and easy to conduct

Limitations of cross-sectional designs

• cannot reveal developmental change and constancy within individuals

  • age effects and cohort effects are confounded

Longitudinal designs

Assess one group of individuals repeatedly over time

Strengths of longitudinal designs

• Allow reasearchers to follow specific developmental trajectories

Limitations of longitudinal designs

• Costly and time consuming

• some participants are not studied at each time point

• potential issues with repeated testing

• are results specific to the cohort

Microgenetic designs

Measure the same individual or group repeatedly in a relatively small timespan

Sequential designs

Combine the cross-sectional and longitudinal designs

Strengths of sequential designs

• can reveal age effects, cohort effects and time of measurement effects

Limitations of sequential designs

• costly and time consuming

• potential issues with repeated testing

Reliability

Would similar results be observed if the study were repeated

Validity

Are you measuring what you think you’re measuring

Replicability

Do other labs find the same result

Test-retest reliability

If you give the same task/test/measure to the same group of participants, do participants perform similarly each time

Interrater reliability

Do different researchers get the same results when they code the same data

Internal validity

Are changes in the dependent variable driven by different levels of the independent or extraneous influences

External validity

Do the results generalise to other populations and situations

Ecological validity

Do the results generalise to real world settings (situations where the behaviours of interest would naturally occur)

File-drawer problem

• It can be tempting for researchers to re-run the same experiment with minor tweaks until they get the results they expect

• It can be more difficult to publish studies that fail to show an effect

• Researchers might put studies revealing null effects away

Activity vs passivity

Are we actively shaping our environments and contributing to our own development or are we shaped by biological and environmental forces beyond our control

Self efficacy

the belief that one can effectively produce desired outcomes in a particular area of life

Quantitative change

Numerically different, eg. tadpole growing

Qualitative change

New structure, ability or process eg. transition into a frog from a tadpole

Universality vs context specificity

Is development similar from person to person and from culture to culture or do developmental pathways vary considerably depending on the social context

Domain specificity vs domain generality

Are our minds supported by many specialised systems that evolved for specific domains or do we have a few general systems that can be used across many different domains

What did Freud argue

We are driven by motives and emotional conflicts of which we are largely unaware

Freud - libido

psychic energy of the sex instinct, child develops through psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital)

Defense mechanisms (Freud - libido)

Unconscious anxiety coping devices adopted by the ego

• fixation (libido remains tied to an earlier stage of development)

• Identification (individual models self after another person, particularly same-sex parent)

• regression (retreating to an earlier, less traumatic stage of development)

Strengths of Freud’s theory

• Brought attention to unconscious processes

• emphasised importance of early experience for later development

• highlighted role of emotions and conflict in personality development

Limitations of Freud’s theory

• Vague, difficult to test

• Overemphasis on sexuality

Erikson’s theory

Argued that personality evolved through systematic stages, less emphasis on sexual urges and more on social influence, and more emphasis on development beyond adolescence

Strengths of Erikson’s theory

• Wider view of development

• considers both nature and nurture

Limitations of Erikson’s theory

• Vague, difficult to test

• more descriptive than explanatory

Behaviourism

Psychological science should be based on objective observations of behaviour rather than unobservable (mental) phenomena

Classical conditioning

Unconditioned stimulus (elicits response without prior learning), unconditioned response (unlearned response to UCS), conditioned stimulus (formally neutral stimulus that elicits response after pairing with UCS), conditioned response (learned response to stimulus that originally didn’t produce response)

Operant conditioning

Learning in which behaviours become more or less probable depending on the consequences they produce, reinforcements/punishments

Social cognitive theory

Emphasis on the critical role that the active cognitive processing of social information plays in human learning, motivation and self regulation

Social cognitive theory - development driven by

• observational learning and imitation

• vicarious reinforcement

• latent learning

• eg. bobo doll experiment

Strengths of social cognitive theory

• Testable

• simple mechanisms

• principles apply across lifespan

• practical applications

Limitations of social cognitive theory

• Inadequate accounts of developmental change

• insufficient emphasis on genetics and maturation

Freud - components of the personality

Id (impulsive, irrational and selfish part), ego (rational aspect that seeks to gratify instincts), superego (individual’s internalised moral standards)

Humanistic theories

Emphasises the inherent ‘goodness’ in people

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

physiological → safety → belonging and love → self-actualisation

Strengths of humanistic theories

• Focused on psychological wellness as more than simply absence of disease

• Focus on positive dimensions

• Foundation for positive psychology

Limitations of humanistic theories

• Initial theories and concepts too broad and hard to measure

• Universality of hierarchy questioned

Constructivist theory

Child is not a blank slate but does not come preloaded with innate knowledge either, the child actively constructs increasingly complex knowledge and abilities out of simpler components.

Stage-based theory - Piaget

Children travel through a series of stages as they develop new knowledge and abilities, each stage is the foundation for the next stage and development is about leveling up.

Sociocultural theory - Vygotsky

Children are intrenched in different sociocultural contexts and development is advanced through social interaction with more skilled individuals.

Social constructivism

Humans actively create their own understandings of the world through social interactions and cultural tools eg. language

Cognitive theories - information processing

Hardware (brain) and software (knowledge, thought processes, logic) - hardware improves in capacity and speed with age and software improves with experience.

Strengths of cognitive theories

• Testable, well researched and generally supported by evidence

• Contribute to education and parenting practices

• Vygotsky highlighted importance of social interaction and culture.

Limitations of cognitive theories

• Too little consideration of motivation/emotion

• Piaget underestimated abilities at different ages, overemphasized stage like progression

Systems theories

Argue that developmental changes arise from ongoing interrelationships between a changing organism and a changing system that contribute to a larger, dynamic system

Gottlieb - systems theories

Epigenetic psychobiological systems perspective - biological and environmental forces interact as part of a larger system that shapes development.

Epigenesis

“Over and above” genes - process through which genes and environment jointly influence development, often in ways that are difficult to predict.

Cultural evolution

Changes in a species stemming from learning and experience passed on across generations

Strengths of systems theories

• Broader, more comprehensive view of development

• Focus on transactions between individual and environment

Limitations of systems theories

• Partially formulated and tested

• Difficult to establish coherent theories

Comparative perspectives

To what extent do other animals exhibit behaviours and developmental trajectories that are similar to those observed in our species

Cross-cultural perspective

How do differences in culture influence differences in development, and to what extent are behaviours and developmental trajectories consistent across cultures.