Developmental Psyc 1

Developmental Psychology aims to

aims to describe how develops, what happens,understand mechanisms, and understand the age-related changes (many domains like memory, social, emotional and cognitive development) that individuals undergo from conception through old age until death- throughout life spam

three big issues in Developmental Psych

1. What are the causes of developmental change? So what drives development change? Nature vs nurture (genes x environment)

2. Early experience vs. later experience:How important is timing of experience in development? Do we need particular experiences really ealy in development or later are ok

3. Continuity vs. discontinuity: What is the nature of developmental change? Is it continuous or discontinuous change?

Early vs. later experience

1. The timing of harmful things (like drugs or toxins) during pregnancy is important because they can cause problems for the baby.

2. congenital cataracts (perceptual development): if infant has cataracts-visual experienceis crucial for optimal development.

3. institutionalised children (socio-emotional development): orphanages

Critical periods

A period when certain experiences are crucial for a particular feature of development

Sensitive periods

A period during which experience is optimal for development of a function (but later experience may compensate if it didn’t have earlier)

Continuous Development

• Growth happens slowly and steadily over time.

• It’s about gradually getting better at things.

• It’s a change in the amount of a skill or behavior (like getting a little better at talking or walking over time).

Discontinuous Development:

• Growth happens in sudden jumps or big steps.

• It’s a change in the type of skill or behavior (not just getting better, but doing something completely new).

• It’s like moving from crawling to walking — a big change, not just a small improvement.

Starfish

(start very small and then large but always look like starfish): continuity, involves gradual, smooth change.

dragonfly

(starts like a lava and merges into dragonfly, different in each stage): represents discontinuity involves distinct stages with marked changes between each stage, often resulting in a transformation into a very different form at the end

How do researchers study development?

Longitudinal Design and Cross-sectional studies

Longitudinal Design

• The same participants are observed, tested, or interviewed in relation of that function, repeatedly over a period of time

Positive: allow strong conclusions, conclusions of measures age-related changes.

Negative: generational effects (technology has changed, and practice effects(If you use the same test over and over, people might look like they are getting better. But the improvement could just be because they remember the test or got used to it). Is time consuming, expensive, there is attrition (loss of participants)

Cross-Sectional Design

• Participants from different age groups are studied at the same point in time

• Measures age-related differences

Positive: Less time consuming/expensive

Negative: Cohort Effects: Sometimes, differences between groups aren’t because of age, but because of other things (like the time period or life experiences they lived through).

Is it Longitudinal design or cross-sectional design?

a.        Are there separate groups that differ in age? Cross sectional

b.        Or are the same participants tested repeatedly? Longitudinal

is it Generational or cohort problems?

a. Is the problem about generalising the results to a different sample? generational

b. Is the problem about a variable other than age, differing between the groups and influencing the results of the study Cohort

novelty preference

preference for new things

Visual paired comparison task:

1^st step of this task: familiarisation (shows a bunch of picture of the monkey faces, over and over again)

2^nd fase: Test fase: old familiar face of the monkey is paired with the face of a new monkey that they have not seen before

If they can tell apart we will be able to see because infants look more at the new face

Cross-Sectional Design facial recognition

• Compared 6-month-olds and 9-month-olds

• At 6 months: babies can tell different monkey faces apart (discriminate).

• At 9 months: babies lose that ability — suggesting a change happens between 6 and 9 months.

perceptual narrowing:

• We get better at noticing things we see often.

• We get worse at noticing things we don’t see often.

Longitudinal Design facial recognition infants:

• Test the same babies more than once.

• 6 months old: all could tell monkey faces apart.

• Then they split into 2 groups:

  • Group 1: No extra training → came back at 9 months → couldn’t tell monkey faces apart (same as cross-sectional results).

  • Group 2: Saw monkey faces in a book for 3 months → came back at 9 months → could still tell monkey faces apart!

Only longitudinal studies allow for

conclusions about age-related change

Researchers are interested in age-related differences in adults' computer literacy. They recruit independent groups of people in their 20s, 40s, 60s, and 80s. This is an example of a

CROSS SECTIONAL design.

It might be difficult to draw conclusions about the effect of age per se, because of group differences in the kinds of technology participants were exposed to in school. This is an example of

COHORT EFFECT effect.