Historical Evolution
Baby diaries
1700s
1800s
Charles Darwin
Jean Piaget
Emergence of Areas
Social Development
Attention & Cognitive Development
Emotional Development
Contemporary Areas
Connectionism
Neuroscience
looks at how the growth and development of different brain areas affects overall development
Historical w/in Civilizations
Early civilizations
Infanticide — fathers/heads of households got to decide whether infants lived/died
Middle Ages & Renaissance
orphaning as substitute to infanticide
Enlightenment (romanticism v. empiricism)
Modern science (maturation vs. behaviorism vs dynamic system)
Head start
Topics w/in Infant Development
Perceptual/Sensorial skills
Sensorimotor/tool use
Conceptual thinking
Representational/symbolic
Communicative/linguistic
]
social/interactive
Expressive/emotive
Self-regulatory/coping
Key Concepts
Development change: stable, irreversible
Development stage: stable and persistent patterns of behaviors
fully mastered abilities of the previous stage; won’t make mistakes from previous stages
Research methods
Quantitative — behavioral processes have a numerical index
Qualitative — emphasize the meaning/quality of the behaviors
Experimental
Random assignment is most challenging with infant studies due to ethics and logistics
Physiological recording
heart rate, hormonal activity, ERPS
Observational research
Longitudinal, cross-sectional
Predictor, outcome variable (cannot IV/DV because you are observing not experimenting)
Be clear in what target behaviors you are observing and why it matters
In infant studies, it’s common to have up to ~30% attrition
Microanalysis: observers record the presence or absence of the predefined categories
e.g. behavioral coding
Macroanalysis
Cross-Cultural Psych
became popular because it could be used to prove that certain behaviors/capacitites are innate
If a capacity were innate it would be true are sociocultural contexts
Documentary —
link between parenting and cognitive development unexplored
less connected in early times, partly due to Piaget
epistemology—study of learning about origins of knowledge
Piaget never claimed to be a developmental psych, instead was interested in learning how people acquire knowledge
John Piaget
First paper at 10, studying insect behavior
PhD in natural sciences
Got into child development after fatherhood
Study — babies reach for toy, continue push it out of their reach till they stop reaching → demonstrates comprehension of distance and scope of abilities
Dr. He’ study — add a cloth under/over toy so that it is in arms reach (but the toy is not); babies can pull cloth to bring toy closer → demonstrates tool use
Origins of Knowledge
Nativism (Rationalism)
Empiricism (Associativism)
Constructivism
Piaget took middle ground, stated not just nature or nurture is important but rather how it comes together in the environment
Hereditary factors
Structural: related to the constitution of our nervous system and sensory organs, thus we perceive e …
constant exchange between the individual and the environment
…
Adapation is the equilibrium of:
Assimilation (modify interpretation of new elements to fit schema)
and accomadation (modify schema in light of new elements)
Piagets’ Developmental stages
Sensorimotor
reflex schemas exercised
primary circular reactions — using body parts, extending arms, thumbs
secondary circular reactions — involving an object outside their body
Object permanence — signs: child will still look for object that has been obstructed from view
A not B error: babies can find toys in location A but not in location B
coordination of secondary
Visable displacement: child will search for missing objects outside of trajectory the object followed while the child was playing with it
Invisible displacement: Child with search multiple locations even they didn’t see the toy going there
tertiary circular reactions —- coordination, multiple secondary reactions
begin to understand that the object is independent of the child but only as long as movement id perceived
beginning of symbolic representation —- testing behaviors e.g. dropping tools to watch parents pick it up
begin to understand that the object is independent of the child
Pass: symbolic processing
Freud, through the study of personality, emphasized the importance of early experiences
Piaget focused on the origins of knowledge, the beginning point
first one to propose motor abilities are important
Motoric activities: crawling, cruising, walking, etc
Gross - throwing, turning, talking
Fine — swiffering, pointing/poking,
David Anderson paper
Self-produced locomotion
Central questions of developmental psych
Origins — what and when?
Process — how?
Gibson: invariant
motor activity plays a crucial role in
Anderson paper — metaanalysis
Infant crawling is linked to many psychological changes
visual perception
fear of heights
spatial coding strat
Egocentric — directions change based on where you are
Allocentric
joint visual attention
parent-child communication
Search for hidden objects
Cross cultural: certain tribes continue to use egocentric coding strat
Epigenesis: the emergence of a new skill creates experiences that bring about new psychological developments
eg onset of prone locomotion
Theorectical Framework of Developmental Process
crawling → fear of height
Infant that have newly learned crawling will cross without worry, while e
Visual proprioception: the awareness of ones own movement and posture produced by eyes alone (Ginson 1979)
plays a role inn height vertigo
utilizes peripheral vision
Infants don’t necessarily use vp the way adults do
Optica flow
Center
Study:
Pre-crawling don’t res
Crawling infants or infants with locomotor experience were more sensitive to peripheral vision change