Organizing Themes in Development

Organizing Themes in Development

• Definition of Developmental Science: The study of life span development, focusing on human behavioral change from conception to death.

• Behavioral Change Categories: Includes observable activities (e.g., from crawling to walking) and mental activities (e.g., from disorganized to logical thinking).

• Goals of Developmental Science:

  • Describe behavioral characteristics at different ages.

  • Identify responses to life experiences at various ages.

  • Formulate theories to explain typical characteristics and responses.

  • Understand factors contributing to individual developmental differences.

  • Analyze the influence of cultural context and generational changes.

  • Identify individual and environmental factors that promote or impede healthy adaptation.

Reflection and Action in Professional Practice

• The Dual Curriculum in Training: Traditionally, education for helping professionals relies on a "formal" curriculum (research-based facts) and a "practicum" curriculum (what is actually done with clients).

• Reflective Practice: A method introduced by Schon ($1987$) where the helper goes beyond rote technical applications to generate new understandings and strategies through personal hypothesis testing.

• Expert vs. Novice Problem Solvers:

  • Expertise: Domain-specific. Experts possess well-organized and integrated stores of information.

  • Methodology: Experts analyze problems by breaking them into smaller, manageable units and use self-monitoring.

• Implicit Theories: Personal assumptions about human attributes (e.g., intelligence or personality) constructed from experience and culture.

  • Example: If intelligence is seen as fixed, a helper might encourage a client to adjust to limitations; if seen as incremental, they might focus on skill-building.

• Self-Monitoring: The best antidote to the misapplication of personal views is remaining aware of one's own theories and recognizing them as one of many possibilities.

A Historical Perspective on Developmental Theories

• Medieval Perspective: Children were often treated as small adults; only infants/preschoolers were free of adult responsibilities. At age $6$ or $7$, children took on adult roles like farming or apprenticeship.

• 17th and 18th Centuries: Philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau began describing children as having different cognitive and personality structures than adults.

• 19th Century Darwinian Influence: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and his "baby biography" of his son fostered scholarly interest in child development.

• Industrial Revolution: Increased the need for academic education (reading, writing, math), sharpening public interest in how children change with age.

• Modern Era: Developmental science now integrates genetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, and anthropology.

Emphasizing Discontinuity: Classic Stage Theories

• Defining a Stage: A period during which a person’s activities share common characteristics.

• Qualities of Stage Theories:

  • Qualitative/Transformational Change: Development is like a tree emerging from a seed; new forms are more complex than previous ones.

  • Directionality: Development has a specific unfolding or emergence of organization.

  • Discontinuity: Development resembles a staircase with periods of stability (plateaus) and rapid transition (rises).

  • Universality: The sequence of stages is usually considered the same across cultures.

Sigmund Freud’s Personality Theory

• The Id: The biological self and source of psychic energy, driven by the Pleasure Principle.

• The Ego: The rational aspect of self that uses the Reality Principle to fulfill needs and avoid negative consequences.

• The Superego: The "internalized parent" or conscience that prevents actions that violate rules through guilt.

• Defense Mechanisms: Strategies like "denial" or "repression" used by the ego to manage internal conflicts.

• Psychosexual Stages:

  • Oral (Birth to $1$ year): Mouth is primary source of pleasure; focus on attachment to caregivers. Fixation: Overdependency or smoking.

  • Anal ($1$ to $3$ years): Anal area is primary source of pleasure; toilet training is key. Fixation: Greed or messiness.

  • Phallic ($3$ to $6$ years): Focus on genitalia. Identification with same-sex parent resolves desire for opposite-sex parent and forms the superego.

  • Latency ($6$ years to Puberty): Quiescent period; energy directed toward work and play.

  • Genital (Puberty +): Adult sexual needs become primary; seeking social/marital satisfaction.

Erik Erikson’s Personality Theory

• Focus: Psychosocial aspects (attitudes and feelings toward self and others).

• The "Crises": Developmental tasks initiated by biological maturation and social expectations.

• The Eight Stages:

  • Trust vs. Mistrust (Birth to $1$ year): Goal is Hope/Trust.

  • Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt ($1$ to $3$ years): Goal is Willpower/Agency.

  • Initiative vs. Guilt ($3$ to $6$ years): Goal is Purpose/Assertiveness.

  • Industry vs. Inferiority ($6$ to $12$ years): Goal is Competence.

  • Identity vs. Role Confusion ($12$ to $20$ years): Goal is Identity/Fidelity.

  • Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young Adulthood): Goal is Love.

  • Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood): Goal is Care/Productivity.

  • Ego Integrity vs. Despair (Late Adulthood): Goal is Wisdom.

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

• Constructivism: Children active build knowledge by interacting with the environment; they do not passively receive information.

• Stages:

  • Sensorimotor (Birth to $2$ years): Lack of representational thought; behavior shifts from reflexive to intentional/symbolic.

  • Preoperational ($2$ to $7$ years): Representational thought begins but is limited by "centering" (focusing on one piece of info at a time).

  • Concrete Operational ($7$ to $12$ years): Emergence of logical thinking about concrete objects; capacity to "decenter."

  • Formal Operational ($12$ to Adulthood): Capacity for abstract, logical thinking about hypothetical situations.

• Décalages: Within-stage variations where a child is advanced in one domain but not another.

Emphasizing Continuity: Incremental Change Theories

• Analogy: A steadily rising mountainside rather than a staircase.

• Conditioning (Behaviorism):

  • Classical (Respondent) Conditioning: Associating a neutral stimulus with one that triggers an automatic response (e.g., fearing a dog after a loud bark).

  • Operant Conditioning: Learning through consequences.

    • Positive Reinforcement: Presenting something pleasurable.

    • Negative Reinforcement: Removing something aversive (e.g., releasing a pair of hands after a person yells "Uncle").

• Social Learning Theory (Albert Bandura): Emphasizes modeling/observational learning. Observers may choose to imitate based on perceived model competence or expected reward.

• Information Processing Theories: Likens the mind to a computer. Knowledge accumulation is specific to narrow domains (e.g., using different strategies for addition vs. reading) and increments are not coordinated across domains.

Contemporary Multidimensional (Systems) Theories

• Bidirectionality: Reciprocal relationships among various levels of causes (biological, psychological, social).

• Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory:

  • Proximal Processes: Reciprocal interactions between the organism and immediate objects/people (the primary engines of development).

  • Distal Processes: Modifiers of proximal processes (e.g., genes or cultural systems).

  • Nested structures:

    • Microsystem: Immediate environment (family, school).

    • Mesosystem: Relationships between microsystems.

    • Exosystem: External settings affecting the child indirectly (parent's workplace, neighborhood SES).

    • Macrosystem: Broadest cultural/economic norms and values.

• Life Span Developmental Theory (Paul Baltes):

  • Biological vs. Cultural Supports: Proposes that biological supports are more critical in childhood, while cultural supports (resources, social networks) become more vital for adaptation in older age as biological systems decline.

Core Developmental Issues

• Nature and Nurture: Outcomes are always a result of interplay. There is no simple distinction; genetics and environment modify each other.

• Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to reorganize and change via neurons throughout life.

• Critical (Sensitive) Periods: Time windows where skills are most easily acquired.

  • Example (Language): Proficiency in grammar is harder to achieve if learning starts after age $17$. Phoneme discrimination narrows after $8$ to $10$ months as the infant specializes in their native language.

• Universality and Specificity:

  • WEIRD Samples: Concerns that most research is based on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic populations.

  • Social Address: Analyzing participants by race, ethnicity, gender, country of origin, and SES.

• Cultural Processing Differences:

  • Westerners: Tend to be analytic, focusing on central objects.

  • East Asians: Tend to be holistic, focusing on context and relationships.

  • Goh et al. ($2007$) Study: fMRI-A showed older East Asians develop a "holistic default" in the visual ventral cortex due to a lifetime of cultural practice.

Risk, Resilience, and Trauma

• Developmental Psychopathology: The study of how psychological disorders develop by looking at intersections of normal and abnormal pathways.

• Risk (Vulnerability) Factors: Conditions like poverty, maltreatment, or trauma that increase deleterious outcomes.

• Protective Factors: Buffers that work indirectly to support positive outcomes in high-risk situations.

• Promotive Factors: Conditions that confer benefit directly regardless of risk level (e.g., intelligence, quality parenting).

• Key Principles:

  • Multifinality: Similar early pathways lead to different outcomes (e.g., conduct-disordered children becoming adults with depression OR antisocial personality).

  • Equifinality: Decidedly different pathways lead to the same outcome (e.g., ADHD caused by biology vs. parenting).

• Trauma Studies:

  • Buffalo Creek ($1972$): Dam burst killing $125$. $17$ years later, $25-30\%$ of survivors had clinical anxiety/depression.

  • Armenian Earthquake ($1988$): $25$ years later, early adolescents with supportive networks and school-based intervention showed better adjustment.

  • Dose-Response Pattern: The intensity and persistence of symptoms generally correlate with the intensity of trauma exposure.

• Resilience Models:

  • Sensitization: Early severe stress makes one more susceptible to future stress.

  • Steeling (Vascine analogy): Exposure to moderate, manageable stressors builds hardiness and coping skills.

  • Skin-Deep Resilience: High-achieving, conscientious individuals from low-SES/discriminated backgrounds may show outward success but suffer internal physiological costs (e.g., higher inflammatory biomarkers).

  • Critical Slowing Down: In dynamic systems, taking longer and longer to recover from negative affect suggests declining resilience.

Applications and Professional Standards

• Translational Research: The process of moving basic laboratory science ("bench") to practical implementation ("bedside") through a recursive loop of testing and back-translation.

• Arrest Reduction in Philadelphia Schools: Researchers worked with police to use knowledge of adolescent brain development to create diversion programs, reducing arrests for minor infractions.

• Prevention Levels:

  • Universal: Directed toward the general population (e.g., mandatory vaccinations).

  • Selective: Targets individuals at high epidemiological risk (e.g., low-birth-weight babies).

  • Indicated: Targets individuals showing subclinical symptoms.

• Ethics in Research: Professionals must consider peer-reviewed evidence, check for control groups, and beware of conflicts of interest or undisclosed financial ties in program evaluation reports.