Psychology Mid Term Review
PSYCHOLOGY 1105
Chapter 4 (pp. 113-121, 132-156) – Human Development
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Describe and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional and
longitudinal designs for researching development.
2. Understand the key debates underlying research and theory in child development.
4. Summarize the major physical, cognitive, and emotional developments that take
place during childhood.
5. Summarize the major physical, cognitive, and emotional developments that take
place during adolescence.
Textbook Concepts:
I. a. b. Describe and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of cross-
sectional and longitudinal designs for researching development.
The two major research approaches are:
i. Cross-sectional: comparing groups of different aged-people to one
another.
ii. Longitudinal: studying the same group of people over time.
Cohort-sequential research design combines the elements of cross-sectional and
longitudinal designs.
II. Understanding How We Develop
a. Developmental psychology is the study of changes in behaviour and mental
processes over time, and the factors that influence the course of those constancies
and changes.
b. “Developmental psychology is the change in physical, cognitive, moral, emotional
and social functioning – as you progress from birth to childhood to adolescence to
adulthood”
.
c. Key debates underlying research and theory in child development:
What drives change? Nature or nurture?
Are the changes qualitative or quantitative?
iii. What is the role of early experiences in shaping later development?
i. ii. 2
IV. Childhood
a. Dramatic gains in physical and psychological capabilities occur from infancy to
childhood.
iii. Our brains grow dramatically.
iv. Brain development prepares us to learn and encode information that will
organize the changes.
b. Cognitive development
i. Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development.
ii. For Piaget, our thinking grows increasingly complex through learning and
self-experimentation.
iii. Piaget believed we passed through multiple stages from infancy to adult:
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational.
iv. Each stage is accompanied by a new cognitive capability.
v. Information processing researchers suggest that babies may develop
mental capacities earlier than Piaget believes.
According to Piaget:
-the goal of development is adaptation
-one learns adaptation through construction of schemes (a.k.a., schema, schemata, scripts) – mental
structure that helps the child make sense of experience
-schemes are developed through the processes of assimilation and accommodation and help us to reach a
mental balance, or equilibrium.
-Assimilation is the process of incorporating new information into existing understanding.
Accommodation is the process of modifying one's existing thought processes and framework of
knowledge in response to new information.
Table 4-5 (p. 134)3
• Jean Piaget (1920s-1980s)
– Assimilation/ Accommodation
– 4 stages and major milestones
• Sensorimotor Stage
– Object permanence
• Preoperational Stage
– Highlights deficiencies in thinking.
– Centration
– Irreversibility
– Egocentrism
– Lack of conservation
• Concrete Operational Stage
– Decentration
– Reversibility
– Conservation
– Ability to think about ideas and reason from cause to effect
– Mastery of real-world relationships
• Formal Operational
– Abstraction and hypothetical thinking
• Lev Vygotsky (Sociocultural Theory – the role of cultural factors) introduced the concepts of zone of
proximal distance and scaffolding with regards to cognitive and language development
c. Social and Emotional development
i. Babies are born with one of four biologically based temperament, a
tendency to respond to certain situations in similar ways: easy, difficulty,
slow-to-warm or unique temperament.
Thomas, Chess, and Birch (1970)
4 basic temperamental styles
easy – 40% of the population
difficult – 10%
slow-to-warm-up – 15%
mixed – 35%
ii. iii. iv. v. Jerome Kagan’s research illustrates two key aspects of temperament:
1) Temperament is inborn
2) Temperament is stable across situations and time
According to the Attachment Theory, babies are born with reflexes that
help solidify their relationship with a caregiver.
This relationship is designed to ensure that baby gets their needs met.
The security of the attachment relationship with early caregivers will have
later implications for how secure the person feels emotionally and
socially.