Developmental Psychology — Lecture Notes

Developmental Psychology: Course Overview

• Developmental Psychology is a course that deals with the study of human development throughout the life span in the areas of the physical, social, cognitive, emotional, and moral development.

Development

• Development refers to the progressive series of changes of an orderly and coherent type toward the goal of maturity.
  • Progressive means the changes are directional, leading toward something positive.
  • Orderly and coherent suggest that development is not haphazard, usual type but rather there is a definite relationship among the stages in the developmental sequence.

Issues in Human Development

• Nature and Nurture: involves the degree to which genetic or hereditary influences (nature) and experiential or environmental influences (nurture) determine the kind of person you are.
• Continuity and Discontinuity: concerns whether a particular developmental phenomenon represents a smooth progression through the life span (continuity) or a series of abrupt shifts (discontinuity).
• Universal and Context-specific Development: concerns whether there is only one path of developmental process for everyone or several.

Basic Forces in Human Development

1. Biological forces - include all genetic and health related factors that affect development
2. Sociocultural factors - include interpersonal, societal, cultural, and ethnic factors that affect development
3. Psychological forces - include all internal perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and personality factors that affect development
4. Life cycle forces - reflect differences in how the same events affect people of different ages.

Factors of Development

1. Maturation - is the development or unfolding of traits (e.g., physical, functions) potentially present in the individual as a result of hereditary endowment
2. Learning - is the result of activities or day-to-day experiences

Types of Change in Development

1. Change in size
2. Change in proportion
3. Disappearance of old features
4. Appearance of new features

Rate of Development

1. Rapid development - is observed during the prenatal throughout babyhood (except for the first two weeks or plateau stage).
2. Slow development - 6 to adolescence.

Factors Influencing Attitudes toward Developmental Changes

• Appearance
• Changes of behavior
• Cultural stereotypes
• Cultural values
• Role changes
• Personal experiences

Significant Facts about Development

1. Early foundations are critical
2. The role of maturation and learning in development
3. Development follows a definite and predictable pattern
4. All individuals are different
5. Each phase of development has a characteristic pattern of behavior
6. Each phase of development has hazards
7. Development is aided by stimulation
8. Development is affected by cultural changes
9. There is social expectation for every stage of development
10. There are traditional beliefs about people of all ages.

Life Span: Definition and Stages

• Life span is the development from conception to death

Life Span Stages and Ages

1. Prenatal – fertilization to birth
2. Infancy – birth to 2 weeks of life
3. Babyhood – 2 weeks of life to 2nd year
4. Early Childhood – 2 to 6
5. Late Childhood – 6 to 10 or 12
6. Puberty – 10 or 12 to 14
7. Adolescence – 14 to 18
8. Early Adulthood – 18 to 40
9. Middle Adulthood – 40 to 60
10. Late Adulthood or senescence – 60 to death

Factors Influencing Mastery of Developmental Tasks

• A retarded developmental level
• Lack of opportunity to learn the developmental tasks or lack of guidance in their mastery
• lack of motivation
• Poor health
• Physical defects
• A low intellectual level

Developmental Theories

• In human development, a theory is an organized set of ideas that is designed to explain development.

1. Psychodynamic theory - suggests that development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they face at different ages.

2. Learning theory - suggests that learning (experience) influences a person's behavior.

3. Cognitive-developmental theory - suggests that development is largely determined by knowledge.

4. Ecological and systems approach - suggests that human development is inseparable from the environmental contexts in which a person develops.

5. Life-span perspective - suggests that human development is multiply determined and cannot be understood within the scope of a single framework.

6. Life-course perspective - suggests the importance of the interplay of the biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces of development.

Approaches to Developmental Research

1. Systematic observation - is watching people and carefully recording what they do or say.
2. Using tasks to sample behavior - is creating tasks that are thought to sample the behavior of interest.
3. Self-reports - in which people answer questions about the topic of interest.
4. Physiological measures - is measuring people's physiological responses.

Reliability and Validity

• Reliability is the extent to which a measure provides a consistent index of a characteristic.
• Validity is the extent to which a measure actually measures what it intends to measure.

Representative Sampling

• Populations - refer to broad groups of people that are of interest to researchers.
• Sample - is a subset of the population

Research Designs

1. Correlational Study - studies the relations between variables. It is usually measured by calculating a correlation coefficient which expresses the strength and direction of a relation between two variables. The values range between $-1.0$ and $1.0$. There are several types of correlation coefficient, but the most popular is Pearson’s. Pearson’s correlation (also called Pearson’s R) is a correlation coefficient commonly used in linear regression.
   • The correlation coefficient is denoted as $r$ and is computed by the formula:
     $r = \frac{ \sum (X<em>i - \bar{X})(Y</em>i - \bar{Y}) }{ \sqrt{ \sum (X<em>i - \bar{X})^2 } \; \sqrt{ \sum (Y</em>i - \bar{Y})^2 } }$
2. Experimental studies - is a systematic way of manipulating the factors that the experimenter believes causes a particular behavior. The factor being manipulated is called the independent variable. The behavior being observed is called the dependent variable. In experimental studies, one group receives the intervention (such as a new drug) while the control group receives nothing or an inactive placebo. The researchers then study what happens to people in each group.
3. Qualitative research - it involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand human behavior. Frequently used techniques include observation, interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and participant-observation. The data is categorize into patterns (themes).
4. Longitudinal study - in which the same individuals are observed or tested repeatedly at different points in their lives.
5. Cross-sectional study - in which developmental differences are identified by testing people of different ages.

Research and Ethics

• Informed consent - participants should give their informed consent (written) prior to participation in research.
• Confidentiality - participant\'s individual data should be confidential and guarded from public scrutiny and thus, sometimes codemames are used to protect anonymity.
• Debriefing - it should be explained to participants why the research is being conducted and why it is important.

References

• Hurlock, E. (1982). Developmental psychology. New York: Mc Graw Hill Book Company.
• Kail, R. & Cavanaugh, J. (2018). Human development: a life span view. Andover: Cengage Learning.