Developmental Psychology 1: Key Concepts and Terms
Introduction
This set of notes captures the content of the Developmental Psychology 1 course as outlined in the transcript for ELTE, Fall 2025. The course is taught by Dr. Patricia Gerván and builds on Patricia Galotti’s Cognitive Development framework (textbook references appear as Galotti chapters for each topic). The program focuses on cognitive development across the lifespan, integrating theory, empirical methods, and applied implications. The schedule lists broad thematic blocks: Introduction to cognitive development, major theories (Piaget, Vygotsky, Information Processing/Learning Theory/Modules and Core Knowledge/Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective), language acquisition, perception-attention-memory in infancy and early childhood, object concepts in infancy, later childhood perceptual-cognitive changes, ADHD, middle childhood representational and complex cognition, and cognitive development in adolescence. The materials note that lectures and required readings align to Galotti chapters 1–3 for the early topics, chapters 6–11 for later ones, with specific guest lectures on language development and ADHD.
Course Logistics and Communication
The primary communication channel for the course is Microsoft Teams. General information and questions relevant to all participants will be posted in the course team group, while individual or personal inquiries should be addressed via the Teams chat function. The class materials include Lecture slides, Teams files, and a Class Notebook/OneDrive repository managed by the instructor and teaching assistants. Cohort groups correspond to different research and development teams (e.g., Kutatásmódszertan, Fejlődéspszichológia 1). The class setup emphasizes access to general class materials, group collaboration spaces, and task-specific channels for questions and submissions.
Evaluation and Grading
The evaluation framework combines a written exam with seminar-based assessment and a home portfolio. The learning requirements include a written exam covering lectures and a compulsory reading list, active participation in seminars (including individual and team work), and a portfolio written at home. The portfolio comprises a summary of compulsory tasks (an interview and anamnesis with parents, administration and interpretation of required tasks and tests with children) and self-reflections. The grade is reported on a 1–5 scale. The weighting is 65% for the lecture/exam component (LG) and 35% for the practice/seminar component (PG), expressed as a weighted average:
G = \frac{65\, \text{LG} + 35\, \text{PG}}{100}.
Example: if LG = 4 and PG = 5, then
G = \frac{65 \times 4 + 35 \times 5}{100} = \frac{260 + 175}{100} = \frac{435}{100} = 4.35.
Final grades are determined with the stated rounding rules. The document also references that the standard format for the assessment includes multiple-choice questions in the written examination.
Introduction to Development: Scope and Lifespan
Development is defined as changes over time in a person’s body, thought, and behavior resulting from both biological and environmental influences. Developmental psychologists focus on common features of human development and typically divide the lifespan into developmental periods or stages that many individuals share. The course emphasizes perspective across domains and time, preparing students to analyze growth trajectories and the factors that shape them.
Core Domains and Developmental Periods
The course distinguishes several domains of development:
Physical: changes in body shape, size, sensory capabilities, and motor skills.
Cognitive: acquisition of skills in perceiving, thinking, reasoning, solving problems, and language.
Personality: stabilization and acquisition of enduring traits.
Sociocultural: socialization and enculturation processes.
The major developmental periods typically covered include Infancy and Toddlerhood (birth–2.5 years), Early Childhood (2.5–6 years), Middle Childhood (6–11 years), and Adolescence (11+ years). The lectures outline topics within these periods, such as perception, memory, language, and executive functions, and how they evolve from infancy through adolescence.
Why Study Cognitive Development? Cognitive Realms and Methods
The course asks why cognitive development is studied, outlining broad cognitive realms such as Language, Memory, Perception, Attention, Emotion, and Reasoning. It introduces research methods for studying cognitive development, underscoring the interplay between self-directed study and textbook-based revision. The framework prompts students to consider what, how, when, who, where, and why questions to map cognitive processes and their development.
Nature, Nurture, and Epigenetics
The course covers nature vs. nurture as a non-debate in contemporary understanding; rather, development arises from a complex interplay of genetic inheritance and environmental influences. Epigenetics is defined as the study of how behaviors and environments can cause changes that affect how genes work. An example used is intelligence: while there is genetic contribution, environmental factors and upbringing can influence cognitive outcomes. Twin studies (identical twins raised apart) illustrate the relative contributions of genetics and environment to cognitive traits.
A video on Epigenetics is provided as a supplementary resource: a YouTube video explaining what epigenetics is and how the environment can influence gene expression.
Typical vs. Atypical Development and Milestones
Typical development provides a baseline picture of progress relative to same-age peers, while atypical development occurs when a child lags behind or advances ahead in any domain (physical, cognitive, social, or adaptive life skills). Milestones such as object permanence and early language acquisition serve as benchmarks for typical cognitive growth. Identifying deviations from typical milestones supports early intervention for conditions such as ADHD, autism, or learning disabilities.
Examples include milestone-tracking and understanding the sequencing of cognitive growth. Early detection and intervention are emphasized to improve outcomes.
Conditions, Education, and Legal Contexts
The material discusses how studying development informs ideal developmental conditions, educational practice, and policy. Educational implications include age-appropriate curricula, play-based learning, classroom management, social-emotional learning, and teacher training grounded in developmental principles.
Legal regulations are also touched upon, including child protection services, age of consent, juvenile justice, and custody issues, illustrating how developmental science informs policy and protection for individuals at different life stages.
Cultural context is addressed, noting that cultural norms shape how children perceive the world and acquire knowledge. Western cultures tend toward analytic cognition and individualism, while Eastern cultures emphasize interdependence, group work, and harmony. The WEIRD framework is introduced to describe Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic populations as a narrow cross-section of global cognition.
The WEIRD concept is elaborated with traits such as high individualism, analytic thinking, universal rules, objective truth preferences, and abstract reasoning, contrasted with non-WEIRD populations which may display more holistic or relational thinking.
WEIRD Populations and Cognitive Styles
Weird populations (WEIRD) show distinct cognitive profiles compared to non-WEIRD populations, including a tendency toward individualism, analytical thinking, and trust in universal rules. These differences are contextual and methodological cautions for interpreting research generalizability across cultures.
The Cognitive Realms and Neurocognitive Architecture
The course outlines broad cognitive domains and their neural correlates in a simplified schematic:
Sensory input feeds into Visual-Spatial Perception and Memory.
Primary Neurocognitive Domains include Executive Functioning, Motor Output, Language, Attention, and Emotion/Motivation.
The model emphasizes the integration of perception, memory, attention, language, and executive control in shaping cognition.
Perception: From Sensation to Interpretation
Perception is the interpretation of sensory information. Sensation refers to the raw data provided by sensory organs, while perception involves cognitive processes that interpret these data. The distinction is emphasized by examples such as optical illusions, where perception can diverge from raw sensory input.
A classic demonstration includes the Ebbinghaus illusion, which deceives adults but is often less effective for young children due to differences in perceptual processing and prior experience with size context. The course presents data showing that younger children resist certain visual illusions more than adults, prompting questions about global versus local processing and prior experience.
Perception: Illusions and Developmental Differences
The Ebbinghaus illusion is discussed with empirical evidence showing that adults are more susceptible to contextual size cues than young children. Explanations for why children resist deception include differences in perceptual maturation, global versus local processing preferences, and lack of prior contextual experience.
Attention and Memory
Attention involves allocating mental resources to tasks while filtering distractions. Selective attention has costs, such as missing peripheral information, but is essential to task performance. The so-called cocktail party effect illustrates how attention can be selectively directed even in noisy environments. The demand on attention varies by task and age, with schooling contributing to growth in task-focused attention and regulation.
Memory is the storage of information perceived and attended to. Memory architecture includes sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Working memory is limited in capacity and develops with age; the classic “magic number” 7 ± 2 describes the typical number of items that can be held in working memory, though this capacity varies developmentally. Memory is constructive rather than a perfect replay of past events, and memory can be distorted by schemas, motivations, and leading questions. The model references the concept of an information-processing pipeline: input, sensory memory, working memory, long-term memory, and output, with control processes such as selective attention, metacognition, and emotional regulation guiding processing.
Working memory capacity develops with age and can be measured with tasks requiring verbal and visual-spatial storage and manipulation. A representative developmental trajectory shows increasing working memory capacity from early childhood through adolescence, augmenting complex cognitive tasks such as reasoning and problem solving.
Knowledge Representation, Categorization, and Perceived World Structure
Knowledge representation involves organized mental storage to facilitate retrieval. An example highlights lexical organization and categorization tasks, illustrating how the mind stores and retrieves information efficiently. Categorization is driven by cognitive economy (saving mental effort) and by a perceived world structure (reflecting natural regularities in the environment). Objects that share patterns (e.g., fruits) are grouped, supporting efficient processing and retrieval.
Language Development
Language development covers production from babbling to real words, vocabulary expansion, and grammar/syntactic development. The course emphasizes how language emerges and becomes increasingly complex through exposure, cognitive development, and social interaction.
Executive Functions
Executive functioning (EF) comprises interrelated but separable components that support goal-directed behavior. Core components include:
Inhibition (impulse control): the ability to resist temptations and refrain from inappropriate responses.
Working memory: maintaining and manipulating information in mind.
Cognitive flexibility (shifting): adjusting behavior in response to changing demands.
Planning and organization: setting goals and prioritizing steps to achieve them.
Task initiation and monitoring: starting tasks and evaluating progress.
Emotional control: regulating affect to facilitate task performance.
A common framework (Miyake et al.) identifies three correlated but separable factors of EF, with additional processes like self-monitoring and metacognition playing supporting roles. Diagrammatic representations often show EF as a network that supports attention, planning, and regulation in complex tasks.
Social Cognition: Theory of Mind (ToM)
ToM refers to the development of the ability to understand that other people have different thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and emotions. This competence underpins social interaction and regulation of behavior in social contexts. The course situates ToM within broader social-cognitive development as children become capable of considering others’ perspectives and mental states.
Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making
Thinking involves manipulation of information to solve problems (e.g., calculations), while reasoning entails logical inference from given information. Decision making is choosing among options. These processes depend on working memory, inhibition, knowledge, and EF. In practice, decisions often rely on recalling prior experiences, evaluating evidence, and managing competing goals and potential rewards.
Application Scenarios: Decision-Making Demands
A typical scenario asks what mental resources must be mobilized to make a “right” decision. Processes include recognizing a food item, recalling its taste, performing numerical comparisons (e.g., 1 < 2), inhibiting immediate desires, shifting attention away from temptations, recalling reasons for self-control, and anticipating rewards. The example integrates working memory, inhibition, attention shifting, and reward anticipation as a cohesive decision-making mechanism.
Research Methods in Developmental Psychology
The course covers a spectrum of research designs and methodological considerations. Key designs include:
Longitudinal design: same participants studied at multiple time points to observe change over time. Advantages include direct observation of change; disadvantages include cost, time, and potential participant attrition.
Cross-sectional design: different ages studied at a single time point to infer age-related differences. Advantages include efficiency; disadvantages include cohort effects and confounds that limit causal interpretation.
Sequential cohort design: multiple overlapping cohorts studied longitudinally to separate age effects from cohort effects.
The notes emphasize that different designs have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and that replication across studies is essential for reliability.
The correlation is discussed as a measure of association, not causation. A correlation coefficient describes the strength and direction of a relationship but does not imply that one variable causes changes in another. An illustrative example shows a spurious relationship between seating location and course grade, which may be driven by common causal variables such as interest, intelligence, or motivation.
Experimental, Quasi-Experimental, and Ethical Considerations
The experimental method involves manipulation of an independent variable across conditions, with random assignment to create equivalent groups and permit causal inferences. Key terms include:
Independent variable (treatment): the manipulated variable.
Dependent variable: the outcome measured.
Experimental group: exposed to the treatment.
Control group: not exposed to the treatment.
Condition: the treatment environment applied uniformly.
Random assignment: allocation to conditions to ensure equivalence.
An illustrative design shows two groups experiencing different video game conditions or a control condition, with the dependent variable measured after exposure to demonstrate causal effects. Advantages include temporal precedence (treatment occurs before outcomes) and initial equivalence between groups; limitations include ethical and practical constraints and potential confounds.
Quasi-experimental designs are discussed when independent variables cannot be manipulated (e.g., age, gender, life events). These designs reduce causal certainty but are often necessary in applied settings. Regardless of design, replication and ethical oversight are emphasized.
Ethical guidelines for research with human participants include the following moral foundations:
Protection from harm: Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) evaluate potential risks.
Informed consent: clear description of procedures, risks, and obligations.
Privacy and confidentiality.
Knowledge of results.
Beneficial treatments where possible.
All methods must comply with ethical standards and seek to minimize risk and harm to participants. The transcript includes guidance on IRB review and the importance of informed consent and participant welfare.
Exam Preparation and Practice Questions
The transcript provides example exam content, including:
A question about whether a study comparing 8–12-year-old children across ages constitutes a longitudinal, cross-sectional, cross-sequential, or micro-genetic design.
A question about memory retrieval in kindergarten experiences (encoding specificity, practice effects, multitasking, or working memory).
A multiple-choice item about categorization and the Perceived World Structure principle.
These items illustrate typical cognitive development exam formats (design identification, memory processes, categorization principles). Students should be prepared to apply definitions, design logic, and reasoning to scenario-based questions.
Supplementary Resources and Notable References
The course references Kathleen M. Galotti’s Cognitive Development chapters 1–3 (Introduction and Theories) and chapters 6–13 (Language, Perception, Memory, Conceptual/Representational Development, and more). The reading list is integral to the written-exam preparation.
Epigenetics video resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aAhcNjmvhc
Additional readings include Wang et al. (2022) in The Lancet (cultural and educational implications of development) and other references cited in the slides.
Summary of Key Concepts and Formulas
Developmental psychology studies how cognition, behavior, and brain processes change over time due to biological and environmental influences.
Nature and nurture interact via epigenetics: environmental factors can affect gene expression and, consequently, cognitive development.
Typical vs. atypical development uses milestones as benchmarks to identify delays or differences and guide interventions.
WEIRD populations describe a narrow segment of global populations, with distinctive cognitive styles (analytic, individualistic) that may not generalize cross-culturally.
The cognitive realms include perception, attention, memory, language, executive functions, and social cognition (ToM).
Perception involves interpreting sensory input; sensation is raw data, perception is cognitive processing of that data. Illusions reveal developmental differences in perceptual processing.
Attention and memory operate within a framework of working memory, long-term memory, and sensory memory, with capacity and processing improving with age; memory is constructive.
Knowledge representation and categorization rely on cognitive economy and perceived world structure, enabling efficient retrieval and learning.
Language development evolves from production to complex grammar; vocabulary expands with age and exposure.
Executive functions (inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, planning/organization, task initiation, self-monitoring, emotional control) underpin goal-directed behavior and adapt to task demands.
Social cognition (ToM) develops as children learn to infer others’ mental states and emotions, enabling sophisticated social interaction.
Thinking, reasoning, and decision making involve manipulating information, logical inference, and making choices under constraints and potential rewards.
Research methods in developmental psychology span longitudinal, cross-sectional, and sequential designs, each with advantages and limitations; correlation does not imply causation.
Experimental methods emphasize random assignment and controlled manipulation to establish causal relations; quasi-experiments are used when manipulation is not possible.
Ethical considerations (IRBs, informed consent, privacy, risk minimization, benefit to participants) guide all human-subject research.
Course assessment combines a written exam (lectures and readings) and seminar work (portfolio and participation), with a final grade formula:
G = \frac{65\,\text{LG} + 35\,\text{PG}}{100}
where LG is the lecture/exam score and PG is the practice/seminar score. For example, if LG = 4 and PG = 5, then
G = \frac{65 \times 4 + 35 \times 5}{100} = 4.35.