Developmental Psychology - PSCH 320 Notes

Developmental Psychology

Agenda (1-16-2025)

• Review homework
• Review the syllabus
• Follow up on questions
• Small group discussion: What is development?
• Chapter 1 slides: Theories of development

What is Development?

• Small Group Discussion: Work together in groups of about 4 students for about 5 minutes.
• Put everyone’s names on one paper – no names, no credit.
• Choose one group member to write key points from the group discussion.
• Discuss the question: What is development?

Developmental Science

• The study of constancy and change throughout the lifespan
• The field is:
  • Scientific
  • Applied
  • Interdisciplinary

Basic Issues in Development

• Continuous or discontinuous?
• One course of development or many?
• Relative influence of nature and nurture?

Continuous vs. Discontinuous Development

• Figure 1.1 illustrates the difference between continuous and discontinuous development.
  • Continuous development: A smooth, gradual process where individuals gradually add more of the same types of skills.
  • Discontinuous development: A process where new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times.

Contexts of Development

• Unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances that can result in different paths of change

Nature and Nurture

• Nature
  • Hereditary information
  • Received from parents at conception
• Nurture
  • Physical and social forces
  • Influences biological and psychological development

Stability and Plasticity

• Stability
  • Persistence of individual differences
  • Lifelong patterns established by early experiences
• Plasticity
  • Development is open to lifelong change
  • Change occurs based on influential experiences

Lifespan Perspective

• Development is:
  • Lifelong
  • Multidimensional and multidirectional
  • Highly plastic
  • Influenced by multiple, interacting forces

Periods of Development

• Prenatal: Conception to birth
• Infancy and toddlerhood: Birth–2 years
• Early childhood: 2–6 years
• Middle childhood: 6–11 years
• Adolescence: 11–18 years
• Early adulthood: 18–40 years
• Middle adulthood: 40–65 years
• Late adulthood: 65 years–death

Domains of Development

• Physical: Changes in body size, proportions, appearance, functioning of body systems, perceptual and motor capacities, physical health
• Cognitive: Intellectual abilities
• Emotional and social: Communication, self-understanding, knowledge of others, interpersonal skills, relationships, and moral reasoning and behavior

The Lifespan View of Development

• Figure 1.3 illustrates the interplay of physical, cognitive, and emotional/social development across infancy, childhood, and adulthood.

Biology and Environment: Resilience

• Ability to adapt effectively in the face of threats to development
• Factors in resilience:
  • Personal characteristics
  • Warm parental relationship
  • Social support outside family
  • Community resources and opportunities

Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud and Erikson:
  • Emphasis on individual’s unique life history
  • Conflicts between biological drives and social expectations

Freud’s Three Parts of the Personality

• Id
  • Largest portion of the mind
  • Unconscious, present at birth
  • Source of biological needs and desires
• Ego
  • Conscious, rational part of personality
  • Emerges in early infancy
  • Redirects id impulses acceptably
• Superego
  • Conscience, which develops between 3 and 6 years of age from interactions with caregivers

Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages

• Basic trust vs. mistrust: Birth–1 year
• Autonomy vs. shame and doubt: 1–3 years
• Initiative vs. guilt: 3–6 years
• Industry vs. inferiority: 6–11 years
• Identity vs. role confusion: Adolescence
• Intimacy vs. isolation: Early adulthood
• Generativity vs. stagnation: Middle adulthood
• Integrity vs. despair: Late adulthood

Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory

• Classical conditioning: Stimulus–response
• Operant conditioning: Reinforcers and punishment

Social Learning Theory

• Modeling or observational learning
• Emphasized today; social-cognitive approach
• Cognition
• Children develop a sense of self-efficacy: a belief that their abilities and characteristics will help them succeed
• Personal standards

Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory: Contributions and Limitations

• Contributions:
  • Behavior modification
  • Modeling, observational learning
• Limitations:
  • Narrow view of environmental influences
  • Underestimation of individual’s active role

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Information Processing

• Human mind as a symbol-manipulating system
• Researchers often design flowcharts to map problem-solving steps
• Development as a continuous process
• Strength: Use of rigorous research methods
• Limitation: Lacks insight into nonlinear cognition, such as imagination and creativity

Ethology

• Concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history
• Roots traced to work of Darwin:
  • Imprinting
  • Critical period
  • Sensitive period

Sensitive Period

• An optimal time for certain capacities to emerge
• Individual is especially responsive to environmental influences
• Boundaries less well-defined than those of a critical period

Evolutionary Developmental Psychology

• Seeks to understand adaptive value of species-wide competencies
• Studies cognitive, emotional, and social competencies as they change with age
• Aims to understand the person–environment system

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

• Focuses on how culture (values, beliefs, customs, skills) is transmitted to the next generation
• Social interaction (especially cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society) is necessary for children to acquire culture

Ecological Systems Theory

• Person develops within complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of surrounding environment
• Layers of environment: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem
• Chronosystem: dynamic, ever-changing nature of person’s environment
• Person and environment form a network of interdependent effects

Structure of the Environment in Ecological Systems Theory (Figure 1.5)

• Illustrates the interconnectedness of the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem, with the individual at the center.

Stances of Major Theories on Basic Issues in Human Development (Table 1.4)