Definitive Study Guide on Developmental Psychology
Overview of Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychology discusses specific stages of development across childhood or the lifespan. It examines how and why people change over time.
Theories in psychology relate to human development, covering physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains.
Module One serves as preparatory content for future materials.
Key Issues in Developmental Psychology
Nature vs. Nurture
Definition: Nature refers to genetics and inherited biological predispositions, while nurture refers to environmental influences and experiences.
Importance: This debate is central to nearly every issue in lifespan development, significantly impacting how researchers design studies and how interventions are structured. Understanding the respective roles of genetics and environment is crucial for grasping developmental topics.
Nature:
Genetic makeup determines biological functions in children (e.g., skeletal or muscular development, predispositions to certain traits or conditions).
This includes traits inherited from parents at conception.
Nurture:
Involves environmental influences and experiences (e.g., relationships with caregivers, teachers, peers, cultural context, socioeconomic status, and educational opportunities).
Learning is a significant aspect of development that relates to nurture, shaped by experiences rather than inherent factors.
Nurture vs. Nature Exploration:
Opportunity for paper exploration on aspects of nature and nurture in class.
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Definition: This concept explores whether development occurs in smooth, gradual transitions or distinct, abrupt stages.
Importance: Key theories will be examined regarding whether human growth is gradual or divided into separate stages, which impacts how development is understood and measured.
Continuous Development:
Suggests development is a smooth, gradual accumulation of skills and knowledge, with new abilities building steadily upon previous ones.
Example: Behaviorists, who typically do not discuss stages, viewing development as a continuous process of learning and gradual change.
Discontinuous Development:
States that development occurs in clearly defined stages, marked by qualitative changes in abilities and understanding.
Example: Stage theorists advocate distinct ages and characteristics for each stage, and specific developmental tasks must be mastered before progression to the next.
Major Theoretical Perspectives in Developmental Psychology
Sigmund Freud
Focus on his contributions in Module One; limited relevance after this module for broader applications.
Freud's Contributions:
Emphasized hidden internal struggles affecting personality development, driven by unconscious desires and early childhood experiences (id, ego, superego).
His clinical perspective focused on abnormal development and individual crises, stemming from unresolved conflicts.
Id:
Unconscious part of one's personality; driven by basic biological needs and the pleasure principle (hunger, thirst, sexual drive, immediate gratification).
Ego:
Represents conscious self; develops identity, navigates drives, and attempts to satisfy the Id's desires in a realistic way (reality principle).
Superego:
Functions like a conscience; integrates societal norms, moral standards, and parental prohibitions into personality, striving for perfection.
Stages of Development:
Oral Stage: Infants fixate on oral pleasures (e.g., thumb-sucking, feeding), focusing on receiving gratification and developing a sense of dependency.
Anal Stage: Focus on potty training and control over bodily functions, leading to issues of autonomy and control, typically between ages 1-3.
Latency Phase: Period of limited excitement during childhood (ages 6-puberty), where sexual urges are repressed, and energy is directed towards social and intellectual development.
Genital Stage: Focus on sexual identity in adolescence and adulthood, leading to mature sexual relationships and intimacy.
Erik Erikson
Developed a psychosocial lifespan perspective that covers eight stages from infancy to late adulthood, each characterized by a unique developmental crisis.
Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy): Development based on caregiver responsiveness to needs. A positive scenario fosters trust, where basic needs are met reliably; a negative scenario leads to mistrust if needs are not consistently met.
Emphasizes the developmental crises faced at each stage, and how their successful (or unsuccessful) resolution impacts personality, contrasting Freud’s emphasis on internal drives. Each stage presents a new challenge that must be overcome for healthy development.
Focus on social interactions rather than just internal conflicts, highlighting the role of culture and society.
Behaviorism and Social Learning
Classical Conditioning
Definition: Learning via association, where an automatic, involuntary response is triggered by an external stimulus. This occurs when a neutral stimulus (e.g., a bell) is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g., food) that naturally elicits an unconditioned response (e.g., salivation), eventually leading the neutral stimulus to become a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response.
Example: Ivan Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell due to conditioned response, after the bell was repeatedly paired with food.
Operant Conditioning
Definition: Learning behavior through rewards (reinforcement) and punishments, where voluntary behaviors are strengthened or weakened. B.F. Skinner's work with rats demonstrates reward mechanisms.
Positive reinforcement promotes repeated behaviors by adding a desirable stimulus (e.g., giving a child candy for good behavior), while negative reinforcement increases a behavior by removing an aversive stimulus (e.g., fastening a seatbelt to stop an annoying car alarm).
Punishment discourages behaviors by adding an aversive stimulus or removing a desirable one. Practical implications include behavior shaping in children (e.g., managing tantrums through consistent responses).
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura: Introduced the concept of modeling (observational learning) in social learning.
Behaviors are learned through observing and imitating others, but also through cognitive processes like attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. We learn not only from direct experience but also by watching others perform actions and the consequences that follow.
Examples include parental influence on child behaviors and adoption of social norms via observing peers or media.
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget
Focus on cognitive processes during childhood and adolescence, particularly how children construct knowledge through interaction with their environment.
Key Concepts:
Viewed children as 'little scientists,' actively exploring and experimenting to understand the world; their developmental stages are dictated by these interactions and the internal reorganization of their thoughts (schemas).
Emphasized concepts like assimilation (fitting new information into existing schemas) and accommodation (modifying schemas based on new information).
Stages of Cognitive Development:
Sensory Motor Stage: Interaction with the world via senses and motor activity (e.g., thumb sucking understood as exploration, development of object permanence where a child understands objects continue to exist even when not seen), typically from birth to age 2.
(Other stages include Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational, each with distinct cognitive abilities).
Information Processing Theory
Compares the human brain to a computer regarding learning and memory processes, focusing on how information is taken in, manipulated, stored, and retrieved.
Terms related to memory include encoding (getting information in), storage (keeping information), and retrieval (getting information out), indicating long-term understanding of material, alongside concepts like working memory and attention. This theory emphasizes the flow of information through different mental stages.
Sociocultural Theories
Lev Vygotsky
Emphasizes the crucial role of social interaction and culture in cognitive development, diverging from Piaget's focus on independent learning.
Key Principles:
Collaborative interaction with more knowledgeable others (e.g., parents, teachers, peers) greatly enhances learning; challenges faced during this process can promote growth.
He introduced the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (ZPD), the range between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance from an expert.
Named the importance of engaging with experts for deeper understanding, often through a process called scaffolding, where temporary support is provided to help a learner master a task.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model
Definition: Examines diverse, nested contexts influencing development, including various social systems surrounding the individual.
Emphasizes how environmental factors affect development, extending beyond immediate family to broader societal influences (e.g., neighborhoods, schools, cultural values, economic conditions).
The model consists of interconnected systems:
Microsystem: Immediate environment like family, school, peer group, and neighborhood, where direct interactions occur.
Mesosystem: Interactions between microsystems, e.g., how parent-teacher conferences (home and school) influence a child’s development.
Exosystem: External settings that indirectly affect the child, even though the child does not directly participate, e.g., a parent's workplace policies or community resources.
Macrosystem: Broader cultural values, laws, customs, and ideologies that shape all other systems.
Chronosystem: Changes over time, including historical events (e.g., impact of a pandemic) and life transitions (e.g., divorce) that influence development.
Application in programs like Head Start highlights the importance of early education in a supportive social context that considers multiple environmental layers.