Development and Learning Notes

Unit 3: Development and Learning

This unit explores applied psychology, where psychological research is used to understand human development across the lifespan. It addresses physical, cognitive, and social development, and different types of learning, including classical and operant conditioning and observational learning, with a focus on the behaviorist perspective.

Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology comprehensively studies how behaviors and thoughts evolve from birth to death, incorporating concepts from various psychology fields like personality. It's often seen as applied research, using findings from other areas to understand maturation.

Key Terms

  • Nature: Genetic influences on development.

  • Nurture: Environmental influences on development.

  • Teratogens: Substances harmful to prenatal development.

  • Reflexes: Inborn, automatic responses to stimuli, such as:

    • Rooting reflex: Turning the head and seeking to suck when the cheek is touched.

    • Sucking reflex: Sucking on objects placed in the mouth.

    • Grasping reflex: Grasping objects placed in the palm or foot pad.

    • Moro reflex: Flinging limbs out and retracting them when startled.

    • Babinski reflex: Spreading the toes when the foot is stroked.

  • Visual Cliff: Experimental apparatus used to test depth perception in infants.

  • Motor skills: Abilities related to movement and coordination, divided into:

    • Gross motor skills: Large movements like rolling over, standing, and walking.

  • Gender schema: Cognitive framework for understanding gender roles.

  • Discontinuous: Developmental process characterized by distinct stages.

  • Growth spurt: Period of rapid physical growth during adolescence.

  • Zone of proximal development: tasks a child can do with help.

  • Psychosocial stage theory: Erikson's theory of development.

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

  • Trust versus mistrust: Infants learn whether their needs will be met.

  • Autonomy versus shame and doubt: Toddlers exert control over their bodies and environment.

  • Initiative versus guilt: Children explore and take initiative in problem-solving.

  • Industry versus inferiority: Children develop a sense of competence in school and activities.

  • Identity versus role confusion: Adolescents explore different social identities.

  • Intimacy versus isolation: Young adults balance work and relationships.

  • Generativity versus stagnation: Middle-aged adults assess their life path.

  • Integrity versus despair: Older adults reflect on their accomplishments.

Cognitive Development Terms

  • Imaginary audience: Adolescent belief that others are constantly watching them.

  • Assimilation: Incorporating experiences into existing schemata.

  • Accommodation: Changing schemata to fit new information.

  • Schemata: Cognitive rules used to interpret the world.

  • Object permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.

  • Mental symbols: internal representations of external objects and events.

  • Egocentric: Inability to see the world from another's perspective.

  • Pretend play: Using imagination to act out scenarios.

  • Theory of mind: Ability to understand others' mental states.

  • Concepts of conservation: Understanding that properties of objects remain the same despite changes in shape.

  • Formal operational stage: Stage of abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking.

  • Abstract reasoning: Thinking about objects and ideas without real-world correlates.

  • Hypothetical thinking: Reasoning from a hypothesis.

  • Concrete operational stage: A stage of logical thinking about concrete relationships.

  • Metacognition: Thinking about one's own thinking processes.

  • Personal fable: Adolescent belief in their uniqueness and invulnerability.

Language Development Terms

  • Phonemes: Smallest units of sound in a language.

  • Morphemes: Smallest units of meaningful sound in language.

  • Syntax: Rules for word order in a language.

  • Semantics: The meanings of words, phrases, and sentences.

  • Babbling: Experimenting with phonemes, typically occurring around four months of age.

  • Holophrastic stage: Using single words to convey meaning.

  • One-word stage: A stage where babies speak in single words.

  • Telegraphic speech: Combining words into simple commands around 18 months.

  • Two-word stage: A stage where toddlers combine the words they can say into simple commands.

  • Overgeneralization (Overregularization): Misapplying grammar rules.

  • Critical period: A window of opportunity for learning a skill.

Parenting and Attachment Terms

  • Attachment parenting: A reciprocal relationship between caregiver and child that affects development.

  • Temperament: An individual's emotional style.

  • Secure attachments: Confident exploration in novel environments with distress upon parental departure and comfort upon return.

  • Avoidant attachments: Resistance to being held and avoidance of parents.

  • Anxious/ambivalent attachments: Ambivalent reactions to parents, showing distress upon departure but resisting comfort upon return.

  • Resistant attachments: Another term for anxious/ambivalent attachments.

  • Insecure attachments: Attachments that are not secure, including avoidant and anxious/ambivalent attachments.

  • Separation anxiety: Distress when separated from caregivers.

Ecological Systems Theory

  • Microsystem: Immediate surroundings of the child, such as family.

  • Mesosystem: Interactions between different microsystems.

  • Exosystem: Indirect influences on the child's development.

  • Macrosystem: Cultural influences on the child's development.

  • Chronosystem: Changes over time that influence development.

  • Authoritarian parents: Parents who set strict standards and punish violations.

  • Permissive parents: Parents who do not set clear guidelines.

  • Authoritative parents: Parents who set reasonable standards and explain the rationale for rules.

Overview

Developmental psychology explores the entire lifespan and includes nature versus nurture influences on development, covering genetic and environmental factors.

Developmental Psychology Research Methods

  • Cross-sectional research: compares different age groups at one time.

    • Quick results, but vulnerable to historical and cultural influences.

    • E.g., comparing recall abilities in groups aged 5-10, 10-20, 20-30, and 30-40.

  • Longitudinal research: studies one group over a long time.

    • Precisely measures developmental effects but is time-consuming.

    • E.g., tracking learning skill progression in mentally challenged children every three years.

Prenatal Influences

Genetics

Genes influence development; twin studies help determine genetically influenced traits. Genes also determine abilities like reflexes and motor skills.

Teratogens

Environmental factors like chemicals or agents affect prenatal development. The placenta filters some harmful substances, but teratogens can pass through.

  • Alcohol: Can cause fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), leading to malformed skulls and intellectual disability as well as less severe Fetal Alcohol Effect with learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

  • Other psychoactive drugs (cocaine, heroin) can cause newborns to share their parent's physical drug addiction and suffer serious withdrawal symptoms.

  • Environmental pollutants and certain bacteria/viruses can also harm infant development.

Motor/Sensory Development

Reflexes

Newborns have reflexes, which are inborn automatic responses to stimuli. Some reflexes are:

  • Rooting: Turning towards touch on the cheek.

  • Sucking: Sucking on objects in the mouth.

  • Grasping: Grasping objects in the palm or foot pad.

  • Moro: Flinging limbs out when startled.

  • Babinski: Spreading the toes when the foot is stroked.

These reflexes are lost as the brain develops. Other reflexes persist throughout life, e.g., eye blinking.

Newborn Senses

Babies have sensory abilities from birth. Vision is poor (legally blind), with a focus range of 8-12 inches. It improves to normal by 12 months. Babies prefer faces and face-like objects. The visual cliff experiment measures depth perception.

Motor Development

Babies develop motor skills in the same sequence, though ages vary. Motor control develops as brain neurons connect and become myelinated. Most babies roll over around 5-1/2 months, stand at 8-9 months, and walk by 15 months. Environment and parental encouragement have a slight effect.

Gender and Development

Gender role development and gender differences are studied. Cultures encourage different gender roles, which are behaviors a culture associates with a gender. Gender roles vary widely among cultures.

Biopsychological Theory

Focuses on subtle biological gender differences. Female brains have larger corpus callosums on average, affecting hemisphere communication.

Social-Cognitive Theory

Focuses on societal effects and internal thoughts regarding gender roles. Boys are often encouraged towards rougher physical play than girls. Interpretations are made about gender messages from the environment based, for example, on whether a girl is criticized for the same rough play a boy is encouraged to participate in

Stage Theories

Consider whether development is continuous or discontinuous.

Lev Vygotsky

His concept of the zone of proximal development is the range of tasks a child can perform independently and those needing assistance. Scaffolding helps students accomplish tasks in their zone of proximal development.

Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage Theory

Consists of 8 stages centering on social conflict.

  • Trust vs. Mistrust: Babies learn to trust caregivers.

  • Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt: Toddlers exert their will and control their bodies.

  • Initiative vs. Guilt: Children take initiative and ask questions.

  • Industry vs. Inferiority: Children evaluate their work and compare themselves to peers.

  • Identity vs. Role Confusion: Adolescents discover their social identity.

  • Intimacy vs. Isolation: Young adults balance relationships and work.

  • Generativity vs. Stagnation: Adults assess their life path.

  • Integrity vs. Despair: Older adults reflect on accomplishments.

Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget

Piaget's theory of cognitive development describes how children view the world through "schemata," cognitive rules to interpret the world. Experiences are incorporated through assimilation. When information violates schemata, accommodation changes schemata.

Stages of Cognitive Development

  1. Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to ~2 years)

    • Experience the world through senses.

    • Develop object permanence: understanding that objects exist even when out of sight.

  2. Preoperational Stage (~2 to ~7 years)

    • Use mental symbols: represent world objects.

    • Language development begins.

    • Egocentric thinking: cannot see the world from others’ perspectives.

    • Development of theory of mind: think about other's mental states.

    • Pretend play.

  3. Concrete Operational Stage (~8 to ~12 years)

    • Think more logically; understand complex relationships among objects.

    • Understand concepts of conservation: properties of an object remain the same despite shape changes. Concepts include
      -Volume
      -Area
      -Number.

  4. Formal Operational Stage (~12 years through Adulthood)

    • Abstract reasoning: manipulate objects and ideas abstractly without physically seeing them or having real-world correlates.

    • Hypothetical thinking: reason from a hypothesis.

    • Metacognition: think about the way we think.

    • Personal fable: belief in uniqueness or invulnerability.

    Abstract Reasoning

Criticisms of Piaget

Underestimated children; stages occur faster and earlier than Piaget predicted. His tests relied heavily on language. Development may be more continuous.

Information Processing Model

Abilities to memorize, interpret, and perceive gradually develop as we age rather than developing in distinct stages and is a more continuous alternative to Piaget's theory.

Language

Language is intimately connected to cognition.

Elements of Language

  • Phonemes: Smallest units of sound.

  • Morphemes: Smallest units of meaningful sound.

  • Syntax: Grammar of a language.

  • Semantics: The meanings of words, phrases and sentences.

Language Acquisition

The stages of language acquisition are:

  1. Babbling: Babies experiment with phonemes (around 4 months).

  2. Holophrastic Stage (one-word stage): Speak in single words.

  3. Telegraphic Speech (two-word stage): combine the words they can say into simple commands.

Children learn grammar rules, sometimes leading to overgeneralization (overregularization).

One controversy concerns how we acquire language.

Behaviorists believed language is learned through operant conditioning and shaping. Noam Chomsky theorized that humans have a language acquisition device and proposed the existence of a critical period for language learning.

Language and Cognition

Benjamin Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis states that language controls and limits our thinking.

Parenting

Attachment Theory

Konrad Lorenz demonstrated that infant animals imprint on individuals/objects during a critical period. One study area focuses on how attachment parenting (reciprocal relationship between caregiver and child) affects development.

Contact Comfort

Harry Harlow's monkey studies showed infant monkeys preferred a soft mother figure over a feeding wire frame figure, demonstrating the importance of physical comfort. Deprivation of real mother attachment had long-term effects. Attachment experiences may influence later temperament.

Secure Attachment

Mary Ainsworth researched attachment by observing infants in novel situations when parents left and returned:

Types of attachment :

  • Secure attachments: Explore confidently, distressed when parents leave, seek comfort upon return (~66%).

  • Avoidant attachments: Resist being held, explore environment, don't seek comfort upon return (~21%).

  • Anxious/ambivalent attachments (Resistant attachments or insecure attachments): Show extreme stress when parents leave, resist comfort upon return (~12%).

Ecological Systems Theory

Views human development as a system of relationships impacted by our environment. The ecological systems theory describes five interrelated systems that influence development::

Different relationships across contexts (family, school, work, neighborhood, culture, and country) interact.

  • Microsystem: direct interactions between the child and their immediate surroundings, including their caregivers.

  • Mesosystem: our microsystems are not isolated. The mesosystem acknowledges that each of the five ecological systems interact.

  • Exosystem: this system involves indirect influences on the child's development.

  • Macrosystem: influences of the cultures a child is immersed in also influence his or her development.

  • Chronosystem: times of transition or change that occur over the chronology or timeline of a child's life that influence development.

Parenting Styles

Diana Baumrind described three categories of parenting styles:

  • Authoritarian: Strict standards and punishment.

  • Permissive: No clear guidelines.

  • Authoritative: Consistent, reasonable standards are explained, encouragement of independence, praise and punishment.

The authoritative style produces the most beneficial home environment

Chapter 12: Learning

Learning is a long-lasting change in behavior resulting from experience. It differs from innate or biological changes.

Key Terms

  • Puberty

  • Menopause

  • Classical conditioning

  • Associative learning

  • Unconditioned stimulus (US or UCS)

  • Unconditioned response (UR or UCR)

  • Conditioned response (CR)

  • Conditioned stimulus (CS)

  • Acquisition

  • Trace conditioning

  • Simultaneous conditioning

  • Backward conditioning

  • Extinction

  • Spontaneous recovery

  • Generalization

  • Discrimination

  • Higher-order conditioning

  • Taste aversions

  • One-trial learning

  • Biological preparedness

  • Association

  • Operant conditioning

  • Law of effect

  • Reinforcement

  • Positive reinforcement

  • Negative reinforcement

  • Punishment

  • Shaping

  • Reinforcement discrimination

  • Discriminative stimulus

  • Primary reinforcers

  • Secondary reinforcers

  • Generalized reinforcer

  • Continuous reinforcement

  • Partial-reinforcement effect

  • Reinforcement schedules

  • Fixed-ratio (FR) schedule

  • Variable-ratio (VR) schedule

  • Fixed-interval (FI) schedule

  • Variable-interval (VI) schedule

  • Instinctive drift

  • Modeling

  • Vicarious learning

  • Social learning theory

  • Latent learning

  • Cognitive map

  • Insight learning

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning, also called associative learning.

Classical Conditioning Concepts:

  • Unconditioned stimulus (US/UCS): Stimulus that elicits a natural, reflexive response (e.g., food).

  • Unconditioned response (UR/UCR): Natural, involuntary response to the US (e.g., salivation).

  • Conditioned stimulus (CS): Neutral stimulus paired with the US (e.g., bell).

  • Conditioned response (CR): Learned response to the CS (e.g., salivation to the bell).

  • Acquisition: Learning has taken place

The most effective method of conditioning is delayed conditioning

Less Effective Methods of Classical Conditioning

  • Trace conditioning: CS, followed by a short break, followed by presentation of the US.

  • Simultaneous conditioning: CS and US presented at the same time.

  • Backward conditioning: US first, followed by CS.

Other Key Classical Conditioning Concepts

  • Extinction: Unlearning a behavior that's been acquired.

  • Spontaneous recovery: Reappearance of extinguished response.

  • Generalization: Responding to similar stimuli.

  • Discrimination: Telling the difference among various stimuli.

  • Higher-order conditioning: Using a CS as a US to condition a response to a new stimuli.

Human Conditioning

John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner conditioned Little Albert to fear a white rat by pairing it with a loud noise.

Aversion conditioning

Baby Albert was conditioned to have a negative response to the white rat, demonstrating aversive conditioning.

Biology and Classical Conditioning

Animals and humans are biologically prepared to make certain connections more easily than others. Taste aversions result in powerful avoidance responses based on a single pairing. It most commonly occurs with strong and unusual tastes. The CS must be salient in order for us to learn to avoid it,

John Garcia and Robert Koelling performed an experiment illustrating that rats readily learned to associate noise with shock and unusual-tasting water with nausea (Garcia effect). This occurs because of biological preparedness

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is learning based on associating consequences with behaviors.

Thorndike's Law of Effect

If the consequences of a behavior are pleasant, the S-R connection will be strengthened and the behavior will increase. However, if the consequences of a behavior are unpleasant, the S-R connection will weaken and the likelihood of the behavior will decrease. Thorndike used the term instrumental learning to describe his work.

Skinner Box: B.F. Skinner's Operant Conditioning

Skinner invented the Skinner box where a rat could press a lever to get food (reinforcement). Positive reinforcement adds something pleasant; negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant. The latter example results in escape learning. Escape learning allows one to terminate an aversive stimulus; avoidance learning, on the other hand, enables one to avoid the unpleasant stimulus altogether.

Such an approach is known as punishment and makes a behavior less likely. The two types of punishment are:

  • Positive punishment (usually referred to simply as punishment): the addition of something unpleasant.

  • Omission training or negative punishment: the removal of something pleasant.

Punishment Versus Reinforcement

Achieve the same ends through punishment and reinforcement.

Harsh punishment can result in unwanted consequences such as fear and anger.

Shaping

Shaping reinforces the steps used to reach the desired behavior.

Chaining

Animals can also be taught to perform several responses successively in order to get a reward to get a reward. This process is known as chaining.

Concepts in operant Conditioning

The terms acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, discrimination, and generalization can be used in our discussion of operant conditioning, too. With regards to a rat in a Skinner box:

  • Acquisition: the rat learns to press the lever to get the reward..

  • Extinction: the rat ceases to press the lever because the reward no longer results from this action.

  • Spontaneous Recovery: If, after having extinguished the bar press response and without providing any further training, the rat began to press the bar again

  • Generalization would be if the rat began to press other things in the Skinner box or the bar in other boxes.

  • Discrimination (also called reinforcement discrimination) would involve teaching the rat to press only a particular bar or to press the bar only under certain conditions (e.g., when a tone is sounded). In this last example, the tone is called a discriminative stimulus.

Primary & Secondary Reinforcers

Primary reinforcers are rewarding in and of themselves (food, water, rest). Secondary reinforcers are learned values (praise, money). Money is a special generalized reinforcer since it can be traded for nearly anything.

Token Economy

In a token economy, people are given a token every time they perform a desired behavior. They can trade tokens for a reinforcer

The Premack Principle explains that whichever of two activities is preferred can be used to reinforce the activity that is not preferred.

Reinforcement Schedules

Ratios schedules (number of responses) or the passage of time (interval schedules) and whether a constant pattern of reinforcement (fixed schedules) or changing pattern (variable schedules) is applied will determine learning.

Classes of Reinforcement Schedule

  • Fixed-ratio (FR) schedule: Reinforcement after a set number of responses.

  • Variable-ratio (VR) schedule: Reinforcement after a variable number of responses.

  • Fixed-interval (FI) schedule: Reinforcement after a certain amount of time elapses.

  • Variable-interval (VI) schedule: time passes before a response will result in reinforcement.

Variable schedules are more resistant to extinction than fixed schedules. Ratio schedules promote higher rates of response than do interval schedules.

Biology and Operant Conditioning

Rats will not walk backward and Pigs refuse to put disks into a bank-like object and tend, instead, to bury the disks in the ground. The tendency for animals to forgo rewards to pursue their typical patterns of behavior is called instinctive drift.

Cognitive Learning

Cognitive theorists believe that even classical and operant conditioning have a cognitive component. In classical conditioning, the subjects respond to the CS because they develop the expectation that it will be followed by the US.

The Contingency Model of Classical Conditioning

The Pavlovian model of classical conditioning is known as the contiguity model because it postulates that the more times two things are paired, the greater the learning that will take place. Rescorla's model is known as the contingency model of classical conditioning and clearly rests upon a cognitive view of classical conditioning, where contingency is when A depends upon B and vice versa