Developmental Psychology Notes

Developmental Psychology

Introduction

• This chapter introduces developmental psychology, updating a previous version for the Australian context to be relevant to psychology students in Australia.
• It covers the field and associated careers, including insights from professionals in guidance counselling, paediatric psychology, and case management.

What is Developmental Psychology?

• Developmental psychology studies the physical, cognitive, and social changes that occur throughout the human lifespan, from zygote to old age.
• Professionals in this field possess scientific skills, understand key theories, conduct empirical research, analyze data, critically evaluate claims, and communicate findings.
• The field is interdisciplinary, covering sensation and perception, cognition, social behavior, personality, and brain systems, and includes both normative and atypical development.
• Research questions range widely, such as:
  • When do infants perceive physical depth?
  • How do children learn word meanings?
  • How does moral reasoning change?
  • Is theory of mind development unique to humans?
  • How do bullying experiences affect later victimization?
  • How do cultures differ in pedagogical practices?
  • What is the role of parents in emotion regulation?
  • How does gender identity develop?
• The field focuses on understanding the mechanisms of change through the interactions of nature (genetic inheritance) and nurture (environment).
• Species-typical developmental paths are observed alongside individual differences.
• Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model:
  • This model considers the multi-directional impact of environmental factors on a child’s development.
  • It includes nested systems with the child at the center, considering genes, temperament, age, health, and physical appearance.
  • The systems interconnect and exist within the 'chronosystem,' which considers changes over time.

Methods in Developmental Research

• Methods include surveys, naturalistic observation, interviews, genetic assays, and neuroimaging techniques like fMRI and EEG.
• A primary consideration is the age-appropriateness of methods, especially when testing infants or older adults.
• Approaches to examining development include:
  • Single Time Point Studies: Focusing on a specific age (e.g., five months).
  • Cross-Sectional Approach: Comparing different age groups.
  • Longitudinal Design: Following the same children over months or years.
  • Microgenetic Design: In-depth understanding of change mechanisms, observing children on the cusp of change over short periods.

e.g., Westlund et al., (2016)

Section Recap

• Developmental psychology involves understanding historical and current theories, conducting research, and interpreting findings.
• It explores the mechanisms of change through the interaction of nature and nurture across various areas of development, such as numerical understanding and gender development.

Social Development

• Early social experiences significantly influence development, beginning with attention to faces in newborns (e.g., Bartrip et al., 2001).
• Focus is on social experiences in infancy and early childhood, the development of social relationships, and the child’s social identity.

Early Social Experiences

• Infants are born vulnerable and dependent on caregivers for survival (Simpson & Belsky, 2008).
• Observations during World War II showed that children separated from parents, even with good physical care, were emotionally disturbed (e.g., Bowlby, 1953), highlighting the need for socio-emotional bonds.
• Harry Harlow’s research in the 1950s with rhesus macaque monkeys showed that infants preferred a cloth-covered apparatus over a wire one providing milk, demonstrating the importance of comfort and security.
• These findings contributed to Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby’s attachment theory, which suggests that early experiences with caregivers shape social and emotional development.
• Sensitive caregivers help infants form a ‘working model of attachment,’ a mental representation of positive social relationships.
• Lack of sensitive care can compromise social development.
• Attachment security is universally important, but its expression varies across cultures (e.g., Posada et al., 2013).
• Research has informed interventions to improve parent-child interactions, such as the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program® (Sanders, 2008).
  • Meta-analysis shows the program enhances parents’ wellbeing and child social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes (Nowak & Heinrichs, 2008; Sanders et al., 2014).
• High-quality childcare, characterized by low turnover and small caregiver-to-child ratios, allows children to form secure attachments even when parents work.
• It can also reduce disadvantage for vulnerable children (Moore et al., 2012; Moore & McDonald, 2013).

Case Study: Romanian Adoption Studies

• Studies of Romanian children adopted after the fall of the political dictatorship, who had spent their early years in institutions with minimal caregiver contact, revealed that older age at adoption (12-42 months) was associated with atypical physical, social, and cognitive development (e.g., Nelson et al., 2007; Rutter et al., 2004).
• These studies highlighted the importance of early social experiences and influenced public policy (Rutter et al., 2009), while also raising ethical considerations such as exploitation, risk/benefit ratio, and cultural sensitivity (Zeanah et al., 2006).

Development of the Self

• Self-concept develops through interactions in Bronfenbrenner’s model, including interactions with others.
• Infants show an emerging sense of self when they recognize their ability to control their environment (e.g., Rovee-Collier, 1999), such as moving a mobile by kicking at two to four months.
• Toddlers recognize their own image in a mirror.
• Preschoolers describe themselves in terms of physical features and social relationships.
• Primary school children engage in social comparison (e.g., Harter, 1999).
• Adolescents strongly value social acceptance by peers (e.g., Damon & Hart, 1988).
• Research on the development of self includes ethnic, sexual, and gender identity, often cross-culturally.
• Attitudes and expectations about gender identity are becoming less stereotypical, and research is applied to improve health and wellbeing.
• Self-esteem, or how we evaluate ourselves, is related to life satisfaction.
• Low self-esteem in childhood is linked to negative outcomes, such as substance abuse (e.g., Donnellan et al., 2005).
• Inflated praise can negatively affect children with low self-esteem (Brummelman et al., 2014).
  • Children with low self-esteem who received inflated praise were less likely to take on new challenges, suggesting it set unattainable standards.
  • This research has led to changes in educational settings, with more focus on praising participation rather than achievement.

Gender Development in Transgender Youth

• Gender identity is an individual’s awareness of themself as male, female, or non-binary.
• It may not align with the sex assigned at birth (American Psychological Association, 2015).
• Approximately 1% of Australians identify as transgender (Pang, nd).
• Some First Nations Australians use terms like ‘brotherboy’ and ‘sistergirl’.
• Gender identity differs from sexual orientation, which includes a person’s attraction to others and the direction of that attraction.
• The TransYouth Project, led by Dr. Kristina Olson, studies gender development in transgender children, finding that socially transitioned children’s gender development is similar to that of gender-typical peers and siblings (Olson & Gülgöz, 2018).
• The project examines continuity/discontinuity of gender identity, researcher biases, and the impact of social support on transgender youth wellbeing.
• Future research will include larger and more diverse samples with children who have/have not socially transitioned.

Peer Relationships

• Peer relationships are integral to children’s development, allowing for the free exchange of ideas and development of social and emotional skills.
• Friendship studies show that close, reciprocated friendships are linked to positive outcomes into adulthood (e.g., Bagwell et al., 1998).
• However, friendships promoting dangerous behaviors can be detrimental (e.g., Simpkins et al., 2008).
• Peer relationships can involve aggression and bullying, with consequences including academic difficulties and suicide.
• Bullying affects approximately 25% of Australian students (Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2018) and disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations.
• Organizations like the National Centre Against Bullying and the Safe and Supportive School Communities Working Group work to address bullying.
• Bullying. No Way! project provides evidence-based resources for schools, parents, and children.
• Research shows students are more confident in intervening in bullying after the Bullying No Way! program (McWilliam et al., 2016).

Emotional Regulation

• Emotional development includes neural responses, physiological responses, subjective feelings, recognition of others’ emotions, and cognitive processes (e.g., Siegler et al., 2018).
• Emotion regulation involves cognitive processes like inhibitory control and social contexts like co-regulation.
• Emotion regulation affects wellbeing, with implications for anxiety and depression.
• Researchers apply findings to create interventions, such as video games like MindLight, in which children practice controlling stress (Schoneveld et al., 2016; Wols et al., 2018).

Section Recap

• This section has covered social development, focusing on early interactions, the development of self, and peer relationships.
• It included examples of how research findings have been applied in education, parenting, and public policy.

Cognitive Development

• Cognitive development studies how we acquire, store, and process information.
• Cognition involves mental processes used in perceiving, remembering, thinking, and understanding (Ashcraft & Klein, 2010, p. 9).

Perception and Early Cognitive Development

• Brain development results from experiences within a species-typical environment.
• Experience-expectant plasticity allows the brain to fine-tune itself based on expected input.
• Lack of expected environmental information can compromise development.
• Infants born with cataracts who have them removed later in development have greater visual impairment (Maurer, 2017).
• This has led to early removal of cataracts to provide necessary visual experiences.
• Infant perception is studied through:
  • Habituation/dishabituation designs: Repeatedly presenting a stimulus until the infant habituates, then introducing a new stimulus.
  • Conditioned head turn procedure: Training infants to turn their head when a sound changes to see a toy.
• Six-month-old infants can discriminate speech sounds from different languages, but this ability narrows by nine months (e.g., Mattock & Burnham, 2006).
• Narrowing perception may underlie the attainment of expertise.

Number and Mathematics

• Cognitive developmental neuroscience studies how children learn about numbers.
• Infants can notice the difference between arrays of different quantities.
• Researchers study the role of early representations in acquiring symbolic numbers (e.g., Feigenson et al., 2013; Sokolowski et al., 2017; Xenidou-Dervou et al., 2007) and whether basic magnitude processing impacts arithmetic skills.
• Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is studied using behavioral and neuroimaging methods (e.g., Bugden & Ansari, 2016).

Language Development

• Language development involves perception and discrimination of speech sounds and learning word meanings.
• Adults support language learning through infant-directed speech and by emphasizing words for objects in the environment.
• Children pay attention to the speaker’s focus of attention to determine what object is being labeled.
• Children deprived of language exposure during a critical period (first four to five years) may not successfully learn language.
• Adults exposed to a second language early in life show different brain activation patterns compared to those who learn it later (e.g., Weber-Fox & Neville, 1996).
• Bilingual children may learn each language more slowly initially, but the lag disappears with age (e.g., Holobow et al., 1991).

Understanding Others

• Developing an understanding of others involves attention to faces, forming attachments, and parsing language.
• Theory of mind is the understanding that others’ behavior is caused by their internal mental states.
• This ability undergoes significant change in the preschool years, shaped by social, cognitive, and neurodevelopmental factors.
• Electroencephalography (EEG) is used to assess the relationship between brain maturation and theory of mind.
• Parental use of mental state talk correlates with children’s later theory of mind development (e.g., Ruffman et al., 2002).
• Applications of theory of mind extend to studying autism, social learning, bullying, prosocial behavior, and depression (e.g., Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013; Poulin-Dubois & Brosseau-Liard, 2016; Zahavi et al., 2016).

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong developmental condition found in approximately one in 100 Australians (Falkmer et al., 2019 ).
  • Research suggests autism is four times as prevalent in boys as it is in girls, other studies suggest the diagnosis rates for women with autism are significantly understated (Arnold et al. 2020; Brugha et al. 2016).
  • More recent research suggests one reason cisgender girls are diagnosed later than boys or not at all is due to the use of gendered diagnostic tools oriented towards behaviours associated with males (Beeger et al., 2013; Frazier et al., 2014).
  • Gender identity is highly relevant to ASD as research suggest transgender and gender diverse people are more likely to have ASD than cisgender people (Strang et al., 2018, Warrier et al., 2020).
• ASD affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others and can present challenges with social communication, sensory reactivity, or repetitive behaviours.
• The neurodiversity movement posits that autism is simply another way of thinking, challenging the notion that it needs curing.
• Co-diagnoses such as intellectual impairment, ADHD, and language or anxiety disorders can impact how well a person with ASD manages everyday life.

Section Recap

• This chapter has covered various areas of developmental research, including social and cognitive development.
• Research on understanding objects considers both perceptual development and social environment.
• Careers related to developmental psychology are numerous and incorporate its theory and methodology.

Educational Paths and Careers

Focus of Psychologists

• Educational and developmental psychologists use scientific evidence to examine the wellbeing of people.
• Clinical psychologists emphasize individual differences relevant to psychological health and wellbeing.

Undergraduate Training

• Undergraduate degrees in psychology in Australia are general, not specialized.
• Developmental psychology courses prepare students for graduate training in psychology, social work, teaching, law, and public policy.
• Jobs with an undergraduate degree in psychology include:
  • Job agencies
  • Child protection and safety
  • Government departments
  • Schools (teacher aides)
  • Aged care organizations
  • Mental health organizations

Postgraduate Training

• Two types of postgraduate training for students interested in developmental psychology include:
  • Registration as a psychologist
  • Becoming a psychological scientist
• To become a registered psychologist, students need to complete an APAC-accredited undergraduate degree, a fourth year, and a postgraduate program, such as the Master of Professional Psychology.
• Terms like ‘psychologist’ are protected titles.
• Guidance or school counselors are one pathway for those with an educational and developmental psychology endorsement.

Psychological Scientist Pathway

• A non-practice pathway for students of developmental psychology is to become a psychological scientist and earn a PhD.
• PhD recipients are considered experts in their field and possess strong research, data analytic, and critical thinking skills which are applicable to many different settings.
• Graduates might also work for government organisations such as the Australian Institute of Family Studies which seeks to improve understanding of the issues affecting Australian families.
• Postgraduate research training is suitable for people who enjoy discovery and problem-solving, with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Career Sectors

• Recognized educational and developmental psychologists, as well as those who research developmental issues, have successfully created careers within both the academic and nonacademic sectors, including the following: *Research and teaching (typically with a PhD)
  • universities/government/specialised research centres
    *Applied/consulting (typically with a master’s degree or PhD)
  • software development or online content curation marketing
  • youth services or child welfare agencies
  • organisations supporting vulnerable populations such as people with ASD and LGBTQI+ people
  • education – curriculum and content education
  • science writing for organisations such as museums
  • toy design.

Conclusion

• People trained in developmental psychology possess strong theoretical knowledge and research skills, enabling them to evaluate claims and communicate findings.
• Research findings can lead to innovative programs and interventions that require empirical evaluation before implementation and policy change.