Developmental Psychology Notes

Developmental Psychology

Agenda (1-16-2025)

• Review homework and syllabus.
• Address follow-up questions.
• Engage in small group discussion: "What is development?"
• Cover Chapter 1 slides: Theories of development.

Small Group Discussion: What is Development?

• Groups of approximately 4 students.
• Record all names on one paper for credit.
• Discuss and identify key points related to the question: "What is development?"

Developmental Science

• Study of constancy and change throughout the lifespan.
• The field is scientific, applied, and interdisciplinary.

Basic Issues in Development

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

Continuous Development

• A process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills.

Discontinuous Development

• A process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times.

Contexts of Development

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

Nature and Nurture

Nature

• Hereditary information received from parents at conception.

Nurture

• Physical and social forces that influence 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.
• Development is highly plastic.
• Development is influenced by multiple, interacting forces.

Periods of Development

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

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: A baby claps her hands after her mother does so; a teenager dresses like her friends.
• Emphasized today: Social-cognitive approach.
• Cognition: Children develop a sense of self-efficacy (a belief that their abilities and characteristics will help them succeed) and 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

• Sensorimotor: Birth–2 years. Infants use senses and movement to explore the world.
• Preoperational: 2–7 years. Preschool children use symbols and develop language and make-believe play.
• Concrete operational: 7–11 years. Children’s reasoning becomes logical and better organized.
• Formal operational: 11 years on. Abstract thinking enables adolescents to use hypotheses and deduction.

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 a 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.

Stances of Major Theories on Basic Issues in Human Development