Psychology Intermediate - Developmental Psychology Notes

Developmental Psychology

Childhood

  • Childhood is the period of development from infancy to puberty.
  • Early childhood: ages 2-5 years.
  • Middle childhood: ages 6-12 years.

Physical Development - Improving Gross and Fine Motor Skills

  • Children expand gross and fine motor skills.
  • Factors influencing development:
    • Finances: Money available for food and educational toys.
    • Cultural background: Expectations of different groups.
    • Social class: Impact of long-term poverty, attitudes to educational development.
    • Family background: Expectations, love, and support.
    • Environment: Housing, pollution.
    • Health status: Long-term or acute illness (e.g., meningitis).
    • Genetics: Inheritance (e.g., height, skills).
    • Gender: Different growth rates for girls and boys.

Cognitive Development - Piaget's Theory

Stage 2 - Preoperational (2-7 years)
  • Play is a crucial function of childhood.
  • Children begin symbolic thinking.
  • Language allows using words and pictures to represent objects.
  • Understanding of counting, classifying by similarity, past-present-future.
  • Focus primarily on the present and concrete rather than abstract.
  • Egocentrism: Inability to consider others' feelings or perspectives.
  • Play helps overcome egocentrism.
Egocentrism - Three Mountain Task
  • Pre-operational children exhibit egocentrism.
  • Egocentrism: Assuming others see the world the same way they do.
  • Three Mountains Task:
    • Children view a 3D model of three mountains from position A.
    • A doll is placed at a different location.
    • Children are shown pictures from perspectives B, C, or D.
    • Asked to choose the picture showing the doll's view.
    • Four-year-olds often choose their own view, illustrating egocentrism.
    • Piaget found that only children aged 7 or 8 typically selected the correct picture.
    • Difficulty arises from being unable to adopt another's perspective.
Conservation
  • Conservation: Awareness that physical quantities remain constant despite changes in appearance.
  • Experiment: Equal liquid amounts in identical containers; one poured into a different shaped cup.
  • Children asked which cup holds the most liquid.
  • They often choose the taller, thinner cup, even after seeing equal amounts initially.
  • Similar experiments on conservation of number, length, mass, weight, volume, and quantity.
  • Few children understand conservation before age five.
Stage 3 - Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
  • Move toward performing mental operations.
  • Accurately imagine consequences (e.g., breaking something while playing ball inside).
  • Reasoning becomes more logical.
  • Able to see things from different viewpoints and imagine events outside their own lives.
  • Logical thought:
    • Ordering objects by size, color gradient.
    • Understanding 3+4=73 + 4 = 7 then 7−4=37 - 4 = 3
    • Recognizing a red square belongs to both the red and square categories.
    • Knowing a short, wide cup can hold the same liquid as a tall, thin cup.
  • Learn best through environmental exploration.
  • Play games with social rules.
  • Develop schemas for skills required to use toys and play games.
  • Conceptual understanding of space and time.
  • Can add, subtract, multiply, divide, place in order, substitute, and reverse.
  • Curious about mechanics and how things work.

Personality Development - Temperament

  • Temperament: Natural style of interacting/reacting to people, places, and things.
  • Characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
  • Innate aspects of personality (e.g., introversion/extroversion).
  • Chess and Thomas studied heredity's influence on temperament.
  • Infants vary: reactive, intense, fidgety vs. easygoing, quiet, placid.
  • Difficult babies: Irritable, intense, unpredictable.
  • Easy babies: Cheerful, relaxed, predictable.
  • Slow-to-warm-up infants: Resist/withdraw from new people/situations (Chess & Thomas, 1987).
  • Temperament persists: Intense preschoolers tend to be intense young adults (Larsen & Diener, 1987).
  • Genetic effects:
    • Anxious, inhibited infants have high/variable heart rates and reactive nervous systems.
    • Become more physiologically aroused in new situations (Kagan & Snidman, 2004).
    • Serotonin-regulating gene predisposes fearful temperament.
    • Combined with unsupportive caregiving leads to an inhibited child.
    • Biologically rooted temperament helps form enduring personality.
  • Thomas and Chess (1977) studied children's behaviors to understand temperament.
  • Identified nine temperament characteristics/traits present at birth and influencing development:
    • Activity: Always moving vs. relaxed style.
    • Rhythmicity: Regular vs. haphazard eating/sleeping habits.
    • Approach: Welcomes strangers vs. shies away.
    • Adaptability: Adjusts easily vs. resists changes.
    • Intensity: Reacts strongly vs. calmly.
    • Mood: Negative vs. positive outlook; frequent shifts vs. even-tempered.
    • Distractibility: Easily distracted vs. shuts out distractions.
    • Sensory threshold: Bothered by stimuli vs. ignores them.
  • Children show all behaviors, but some are more likely to show certain ones.
  • 60% of children fall into three groups:
    1. Easy Child: Calm, happy, regular habits, adaptable; parents need to initiate communication about frustrations.
    2. Difficult Child: Fussy, irregular habits, fearful, easily upset, intense reactions.
    3. Slow-to-Warm-up Child: Inactive, fussy, withdraws, reacts negatively initially, becomes positive with exposure.

Social Development - Play

  • Social skills learned through play.
  • Playtime develops:
    • Physical skills: Reaching, grasping, running, climbing, balancing, handling toys.
    • Cognitive concepts: Problem-solving, colors, numbers, size, shapes, memory, attention span.
    • Language skills: Develops through interaction; begins with parents.
    • Social skills: Cooperating, negotiating, taking turns, following rules.
    • Sharing and teamwork: Practiced through play.
    • Develop sense of self, interact with peers, make friends, learn to lie and role-play.
  • Proper social skills lay the foundation for good relationships.
  • Mildred Parten's classic study observed children (2-5 years) and categorized play into six types:
    1. Unoccupied play: Not playing, watching momentarily interesting things, plays with own body, stands around.
    2. Solitary play: Plays alone with different toys, makes no effort to get close to others (2-3 years old).
    3. Onlooker play: Watches others play, talks to them, asks questions, gives suggestions, but doesn't join.
    4. Parallel play: Plays independently near others with similar toys but plays beside rather than with them.
    5. Associative play: Plays with others, borrows toys, no organization of activity.
    6. Cooperative play: Organized group play striving for a goal or playing formal games.
  • Children participate less in the first four types and more in the last two as they grow.

Moral Development - Kohlberg's Theory

  • Moral development is based on experiences interacting with the physical environment.
  • Comprised of rules, rights, and wrongs that shape moral development.
  • Kohlberg's theory has six stages within three levels.
  • Moral development is a continual lifespan process.
Level 1: Preconventional Morality
  • Judgments based on the authority of physically superior individuals (usually parents).
  • Outcomes or consequences determine rightness or wrongness.
  • Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Orientation:
    • Relies on physical consequences to decide if an action is right or wrong.
    • Punishment = wrong, no punishment = right.
    • Obedient to adults due to size and strength, not respect.
  • Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange:
    • Do things that are rewarded, avoid punishment.
    • If it feels good or brings pleasant results, it is good.
    • Beginning concern for others if it benefits the child.
    • Agreements like "If you help me, I'll help you."
Level 2: Conventional Morality
  • Judgments shift from external consequences to group rules/norms (family, peers, society).
  • Aware of societal rules and laws, conform rigidly.
  • Law-and-order mentality, desire to look good and please others.
  • Stage 3: Interpersonal relationships:
    • Good behavior is what pleases others.
    • Value trust, loyalty, respect, gratitude, mutual relationships.
    • Judgments based on intentions and outward behavior.
    • Accidental wrongdoing is less serious than intentional.
  • Stage 4: Maintaining Social Order:
    • Focus on duty, respecting authority, following rules/laws.
    • Less emphasis on pleasing individuals (stage 3) and more on adhering to regulations.
    • Regulations themselves are not questioned.
  • Example: Jack might not drink because youths drinking is illegal and he believes he should be punished for breaking the law. He understands the law's intent is for his benefit and protection.