PSY210- Lecture 1 (Intro)

Course Basics - PSY210: Intro to Developmental Psychology (Fall 2025) - Class 1: September 4th - Instructor: Mia Radovanovic, Pronouns: She/Her (Postdoctoral Fellow at UTM) - University: University of Toronto
What you will learn in this class

  • We'll focus on the basic science behind developmental psychology, with occasional links to real-world applications.

  • Understand that cognitive development happens within social and cultural contexts.

  • Where it's relevant, we'll connect topics to important social issues.

Syllabus & Materials

  • Required readings: Check the syllabus weekly; these might be covered in lecture, but not always, so read them! Readings are on Quercus.

  • Lecture Materials: Slides and recordings will be posted on Quercus. Slides (PDF) are usually up before class, and recordings within about 3 days. Do not share any materials online.

Attendance & Participation

  • Your participation isn't graded, but actively doing class activities helps with attendance and understanding.

  • We'll use Mentimeter in class for practice questions, which are similar to what you'll see on term tests. Recordings on Quercus won't include these interactive parts, so it's a good reason to come to class!

Asking Questions

  • Best way: Ask in class (there are anonymous options if you're shy).

  • Second option: Use the Discussion Board on Quercus. Check if your question has already been answered there.

  • Private/Specific questions: Email the course instructor at mia.psy210.uoft@gmail.com.

Assignment Overview

  • Weekly Quizzes: 20%

  • Term Test 1: 25% (due Oct 9)

  • Term Test 2: 25% (due Nov 27)

  • Final Paper: 30% (due Dec 12)

  • Total: 100%

Weekly Quizzes (2% each; 20% total)

  • Usually finished during the lecture slot.

  • These are short questions just to get you thinking and participating, not high-stakes tests.

  • Answers will be released one week after you submit them.

  • Your lowest quiz score will be dropped, which is nice!

Term Tests (25% each, 50% total)

  • They'll have a mix of multiple-choice and short-answer questions.

  • Content will cover both the required readings and what we discuss in lectures.

Term Test Preparation & Study Guides

  • About a week (or less) before each term test, a study guide with comprehensive questions will be posted.

  • This guide is for helping you structure your strong responses; don't wait for it to start studying! Begin reviewing earlier.

Final Paper (30%)

  • Length: 8-10 pages (this doesn't count the title page, abstract, or references).

  • Must be in APA format.

  • Your instructor will give you topic options and starter resources on Quercus.

  • Goal: Come up with a clear thesis statement and use academic sources to support it, while also addressing any counter-evidence.

Humans as a Species (Slides 35–47)

  • How we start:

    • Precocial vs. Altricial Development: Humans are altricial, meaning we're born very dependent. Newborns can't talk, walk, see well, control their body temperature, feed themselves, or protect themselves. We're pretty helpless!

    • Humans are born needing a lot of care.

    • Evolutionary Perspective: Humans evolved from apes, which are also altricial to some extent.

    • Humans vs. Great Apes: Ape mothers usually handle all the offspring care themselves. Humans, though, are more open to others helping out with raising kids.

    • Evolutionary Change: It's thought that walking upright kicked off many evolutionary changes.

    • Walking upright led to skeletal changes: a narrower pelvis and changes to the birth canal. This was necessary to allow for infants with larger heads to be born.

    • Brain Size at Birth: Chimpanzee brains are about 50%50\% of their adult size at birth. Human brains are only about 25%25\% of adult size.

    • First 3 Months: By 3 months, human brains are still only about 50%50\% of adult size. This early period is sometimes called the 4th trimester because of how much development is still happening outside the womb.

    • Longer Maturation: Humans have much longer periods of childhood and adolescence. We have an early childhood phase, and the time between births (inter-birth interval) is around 3 years3\text{ years} for humans compared to 6 years6\text{ years} for chimps.

    • Consequences: This long development put strong pressure on us to develop social skills early in life. Coordination and cooperation are really unique to humans, and social learning is a huge part of our development (more on this later!).

    • Summary: Evolutionary changes led to better social skills, extended caretaking (more people helping), faster birth cycles, and more peers around.

Foundational Themes About Knowledge

  • Core themes we'll explore:

    • Nature versus Nurture (genes vs. environment)

    • Qualitative versus Quantitative Change (different types of development)

    • Active versus Passive Development (are kids active participants or just absorbing info?)

    • Global versus Local Development (does development happen all at once or in specific areas?)

Nature vs. Nurture: Where does knowledge come from?

  • Key concepts: Nativism (ideas we're born with, innate) vs. Empiricism (knowledge comes from experience).

  • Eclectic: The slides mention “ETT” (Eclectic Theoretical Approach?), but it's not fully defined here; it likely means drawing from various theories.

  • So, is it about needing experience to form ideas (Empiricism) or having innate ideas (Nativism)?

  • A common idea in Empiricism is that the newborn mind is a tabula rasa (Latin for "blank slate").

  • There's also a concept that development follows a "natural order."

  • Examples illustrating different views:

    • Can a shy child's future shyness be changed by their experiences on a playground?

    • Is kindness something we inherit from our parents or something we learn at school?

    • Can the negative effects of bad early life events be reduced if a child has a supportive environment later on?

  • The nature vs. nurture discussion warns us against two extremes:

    • Naturalistic fallacy: assuming that anything natural is automatically good.

    • Extreme environmental determinism: believing that only the environment shapes us.

  • It really acknowledges that both our genetics and our environment are critical.

  • Nativism and Empiricism aren't mutually exclusive! Piaget's Constructivism is a theory that tries to combine both: Input (from environment) →{\rightarrow} Mind (processes it) →{\rightarrow} Output (new understanding).

Piaget’s Constructivism and Related Theories

  • Piaget's Constructivism: This theory says development is an active process where children build their own understanding of the world.

  • Input →{\rightarrow} Mind →{\rightarrow} Output: Children actively engage with information, their minds adapt, and this leads to new knowledge or behaviors.

  • Modern views include:

    • Nativists: Believe we're born with reflexes and mechanisms for change; development happens when these interact with the environment.

    • Constructivism (Piaget): Children respond to their environment by adaptating internally.

    • Empiricism (Spelke, Siegler): Early knowledge exists but expands and changes a lot through environmental experiences.

    • Core Knowledge Theory: Suggests we have innate, specialized knowledge in a few core domains (like understanding numbers or objects). This knowledge is universal and sticks with us.

    • Characteristics of Core Knowledge:

    • Universal (seen in everyone, everywhere).

    • Has signature limits (specific boundaries to what it can do).

    • It's not easily lost or changed; it stays throughout our lives.

    • Information Processing Approach: This theory thinks of the mind like a computer. Development means our "computing power" increases as we mature. Learning is like integrating new evidence.

Intuitive Theories of Human Knowledge (Wang & Feigenson, 2019)

  • Research: This study looked at what adults and children think about where knowledge comes from.

  • Key Findings:

    • Both adults and children tend to overestimate how old someone needs to be to show core knowledge abilities. They often think these abilities are learned through experience rather than being innate.

    • They are more accurate when estimating the onset of sensory abilities (like seeing or hearing) and instructed abilities (things explicitly taught).

    • Implications: People, across all age groups, have a bias towards empiricism. Experience in studying the mind (like you're doing now!) helps improve this accuracy.

Foundational Themes Summary

  • Modern theories generally agree that some knowledge is innate and that the environment matters a lot. The exact details and extent of change are still debated.

  • Some development involves quantitative changes (like getting taller), while some involves qualitative changes (like going from babbling to speaking full sentences).

  • Humans are active learners, even when they're babies or young children.

  • Some developmental changes are local (affecting specific skills), while others are global (affecting many aspects of development).

Other Considerations for Theory

  • Developmental Cascades: Changes in one area of development can lead to changes in other areas. These can also happen over time.

  • Sociocultural Context: The different systems we're embedded in (family, community, culture) really influence our development. This also causes variation across cultures.

  • Individual Differences: It's important to look at both group averages AND the variation within groups (how different individuals are).

  • Bidirectional Influence: Interactions, like those between a parent and child, create mutual effects, where each influences the other.

Developmental Cascades: Concepts & Examples

  • Example of Cascades over Time: If a baby is good at motor exploration early on (crawling, reaching), this can be linked to higher IQ scores at age 1010 and better cognitive performance at age 1414.

  • Negative Cascades Example: Peer rejection and aggression in kindergarten can lead to a negative chain of events that continues through later grades. A child's way of Social Information Processing (SIP) can interact with peer dynamics to create these ongoing issues.

Development within Sociocultural Context

  • Bronfenbrenner's Nested Systems Model: This model shows that individuals develop within multiple layers of influence, like an onion (e.g., family, school, community, broader culture).

  • Variability across Cultures: Skills can differ due to culture. For example, some cultures (like the Pirahã) use approximate number systems rather than exact counting, which affects numerical language.

  • Cross-Cultural Examples: The gahvora cradle used in Central Asia. Also, the ages at which children learn to walk and climb can vary among cultures. Despite these differences, there are still universal patterns in human development.

Individual Differences

  • We don't just look at averages; we also focus on within-group variability (how unique each person is).

  • Microgenetic Approach: This research method captures very fast developmental shifts and changes in learning strategies (e.g., how a child might switch between different ways to solve an addition problem).

  • Developmental shifts aren't all-or-nothing: Individuals might use several strategies at once or sometimes go back to simpler ones.

  • Maternal responsiveness can vary, and this predicts different rates of language and other developmental progress in children.

Bidirectional Influence

  • Reciprocal Effects: Children's improving communication skills can encourage parents to have deeper conversations with them, and parents' responsiveness in turn shapes the child's development. It's a two-way street.

Developmental Theories: Summary of Key Points

  • Most research tends to focus on group differences and analyzing single domains. However, to understand what's universal versus what's culturally shaped, we need to examine both across different contexts.

  • Development isn't a one-way street; cascades and bidirectional influences are very common.

Basics of Developmental Methods

  • What is a research question? It needs to be something you can actually test! For example, asking why teenagers commit violent acts is too broad.

  • Issues: You need clear definitions and operationalization (how you'll measure something).

  • Reframing to a testable question: Instead of "causes of violent acts," ask: "Does playing violent video games cause teenagers to commit violent acts?" (This is still a hard question to answer directly with causation, but it's more testable).

Variables & Operationalization

  • Variable: Any factor that can have different values (e.g., age, hours of sleep).

  • Independent Variable (IV): The hypothetical cause that the experimenter manipulates (changes).

  • Dependent Variable (DV): The hypothetical effect that is measured. It's not manipulated.

  • Operational Definition: This is how you'll actually measure a concept in your study.

    • Examples: How many hours of video games are played? What specific types of games? How will "violent acts" be defined and measured?

Causation vs. Correlation

  • To claim something causes something else: Ideally, you need random assignment (putting people randomly into an experimental group or a control group).

  • Alternatively: You can use within-subjects designs where the same people are measured pre-test (before intervention) and post-test (after intervention).

  • Without a control group: A correlational design can show if two variables are related or if one predicts another, but it cannot establish causation.

  • Key takeaway: Correlation does not imply causation! To prove causation, you need to manipulate variables and control for confounding factors.

    • You can use correlational analyses within experimental designs, but the ability to claim causation still relies on having good experimental control.

Experimental vs. Correlational Designs

  • Experimental Design:

    • Involves random assignment of participants.

    • The Independent Variable (IV) is actively manipulated.

    • The Dependent Variable (DV) is measured across different groups (e.g., treatment vs. control group).

  • Correlational Design:

    • Is observational; there's no manipulation of variables.

    • You're just assessing relationships between existing variables.

  • H0 vs. HA (Hypotheses):

    • Null Hypothesis (H0): States there's no effect or relationship.

    • Alternative Hypothesis (HA): States there is an effect or relationship.

    • We either reject the null hypothesis (meaning we found an effect) or fail to reject