Development
The sequence of physical and psychological changes that human beings undergo as they grow older
Developmental Psychology
The scientific study of age-related changes in behaviour, thinking, emotion and personality
Big questions in Developmental Psychology
- Continuity and change
- Sources of Development
- Individual Differences
Quantitative Change (continuity)
continuities in development; things we can measure e.g., vocabulary (more and more words), gradual accumulation of changes
Qualitative Change (Discontinuity)
discontinuities in development; stage-like e.g., (locomotive development), fundamentally different changes
Data Collection (In Dvlpt. Psych)
- Self-Report
- Observation
- Experimental methods
- Clinical interview methods
Experimental Methods of Data Collection
The Visual Cliff
The Rouge Test
Clinical Interview Methods of Data Collection
Responding to questions with questions
Research Design Examples
- Longitudinal design (look at the same children over time) e.g., the Dunedin study
- Cross-Sectional Design (comparing people of different ages)
Cognitive Development
(basically) intellectual growth
Jean Piaget
Four ‘stages’ of cognitive development; once children master things they struggle with in any particular stage, they ‘move on’ to the next stage
Four “Stages” of Cognitive Development
- Sensorimotor Stage
- Preoperational Stage
- Concrete Operations Stage
- Formal Operations Stage
Sensorimotor Stage General Characteristics
- Birth-2 years
- Cognition tied to external stimulation
- “Thinking is doing”; cognition consists of behaviour
Object Permanence
Schema Formation
Representational Thought
Sensorimotor Stage
Object Permanence
- The idea that objects do not cease to exist when they are out of sight
- Birth - 3 months: Looks at visual stimuli, turns head towards noise (DON’T GENERALLY FIND VISUAL TRACKING)
- 3 months: Follows movin objects with eyes, stares at spot where object disappears, but won’t search for it.
- 5 months: Grasps and manipulates objects, anticipates future position of object
- 8 months: Searches for hidden object, but shows “A not B” error/effect
12 months: Searches in the last place that they saw the object
Schema Formation
- A schema is a mental representation or set of rules that defines a particular behaviour category. It helps us to understand current and future experiences.
e.g., What happens at a lecture
Things that you can eat
Things that are animals
Representational Thought
- The ability to form mental representations (e.g., of others’ behaviour)
- Occurs towards the end of the sensorimotor period
- Mental representation is instrumental in:
o Imitation
o Deferred imitation - a child’s ability to imitate the actions they observed others perform in the past
o Symbolic play
o The use of words to represent objects
Preoperational Stage General Characteristics
- 2 - 7 years
- Ability to think logically as well as symbolically (if mom has the car keys, going for a drive)
- Rapid development of language ability
- Classification and categorisation, counting, object manipulation
Failure of Conservation
Conservation is the understanding that specific properties of objects e.g., weight, volume, number) remain the same despite apparent changes or arrangements of these objects
Egocentrism
A child’s belief that others see the world in precisely the same way that they do
Concrete Operations Stage
- 7 to 12 years
- Ability to perform logical analysis
- Ability to empathise with the thoughts/feelings of others Understanding of complex cause-effect relations
Formal Operations Stage
- 12 years upward
- Abstract Reasoning
- Metacognition
piaget said not everybody got to this stage
