What is developmental psychology?
Studies of human growth across lifespan
- Changes (physical or mental)
- Factors (reasons) that affect development
- Child psychology (infant, child, adolescent) versus lifespan (child, adult, pre-natal) psychology
Why study developmental psychology?
- To understand human nature
- To shape social policy
- To enrich human life
Why study child development?
- How do genetics and environment affect child development?
- How can we conduct research with children while protecting their human rights?
- What can psychology tell us about effective child-rearing and child mental health?
Why study lifespan development?
- How do we change across our lifespan, how do we stay the same?
- How do we recover from trauma, what supports are effective and for whom?
- To what extent do we actively shape our lives or passively respond to surroundings?
What are the 7 enduring themes of developmental psychology?
Seven enduring themes of development
- Continuity & discontinuity
- Mechanisms for change
- Universality & context specificity
- Individual differences
- Research & children’s welfare
- Nature & nurture
- The active child
What are the four types of change?
- continuity = stability, things that are relatively stable and don’t change
- Discontinuity = change, a person’s title (Miss, Mrs, Dr)
- Continuous change = quantitative, reversible (height, memory, etc)
- Discontinuous change = qualitative, irreversible (puberty)
Not exclusive of each other
What mechanisms are needed for developmental changes to occur?
Species change
Changes in behaviour
To what extent is the development…
- Universal across contexts and cultures
- Exclusive to specific contexts and cultures
What is cognitive development?
How children/people think, learn, explore, remember and solve problems
- perception, attention, language, problem solving, reasoning, memory, conceptual understanding, and intelligence
List the 5 developmental themes
- Continuity & discontinuity
- Nature & nurture
- The active child
- Universality & context specificity
- Mechanisms of change
What are the 3 theories of cognitive development?
- psychological frameworks that explain how our cognitive skills develop
- e.g. Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory
- Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory
- Information processing theories
Discuss Piaget’s cognitive development theory
1920s
children active role in development - like scientists
4 main stages
not reversible
4 discrete stages
s1 - child understand world through senses
s2 - internally represent some ideas, but are very brief and simple
s3 - able to think logically not just intuitively, many things influence things, not just one
s4 - can think systematically, can think of things in an abstract way
within each stage have continuous change in cognitive development
appealing idea
good overview of children - different capacities at different ages
helps teachers too
has a lot of observations in research
has broad spectrum of development
describe problems with Piaget’s theory
vague
underestimates abilities of infants or young children
kids could do more, younger
stages are mostly fixed
BUT
very appealing overall
Describe Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
similar time to piaget
got popular from 1970s ish
children learn from interactions with others
people developing with gradual process
Individuals’ cognitive development is largely shaped by the social and cultural context.
- Infants have basic cognitive skills(attention, sensation, perception, memory)
- As infants interact with others, these skills become more sophisticated.
cognitive function - dependent on people around us
describe problems with Vygotsky’s theory
overinfluences social effect
underestimates role of children
Describe information processing theories
Information processing theories:
popular in early 2000s - time of computer rise
The human mind is a complicated information-processing system like a computer.
(Input devices: Sensory memory) → (CPU: Processor: Working memory) → (Output - monitor)
↓
(HDD: Hard Disk Drive: Long-term memory)
mechanisms on how cognition develops
describe problems with information processing theories
doesn’t talk about process, effect of social/cultural influences
What is intelligence?
Intelligence = capacity to learn from experience and adapt to one’s environment
Robert Steinberg
Learn + adapt = change and progress, changeable and dynamic
Describe intelligence
Intelligence is a developmental concept
- always changing and updating knowledge system = representation of intelligence (all sorts of different processes)
- can mean different things at different ages
- can be different in different contexts
Discuss general intelligence (g)
General Intelligence (AKA cognitive ability, general intelligence factor, general mental ability, intelligence):
A person possesses a certain amount of general intelligence (g) that influences their ability on all intellectual tasks
different theories on how to measure this too
are intellectual contexts only area for intelligence?
What are the 4 different dimension opinions on intelligence?
- IQ
- Cryst = fact/knowledge in the brain, Fluid = solve problems on the spot
- 7 different abilities - don’t like the idea of using 1 measure for intelligence
- many dimensions
Discuss IQ
1900s france, all children go to school, not all good at it
Afred Binay and Theodore Simon asked to develop a test to predict who would fall behind so they can help them more
All children are equally capable
IQ = mental age/chronological age x 100
most people around 100
mental age matches chronological age
Standard deviation = 15
98% of people get score within 2 std dev, between 70 and 113
IQ = fixed not really representative
stable throughout life
Discuss John Carrol
3 stratum theory of intelligence
A hierarchical integration of:
- g, divided into
- 8 generalised abilities divided into
- many specific processes
People exhibit different traits as they age
What are the stanford binet scales
5 cognitive abilities
- fluid reasoning
- knowledge
- quantitative reasoning
- visual-spatial processing
- working memory
Popular in US
For ages 2-23
Uses MA to calculate IQ
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Clinical Psych readings63
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Developmental Psychology Readings50
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Social Psych Readings46
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Personality Psych Reading77
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Modules Week 116
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Research Methods Readings50
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Social Psychology157
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Personality Psychology Reading139
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Clinical psychology readings/quiz questions193
