Developmental Psychology

• Stages of development

  • pre-natal: the period of time spent in the womb before an individual is born
  • childhood: the time between birth and the start of puberty
  • adolescence: the transitional period between childhood and adulthood that includes going through puberty
  • adulthood: the final stage of development when the individual has reached full maturity which comes with certain responsibilities and expectations
• Stages of brain development: pre-natal

  • 16 days after fertilisation, the human embryo develops a neural tube- this is what will become its brain and spinal cord.
  • cells are created from around 6 weeks gestation until around 20 weeks gestation.
  • Follows a process called “migration”(this starts around 8 weeks and is complete by 29 weeks)- the cells move to their correct location in the brain where they become neurons and begin to form the nervous system.
  • When the foetus is around two months of gestation, the neural tube divides into brain cells and nerve cells.
• Stages of brain development: pre-natal

  • Cerebral cortex is then formed- this part of the brain is responsible for how we think and act, as well as our memories and our intelligence.
  • This part of the brain is divided into four different sections
• Frontal lobe

  • Located behind the forehead 
  • Responsible for: decision making, emotions, personality and rational thought 
• Temporal lobe

  • Located just above the ear
  • Responsible for comprehension of speech
• Parietal lobe

  • Found at the top of the scalp
  • Responsible for sensory information 
• Occipital lobe

  • Located at the back of the head 
  • Allows us to distinguish colour, shape and motion  
• Stages of brain development: pre- natal

  • At 4 to 6 months pregnancy enters the second trimester- the brain becomes fully developed, although its not yet grown to its full size. 100 billion neurons have been formed
  • By 5th month- simple synapses have been formed, allowing the neurons to communicate with each other
  • End of second trimester- the nervous system has developed. 
  • In the third and final trimester- the brain continues to grow.
  • The brain development will be affected by what the mother consumes during pregnancy
• Stages of brain development: childhood 

  • After the child is born, the brain develops many neural connections (approximately 1,000 per second!)
  • When a baby is born, it’s ability to see clearly is limited.
  • By the time it is five months old, the new synapses allows it to see in 3D and it will have gained the ability to see in colour as well.
• Stages of brain development: childhood 

  • At the age of 3, the density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex is at its peak. This allows the child to start to use their past experience to understand their present. 
  • They also starts to understand cause and effect. 
  • During later childhood, these connections are then “pruned”, meaning that we get rid of the neural connections that do not use. 
• Stages of brain development: adolescence

  • This is the transitional period between childhood and adulthood that includes going through puberty.
  • At this stage, areas of the brain like the limbic system are the first to mature. 
  • Limbic system is responsible for regulating emotions and helps form new memories.
  • The frontal lobes continue to develop during adolescence and reach maturity around the age of 16
  • The pre- frontal cortex is last to mature, and this is regulating decision making and moderate social behaviour.
• Stages of brain development: adulthood

  • At around the age of 25, the pre- frontal cortex which is know as the “rational” part of the brain, finally matures.
  • This part of the brain allows individuals to make rational decisions and be able to focus on long term consequences of actions.
• IQ stands for 'intelligence quotient', which is a score that tells us how intelligent someone is

  the average IQ score is 100 and approximately two-thirds of people score between 85 and 115

  if you score 140 or more you are considered a genius
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development:he believed that children's cognitive development followed invariant stages he identified four stages:

  • sensori-motor stage
  • pre-operational stage
  • concrete operational stage
  • formal operational stage

  as children move through these stages, they continually go through the processes of assimilation and accommodation
• assimilation happens when children come across new information and make it fit with what they already know by integrating it into existing schemas

  accommodation happens when children come across new information that does not fit easily with existing schemas so that a new schema needs to be created in the mind

  schemas are mental 'pockets' of organised information
• Sensori-motor stage (0-2 years old):

  • young infants understand the world through what they sense here and now, exploring the world physically
  • they don't understand that things exist even when they are not there and it takes them some time to realise that they themselves exist
• Pre-operational stage (2-7 years old):

  • young children begin to use symbols and signs as part of their thinking, and the fact they develop their use of language makes a big difference to how they are able to think about things
  • however, their cognition is still limited by errors that they naturally make at this age

  Features:

  • object permanence - understanding that someone or something exists even when they are not there
  • animism - believing inanimate objects have feelings
  • egocentrism - only able to perceive situations from their own point of view
• Concrete operational stage (7-11 years old):

  • children begin to do operations (solve problems mentally) but tend to rely on concrete objects to help them to do this

  Features:

  • decentration - when children are able to deal with two bits of information at a time
  • reversibility - they understand that objects or numbers can be changes and taken back to their original form
  • conservation - they understand the properties of certain objects do not change even if the object's appearance does
• Piaget's theory criticisms:

  • too reductionist as it takes something as complex as cognitive development and reduces it down to stages driven by age
  • stages are too rigid and don't allow for individual differences
  • focuses too much on logical thought and ignores other types of thinking, such as creativity
• Piaget's study:

  • sample - small group of Swiss school children, including his own children
  • IV - age of children used
  • DV - whether they could conserve number or not
  • independent measure
  • hypothesis - children in the concrete operational stage would demonstrate conservation but that children in the pre-operational stage would not
• Piaget's study results:

  • 3-4 years olds tended to say the spread out row had more counters when asked the question a second time
  • 5-6 year olds tended to recognise the number of counters had stayed the same but couldn't justify why
  • 7 year olds and older were able to recognise both rows still had the same number of counters and could also explain their logic behind it
• Piaget's study criticisms:

  • he was criticised for asking the same question twice. younger children especially thought that this meant their first answer was wrong so they changed it
  • culturally biased as only Swiss children were used
  • sample was small so it is difficult to generalise
  • used and artificial task which had little bearing on real life
  • lacked construct validity as a narrow measure of conservation had been taken
• Dweck's theory

  Fixed mindset:

  • people see their own intelligence as fixed
  • they tend to avoid challenges they don't want to fail
  • being wrong or getting feedback is seen as negative

  Growth mindset:

  • people believe that intelligence is something that can be developed
  • they will take on challenges
  • it is okay to get things wrong especially if this leads to useful feedback. both are seen as positive
• Dweck's theory:

  • she believes that we don't just have one mindset or the other, rather that it can differ for different abilities
  • she also believes that a particular mindset is not necessarily permanent; mindsets can be changed
  • her research showed that praise linked to reassuring students about their intelligence or talent has a negative effect on their view about their abilities
  • Dweck argues that praise should recognise effort
• Willingham's theory:

  • he criticises the theory of different learning styles, stating that even though one may have a preferred learning style doesn't mean they can't learn in a variety of ways
  • what really helps children to develop is to make things meaningful to them; the importance of meaning in learning
• Learning theories criticisms:

  • they both focus on nurture over nature
  • over-generalising by dismissing certain approaches to development while promoting others. it might be that certain approaches suit certain children and that both theories should consider the individual more
  • have mixed evidence to support them
• Blackwell's study

  Study 1:

  • hypothesis - students' beliefs about intelligence (fixed vs growth) would correlate with their achievement grades on a maths test
  • longitudinal correlation study which took place over five years
  • sample - 373 students from schools in New York. they varied in terms of ethnicity, social economic statues and achievement
• Blackwell's study

  Study 1: Results

  • no significant correlation between theory of intelligence and maths test score at the start of the seventh grade
  • when students were tested in the autumn term of seventh grade and the spring term of eighth grade, their mindset became a significant predictor of maths achievement
  • the researchers concluded that those students who had a growth mindset and believed they had the capacity to change their intelligence made a greater improvement on their math test score than those with a fixed mindset
• Blackwell's study

  Study 2:

  • hypothesis - students who were taught to that intelligence is malleable would show more positive motivation in the classroom and achieve better than those students who were not taught about the growth mindset
  • correlation study with an experimental section
  • sample - 99 students from a seventh grade class from different schools in New York
• Blackwell's study

  Study 2: Results

  • no difference between the two groups in terms of their recall of general content from the workshops but the intervention group scored significantly higher on recall of the content from the theory that they had been taught about
  • the intervention group had more positive mindsets than the control group by the end of the study
  • more of the intervention group displayed more positive motivation compared to the control group
  • the researchers concluded that teaching students that intelligence is flexible has a positive effect on their motivation
• Blackwell's study: Criticisms

  • culturally biased as it only took place in one part of the USA
  • age biased so the findings may not apply to other age groups
  • they only measured achievements in maths so it cannot be generalised to other subjects
  • as study 2 used independent groups, the difference between the effort and achievement of the students could be down to individual differences