Week 1 - why and how to study human development

• Developmental science relates to how we develop from an infant to a fully formed adult and the variations between us through this process.
• Developmental change is the process of change that occurs in human beings throughout development.
• Seeing babies is uncommon meaning this may have implications to our thinking regarding early socio-economic abilities
• developmental science aims to describe, explain and predict developmental change and outcomes
• aspect 1 of developmental change is the growth and increase in folding of the brain
• aspect 2 of DC is changes in synaptic connections - through synaptogenesis and synaptic pruning
• aspect 3 of DC is changes in neuron structure and myelination
• DC cannot simply be equated with growth / increase
• DC is a complex phenomenon, instantiated via different processes
• Studying development allows us to understand adults structures and gives an insight into the mature form- a key to understanding childrens capabilities and a source of insight for shaping social policy
• piaget 1986-1990 was interested in where knowledge comes from and worked w binet on the 1st intelligence test where he became interested with mistakes that children make on experimental tasks
• piaget interest lead to breathtaking scope of work including childrens understanding of time, space, number, logical reasoning etc
• piaget showed how our thinking changes qualitatively with age in developmental stages
• Children are little scientists actively constructing knowledge and development through theories and testing
• Empiricists - Locke, Berkeley, Hume
• Nativists - Descartes, Leibniz
• Comparative evolutionaries - Darwin, Lorenz
• Empiricists believe that newborns understand nothing and are born as a blank slate. All knowledge is learnt through experience
• The modern view is that we have an all purpose learning system with little bias towards a particular kind of info present at birth. Learning occurs through linking together any bits of info that co-occur frequently
• nativism believes some elements vary from birth due to our genetic inheritance and some abilities are not learnt but innate
• Nativism believes there are specialised learning mechanisms and processing capacities tailored for particular kinds of information
• An example of innate ability is number discrimination which is shown in infant humans as well as animals
• Evolutionary perspectives believes different organisms encounter similar challenges in development and particular traits arise as a result of natural selection
• Using the evolutionary perspective we can pose questions surrounding the origins of various psychological capacities
• cross cultural perspectives focuses on how cultural variations influence patterns of development and what aspects are universal between culture
• is the way religious beliefs, language and children's perception of visual depth develop influenced by culture
• neuroscience looks at how neurobiological systems give rise to psychological development and how the nervous system changes as a result of experience
• Longitudinal focuses on the same group over various time periods throughout
• Longitudinal A - poweful for evaluating earlier events impact on later behaviour
• Longitudinal A - good for studying long term effects of training and may uncover long term patterns of change in individuals
• Longitudinal D - time consuming, P may drop out, practice effects may occur which are the effects of participating rather then natural ones in developing
• Cross sectional is when different groups are studied at the same time point
• Cross sectional D - Yields no info about the causes of age related changes and children of differing ages are subject to cohort effects
• cohort effects is when you cant tell if a change is due to particular cohort in time or something else
• Sequential appraoch is a mix of both approaches looking at indiviudals at the same time but over time simultaneously