CHAPTER 2

• Developmental psychology


  Focuses on how thoughts, feelings, personality, motor skills and social relationships evolve as the individual child develops
• Three major domains of development

  • Cognitive
  • Psychosocial
  • Physical
• Why study development


  • Understand normal development (which informs our understanding of 'unusual' development)
  • Improve self-understanding
  • Guide our responses to actual behaviour
  • Inform appropriate expectations about children/adolescent behaviour
• Biological theories of development

  • Look at processes in the brain and central nervous system and study how these develop and change as the child grows
  • The neuropsychological perspective is currently dominant
  • Well-understood today that damage to certain portions of the brain can have significant developmental impacts
  • Has introduced useful drug therapies for assisting certain psychological disorders related to chemical imbalances in the brain
• John Watson: 'Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.'
• This statement by Watson situates him in the debate as believing that development is primarily shaped by environment rather than innate factors
• Some people have argued that this statement provides a liberating view of development: whatever the child brings into the world is incidental to who that child will become, given the right input. However, there are problems with this way of thinking as it ignores the role of innate factors in development
• Respondent conditioning


  Classical conditioning, as demonstrated by Pavlov's dog
• Operant conditioning


  Type of conditioning studied by Skinner
• Primary reinforcers


  Reinforce behaviours that satisfy primary needs
• Secondary reinforcers


  Provide satisfaction and reinforce behaviours
• Principles of behaviourism


  • Behaviour that is positively reinforced will reoccur; intermittent reinforcement is particularly effective
  • Information should be presented in small amounts so that responses can be reinforced ('shaping')
  • Reinforcements will generalise across similar stimuli ('stimulus generalisation') producing secondary conditioning
• Unconscious mind


  The part of the mind that Freud compared to an iceberg, with the conscious mind being just the visible tip
• Freud's theory of psychosexual development and Erikson's theory of psychosocial development are two major psychodynamic theories of development

  
• Intelligence


  Involves biological adaptation, equilibrium between the individual and the environment, mental activity, and competence
• Piaget's functions of intelligence

  • Functions = how of intelligence, biologically inherited, enable us to adapt to the world, consist of assimilation and accommodation, these two functions are complementary and invariant, both are essential
• Assimilation


  Applying existing cognitive structures/schemes or ways of knowing to new situations/information, making sense of the new in terms of the old
• Accommodation


  Changes in existing cognitive structures/schemes or ways of knowing as a result of the fact that the existing structures do not allow one to understand new information, modifying cognitive structures in light of new information that clashes with existing understanding
• Piaget's structures of intelligence

  • Actively constructed by the individual throughout development, through action the child constructs information about the world, which is organised into structures called schemas and operations, structures = the product of the transaction between the child and the environment
• To know an object is to act on it. To know is to modify, to transform the object, and to understand the process of this transformation, and as a consequence to understand the way the object is constructed. An operation is thus the essence of knowledge, it is an interiorised action which modifies the object of knowledge.
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development

  • Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
  • Pre-operational (2-6/7 years)
  • Concrete Operational (6/7-11/12 years)
  • Formal Operational (11/12 years and up)
• Sensorimotor stage


  • Reflex base, coordinate reflexes, developing object permanence
• Pre-operational stage


  • Self-oriented, egocentric, formation of mental symbols, symbolic understanding, symbolic play
• Egocentrism


  Inability of a child to see a situation from the point-of-view of another person; from a perspective different to his or her own
• Centration


  Child centres attention on only one aspect of a situation, to the exclusion of all others
• Concrete operational stage


  • Absence of egocentrism, can classify and conserve, applies logic to actions/events
• Word


  Always has a personal meaning
• Pre-operational stage (2 – 7 years)


  • Symbolic understanding
  • Egocentrism
  • Centration
• Through symbolic play, symbols acquire meaning
• By combining imitation (accommodation) and play (assimilation) the child forms mental symbols and invests them with meaning
• Egocentrism


  • Rule following
  • Monologues
• Concrete operational


  • Absence of egocentrism
  • Can classify (categorisation at different levels)
  • Can conserve (understand that the amount of something remains unchanged across transformations. Not misled by visual appearance)
  • Can mentally reverse actions (reversibility; compensation; identity)
  • Applies logic to actions/events
  • More flexible as not reliant/limited to appearance of things
  • Still limited to actual (concrete) objects and events and cannot reason abstractly
• Pre-operational children are unable to conserve because they are egocentric and therefore focus (centre) on only one aspect of the situation (the level of the water)
• Concrete operational children are able to de-centre and focus on both pertinent aspects (level of water and width of container). Can mentally reverse the events (operation of pouring); can compensate (realise that width compensates for height) and recognise that the water's identity is unchanged (nothing has been added or taken away)
• Formal operations (11+ years)


  • Identify relevant variables
  • Systematically test combinations of variables and keep other variables constant
  • Establish causal variables
  • Can generate hypothetical solutions to problems: identify all possible solutions; formulate propositions; use logical reasoning
• Equilibration


  Internal self-regulation – the balancing that goes on in our minds between assimilation and accommodation
• Through this kind of balance, a both realistic (accommodation) and meaningful (assimilation) rapport between subject and object is secured
• An act of intelligence in which assimilation and accommodation are in balance or equilibrium constitutes an intellectual adaptation
• Educational implications


  • Learning must be active and exploratory
  • Focus on potential (what is developing)
  • Qualitative difference between adults and children's thinking has implications for moral, social and educational development
  • Cognitive conflict (disequilibrium) provides the stimulus for learning
• Mediational means (tools)


  Machines, writing, speaking, gesture, architecture, music, etc.