Lecture 1

• The 2 things that drive development are maturation and learning
• Maturation is the hereditary influences on the aging process
• Learning is a change in behavior due to experience
• Changes can be continuous to discontinuous
• In developmental psychology we: observe, explain and optimize
• Plato thought that experience is not the foundation of knowledge and its innate; nature
• Aristotle said knowledge is caused by experience; nurture
• Theories of child development: psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive-developmental and ethological perspectives
• Psychoanalytic perspective: Freud's psychodynamic theory; ID(desire), EGO(rational) and SUPEREGO(Moral compass)
• Anna Freud created the field of child psychoanalysis. Noted that children's symptoms need to be considered through the lens of their developmental stage.
• The learning perspective: people like John B. Watson/classical conditioning and B.F Skinner/Operant conditioning
• John B Watson conducted the little albert study in order to prove classical conditioning works on humans; showed albert a bunny and then a played a crashing sound every time he showed it; instilling a sense of fear.
• Albert Bandura is another guy in the learning perspective that pioneered Observational learning; Bobo doll experiment(how children imitate other behaviors with the doll)
• The cognitive perspective focuses on how children think and how this changes as they grow
• Ethological perspective is transitioned from the evolutionary and biological perspective. Mostly looking at reflexes and animals are biologically programmed and a critical period in which learning can only occur at certain points; Konrad Lorenz(experiment in which chick was removed from the mother and saw another moving object instead)
• The scientific method consists of: identifying a question, forming a hypothesis, collecting data to test hypothesis and drawing conclusions
• Reliability: The extent to which a test yields consistent results when repeated
• Validity: The extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure
• naturalistic observation: environment is not being controlled at all
• Structured observation: controls are sent into play and the environment is controlled as well
• Collecting data occurs through: self-report(interviews/questionnaires)and physiological measures,
• Research designs are: correlational and experimental
• Quasi-Experiment: A research design in which the independent variable is manipulated in a way that is not random
• 3 Main designs for studying age related changes: Longitudinal, Cross Sectional and Sequential
• Longitudinal designs: looking at the same participants over a long period of time
• Microgenetic Design: Looking at the emergence of a small specific thing. It's an intense observation when developmental change is expected to occur; e.g. motor development.
• Pros of longitudinal designs: continuity/discontinuity and can reveal links between early experience and later outcomes
• Cons of longitudinal designs: cross generational problem(generational context might make data obsolete) cost/time and practice effect(using the same methods over and over again)
• Cross-Sectional design: using different ages of kids to see if there's a difference in age
• Pros of cross-sectional design: quick and cheap and demonstrates age differences.
• Cons of cross-sectional designs: cohort effect(people who are born at a certain time might have a difference from people born at another time), says nothing about development
• Sequential design: cross-sectional and longitudinal combined; Tracking different age groups over time(can compare if the same age groups are actually affected by the time period)
• Sequential Design pros: same as longitudinal but less cost/time; can also compare different cohorts at same age
• Cons of sequential designs: they're complicated and more time consuming in comparison to cross-sectional