Psy2103f notes

• Developmental psychology


  Systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception and death
• Developmental psychology


  • Uses scientific method
  • Continuity: the way in which we stay the same or reflect our pasts
• Goals of studying human development

  • Description
  • Prediction
  • Explanation
  • Optimisation
• Nature vs nurture


  Is development determined by biological factors (heredity), environmental factors (e.g., social influences, culture), or the equally important contributions of both?
• Nature proponents argue that development is due to biology/heredity
• Nurture proponents argue that development is determined by our environment or experiences
• Bias in South African developmental psychology pre-WW2: "African children only 50% as mentally efficient as whites …. Their schooling should be designed to suit their mentality." (Loram,1923)
• Bias in South African developmental psychology pre-WW2: "School under-achievement in poor white children is a result of poor nutrition and education… improve access to education, and implement school feeding." (Carnegie Commission, 1932)
• Nature and nurture contribute to development
• Continuity and discontinuity


  Concerned with how we describe environmental changes - is human development steady and gradual or is it distinct and abrupt stages
• Examples of continuous development


  • Process of gradually adding more abilities that existed, or subtracting those abilities
  • Changes in amount, how much of something exists
  • As we get older, we grow taller
• Examples of discontinuous development


  • Process through which totally new ways of thinking about and understanding the world emerge at different time periods throughout development
  • Changes in kind; make individual fundamentally different in some way from before
  • Development proceeds through a series of stages which each stage being different
  • Puberty
• Universal and context-specific development


  Whether people are fundamentally similar to one another or if each individual is truly unique
• Stage theorists believe that the stages of development they propose are universal
• Others argue that development is more varied and that development occurs in different times and places – cross-culturally different experiences influence development
• Today's lifespan perspective

  • Development is lifelong
  • Development is multiply influenced
  • Understanding development requires multiple disciplines
  • Development is multidirectional
  • Development is plastic
  • Development is embedded in multiple contexts
• Research by African scholars trying to understand African children on their own terms is still limited
• WEIRD – western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic societies
• Developmental theory


  An organised set of ideas that is designed to explain (and make predictions about) development
• Perspectives on why the chicken crossed the road

  • Kindergarten teacher: To get to the other side
  • Aristotle: To actualise its potential
  • Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability
  • Captain James T. Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before
  • Charles Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads
  • B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will
  • Sigmund Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity
• Psychodynamic perspective


  Children move through a series of stages in which they experience conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. The way in which children handle these conflicts influences their ability to learn, how they interact with others, and how they cope with their anxieties.
• Freud's psychosexual stages


  Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital
• Erikson's 8 psychosocial stages

  At each stage, the individual needs to confronts and negotiates a specific psychosocial conflict/crises. The way in which we handle the conflicts either result in adaptive or maladaptive outcomes at each stage.
• Learning theory


  Developmental change is mainly caused by the environment. Learning is the NB process in development. Child is seen as passive.
• Classical conditioning


  John Watson
• Operant conditioning


  B.F. Skinner
• Social learning theory


  Observational learning – children learn through observing and imitating others. Operant conditioning.
• Bandura social-cognitive theory


  Argues that humans are cognitive beings which plays a role in behaviour and development
• Human learning differs from rats learning because humans have much more sophisticated cognitive functioning
• Learning theory puts too little emphasis on biological factors
• Cognitive-developmental perspective


  Concerned with activity of knowing. How children understand the world and how that understanding develops throughout the lifespan.
• Piaget's constructivist theory


  Did not believe intelligence is fixed at birth. Interested in how children think. Stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational.
• Assimilation


  Refers to how we understand new information in terms of what we already know or understand about the world
• Accommodation


  Changing our existing understanding of the world or mental structures/concepts to fit the new environment
• Equilibration


  Assimilation and accommodation enable us to move from a state of disequilibrium to equilibrium
• Critiques of Piaget's theory: Fixed stages of development is too rigid, underestimated cognitive abilities of infants and young children, too little emphasis on social/cultural influences on cognitive development and cognitive processes
• Information processing theory


  Likens the human mind to a computer with hardware and software. Thought processes change across lifespan – involving the same elements of different ages to greater or lesser degree.
• Vygotsky's sociocultural theory


  Focuses on the impact of social and cultural experiences on cognitive development. The ways in which a cultures preferred methods of thinking and solving problems are passed onto the next generation through social interaction.
• Ecological and systems perspectives


  Provide more complex explanations of how biological and environmental influences – including culture – constantly interact with one another to influence development.
• Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory


  Views children as developing in a complex system of relationships that are affected by multiple levels of surrounding environments: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, chronosystem.