Developmental Psychology Flashcards
(50 cards)
What is developmental psychology:
The study of human behaviour as a function of age
How and why we change
Change as a function of: physical maturation, cognitive development, social experience
Current issues in treatment
- mental illness can vary in severity, can be episodic or persistent
- comorbidity for mental illness and physical disorder impacts 1/8 Australians
- need a multidisciplinary approach to holistic care
Who provides treatment?
- psychiatrists: Full AHPRA registration required (MD), diagnose and treat severe psychological through psychotherapy and medication
- clinical social workers and psychiatric nurses
- clinical psychologists: full AHPRA registration required, full-fledged disorders (DSM diagnostics)
- counsellors: not protected category
Areas of study in developmental psychology
Physical development: body changes, motor skills, puberty, physical signs of aging
Cognitive development: perception, language, learning, memory, problem-solving
Psychological development: personality, emotions, gender identity, moral behaviour, interpersonal skills, roles
Define change and continuities
Change: systematic changes are orderly, patterned and relatively enduring –> example = crawling to walking (seen in developmental milestones)
Continuities: refer to ways in which we remain the same or consistent over time (e.g. attachment from infancy to adulthood, temperament/personality)
Start of developmental psychology:
- egg and sperm (genes combine to form a zygote)
- blastocyst (days 5-9, cluster of cells start to divide and multiply)
- embryo (to 8 weeks, early stage: formation of body structures, tissues)
- foetus (the unborn offspring, has major body organs though not fully developed)
early experience: sensitive periods
- teratogens: any agent that can cause a birth defect and disrupt development (e.g. radiation, chemicals, nicotine, alcohol, recreational drugs)
- timing of exposure is important in terms of impact (e.g. Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder OR Rubella virus) (note: the period of greatest susceptibility is the embyronic period)
early experience: sensitive periods EMPIRICAL SUPPORT
Neurological development (1-3 years)
- extensive myelination of the nervous system
- language development
STUDIES: Romanian orphans who were later adopted AND the “wild boy of Averyon”
- development of biological systems can be time sensitive
- later cognitive impairments are also related to timing and duration
Developmental theories
- A framework: to organise thinking –> can sometimes be limiting (its not always biological or social)
- A lens –> guides collection of new facts (can also limit which facts we notice)
Different theories dominant at different times
Impact of parent’s theories: Folk psychology
- parental locus of control and efficacy
- representations of the child
- discipline approaches
Nature and nurture
- universal genetically determined capacities for language, motor development
- but expression is influenced by environments (and there are individual and cultural differences)
- nature (genes) and nurture (environment) work together
define maturation
unfolding of genetically programmed behaviour patterns
example of maturation
maturation = unfolding of genetically programmed behaviour patterns
but environment (childrearing customs) has an impact (whether it be swaddling, carrying on body, baby containers)
There’s a different postural situation that the child will develop from being swaddled or carried on the body, in comparison to separation
Major theories of development and associated scientists
Psychoanalytic theory: Freud and Erikson
Cognitive development theory: Piaget and Kohlberg
Social cognitive theory: early behaviourist theories through to bandura
Ethological theory: attachment theories of Ainsworth and Bowlby
Stages of psychosocial development: Erikson
Cognitive Development - Piaget
Revolutionary discovery that children’s minds have profound qualitative and quantitative differences from adult minds. The child is active - constructs an understanding of the world through exploration and experience.
Encourages us to cultivate creative and innovative minds.
Maturation/nature/innate drives
Developmental process
A process (equilibration) balance between new experieces and what we already know / think we know
- assimilation: new information assimilated into existing schemas (integrates and interprets new experiences in terms of existing schemes)
- accommodation: schemas updated to accommodate new information (modifying or creating new schemes in response to our experience - acquiring information from environment)
Piaget’s 4 Main stages of intellectual growth
- Sensori-motor intelligence (birth-2years): object permanence
- Pre-operational period (2-7years): mental representations, but pre-logical/egocentric, conservation a challenge
- Concrete operations (7-11years): mental operations, but nly for physical/concrete materials such as adding or subtracting
- Formal operations (11years-): hypothetical reasoning, mental operations on abstract concepts, hypothesising
Symbolic or representational thought
- emerging capacity from 18-24 months (one object can represent another, this capacity deferred imitation and make-believe play)
- preschool years (2-6): further gains in mental representation, symbols represent the concrete world, drawing
object permanence - piaget
Infants < 8 months
- out of sight, out of mind, no effort to retrieve hidden object
Infants ~ 9 months - 12 months
- search, but where last found (i.e. object does not exist independent of child’s actions)
Infants 12-18 months - breakthrough
- understnad not only that objects continue to exist (independent of the child’s interaction with them) but that they can be moved while out of sight - invisible displacements
conservation
- extension of object permanence
- the logical understanding that objects have a fundamental essence that continues to exist, irrespective of changes in form, presentation, appearance
- To “pass” the test, the child needs to identify that the fundamental traits have not changed just because the appearance has changed.
Piaget’s Theory: Strengths and limitations
Strengths:
- landmark theory - fascinating aspects of pre-logical thinking
- learning as an active process - influences on education
- processes cross domains - conservation of liquid, mass, area
Critiques:
- stages are too rigid / prescriptive
- underestimated children’s abilities (methodological issues - task demands / language)
- universality? (is there a western bias)
Summary of Piaget
- Piaget contributes to cognitive development, including key discoveries about how children think
- Discovery: children actively construct an understanding of the world through exploration and experience (using equilibration through processes of assimilation and accommodation)
- 4 Main stages of intellectual growth: sensorimotor intelligence, pre-operational period, concrete operations, formal operations
- Symbolic or representational thoughts emerge from 18 months
- object permanence breakthrough occurs in the 12-18 months
- conservation is the understanding that objects have a fundamental essence that continues to exist despite changes in form
Other theoretical approaches to cognitive development
Sociocultural: Vygotsky
- learning collaborative (it is socially defined)
- role of siblings and peers (scaffolding - how can we work within what a child knows and move to increasing their knowledge in a supported way?)
- zone of proximal development
Information processing approach
- increased capacity of neural systems: processing of information, effortful to automatic, more sophisticated memory strategies
Social cognition
- Thinking about other minds
- 18 months of age
- Developing a sense of self: a young person starts to appreciate that they are an individual, and other people are also individuals who may see the world differently
- E.g. young children are fascinated by mirrors but at 18 months they realise that is themselves
- Example: The Rouge Experiment
