Developmental Psychology Revision Notes PDF

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Lecture summary notes for Developmental Psychology module....

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DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY REVISION NOTES

LECTURE 1: THEORETICAL APPRAOCHES TO THE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT • Provide definitions of developmental psychology and child development Developmental psychology = understanding the changes in mind and behaviour that human beings experience throughout the life span. Child development = understanding human development from conception to adolescence. • Present arguments for reasons to study child development EMPERICAL    

Chilhood is a period of rapid change Long term influences of events in childhood Understanding the origins and development of complex adult processes. Comparative questions

PHILOSOPHICAL  Childhood explains human nature APPLIED  Real world implications

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FACTORS WHICH MIGHT INFLUENCE THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD Genetics Nutrition Parents Teachers, schools Local environment Traumatic experiences

• Describe pre-20th century views of development and understand how these contribute to current understandings of child development MEDIAEVAL TIMES:  Childhood became seen as a distinct period of development, requiring protection  Laws began to distinguish adult and child offences.  However – extremely high rates of infant mortality in parts of the world.

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THE REFORMATION – 16th CENTURY The religious movements of Puritanism & Protestantism changed the way we see children. Children were thought to be born evil (Original Sin) Harsh, restrictive child-rearing practices were advocated to ‘civilize the child’ Child-rearing methods became seen as important; childcare manuals written Emphasized the importance of education for children THE ENLIGHTEMENT – 18th CENTURY PHILOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

 John Locke; o Children born as blank slates (TABULA RASA) o Emphasized effect of experience of children’s characters o Recommended parents should spend time with their children, reward them with praise and avoid physical punishment. o Believed in power of nurture, and continuous development  Jean-Jacques Rousseau o Chidlren are innately good (noble savages) o Adult training is harmful to this innate moral sense o Child-centered philosophy: children should be allowed to develop naturally o Recognised stages of development, in each of which adults should be receptive to the child’s changing needs o Supporter of nature and discontinuous (stage like) development.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH – 19TH CENTURY  Darwin’s Theory of Evolution  Individual differences, natural selection and survival of the fittest  adaptive value of behaviour • Outline and evaluate key 20th century theories of child development, including Freud’s psychosexual theory, social learning theory and behaviourism FREUD’S PSYCHOSEXUAL THEORY  Children develop in stages, each involving conflict between biological drives and social expectations  Conflicts are instigated and resolved by 3 mental structures; the id (biological drives), the ego (rationality) and superego (conscious)

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Stage

Age

Focus

Oral

0-18m

The mouth

Anal

18m-3yrs

Functions of elimination

Phallic

3-6 yrs

The genitals

Latency

6-11 yrs

Social & intellectual skills

Genital

12+

Sexual relationships

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY Learning from interactions between the child and the physical and social environment. Observational learning and imitation (modelling) Influence of child’s level of cognitive development and sense of selfefficacy: child can make choices about what to imitate. Used to explain gender development, aggression and TV influence.

BEHAVIOURISM  Only that which can be directly observed and measured should be examined

 Development = change in observable behaviour learned through experience with the environment  Influenced by classical conditioning work e.g. Pavlov’s dogs • Demonstrate an understanding of the nature of 21st century developmental science GENES  NEURONS  COGNITION  BEHAVIOUR  ENVIRONMENT LECTURE 2: ISSUES AND METHODS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY • Understand and debate a variety of theoretical issues in developmental psychology NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE  NATURE – development driven by the maturation of one’s hereditary endowment  NURTURE – development driven by physical and social environment STABILITY VS CHANGE  Do d/or early experiences fix certain patterns of behaviour? Or can later experiences support change? Or can later experiences support change? CRITICAL OR SENSITIVE PERIODS  Are there periods when certain developments or experiences must (or must not) happen for development to proceed optimally? PASSIVE VS ACTIVE CHILD  Does the child simply respond to his/her environment, or is the child an active purposeful indivudal who influences his/her own development? o Passive child (mechanistic) view:  Environment shapes the child’s behaviour and stimulates development o Active child (organismic) view:  Internal psychological structures drive development; children actively explore their world and influence their own learning.

NORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT VS INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES  Do all children follow the same development path, or is each child’s sequence of development unique? • Describe different types of research and study design 1. OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH  Behvaiours may be observed and recorded in… o Naturalistic environments o Structured settings  Observations can be… o Descriptive o Systematic 2. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH  Aims to describe the relagtionship between one aspect of childrens development and another  The direct and strength of the relationship is expressed by a correlation coefficient between -1 and +1. 3. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH  Aims to show a causal relationship between one variable (IV) and another (DV).  Changing one variable causes a change in the second variable  Test experimental hypotheses – manipulate the IV to see what happens to the DV  Conducted in labs or in a naturalistic setting • Describe a range of methodological approaches to studying infant development LONGITUDINAL STUDIES  Measures behaviours in the same subject at different ages  Advantages of longitudinal designs o Provide estimates of changes/stability of behaviour oiver time o Estimates effects of early experiences on later behaviour  Issues in longitudinal designs: o Sampling problems e.g. biased sampling o Repeated designs problems e.g. practice effects

CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES  Measure behaviours in different aged subjects at the same time point  Issues in cross-sectional designs: o Cross-sectional studies cannot reveal development at the individual level, only the group average level o Cohort effects: different age groups have different life experiences that may strongly effect their behaviour CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES  Examine a behaviour under different cultural conditions • Demonstrate an understanding of relevant ethical issues  Disclosure – researchers can be asked to apply for a police certificate  Ethics approval – ethics committees ensure that studies don’t put participant’s welfare at risk  Informed consent – must be obtained from parents or guardians  Personal Data Protection Act 2010 – participant details and test scores must be kept confidential, anonymous and secure. LECTURE 3: ATTACHMENT & PARENTING • Demonstrate an understanding of the different functions of the family system  This idea is based on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory  Family = the way that larger society influences a child o Socializes new members o “Makes human beings human” – Bronfenbrenner, 1991  May have evolved to live in families because:  Human neonates are born at a relatively immature satge of development  Infants have a long period of child dependency  The male would want to have a prenatal certainty  Families increase chances of survival  It would ensure continuation of genes  Members can be replaced  Sharing promotes survival

 THREE FUCNTIONS OF FAMILY: 1. They allow for reproduction 2. Socialization (of infants) 3. Emotional support for all members

• Describe and critically evaluate Bowlby’s ethological theory of attachment BOWLBY’S ETHOLOGICAL THEORY  Rooted in evolutionary theory, but also has psychoanalytic aspects to it  Attachment begins as innate reflexes then becomes emotional attachment  Sees attachment as an adaptive behaviour that promotes survival  Attachment is universal  Theory proposes several stages in the development of attachment EVAL  STRENGHTS: o Brings together psychoanalytic and biological aspects o Stages are based on some observable behaviours e.g. secure base, fear of strangers, social referencing o Attachment styles are quite stable over time  WEAKNESSES: o Too perspective? o Focuses mainly on the mother, less on the father o Unclear how attachment may develop in different family settings, with multiple caregivers etc o May be ethnocentric • Explain and analyse methods of assessing infant attachment and relate these to attachment theory THE STRANGE SITUATION  STRENGHTS: o Naturalistic o Doesn’t rely on self-reports o Compares reliably with “at home” studies

o Has been used in a range of cultures  WEAKNESSES: o Still not entirely ‘real’ o Only based on 20 min observation o Mothers may not behave how they normally would o Assumes that separation is normal for infant o Can only be used with 1-2 year old’s • Discuss how attachments may vary across cultures, supporting your arguments with empirical evidence ATTAHCMENT ACROSS CULTURES  Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) o Large meta-analysis study of research using the SS in 8 countries found that secure attachment t is the most common type o Patterns do vary across cultures  Israeli and Japanese infants – higher % of resistant  German infants – higher 5 of avoidant  Van Ijzendoorn et al (2004) o Meta-analysis of studies using AQS showed that correlation with SS was better in some countries than others – lower in the US than in Canada and Europe  If cultures differ in attachment style, then perhaps long-term outcomes associated with different attachment styles are different across cultures as well… • Evaluate various factors affecting attachment security  Variations of estimates: 30% to 90%  Depends of variety of factors o Socio-economic status  Low SES = less stable. Attachments are more likely to change over time, due to a less consistent environment o Life events  Stressful life events = less stable attachments  Consistent environment = consistent attachment  By age 4-5, attachment is very resilient to change

LECTURE 4: ATTACHMENT AND PARENTING (2) • Discuss the importance of positive communication patterns within families  Quantity as well as quality of communication is important: o Highly elaborative parents have children with better memory and more complex language (Reese and Newcombe, 2007)  Importance of listening to and talking with children – both for language and emotional development (Diamond, 2012)  Openness of communication is important with adolescent children (Barnes & Olsen, 1984) o Results in higher levels of family cohesion and family satisfaction • Evaluate the extent to which behaviourist methods of control are effective  

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METHODS OF CONTROL Consistency of rules has a significant effect on behaviour (Kurdek and Fine 1994) Punishing behaviours o Effectiveness of physical punishments? o Short term v long term effects Behaviourism and behaviour management: o Rewards and punishments o Operant conditioning – behaviours shaped by consequences

EVAL:  Mixed findings abouit effectiveness of ‘nauhgty step’ (Morawska 2011)  Negative (harsh) discipline correlated with behaviour problems and externalizing behaviours in childhood (Patterson 2002)  Children of parents who reward/punish for gaining good/poor grades have poorer overall grades than those who are just encouraging (Dornbusch, 1988)

• Describe the long term associations between ‘Parenting styles’ and developmental outcomes, referring to empirical evidence

PARENTING STYLES 1) AUTHORITIVE PARENTING  Children are more compliant and less defiant than their peers at age 2 (Crockenberg and Litman 1990)  Fewer behaviour problems, higher self-esteem and greater academic success through school  Better school performance in adolescence 2) AUTHORITARIAN PARENTING  Often results in children wither being anxious and withdraw or aggressive  Children perform less well in school, have lower self-esteem and experience more social problems (Baumind 1991) 3) PERMISSIVE PARENTING  Effects may be particularly noticeable in adolescence – antisocial behaviour / anti-authority  Unexpectedly, children are actually less independent than their peers (Maccoby & Martin 1983)  On average, children show poor academic performance 4) UNINVOLVED PARENTING  Lack of parental monitoring leads to risky behaviours in adolescence – greater chance of involvement with alcohol or drugs  Lack of emotional connection with mother/father can lead to poor relationships in the future  Associated with impulsive behaviour in adolescence (Block 1971) • Demonstrate an understanding of factors that may influence parenting styles      

Family size Birth order Gender Parental characteristics Parental employment Level of social support

 Family structure (single-parent, only child, adoptive families, same sex couples) LECTURE 5: ADOPTION • Describe some of the reasons and psychological consequences of adoption

• Describe how researchers have used adoption as a tool to investigate  early deprivation  attachment disruption  heredity

LECTURE 6: DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER IDENTITIY  Be able to define gender typing, gender stereotypes & gender identity. GENDER TYPING – children adopting gender/sex appropriate social behaviours. GENDER STEREOTYPES – common views about how males/females should be or tend to be. GENDER IDENTITY – “A person’s perception of self as masculine or feminine in characteristics” – Berk, 2007  Demonstrate an understanding of some gender stereotypes that exist and some characteristics of gender stereotypes through development. Western gender stereotypes: In females – Personality: warm and sensitive Physical features: graceful Occupations: teacher Behaviours: child care and decorating In males – Personality: rationality and assertiveness Physical features: strong Occupations: engineer Behaviours: fixing things and leading groups

Western gender stereotypes in childhood: In Females – like dolls, cry easily, prefer playing inside, kind and understanding In males – Link trains/cars/building things, shouldn’t cry, like playing outdoors, like blue, rough and tumble play Stereotype development: Children are aware of stereotypes from a very young age. Young children make very fixed, inflexible judgements about gender School aged children acquire a broader range of stereotypes Children/teens stereotyping becomes more flexible. • Identify and evaluate some key theories of, and factors affecting, gender typing and identity. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY:  Natural selection and adaptation  Males must gain mate; competitive, aggressive  Males who are more aggressive will be more successful in passing on genes  Females who are more caring will be more successful  Females must mate, then care for offspring  Need genes to ensure genes are passed on EVAL: Doesn’t account for recent changes in society Difficult to test experimentally Ignores environment Applies to groups, not individuals COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY:  Kohlberg (1966) – influenced by Piaget  Children differentiate between males/females  They identity their own gender, behave in accordance with and imitate same sex models EVAL: +VE.. studies show children develop gender concept -VE.. but may reach each stage a little earlier

GENDER SCHEMA THEORY:  An “info processing” approach  Says children develop schemas to help organise experiences of gender roles/differences  Children have experiences of each gender, their gender identities arise from this  Gender-typed behaviours of others are then organised into schemas

LECTURE 7: PEERS & FRIENDSHIPS • Describe how peer sociability and friendships develop over time, and demonstrate an understanding of different factors affecting peer sociability and children’s friendships DURING 1ST YEAR: Smiles/bables @ 6 months Brief interactions by 1 y.o. AGE 1-2: Mutual imitation and shared games Minimal verbal interaction AGE 2+: Begin to use language to initiate reciprocal play Interactions are positive and children show enjoyment.

FACTORS AFFECTING PEER SOCIALBILITY Cultural Factors – Individualistic Vs Collectivistic Parental Influences – Direct (provide peer interactions, advice, suggest good behaviours) and Indirect (parenting, attachments and parent child play).

Child’s Age - … • Characterise some peer acceptance categories that have been applied to children, and demonstrate knowledge of some issues surrounding interventions for rejected children PEER ACCEPTANCE: the extent to which children and liked and accepted by their peers. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Popular children Rejected children Controversial children Neglected isolated children

• Demonstrate an understanding of the factors contributing to bullying Why do children bully?  Modelling learnt behaviour  Tend to be high-status children with ‘power’  Higher rates of behavioural problems for ‘direct’ bullies Why are children bullied?       

Tend to not join in with activities Physical aspects – frail kids Minority of victims are also aggressive – provoke bullies Inhibited children Tend to be children who don’t have many friends Give in to demands of bullies Parenting? Resistant attachment type more common, overprotective motherstr5

LECTURE 8: VYGOTSKY • Describe Vygotsky’s theory and demonstrate knowledge of the core aspects and ideas

VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  Because cognitive development is context specific, Vygotsky didn’t believe in an individualistic view – learning and development do not take place in isolation from others.  Cognitive development is a socially-mediated process (passed on from one generation to the next).  Development of language is important – leads to a qualitative change in thinking. Emphasized a strong link between language and thought.  Interaction with and instruction from more knowledgeable people through social experiences is important. VYGOTSKIAN IDEAS 1. Intersubjectivity – the mutual understanding that two people arrive at and share during communication 2. Zone of Proximal Development – the range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to do alone, but can be mastered with help from a more knowledgeable person. 3. Social scaffolding – the context provided by the more knowledgeable person to help the child develop his of her cognitive skills. 4. Guided participation – the process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to learn. 5. Cultural tools – e.g. symbol systems, artefacts, values, skills 6. Private speech – children talking to themselves • Evaluate the theory with reference to empirical evidence PROS  Explains some cultural differences in cognitive development  Positive influence of education – at school or at home  Social context and guidance from others does influence children’s cognitive development  Scaffolding can be very effective according to research. CONS  Roles of social context and language may be exaggerated  Ignores biological aspects  Some interactions hinder, rather than help, development.

• Discuss the implications of Vygotsky’s theory for educational practise  Demonstrates importance of social interaction in learning  Effectiveness of peer collaboration  Scaffolding can be clearly applied to educational settings  Idea of assisted discovery within the ZPD  Rec...