PSYC 248 Notes PDF

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PSYC 248 NotesLecture 1: IntroReadings for lectures can be tested, readings for labs will notTests will be multi choice & short answerLecture 2: Histories, theories and themesDevelopment psychologyThe study of behavioural and psychological changes as development occurs across thelifespanSt...

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PSYC 248 Notes Lecture 1: Intro Readings for lectures can be tested, readings for labs will not Tests will be multi choice & short answer Lecture 2: Histories, theories and themes Development psychology  The study of behavioural and psychological changes as development occurs across the lifespan  Study: Description and explanation  Behaviour: how an entity acts in response to a particular stimulus or environment  Psychological: of or related to mental processes  Development: change over time  Lifespan: conception to death History and themes in development psychology Nature vs. Nurture  The idea that humans are born with innate ideas (nativism) vs the idea that humans need experience to form ideas (empiricism)  How much of the character of the mind is due to genetic endowment vs. how much is acquired via learning from environment  Maturations theories  Behaviourism: Watson and Skinner, the idea that spontaneous actions have consequences, these consequences result in learning (due to response)  Cognitive-development theories: Piaget, kids are active explorers, learning took place from this Nativism vs. Empiricism Nativism  Core knowledge theories Empiricism  Associative learning theories Continuous vs. Discontinuous

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Stage like changes can be both continuous and discontinuous

Active vs. Passive  Passive: absorbing information without involvement  Active: children bring something to learning themselves, engaged with learning  Piaget (active theory)  Skinner (Passive theory)

Global vs. Local

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Is the cause of change global or something relatively more local

Lecture 3: Methods and Approaches What is the scientific Method?  Goal: explaining how things work  Means: gathering evidence History of scientific method  Nature vs nurture  Nativism and empiricism  Darwin looked at prenatal growth of many animals and found that they looked similar  Darwin sparked interest with others which started 'baby biographies' (19th century)  Other people started doing baby biographies, in the 20th century the normative approach started  Hall & Gesell: studying large numbers of children at different ages to represent typical development (normative approach)  Alfred Binet: developed the 'stanford-binet scale of intelligence', an IQ test which is still used today  Piaget: joined Binets lab, interviewed large groups of children and administrated experimental tasks Research methods in developmental psychology  Scientific method: objectively allow data to inform theory  Methodological approaches:  Case studies, observational studies, self or other report studies, experimental studies

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EG: how do we get kids to be more attentive in class?, come up with a theory such as exercising before class will make kids calmer, and then you test your theory The point of testing is to try get evidence of your theory

Case studies  Observing behaviour of 1 or few individuals

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Pros: detailed, allows repeated measurements, reveals change Cons: limited in scope, difficult to generalize, cant apply to a broad population

Observational studies  Naturalistic observational studies:  Observing multiple individuals (all together or at one time) in a natural, non-lab setting  Pros: high ecological validity, can see spontaneous behaviour of interest, increase generalization (sample size)  Cons: the observer may have influence on behaviour, behaviour may be infrequent or undesirable, cannot draw conclusions about cause and effect  Structured observational studies:  Observations in a controlled setting that evokes a behaviour of interest  Pros: similar environment for all participants, controls for influence of other 'extraneous' variables  Cons: cannot draw conclusions about cause and effect Self report studies  Self- or other- report studies  Administer interviews and questionnaires to participants or others who know them  Pros: people who know participant well  Cons: social desirability, subjectivity and bias, selective reporting, cannot explain cause and effect Experimental studies  Manipulate a factor (independent variable) and measure behaviour (dependent behaviour)  Pros: precise as can test a specific hypothesis and control for other factors, can establish cause and effect  Cons: lower ecological validity, can be reductionist

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Within subjects design: participants experience both conditions (allows you to compare responses within a participant)  Between subjects design: assign participants to different conditions (no order effects, eg. Practice/training, comparison) Sampling strategies for studying developmental change  Longitudinal: same child tested at different ages (sensitive to individual differences, can test interventions)  Cross-sectional: test children in two different age groups and compare them (less time intensive, no order effects, lower attrition, easy to use the same method and setting with both groups) Lecture 4 & 5: Early perceptual development

Sensation in the fetus  Sight - limited in the fetal stage  Touch - contact between hands and body  Taste - can detect flavour  Smell - amniotic fluid smells  Hearing - external sounds are audible in the womb Early perception  Sensation: registration of sensory info from the external world by the sensory receptors in the sense of organs and brain  Perception: process of organising and interpreting sensory information (how we encounter the world) Modes of perception Visual Acuity: visual acuity is the sharpness of visual discrimination  Methods: preferential looking procedure, habituation process (forming a habit to then get bored, then showing different pattern to see if it then catches their interest again dishabituation)  Suggests that visual acuity develops over the first few years of life  Feedback loops: the outputs of a process feed back into the process as regulating inputs  Brain sends a message that the eye needs to grow, blurry image = too small of an eye (light doesn’t hit retina properly)  Critical periods: time periods in which specific experiences are necessary for typical development to occur Colour:  Categorical perception: tendency to cluster stimuli that vary along a continuum into discrete categories

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Even 4 month olds (and perhaps newborns) show categorical perception of colour, just like adults  Therefore, categorical perception of colour is likely not dependent on language or teaching Depth:  Binocular cues:  binocular parallax - depth inferred from the slight disparity of how the two eyes capture object, objects closer produce more disparity  convergence - depth is inferred from seeing the muscle tension needed in the eyes to focus the image on retina  Dynamic cues: looming, motion parallax  Pictorial cues: various Auditory  The newborns auditory sytem:  Auditory sustem functional by third trimester  Well developed senses at birth, adult-like at 5 years  Infants can make many discriminations that adults can make: duration, frequency, relative loudness

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Testing preferences: infants learn that If they suck in a certain way they can hear a certain sound; test whether infants suck to produce sound  Testing discrimination: Infants suck while listening to one sound until they are habituated (sucking rate decreases to a certain level); test whether infants dishabituate (increase their sucking rate) when a new or new-category sound is played, in contrast to when an old or samecategory sound is played  Perceptual narrowing: increase in the precision of perceptual processing in one category, at the expense of perceptual processing outside that category Smell and taste  The newborns chemical perception system develops prenatally  Taste and smell are linked  Newborns prefer taste they have experienced in the womb Touch  Infants learn about the environment through active touch  First exploration is mostly oral then manual Intermodal  Intermodal perception: integration of information across sensory modalities (e.g., recognising an object in one sensory modality that is familiar through another modality) Lecture 6: Motor Development Infancy: Origin of Action 1. Maturation theory  Arnold Gesell  Motor development is driven by the developing brain  Evidence: twin case study, cultural motor 'deprivation'  Early actions: reflexes - automatic responses to a particular form of stimulation  Auditory perception: where is sound coming from 2. Dynamic Systems theory  Elenor Gibson: combined perception and action (perception-action approach)  Esther thelen (1970's-80's)  Motor development is driven by the interplay between brain and maturation, body changes, the environment ect.

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Learning to move around in space (visual cliff) Babies actions are learned by experience, when in a new posture eg changing from sitting to crawling babies are going to have to go through new learning experiences When babies first start crawling they are willing to cross the cliff

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When babies are more experienced crawlers (often after about a month), they become avoidant of visual cliff This is due to babies learning to perceive affordances of locomotion: affordances refer to the fit of your physical capabilities and the relevant environment Babies learn to perceive the relationship between their bodies and the environment Active experience acquires new motor skills because you get the perceptual effect of action

Lecture 7 & 8: Cognitive development Piaget  Became interested in how thought developed  Children as active learners (constructivism)  Development is discontinuous and stage-like  Development tends to be global (domain-general) rather than local (domain-specific)  Not a complete empiricist or nativist  Ideas of schemes: childs patterns of thought, knowledge, interpretations and behaviour when interacting with the environment  Assimilation (child interpret something new from pre-existing schemes) and accommodation (new object doesn’t fit an existing scheme)  Study of cognitive development Properties of stages  Discontinuous  Invariant: order never changes, always happens the same  Universal Object permanence  objects continue to exist even when they cannot be perceived

Stages Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years)  Developing object concept: objects exist outside our interactions with them, objects continuously move, objects obey law of gravity and inertia  Birth-1 month: reflexes  1-4 months: primary circular reactions (random motor behaviour that react with their body)  4-9 months: secondary circular reactions (first scheme where babies react with objects outside of their body)  9-12 months: integration of schemes  12-18 months: tertiary circular reactions  18-24 months: symbolic thinking Key ideas

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the competence/performance distinction: the difference between (competence) the underlying psychological ability, capacity, or understanding, and (performance) the articulation or production of this competence in a given task

Pre-operational (2 to 7 years) Concrete-operational (7 to 11 years) Formal operational (11 to adult) Lecture 9: Autobiographical Memory Important role in: Development    

Learning Identity Social bonds Life story Emotion

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regulation 

Resilience/ment 

About the world Self care and independence Academic and practical learning Coping skills

al health 

Critical to many functions of learning and serves an important part in being human

When does memory begin?  Newborns (...