PSY 101 Notes 2 23 2015 3 9 2015 Disclaimer All information is my own all notes were taken using only Dr Poulin s lectures and no other source Developmental Psychology The study of how people change across the lifespan while being influenced by both biological and environmental forces 1 Nature Nurture and Development Nature and nurture affect us from the beginning Womb between conception and birth 2 Maturation o Zygote embryo fetus o Roughly a 259 day long process variation because the process is subject to environmental control poor maternal nutrition alcohol consumption high stress increased risk of premature birth and stunted development Maturation biological growth across the lifespan regulated by genes o Child development from infancy through adolescence growth puberty etc o Brain development amount of cortical neuronal connections increases as the child grows o You are born with all the neurons you will ever have but it is the amount of connections that increases o Skill development also shaped by biology and maturation develop at highly predictable times 2 3 months rolling over back to front baby develops increased body strength and better neuronal connections for brain muscle signaling 4 7 months sitting up the ability to sit up not desire 6 10 months crawling has huge physical and social implications 8 12 months walking These skills usually develop in this order and the timing is strongly related to genes Identical twins tend to develop these skills at the same time independent of environmental influence parents do not necessarily need to teach these skills they just happen 3 Physical Development in Childhood Physical maturation influences development Cognition processing information thinking influenced by maturation o First childhood memories strong tendency that the average age for memory retention is 3 5 years events o Related to biological development of language abilities the ability to remember facts and o We develop cognitive skills across our lifetime how we are able to think Previously it was thought that children simply had less experience and that is why they aren t as smart as adults children do not have the cognitive capacity to reason and think abstractly 4 Cognitive Development in Childhood Jean Piaget Overview o Jean Piaget 1896 1980 a Swiss scientist psychologist o Taught biology at an all boys school administered intelligence tests to the students across a wide age range o When he graded the tests he discovered a pattern younger children scored lower than older children when tested on the same material and they scored lower in the same way o He realized adult cognition requires 3 essential cognitive skills Represent objects Thinking logically about objects behave or interact Representing abstractions mathematical principles moral legal rules o Piaget realized that nobody is born with these skills children must gain them through biological maturation in order in a very predictable timeframe Stages o Piaget published a series of papers in the 1920s and 1930s proposing that cognitive development occurs in 4 stages Sensorimotor birth 2 years None of these abilities are present A child s interactions with the world involve figuring out how their actions sensations work with each other Cognition focused on connecting sensations with actions Certain developmental events lay the groundwork for later stages Object permanence develops things exist even when not visible Focus is on here and now very limited ability to imagine something that is not physically present Preoperational 2 6 or 7 Sesame Street creators designed characters based on these developmental stages Elmo and Ernie are in the preoperational stages Thus children identify with them Representation of concrete objects facts Inability to use logic children have unrestricted imaginations They are unable to foresee consequences of their actions No understanding of conservation of properties across situations breaking a cookie in half means 2 cookies to a child for instance Another example rearranging 4 objects the child will no longer know how many are present View of the world is egocentric children assume that everyone sees the world the way they do Concrete operational 6 7 to 11 12 But no abstract concepts Formal operational 11 12 onward Learn to think logically about concrete objects They can conserve properties across situations cookie example won t work here they know the half is smaller than the whole Ability to think about abstract concepts symbols Includes thinking logically about those concepts Pinnacle of cognitive development according to Piaget but he did not have a specific theory as to how this sequence happened biological evolutionary etc Schemas Internal cognitive representation of the world o o Much of cognitive development is about forming and updating our schemas to better reflect how the world works o A general term for any type of concept internal representation for things out there in the world o Example picture of a dining room you may have never seen that specific picture before but you have an internal representation of what a general dining room looks like and thus you know what the picture depicts o Two processes we engage in regarding schemas Assimilation understanding a new experience by fitting it into existing schemas It is part of cognitive development because you apply old schemas to new information and it is filed away until we need it However this is not always the correct strategy to label new information if a child sees an animal underwater they assume it is a fish However say it is a penguin which is a bird The child assumes birds fly and have feathers so they must process this new information differently Accommodation adjusting existing schemas to better reflect experience underwater animal example You change your mental representation to better represent events and experiences o Piaget states that all of cognitive development is a balance of assimilation and accommodation o Intelligence is defined by using the two skills appropriately Contemporary View PARALLELS TO PIAGET o Piaget has mostly been right about how cognitive development works many other older psychology theorists have not been right in the modern view o Schemas are an organizing principle in cognitive psychology o Existence of stages and order of stages is accurate holds up across cultures and across time This adds evidence to the idea that this may be a biological phenomenon In addition the stages