Reading 1 Study Guide for Chapter 1 of Lally and Valentine-French

Modified: 2024-05-08 3:37 AM CDST

Chapter 1 introduces several key concepts and issues in developmental psychology, discusses older and newer theories of development, and shows how research in the field is conducted. Be sure you study and understand items in bold. Remember, your tests will be open book and open notes so you don't have to memorize answers. You should, however, develop your on ways to find the information requested by the tests.

• 1.1 Prelude to Lifespan Development
  • The field has changed
    • No longer just the study of infants and children
    • Adolescents added first, followed by adults
    • Development is more rapid for infants and children, but adolescents and adults also change over time
    • Section previews issues:
      • Is development gradual or stage-like?
      • How much of our knowledge is innate or learned?
      • How does social context affect development?
      • Developmental Psychology "informs": educational psychology, psychopathology, and forensic psychology
      • Developmental Psychology "complements": social psychology, cognitive psychology, and comparative psychology
• 1.2 Lifespan Perspective
  • Development is present at all ages in the human lifespan
  • Development is not a single entity, it includes physical changes, cognitive changes, and psychosocial changes
  • Development is studied by psychologists AND other academic disciplines
  • Learn the word "plasticity" it refers to change
  • Development differs by age-grade (e.g., toddlers, seniors) and cohorts (people born at around the same date)
  • Development differs by social economic status (SES)
  • Development differs by culture (and subculture)
  • Know the difference between human lifespan and life expectancy
• 1.3 Conceptions of Age
  • Chronological Age (I'm 75, fyi)
  • Biological Age: how fast are you aging, affected by lifestyle and genetics
  • Psychological Age: how do you compare cognitively and emotionally to others of the same chronological age?
  • Social Age: Where do you fit in terms of social norms about age? Are you accelerated or behind the norm?
• 1.4 Periods of Development (ages are approximate and vary)
  • Development begins in utero
  • The usual names for developmental periods are:
    • Prenatal
    • Infancy and Toddlerhood Birth to 2
    • Early Childhood 2 to 6
    • Middle and Late Childhood 6 to puberty
    • Adolescence puberty to 18
      • I like to add Early and Late here too, fyi
    • Emerging Adulthood 18 to 25
    • Early Adulthood 25 to 40-45
    • Middle Adulthood 40-45 to 60-65
    • Late Adulthood 65+
• 1.5 Issues in Lifespan Development
  • Nature vs Nurture
    • This issue looks at nativism vs empiricism and may be to simple a distinction.
      • From my textbook on history of psychology:
        • Seay and Gottfried (1978) proposed three additional “sets” in addition to nature and nurture. Those additional sets were: ontogenetic set, cultural set, and individual set. Ontogenetic set encompasses effects due to maturation and maturation-environment interactions. Cultural set refers to macroenvironmental factors imposed by society. Individual set is a finer grained look at the interactions between (1) individuals and their genetic make-ups and (2) their specific experiences.
  • Continuity vs Discontinuity
    • Does development proceed gradually or are there easily seen stages
    • Some theorists (Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg say yes to stages)
    • Other theorists (behaviorists, Vygotsky, and information processing psychologists say no to stages)
  • Active vs Passive
    • Active means that you shape your environment
    • Passive means the environment shapes yoy
  • Stability vs Change
    • In terms of personality, stable means your personality has not changed much over time. Change means that it has. (FYI, my old friends say I'm a lot mellower now than then.)
• 1.6 Historical Theories of Development
  • Preformationist
  • Locke's tabula rasa (blank slate)
  • Rousseau (father of developmental psychology)
    • Focused on biological maturation
    • Influenced: Gesell, Montessori, and Piaget
  • Freud
    • Highly influential stage theorist: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages
    • I write in my history text:
      • When Freud and his theories emerged at the turn of the 20th century many took notice. His theories provided a new way to understand psychology. His model of the personality, stages of development, dream analysis, and the role of the unconscious were original and earth shattering. So, it was no wonder that he quickly attracted followers.
    • Today, however, Freud's theories are only of historical interest
• 1.7 Contemporary Theories of Development
  • Erik Erikson
    • Less controversial than Freud but still a psychodynamic theorist
    • Pioneer in developmental psychology
      • Because he extended HIS stages to the entire lifespan
  • Behaviorists
    • John B. Watson wrote (1913):
      • The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered on the same plane; as being equally essential to a general understanding of behavior. It can dispense with consciousness in a psychological sense.
    • B. F. Skinner followed Watson's dictums and developed an approach to psychology that did not depend on internal states
  • Social Learning Theory
    • Albert Bandura
      • Reciprocal Determinism: the environment influences us and, in return, we influence the environment
      • Imitation Learning. Children will imitate "models" and will imitate aggressive behavior (the Bobo doll)
  • Cognitive Theories (focus on how cognition changes over time
    • Piaget
      • Sensorimotor (birth to 2), Preoperational (2 to 7), Concrete Operational (7 to 11). and Formal Operational (11 to adult)
      • Maintained that children's thinking was different that adult's thinking
      • Criticized
        • for overemphasizing physical maturation
        • for underemphasizing roles of culture and experience
    • Vygotsky
      • Russian developmental psychologist who died young
      • His work rediscovered in the 1960s
      • He emphasized:
        • how culture and cognitive development interacted
        • how others could guide children to achieve goals they did not believe achievable
    • Information Processing Theory
      • Influenced by computer revolution: input, storage, output, software, hardware, coding
      • Assume that humans perceive, analyze, manipulate, and remember information
  • Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory
    • Focuses on variety of influences on individuals and how they affect development:
      • Microsystem: the family individuals are usually the first (e.g., caretaker-child)
      • Mesosystem: schools and religions
      • Exosystem: Community values
      • Macrosystem: the economy, wars and conflicts, technology
      • Chronosystem: Development in historical context
• 1.8 Research Methods
  • Nearly all psychology texts cover research methods
    • The main divisions are:
      • Descriptive Research
        • Describes behavior using:
          • Case studies
          • Naturalistic observation
          • Laboratory observation
          • Surveys
          • Interviews
          • Psychophysiological assessment
          • Secondary or Content analysis
      • Correlational Research
        • Examines the relationships between variables
        • Correlation coefficients range from -1.00 to +1.00
        • Correlations near 0 have no relationship.
        • Examples:
          • Bicycles-weight and price are negatively correlated. Meaning, heavy bikes tend to be cheap while light bikes tend to be expensive
          • Human height and weight are positively correlated. Meaning tall people tend to weigh more while short people tend to weigh less
        • CAVEAT: just because two variables are correlated does not mean one caused the other. Note, an unsuspected THIRD VARIABLE might be the cause
      • Experimental Research
        • Only method that can specify cause and effect (when done correctly, that is)
          • A successful experiment can state that the independent variable caused a difference in the dependent variable
        • Independent variables are specified by the experimenter (example: dosage of a drug)
        • Dependent variables are affected by the independent variable (example: the drug's effect)
        • Experiments must have a minimum of two groups, in a simple two-group experiment:
          • The experimental group is treated with the independent variable (say, the drug dosage)
          • The control group is not treated with the independent variable (not given the drug)
          • Well designed experiments control for extraneous variables
• 1.9 Research Involving Time-Spans
  • Research in developmental psychology commonly uses three types of time designs:
    • Cross-sectional
      • Example: survey 50 children in grades 1 to 12
      • Can be done quickly
      • Subject to cohort effects
    • Longitudinal
      • Example: survey same 600 1st graders for 11 years
      • Takes a long time
      • May lose too many participants over the course of research
    • Sequential
      • Example: survey the same150 1st graders for 3 years, the same 4th graders for 3 years, the same 7th graders for 3 years, and the same 10th graders for 3 years
      • Is an effective middle path
• 1.10 Experimental Research (Ethics)
  • Researchers must protect participants:
    • By not inflicting harm
    • By asking for informed consent
    • By maintaining cofidentiality
    • By avoiding deception
    • By debriefing participants after completion of the research

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