Psychology 312H
Course Director:
Michelle Martin-Rhee
Fridays 1-4 
Welcome!!
Outline for today
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Course outline
Intro to cognitive development
Some evolution
Some biology
Questions??
Course content
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Text / website
Articles
Outside material
2 exams
2 small assignments, 1 essay
I count grammar and spelling
E-mail is best: michelle.martin@uhn.on.ca
How to pass my course
• FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS
• ASK QUESTIONS
• Do not plagiarize
Example:
According to some researchers, cognition can
largely be explained by underlying
neurological processes (Nelson, 2001;
Martin, 2004; Piaget, 1952; Johnson, 1765;
Smith, 2003; Brown, 1999).
DO NOT DO THIS!!
How to pass my course
•
•
•
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FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS
ASK QUESTIONS
Do not plagiarize
Do not use internet as primary source
Example
Writing essays is easy when you can just take
thirty seconds to look up dyslexia
(http:/www.ilovetostealothers’work.com).
DO NOT DO THIS!!
How to pass my course
•
•
•
•
•
FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS
ASK QUESTIONS
Do not plagiarize
Do not use internet as primary source
Do the work, hand it in on time, pay
attention to green and red underlining in
Word
Fields of Psychology
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Clinical
Clinical Developmental
Experimental
History
Theory
Developmental
Cognitive
Fields of Psychology
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Clinical
Clinical Developmental
Experimental
History
Theory
Developmental
Cognitive
What we mean by Cognitive
Development
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Infancy (0-3)
Childhood (3-11)
Adolescence (12-19)
Early adulthood (20-35ish)
Middle adulthood (35ish-65ish)
Late adulthood (65+)
What we mean by Cognitive
Development
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Infancy (0-3)
Childhood (3-11)
Adolescence (12-19)
Early adulthood (20-35ish)
Middle adulthood (35ish-65ish)
Late adulthood (65+)
Definitions…
• Cognition
– Hidden thought processes (top-down and bottom-up)
– Can’t see it directly
• Development
– Systematic continuities in the individual that occur
between conception and death
– Can be physical, mental, neurological
• Structures and functions
– Structures have a function, but functions affect structures
• Cognitive development
– Changes that occur over time to our thought processes
Influences on Development
• Development is somewhat regular
– Lots of individual variation…
• Effects of genes
– E.g. personality traits
– Possible developmental issues (e.g. autism, Down
Syndrome)
• Effects of environment
– Culture
– Religion
– Home environment
• Interaction of both
– Humans as a dynamic system…
Debates in developmental psychology
• Nature vs. Nurture
– Interactions and constraints
• Stability vs. Plasticity
– E.g. personality vs. social competencies
• Nature of developmental change
– Continuous or Discontinuous?
– Qualitative or Quantitative?
– Homogeneity of cognitive function
• Modularity vs. domain-generality
– Or general processes that control information to smaller
sub-areas?
Brief History of Human Evolution
Advances in
stone tools
Fire
Art
Cities
Earliest
Homonid
Fossils
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Australopethicus
Africanus
Brain expansion
2
Homo
Erectus
1
Neanderthal
Present
4
Earliest stone
tools
Homo
Sapiens
Evolution
• R-selected vs. K-selected species
– r-selected are smaller, live less time, have more
offspring (mice)
– K-selected are larger, live longer, have fewer offspring
(humans)
• Through evolution, our brains got bigger
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Therefore our heads are bigger
We have to be born earlier
We are born very immature and require much care
Both before and after birth, there is a tremendous, rapid
growth in brain size
Neuronal Development
• 3 stages
– Proliferation
– Migration
– Differentiation
Neuronal Development
• 3 stages
– Proliferation
– Migration
– Differentiation
• Synaptogenesis and Synaptic pruning
– Excessive synapse production…why?
– Experience-expectant vs experience-dependant
processes
• Myelination
• Critical periods
• Canalization
Features of the Cortex
• Asymmetry
– Left side typically larger than right in almost all species
– Brain is actually torqued
• Lateralization of function
– Left vs. Right functions
– Connected by corpus callosum
• Plasticity of Cortex
– Can we recover lost function after damage?
– Adaptive value of plasticity and immaturity
Summary for Today…
• In this course, we will look at changes in
children’s thinking over time
• Lots of debate about genes vs environment, nature
of developmental change, and in how we represent
information in the brain
• Evolution has given humans and non-human
primates bigger brains, and hence we are born
very immature; a lot of development occurs over
the first years of life
• An understanding of how the brain works can help
us to understand some of the mechanisms of
change in children’s cognition