GUIDANCE FOR TEACHERS
SECTION 1
Introduction
Integration with other units
This is an optional component unit of Advanced Higher Psychology. It
has a value of one credit at Advanced Higher.
Unit content
The unit has three outcomes:
1.
2.
3.
Analyse major theories in developmental psychology.
Evaluate research evidence relating to theories in developmental
psychology.
Analyse an issue in developmental psychology.
Content of this pack
This pack contains resources that will assist the teacher/lecturer with the
delivery of this unit. It contains material relevant to all of the outcomes.
Core skills
Details on core skills may be obtained from the Scottish Qualifications
Authority (SQA).
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Statement of standards
Outcome 1
Analyse major theories in developmental psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) Competing theoretical explanations in developmental psychology
are explained accurately and comprehensively.
(b) Competing theoretical explanations in developmental psychology
are compared accurately in terms of their main features.
(c) Competing theoretical explanations in developmental psychology
are contrasted accurately in terms of their main features.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates
should produce written or oral responses to cover all performance
criteria. They are required to do so for two key concepts chosen from
the following: early socialisation, cognitive development, social
behaviour, adolescence and adulthood, ageing.
Written/oral responses will typically be extended responses of about
1000 words for each key concept and associated research evidence,
integrating Outcomes 1 and 2.
Outcome 2
Evaluate research evidence relating to theories in developmental
psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) Research evidence relating to theories in developmental
psychology is described accurately.
(b) Research evidence relating to theories in developmental
psychology is explained clearly and accurately in terms of its
strength of support for the theories.
(c) Validity of conclusions based on this research evidence is
explained clearly and accurately.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates
should produce written or oral responses to cover all performance
criteria. They are required to do so for research evidence in two key
concepts chosen from following: early socialisation, cognitive
development, social behaviour, adolescence and adulthood, ageing.
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Written/oral responses will typically be extended responses of about
1000 words for each key concept and associated research evidence,
integrating Outcomes 1 and 2.
Outcome 3
Analyse an issue in developmental psychology.
Performance criteria
(a) An issue relevant to developmental psychology is explained clearly
and accurately.
(b) Essential arguments of this issue are explained accurately and
comprehensively in a balanced way.
(c) The contribution of this issue to developmental psychology is
explained accurately and comprehensively.
Evidence requirements
To demonstrate satisfactory attainment of this outcome, candidates
should produce written or oral responses to cover all performance
criteria. They are required to do so for one issue from the following:
heredity and environment, attachment and separation, genetic research
in developmental psychology, developmental psychology as science,
cultural/gender bias in developmental psychology, the use of nonhuman animals in research.
Written/oral response will typically be an extended response of about
1000 words.
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Approaches to learning and teaching
In delivering this unit, it is useful if teachers/lecturers achieve a balance
between teacher/lecturer exposition and experiential learning. It is
important to recognise that learners acquire and process information in
a number of ways to help them learn. These include visually, aurally, in
discussion or exchange with others, during group-based problem
solving activities, and during solitary reflection.
Students should be encouraged from the beginning to draw on their
own experiences, perceptions, and their previous and current learning.
Personal experience of interacting with a variety of people, and in a
number of different situations, is an invaluable source of knowledge and
is highly relevant to cognitive psychology. The sharing of experiences
and insights will promote general awareness that developmental
psychology assists self-understanding and an understanding of humans
in a variety of contexts.
Students should also be encouraged to gather and use information
about different people’s actions, thoughts and feelings and to consider
how these affect themselves and others. Relevant quality newspapers
and/or magazine articles and video/film productions are useful resources
which bring cognitive psychology to life so that it can be shared by
comparatively large groups of people at any one time. This remains
appropriate even when the material is fictional, provided it presents us
with a true picture of the human condition and is not deliberately
sensationalised.
In delivering this unit, it is appropriate that a multicultural approach is
taken since the learning needs of individuals vary according to their
cultural background. Case studies, role-play and simulations should
incorporate characters and elements from different social and cultural
backgrounds wherever possible.
Unit induction
At the beginning of the unit ‘Developmental Psychology’, teachers and
lecturers should ensure that students are clear about its nature and
purpose. Induction for this unit should last about two hours and should
include an introduction to the content of the unit, provide a
programme of work and explain the arrangements for assessment and
reassessment. At this point students can be given the Candidate’s Guide
from the Unit Assessment pack. This helps explain what the unit is about
and how it is assessed.
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In order to allow students to make a confident start, reference should
be made to links with previous or other current learning with which
they are familiar. It is also important to discuss and explore the nature
of the Course or Group Award being undertaken by the group if
appropriate.
It may be necessary to include induction exercises, particularly if the
group is a new one. The type and number of exercises used will
however depend on the nature of the particular group, their familiarity
with each other and with the teacher/lecturer concerned.
Learning environment
The expertise of the teacher/lecturer is invaluable in developing skills in,
approaches to, and insights about the subject of developmental
psychology. Teachers/lecturers should aim to create a relaxed and
enjoyable learning environment, which is both motivating and
supportive.
In order that a people perspective is always present the following
conditions should be met:
• the provision of a learning climate in which students feel supported
and able to express their thoughts and ideas
• a teaching style that promotes a supportive learning climate
• teaching and learning methods that draw on students’ past and
present learning experience and which enable them to integrate new
ideas and skills during their interactions with others.
Further guidance can be found in the Psychology Subject Guide.
How to use this pack
Purpose of the pack
This pack is designed to provide guidance and support materials to help
teachers/lecturers in the delivery of the unit. Sections 2 and 3 contain
student information and activities that may be used by teachers/lecturers
in whichever way suits their preferred style of delivery and the needs of
their particular student group.
This pack has not been designed for open learning purposes. Additional
reading, exercises, assignments, etc., and answers to enclosed exercises
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GUIDANCE FOR TEACHERS
and worksheets will be provided and facilitated by the teacher/lecturer.
The student activities in the pack will have to be followed up and
brought together by the teacher/lecturer in whatever way is most
appropriate.
The student activities in this pack cover the three outcomes and their
performance criteria at Advanced Higher level. The unit in the teaching/
learning situation calls for two key concepts, their features and
explanations, and one issue to be covered. This Teacher’s Resource Pack
will endeavour to cover three key concepts, their features and
explanations, and two issues.
The three concepts covered in Section 2 (early socialisation, cognitive
development and ageing) each deal first with Outcome 1 (analyse major
theories in developmental psychology), followed by Outcome 2
(evaluate research evidence relating to theories in developmental
psychology), while Outcome 3 (analyse an issue in developmental
psychology) is dealt with last. Section 3 deals with two issues in relation
to developmental psychology. These are ‘The use of non-human animals
in research’ and ‘Heredity and environment’.
This sequence of delivery is by no means compulsory and may be
rearranged at the discretion of the teacher/lecturer responsible for
delivering the unit.
Using the materials
Sections 2 and 3 of this pack contain student information materials and
activities.
The essential knowledge required for the unit has been covered on the
information pages. These are particularly useful as handout material.
They could also be used as the focus of input by the teacher/lecturer and
to develop ideas further as part of question and answer sessions and
group discussions.
These information sheets can be photocopied as a separate pack should
the teacher/lecturer prefer to use them either as teaching notes or as
separate handout materials. Alternatively, the materials could be
assembled into smaller topic packs.
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Guidance on the content and context for this unit
By introducing students to a range of concepts and associated theories,
research evidence and issues in developmental psychology, it is
intended to develop knowledge and understanding of developmental
psychology generally and to emphasise the significance of this area to
the whole of Psychology.
A choice of two concepts and one issue is a feature of this unit. This
provides flexibility for centres to accommodate different needs and
interests in studying developmental psychology at this level.
More information on the content of this unit is provided in the course
details.
Guidance on learning and teaching approaches for this unit
General proposals regarding approaches to learning and teaching are
contained in the course details. Learning and teaching approaches
should be carefully selected to support the development of knowledge
and understanding, investigation and application. The learning
experience at this level should be interesting, to encourage enthusiasm
for the subject and to stimulate and prepare candidates for independent
study.
The unit should be approached using a wide range of stimulus materials
and teaching approaches. Candidates should be encouraged to draw
upon their own experiences and should have access to resources. The
material should be up-to-date and relevant to the unit, the level of study
and the interests of the candidates. The emphasis throughout should be
on active learning, whether as part of a whole class, in small groups or as
individuals. The outcomes are interconnected and should be
approached as such. At Advanced Higher it is especially recommended
that, wherever possible, outcomes should be covered in an integrated
way. An outcome-by-outcome internal assessment approach, which
could lead to a compartmentalised view of psychology, should be
avoided.
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GUIDANCE FOR TEACHERS
Guidance on approaches to assessment for this unit
The National Assessment Bank will provide assessment instruments and
guidance on implementation. This does not preclude teachers/lecturers
from devising their own assessment tasks. Evidence of attainment of the
outcomes for this unit may be provided through a variety of methods.
However, restricted-response questions are considered to be most
appropriate. Where an integrated approach is used for assessment, it
will be necessary to identify in the candidate’s response where each
outcome has been met.
Where assessment evidence is gathered by means of a single assessment
towards the end of the unit, care should be taken to ensure that
sufficient time is allowed for remediation and reassessment if required.
Where a candidate has failed to achieve one or more of the outcomes, it
is only necessary to reassess those outcomes that the candidate has
failed to achieve.
Where assessments are set which allow candidates to demonstrate
performance beyond the minimum standard required, evidence
gathered for internal unit assessment might also be used for grade
prediction and for appeals for external course assessment. For details of
the grade descriptions for external assessment, please refer to the
Advanced Higher Psychology course specification.
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SECTION 2
What is developmental psychology? – Setting the scene
Developmental psychology is the branch within psychology that
concerns itself with the different changes that happen to us as
individuals from pre-birth to death and what the causes and effects of
these changes might mean for us. These changes, which occur at
different ages throughout our lifetime, are continuous and progressive
and fall into the following four categories:
1.
2.
3.
4.
physical
cognitive or intellectual
social
emotional.
Physical development concerns the development of our body’s
anatomy (bodily structure) and physiology (bodily processes) during the
course of our life and how these developments help or hinder how we
think and how we behave, socially and emotionally, as we age. We all
physically develop at approximately the same age the world over,
though the onset of physical change may vary slightly from one person
to another.
Cognitive development concerns perception, attention, language,
memory and thinking (or problem solving). Collectively these are called
our cognitive processes. An investigation into cognitive development
in developmental psychology almost exclusively concerns the growth
and development of thinking ability.
Social development is enquiry into how we develop as social beings
and here developmental psychology looks at socialisation, sociability,
child-rearing practices, moral development, groups and peer group
influences, etc.
Emotional development, which is closely related to social
development, concerns concepts like the nature of the attachments we
form with others, our temperament, our personality, what motivates us
to aggression, identity and our search for meaning in life.
The study of these continuing and progressive changes that occur to us
during our lifetime is known as lifespan development theory or the life-
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span approach. Developmental psychology’s lifespan approach is
different from other ‘approaches’ in psychology – like behaviourism or
psychoanalysis – in that it does not favour any particular psychological
theory, or theorist, but does make a number of assumptions concerning
our development. These assumptions are that:
• biological maturation, which is determined by our genetics, must
occur before physical, and ultimately cognitive, social and emotional
growth and development happens for us as individuals
• human beings the world over experience the same sequence of
physical, cognitive, social and emotional development throughout
their lifespan
• as we develop physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally these
age-related changes are shaped, for better or for worse, by the
environment within which we find ourselves.
Developmental psychology studies, in the main, the various skills and
abilities human beings have, including how we acquire them in the first
place. Human beings are very complex animals, thus the first important
influence on our development is our biology. As mankind, in the
generic or non-specific sense, has evolved, biology has affected
behaviour in a number of ways. Great discoveries were made in biology
in Europe during the nineteenth century, and as a result some
psychologists, such as Galton, began to argue that many of our skills,
such as intelligence, were genetically determined in much the same way
as our sex, our skin pigmentation or colour of our eyes. Psychologists
who take this view are influenced by the nature or heredity perspective
(our biology or genetics control and shape what we become physically,
cognitively, socially and emotionally). Others, such as the behaviourists
Watson and Skinner, and later the eminent psychosocial psychoanalyst
Erikson, disagreed, arguing that we each (physically, and to a greater
extent, cognitively, socially and emotionally) are the product of all the
experiences we encounter as we grow up. Our environment makes us
what we are. This is the nurture or environment perspective within the
heredity–environment debate. This we will consider in greater detail
below and in Section 3 which deals with the issues in developmental
psychology.
Over and above this some, like Maslow and Rogers, within humanistic
psychology would argue that because we have free will we can, if we
want, change aspects of what we have become. We can, for example,
change how we think about and view the world, and this can have an
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influence on our social and emotional behaviour as individuals and with
others. Psychologists who believe environment is more influential in
shaping us psychologically would be said to be taking a nurture
perspective (our environment controls and shapes what we become
physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally).
An overview of the nature–nurture debate and developmental
psychology
The teacher, lecturer and/or learner may wish to return to this in later
consideration of a possible issue for Outcome 3, i.e. heredity and
environment.
The ‘normal’ human baby inherits 23 pairs of chromosomes from their
male and female biological parents. It is estimated that each
chromosome probably contains between 10 000 to 20 000 genes. A gene
carries information in the form of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to the
developing organism, known as a foetus. A baby’s, and ultimately an
adult’s, genetic inheritance is a mixture of the parents’ genes and is
called our genotype. A genotype is a sort of blueprint or plan of what
we will be like as we develop and grow. Many early psychologists
thought that most of our personality, intellect, sex role behaviour, etc.,
was the result of our genes and could not be interfered with, or
changed, in any constructive way. This is quite a frightening thought. It
means that we have no free will and need not feel responsible, or be
held accountable, for our actions.
Nowadays we know this early view was quite wrong. We do not always
achieve the prediction of our genotype anyway. We cannot predict with
any certainty on the basis of genetic inheritance alone what we might
become as human beings. Environment, and its influence on physical,
cognitive, social and emotional development affect us from conception.
If, for example, our mother had a certain disease, smoked, drank
heavily, took drugs or had an accident while pregnant, or if we were
born into a culture where people were subject to drought and
starvation, we may remain undersize, underweight or have some mental
problem. What we actually become then as human beings is called a
phenotype – the consequence of the interaction between our genetic
inheritance and the environment we find ourselves in.
We are born with many abilities. For example, certain aspects of our
visual system are available to us from birth. Much of what we become
however, is a result of the experiences we have and the people we mix
with. Whether our parents are strict or easy going, what our friends are
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
like, the culture we live in, how wealthy our family is, all combine to
make each of us what we are. As the science of genetics advances, we are
becoming a bit more certain as to the role genetics has, or does not
have, in shaping us physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. The
degree to which genetics and environment influence us
developmentally is the subject of the nature–nurture debate.
Maturation
Another biological influence on us, the developing organism, is the rate
at which we mature. Maturation is the process of physical growth, and
starts at conception. All normal human foetuses the world over develop
at the same rate. We all learn to manipulate our hands and fingers, to
move (or orientate) our heads, to crawl and to walk at approximately
the same time. This progressive rate of development is the same for all
children and is genetically determined. We can only learn to adapt our
behaviour when we are maturationally, or biologically, ready to do so.
This is evident in infants about one year old, who can crawl like
champions and stand up with support, but because of their body shape
cannot yet walk. Quite simply, their legs have not yet straightened
enough to support upper body weight. Walking can only occur when
the infant is physically – or maturationally – ready.
Human beings do not mature very quickly. For the first few years of life
we are the most helpless of all species. Almost 25 per cent of our lives
are spent as an immature child. No other animal spends as long
preparing for adulthood as we do.
Is development continuous or does it happen in stages?
As well as the nature–nurture debate, developmental psychology also
has an interest in discovering what (and whether) physical, cognitive,
social and emotional changes are related to identified age-related stages
in our life; or if these developmental changes are continuous, or nonstage related. The history of developmental psychology has seen some
controversy as to whether language, personality, moral values,
intelligence, etc., are developed at, and through, fixed and identifiable
stages in our life or whether they develop continuously throughout the
human lifespan.
If certain skills and abilities (or behaviours) do develop in stages (and
there is now a lot of evidence to suggest this is the case), developmental
psychologists then look for certain boundaries, or parameters, to
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differentiate between stages of development associated with particular
stage-related behaviours. Take what has been found out about the
development of language for instance.
• Each stage exhibits a particular kind of behaviour not found in a
previous stage. The first stage of language development in infants is
called ‘babbling’. Babbling is where a baby meaninglessly repeats
consonant sounds like mama or dada. Babbling happens around 4
months of age and ceases when the next identifiable stage of language
development, the learning of first words, is mastered.
• The kind of behaviour (and associated thinking) that goes with each
stage must be different. Extending the above example, the
meaningless babbling of consonant sounds sees the developing infant,
because of its parents’ excited behaviour, begin to associate particular
sounds with particular objects in its environment. The infant begins
to develop vocabulary as a consequence, e.g. daddy, mummy, teddy,
etc. It realises that particular sounds have a particular meaning.
Particular sounds represent things in its environment. As this
develops, the infant acquires more words that allow even more
meaningful communication with those around. Children can now ask
questions and can state preferences. They could not do this earlier.
• All children must go through identified stage-related behaviours in
the same order, at approximately the same age and generally at the
same rate. The development of language is again an obvious example,
in that we can identify particular ‘language’ behaviours occurring
within particular age-stages, namely:
The development of language – an age-stage related process
Identified behaviour
Babbling
Using words
Using simple sentences
Identified common age
4 months to 1 year
1 year to 18 months
18 months onwards
This sequence of development regarding language is the same for all
children in the main. It is this combination of mental activity and actual
behaviour that is the subject matter of developmental psychology. From
a lifespan point of view what we try to do is discover what type or kind
of physical, cognitive, social and/or emotional development is occurring
at a particular time for a person, what these developments are and
whether they are age-stage related or develop gradually across the
human lifecycle.
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Lifespan development: a whole-life approach to developmental
psychology
The human lifecycle is often ‘compartmentalised’ in developmental
psychology. An understanding of lifespan development therefore sees
developmental psychologists investigate, within and across identified
age-stages, physical, cognitive, social and emotional change during our
lifetime. Important age-stages across the human lifespan are:
• Conception to birth – often referred to as the prenatal stage of
development
• Infancy – often referred to as the neonatal stage of development
• Childhood
• Adolescence and adulthood
• Old age.
‘Lifespan development’ identifies infancy, childhood, adolescence and
adulthood and old age (ageing) as especially important age-stages in the
human lifespan. Lifespan development is a relatively new approach in
developmental psychology. As late as the mid-1970s those who would be
termed ‘developmental psychologists’ today only studied physical,
cognitive, social and emotional development in babies and young
children (pre-birth to around age 7). They were child psychologists as
such. Economic boom in Britain during the affluent 1960s, the raising of
the school leaving age from 14 to 15 and then to 16 by the mid-1970s
and the impact on the welfare state all came together to help expand
the age-ranges developmental psychology was interested in.
Adolescence, or the ‘teenager’, was invented in the 1960s. Previously, in
our culture you were identified as either a school child or a worker.
There was no ‘in-between’ stage. Teenagers became an identifiable
group in our society, separate from children and adults. Indeed today
the European Union officially recognises a young person as someone
between 16 and 25. From not existing 40 years ago, they are now
institutionalised! Less-well-off cultures have little need to make such a
distinction.
Better health care from the cradle to the grave in the United Kingdom
also gave rise to a greater proportion of the population living longer.
Certain psychological processes such as memory and attention, as they
developed and changed over our life, became of interest to
developmental psychology. Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia
began to become known. Greater understanding of memory in old age
has been of benefit to an understanding of memory across the whole of
the human lifecycle. Lifespan development from the point of view of
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physical, cognitive, social and emotional development and change was
born.
In a general sense each age-stage, or particular age span, sees us
investigating physical, cognitive, social and emotional development
which helps developmental psychology put forward ideas as to how we
develop and change throughout our life. A holistic physical, cognitive,
social and emotional overview of all these four parts of developmental
psychology is why the topic is often said to take a whole-life approach to
lifespan development.
Particular age-stages sometimes emphasise one aspect of development
and change over another. For example, investigation at the prenatal
stage is almost exclusively physical or biological in nature. Investigation
of infants during the neonatal stage places more emphases on physical
and cognitive development, rather than social or emotional. The period
of childhood allows developmental psychologists to begin to investigate
our social, moral and intellectual development. Adolescence sees us
study aspects of emotion and social behaviours in relation to great
physical (and cognitive) change for the developing teenager. Finally,
adulthood and old age is particularly concerned with physical and
cognitive development and change, personality and social development.
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Age-stages and related physical, cognitive, social and emotional
developments within and across the developmental lifespan
1.
The prenatal stage
Physical development
The period from human conception to birth, called the prenatal stage,
lasts around 280 days (9 months) and is divided into three stages of
foetal development:
• the germinal stage
• the embryonic stage
• the foetal stage.
The germinal stage
Conception gives rise to the first stage of prenatal development, the
germinal stage. Conception involves successful fertilisation of the female
ovum (egg) by a male sperm in the female fallopian tube. During the
next 10–14 days, the zygote, the fertilised egg, repeatedly copies and
divides itself (mitotic division) as it travels to the uterus. Masses of cells
are formed (the human embryo) and implant on the lining of the uterus.
These cells are undifferentiated (not different) from each other, in that
each is an exact copy of its neighbour.
The embryonic stage
When the cell mass implants, the embryonic stage begins. For the next
six weeks, the cells differentiate both in structure and function. What
this means is that some cells develop into protective structures, i.e. the
placenta, the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac, while others go to
form basic body parts.
The placenta is the protective organ that surrounds and allows
nourishment to, and waste elimination from, the developing embryo.
The umbilical cord carries blood containing essential nutrients from
the mother to the embryo via the placenta. It discharges waste from the
embryo to the mother by the same route.
The amniotic sac surrounds the developing embryo in a thick
protective suspension fluid called amnion.
Other differentiating cells develop other body structures. By 8 weeks
after conception it is possible to identify some basic body structures
taking shape. At this stage many of these do not work, or more
accurately are non-functional.
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The foetal stage
The foetal stage begins when a basic form of each structure is present.
For the remaining 32 weeks of pregnancy cells continue to divide and
differentiate to build functional, or working, body structures and to
increase the size and body weight of the developing foetus. Physical
development proceeds in a cephalocaudal fashion. This literally means
‘head first’ – hence the reason why a baby’s head is so much larger than
the rest of its body when born. Indeed the next two years of life see the
baby’s body catching up, size-wise, with its head.
The foetus is still entirely dependent on its mother for nutrients and
waste disposal.
Quick Questions
• Given that a developing foetus is entirely dependant on its
mother’s own body environment for nutrients and waste
disposal during the pre-natal stage, what implications does this
have for the developing baby?
• What measures can a mother take to better ensure the birth of a
healthy baby?
2.
Infancy
The neonatal period
Infancy spans the first two years of life, beginning with what is called the
neonatal period of the first month of life. The neonate, as the newborn
is often referred to in developmental psychology, is very competent.
Although their cerebral cortex (brain and spinal cord) is not yet mature,
neonates display a variety of inborn or innate behaviours called reflexes.
An innate ‘rooting’ reflex (turning in the direction of an object when it
brushes against your cheek) allows it to locate the nipple despite poor
vision. The automatic sucking reflex of a newborn allows it to operate
on its mother’s nipple, or bottle, to allow for essential feeding which
helps ensures its survival. Newborns also display a well-developed sense
of hearing and smell that they use to identify people. Visual acuity, the
sensation of being able to see things clearly, is still developing.
Quick Questions
• Why do you think these reflex behaviours are available to the
newborn infant?
• Does a baby learn these behaviours? If not, how do you think
they come about?
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Physical development
From birth to two years of age it is very apparent that a baby physically
develops at an astonishing rate. Observation of growing infants indicates
that their body part proportions change as the arms and legs catch up
with the head and upper body. Development of muscles and the motor
centres of the cerebral cortex together allow the infant to progressively
reach, grasp, roll, sit, crawl, walk and vocalise (talk). The order in which
these psychomotor developments occur is the same for infants the
world over. Known as epigenesis, this is seen as evidence of the role of
maturation, which is the common process of physical growth due to
biological/genetic ageing rather than learning.
Cognitive development
While this is dealt with later in these support notes as an optional key
concept, it is useful to note that it is in infancy the symbolic function
emerges. This is the term developmental psychologists use to describe
how we develop our ability to think to ourselves and to speak to others,
i.e. we think and speak using commonly agreed language symbols which
represent objects, images, people, events, etc.
Infants gradually learn that certain combinations of the babbling sounds
they make represent, or symbolise, people and objects. This is aided by
the maturation of brain areas associated with the development of
memory and language such as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. When
conducting a post-mortem on a patient, who could understand but not
produce speech, Broca (1861) discovered very specific brain damage in
the brain’s left-frontal lobe. He deduced this area to have something to
do with our ability to produce the sounds of the words we make. Later,
in 1874, Wernicke identified an area of the brain at the top of the
temporal lobe that is responsible for our ability to understand speech.
This followed a case study and post-mortem on a man who could
produce speech but could not understand what was being said to him.
Infancy also sees the maturation of memory. By age two our memory
structure is the same as that of an adult. This gives us the ability to
remember, among other things, what combination of sounds represent
what objects in our complex world. We put them together first simply,
and then in a more complex fashion to enquire about things and to put
forward our own point of view. Toddlers have an amazing capacity for
enquiry, quickly realising that the people, objects, images and sounds
that make up their world have ‘names’ which represent them. Even
better, everyone who can speak agrees on what these names for things
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represent! The discovery of the importance and power of language by
infants at this early age is an indication of just how vital the maximisation
of its development is for their future survival. By age two most infants
can communicate in two- or three-word sentences, can think through
simple problems said to them and have a basic understanding of the
power of ‘language’, as seen in the way they often deliberately use
crying to get what they want.
All this is related to the work of the famous psycholinguist Noam
Chomsky whom we will discuss in greater detail later on. A
psycholinguist is someone who studies the origins, development and
importance of language for human beings. Chomsky (1959) argues
human beings the world over are born with a biological predisposition
towards acquiring language. Our brains are essentially wired and
programmed to allow us to acquire, understand and use language.
Chomsky says we have to trigger this innate language acquisition device
(LAD) by our teenage years; otherwise we can lose the ability to vocalise
and suffer the effects of language privation as a result. The development
of language is age-stage related and depends to a great extent on
physical/biological developments in our brains, or cerebral cortex. The
interaction of biological maturation, our environment and individual
cognitive development is most important.
Quick Questions
• Why is it important to learn to talk in infancy?
• What does language allow us to do as individuals?
• What does language allow us to do with others?
Social and emotional development
During the first two years of an infant’s life increasingly more complex
social and emotional behaviours begin to emerge. As early as two
months, infants begin to react in a consistent way towards certain
objects and events, e.g. showing excitement when ‘Dadda’ comes into
the room. These consistent patterns of behaviour are known as infant
temperaments. They might be said to be genetic predispositions
towards a particular personality type, suggesting that the beginnings of
individual personality may be innate. Temperaments are the building
blocks to personality. All infants display them but in differing degrees.
Interestingly, the first attempt to classify people into personality types
using temperaments was made over 2500 years ago by Galen in Ancient
Greece. He believed we each behave in a particular way because of an
excess of one of four bodily fluids in our body. These fluids are blood,
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phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. An excess of one of these fluids or
humours was the cause of a particular temperament or general
personality. Thus, if you had excess blood you would have a sanguine
personality; excess phlegm – a phlegmatic personality; excess black bile
– a melancholic personality; or excess yellow bile – a choleric
personality or disposition. We still use some of these phrases to
commonly describe people’s personality today, even if the cause and
effect relationship is wrong!
Social behaviour also occurs during this time. By six to eight months
infants form attachments to important people in their world, e.g. mum,
dad, brothers and sisters (called siblings) or indeed anyone who would
be thought of as the baby’s caregiver.
By age 2 most infants begin to look forward to opportunities to socialise
with other children. This helps them begin to realise that we are by
nature gregarious creatures, in that we naturally seek company, but that
living successfully with others means you have to be less selfish, more
co-operative and agree to stick to certain rules. The realisation of this
does not happen easily for the developing infant as he or she enters the
next age-stage in developmental psychology.
3.
Childhood
Physical development
Childhood is the period from about age 2 to 12. In general, physical
growth slows markedly in comparison to the prenatal and neonatal agestages. Behavioural changes, on the other hand, appear almost daily.
Children begin to show individual differences in comparison to others,
i.e. observable differences in skills and behaviours among children of the
same age, background, culture, etc. These individual differences arise as
a consequence of genetic endowment, affecting physical and cognitive
development and the child’s individual experience in the world.
Individual differences are often seen in children who early on show a
proficiency for music, sport, art, etc. Just how far these apparent
differences will develop is heavily influenced by our experiences in our
environment. By age 5–6 overall physical growth declines to a slow but
steady rate. Permanent teeth begin to appear. By now we can quite
accurately predict who will be short or tall in adulthood. Individually
children show improvements in gross and fine motor skills and hand–
eye co-ordination. They don’t fall over as much playing football and at
least try to tie their own shoelaces! They can catch a ball thrown at
them, cut with scissors and symbolise and draw ever more meaningful
representations of things in their world.
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Cognitive development
Cognitively, children develop progressively more sophisticated memory
and reasoning skills during childhood. The reason for this is the
continuing biological maturation of our cerebral cortex or brain. We
usually cannot remember anything about our lives before age 3. The
reason for this is that the part of our brain responsible for long-term
memory is still developing during this time. Although children between
2 and 5 can clearly pay attention and learn, they often fail to recognise
what they need to know to solve a problem and how to use this
knowledge more efficiently as a result. They thus approach learning
tasks in an unsystematic fashion. Biological maturation, increased
experience of similar learning situations and increased exposure to new
and novel ones, all interact during childhood to help identify particular
stages in cognitive growth; especially that of thinking. It is interesting to
note that the child’s developing personality also affects their thinking.
Children between 2 and 5 consistently think, understand and interpret
their world entirely from their own point of view. Their thinking is said
to be egocentric. They have difficulty in appreciating anyone else’s
point of view. Mum saying ‘No’ to a demand for sweets just does not
compute! Thinking also tends to be rigid and categorical and very
difficult to change once learnt. Once a young child thinks she has
grasped the rules of a game, for example, it is very difficult to get her to
appreciate that the ‘rule’ concerning everyone else having to let her win
is one her Nana made up and does not apply in the real world! From
age 5 to 12 children are better able to focus on the relevant features of a
learning task, and can understand the effects their, and others’,
behaviours may have. Thinking becomes more logical, flexible and
creative. It becomes evident that the cognitive process of thinking and
problem solving develops in stages.
This is in contrast to another cognitive process, language. Language is
mastered by children between ages 2 to 5. The un-grammatical two-andthree word sentences of the two-year-old are rapidly replaced by longer,
more grammatically correct sentences, containing nouns, pronouns,
verbs, adjectives, etc. We have an insatiable desire for the acquisition of
language in early childhood. Children of this age are constantly seeking
meaning, and wanting to give meaning to, the objects, people, images
and situations they experience around them. They also have an
awareness of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ vocabulary and sentence
construction. Language development can be enhanced greatly by
caregivers, teachers, siblings (brothers and sisters), etc., gently
correcting the language mistakes of children. They don’t seem to mind
and indeed seem to want to know what is the more correct word or
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phrase in the circumstance. This development of vocabulary and
grammar greatly benefits thinking. By age 5, young children are also
aware of the rules or conventions used in spoken language, such as
taking turns in conversations, sticking to the topic of conversation and
adding information to conversations to increase its content and interest
for others. The development of language is age-stage related and
depends to a great extent on physical/biological developments in our
brains, or cerebral cortex. The interaction of biological maturation, our
environment and individual cognitive development is once again
emphasised.
Intelligence
It is not the purpose of Advanced Higher Developmental Psychology to
debate the question ‘what is intelligence?’. This is more the province of
units like ‘Individual Differences’. Further, the study of ‘intelligence’, as
found within developmental psychology, is examined in greater detail in
the later optional key concept ‘Cognitive development’. By way of
introduction however, it may be useful to try to get a general idea of
what intelligence might be, and more importantly, what influences there
can be on the maximisation of whatever intellectual potential we have.
This is us back to the nature–nurture debate, or the influence our
genetics and environment play in the unfolding of intellectual ability.
What intelligence is has intrigued mankind since the beginning of time.
In a general sense, ‘Intelligent activity consists of grasping the essentials
in a situation and responding appropriately to them’ (Heim, 1970). The
ability to be able to do this is as a result of our genetic inheritance from
our biological parents and our own learning experiences in the
environment we are brought up in. Debate has raged as to how much
genetics and environment each individually contribute to our
‘intelligence’. Psychologists like Eysenck and Jensen would argue
genetics contributes over 75 per cent to our ‘intelligence’; while Kamin
would argue the opposite – that environment’s contribution towards
intellectual ability is over 75 per cent. Who is more correct? The answer
is neither. The science of genetics nowadays allows us to say that
biological/genetic inheritance does play a part in overall intellectual
growth and that, as measured by intelligence tests (or IQ – Intelligence
Quotient – tests), genetics contributes towards 60 to 70 per cent of our
IQ. On the other hand, environment contributes between 30 and 40 per
cent. As most of the population share the same IQ of around 100, the
genetics–environment debate is a bit pointless. Developmental
psychology is much more interested in the interaction of genetics and
environment and how we can maximise all people’s ‘intelligence’ by
being aware of the importance of environment as the factor which affects
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the difference between one person developing their intellect to the
maximum and another not being able to do so. The social setting, or
environment, in which you find yourself is of immense importance to
the potentialisation (maximisation) of whatever abilities you have in the
first place.
Social development
From age 5 or 6 most children have greater opportunities to interact, or
mix, with children of their own age. Parents become less important as
the influence of the peer group grows. A peer group can be described as
those you identify as being most like yourself, i.e. your classmates,
friends, work colleagues, etc. Its influence is great, especially in the
teenage years. This is particularly emphasised by sociologists and social
psychologists when they talk about socialisation. They say we all go
through a socialisation process where we learn the common rules,
norms (standards of behaviour), beliefs and values of the society we are
brought up in. Major influences on socialisation are parents, teachers
and our peer groups.
Experiences obtained from mixing with others will influence the child’s
developing personal social identity or self. During childhood, individual
children begin to show a variety of social patterns of behaviour when
they are around others. This may be because of a genetically influenced
temperament, and certainly be because of previous past experience.
We can often identify those children who are shy or insecure and those
who are confident and display leadership qualities. Popular children are
typically ‘good-looking’, self-confident and competent, and find that
others seek out and enjoy being in their company. Children who are
perceived by other children as being behaviourally different in some
way, i.e. if they are over-aggressive, often find difficulty in joining and
being accepted by the peer group and ultimately can be left to
themselves. Most interestingly, a child’s skin colour, class, cultural
background or physical difference in comparison to others does not
seem to be an issue in the formation of the peer group at this age. This
is sadly not the case for long. As the child gets older, the influence of a
previously important peer group will diminish. Parents have less and
less influence on the child as he or she gets older. The power of
whomever a child perceives as its peer group is enormous. A pre-school
child is heavily influenced by its parents. This begins to wear off when
the child starts school. Initially the teacher is looked upon as some kind
of god, and the same child will often contradict her parents’ wishes with
the phrase ‘The teacher said so’. By age 7 or 8 the same child no longer
meekly accepts her mum’s idea of what is style! By the teenage years,
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being seen to want to be like your mum, dad or teachers is definitely
uncool. The socialisation process and the influence of different peer
groups on each individual’s social development should not be
underestimated.
Sociability
Buss and Plomin (1984) identify sociability as a particular temperament
we all have at birth. Sociability is genetically inherited and innate.
Sociability is in our nature. It is our gregarious or social side to being
human – our inbuilt need to want to be with others. We need others
from a biological, cognitive, social and emotional point of view.
Sociability is very evident from birth. Babies react with excitement to
encourage our social behaviours with them. They appear to know that
smiling and being pleasant to others is a necessary prerequisite to their
survival.
Our biological genes will determine the amount and types of sociability
we each show towards others as we grow and develop. Sociability
temperaments or behaviours can be identified as:
• our individual, but common, need to look for and get pleasure from
being with others
• how much or how little we each need to be on our own or with
others
• how much we need to give of ourselves to shared activities
• showing emotion towards and getting emotions from other people.
These predispositions of temperaments begin to unfold in infancy. Our
social experiences, and what we learn as a result, are also influential in
determining our sociability towards other people. If we were more shy
than other babies in early infancy and this ‘shyness’ has been
commented upon and viewed negatively by others as we grow, it is not
at all surprising to find the same person showing introverted adult
personality traits later on in life.
Put another way, we all share a need for others but we do not all share
the same degree of need for others. Some people will be most at home
being very outgoing and constantly in other people’s company. Some
others will be equally happy being just part of the group, or not part of
any particular group at all. Some people will be perfectly happy being on
their own, thinking or reading to themselves. Others would find this a
reflection of just how popular they think they are, and would worry
about it! Some of us have an immediate need to tell a new-found friend
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our whole life story, warts and all; while other people on meeting
someone they don’t know too well would be a lot more cautious about
what they reveal of themselves. This is a sign of the degree of need each
of us has towards being sociable with others.
Self-image or personal identity
From as young as 2, children begin to develop an idea of personal
identity or self-image. They have a self-concept, in that they know who
they are and who they are in relation to other people, i.e. they
understand their name; that they are part of a family and know who is
mum, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, neighbour, nursery nurse,
primary 1 teacher, etc. At age 5 most children’s descriptions of who they
think they are will be very categorical and rigid. This is especially true in
terms of age, gender and associated behaviour patterns. A child of 6 will
be very precise as to whether he or she is 6, 6½ or nearly 7 and a girl,
for example, will behaviourally display her gender through genderrelated play, preferences and conversation. ‘Star Wars’ is more appealing
to little boys than little girls, while ‘Snow-white’ has more appeal for
girls. Developing self-image and related sex-role identification in young
children is greatly influenced by the messages they receive from their
environment. Sex-role identification (comprehending that you are a
little boy or a little girl) and associated gender behaviour (behaving in a
masculine or feminine way) is very evident from age 2–5. Children’s sexrole behaviour is also categorical and rigid. They have a very stereotyped
idea about what is masculine and feminine behaviour. Many little girls in
Scotland of around age 5 will not wear trousers – despite the weather.
They associate trousers with little boys of the same age, and they are
definitely not one of them! This can be much to the dismay of parents
and other primary caregivers who try to bring up their children in a
non-stereotypical way, i.e. by not encouraging toy guns and weapons for
little boys, or dolls, toy kitchenware, etc., for little girls. In this instance
caregivers face an uphill struggle. What young children see other boys
and girls doing, what they see brothers and sisters doing, what they see
mum and dad doing, what they see on television, etc. all contribute to
the development of their self-concept, their identification with male or
female sex-roles and associated gender behaviour during this time.
Between ages 5 and 12, a child’s self-concept and sex-role begins to
widen out. The primary school years see children begin to describe
themselves using terms like ‘nice’, ‘smart’, ‘tall’, ‘small’, ‘pretty’,
‘handsome’, etc. This is evidence that they are beginning to compare,
contrast and most importantly evaluate, or value, themselves in
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comparison to other children in their peer group. This social
comparison is very influential across the whole of childhood and the
teenage years in the development of our self-confidence (how good we
feel about our self) and self-esteem (how much we value, respect and
appreciate whom we have become).
Emotional development
Attachment: critical and sensitive periods
Attachment, in psychology, is the special term used to describe the
mother–infant bond formed at birth or soon after by a wide variety of
species including human beings. The special name given to the unique
human mother–child attachment, or bond, is called monotropy. It is an
intense emotional bond that is of immense importance in the physical,
cognitive, social and emotional development of any newborn. In humans
its absence can seriously affect the developing person’s ability to form
loving, sexual and non-sexual relationships with others. Its absence can
also affect their moral development, essentially the ability to
discriminate between right and wrong and also their ability develop
intellectually. The social, emotional and cognitive effects of the absence
of maternal love, or attachment, in early life was first brought to our
attention by Dr John Bowlby in his paper ‘Maternal Care and Mental
Health’ in 1951. He argued that a monotropic bond has to be
established between caregiver and child either at birth or during early
infancy otherwise the child may develop cognitive, social and emotional
difficulties in later life. We shall return to Bowlby and other related
concerns when we look at our first AH key concept: ‘Early socialisation’.
Social and emotional development
Personality
The social experiences we go through influence the development of our
personality. What is clear is that the emerging personality is shaped from
very early on in childhood and appears to progress through a series of
stages. The idea that personality development occurs in stages
throughout early childhood was, as we know from the first unit
‘Introduction to Psychology’, first studied by Sigmund Freud in the early
1900s when he put forward his psychosexual theory of personality
development. It suggests that children go through a series of
psychosexual stages in childhood where they obtain pleasure from
particular parts of their body known as erogenous zones. It further says
that we are biologically and instinctually driven to maximise the pleasure
obtained from stimulation of these zones. In doing so, our associated
behaviour is often viewed as taboo. How our parents deal with this, and
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our experience as a result, Freud believed, could damage the emerging
personality. This ‘damage’ he identified as particular, and sometimes
peculiar, behaviours or fixations in adulthood.
Setting the scene: developmental psychology’s whole-life approach
to lifespan development – summary
Lifespan development involves developmental psychology taking a
whole-life approach to the study of physical, cognitive, social and
emotional growth and change from birth to death. Our lifespan is
divided up into: the pre-birth or prenatal stage; infancy or neonatal
stage; childhood; adolescence; adulthood and old age. Each sees
developmental psychologists investigating particular aspects of physical
or cognitive or social or emotional change. Very often a change in one
area of human development will have an impact on others. Physical,
cognitive, social and emotional developments and change at particular
points in our life are all inter-related to each other. Developmental
psychology is interested in whether certain physical, cognitive, social
and emotional events and changes happen to us all at roughly the same
time and whether we develop physically, cognitively, socially and
emotionally progressively in stages or in a continuous way. Physically we
all develop at approximately the same rate and in the same fashion the
world over. Physical development and change is thus linked to our
biological maturation. Physical change is genetically determined and
age-stage related. In order to develop cognitively, we have to be
biologically ready to do so. Some cognitive developments, identified as
having a critical or sensitive period, happen within a particular agestage, e.g. the acquisition of language in infancy/early childhood, while
others, e.g. the ability to do mathematics, must wait until we cognitively
develop and grow from birth until adolescence. Biologically influenced
physical change allows us to socially and emotionally develop and
(hopefully) grow across all age-stages in life. We cannot walk until we
are biologically ready to do so, but when we are this allows for greater,
more independent experiences in our world. Puberty allows for the
development of an important side of what it means to be human – the
long-term establishment of a close, loving and stable relationship with
another. How we handle developing social relationships with others is
very much influenced by our personalities as shaped by previous past
experience. How we change and develop as thinking, social and
emotional individuals very much depends upon the environment we are
brought up in and the experiences we have within it at certain ages and
stages in our lives.
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Student activity
Questions
1.
Identify four continuous and progressive changes across the
human lifecycle.
2.
What name does developmental psychology give to the approach
which studies these four continuous and progressive changes over
the human lifecycle?
3.
What three assumptions does this approach make concerning our
development?
4.
What perspective in psychology does the following sentence
describe? ‘Our biology or genetics control and shape what we
become physically, cognitively, emotionally and socially.’
5.
What is its rival perspective called?
6.
What is the process of physical growth called?
7.
Name one age-stage related ability we mostly all develop from age
2 to 5.
8.
What do developmental psychologists call the period of growth
from conception to birth?
9.
With what cognitive process are Broca, Chomsky and Wernicke
associated?
10.
What needs to happen for individuals before they can cognitively
develop?
11.
Of what might infant temperament be a sign?
12.
What do you think the term ‘egocentric’ means to a developmental
psychologist?
13.
If you think it is 30:70 and your classmate thinks it is 70:30 what are
you discussing? To what do the figures refer?
14.
Name the process where we learn common norms, beliefs and
values.
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15.
What is sociability?
16.
If you know who you are, and who you are in relation to others,
you could be said to have a good what?
17.
With whom is the term ‘monotropy’ most associated? What did he
study?
18.
Name and describe the first three age-stages in Erikson’s theory of
psychosocial development.
19.
What aspect of being human does Erikson think our social
experiences can influence?
20.
What is meant by the whole person or whole-life approach in
developmental psychology?
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Glossary: Lifespan development
affectionless psychopath: identified by Dr John Bowlby, it is an
extreme personality due, he thinks, to maternal deprivation (absence
of mother-love in infancy) gravely affecting our social and emotional
development. Related to imprinting in animals, it reveals itself in
humans in people who are unable to form close loving, sexual and
non-sexual, relationships with others; who have little or no moral
values and have a very casual approach to crime. Affectionless
psychopaths lack conscience for their actions.
attachment: the close emotional bond best formed in very early infancy
between human babies and their primary caregivers – usually their
mothers. It is driven by our need for physical comfort, and the
amount and quality we receive is thought to help shape the
developing adult personality and drives how we deal socially and
emotionally with others and ourselves.
biology: the scientific study of living organisms; human, animal and
plant.
cerebral cortex: our brain and spinal cord.
chromosomes: rod-shaped structures that appear in the nucleus of a
cell during cell division; a chromosome consists of nucleoproteins
arranged into genes, which are responsible for the transmission of
physical, cognitive and possibly social and emotional characteristics
from biological parents to child.
cognitive development: concerns perception, attention, memory,
language and thinking. Developmental psychology is very interested
in the development of thinking in particular.
critical period: a set period during our development where it is
thought certain things must happen in order that the organism learns
essential skills for its future survival. First identified by the ethologist
Konrad Lorenz, he suggested a duckling has a critical period of 24
hours within which it must trigger its innate following behaviour by
imprinting on the first large moving object it sees – usually its
maternal parent. If imprinting does not happen during this critical
period, later development is affected.
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): our genetic inheritance passed onto us
by our biological parents which influences physical, cognitive, social
and emotional development – though not all in equal measure. DNA,
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or deoxyribonucleic acid, is what the ‘nature’ side of the nature–
nurture debate is all about. What influences us more – our genetic
inheritance in the form of DNA or our environment?
developmental pathways: Michael Rutter believes that the experiences
we get during infancy and childhood, especially in the form of a
stable, loving family environment, determine in many respects the
relationships we form with others as we get older. If our parent(s) or
primary caregivers were caring, loving, nourishing, supportive, etc.,
to us during our childhood, we are more likely to show the same
behaviour in our own relationships with others.
developmental psychology: the study of physical, cognitive, social and
emotional changes and developments, including their causes, effects
and inter-relationships over the course of the human lifespan.
dysfunction: abnormal or disturbed behaviour as a consequence of
physical, cognitive, social or emotional difficulties.
egocentric: seeing and interpreting the world solely from your own
point of view. Egocentricity is very evident in children from about age
2 onwards. It should disappear as children gain more experience of
their worlds, especially in social and emotional relationships. In
adults egocentrism would be recognised as continual and consistent
selfishness.
emotional development: an aspect of developmental psychology that
involves personality, aggression, motivation, the development of a
self-concept, etc. Emotional development is closely related to social
experience, cognition and biologically determined physical changes
during our lifetime.
environment: the world we live in and the experiences we have in it.
experimental group: a term used in scientific research that indicates
that a selected group of people are receiving a ‘treatment’ of some
kind or another, which another selected group, a control group, are
not. This is to allow for comparison between the two groups to see if
the treatment has caused any effect.
epigenesis (or epigenic principles): the idea that we cannot do
something until we are biologically mature enough to do so, i.e. walk,
talk, remember complex events, think in an adult fashion, etc.
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external validity: how a theory holds up in relation to alternative
theories on the same issue. For example, Jean Piaget has a most
useful theory concerning the way children learn. However, learning
can also be explained in psychology from the point of view of
behaviourism, social learning theory and cognitive social learning
theory.
extrapolate: to generalise about your findings to a larger, and perhaps
different, population.
erogenous zones: areas of the body associated with pleasurable
sensation and activity. Identified by Sigmund Freud, erogenous zones
include the mouth, anus and genitals.
ethology: the biological study of animal behaviour.
fixation(s): an aspect of an adult’s personality usually identified as a
peculiar behaviour which has been caused by under- or overstimulation of an erogenous zone in childhood, or as a consequence
of a parent’s attitude to a child getting pleasure from an erogenous
zone.
foetus: the developing embryo.
gender: masculine or feminine specific behaviours. Our sex, male or
female, is genetically determined. Gender on the other hand is learnt.
genetics: the study of inherited characteristics.
genotype: an individual’s collection of genetically inherited
characteristics from their biological parents that may influence their
physical, cognitive, social and emotional development.
holistic: a whole-person approach in psychology. Understanding a
person from all relevant points of view, i.e. understanding a person’s
development, taking into account the causes, effects and
relationships between physical, cognitive, social and emotional
changes and developments across the human lifespan.
imprinting: an innate ability in many animal species that sees a newborn
attaching to the first large moving object it sees by following it.
Imprinting is crucial to survival.
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independent group design: a research strategy used in psychology that
sees two dissimilar groups of people being compared to each other in
an experiment.
individual differences: physical, cognitive, social and emotional
differences between individuals. The study of individual differences in
psychology looks at, for example, personality and intelligence. These
are aspects of being human which we all share and recognise in each
other, but in which we notice differences between us.
infant temperament: a personality disposition displayed in infancy, e.g.
a quiet baby, a demanding baby, etc. Temperaments are thought to be
influenced by our genetic inheritance and are the basis to the
eventual adult personality.
internal validity: how scientifically correct is the method used to
collect and collate appropriate data that contributes towards a theory.
IQ (Intelligence Quotient): an IQ test score for a ‘normal’ person will be
100.
LAD (Language acquisition device): the biological ‘hardware’ in the
brain that sees us innately want to acquire and develop language.
longitudinal study: a psychological study into an individual or group of
individuals over at least one year following physical, cognitive, social
or emotional changes and developments.
maternal privation: the complete absence of mother-love in infancy
which is felt can contribute towards social and emotional difficulties
in later life.
maturation: associated with our genetics, maturation is the biological
ageing of our bodily processes and structures – often necessary
before physical, cognitive, social and emotional developments can
occur.
monotropy: the unique mother–infant bond formed at birth.
motor skills: a particular physical dexterity or ability related to
biological maturation, e.g. body manipulation, crawling, walking, etc.
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
nature perspective: those who believe that what we are, and what we
can become, is determined largely by our genetic inheritance. Our
genetics, according to this position, will determine our physical
make-up, cognitive abilities, social relationships and emotional
behaviours.
neo-Freudian: someone who follows in the psychoanalytic tradition
established by Sigmund Freud in the early 1900s.
neonatal stage: the first month of human life.
nurture perspective: those who believe that what we are, and what we
can become, is determined largely by our environment. Our
environment can affect physical make-up, cognitive abilities, social
relationships and emotional behaviours.
peer group: a group of people we most closely associate with. Peer
groups can include friends, workmates, your community, etc. The
influence of the peer group in the formation of social behaviours, our
identity and our emotional responses to life is most apparent in
adolescence.
phenotype: what our genetic inheritance actually becomes, physically,
cognitively, socially and emotionally. Our phenotype is strongly
influenced by the environment we are brought up in.
pre-natal stage: pre-birth – the 9 months of human foetal development.
primary caregivers: includes those who look after, love and nurture us
in infancy, childhood and adolescence. Primary caregivers are
mothers, fathers, stepmothers, stepfathers, aunts, uncles, older
brothers or sisters, etc.
privation: never having something in the first place. This is opposed to
deprivation which means having something and then having that
‘something’ taken away from you.
psychomotor development: the development of centres of the brain
which allow for physical motor skills to develop.
psychosexual theory of personality development: a theory on
personality development being determined by psychosexual
experiences in infancy and childhood put forward by Sigmund Freud.
He says this experience will form aspects of the adult personality. He
divides childhood into five psychosexual stages – oral, anal, phallic,
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latent and genital, and says frustration of pleasurable activities
associated with related erogenous zones of the body can lead to
peculiarities of personality and behaviour in later adult life. These are
called fixations.
psychosocial theory of personality development: an alternative
theory on the development of personality put forward by Erik
Erikson. He says personality is shaped not just by childhood
experience but throughout our whole life. Unlike Freud he says that
personality is not a result of erogenous pleasure, but as a
consequence of having to make decisions based upon past
experiences at certain points of our life. He calls these decision
points ‘psychosocial crises’ and says we confront them at eight stages
throughout our life. The influence of our social world in the ongoing
development of our personality is all important.
physical development: genetically determined biological body changes
and developments over the course of the human lifespan. These will
have a knock-on effect on cognitive, social and emotional aspects of
the ageing individual.
rooting: a newborn’s innate (inherited) reflex action to turn towards
objects brushing against its cheek.
self-concept/self-image: an idea of who you are as an individual. The
self-concept begins to be formed in infancy with the gradual
realisation of your sex. You begin to form your identity by behaving in
a masculine or feminine way. This is helped along by observation and
imitation of what other ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ are seen doing in your
environment.
self-esteem: how much you respect and value yourself. Our self-esteem
comes from how others react to us. We think and behave accordingly.
sensitive period: a period in our life where we are most susceptible,
and better able, to learn how to do something. Language has a
sensitive period from about 2 to 14 years of age.
sequence of development: physical, cognitive, social and emotional
changes across the human lifecycle, some of which happen in
identifiable and progressive stages (age-stage cognitive problemsolving and language abilities, etc.) while others happen in a similarly
identifiable but continuous manner (the ageing process, non-age
stage development of personality, etc.)
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sibling(s): brother(s) and sister(s)
sociability: our ability to interact, or mix, with others. Sociability is
related to our developing realisation that life is so much more
enriched when we are with others in a family, class, work or
community situation. However, being with others has a personal cost
for individual freedom. We have to give up a part of our individuality
to successfully work together as a group. Sociability involves
balancing the rules of social interaction against our individual
personality.
social development: the causes and effects of an individual’s social
behaviour across the human lifespan. A study of social development
sees developmental psychologists looking at how we develop and
change as a consequence of learning experiences in our
environment. Issues of social interest include the development of
play, moral development, the influence of the peer group in
adolescence, the reasons why you view your self as you do, etc.
socialisation: the process we go through as individuals in learning our
culture’s rules, norms (acceptable behaviours) and values (beliefs).
Important to the process of socialisation are parents (especially our
mothers), teachers, the adolescent peer group and society’s
structures and institutions like work, the judicial system, the press,
etc.
symbolic function: being able to think using commonly agreed
symbols, e.g. words for things found around us. An infant begins to
show it can think using symbolic representations when it shows
continuous excited behaviour when ‘Dada’ comes into the room.
whole-life approach: the causes, effects and inter-relationships between
physical, cognitive and social development across our whole lifetime.
An understanding of memory problems in old age gives greater
understanding to the development of memory across the whole of
the human lifecycle. The centres of our brains associated with
memory have to be biologically ready (by about age 2) before we can
begin to develop language and simple problem-solving strategies. Our
memory will affect our cognitive, social and emotional behaviours
thereafter. It makes sense in this, and other areas in developmental
psychology, to take a whole-life approach to lifespan development.
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Concept 1: Early socialisation
What is ‘early socialisation’ in developmental psychology?
‘In a developmental sense childhood lasts a lifetime.’
Keegan (2002)
Early socialisation in developmental psychology examines how we come
to be as we are. It specifically looks at sociability and attachment as early
childhood experiences and how these mould our developing
personality and consequentially impinge upon emotional and cognitive
development. More generally, early socialisation concerns the processes
in infancy and childhood of acquiring the norms and values of our
society including language, gender role behaviour, moral development
and the control of aggression. In human beings this involves a symbiosis
between our innate abilities (nature) and the culture we find ourselves
in (nurture). Early socialisation is thus both biological and cultural. The
learning of these norms and values, or ways of behaving, is called
enculturation.
In a psychological sense early socialisation at Advanced Higher level sees
interest focus upon:
•
•
•
•
sociability
attachment, deprivation (separation) and privation
theories of attachment (Bowlby, Ainsworth)
social and cultural variations in child-rearing.
Sociability
As proposed earlier, early socialisation includes the study of sociability.
Buss and Plomin (1984) identify sociability as a particular temperament
we all have at birth. They also identify emotionality and activity as the
other dimensions to our individual temperaments which also influence
the emerging personality, self-image or emerging personal identity.
Further, sociability is genetically inherited and innate. Sociability is
initially in our nature and may be influenced by the inter-uterine
environment. It is our gregarious or social side to being human – our
inbuilt need to want and to be with others. We need others from a
biological, cognitive, social and emotional point of view. If one takes
attachment alone, a baby who is sociable is more likely to form a secure
attachment (and subsequent benefits) than a baby who is not. Put
another way, sociability which is genetically determined not being
reciprocated in kind (due to a frustration of the attachment process)
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
teaches a baby very negative lessons which may influence his/her
personality from a very young age indeed. Put bluntly, if you cannot
attach to someone despite giving it your genetic all in the early months
of life, who can you attach to in a broader more adult sense later on?
Sociability is a prerequisite to attachment – successful or otherwise.
Sociability is very evident from birth. Babies react with excitement to
encourage our social behaviours with them. They appear to know that
smiling and being pleasant to others is a necessary prerequisite to their
survival.
Our biological genes will determine the amount and types of sociability
we each show towards others as we grow and develop. Sociability
temperaments or behaviours can be identified as:
• our individual, but common, need to look for and get pleasure from
being with others
• how much or how little we each need to be on our own or with
others
• how much we need to give of ourselves to shared activities
• showing emotion towards and getting emotions from other people.
These biological predispositions of temperaments begin to unfold in
infancy as we interact in our environment. Sociability (and personality)
is therefore a dance between nature and nurture. Our social
experiences, and what we learn as a result, are influential in determining
our sociability towards other people. If we were more shy than other
babies in early infancy and this ‘shyness’ has been commented upon and
viewed negatively by others as we grow, is it not surprising to find the
same person showing introverted adult personality traits later on in life?
Put another way we all share a need for others but we do not all share
the same degree of need for others. Some people will be most at home
being very outgoing and constantly in other people’s company. Some
others will be equally happy being just part of the group, or not part of
any particular group at all. Some people will be perfectly happy being on
their own, thinking or reading to themselves. Others would find this a
reflection of just how popular they think they are, and would worry
about it! Some of us have an immediate need to tell a new found friend
our whole life story, warts and all; while other people on meeting
someone they don’t know too well would be a lot more cautious about
what they reveal of themselves. This is a sign of the degree of need each
of us has towards being sociable with others.
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Heredity: innate social abilities
Babies exhibit innate social abilities as a consequence of evolution.
These social abilities that come to us through nature are adaptations
which have survival value for us. The study of evolutionary algorithms in
evolutionary psychology suggests that human survivors in the past were
most likely to be the babies who produced innate infant-primary
caregiver social signals to which the caregiver responded – probably as a
result of caregiver genes they had inherited themselves.
Examples of innate social abilities include:
• The appearance of babies, which makes them attractive to older
people. Lorenz (1943) observed that their ‘kewpie-doll’ appearance
of large forehead, large round eyes and soft-rounded features was
common to the infant of many species. Manufacturers of children’s
dolls have been exploiting the kewpie-doll effect for decades.
• Athough when a baby smiles is debatable, smiling is a very powerful
means of non-verbal communication. It begins to become evident
from about 8 weeks but nobody knows for sure whether this first
smile is a result of personal pleasure the baby is experiencing (asocial
smiling) or whether it is pleasure in interaction with others. Cooing
and crying see adults respond with interest or concern.
• Imitation is also an evident ability in infants. Meltzoff and Moore
(1977, 1983, 1989, 1992) regularly report on this. They have found
babies less than 7 days old able to imitate another’s face movement
such as opening and shutting their mouth, forehead furrowing, etc.
This is strong evidence for participative social interaction.
• This all, of course, points to the evolutionary aspect to all our
emotions. We share similar emotions the world over. A smile in John
Finnie Street, Kilmarnock means the same thing as a smile in Albert
Road, Hout Bay, South Africa – it is to be hoped! There has been a
reawakening of interest in the psychology of emotions first brought
to our attention in the nineteenth century by functionalist William
James. This is mainly due to its Darwinian influences and current
interest in where we come from and why we are as we are as we enter
a new millennium. Genetically shared emotions include interest, joy,
surprise, fear and anger, as identified in mothers of one-month old
infants during interview (Johnston et al. 1982). This was confirmed by
Izard (1982) with his research into these five primary emotions where
he took photographs of very young infants expressing interest, joy,
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
surprise, fear and anger all as a result of non-harmful stimuli. He
then got adults to successfully determine the infants’ emotional states
in the photographs. Infants as young as two months old
communicated all five primary emotions. Interest, joy, surprise, fear
and anger at least appear to be innate.
Environment: learned social abilities
Social interactions appear also to be influenced by what we learn in/from
our environment. A baby is an immense learning machine and it is said a
baby learns more in the first two years of life than in the rest of its life
put together (Keegan, 1999). One way a baby learns is through
reinforcement. Reinforcement was first brought to our attention by
behaviourists such as Watson, Pavlov and Skinner. They say we learn by
forming stimulus-response units of (learnt) behaviours as we interact
with our environment. If we show a behaviour that is encouraged by
positive reinforcement (a reward of some kind) operant conditioning
theory (Skinner) says we are likely as individuals to repeat the desired
behaviour in the future. An adult making funny faces and getting a
chuckle or two from a baby in return, the baby then making funny faces
and getting an enthusiastic response from the adult in return (and so
on) is an example of positive reinforcement of the innate ability to
smile/laugh. It is also sad to observe a number of teenage mothers using
physical punishment, or negative reinforcement, in the form of slaps
administered to young babies, infants and toddlers to dissuade them
when they cry in public; often as a result of some discomfort or distress
they are suffering.
As said, social abilities or sociability are both influenced by nature–
nurture!
The humanistic influence on early socialisation: self-image or
personal identity
From as young as 2, children begin to develop an idea of personal
identity or self-image. They have a self-concept, in that they know who
they are and who they are in relation to other people, i.e. they
understand their name, that they are part of a family and know who is
mum, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, neighbour, nursery nurse,
primary 1 teacher, etc. At age 5 most children’s descriptions of who they
think they are will be very categorical and rigid. This is especially true in
terms of age, gender and associated behaviour patterns. A child of 6 will
be very precise as to whether he or she is 6, 6½ or nearly 7 and a girl,
for example, will behaviourally display her gender through gender-
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related play, preferences and conversation. ‘Star Wars’ is more appealing
to little boys than little girls, while ‘Snow-white’ has more appeal for
girls. Developing self-image and related sex-role identification in young
children is greatly influenced by the messages they receive from their
environment. Sex-role identification (comprehending that you are a
little boy or a little girl) and associated gender behaviour (behaving in a
masculine or feminine way) is very evident from age 2–5. They have a
very stereotyped idea about what is masculine and feminine behaviour.
Many little girls in Scotland around age 5 will not wear trousers –
despite the weather. They associate trousers with little boys of the same
age, and they are definitely not one of them! This can be much to the
dismay of parents and other primary caregivers who try to bring up their
children in a non-stereotypical way, i.e. by not encouraging toy guns and
weapons for little boys, or dolls, toy kitchenware, etc. for little girls. In
this instance caregivers face an uphill struggle. What young children see
other boys and girls doing, what they see brothers and sisters doing,
what they see mum and dad doing, what they see on television, etc., all
contribute to the development of their self-concept, their identification
with male or female sex-roles and associated gender behaviour during
this time.
Between ages 5 and 12 a child’s self-concept and sex-role begins to
widen out. The primary school years see children begin to describe
themselves using terms like ‘nice’, ‘smart’, ‘tall’, ‘small’, ‘pretty’,
‘handsome’, etc. This is evidence that they are beginning to compare,
contrast and most importantly evaluate, or value, themselves in
comparison to other children in their peer group. This social
comparison is very influential across the whole of childhood and the
teenage years in the development of our self-confidence (how good we
feel about ourself) and self-esteem (how much we value, respect and
appreciate whom we have become). An influence on sociability, it is
dealt with more specifically as the key concept ‘Social behaviour’ in
Advanced Higher Developmental Psychology.
Student activity: Essay
Describe, discuss and evaluate the concept of sociability in
developmental psychology. You should use about 1000 words for
your answer.
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Attachment, deprivation (separation) and privation
An attachment according to Ainsworth (1989) is an affectional bond
involving: ‘a relatively long-enduring tie in which the partner is
important as a unique individual and is interchangeable with none
other.’
Deprivation in a developmental sense means having ‘something’ and
then it being taken away from you, while privation means never having
had that ‘something’ in the first place. In its original sense ’something’ is
the mother-figure which nowadays would be broadened to include all
who fall into the genus of ‘primary caregiver’.
Schaffer’s phases in the development of attachments
Schaffer (1996a) says the attachment process can be divided up into
various phases:
1.
The pre-attachment phase: birth–3 months. From 6 weeks babies
show preference for human beings over and above the physical
aspects of their environment (see Fantz, 1961: ‘The perception of
human faces’). This is shown in behaviours such as nestling,
gurgling and (social) smiling directed at most in their world.
2.
The indiscriminate attachment phase: from 3–10 months babies
start to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people,
becoming more animated and excited in the presence of those
they have a previous knowledge about. The social smile directed at
anybody has disappeared. They will allow strangers to pick up and
cuddle them as long as this is done in a caring considerate manner.
3.
The discriminate attachment phase: evident from 7/8 months, this
is the beginning of specific attachments identified by proximity
behaviours, and separation anxiety. It parallels the onset of object
permanence in babies (the notion that objects, events, people,
etc., do exist outwith and away from themselves).
4.
The multiple-attachment phase: 9 months plus. This is the phase
where strong additional attachments are made with other
important caregivers, e.g. dad, grandparents, siblings (brothers and
sisters) and the developing peer group (other children). Proximity
behaviours and separation/stranger anxiety diminishes with the
strongest attachment continuing to be with the mother.
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Schaffer and Emerson (1964), in ‘The beginnings of the end of
Cupboard Love theory’, describe how 60 infants were investigated every
month up to 12 months, and then at 18 months. Mothers told of their
observations of their babies in seven everyday anxiety situations such as
being left alone, being babysat and put to bed. Infant protest was
quantitatively and qualitatively reported. Schaffer and Emerson
discovered the babies were clearly attached to multiple-caregivers who
did not engage in care-type activities – most notably the father! Also in
39 per cent of cases, the caregiver who bathed, fed and changed the
baby was not the child’s main attachment figure. Important predictors of
attachment are responsiveness to the infant and stimulation given them
by significant caregivers.
Theories of attachment: cupboard love; psychoanalysis and
behaviourism
For the first half of the twentieth century, developmental psychology
understood attachment from the point of view of ‘cupboard love’
theories as proposed by the psychoanalytic and behaviourist
approaches.
Freud believed that infants become attached to their mothers as a result
of instinctual needs and drives within them.
‘The reason why the infant in arms wants to perceive the presence
of its mother is only because it already knows that she satisfies all
its needs without delay.’
Freud (1926)
Freud surmised healthy attachments come about due to feeding which
satisfies the baby’s need for food, security and oral (sexual) gratification
– see Freud’s Oral Stage in his theory of psychosexual development of
personality. Attachment is frustrated when a baby does not get its oral
stage needs satisfied, or if they are satisfied too much (an oral retentive
personality personified by the adolescent/adult nail biter, finger chewer,
lip chewer, smoker, etc.). For psychoanalysis, breast-feeding and the
presence of a maternal figure is important to healthy attachment and all
that follows.
Behaviourists also have a place for food in their understanding of the
attachment process. They say babies become attached to those who
respond to their demands for physiological comforts such as food,
warmth, security, etc. Food is a primary reinforcer. This means a
reinforcement which is not learnt (unconditioned). Caregivers in the
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
baby’s mind become conditioned (learnt) or secondary reinforcers.
The baby associates the pleasurable satisfaction of physiological needs
with the caregiver through positive reinforcement. The attachment
bond is formed.
The end of cupboard love theory
For the background to modern attachment theory see Section 3 Issues:
‘The use of non-human animals in research’).
Attachment sees the individual want to be around the attachment figure.
It gives those forming an attachment security, comfort and confidence.
The strength and worth of this influences our self-concept (who we
think we are as a person, and as a result why we feel and behave as we
do). The attachment figure (e.g. a primary caregiver) represents a
secure base that should allow for safe exploration of the unknown,
unfamiliar or threatening by the ‘attached’ infant or child.
Attachments in humans
Borrowing from ethology (see Section 3 Issues: ‘The use of non-human
animals in research’) the bonding process in humans is the beginning of
the attachment process. The Scots Schaffer and Emerson (1964) define
attachment as:
‘the tendency of the young to seek the proximity of certain other
members of the species.’
Macoby (1980) identified four attachment characteristics in infants and
young children such as:
•
•
•
•
wanting to be near the primary caregiver
distress when separated from the primary caregiver
joy on being re-united
behaviour orientated towards the primary caregiver.
As stated earlier, Dr John Bowlby was interested in the psychological
effect imprinting has for human beings. His maternal deprivation
hypothesis accepted Harlow’s idea that the first two years of an infant’s
life is the critical period in its ability to form and develop an attachment
to its mother. This unique human mother–child bond he called
monotropy. ‘It is because of this marked tendency to monotropy that
we are capable of deep feelings’ (Bowlby, 1988). It is unlike any other
relationship the infant may have in its life and its frustration, or absence,
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can cause the infant social and emotional difficulties in later life. The
strength and worth of the monotropic bond influences our self-concept.
Bowlby was able to argue this on the basis of a study he conducted in
1946 in his clinic in London where he worked with disturbed (or
dysfunctional) teenagers. He was able to compare 44 teenagers
identified as thieves with a similar group of teenagers who showed
dysfunctional behaviour but were not criminal. The results of the study,
contained within his report Forty-four Juvenile Thieves: Their Characters
and Home Life, indicates that among the 44 thieves, 17 had been
separated from their mothers in early infancy. The control group by
comparison only contained 2 teenagers who had been separated from
their mothers in early infancy. He further found that among the 17
maternally deprived thieves, there were 14 who were even more socially
and emotionally dysfunctional than their colleagues in that:
• they were unable to form close relationships with anyone
• they had few or no moral values
• they had a very casual approach to crime and the effects their crimes
had on their victims.
He concluded that maternal deprivation was the cause of his 44 thieves’
social and emotional problems and that ‘mother love in infancy and
childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins
for physical health’ (Bowlby, 1951). So much so that according to
Bowlby, lack of maternal love, or monotropy, can result in:
• juvenile delinquency
• low IQ
• affectionless psychopath (a sociopath).
Situations where these extreme effects of maternal deprivation can
occur include, for Bowlby: war; famine; mother in prison; full-time
working mother, etc. This was explored further by Bowlby in 1949 when
he was commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), a part
of the United Nations (UN), to investigate the psychological effects of
the Second World War (1939–45) on the thousands of displaced
children who were wandering Europe at the time. He confirmed much
of his earlier findings (that lack of mother-love in infancy can jeopardise
intelligence and create social and emotional difficulties) in his paper to
the UN Maternal Care and Mental Health, published in 1951.
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Is Bowlby correct?
When a theory is proposed in psychology, it is normal for it to be
scrutinised at two levels. We ask:
1.
how valid is the theory in the light of the research which backs it
up? Has the research been conducted in a scientific manner? Are
any contributory theories used in the research inappropriate? This
is called looking at a theory’s internal validity.
2.
how valid is the theory when compared and contrasted with
alternative theories concerning the same topic, in this case the
consequences of mother-love in infancy? This is called a proposed
theory’s external validity.
Internal validity
In putting his theory together, Bowlby used two sources to give it some
impetus. First, Bowlby cites Goldfarb (1943) who himself looked at one
group of children who were in care until the age of 3 (his experimental
group) and another who were in care very briefly after birth and were
then adopted (control group). This allowed Goldfarb to conclude that
the experimental group, in comparison to the control group:
1.
2.
3.
scored lower on IQ tests
had problems with moral rule keeping
lacked social skills in their dealings with others.
Goldfarb (1943), using a matched pairs design, paired 15 children from 6
months to age 3½ brought up in an institution with 15 children who had
been fostered immediately on separation from their biological mother.
The institutionalised children had been effectively socially isolated in
their first year. By age 3 the institutionalised group were intellectually
inferior to their fostered peers. They lacked social maturity for their age
and had difficulty with moral rule-keeping. By age 10 to 14, the
institutionalised group still showed cognitive, developmental social and
moral deficits. Their IQ for example was in the order 72 and 95.
Goldfarb concluded this was all down to whether the children had been
fostered or not. No account was taken by him of individual differences
such as race, gender, sociability, physical appearance, intellectual ability,
etc., apparent at the point of fostering and indeed probably the basis
upon which one child was fostered and another was not.
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Bowlby, secondly, used research generated by Spitz (1945, 1946) and
Spitz and Wolf (1946). Spitz and Wolf proposed that children who had
lost a parent in their early childhood often suffered deep depression
well into their teenage years, and this slowed down cognitive, social and
emotional development, in comparison to children who had two
parents during their upbringing.
Spitz (1945, 1946) and Spitz and Wolf (1946) investigated anaclitic
depression found in orphans ‘brought up’ in South American
orphanages. Here they were deprived of even the most basis sensitivity
responses by their untrained and overworked caregivers. This gave rise
to psychopathalogical symptoms such as apprehension, sadness,
sobbing, withdrawal, appetite loss, weight loss, insomnia and cognitive
deficit. If this deprivation continued more than 3 months Spitz (1945,
1946) and Spitz and Wolf (1946) said recovery is impossible.
Using Goldfarb and Spitz and Wolf as the backdrop to his research,
Bowlby then put forward evidence coming from his own clinic for
dysfunctional teenagers in London. His research seemed to indicate that
there was indeed some connection between absence of mother-love in
infancy and a dysfunctional personality in later adolescence and adult
life.
However, critics argue:
1.
Goldfarb in 1943 did not discover why it was that some children in
his study were deemed suitable for adoption, and others, who
remained in care, were not. Individual differences could have
played a part in deciding who was to be adopted and who was to
stay in care. Individual differences might be the reason behind
lower IQ scores, moral rule-keeping problems and social
relationships.
2.
Children in institutions, it is argued, are not just deprived
maternally. They do not experience the diversity of family life.
Their learning experiences which shape social and emotional
behaviours in the institution would have been different in
comparison to those children who found themselves adopted.
Maybe this was an alternative reason for these children’s
shortcomings in comparison to the adopted group.
3.
Spitz and Wolf were talking about paternal deprivation – the loss,
after experience of having, a father or father-figure in the family
home.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (AH)
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
4.
Bowlby’s research methodology was flawed. He used a
retrospective case study approach with his 44 thieves.
Retrospective case studies see participants reflecting back on their
lives. As a result they are prone to problems concerning a
participant’s selective memory, shadow memory or incomplete
records. As these 44 teenagers were themselves convicted of
criminal activities, a retrospective case study approach in this
instance is even more prone to these shortcomings.
5.
Retrospective case studies allow the sample to pre-select itself. This
is not a good research technique. It would have been better if
Bowlby had been able to conduct a longitudinal case study – taking
a whole group of children born on the same day and researching
them over at least the next year. A good example of a televised
longitudinal case study is the BBC’s 7-Up series which every 7 years
looks at the development of a group of UK children all born in the
same week in 1955. Another is the year 2000 longitudinal study,
written and presented by Lord Robert Winston for the BBC, which
will follow the physical, cognitive, social and emotional
development of a group of babies born in the UK on 1 January
2000 over their human lifespan.
6.
Of Bowlby’s 44 thieves, details in individual case studies suggest
that 27 were not separated from their mother at birth or in infancy.
Questions must arise therefore as to why they became criminal.
7.
Bowlby was a psychoanalyst. As a result he over-concentrated on
what happens to us in the first five years of our life, and generally
ignored the later years. Developmental psychology would
recommend we find out about a person’s whole life before trying
to conclude what and where in their lifetime things happened
which made them what they are.
8.
Finally, as regards the internal validity of Bowlby’s theory on
mother-love in infancy, he ignores the reality of life in Britain. He
advocated a ‘constant care’ mother–child relationship as the only
way to avoid social and emotional difficulties in later life. However,
he did not take account of the millions of children who are
brought up in a situation where mum is absent for one reason or
another – and who do not suffer low IQ, juvenile delinquency or
affectionless psychopathy. He also ignored the different childrearing arrangements we have in Britain, such as the use of
relatives in helping to look after children if parents are absent; the
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employment of nannies and nursery nurses; situations where both
parents work; single-parent families; cultural child-rearing
differences and practices and alternative child-rearing strategies.
Look up:
‘Controversial aspects of Bowlby’s Attachment Theory’ by Juan Carlos
Garelli
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3041/controversy.html
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation: Its external validity
Juvenile delinquency
Examining the causes of juvenile delinquency in 1972, 1979 and 1981
and while generally supporting Bowlby, Michael Rutter concluded that
in his opinion the main factor leading to delinquent behaviour such as
stealing was whether or not a teenager’s home-life was stressful and
unhappy. He was also critical of Bowlby’s error of confusing different
types of deprivation.
Powers, Ash, Schoenberg and Sorey (1974) lend some support to
Rutter’s view. They looked at why you get one-off juvenile offenders and
recidivists (continual or habitual offenders). They believe that the factor
here is stress in the home. An unstable family environment seems to be
important in the development of juvenile delinquent behaviours.
Affectionless psychopathy
This is not, Rutter (1972, 1979) argues, the result of maternal
deprivation, but maternal privation. Privation is never having had
something in the first place. In looking at Bowlby’s research Rutter
suggests that those who had been institutionalised and had developed
dysfunctional behaviours had never had the experience of maternal love
in the first place.
The effects of maternal privation were examined by Pringle and Bossio
(1960). They looked at a sample of children who were institutionalised.
The sample broke down into two groups. One group, whom they
labelled as ‘maladjusted’, had come into care soon after birth; while the
other ‘stable’, more developmentally normal group of children had
spent at least one year in their family home. Their maladjusted group
showed traits similar to those associated with affectionless psychopathy.
They showed complete indifference towards others. Privation – not
having the opportunity to form close relationships with others in early
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
infancy – seems to have an effect and gives some clues as to the
formation of a personality which exhibits ‘affectionless psychopathy’ or
‘sociopathy’ in particular and non-biological ‘severe personality
disorders’ in general.
Freud and Dann (1951) investigated children who had survived Nazi
concentration camps. They found six children who had lived in a camp
from an early age and had miraculously survived the Holocaust. They
had not formed any close relationships with adults, were maternally
deprived and if Bowlby was correct should therefore have shown
symptoms of affectionless psychopathy. Freud and Dan discovered that
they were, very understandably, suspicious of others but were not
affectionless or maladjusted. This was probably due to the fact that while
in the camps the children had stuck together and had formed close
attachments with each other (see the work of ethologists such as Lorenz
and Harlow).
Hodges and Tizard (1978) looked at the permanency of any effect
maternal deprivation had. They investigated children who had spent
most of their lives in care and had not been adopted until late in
childhood. Tizard and Hodges found that over time their participants
could develop deep and loving relationships with the right adoptive
parents. The early days were difficult for children and parents alike.
Patience and support in a stable family environment were crucial in
helping the children overcome the effects of maternal deprivation/
privation.
Low intelligence
We now know that Bowlby relied on a number of other people’s
research to frame his own theory on maternal deprivation. One of these
was Goldfarb. Goldfarb argued that children who suffered from maternal
deprivation could end up less intelligent than peers who had a more
normal family life. The development and maximisation of any skills and
abilities we may have are now known to be a lot more complex than the
presence or absence of mother-love in infancy alone.
For example, Denis (1969) investigated children in an Iranian orphanage
which seemed to produce children who were less intelligent than
others. He found that, although well cared for physically, they lacked
much in the way of intellectual stimulation. This he felt to be more
important in the overall development of intelligence than maternal love
or privation. He also believes that there is a critical period up to age 2
where intellectual stimulation (as found in the ‘normal’ family home )
has to occur otherwise children suffer an intellectual deficit in
comparison to others – which they are never able to close. While there
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is some merit in what Denis says there is debate over his idea of a critical
period of intellectual development.
Skeels (1939) thinks you can reverse the effects of privation. In the
course of his work he came across two children in an orphanage who
were both very intellectually challenged. They were subsequently
transferred to a home for the mentally subnormal (as they were referred
to in the 1960s). Within 3 months the change in the two children was
dramatic. They were more alert, intelligent and sociable. Skeels
discovered that because the children were so young they had been
‘adopted’ by the others in the home. They had been cuddled, talked to
and encouraged to play much more than before. Skeels concluded that
this was the reason for their overall improvement in intellectual, social
and emotional abilities. Linking his 1939 study to his later study in 1966
is worth considering. The original study had 25 participants, all of whom
were brought up in an American children’s home until age 2. The home
offered little in the way of intellectual, social or emotional development.
When they were 2, 13 of the children were put into a home for the
mentally retarded. Their average IQ was 64.3; the average normal child
of the same age would have an IQ of 100. Care was given by older,
subnormal girls. The children got structured and supervised play
opportunities. There was a high staff–child ratio, etc. By age 3½, the 13
children in the experimental group had either been adopted or
transferred back to their original orphanage. The IQ of the experimental
group had risen to 92.8, in comparison to their 12 peers in the control
group who had remained in the original orphanage throughout this
time. Their IQ was found indeed to have fallen from 86.7 to 60.5. By age
7, the average improvement for members of the experimental group was
36 points, while the average loss for the control group was 21 points. In
a longitudinal study, Skeels followed the participants into adulthood. He
found that of the experimental group:
•
•
•
•
•
all had had more education than the control group participants
one third of them had gone on to college
one third had got married
one third had given birth to ‘normal intelligence’ children
all were, in the main, self-supporting.
The control group, who had been brought up in institutions all their
childhood and teenage years, were unable to earn enough to be selfsupporting and were still regarded as mentally retarded.
Skeels’ work suggests that it is the content and amount of intellectual
stimulation we receive in early childhood which is important to eventual
social and emotional development and not, as Bowlby thought, the
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
amount of maternal love we receive. An intellectually poor environment
will ultimately stifle intellectual development which will affect our
developing personality, socially and emotionally.
Michael Rutter (1981, 1989), in attempting to pull together the
arguments concerning Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation, and the
intellectual, social and emotional difficulties which might emerge as a
result, believes that maternal privation (but not deprivation as Bowlby
thought) does have consequences. These consequences can result in
intellectual, social and emotional difficulties. As a result of the early
experience of having, or not having, been brought up in a stable, caring,
loving and stimulating environment, children’s developmental pathways
into adulthood are affected. The amount of sensitivity, support and
warmth from others in our early years is vital to nourish our ability to
develop genuine sensitivity, support and warmth to others in our later
adult years. For later social and emotional stability for us as individuals
early attachments are crucial and should be encouraged and developed.
Our home-life should be relatively stress-free. The effects of an inability
to form attachments with caregivers in our early years are not
permanent nor irreversible. Low IQ is not as a result of maternal
deprivation, or privation, but because we have grown up in an
intellectually unstimulating environment. This can be enhanced by
putting someone into a more stimulating environment which is itself
loving, caring, supportive and encouraging for that person.
In 1998, Rutter et al. were able to revisit the influence of severe
privation on physical, cognitive social and emotional development. They
studied 111 Romanian orphans adopted in the UK before the age of 2.
When they arrived in Britain they were deemed severely
developmentally impaired. With physical attributes only being shared by
3 per cent of similar British children they showed low weight and small
head circumference. A control group of UK children showed none of
these physical delays. By age 4 Rutter et al. reported the Romanian
children had caught up with their host country cohort. Age of adoption,
however, correlated negatively with achievement of key developmental
milestones. The later adopted, the slower and more difficult the
progress.
Another group of Romanian orphans were researched by Morison et al.
(1995). They compared two groups of age- and sex-matched children.
One group spent at least 8 months in a Romanian orphanage before
being adopted while those in the other group were adopted within 4
months. They discovered the later adopted children made up on
previous delays in development on a progressively successful month-bymonth basis.
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Social and cultural variations in child-rearing
The reason why developmental psychology is interested in social and
cultural variations in child-rearing is because cross-cultural study allows
us to consider how much of the attachment process is as a result of
heredity and/or the environment or culture we find ourselves in.
A culture, according to Cara Flanagan (1999), ‘refers to a set of rules,
morals and methods of interaction that bind a group of people. These
rules, morals and so on are the products of socialisation, that is we learn
them through our social interactions with other members of our
culture.’
We come from diverse cultures and within each are sub-cultures
separated by class, ethnicity, religion, economic opportunity, education,
etc. These account for cultural variations in the socialisation process, a
major contributor to which is the way children are ‘brought up’. This is
referred to as ‘child-rearing’ in psychology and has resulted in a large
amount of study into attachment and child-rearing practices which
influences the process and other wider aspects to personality.
By far the most important contributor in this area is Mary Ainsworth
(1967, 1971, 1978). In 1967 she studied 28 breast-fed babies near
Kampala, Uganda. When her study commenced, the babies were aged
from 15 weeks to 2 years. They were observed at home every fortnight,
for 2 hours during a 9-month period. Using naturalistic observations
and interviews with the mothers she identified species of specific
attachment behaviours. These fell into three types. She made strong
correlations between the mother’s own sensitivity rating (derived from
interview) and amount of cuddling given by the mother (naturalistic
observation). One group she labelled securely attached, the second
insecurely attached and the third not-yet-attached. She inferred the
independent variable resulting in these individual differences in
attachment behaviours to be maternal sensitivity to signals made by the
infants.
In 1971, Ainsworth replicated her study in Baltimore, USA. Van
Ijzendoorn and Schuengal (1999) feel so moved with this that they call it
‘the most important study in the history of attachment research’.
As in Uganda, Ainsworth relied on interview and naturalistic observation
in her longitudinal study of 26 mother–infant pairs. They were visited at
home every 3–4 weeks for 3–4 hours at a time. Each mother–infant
pairing generated 72 hours worth of data. In order to make sense of this
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Ainsworth used a previously set standard against which to compare her
observations of attachment behaviours. This was her own ‘Strange
Situation’ devised by herself and a colleague earlier (Ainsworth and
Wittig, 1969). In the Baltimore study their Strange Situation was altered
to allow for mother–infant behavioural patterns to be identified.
Eight Strange Situations in Baltimore (Ainsworth et al. 1978)
Episode
Present?
Length
of time
Description
1
Mum, baby,
observer
30 secs
Observer brings mum and baby
into room then leaves.
2
Mum, baby
3 mins
Mum sits passively while baby
explores. If needed, play
stimulated/encouraged after 2
minutes.
3
Stranger,
mum, baby
3 mins
Stranger comes in. 1st minute
quiet. 2nd minute stranger talks
with mum. 3rd minute stranger
approaches baby. After 3 minutes
mother leaves without being seen
by baby.
4
Stranger, baby
–3 mins*
First separation episode. Stranger
involved in active play with baby.
5
Mum, baby
+3 mins**
Stranger leaves. Mum greets/
comforts baby. Attempts active
play then leaves. ‘Bye, bye.’
6
Baby
–3 mins
Second separation episode.
7
Stranger, baby
–3 mins
Continued separation. Stranger
tries active play with baby.
8
Mum, baby
3 mins
Mum returns, greets and picks up
baby. Stranger leaves without
being seen.
*episode stopped if baby very distressed
** episode continued if baby became distracted away from it
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The Strange Situation gives four measures of the security of the baby’s
attachment based on four behaviours. These are separation anxiety (the
distress the baby shows when mum leaves), the infant’s willingness to
explore (attached infants are less proximal) and stranger anxiety
(attached infants show more distress when left in presence of stranger).
Furthermore, Ainsworth et al. were particularly interested in the types
of reunion behaviours shown by the babies on the return of their
mothers. This she felt was an indication of the quality of attachment that
existed between mother and baby. As a result of the quality of
attachment, came associated infant behaviours and emergent
personalities, functional and dysfunctional. The variable influencing
quality of attachment, as identified earlier in Uganda, she found to be
maternal sensitivity to the baby. Sensitive mothers have securely
attached babies and insensitive mothers have insecurely attached babies
who fall along two category axes: anxious avoidant/detached or anxious
resistant/ambivalent.
The Type A insecurely attached anxious avoidant infant cares not one
jot when mum returns; shows little stranger anxiety; reunion behaviours
are absent on mum’s return.
The Type B securely attached infant plays happily when mum is present;
ignores mum’s presence while playing; plays happily when stranger is
around/absent; gets distressed when mum leaves; play reduces; seeks
comfort and proximity immediately she returns; calms down quickly;
resumes play. Distress is caused by mum’s absence, not being alone.
Qualitative and quantitative behaviours are evident in infant–mother and
infant–stranger interactions.
The Type C insecurely attached anxious resistant infant shows distress
when mum leaves and is not easily comforted on her return. The child
seeks and rejects cuddling contiguously. Mum is inconsistent in her
behaviours, sometimes insensitive (angry and rejecting) and
subsequently sensitive to the point of over-responsiveness. Limited
exploratory play by the child as it tends to be proximal to the mother.
A fourth and recognised Type D insecurely attached disorganised infant
has been identified by Main and Solomon (1986). This infant shows no
set pattern of behaviour either when separated or reunited with its
mother. Flanagan (1999) notes that ‘this kind of behaviour is associated
with abused children or those whose mothers are chronically
depressed’.
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Evaluating the Strange Situation
1.
Methodological comment: While the Ugandan and Baltimore
studies confirm that sensitivity is the key variable to secure/
insecure attachment, in both relatively small samples were used.
2.
However, Ainsworth’s contribution has led to greater work being
done in this area. An important supporting study comes from
Ijzendoorm and Kroonenberg (1988) who reviewed 32 worldwide
studies across eight countries and 2000 children. They concluded
on the basis of this meta-analysis of cross-cultural data that different
cultures (and thus factors involved in socialisation such as childrearing practices) give rise to different weightings of Type A, B and
C infants. In one study from Japan there is an absence of Type A
insecurely attached anxious avoidant, but a high proportion of
Type C insecurely attached anxious resistant infants. In the other,
the results are more consistent with Ainsworth’s types and spread.
There appears to be a worldwide pattern of Type A, B and C
securely/insecurely attached infants as indicated by Sainsworth, but
the USA shows greater variation when samples are contrasted. This
is probably due to the many cultural backgrounds adhered to in
America. It is itself a microcosm of the world’s different cultures.
Ijzendoorm and Kroonenberg (1988) also found cross-cultural
differences in that while Type B securely attached infants are found
worldwide, Type A securely attached are more common in Western
European societies while Type C insecurely attached anxious
resistant infants are more common in the likes of Japan and Israel.
3.
Vaughn et al. (1980) discovered that attachment type can alter as
home circumstance changes. They investigated children at 12 and
18 months of single parents living in poverty. Attachment types
differed significantly dependent on changing family circumstance.
Better housing and less stress from the point of view of the mother
seemed important. This suggests attachment types are not
permanent as theory might imply.
4.
Another implied observation about attachment behaviours is that
they reflect temperament. If this were so, in the case of simple
multiple attachments between infant and mother and infant and
father, the attachment behaviours (secure/insecure) should be the
same (van Ijzendroon and De Wolff, 1997). This was not the case as
found by Main and Weston (1981) who say there is a quality of
distinct relationship found between infant–mother and infant–
father. The baby can be securely attached to one but not the other.
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5.
Lamb et al. (1985) and Melhuish (1993) criticise the Strange
Situation in general as being too artificial, limited in terms of the
information it obtains and failing to take account of the mother’s
behaviour. There is also the ethical issue of deliberately putting
infants under stress. Marrone (1998) counters this from the point
of view of ecological validity. The Strange Situation does reflect
reality.
Let us leave the last words on attachment to Scroufe et al. (1983) who
said ‘securely attached infants are likely to be more confident,
enthusiastic, and persistent in problem solving later on as young
children’.
Student activity: Essay
In around 1500 words describe, discuss and evaluate Dr John
Bowlby’s theory of monotropy.
Further reading: early socialisation
Bowlby, J, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory,
London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1988
Durkin, K, Developmental Social Psychology: From Infancy to Old Age,
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995
Flanagan, C, Early Socialisation: Sociability and Attachment, Routledge
Modular Psychology Series, 1999
Rutter, M, Maternal Deprivation Reassessed (2nd ed.), Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1981
Schaffer, R, Mothering, Glasgow: Fontana/Open Books, 1977
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Glossary: Early socialisation
affectionless psychopath (a sociopath): someone who lacks
conscience as regards their often criminal activities.
attachment: active, emotional and mutual relationship between two
people (usually infant and parent/primary caregiver) with interaction
reinforcing and strengthening the link or monotropic bond.
critical period: a set time where something must occur otherwise a
deficit is experienced.
developmental pathways: the physical, cognitive, social and emotional
paths we journey along in life influenced by experience.
external validity: ability of a theory/piece of research to sustain itself
when confronted with alternative explanations for the phenomenon
under investigation.
enculturation: the learning of society’s norms, values or ways of
behaving.
gender: roles and behaviours regarding the significance of being male or
female.
internal validity: the ability/inability of contributory pieces of research
to sustain a proposed theory.
longitudinal study: a (case/observational) study that lasts more then
one year.
matched pairs design: an experimental design where groups of
participants are matched for extraneous physical, cognitive, social and
emotional confounding variables.
monotropy: the attachment/affectional bond formed (usually) between
mother and infant.
nature: aspects of an individual’s physical, cognitive, social and
emotional make-up influenced by genetics.
nurture: aspects of an individual’s physical, cognitive, social and
emotional make-up influenced by environment.
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self-concept: knowledge of personal identity – who you are and who
you are in relation to other people.
self-image: a person’s sense of self or personal identity.
primary caregivers: person who qualitatively and quantitatively
nurtures a baby, infant, child, etc., in the absence of the biological
mother.
reinforcement: something which increases/decreases the likelihood of a
behaviour being repeated, i.e. a reward or punishment.
self-esteem: how much we value, respect and appreciate whom we have
become
sex-role identification: sex-role and associated gender behaviour;
behaving in a masculine or feminine way evident from age 2–5.
socialisation: process of developing the habits, skills, values and
motives shared by members of a particular society or culture.
sociability: the particular temperament we have at birth; influenced by
genetics and foetal environment and is the building block to
personality.
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
Concept 2: Cognitive development
The study of cognitive development is, as is ‘early socialisation’, an
optional key concept at Advanced Higher level. Students are asked to
consider two key concepts and one issue. This is the second key
concept considered in this AH pack.
Cognitive development is the study of how our brains are able to take in
information from the outside world and what we do with this
information. It concerns how we create perceptions concerning our
world, how we form and are able to retrieve memories and ultimately
how our cognitive development affects our actual behaviour. At
Advanced Higher level SQA ask that we at least consider here:
• Theories and research of cognitive development – Piaget, Vygotsky
Bruner, information processing
• Practical applications of theory and research to education
• Factors which affect language development – Chomsky.
In developmental psychology, cognitive development is particularly
interested in what changes in cognitive functioning occur as we age and
what factors are responsible for these changes. It is an area of study in
psychology in general, and developmental psychology in particular,
which has benefited from the work of Jean Piaget.
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland in 1896 and died in 1980.
He was educated at, and received his PhD (doctorate) from, the
University of Neuchatel in 1917. His important works include: The
Origins of Intelligence in Children (1952), The Language and Thought of
the Child (1952), The Psychology of the Child (1969).
Mainly interested in the study of the development of thought and
knowledge in human beings (genetic epistemology) he proved that
children think differently from adults. This was contrary to what was
previously thought. He believed the reason children think (feel and
behave) differently from adults was because their brains continue to
biologically mature throughout childhood. Quite simply, they cannot
think, feel and do certain things in the same manner as adults principally
because they are not yet biologically ready to do so. Cognitive
development is thus affected by biological maturation. Accordingly all
children follow the same sequence of (cognitive) development.
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It should be noted that Piaget took ‘cognitive development’ to be the
same thing as ‘intelligence’. For Piaget, cognition (and therefore
intelligence) is a biological process. He was consequently interested in
the ‘biology of thinking’ and how it develops and unfolds as we
biologically age and mature.
For him, children’s intellectual development falls into certain
identifiable stages. These stages are common to all children and all
children go through them in the same order. Some children manage to
go through a stage or stages quicker than others. This is evidence of
individual differences in cognitive abilities. Individual differences are
also evident in other areas of developmental psychology, e.g.
personality.
Cognitive development is seen as a building block process, where
children have to be biologically mature before they can enter a
particular stage. They master specific intellectual abilities during a
particular stage, and having done so, if biologically ready, they enter and
go through the next stage – which intellectually is different from the
one which came previously. Most definitely, Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development in children is an age-stage related theory which
emphasises the relationship between biological maturation, physical
maturation and developing cognitive abilities. As shall be seen, this
developing of a child’s cognitive ability during infancy and childhood
has social and emotional consequences.
Quick Question
• Name two behaviours most children have by age 2, which were
not evident at birth. Why did they take time to develop?
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in children
Essential vocabulary
In order to appreciate the great contribution Piaget made to
developmental psychology (and beyond) it is necessary to be aware of
two important Piagetian principles. These are organisation and
adaptation.
Organisation
It is thought that an infant learns more in the first two years of its life
than in the rest of its life put together. As infants physically and
cognitively develop they must come across countless new learning
experiences every day.
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
How do they deal with these experiences? Organisation is the term
given to a baby’s ability to order and classify these new experiences in
the mind. Organisation is an innate process common to all infants. We
are born with this ability to organise all experiences we come across.
Piaget said we innately organise experiences into a schema. A baby,
when exposed to a new situation or stimuli, e.g. daddy, cows in a field,
buses, etc., uses its organisational ability to form schema representing
these new stimuli. It will have in its head a mental representation or
schema of ‘daddy’, cows, buses, etc. Our innate ability to organise our
world into schema is our ability to classify and categorise objects, events,
situations and so on. Organisation is the beginning of intellectual
functioning for all newborns. It is not learned, but biologically inherited
or innate.
Adaptation
Adaptation is the infant’s growing ability to understand its surrounding
world. Adaptation cannot occur unless there is a schema already
established regarding the concept or aspect of its environment it is
trying to understand and act upon. The two times table is completely
meaningless to a child unless it has established a number schema!
Adaptation depends upon two mental processes which Piaget labels
assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation is said to happen when a child behaves in a way that
suggests it has formed a schema about a particular set of stimuli.
Assimilation is more primitive than accommodation. Assimilation sees a
young child generalise about its world on the basis of an existing
schema. For example, a toddler, Des Browne, is being pushed through
Kilmarnock and sees a bus. Des points towards it, obviously wanting to
know what this big object is! Mrs Browne says it’s a bus. Thereafter,
anytime Des sees a bus he points at it and says ‘bus’. Des has formed a
bus schema. Unfortunately he also points at caravans, lorries and
tractors classifying them as ‘bus’ as well! This is assimilation – a young
child’s general interpretation of its world based upon an existing
schema. Des Browne has not yet developed the mental ability to
discriminate between stimuli, or things that look a bit like each other –
but are different.
Accommodation is a more advanced form of assimilation. It is where
the child restructures existing schemata in order to accommodate
similar but different stimuli in its world. It essentially changes its existing
mental structure (formed by existing schemata) so that new experiences
can be added, understood and acted upon. Using our above example,
accommodation is said to have happened when Des consistently and
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successfully points to buses, lorries and tractors and identifies them
correctly. This is accommodation – a young child’s specific
interpretation of its world based upon restructuring existing schemata.
Des has developed the mental ability to discriminate between stimuli
that seem the same but are different.
The development of thinking depends upon our ability to change our
mental structures to face new challenges in life. We are able to do this
from a young age. What pushes us towards having to change old
schemata in order to accommodate our complex world is the tussle
between equilibrium and disequilibrium. For a while at the assimilation
stage, Des can happily interpret buses, lorries and tractors all as ‘buses’.
It is not a problem. His existing bus schema does quite well. As time
goes on and Des is exposed to more and more buses, caravans, lorries
and tractors, and on being corrected by his mummy, he realises that a
bus is different from a caravan/lorry/tractor. This puts the existing ‘bus’
schema in his mind in a state of disequilibrium (imbalance) in that
caravans, lorries and tractors are not buses. As a consequence
accommodation, or the restructuring of an existing schema, happens in
order for Des to return to a state of equilibrium (or balance) in his
interpretation of his world. On seeing a bus, caravan, lorry or tractor
thereafter, he specifically identifies it correctly.
Look up:
The Construction of Reality in the Child
by Jean Piaget (1955)
‘The Elaboration of the Universe’
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/
piaget2.htm
Genetic Epistemology
by Jean Piaget (1968)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/
piaget.htm
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Piaget’s stages of cognitive development in children
Identifying a sequence of cognitive development common to all
children, Piaget identified four age-stages each of which show the
development of distinct thinking and problem-solving behaviours and
abilities not available to the child in a previous stage. This is because the
child is not biologically ready and therefore unable able to deal with the
more complex problems each developmental stage contains. Epigenesis
(in this instance, the biological maturation of our cerebral cortex) is
therefore directly linked to cognitive development. This can be
illustrated below.
Epigenesis and cognitive development
1.
Between the ages of 0–2 biological maturation of our sense organs
and sensory and motor areas of our brain occurs. This must
happen before cognitive functioning takes place.
2.
From age 2–7 it has been found that the areas of our brain
concerning hearing and speech must mature before basic thought
processes dealing with vocabulary, mental imagery (thinking in
pictures) and understanding can happen. The development of
language is an obvious example here.
3.
From 7–11 our brains continue to mature and develop in order to
bring our cognitive ability to a more adult level. We develop an
ability to see other people’s points of view and improve our social
behaviours towards others. This was not apparent in the earlier
years.
4.
Finally at around age 11–13, our brains are thought to have finally
matured to an adult level. We are able from this time to think
abstractly about our world, reason logically and think in a scientific
(or hypothetical) way. This also eluded us in the earlier years of
life.
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Cognitive stages of development
The sensori-motor stage (0–2)
The baby initially can only deal with its world using innate reflex actions
such as rooting and sucking. There is a gradual increase in sensory and
motor awareness, i.e. vision, hearing and bodily movements. The baby
has no realisation of the existence of anything outwith its own
immediate experience, i.e. if something is hidden from a baby’s view
then it no longer exists in its reality. This is what Piaget calls object
permanence. He said that babies under 8 months had no object
permanence. The concept of object permanence can be demonstrated
quite simply. A ball is placed directly in the line of sight of a baby. It is
moved to left and right. The experimenter knows that the baby is
attending to the ball as its eyes are following its movements. When the
ball is covered by a cloth, the baby no longer attends to it with its eyes
and no longer reaches out for it. It has not yet developed object
permanence (the knowledge that things do exist outwith and away from
itself) and is egocentric, in that it cannot understand that the world can
be seen from a variety of perspectives (or points of view) other than its
own. Based on observations of his own children Piaget (1952) divided
the sensori-motor stage into six sub-stages (see next page). By the end
of the sensori-motor stage other cognitive structures such as selfrecognition (in a mirror) and symbolic thought (language) have also
begun to emerge. Piaget terms these the ‘general symbolic function’
and also include deferred imitation and representational play.
Deferred imitation means the ability to reproduce or imitate something
now absent while representational play is play with objects which
represent something else in the child’s mind.
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Sensori-motor sub-stages
Sub-stage 1: 0–1 month. Exercising reflexes. Reflexes practised. No
‘intentionality’, i.e. they mean to do something. No understanding
of objects.
Sub-stage 2: 1–4 months. Primary circular reactions. Reflexes
extended to new objects. Infants coordinate simple schemata
(grasping, looking). Realise and repeat ‘behaviour causing specific
events’. Babies briefly look to the last place they saw an object.
Sub-stage 3: 4–10 months. Secondary circular reactions. Coordination of all the senses. Anticipatory thoughts, feelings and
behaviours evident. Can anticipate results of own actions. Partially
hidden objects can be found.
Sub-stage 4: 10–12 months. The co-ordination of secondary circular
reactions. Infants represent objects in their minds and show
beginnings of symbolic behaviours and memory. Goal driven
behaviours and actions.
Sub-stage 5: 12–18 months. Tertiary circular reactions. Infants
search for environmental novelty and can use several
interchangeable schemata to achieve goals. Beginnings of
experimentation and curiosity as to ‘What might happen if….?’
Well-hidden objects can be found.
Sub-stage 6: 18–24 months. Invention of new means through
mental combinations. Evidence of thinking and problem-solving
before actions. Mental manipulation of objects to achieve desired
goal. Objects contained within others, i.e. hidden in a container,
can be found.
Based on Tomlinson-Keasey (1985)
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The pre-operational stage (2–7)
As toddlers enter this stage in their cognitive development, egocentrism
gradually disappears. This can be seen in their less self-centred
behaviours after about age 2 or 3. Object permanence becomes
established and is correlated with anxiety fears in the presence of
strangers as discussed earlier. Children at the younger end of this age
range (2–4) do not yet have an ability to decentre, which is being able
to see the world as others do. This Piaget calls the pre-conceptual substage. This is evident in Piaget’s mountain study. Here Piaget presented
young children with an apparatus which had papier-mâché models of
three mountains. One of the mountains had a house on top of it, the
second had a snow-capped peak and the third had a wooden cross at its
summit. A doll was placed and moved (orientated) around the base of
the mountains. Children were asked what they thought the dolly could
see. Piaget found that children during the pre-operational stage could
not decentre very well. They reported what their eyes ‘told’ them as
opposed to what the dolly’s point of view was.
The most interesting concept of animism begins to emerge at this time
as well. Animism is where children give toys and playthings a life-like
quality. Dolls for example are perceived as ‘real’. Animism is very
obvious in observations of children’s play. Children also have problems
of conservation at the pre-operational stage, which is caused by only
being able to take into account one aspect of an object or situation at
any one time. Children between 2 and 4 have, for example, difficulty
understanding volume and number. The cause of this is the perceptual
appearance of the stimulus. The children have not yet cognitively
developed reversibility (an understanding of what can be done without
gain or loss).
This is demonstrated below.
Piaget’s conservation of
number and volume
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
d)
In the diagram, (a) and (b) represent rows of chocolate buttons in a
conservation of number task. If a child is presented with a choice
between row (a) or row (b), it will choose row (b). This is because row
(b) looks longer! The child can see one row of buttons is longer than
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the other, but cannot yet understand the significance of the spaces
between each button. It fails to conserve number.
In the diagram, (c) and (d) represent a conservation of volume task.
Both the tall and the fat glass are filled with equal amounts of lemonade.
A child between 2–4, Piaget believes, if given a choice between (c) and
(d) would invariably choose (d). This is because the tall glass looks as if
it contains more to the child than the smaller but fatter glass. The child
is looking at the heights of the liquid, but not the shape of the glass the
lemonade is contained in. Children can only deal with one aspect of the
stimulus at any one time. Students should note that Piaget thinks
children at the pre-operational stage have difficulty not only conserving
number and volume but also length and mass. By age 5 or so Piaget says
they begin to throw off aspects of pre-conceptual thought and gravitate
towards the second pre-operational sub-stage which he calls the
intuitive sub-stage, evident in their ability to discriminate gradually
between relative statements and actions such as ‘bigger’, ‘smaller’, etc.
Their ability to do so in the pre-operational intuitive sub-stage he calls
seriation. The ability to classify objects (centration) also begins to
emerge, as does a reduction in egocentrism.
Tests for the conservation of number, length, substance or quantity
Conservation of number
Two rows are presented to the pre-operational child. In the pretransformation question he/she agrees each row contains the same
amount.
One row is then lengthened or shortened. In the post-transformational
question the child is asked whether each row has the same number of
counters.
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Conservation of length
Two sticks are presented as below. The child agrees they are of the same
length.
One is moved, left or right. The child is asked whether they are the
same length.
Conservation of substance or quantity
Two similar Plasticine balls are shown as below. Child agrees they are of
the same amount.
One is altered. The child is asked whether they are still of the same
amount.
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The concrete-operational stage (7–11)
By age 7, children should be able to understand the law of conservation
– certainly as regards number and volume. They can now deal with
reversibility of thinking, i.e. in the above example being able to
mentally move the lower row together, or to mentally move one amount
of liquid from one glass to the other. This allows them to see that
indeed the rows contain the same number of buttons and the glasses the
same amount of lemonade. They can classify and order objects in a
series, i.e. arrange things in size, and can understand relational
problems, i.e. A is larger than B which is larger than C. They begin to
show an ability to think in the abstract, but only if the problem is put to
them in a real and meaningful way based on their own knowledge of the
world. A child of around 8 would be completely unable to make sense of
the equation:
x > y; t > x. What is the smallest, x, y or t?
but would be able to work out the following:
‘Nana is older than Mummy; Granny is older than Nana. Who is the
youngest?’
This is the concrete operation transitivity – which could not be done at
an earlier stage. Concrete operational thinking is the young child
thinking in the abstract, but using real-life examples to help it work out
complex issues. Another example is where a child between 7 and 11 may
not understand the complexities of fractions when put in ‘number’
form, e.g. ¼, ½, ¾, but may very well be able to understand if the
fraction is put in ‘real’ terms like ‘Half an apple and half an apple
make...?’ Concrete operational thinking will develop and refine up until
the next stage where the child develops more adult-like thinking
strategies and associated behaviours.
The formal operational stage (11–13)
This is the last stage in cognitive development. It sees children
beginning to develop and use abstract thought and scientific reasoning.
Problems are approached in a more adult logical way. Teenagers can
follow arguments and reason in a hypothetical way, i.e. tackle problems
which ask ‘What if...?’ Much of a secondary curriculum is geared towards
the development of hypothetical and abstract thinking. There is some
evidence to suggest that many who enter secondary school are not yet
in a biological position to cope with abstract mathematical and scientific
concepts. They still have to endure the curriculum nonetheless. As a
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consequence much of what they are exposed to in abstract subjects is
lost to them. They are not yet biologically mature enough in a cognitive
sense to deal with this type of thinking. This is one of the reasons why
so many of the adult population feel uncomfortable when asked to think
in number terms. They have not – even by their adult years – come
through and mastered all aspects of formal operational thinking.
Inhelder and Piaget (1958) gave adolescents five containers filled with a
clear liquid. Four, they were told, were ‘test chemicals’ and one an
‘indicator’. When a particular combination of the test chemicals were
added to the indicator it turned yellow. Children at the pre-operational
stage simply mixed the chemicals randomly to see what transpired.
Concrete operational children were a bit more systematic but also failed
to hypothesise and think through the problem with much success. Only
those in the formal operational stage were able to successfully think
through the problem, testing all combinations of the test chemicals in a
methodical, systematic manner, varying one factor at a time. They also
wrote down results and tried to make general conclusions about each
test chemical.
Evaluation of Piaget
While of immense importance to psychology and much respected for his
contribution, Piaget can be and has been criticised. As Flavell (1982)
says:
‘Like all theories of great reach and significance … it has problems
that gradually come to light as years and years of thinking and
research get done on it. Thus, some of us now think that the theory
may in varying degrees be unclear, incorrect and incomplete.’
1.
Piaget thought that a young child was egocentric and unaware of a
world outwith its own immediate one. Margaret Donaldson (1978)
says that an understanding of egocentrism and object permanence
is not quite as simple as Piaget proposed. If egocentrism exists
then how an object disappears should still see children engage in
egocentric behaviour. She reran his ball-cloth experiment using a
ball and a light switch. Instead of covering the ball with the cloth
she turned the lights off in the room instead. In this instance
babies reached for the ball even although they could not see it.
This was confirmed by Bower and Wishart (1972). Bower suggests
that the reason for this difference in egocentric/non-egocentric
behaviour is not that the baby has no object permanence early in
life, but because it is confused by a cloth covering a ball. The baby
has not learnt that balls and cloths can be manipulated this way. It
is, by comparison, well used to lights going on and off in its world.
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It knows that if a light goes off, the things in its world still exist.
The issue of object permanence, or lack of it, at the sensori-motor
stage is open to question. Experience seems to make a difference.
2.
As regards decentering at the pre-operational stage, Hughes (1975)
replaced his mountain and doll apparatus with a policeman and
doll one. Hughes found children were able to decentre (see the
world through other’s eyes, i.e. the policeman or doll) at an earlier
age than Piaget imagined. One reason for this was that the
apparatus used by Hughes was known to the children. The task
made more sense to them. They knew what the objects were and
could understand better what was being asked of them.
3.
Similar criticisms can be made about Piaget’s underestimation of
children’s conservation ability concerning weight, number, volume
and mass. Having experience of the things you are being asked to
deal with, and being able to understand what is being asked of you,
appears to lower the age at which children can/cannot conserve.
This would be apparent in nursery schools for example, where the
pre-fives are daily encouraged to play with water, sand, Plasticine,
etc.
Rose and Blank (1974) found that when the pre-transformation
question was not asked, 6-year-olds often succeeded on the
conservation of number task. They also made fewer errors when
tested in the standard way a week later. These findings have been
replicated by Samuel and Bryant (1984)1 using conservations of
number, liquid quantity and substance, and McGarrigle and
Donaldson (1974)2 in their Naughty Teddy transformation
experiments and observations.
4.
Piaget only used a small number of children, including his own, in
his research. He generalised his findings to the whole population
of children. This research strategy would be unacceptable today.
5.
His sequence approach to children’s growing cognitive
development from birth to age 11/13 is firmly based in biological
maturation of the cerebral cortex. His theory has been criticised as
being anti-educational in that it implies that education can play
1
2
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Samuel and Bryant, ‘Asking only one question in the conservation experiment’,
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 25, 315–318.
McGarrigle, J and Donaldson, M (1974), ‘Conservation accidents’, Cognition 3: 341–
350
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little part in cognitive development until a child is biologically
ready to move through or up a stage. Alternative psychological
theories to cognitive development would suggest that education
does have an important part to play in unfolding cognitive ability.
6.
According to Meadows (1995) Piaget discounted the influence of
others in the child’s environment to the development of cognitive
abilities. Piaget saw children as isolated ‘scientists’ trying to
independently understand their highly complex worlds. As shall be
seen when we look at the contribution of Lev Vygotsky, there does
appear to be a substantial social influence regarding the
development of knowledge and thought.
Look up:
The Jean Piaget Society
http://www.piaget.org/
Student activity: Essay
Describe, discuss, and evaluate Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development. Your essay should be around 1000 words in length.
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Further challenges to Piaget
Some psychologists feel that much of what Piaget proposes is difficult to
test scientifically. This is because Piagetian concepts like organisation,
assimilation, accommodation, equilibrium, etc. do not exist in reality.
They are merely names, or hypothetical constructs, given to what are
thought to be the human mental functions involved in cognitive
development.
The main thrust of criticism comes from the behaviourists. Their
bottom line is that if you cannot measure something objectively it does
not exist in fact. If something does not exist in fact, the study of it is
more the realm of philosophy as opposed to science. This came from
the work of the early American behaviourist John Broadus Watson who
in 1913 said that if psychology wants to be a science it must use
experimental research methods much like physics, chemistry and
biology. Psychological enquiry should only, in his opinion, be concerned
with human behaviour – not hypothetical constructs thought to apply to
the workings of the human mind. His emphasis on the study of
behaviour, instead of the mind, is because behaviour is real – our
behaviour can be seen to happen and therefore can be accurately
measured. Accurate, objective measurement, or empirical data is the
mark of a true science. Behaviourists think much of what we learn is a
result of our interaction with our environment. It is through these
everyday experiences that children learn various types of behaviour, like
how to get along with others, pass exams and cope with new and novel
situations. Children’s behaviour as a consequence of learning in, and
from, their environment is known as conditioning. The influence of
conditioning (learnt behaviours) became apparent to Watson after he
read the work of Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849–1936), a Soviet Nobel
Prize winning physiologist, who advocated that organisms learn
particular behaviours over the course of time by associating one event
with another.
Using dogs as his subjects, Pavlov found he could stimulate their salivary
glands by putting food powder in their mouths. The amount of saliva
produced was then measured. The saliva produced was a reflex action,
or unconditioned response (unlearnt), to food (the unconditioned
stimulus) being placed in their mouths. He then began to notice that his
dogs also salivated whenever their keepers appeared with their meals.
Could this salivation be a clue that they had learnt that the appearance
of their keepers meant that they were just about to get fed? Had the
dogs learnt to predict that one event will follow another? Put another
way, had the dogs become conditioned to expect that a particular
stimulus (the keepers) would lead to a particular response (being fed)?
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In an attempt to try and understand this better he set up a laboratory
experiment, the results of which would eventually give psychology a
great insight into how we learn as individuals. Pavlov’s work gave rise to
his theory of classical conditioning. He knew from his earlier work that
an unconditioned stimulus (food powder) led to an unconditioned
response (salivation) for his dogs. He wanted to know if he could
condition, or teach, his dogs to salivate to another completely
unconnected stimulus – called a conditioned stimulus. He put his
dogs into a cage-like apparatus and followed the procedure below.
Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning
Before conditioning
!
Food put in dog’s mouth
(the unconditional stimulus: UCS)
dog salivates
(unconditioned response: UCR)
then
!
Pavlov rang a bell
(called the neutral stimulus: NS)
no response (the dog did not
salivate)
During conditioning
!
Bell rung/food given at the same time
(NS + UCS)
dog salivates
(unconditioned response: UCR)
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After conditioning
!
Bell rung
(the conditional stimulus: CS)
dog salivates
(conditioned response: CR)
Conditioning, or learning, is said to happen when the dog responds
(conditioned response) to a previously neutral, or unconnected,
stimulus (NS), referred to after conditioning as the conditional stimulus
– the stimulus to which the unassociated behaviour has become
conditioned.
Some interesting points about classical conditioning
1.
Pavlov discovered that dogs aren’t daft! What is meant by this is
that he found out that after conditioning his dogs only responded
(salivated) to the sound of the bell temporarily. After a while on
hearing the bell they did not salivate. It was as if they realised that
they were being conned. When an organism does not conditionally
respond to a conditioned stimulus, this learnt stimulus-response
connection has been broken or extinguished. Pavlov emphasised
that reinforcement is needed to keep the learnt response
happening when the organism comes up against the conditional
stimulus. Put simply, after conditioning every so often the dogs
had to be presented with the bell and the food, otherwise they
would not salivate to the bell alone.
2.
If the learnt, or conditioned, stimulus-response connection does
become extinct, i.e. that bell → salivation no longer happens
(because the reinforcer of food is removed), Pavlov found that
after a period of rest, when the conditional stimulus (bell) is represented, the conditioned response (salivation) may recur. This is
called spontaneous recovery.
3.
Pavlov found that his dogs would, initially, conditionally respond
(salivate) to bells which had slightly different tones to that of the
original bell. He also found the more like the original bell-tone
other bells had, the greater the amount of salivation produced.
This he calls stimulus generalisation. You may like to consider
the similarity here with Piaget’s idea of assimilation.
4.
Pavlov further discovered that over time his dogs went from
stimulus generalisation to stimulus discrimination. Experience
allowed them to discriminate between bells of different tones.
They would only respond to the tone of the original conditional
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stimulus bell. You may like to consider the similarity here with
Piaget’s idea of accommodation.
Watson, on reading Pavlov’s work, believed that the conditioning
process was the explanation to all human behaviours. For Watson, and
other ‘hard’ behaviourists, human behaviour is explained in terms of
learnt responses to stimuli in our environment. All behaviour is the
product of environmental learning. Classical conditioning – learning
that one event follows another – is central to the behaviourists’
understanding of all aspects of our behaviour.
To go some way towards proving that behaviour – both ‘normal’ and
‘abnormal’ – is solely the product of learning Watson conducted his
famous ‘Little Albert’ experiment.
Watson and Raynor’s (1920) ‘Little Albert’ experiment
Watson and Raynor wanted to find out if a phobia could be learnt or
induced. The unwilling participant in their questionable study was a 9month boy called Little Albert. Albert had a pet white rat. Every time
Albert played with the rat, Watson and Raynor whacked a hammer off a
steel bar. This startled Albert! So much so that very quickly he became
‘conditioned’ to responding in a distressed state, by crying and trying to
crawl away, when the stimulus of his rat was brought to him. He had
gone from a previously happy response to the stimulus of his rat to a
learnt (conditioned) distressed response to it. Watson and Raynor had
induced a fear response to the rat stimulus. Watson and Raynor had
‘proved’ that phobias could be learnt. It was not until the 1950s,
however, that behaviourists began to look at very useful therapies to
help people ‘unlearn’ behaviours which caused them, and others, a
problem.
B F Skinner (1904–90)
No discussion on
behaviourism, however
brief, would be complete
without mentioning another
American psychologist,
called Burrhus Frederic
Skinner. Also a behaviourist,
he extended Pavlov’s work
in his theory of operant
conditioning. Using cats,
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rats and a piece of apparatus which has become known as a Skinner
Box, he was able to prove that an organism can be encouraged to
perform a particular behaviour if it has been rewarded for it in the past;
and similarly an organism can be discouraged from a particular
behaviour through the use of punishment. Simply put, reward, or the
use of positive reinforcement, encourages positive behaviours;
punishment, or the use of negative reinforcement, discourages negative
behaviours.
Quick Questions
• What classically conditioned behaviours can we observe in an
infant?
• From your own experience what rewards have been/are used
with you to encourage positive behaviour? What punishments
have been/are used with you to discourage negative behaviours?
• Do they work? If so why? If not, why not?
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Alfred Bandura’s contribution to ‘How do children learn?’
Born in 1925 in Canada, Bandura is best known for his social learning
theory. He was critical of behaviourism in that he thought the
behaviourist understanding of how we learn – through classical and
operant conditioning – was too far removed from real-life situations.
Behaviourists generated their learning theory in a laboratory using
animals. They then ‘jumped’ the theory to apply to human beings. For
Bandura, this was too much. He went about observing children’s
behaviour in real-life situations to try and discover if learnt human
behaviour was more complex than classical and operant conditioning
alone. His social learning theory is based upon a belief that children
learn by observing the behaviours of others. For Bandura, children learn
more by modelling their behaviour on others. They learn via observation
and imitation. This is especially the case as regards gender role and the
development of moral thoughts and behaviours.
In a series of studies, Bandura et al. showed how, and in what
circumstances, children learn behaviour through observational
learning. For example, they would bring 5-year-old children separately
into a room (the experimental group) where each would see an adult
model playing with various toys. Each saw the adult suddenly turn and
assault an inflatable ‘Bobo doll’. They saw the adult model knock it over,
sit on it and punch it on the nose. The adult then proceeded to smash
the doll over the head with a large wooden mallet. Finally he would
throw and kick the doll up in the air, while shouting, ‘Sock him on the
nose, hit him down, throw him in the air, kick him pow!’
Shortly after this, each child was aggravated and deliberately made angry
by having an attractive toy teasingly withheld from them! At the same
time, another group of 5-year-olds who had not seen the adult model’s
behaviour (the control group) were similarly made angry. The adult
model left and all the children were put into the room with the Bobo
doll, wooden mallet, etc. Observing via a two-way mirror Bandura rated
the behaviour of the children. He found that his experimental group
(those who had seen the adult model) copied the adult’s behaviour
almost identically. He was in a position to now say that not only do
children learn by observing, imitating and modelling the behaviour of
others, but more importantly and contrary to what the behaviourists
thought, learnt behaviour does not need any kind of reinforcement.
Having established that learning can occur in the absence of
reinforcement, Bandura and Walters (1963) set about to try and
determine the role, if any, reward and punishment has in the learning
process.
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Three groups of children saw three different films of a model yelling and
punching the Bobo doll. One film ended with the model being praised
for his behaviour, one ended with the model being punished and the
third concluded with the model being neither praised nor punished (no
treatment). Each group of children were left alone in the room and
observed via the two-way mirror. They discovered that the Praise Group
children behaved more aggressively than either the punishment or no
treatment groups. The Punishment Group behaved less aggressively
than either the praise or no treatment groups. In a later phase of the
experiment the children were told they would be rewarded if they did
everything they saw the adult model do in the film. Differences in
behaviour between the praise and punishment groups disappeared
almost immediately! What this suggests is that reinforcement does not
need to be present to acquire a behaviour – observation, imitation and
modelling of another is enough – but if reward or punishment is used,
the behaviour of the child can be influenced in part. Nowadays social
learning theory has been extended into the area of cognitive social
learning theory, which emphasises children’s developing ability to
actively process information coming to them from their environment.
We act upon our environment as it in turn acts upon us. The experience
of this is thought about by the child, and is used to deal with the same
and similar situations later on.
Quick Questions
• Throughout 1999, a secondary school in Wales gave points to
pupils for attending school on a regular basis. Points made
prizes in that pupils who had a good attendance record won a
week-long adventure holiday. Truancy rates fell dramatically.
What aspect of behaviourist theory did this school successfully
apply?
• What might teachers have to do from time to time throughout the
school year to keep truancy rates down to 1999 levels?
• When at secondary school many people take unofficial time-off.
This is not to be recommended, if only because we know that if
we get caught some sort of punishment will be coming our way.
Why then do we do it?
• If you saw your best friend jump fully clothed into a river,
would you do likewise. If not, why not? What major criticism
might be made about social learning theory? Why might a
knowledge of cognitive social learning theory provide a better
explanation of this scenario?
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Cognitive social learning theory
Vygotsky and Bruner: Learning and our social world
In consideration of challenges to Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development in children, Advanced Higher Developmental Psychology
sees the work of Vygotsky and Bruner, with their emphases on learning
and the child’s social world, as important. The influences coming from
Vygotsky and Bruner have allowed for the development of what is called
cognitive social learning theory in psychology.
Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934)
An alternative to the ‘child as scientist’ as proposed by Piaget, Vygotsky
views the child (and any learner) as an apprentice. Unlike Piaget (who
thought cognitive development was based on biological maturation),
Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, believed that cognitive
development was more influenced by the social world we live in.
Underlying the theory is Vygotsky’s observation that our mastery of the
essentials of life is often initially beyond us. We need help. This help
comes from others, i.e. mum, dad, older siblings, teachers, etc. Vygotsky
calls the assistance they give us scaffolding. Scaffolders nourish the
seeds of cognitive ability and potential. The ‘fertiliser’ they use – in a
psychological sense – is the cognition language.
Scaffolders use language to describe and explain our complex world to
us. The better use they make of language in the description and
explanation of phenomena helps our understanding. Your teachers and
lecturers, as scaffolders in the development of your knowledge of
psychology, it is hoped will use the richness of their language skills to
explain and describe matters psychological to you. Their further use of
anecdotes, stories and games will also help you to understand better the
science of mind and behaviour. We use (internalise) other people’s
interpretations of life to help us problem-solve now and in the future.
You, for example, will probably use the language and explanation of
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development from these notes in an
assessment – and will also apply it in an everyday sense to help your
understanding of your own and children’s cognitive development.
We use other people’s explanations as our own inner speech and verbal
thoughts. The point here is fairly obvious. If something is poorly
explained to us this affects our present understanding of it – plus any
future understanding of related, more complex, issues. This is illustrated
on the next page in consideration of a question often asked by young
children.
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In an investigation into scaffolding, Wood et al. (1976) set children of 4
and 5 (in the presence of their mothers) a building task. The mothers
were encouraged to assist their children verbally in the construction.
They noted that mothers all used instructions which went from the
general to specific. Some mums were very general; some were very
specific and some were both. They found that while no single strategy
guaranteed learning, those mothers who mixed general instruction with
the more specific at appropriate points saw a more successful and
efficient outcome in the building of the construction. This was
confirmed by Bruner (1983) who says the most useful learning
environment is one where general instruction is used by the scaffolder
to encourage autonomy of thought and problem-solving and where
difficulties emerge, at that juncture, to use more specific helpful
interventions.
Children are not stupid creatures. They are active learners, or
apprentices, full of enquiry about the world they see around them.
‘Where do babies come from?’ is a question often asked by young
children around age 5 or 6. This question often causes concern for a
parent. If a parent explains ‘babies’ from the point of view of a baby
being like a flower in that it grows from a seed in mummy’s tummy, this
very often satisfies the child’s understanding at that time about an
important aspect of its life. Evading the question does not aid the child’s
need for understanding (maybe as a consequence it will not seek advice
on sex from this parent again). The flower/seed story helps the child
cognitively mature at age 5/6 and later on to understand the biology of
foetal conception and development.
The gap between an individual’s actual ability level and potential ability
as regards task/skill/concept mastery is called their ZPD or zone of
proximal development. The richness of help received from scaffolders
helps the child maximise its potential within any particular ZPD. ZPDs
differ from person to person. They are affected by a person’s genetics,
environment and interaction of both. If, for example, a 7-year-old
Scottish boy has a better-than-average football ability and this is
recognised and encouraged by a primary school teacher who herself has
a coaching background, with support and encouragement from family
and friends, later secondary school teachers and boys’ club officials, the
boy may one day end up day playing professional football for a premiere
league club. If, on the other hand, potential ability is not encouraged,
the boy may never even kick a ball for a Sunday League pub team let
alone club and country.
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For Vygotsky, it is therefore a child and young person’s social world
which influences cognitive development more than biological
maturation. Vygotsky believes the quality and ability to think and reason
using inner speech or verbal thoughts is a consequence of a social
process with others. It develops as a product of our social interactions
with others (especially adults) during infancy, childhood, adolescence
and beyond. Vygotsky views language and cognitive development as
inter-related. For him there are three major elements in the process
towards fully developed cognitive ability. These are:
• Initially the infant and toddler deal with their world through action.
This does not need language per se.
• As children age they then are able to reflect on their own thought
processes through language, using strategies such as talking through
the problem to themselves.
• Understanding comes about in mutual interaction with others in our
environment or social settings. Social interactions with teachers,
peers, parents and other significant people help cognitive
development flourish.
As a result children acquire their culture’s knowledge and skills ‘through
graded collaboration with those who already possess them’ (Rogoff,
1990), in that, according to Vygotsky: ‘Any function in the child’s
cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears
on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane.’
Meadows (1995) gives a good example of cultural development which
takes the infant from the social to the psychological. Very often a young
child will use pointing as an unsuccessful attempt at getting at
something beyond its reach. Mum often picks up on this, makes the
gesture herself, follows it through and picks up the object and hands it
to the child. Thereafter a more deliberate gesture is made often
accompanied by cries, orientating towards the mother and eventually
words and telescopic sentences. The gesture is made towards the
mother, not the object. The child has now internalised this social
experience at a more psychological level.
Unlike Jean Piaget, Vygotsky did not believe children had to be ready
before they could tackle something new or beyond their apparent ken.
He advocated scaffolders provide children with challenges above their
cognitive level but within their respective ZPDs.
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Look up:
Lev Vygotsky
The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological
Investigation
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/index.htm
Lev Vygotsky
Thinking and Speaking
http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/index.htm
Vygotsky Centennial Project 1996 (an excellent gateway.)
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~ALock/virtual/project2.htm
Social Development Theory: L. Vygotsky
http://www.gwu.edu/~tip/vygotsky.html
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Bruner
‘If agency and esteem are central to the construction of a concept
of Self, then the ordinary practices of school need to be examined
with a view to what contribution they make to these two crucial
ingredients of personhood.’
Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education
Jerome Bruner (1964) was much impressed by Vygotsky’s work,
especially the influence of scaffolders as regards children and young
people’s maximisation of cognitive potential and cognitive
development. Like Vygotsky he articulated that thought is dependent
on, or caused by, language. Critical of Piaget’s non-consideration of
language per se, he however shared similar beliefs to Piaget in that he
accepted we are born with a biological predisposition to organise our
world and that biological maturation of the cerebral cortex enhances
complex thinking and problem-solving abilities. He also agreed with
Piaget concerning the natural curiosity and inquisitiveness of children.
Abstract knowledge grows out of action with competence developing
from experience and concrete mental operations. His contribution to
cognitive development concerns the ways children think about their
world. He says children have to develop progressively more
sophisticated forms of knowledge in their minds to help them think and
deal with life. The more complex they discover their world to be as they
get older, the greater the need to use more complex ways of thinking
(representations) about it. As a consequence Bruner says children use
three different ways, forms or modes of representation to think about
their environment. These are:
• the enactive mode occurs at the same time as Piaget’s sensori-motor
stage (0–2). The infant thinks in and uses the enactive mode, or form
of representation, to think about its world, which is represented
(thought about/dealt with) in terms of its sensori-motor actions. This
sounds complicated but all it need mean for us is that infants use a lot
of gestures, facial expressions and obvious emotions (crying,
laughing) which mean something for them in their simple
environment, and which others are able to interpret and act upon.
• the iconic mode is the growing child’s use of mental imagery to
think about, deal with and represent its world. Showing itself just
before the onset of language, the infant begins to form mental
pictures to represent and remember people, objects, etc., in its
environment. This is necessary because the child’s world is becoming
more complex. Gestures and so on just will not do anymore.
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Children begin to store visual images or mental pictures of their
world in their cerebral cortex.
• the semantic mode is when the child begins to represent or think
about its world using language. Language is important in that it allows
the young child to enquire, think about, deal with and act upon its
environment. For Bruner, being able to use the semantic mode, or
form of representing knowledge, to deal with the world is the key to
intellectual growth and development.
Iconic thinking – or its limitations – were considered in a classic
experiment run by Bruner and Kenny (1966).
Bruner and Kenny (1966) presented 5 to 7-year-olds with an
arrangement of differing shaped glasses (height and diameter) as above.
When the glasses were removed, all the children were competent at
putting them back in their original positions. This is a reproduction task
using the iconic mode. The glasses were again removed. The children
were then asked to replace all the glasses in a mirror image of their
original position. This is the transposition task. Those older children
capable of symbolic thought could do this, while the younger iconic
thought children could not. Bruner and Kenney surmised that the
younger children were unable to restructure their original
representation of the stimulus to allow them to deal with the new
situation, that is manipulating the glasses in their heads into the pattern
required.
Results:
Reproduction task
Transposition task
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60% 5-year-olds
0% 5-year-olds
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (AH)
80% 7-year-olds successfully
79% 7-year-olds successfully
THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
The major difference between Piaget and Bruner concerns language.
Bruner believes the jump from iconic to symbolic thought is because of
language. He argues that by activating children’s language, encouraging
symbolic mode thought, their cognitive development is improved.
Piaget, on the other hand, believes cognitive development to be all
about the successful acquisition of operations (sensori-motor, preoperational, etc.). Language is not the cause of development but a tool
used in the course of the development of operational thinking.
Look up:
Constructivist Theory: J. Bruner
http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html
The information-processing (IP) approach to cognitive development
‘Information-processing theories of cognitive development focus
on the processes of cognition and the kinds of information
children are capable of acquiring from the environment and what
they are capable of doing with it.’
Krebs and Blackman (1988)
While in part influenced by Piaget, IP is not hidebound by one theory. It
tries to understand learning from the point of view of information
processes or how we store, interpret, retrieve and evaluate information.
It concerns the greater study of perception, attention, language,
memory and thinking or problem solving. Of developmental interest is
sequential development and working memory (Case, 1978, 1985). The IP
approach agrees here with Piaget in that it advocates the sequential
nature of cognitive development during which a child’s cognitive
processes become more developed, efficient and effective. Central to IP
in developmental psychology is the (biologically limited) working
memory the developing child has at its disposal. Called M space (like
short term memory), a useful analogy to its understanding might be ‘you
can’t put a gallon into a pint pot’. Its limited capacity frustrates
information processing in general and thinking and problem solving in
particular. Central to the IP approach (within developmental
psychology) is an understanding of children’s minds based on ‘the
computer analogy’.
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Cognitive development is as a result of children’s ageing process and
experience – they develop better strategies for remembering and
organising knowledge and for encoding more aspects of the problem on
hand.
2. Child stores, retrieves and
manipulates input
1. Input received
from the
environment
3. Child responds behaviourally
In order to study children’s information processes, IP psychologists have
developed a technique called task analysis. Their logic is that if a child
cannot do the things adults do one must understand the problemsolving steps and sequences involved in their problem-solving strategies.
Task analysis
Take the following problem.
If O’Neill does not tell as many fibs as Jamieson, and Jamieson does not
tell as many fibs as Browne, who is the most truthful?
Oakhill (1984) identifies five elements needed to solve this.
1.
The child must perceive and encode the necessary propositions in
the question – which means they must attend to it.
2.
The propositions have to be stored in working memory. Groome
et al. (1999) see working memory (a hybrid of STM) as like a
computer screen, a kind of mental workspace, where various
operations are performed on current data.
3.
The propositions must be combined in memory to form an
integrated representation in the mind.
4.
The question must be encoded.
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5.
The representation of the propositions must be ‘scanned’ to
answer the question or to conclude on what is being asked.
Failure to deal with the question is, according to Trabasso (1977), due to
a breakdown in information processing (encoding, storage or retrieval)
associated with perception, attention, language, memory and problemsolving and their inter-relationships.
Keeney et al. (1967) presented children of differing ages with a number
of pictures to remember. Before the recall test, they observed most of
the 8–10 year olds ‘mouthing’ the picture series (rehearsal) while
younger ones of 5 did not. Although the 5-year-olds remembered less of
the picture series than their older counterparts, when taught the
rehearsal strategy they thereafter did as well as the older children
concerning memory recall (remember Vygotsky). At age 5 memory
appears just as good as an older child’s but is not used as efficiently or
effectively.
Bee (2000) and Pine (1999) each suggest that as children grow and
mature:
•
•
•
•
they acquire more and more powerful strategies to remember
they use these strategies more efficiently and flexibily
they apply them to an increasing array of problems
those of school-age are capable of using a broader range of different
strategies for the same problem, so that if strategy number 1 fails, a
back-up or alternative is available for application.
One new strategy is the child’s growing awareness of its own mental
processes. This is called metacognition. Part of the larger category
executive process (planning what to do and considering alternatives),
metacognition and executive processes may gradually emerge as a result
of ageing.
The IP approach does not emphasise Piaget’s qualitative stages to
cognitive development. Siegler (1976) says that it is not biological
maturation and resultant cognitive change in children that accounts for
differing operational abilities but it is their acquisition of increasingly
complex rules for problem-solving. Seigler agrees with Piaget to a
sequence in a child’s grasp of new strategies, but for him these are not
the same as distinct developmental stages. According to Bee (2000),
some of the changes Piaget attributed to new mental structures are
easier explained in the light of increased experiences with the same (or
similar) task or problem. As a result the child becomes more efficient
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
and effective at encoding, storing and retrieving information necessary
for thinking and problem-solving. These, for the IP approach, are
quantitative changes. However, at the same time Bee comments:
‘There also seems to be a real qualitative change in the complexity,
generalisability, and flexibility of strategies used by the child.’
Student activity: Essay
Describe, discuss, and evaluate the theories of Vygotsky and
Bruner in relation to cognitive development. Your essay should be
about 1000 words in length.
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Practical applications of theory and research to education
Whether cognitive development is biological or social in origin (or both)
much can be found in the world of education regarding applications of
theories as advocated by Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner.
Piaget and education
Piaget did not see himself as an educationalist; however his theory has
had an impact especially in the twenty-first century child-centered
nursery and primary classroom. Some implications of Piagetian theory,
most especially readiness, the curriculum and teaching methods, are
considered below.
1.
‘Readiness’: parents, teachers and society at large, due to Piaget’s
teachings, understand children to qualitatively differ in what they
can think, feel and do in comparison to adults. Teachers therefore
are more aware of age-related stages of development and work
accordingly. Nurseries, for example, place great emphasis on
developing physical and motor skills, conservation work with sand,
water, Plasticine, counters, etc. Scottish nurseries now have a
statutory duty to have a set curriculum. This very much reflects
what Piaget identified children should be able to do at the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages. Few are ‘hard line’ and do not
fully concur with Piaget’s idea that if children are biologically
immature to do certain things they will get confused and upset
when they try but do not succeed on tasks thought by Piaget
beyond them.
2.
‘Stimulating active learning’: Piaget believed in active
participation and interaction with the environment to encourage
cognitive development and operational thought. Active learning is
evident in nurseries and primaries in Scotland today – and was
indeed 40 years ago with active teaching/learning in some workingclass primary schools used to encourage and develop cognitive
abilities to allow any chance of success in the 11+ ‘qualifying’
examination needed to enter a senior secondary. One school, St.
Paul’s Primary at Tollcross in Glasgow had a 99 per cent success
rate in the Qualifying Examination as a consequence of active
learning – at a level difficult to recognise today. To enhance
discovery learning, the classroom environment should be awash
with materials and activities to stimulate curiosity and allow
transition to greater cognitive levels (stages).
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THEORIES AND CONCEPTS
3.
‘Questioning’: Questioning of children also helps active learning.
When wrong answers are forthcoming the teacher should look to
clues in the child’s response to identify their thinking process, or
where they may be developmentally at present.
4.
‘Use of concrete operational materials’: Again fairly obvious
teaching practice for those working with children under the age of
11 (formal operational stage). This enhances concrete operational
cognitive operations and makes easier the transition to formal,
more abstract, operational thought.
5.
‘Assimilation and accommodation’: Awareness of these by the
teacher is important in the learning process. New concepts/
experiences should be linked to what the child already knows
(Hughes, 1978 – the policeman/doll). This aids assimilation and
ultimately quicker and more efficient accommodation.
Vygotsky and education
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, in an applicable sense, takes
its cue from the child. Progress is dependent upon the child. It is a
child-centred approach which views the teacher as a facilitator or
enabler. Vygotsky takes a different tack. For him, intelligence is the
capacity to learn by instruction. He sees teachers as guides, assisting
their apprentice to pay attention, concentrate and thus learn more
effectively. This is done through listening, watching, doing, discussing,
conversing, etc. with teachers and other significant scaffolding others.
This is what is called a didactic teaching methodology. It is the flavour
of education in Britain in the twenty-first century. We have moved away
(and back?) to a more teacher-centred or traditional approach. This
would worry Vygotsky in that he did not:
‘…advocate mechanical form teaching where children go through the
motions of sitting at desks and passing exams that are meaningless to
them… On the contrary Vygotsky stressed intellectual development
rather than procedural learning.’
Sutherland (1992)
Vygotsky did not see teachers as some kind of dictator in the classroom
but like Piaget advocated their control of the classroom. They are there
to develop, extend and challenge children to go beyond where they are
at present. This, as was said earlier, is done via language, culture and the
child’s social world. The key to the maximisation of cognitive potential
is determined by each individual’s zone of proximal development (ZPD).
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Meaning given to stimuli is a social construct obtained from linguistic
interactions between the scaffolder and apprentice. Vygotsky did not see
children in the same light as Piaget. They do not develop competence
via their own actions. They need some help to develop knowledge,
concepts and skills. This is forthcoming from the more expert in
interactions as described above. However, as Keegan (2000) indicates,
‘A culture of teachers as scaffolders in Scottish classrooms is maybe
not as obvious as it once was.’
Interestingly, Vygotsky saw a place for collaborative learning with group
learning and peer tutoring from older more able children. This was
because these environments especially encourage language,
explanations and co-operative working. The latter was much appreciated
in Vygotsky’s Soviet culture at the time. His theory has a political
message which has much to be said for it. According to Sutherland
(1992):
‘The socialist rationale was one of all children working for the general
good rather than the capitalist one of each child trying to get out of
school as much benefit as s/he can without putting anything back into it.
The brighter child is helping the less able one since the latter … will be
more of an asset to society as a literate rather than an illiterate adult.’
Scaffolding in an educational context
Bruner et al. conducted a number of research studies to examine the
role of scaffolding in learning with 3-, 4- and 5-year-old children. Wood,
Bruner and Ross (1976), discovered that there are a number of factors
that typify effective scaffolding in children’s cognitive development:
• Recruitment: The teacher captures interest and motivates students to
attempt the task.
• Reduction of degrees of freedom: The teacher simplifies the task and
breaks it down into manageable steps in order for students to achieve
success.
• Direction maintenance: In the early stages of the task, the teacher
encourages and motivates to succeed. Later on, the student should
find the task motivating in its own right.
• Marking critical features: The teacher talks up relevant aspects of the
task, in order that the student can gauge how far off the mark they
are/are not.
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• Demonstration: The teacher demonstrates a correct solution or,
where a part solution exists, should offer explanations of any error.
This should lead to the student imitating on this and thus improving
on effort, success and self-esteem.
They carried out an observational study where a tutor taught each
individual child to build a 3-D structure, a superordinate task the child
could not do on its own. It was agreed previously that the tutor would
allow the children to complete as much of the task as possible
themselves and would offer verbal help before demonstration of the
task. The tutor’s actions and reactions at each stage of the task were
dependent upon the child’s success or failure. If they were doing well
they said nothing. This study shows the process of scaffolding. The tutor
guided the children through a task, at each stage allowing the child’s
level of achievement to determine the next level of tutoring. The tutor
worked within the child’s ZPD (zone of proximal development) – the
area between what the child could do on her own and what she could
achieve with help. Is this possible in a classroom of 30 children?
Look up:
‘Change law with a mind to the future’, Gerard Keegan, TES Scotland, 14
April 2000.
Bruner and education
Sutherland (1992) asks:
‘How can teachers reach the targets set by the government without
some acceleration of the slow learner? Are the most able pupils being
fully stretched in comprehensive schools particularly in the mixedability classes? Should they be accelerated to the next stage?’
To answer the questions posed above it is useful to consider Bruner’s
theory of cognitive development in an educational context.
Piaget lays emphasis in his theory on ‘readiness’. Essentially he is saying
a child has to be biologically and thus cognitively ready to deal with
sensori-motor, pre-operational, concrete operational or formal
operational thought. Bruner (1953) disagrees. He believes much more
in active interventions in the form of a stimulating learning
environments as ‘any subject can be taught effectively in some
intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development’.
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Stimulating differing levels of thinking for Bruner is to be found in his
spiral curriculum. This is where a child doing a particular subject
comes to understand its principles and concepts at a deeper and deeper
level. This is evident in the nursery where aspects of Piagetian
conservation are first introduced. It is revisited in a more structured
form in the early years of primary and this continues throughout with
children exposed during planned active learning activities to the
concept in ever increasing and diverse contexts. By the concrete
operational stage conservation should, among other things, be
synonymous with volume. This is helped along by teachers making links
within and between the subjects being investigated. Very often a glue in
the form of a term long project is used to help do this. During
secondary school the topic is again looked at, this time using and
applying it in abstract terms, i.e. using formulae – now in the absence of
primary school concrete operational props.
Adey et al. (1989) investigated the effectiveness of CASE (Cognitive
Acceleration Science Education) materials in England (also piloted in
Scotland in 1999). A number of schools formed both a control and
experimental group. In all cases the control/experimental group were
taught by the same teachers. The experimental group were exposed to
CASE materials and teaching methods very much based on the
‘stimulation of active learning’ model proposed by Bruner. CASE
consists of practical problems for pupils to tackle that require formal
operational thought (hypothesis testing and abstract thought). Elements
of behaviourism and cognitive learning theory are present with pupils
having to successfully complete one task before moving on to the next
more complex one. The more complex task demands knowledge gained
from the previous ones. In comparison to the control group who were
not exposed to CASE, and using Piagetian formal operational reasoning
tasks as their measure, Adey et al. reported that after three years the
boys in the experimental group did significantly better than both boys
and girls in the control group. The research indicates that accelerated
learning programmes in at least one subject may benefit some children,
if biologically and thus cognitively ready to be accelerated. Once again
Piaget in relation to Bruner seems at least part correct. Or should that
be the other way around?! Such is the nature of psychology.
Like Vygotsky, Bruner views teachers as ‘interventionists’ who are
‘obliged to make demands on their pupils’ (Sutherland, 1992). Both see
the use of culture as important vehicles to learning. Bruner is more
child-centred than Vygotsky who leans more towards teacher-centred
learning and direct instruction. All of them – Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky,
and indeed the IP approach – have valuable things to say for the teacher
and learner alike.
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Student activity: Essay
In around 1000 words describe, discuss and evaluate where
appropriate the practical contributions made to education by
Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner.
The information-processing approach and education
Originating in the USA, IP makes a contribution from the point of view
of memory and the limited ability of young children to process
information. These temporary biological ‘deficits’ are the cause of poor
reading, and memory retention and recall difficulties. IP aids the
teacher/learner in suggesting strategies to dilute memory load in the
young learner and still achieve the learning goal. This sounds
complicated but all it might mean is that in working out ‘sums’ children
are encouraged to write them down! IP implies a teacher-centred
learning environment with the teacher as a kind of cognitive repair man
or woman. It also places an emphasis on metacognition in making
learners aware of their own learning: the ‘why can I/can’t I do this?’ It is
seen when children say ‘I can’t do this because I haven’t learnt my 12
times table yet.’
This helps both cognitive development and insight into how we process
information (Nippold, 1984). Davis (1984) suggests IP should not take a
passive view of the learner. IP should actively encourage, from an
information-processing perspective, hypothesis testing by learners and
their use of visual imagery to enhance memory encoding, retention and
recall when applying what they have discovered to real-life situations.
Factors which affect language development – Chomsky
Mike Cardwell in his excellent Complete A–Z Psychology Handbook
defines language as ‘an agreed set of symbols that enable us to convey
meaning and converse with other members of the same culture who
share the same language’.
The Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus see language as: ‘A system for the
expression of thoughts, feelings, etc., by the use of spoken sounds or
conventional symbols... The faculty for the use of such systems, which is
a distinguishing characteristic of man... The language of a particular
nation or group. The specialised vocabulary used by a particular group.’
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Agreed definition is difficult. Language has been studied from the
beginnings of time. Is there such a thing as one agreed language? We
learn spoken language at home. We are then sent to school to learn to
read, write and converse better in language! How we speak in the home
will perhaps not be the language we use with our peers. Similarly the
language some of us use with our peers will not be the same when we
are talking to small children. We learn foreign languages. We learn the
language of academic subjects which allows us to converse with others
who use the same language, i.e. mathematics, music, chemistry, physics,
psychology, etc. While we all share the same spoken language, why is it
that the language coming from a particular person is perceived as more
important than another? Language is power. A knowledge of language
should equip you to be more effective in your interpersonal
relationships.
The psychological study of language is heavily influenced by British
philosophy from the establishment of the British empirical tradition by
John Locke in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continued
by George Berkeley, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, G E Moore and
Bertrand Russell in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These
English (and Scottish) philosophers gave birth to what is nowadays
called analytic or linguistic philosophy.
How is language acquired?
Conditioning, imitation and rules have all been found to play a part but
before these environmental influences begin, our biology must come
into play. We have a biologically determined critical period for language
acquisition. Noam Chomsky first brought this to psychology’s attention.
Chomsky, an American linguist, writer, teacher and political activist,
founded what is both brilliantly and absurdly called transformationalgenerative linguistic analysis!
What Chomsky means by this is that as well as the rules of grammar
specific to individual languages, there are also universal rules or
linguistic universals common to all languages. These include the use of
nouns, adjectives and verbs at the deep structure level of language. All
languages have the same deep structure. This shows that the ability to
form and understand language is innate to all human beings.
Chomsky believes that children the world over are born with an innate
language acquisition device to help them cope with the complexities of
language. There appears to be a critical period for language acquisition.
The theory lies within the biological approach in psychology and is
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beyond the scope of this course, but suffice to say it is all down to the
epigenic maturation of those parts of the brain that deal with language.
Once this critical period is reached (11/12 according to Lennenberg,
1964 and 1967) little can be done to kick-start language and its attendant
potentialities for the individual. Our ability to switch on to the
acquisition of language in early childhood is uncanny. Bilingualism need
only prove this point.
One criticism of Chomsky’s work is Bruner’s observation that you
cannot divorce language from the context within which it is used.
Bruner (1983) views language as ‘a by-product (and a vehicle) of culture
transmission’. Not only does it have rules and structure (however
acquired) but much more importantly it has a social function.
Furthermore, Bloom (1970) in researching into toddler utterances
suggests Chomsky ignores meaning at the expense of rules and
structure. Bloom observed a toddler say ‘Mummy sock’ in two situations.
In one mummy was putting on the infant’s sock, in another she was
picking it up. Intention and meaning in both utterances are different.
His theory also takes little account of the way adults simplify their
language to help infants’ understanding. We use shorter sentences,
speak high-pitched (like a Tellytubby!) and emphasise important words
and phrases. Called ‘motherese’ (a term now apparently deemed
politically incorrect), Gelman and Shatz (1977) feel it is important to the
acquisition of language. Young children, when talking to even younger
children, like adults adjust their speech to the perceived level of
linguistic skill they think the other child possesses. The author has
observed his own 9-year-old daughter talk to 3- and 4-year-olds as if they
were from the planet Zog! The author’s own preference, while
observing pitch and tone conventions, is to talk to learners of all ages
using elaborated code with concrete operational examples to aid
cognitive development. This is in line with Chomsky in that he thinks
talking to children in a simplistic way is inadequate to the development
of their linguistic competencies. The author here would go further and
suggest it is not just inadequate to linguistic development, but damaging
to intellectual potential. ‘Talk up’ to our learners: don’t ‘talk down’.
Research: privation and language acquisition
Two pieces of research deserve mention here. These are the Koluchová
twins (Koluchová, 1972, 1976, 1991) and the case of Genie as reported
by Rymer (1993) and Curtiss (1977).
The Koluchová (1972, 1976, 1991) longitudinal study of twin
Czechoslovak boys is a classic. Their mother died when the twins were
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born and they were fostered for the first 18 months of their lives. They
were then returned to the father and stepmother who subjected them
to a cruel régime. They were isolated from everyone and were kept
malnourished, given no exercise or intellectual stimulation. When found
at age 7 they were physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally
retarded. They were then placed in the care of two sisters who
nurtured, loved and cherished them. They both gradually made up
physical, cognitive social and emotional deficits. Now both are reported
as developmentally normal and are themselves married and bringing up
children. They did catch up cognitively and intellectually with their
cohort age but remain in the lower reaches of intellectual ability in
relation to their cohort normal distribution.
Rymer (1993) and Curtiss (1977) report the famous case of Genie. Born
to dysfunctional parents, her father locked Genie away from birth
thinking she was vulnerable because she was retarded. She was
physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally deprived throughout her
entire childhood, only being brought to the attention of the authorities
at the age of 13 when she was removed from these dire straits and
placed in the care of the local authority. It was at this point her father
committed suicide. She had immense difficulty in acquiring spoken
language. This may have been because she was retarded and/or some
evidence for Chomsky’s LAD. She did acquire and used Ameslan
(American Sign Language). Her overall recovery was disrupted by
unsettled and unstable foster homes and while eventually physically
recovering she was cognitively, socially and emotionally dysfunctional
showing autistic symptoms such as disinterest in the people around her.
Look up:
The Noam Chomsky Archive
http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/index.cfm
Theory
http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~iandc/Authors/chomskynoam.html
Student activity: Essay
In around 1000 words and using relevant research evidence where
appropriate describe, discuss and evaluate Chomsky’s view on the
acquisition of language.
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Further reading: cognitive development
Bee, H, The Developing Child (7th ed.), NY: Harper Collins, Chapters 7–
8, 1995
De Villiers, P A and De Villiers, J, Early Language, London: Fontana,
1979
Donaldson M, Children’s Minds, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1978
Meadows S, ‘Cognitive Development’ in P E Bryant and A M Coleman
(eds), Developmental Psychology, Harlow: Longman
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Glossary: Cognitive development
accommodation: more advanced form of organising our world. Piaget
says we create schemas or schemata (mental structures) about our
world, first simply (assimilation), but realise as we develop that all we
come across cannot quite ‘fit in’ or be dealt with by these existing
simple schemata. We therefore adapt or change existing schemata to
accommodate new information from our increasingly more complex
world.
animism: evident in childhood play – especially during Piaget’s preoperational stage. Animism is where children give a living personality
to teddies, dolls, toy soldiers, etc. Animism gives us a clue as to how
young children perceive their world.
apprentices: term used by Vygotsky to describe children as active
learners. It implies that children need help to maximise the
development of their cognitive skills, abilities and competencies.
Help comes from parents, caregivers, older siblings, teachers, the
peer group, etc. Piaget sees children as ‘scientists’ who cognitively
develop by testing hypotheses in/about their environment. Vygotsky
takes a more cautious approach, by suggesting they are apprentices
who need assistance from others.
assimilation: a simple form of organising information about our world
(see accommodation). Piaget says that assimilation occurs when we
create a mental schema about something in our world. Assimilation
sees a child deal with its world in terms of existing schemata. After a
while the child comes to realise that its existing assimilated schemata
is inappropriate to deal with its growing knowledge of the world. It
changes or creates new schemata as a result (accommodation).
Bandura, Alfred: Canadian psychologist who advocated social learning
theory as another way of looking at how children learn from their
environment. They learn certain behaviours by observation, imitation
and modelling of others.
behaviourists: sometimes called the first force in psychology.
Behaviourism emerged as a reaction to psychoanalysis (second force)
because it felt psychology should be about actual observable
behaviour, as opposed to the unobservable and inaccessible contents
of the human mind, which behaviourists felt were private and
personal to an individual. Behaviourism had become a powerful force
by the middle of the twentieth century in the USA and has had a
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tremendous influence on psychology worldwide. Behaviourists such
as Pavlov, Watson and Skinner gave psychology an understanding of
learning from the point of view of conditioning. They say we learn as
a consequence of classical and operant conditioning, and that
individuals can be seen as the sum total of learnt stimulus-response
(S-R) units of behaviour.
Bruner, Jerome: a psychologist who says children’s intellectual
development depends on how their minds use the information they
receive. He identified enactive, iconic and semantic types of thinking
used by the growing child to represent its world.
classical conditioning: discovered by Ivan Pavlov while working for the
Soviet secret service, classical conditioning, or classical learning, is
where we as organisms learn that one event (a stimulus) will predict
another stimulus or event. Pavlov first noticed classical conditioning
when he observed that dogs in his laboratory salivated at the sight of
their keepers. They had learnt that their appearance meant that they
were to be fed.
conditional stimulus: a stimulus you teach a participant to respond to
in some way or other. Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate when
they heard the conditional stimulus of the bell.
conditioned/conditioning: behaviourist term for learning.
cognitive development: includes perception, attention, language,
memory and thinking (or problem solving). Developmental
psychology has been particularly interested in what influences
thinking and intellectual development. First thought to be dependent
on biological development and genetic endowment, developmental
psychology now realises that our environment plus the active
learning experiences we get from it all contribute to cognitive
development.
concrete-operational stage: Piaget’s third stage of cognitive, or
intellectual, development between the ages of 7–11. The concreteoperational stage is identified in the developing child’s ability to think
more abstractly about its world. The child solves problems using
abstract reasoning such as reversibility and simple hypothesising.
conservation: a child’s ability to understand physical aspects of its world
such as number, volume, length, weight and mass. The child’s ability
to conserve begins to develop at the end of the pre-operational stage
(2–7).
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control group: in order to allow us to narrow down the possibility of
error in psychological experiments we very often have two groups of
people taking part. This helps us make comparisons between them.
One group we call the experimental group, and the other we call the
control group. The experimental group are given a ‘treatment’ of
some kind while the control group go without. Both groups are then
tested for performance. If the experimental group significantly do
better/worse on the performance measurement than the control
group, we are more confident that there is a connection (causeeffect) between the treatment given and performance.
decentre/decentring: a young child during the pre-operational stage
will begin to decentre, or show it can see the world from other
people’s point of view. Up until then the child is egocentric, only
seeing the world from its own viewpoint.
disequilibrium: a Piagetian term referring to a child during
accommodation where it is changing/forming new schemata in order
to deal better with its world. Old schemata just won’t do.
egocentric: a child’s inability to see the world from another person’s
point of view. When a child does, it is said to now be able to decentre.
See Jean Piaget’s ‘mountain study’.
empirical data: results obtained by careful experimental research, as
opposed to just thinking (philosophically) about an issue.
enactive mode: Jerome Bruner’s notion as to how children first
‘represent’ or think about their world. The enactive mode sees a
baby, for example, represent and deal with its environment using
sensori-motor behaviours.
epigenesis: epigenic principles. The unfolding of our genetic blueprint.
The biological trigger necessary for the onset of physical, cognitive,
social and emotional development and change. The fact that
biological development is necessary before other physical, cognitive
and emotional developments can take place, e.g. walking, where a
baby has to biologically distribute body mass, build muscle, etc.,
before it can toddle. The onset of puberty is another example of
epigenic principles in action.
equilibrium: a Piagetian term where a child is said to be assimilating
with its world. It is dealing with its environment in terms of existing
knowledge structures or schemata.
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et al.: abbreviation for et alia, a Latin term which means ‘and others’.
experimental group: see control group. The experimental group in
psychology is a group of participants who are given some kind of
‘treatment’ that allows comparison with a control group who do not
receive any treatment.
formal operational stage (11–13): the last stage in Piaget’s theory of
cognitive development. By this stage children can deal formally with
their world; they can think and reason logically, hypothesise, etc.
Interestingly, there is some evidence that a few people do not
successfully acquire formal operational thought, especially that of
working with abstract numbers.
genetic epistemology: the study of the growth of thought and
knowledge in relation to evolutionary biology.
‘hard’ behaviourists: Watson, Skinner, Pavlov, etc. These early
behaviourists saw all human behaviours as a consequence of learnt S-R
(stimulus-response) units of behaviour. We are what we are, and
become what we become, as a result of learning.
hypothetical constructs: a phrase used in psychology that gives names
to things that do not exist in reality (and consequentially are very
hard to measure/observe), e.g. perception.
iconic mode: Jerome Bruner’s idea that children as they get older (2+)
begin to think and deal with their world using mental images.
imitation: The Canadian psychologist Alfred Bandura proposed in his
social learning theory that children model their behaviour by copying
others that they see.
laboratory experiment: a major research method used in psychology,
especially by behaviourists and their modern day equivalent. A
laboratory experiment is characterised by the scientists’ control of
extraneous variables in order to work out any cause and effect
relationship between an independent variable (the one that is
manipulated or changed) and a dependent variable (the one that is
measured or observed).
language: a cognitive process identified as particular to human beings.
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mastery play: play, as considered by Piaget, was seen as important as it
helps a child practise and develop skills and abilities. He thought
children go through a sequence of development regarding play
behaviours. Mastery play is the first where the child repeats
behaviours, in play, in order to master them.
mental representation: the images we use in our minds to represent or
think about our world.
model: term used by Bandura to identify the person whose behaviour a
child is imitating.
modelling: the process of imitation.
modes of representation: ways of thinking about our world. See
Jerome Bruner.
object permanence: Piaget’s observation that a very young child
appears to deal with its world in the ‘here and now’. If the child
cannot directly see or experience something, it does not exist. See
Piaget’s ‘ball and cloth’ experiment.
observation: a popular research strategy used in psychology.
Observation is of three kinds. Natural observation sees a psychologist
directly observe a situation in nature (as it happens). They do not/
cannot exercise any control in a situation of natural observation.
Natural observations might be looking at play as it happens within a
school playground. Participant observation is where a psychologist
sets up and takes part in an observation with his/her participants, e.g.
Piaget’s mountain study. Non-participant observation is where a
psychologist will set up an observation but observe what happens
from afar, e.g. via a two-way mirror, or as a bystander taking notes,
e.g. Bandura’s Bobo doll. In observations there is no manipulation of
an independent variable.
observational learning: Bandura’s term for the process of learning
certain behaviours by a child as it observes and imitates the
behaviours of others.
operant conditioning: attributed to a major player in behaviourism, B F
Skinner. Skinner believed that we are encouraged towards certain
behaviours by the use of positive reinforcement (reward) and
discouraged from certain behaviours by the use of negative
reinforcement (punishment).
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organisation: an innate or inborn ability to organise information about
our world identified by Jean Piaget.
participant: more modern term used to signify people who take part in
psychological research. Previously referred to as subjects.
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovitch: Soviet Nobel Prize winning physiologist
(1849–1936) whose work with dogs saw him putting forward a
learning theory regarding classical conditioning. Classical
conditioning is where we learn that one event will follow another; or
that one event predicts another.
Piaget, Jean: Swiss psychologist (1896–1980) whose main contribution
to psychology is that cognitive development (notably intelligence)
occurs in stages for children. Children cannot do certain cognitive
tasks until they are biologically ready.
pre-operational stage (2–7): Piaget’s second stage of cognitive
development in children. Important aspects of the pre-operational
stage are conservation of number, volume, length, etc; animism,
egocentrism and decentring.
positive reinforcement: behaviourist term attributed to B F Skinner
which means the use of reward to encourage particular behaviours.
reflex action: or unconditioned response is a behaviourist term
concerning any response that is produced by an organism whenever
an unconditioned stimulus is present. In Pavlov’s famous experiment
into classical conditioning, the unconditioned response was
salivation, when food powder (the unconditioned stimulus) was put
into each dog’s mouth.
reversibility: at the concrete operational stage of cognitive
development, Piaget believes we develop reversibility. Reversibility is
our mental ability to move concepts around in our minds in order to
solve problems. It might be seen in a child of between 7 and 11 when
they are presented with two (undisclosed) half-pint jugs of water and
are asked to work out without touching anything whether or not the
two half-pint measures will ‘fit into’ a third jug of undisclosed size.
rule-bound play: develops according to Piaget during the concreteoperational stage of cognitive development. It is where the
developing child begins to appreciate that in order to work, play and
live together rules are necessary to govern people’s behaviour.
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sequence of development: physical, cognitive, social and emotional
changes across the human lifecycle, some of which happen in
identifiable and progressive stages (age-stage problem solving and
language abilities, etc.) while others happen in a similarly identifiable
but continuous manner (the ageing process, non-age stage
development of personality, etc.)
scaffolding: attributed to the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He
believed that cognitive ability depended very much on what we learn
from our social world. Scaffolding is the support we get as children,
teenagers and adults to help us develop whatever potentials we have.
Scaffolding comes from parents, brothers, sisters, teachers or indeed
anyone who has a significant positive influence on the nurturing of
cognitive development in individuals.
schema: an organised structure or bundle of knowledge we have about
aspects of our world that can change with age and experience. Piaget
thinks our ability to organise our world on the basis of schemata is
innate.
semantic mode: a term used by Jerome Bruner to identify how infants
and children develop ways to think about their world. Thinking about
the world using the semantic mode occurs when children begin to
think, or represent, their world using language. Language is
important in that it allows the young child to enquire, think about,
deal with and act upon their environment. For Bruner, being able to
use the semantic mode, or form of representing knowledge in a
meaningful way to deal with the world, is the key to intellectual
growth and development. Semantic thinking turns on language.
sensori-motor stage (0–2): Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development
from birth to age 2. Initially the baby can only deal with its world
using innate reflex actions such as rooting. A baby has no knowledge
of a world outwith and away from itself. If it can’t see an object, that
object no longer exists in the baby’s mind in relation to its world.
This egocentrism gradually diminishes during this stage as the infant
develops object permanence sequences of development concerning
play behaviours. Sylva (1980) and others propose that play can be
categorised broadly into challenging play, and simple/passive play.
She identifies four categories of play behaviours: 1 Simple play; 2
Complex play; 3 Practice play; 4 Symbolic play. Another psychologist,
Parten (1933), confirms much of Sylva’s work. For Parten, play
develops in five stages: 1 Solitary play; 2 Onlooker play; 3 Parallel
play; 4 Associative play; 5 Co-operative play. The development of play
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behaviours and strategies influences cognitive, social and moral
development. Personality is also affected.
Skinner, B F: Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904–90) was an early
American behaviourist whose theory of operant conditioning has
been hugely influential in understanding how we learn behaviours
from early infancy onwards. For Skinner, the use of reward (positive
reinforcement) will encourage the repetition of desired behaviours
and the use of punishment (negative reinforcement) should
discourage unwanted behaviours. Operant conditioning is very
obvious in all aspects of life. It is used by parents in the home,
teachers in school and society in general.
Skinner Box: apparatus used by the behaviourist B F Skinner to develop
his theory of operant conditioning. It is a cage-like structure that
contains a food delivery chute and a lever. A rat would be put in the
box. First the rat explores its environment and will investigate the
lever. It finds that food is delivered when the lever is pressed. When
the rat is later observed to successively press the lever to obtain food,
this is taken to be proof that learning has occurred. The rat has come
to associate the pressing of the lever with the delivery of food. Food
is the positive reinforcer that will see the rat press the lever
thereafter.
social learning theory: attributed to the Canadian psychologist Alfred
Bandura, social learning theory believes that children learn social
behaviours by modelling themselves on others using imitation and
observation. What they see adults do is especially influential on
children.
stages: developmental psychology has a special interest in finding out
what physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes happen is
stages during our life and what changes happen continuously.
Changes that occur in identifiable and distinct stages in our life would
include the cognitive development of language. A change that occurs
in a continuous fashion would be ageing.
stimuli: an object, event, situation, etc., which we come across in our
environment and to which we normally respond in some way, i.e. if it
rains (the environmental stimulus) we put an umbrella up (the
organism’s response).
symbolic play: Sylva et al. (1980) report that play behaviours develop in
a sequence of stages. Symbolic play is imaginary, make-believe or
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pretend play that becomes more and more evident in children from 4
onwards. It is play which involves children using objects to represent
other things, e.g. a brush handle being used to ride around on
because it represents a horse; a collection of books end-up on the
floor which become a cave; dolls, teddies, etc., which become real
people. Sylva believes symbolic play to itself represent the child’s
realisation that there is a difference between the real and imagined
world. Make-believe play encourages imagination and related
language and creative thinking ability. Symbolic play helps shape
social skills and the development of personality.
spontaneous recovery: behaviourist term associated with Pavlov. In the
absence of reinforcement, the desired response to a conditional
stimulus will disappear. This is known as extinction. Occasionally
however, after a period of rest, the organism may once again respond
to a conditional stimulus when it is presented. This is called
spontaneous recovery.
treatment: when used in the context of psychological research,
‘treatment’ is the giving of something to an experimental group to
see whether it has any effect on behaviour. If you were trying to
measure the effect alcohol had on reaction time you would give
measures of alcohol to people and test their reactions as a
consequence. The measure of alcohol is the ‘treatment’.
Vygotsky, Lev: Soviet psychologist (1896–1934) who emphasises the
importance of social interaction with others as the key to cognitive
development and fulfilment of whatever zone of proximal
development an individual might have.
Watson, John Broadus: American founding father of the behaviourist
school in psychology (1878–1958) who, in the early part of the
twentieth century, did much to move psychology towards being as
like a real science as it can. He was influenced by the work of Pavlov
in the former USSR.
ZPD or zone of proximal development: each individual’s range of
physical/cognitive potential as illustrated by Vygotsky. We all have
similar potential for different things, but not all in equal measure.
ZPD is influenced by genetics, but if genetic potential is not
encouraged and nurtured by scaffolders, an individual’s potential in a
particular area may never be realised. The richness of the child’s
social world is important for Vygotsky to the development and
fulfilment of every child’s zones of proximal development.
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Concept 3: Ageing
The study of ageing is, as is ‘early socialisation’ and ‘cognitive
development’, an optional key concept at Advanced Higher level.
Students are asked to consider two key concepts and one issue. This is
the third key concept considered in this AH pack.
What is ‘ageing’ in developmental psychology?
Ageing in developmental psychology generally examines the ‘meaning’
of old; physical and physiological change and social adjustment theories
as a consequence of ageing – notably social disengagement theory;
activity theory and the psychosocial theory of personality development
as it applies in the later years of life.
In a psychological sense ageing sees interest at Advanced Higher focus
upon:
• Changes in physical and cognitive functioning
• Psychological ageing
• Theories and research of ageing – disengagement theory, activity
theory
• Social ageing.
Ageing
Average life expectancy in industrialised countries now stands at 75,
with women living seven or eight years longer than men. For most of
their history, humans have lived, on average, a mere 40 or 50 years – a
lifespan heavily influenced by deaths in infancy. It is only in the last 50
years, when improvements in health care have enabled more people to
survive into adult life, that we have seen an acceleration in longevity and
an increasing proportion of old people in the population. But these
startling advances have a downside: a rise in disability and chronic
diseases, the most prevalent of which is Alzheimer’s disease. The World
Health Organisation’s statement – ‘Health expectancy is more important
than life expectancy’ – has never been more apt.
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Things you might want to know about ageing and demographic
change in the UK
The make-up and distribution of our population will be very different in
30 years time.
In 1995 there were fewer than 9 million people over 65 in the UK. By
2030 there will be 50 per cent more – almost 14 million.
In 1991, 21 per cent of the workforce were aged 20–34. By 2001 this had
dropped to 14 per cent.
People are having fewer children; family life and the world of work have
changed for almost everyone and life expectancy is increasing. Taken
together, these developments will have significant economic
implications for all of us – whatever our age. In just one generation, the
number of first time marriages has halved and divorces have trebled.
Lone parents now head almost a quarter of families with children, nearly
three times the proportion in 1971. For the first time in 1997 more
women had babies between the ages of 30 and 35 than those aged 20 to
25.
When the National Health Service was designed, life expectancy was
around 50 years. Today it is around 80. It was set up when 60 per cent of
the population were under 20. Soon 50 per cent of the population will
be over 50. This is a tremendous tribute to medicine and to improved
social conditions. It creates great opportunities for a healthier old age.
But it also pays testament to the substantial changes which are taking
place in our society now.
By 2021 41 per cent of the population will be over 50. By 2031 the
proportion of those aged over 60–65 compared with those of working
age will have doubled.
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UK demographic facts of life
1.
In 1901 life expectancy for men was 49 and 45 for women. In 2001
life expectancy for women was 80 and 75 for men.
2.
In 1951 there were 300 centenarians; in 2031 there will be 36,000.
3.
In 1961 there were almost four people of working age to support
each pensioner; by 2040 there will only be 2.
4.
In 1996 there were 5.8 million single-person households. By 2011
this figure will rise to 7.9 million representing a third of all
households. In Great Britain in 1994/95, 21 per cent of dependent
children lived in single-parent families – three times the
proportion in 1972.
5.
In 1971 women’s share of employment was 35 per cent. Today it is
just under 50 per cent and it is forecast to exceed male
employment by early in the twenty-first century.
6.
For the first time ever in 1997, more women aged 30–34 had babies
than women aged 20–24.
7.
When the National Health Service was designed, 60 per cent of the
population were under 20 – by 2020 that proportion will be less
than a quarter.
8.
When the Welfare State was designed, actuarial projections
estimated only 3 years of life after retirement.
9.
In just one generation, the number of first time marriages has
halved and divorces have trebled.
10.
In 1995 there were fewer than 9 million people over 65 in the UK –
by 2030 there will be almost 50 per cent more. From 1997 to 2040,
the number of people aged over 65 will increase at 10 times the
overall rate of population growth.
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So what do we mean by ‘ageing’?
As is often the case in psychology, definition of our topic is at first
straightforward but can soon turn problematic.
‘Ageing can be defined as growing old. It is the process of
progressive change, which occurs with the passage of time.’
Reber, A, Dictionary of Psychology (1995)
However, in consideration of ‘what is age’ Kastenbaum (1975)
distinguishes between five different kinds of age:
•
•
•
•
•
chronological (the exact number of years a person has lived)
biological (the condition of the body)
subjective (how old a person feels in themselves)
functional (what kind of life they lead)
social (how we mix/interact/are accepted with and by others).
These ages can be, and often are, quite different – not often correlating
with one another at all. Few elderly people would describe themselves
consistently in terms of Kastenbaum’s ‘ages of me’. For example, it is
quite common for someone’s subjective age to be very different from his
or her chronological age, maybe as a consequence of a young/old social
age, in that many chronologically old people feel young inside. Some
people, through paying attention to exercise and fitness routines, may
have a biological age that is quite different from their chronological age.
Others, who maybe engage in a lot of activities, feel functionally younger
than their chronological years. Whatever ‘ages of me’ (Kastenbaum,
1985) one feels one reflects, the demographic imperative (Swenson,
1983) (of far more people living longer nowadays than ever before) has
seen a growth in interest in the psychology of ageing from within
developmental psychology. Developmental psychology is nowadays
particularly interested in physical, cognitive, social and emotional
change and developments (and their inter-relationships) as much at the
end of life as at the beginnings.
Life expectancy of people today is much longer than in previous years.
Life expectancy refers to the age that people are expected to live, if the
conditions are right. This is due to the better living conditions of our
more modern times. A better standard of living, good medical services
and advances, better social environments and proper nutrition have all
helped contribute to a much longer life span in the UK than previously
experienced. Saying this, there is a class issue inherent in life
expectancy. Research consistently shows that in Scotland those who are
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deemed working class have a life expectancy on average 7 years less than
their middle- and upper-middle class counterparts.
Lifespan is the actual amount of time a person lives for. Vaupel’s (1997)
nature/nurture estimate indicates that 25 per cent of the variation in
human lifespans is caused by genetic factors; another 25 per cent by
factors such as class, education, diet and behaviour, which are fixed by
the age of 30; and 50 per cent by short-term factors like standing in front
of a truck!
The ‘elderly’ or ‘aged’ is a man or woman over retirement age. It is clear
however that this is too general. This alone could mean 60, 65, or any
age in-between or even lower if you have taken ‘early retirement’.
Burnside et al. (1979) view the last years of our lives in terms of a
decade-by-decade model, probably better reflecting a more specific
reality concerning older people. Burnside’s decade-by-decade model
identifies:
• The young-old (60–69): a major transition in the Levinson sense (see
his 1978 ‘Seasons of Man’s Life’ proposition in the HSDU
Intermediate 1 and 2 Developmental Psychology pack 6544, 2000).
Most in their young-old decade see themselves taking up a new role
structure to cope with changes found with their new ‘status’ – such as
income and expenditure adjustments, friends dying, social networks
disappearing, etc. While physical strength may not be as it once was,
many aged 60–69 report new energies and enthusiasms for things
they value or have come to value in life.
• The middle-aged old (70–79) have to confront the now regular
reminder of their own mortality by coping with increasing numbers of
their contemporaries dying around them. They are no longer as
active in organisations as they were pre- and early post-retirement
which can lead to psychological frustration. Personal health becomes
a major issue. They have the task of keeping their young-old reintegrated personality together which is often made difficult with
physical decline if nothing else.
• The old old (80–89) show difficulty in adapting to environmental
changes around them and resulting interactions. Their social,
cognitive and emotional interactions often have to be (physically)
assisted by others.
• The very old old (90–99) experience ever-increasing health
difficulties which are balanced against a new-found freedom from
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responsibility. If crises in previous elderly decades have been resolved
the very old old may here enjoy a decade of serenity, joy and
fulfilment. The smile on the face of the redoubtable and
psychologically interesting HRH The Queen Mother when she
reached her 100th birthday in 2000 neatly illustrates this point.
Craig (1992) reminds us that the elderly are not one homogenous group
but a number of sub-groups, each one of which has particular issues with
which to deal. He also views getting old in a more positive way than
most in that ‘having a problem is not the same as being a problem, and
the all-to-popular view of those over 65 as needy, non-productive and
unhappy needs revision.’
Changes in physical functioning
Biological ageing
Multi-cellular animals have two types of cells: germ cells, which go on
generation after generation, and somatic or body cells. There are two
basic strategies for survival. Either the animal puts energy into
regeneration and repair of its body, so it can go on indefinitely, or it
puts energy into early reproduction in which case its body will age and
die. Most animals, including humans, have evolved the latter, which
produces more offspring to survive to the next generation. Although
there is good evidence that body maintenance is more efficient in
longer-lived animals like humans than in those that live for shorter
times, we age because our maintenance mechanisms eventually fail and
we cannot replace essential parts of ourselves when they go wrong (for
example brain cells, heart muscle, major nerves and blood vessels).
In the context of comparative and evolutionary biology, although
humans show a steadily increasing death rate with advancing age, there
is nothing inevitable about this pattern. Most animals do age for two
reasons. The first is that because animals in the wild do not generally
survive predation to live into old age, natural selection has only limited
opportunity to affect events which happen late in life. This means that
any mutations or changes harmful in later life can accumulate in the
genome practically unchecked by natural selection, and their effects
finally age the whole organism. The second is that to reproduce many
offspring early on in a lifespan is a better survival strategy than to
reproduce at a constant rate throughout life. Early reproduction,
however, uses up so much energy that animals which follow this strategy
do not have as much to expend on maintaining their bodies, so they
sacrifice their chances of longer life span.
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Humans have evolved the longest life span of any mammalian species
because our brains have enabled us to reduce the risk posed by our
environment. Menopause seems to be a paradox: it shuts down
reproductive function when a woman is still capable of bearing children.
However, it enables the older woman to contribute to the survival of her
grandchildren – and thus her genes.
Genetics can help us understand ageing also. Although genes are
currently thought to be responsible for only 30 per cent of longevity,
and the environment for 70 per cent, genes lead us to fundamental
mechanisms. People who have aged particularly successfully may owe
this to genetic factors which warrant research. The ageing process in the
brain sees healthy brains lose volume and weight and up to 50 per cent
of their nerve cells (neurons). The long extensions of the nerve cells,
and the regions in which a message is passed from one to another,
proliferate in an attempt at compensation. These genetically triggered
events and changes are the same as, but less severe than, those seen in
Alzheimer’s brains, which also show characteristic senile plaques and
neurofibrillary tangles. The senile plaques are outside cells, and the
protein amyloid is in the plaque cores and around them. The
relationship between plaques and tangles is not clear. The tangles, made
of tau protein, are inside the nerve cells and develop in a regular
pattern throughout the brain. They disrupt the transport of messages
from one nerve cell to another. The cells atrophy and die, and dementia
results. A much studied aspect of ageing such as early-onset Alzheimer’s
disease is genetically determined: it is caused by mutations in three
known genes, and a gene which makes a protein called APOE e4 is a risk
factor. APOE e4 is 2.5 times more common in Alzheimer’s patients than
in the general population. There is probably also a genetic component
to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but that is not related to the three
known genes. There are also environmental risk factors for Alzheimer’s
disease, such as head trauma.
This aside, senescence, or primary biological ageing, is when obvious
signs of ageing become apparent. These signs of ageing are physical,
occur gradually and can be affected by individual differences.
Senescence involves physiological and biochemical changes which have
behavioural implications. From the time of late adulthood the
physiological ageing process can be clearly seen, for instance, the hair
may become grey and even begin to thin. The skin loses some of its
elasticity and wrinkles appear, muscle tone also diminishes. Some
people even lose some of their height; this due to the cartilage between
the vertebrae wearing. The body organs are likely to function less
efficiently, for instance in the case of the heart and lungs; this causes a
decrease in physical stamina. Some of the senses dull, such as hearing.
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Many old people may find it difficult to understand speech, particularly
if spoken in a high pitched voice. Sight also may become impaired as the
lenses in the eyes become hard and discoloured with age.
Bee and Mitchell (1980) summarise the physical aspects of ageing thus:
• Smaller: tissue holding long bones in arms, legs, spine, etc., becomes
compressed and flat. Our calcium metabolism changes in old age
leading to lesser body weight in comparison to younger people.
Muscle mass reduces with some organs getting smaller (e.g. bladder).
• Slower: neural signals take longer to travel to the brain and reaction
time slows. Immune system functions less efficiently to illness, disease
and accident. Liver and skin cell reproduction slows.
• Weaker: bones (due to calcium metabolism) become more brittle and
prone to fracture. Muscle strength weakens, senses dull.
• Lesser: elasticity of skin diminishes causing wrinkles and sags! Lack of
elasticity of tissue in the ear drum and eyes gives rise to hearing/sight
difficulties. Blood vessels harden which leads to circulatory problems.
• Fewer: body hair, teeth and taste receptors on tongue.
Adapted from Bee and Mitchell (1980)
There are numerous theories that attempt to explain biological ageing.
One such theory is the Error Theory. This theory assumes that the
deficits of ageing are due to the accumulation of random genetic
damage, or from the flow of genetic information being disrupted by
small errors. This would culminate in the reduction of proper cell
function, or may even prevent it. Regeneration of cells is crucial to
keeping us looking young. As we age the regeneration of cells is
frustrated. American microbiologist Leonard Hayflick found that human
tissue cells are capable of only a limited number of cell divisions before
they die. Hayflick argues that cells are already pre-programmed with
each person’s blueprint of ageing. This would explain why different
animal species have different life spans. Physiological theories of ageing
focus on the functioning, and inter-relationships, of our organic system.
Particular emphasis on physiological ageing is placed on the immune
system which appears to lose its capacity to fight off infection as we age.
Antibodies are produced but tend to have difficulty in differentiating
between good and bad cells in the body.
Psychological ageing
The process of human ageing need not only be considered in the
context of physiology. There are other important aspects of ageing to
take into account. These are psychological and social.
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Psychological aspects of ageing include cognition, especially
intelligence and memory.
Social aspects of ageing concern the outcomes of interaction of the
ageing person’s social world and their personality.
It is at this juncture that students may be interested to learn that those
interested in the psychology of ageing are of two theoretical
orientations. On the one hand there are those theorists who favour a
decrement model – where ageing, viewed in a negative sense, is talked
about in terms of decay in physical, cognitive, social and emotional
functioning. On the other hand are those who advocate a more positive
personal growth model which emphasises the opportunities old age can
bring in terms of leisure time, reduced responsibility and focused
priorities which can enhance physical, cognitive, social and emotional
functioning (Kalish, 1982).
At the level of the person, which model or category one falls into is very
much determined by previous past experience and physical, cognitive,
social and emotional development. Some older people have a
decremental experience while others tend towards personal growth.
The influence of previous past experiences, a psychologically healthy/
unhealthy self, society’s view of the elderly, your ability to actualise on
opportunities for personal growth, your culture, your personality, etc.,
all come together to give the end to life a negative or positive outcome.
Psychological ageing and cognitive functioning
One worry the older person has about ageing is the fear that they lose
cognitive abilities such as thinking productively, memory, decision
making, etc. Initially thought to be the case as a consequence of crosssectional studies, where different age groups were tested on the same
things at the same time, there is no conclusive evidence to support
wholesale cognitive dysfunction as a result of biological ageing. It is
estimated that only about 5 per cent of the population will suffer from
senility to the extent of major loss of cognitive functioning (Zimbardo et
al. 1995). Cross-sectional studies attract the cohort effect (all taking part
in different age groups have had different experiences) and as a result
cognitive differences cannot conclusively be said to be down to ageing
alone. Unless we have evidence of intellectual ability for each participant
at an earlier age we cannot conclude intelligence declines with age on
the basis of cross-sectional study. Better evidence concerning cognitive
functioning has come from longitudinal studies which test and re-test
the same people on particular variables at different points during their
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lives. Longitudinal studies indicate that while cognitive functioning can
be retained well into old age (Holahan and Sears, 1995) evidence shows
that there are some age-related changes regarding different kinds of
intelligence and aspects of memory.
Changes in intelligence
Cognitive changes, although apparent in some people to some degree,
are not evident in all. As said earlier, cognitive change in a negative
sense is not a pre-requisite of old age. However, if cognitive functioning
is impaired, it is usually limited to certain cognitions such as thinking
and problem solving. Herein lies ‘intelligence’ and our interest in how/if
it is influenced as a result of biological ageing.
It is not the purpose of AH Developmental Psychology to engage in the
‘What is intelligence and can it be measured?’ debate. This is more the
province of the AH Psychology of Individual Differences. While it can be
criticised, the psychometric approach to intelligence here is relevant.
The psychometric approach is a way of studying intelligence that
emphasises the products of intelligence (including IQ scores) using a
statistical technique called factor analysis. It tries to look for evidence
to support one general intelligence trait or specific abilities. The
psychometric approach has led to Spearman’s g (general intelligence),
Thurstone’s factor analysis and seven primary mental abilities, and
Cattell’s fluid intelligence and crystallised intelligence. What all agree
about intelligence, whatever it may be, is that it is multi-dimensional in
that it is composed of a number of different capacities and abilities. One
way of looking at intelligence is, as indicated above, to separate it out
into two general ‘types’: fluid and crystallised intelligence (Cattell,
1963).
Crystallised intelligence (gc) refers to knowledge that a person has
already acquired such as vocabulary, arithmetic and general knowledge.
It is accumulated knowledge, linked to education, experience and
culture and is measured by tests of general information.
Fluid intelligence (gf) refers to the ability to solve novel and unusual
problems creatively and learn and retain new information quickly. Fluid
intelligence is about memory span and mental dexterity. Practically, it is
identified in behaviours such as finding a pattern to numbers presented,
visualising and problem solving on an object in your mind, doing
jigsaws, etc. Fluid intelligence aids problem solving and is measured by
tests measuring new and abstract problems not previously encountered
and not based on previous knowledge or learning.
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Gf and gc intelligences are found within the Thurstone (1938) Primary
Mental Ability (PMA) test and the later 1958 WAIS (Weschler Adult
Intelligence Scale).
Gf are measures of abilities such as response time to set problems,
memory span and non-verbal reasoning. Gc are measures of abilities
such as reading comprehension and vocabulary. Crystallised and fluid
intelligence measures are substantially correlated.
Horn (1984) reported a study in which gf and gc measures were got
from an analysis of the WAIS (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale). The
correlation between crystallised and fluid intelligence factors was 0.61.
Such findings have led those who believe in (just) one intelligence to
argue that gf and gc are simply different aspects of a more general
intelligence (IQ) factor. This cannot be answered conclusively by
looking at correlations between tests alone. By stepping outside of
factor analysis we can look at how gf and gc measures respond to
manipulations that might change mental competence. It turns out that
they respond differently. They therefore may not be the two aspects of
the same thing, i.e. IQ. The most striking example is ageing. Measures of
gf generally decrease from early adulthood onward, whereas gc
measures remain constant or even increase throughout most of our
working life (Horn 1985; Horn and Noll 1994). This is not surprising.
Experience counts; most of the key leadership positions in our society
are held by people over 40. On the other hand, middle-aged and older
people do take longer than younger people to understand new
problem-solving methods and to deal with unfamiliar tasks. Age is not
the only variable that can be shown to have different influences on fluid
and crystallised intelligence. Alcoholism shows similar effects.
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Crystallised Intelligence
Fluid Intelligence
Infancy
Childhood
Adolescence
AGE
Adulthood
Old age
Research indicates that crystallised intelligence increases with age
(Horn, 1982) while fluid intelligence declines. In a cross-longitudinal
study into crystallised intelligence Schaie and Hertzog (1983) say that
fluid intelligence peaks at between 20 and 30 and declines for all age
groups thereafter. On the other hand crystallised intelligence improves.
The reasons are unknown. It may be that the decline in fluid intelligence
is related to the biological ageing process in the brain which influences
this particular intellectual aspect of neurological functioning.
Alternatively, according to Denney and Palmer (1981), it may be because
crystallised abilities are called for throughout our life span, while
demands on fluid intelligence are less likely in old age (Cavanaugh,
1995). Research in this area has been confirmed by Botwinick (1978)
who found that gf begins to decline in middle age and drops sharply for
most in late adulthood while Nesselroade et al. (1972) discovered that
gc remains the same or actually improves until the early 80s.
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Studying g using a cross-longitudinal methodology
In 1956, Schaie gave Thurstone’s PMA to a group of 161 subjects whose
ages ranged from 20–70. Initially arranged into discrete seven yearly agegroups cohorts, i.e. 25, 32, 39, 46, 53, 60 and 67, they were similarly
tested in 1963 and 1970. Number, word fluency, comprehension and
spatial abilities were tested. On comprehension or word meaning,
scores for the 25 and 32 age group cohorts got better over the 14-year
period. For the 50 to 60-year-olds comprehension showed minimal
decline while for the 60 to 67-year-olds comprehension became more
noticeably difficult for them. This pattern was repeated in the main for
overall scores, e.g. fluid intelligence, as measured by for example word
fluency, showed a decline for all age groups (Schaie and Hertzog, 1983).
Some controversy exists as to whether decline in fluid intelligence is
due to inevitable biological ageing factors or simply lack of practice.
Baltes and Willis (1982) in establishing Project ADEPT trained adults in
those PMAs that showed a decline with age. Fluid intelligence improved
significantly with initial training and booster sessions in 1981 and 1986
with improvement being maintained among even the oldest in their 70s
and 80s (Willis and Nesselroade, 1990, in Cavanaugh, 1995).
A discussion of a landmark longitudinal study into cognitive ageing
In 1996 Ian Deary, Professor of Differential Psychology at the University
of Edinburgh and President of the International Society for the Study of
Individual Differences, was contacted by Professor Lawrence Whalley,
Head of Mental Health at the University of Aberdeen. Professor Whalley
was researching into cardiovascular disease among the Aberdeen Birth
Cohort of 1932, then 64. Professor Whalley wanted to know if there
would be any benefit in testing the cohort on cognitive abilities such as
intelligence as a consequence of ageing. Deary thought this, while
laudable, problematic. There was no data available on any of the
samples’ intelligence from an earlier point in their life. Measurement of
any relative change in intelligence as a result of the ageing process
could therefore not be done. Almost at the same time however, Deary
made an astonishing discovery. He found out that SCRE (the Scottish
Council for Research in Education) had inherited the results of the
Scottish Mental Survey of Monday 1 June 1932 of 87,498 Scottish 11-yearolds born in 1921. The test given them was a version of one of Sir
Godfrey Thomson’s Moray House Tests as used in the English 11-plus
examinations. Teachers administered and scored the tests. The
purpose of the exercise was to discover the distribution of the ability of
the age group and to use the data as an aid in formulating educational
provision for the 1940s and 1950s. The same exercise was repeated in
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1947 involving 70,805 people born in 1936. This was the 1947 Scottish
Mental Survey. At the time, and for some years thereafter, the Scottish
Mental Surveys were internationally renowned. The data on mental
ability and demographic, educational and physical factors had academic
and practical worth. Research agendas however move on. As the 11year-olds of 1932 celebrated their half-centuries and passed through
retirement into their three score years and ten, surveys became
forgotten history. As luck would have it, SCRE had far-sightedly retained
the data. The ledgers and brown-paper-tied-with-string parcels of data
recorded in copperplate writing were safely stacked and locked away in
Edinburgh maturing to a research resource of unparalleled richness.
Whalley’s interests combined with Deary’s. Both then set about realising
the potential of the Scottish Mental Survey data. Now the Lothian Birth
Cohort 1921 (funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences
Research Council) and parallel studies in Aberdeen are under way.
People in their late 70s (from the 1932 Survey) and in their early 60s
(from the 1947 Survey) are being re-tested. The purpose is to discover
the social, educational, medical, psychological and genetic factors that
assist people, over a lifetime, to preserve their mental abilities. In other
words, to find the secrets of a sagacious and successful old age.
Mental ability and growing old
Populations in the West are shifting towards a greater proportion of
older people. In tandem with the better-known physical changes of age,
the brain grows old too. Some, but not all, mental skills decline,
especially from the seventh decades. The quality of life in old age is
affected by how well mental ability is maintained. A healthy mind begets,
to a degree, a healthy and happy, not to say serene, old age. But some
people’s thinking skills stay relatively sharp while others’ are blunted.
These differences in the ageing of the brain’s functions have become a
priority in recent research. Irritatingly, one essential datum is almost
always missing from studies trying to discover why people differ in
cognitive ageing: the way they were. It is almost impossible to tell how
much a person’s mental abilities have changed if one does not know
what they used to be.
Here’s the problem. Examine the mental abilities of a group of older
people. Some score better than others on tests of memory, reasoning,
perception, and so forth. That does not provide information about what
the slings and arrows of a half-century’s miscellaneous fortunes have
wreaked on the brain. The high scorers might always have scored
highly. The low scorers might always have been practical rather than
cerebral; common-sensical rather than brainy. The interesting people
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are those who held steady or even improved their thinking skills with
age. And those who have slid down the slope into cognitive disability
are interesting too, though more poignantly. To find out the extent to
which people have altered in their thinking skills one must know their
former level. The problem is that studies of old people’s intellectual
functions rarely have access to mental ability test scores from earlier in
life. Such data are of a value that is hard to overestimate. That is why
the rediscovery of the Scottish Mental Survey data will be so important
for this area of research.
Still stable after all these years…
With current research underway on a study that began in SCRE’s offices
in 1932 there is still much to be done. Thus far hundreds of people in
their late 70s have been tested at the University’s Wellcome Trust
Clinical Research Facility at the Western General Hospital with many
more yet to be contacted and seen in the laboratories in Edinburgh and
Aberdeen. Nevertheless, the studies progress in the knowledge that
because of the Scottish Mental Surveys, there exist valid mental test data
on an entire population, now old, and that Scotland will be the source
of some first-rate research on the determinants of differences in
cognitive ageing which can be utilised in a global sense. Some dividend
has come through already. On 1 June 1998 the Aberdeen participants in
the 1932 survey came back for a mass-retesting on the Moray House Test
at the Music Hall in Aberdeen’s Union Street. At this memorable
meeting, and a smaller one a few weeks later, a total of 101 people sat
looking at the same test questions 66 years on to the very day. The
same instructions were read out as those given by their teachers in 1932
and time limits maintained. The results indicate that the seventysomethings scored quite a bit better than they previously did at age 11
and that mental ability differences appear quite stable from age 11 to age
77. With some interesting exceptions the original high scorers did as
well while the modest remained … modest. This is by far the longest
follow-up study of mental ability differences to date found in
psychological research and epoch-making in its importance.
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Professor Ian Deary
of Edinburgh University in the above.
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Changes in memory
Memory, one of our five cognitive processes (perception, attention,
language, memory and thinking or problem solving) has long had
negative connotations with ageing. Studies show that short-term
memory (STM), which is our ability to recall immediate information that
is still being attended to, suffers only minimal decline. There is little
difference between the younger and older adult as regards STM capacity
(7±2 ‘chunks’). The older person is less likely to be more susceptible to
distraction and less able to recall memorised information in a different
form. As far as ageing and long-term memory (LTM) goes, older people
have difficulty remembering information that they have actively ceased
to need or use, but have no difficulty recalling knowledge and
experiences that they recall often.
On recall tests, it has been found that older adults generally do less well
than younger participants. The reasons for any memory deficit may be
due to biological decline which frustrates some aspects of memory and
information processing (Stuart-Hamilton, 1994). On recognition tasks,
differences due to ageing are not as obvious. This biological rationale to
memory decline has been challenged by the likes of Diamond (1978)
whose study shows 90+ per cent of those over 65 exhibit little cortical
deterioration (loss of cortical neurons) and indeed under enriched
conditions in old age new neural connections can be identified being
formed as a result of cognitive ‘hot-housing’. Further support for this
comes from Rogers et al. (1990) who says, as with general intellectual
functioning, the more well-educated and mentally active you are in
older age, the better able you are in holding off (long-term) memory
decline. Biological decline of memory and inevitable deficit as a
consequence of old-age is not clear-cut. Those advocating the alternative
explanation of negative cultural stereotypes put forward an interesting
position. In 1994 Levy and Langer investigated the influence of
stereotypes on memory decline by looking at the memory capabilities of
three groups of people:
• Hearing Americans
• Members of the American deaf community
• People from mainland China.
They assumed members of the US deaf community had been less
exposed to negative stereotypes concerning assumptions about memory
decline (among other things) in old age. China was chosen due to the
deference Chinese society and culture gives its old people. Levy and
Langer discovered that the older American deaf and Chinese subjects
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did significantly better on memory tasks than their hearing American
counterparts. Qualitatively it was further found that hearing younger
Americans had less positive perceptions about ageing than any of the
other groups. Among the older groups, a positive correlation was found
between attitude to ageing and memory performance. This is
reminiscent of the self-fulfilling prophecy where low expectations, as a
kind of learned helplessness, make it less likely older people will engage
in activities to enhance memory ability in old age. Levy (1996) concludes
that a negative self-stereotype influences memory ability in old age in a
negative fashion, while positive self-stereotypes improve it. Levy found
no such self-stereotype with younger generations because for them selfstereotypes of ageing are not important … yet!
Stereotypes of the elderly contain negative elements whatever the age
group investigated. Some of the strongest negative stereotypes of the
elderly are held by children and teenagers.
Goldman and Goldman (1981) interviewed more than 800 children aged
5–15 in Australia, England, Sweden and the USA about their perceptions
of old age. Two generalities were found:
1.
All, no matter their age, were more likely to hold negative attitudes
towards the elderly than positive. The older the child, the greater
the negative image in that over 90 per cent of 15-year-olds
perceived the elderly in negative ways.
2.
Goldman and Goldman emphasise the disgust shown by
participants on being asked about old age. Physical deterioration
was particularly commented upon in negative terms, i.e. wrinkly,
feeble, infirm, sick, etc., as were psychological perceptions, i.e.
grumpy, bad-tempered, irritable, mentally ‘slow’, etc.
This may be due to a number of reasons, i.e. person perception and the
nature of physical attractiveness (Jackson, 1992) and the further
perception that with old age comes a downward change in status
(Durkin, 1995).
Student activity: Essay
Identify, describe and discuss physical and cognitive issues
associated with the ageing process. Your essay should be about
1000 words in length.
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Theories and research on ageing: disengagement theory and activity
theory
Social disengagement theory: a decrement model of ageing
In 1961, Cummings and Henry, during a five-year study of 275 people
aged between 50 and 90 in Kansas City, USA, attempted to describe what
happens to us socially as we grow old.
Social disengagement refers to mutual society-older individual
withdrawal recognised in compulsory retirement, children leaving
home, death of a spouse, friends, etc. It also includes mutual withdrawal
of the individual from society in forms such as reduced social activities
and social isolation. Cummings and Henry propose that there is a
biological process of social disengagement which takes place as we grow
old. Consequentially the older person gradually withdraws from wider
society and participation in it. Thus social disengagement is:
‘an inevitable process in which many of the relationships between a
person and other members of society are severed, and those
remaining are altered in quality’.
Cummings and Henry, 1961, p. 210.
Alternatively, according to Bromley (1988), it is:
‘a systematic reduction in certain kinds of social interaction. In its
simplest and crudest form, the theory of disengagement states that
diminishing psychological and biological capacities of people in later
life necessitate a severance of the relationships they have with
younger people in the central activities of society, and the
replacement of these older individuals by younger people. In this
way, society renews itself and the elderly are free to die’.
Cummings (1975) suggests social disengagement to be:
• Shrinkage of life space
• Increased individuality
• Acceptance, often wholeheartedly, of these age-related changes.
Growing Old – The Process of Disengagement (1975)
Shrinkage of life space is an aspect of entering old age that sees us
having fewer roles and therefore shrinking social interactions. This is
due to retirement, physical aspects of ageing affecting mobility, death of
spouse and friends, etc. Increased individuality arises as a result of the
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above and consequentially older people are not as hidebound by rules
and conventions in their roles and interactions that remain. You are
effectively in a better position to ‘Please yourself’! Acceptance sees the
healthy older person consciously withdraw from roles and relationships,
becoming more introspective, as if themselves preparing for death.
Withdrawal is viewed as the most appropriate way to age.
Cummings and Henry suggest that disengagement might be both natural
and inevitable and by implication have a biological basis to it in order to
help prepare the older person for death. Disengagement became
popular in the 1960s and early 1970s because it seemed to explain how
there could be so many old people in society and yet how they could
seem so ‘invisible’. It was also popular because it presented a genetic
explanation for the phenomenon, and genetic explanations were
popular with the media, at least in the USA at that time. While most
would hold with the first two propositions that with ageing comes a
shrinkage of life space and increased individuality it is with the third
claim of inevitable acceptance that criticisms are most directed (Bee,
1994).
Bromley (1988) offers three criticisms that challenge social
disengagement theory.
1.
Practical: social disengagement theory offers a negative view
supporting societal indifference, exclusion, isolation and
segregation of the elderly.
2.
Theoretical: social disengagement theory offers little in the way of
evidence that this is the actualité of the aged population. It is a
proto-theory in that it is a ‘collection of loosely related
assumptions and arguments’ (McIlveen and Gross, 1997).
3.
Empirical: social disengagement theory is questionable in the
absence of empirical data to support its claim that all the elderly
psychologically disengage as it suggests.
Prompted by the absence of empirical data supporting disengagement
theory, Havighurst et al. (1968) followed up about 50 per cent of the
original Cummings and Henry sample. While they found evidence to
support our orientation towards social disengagement as we age they
also found older people who were still ‘active and engaged’. These
participants were found to be happy and contented, and the more active
an individual was, the happier they appeared to be. They had good
morale and indeed lived longer than their more disengaged peers. This
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goes against the view that disengagement is natural and part and parcel
of the ageing process (Bee, 1994). Disengagement is not therefore a
prerequisite for good mental health in old age. It is also useful to take
on board the further criticism that social disengagement is cohort
specific, i.e. refers to a cohort of the elderly in the USA at a particular
point in time in the early 1960s where an ageist attitude was endemic.
Since then we have seen improved health-care, early retirement, higher
educational levels, etc., influencing the thoughts, feelings and
behaviours of our elderly population which has made wholesale social
disengagement by them questionable. This is given some impetus when
one considers the fact that Ronald Reagan became President of the USA
in his 70s; the astonishing success of the likes of companies like SAGA –
who nowadays see their travel market as anyone 55+; the thousands of
‘elderly’ who attend learning in later life programmes at colleges and
universities, etc. Not to mention of course the likes of the Grey Wolves:
a collective of elderly political activists associated with the Scottish
Socialist Party who are extremely active and central to the campaign in
Scotland for a return to an index-linked inflation-proof state pension.
The issue of individual differences in type and degree of disengagement
is thus apparent. Not all psychologically disengage from ‘everything’ in
whole or in part immediately upon retiral. Bromley (1988) posits a
disposition towards a personality dimension to disengagement as a
characteristic of getting old. This had been earlier identified by
Havighurst et al. (1968) who found two types of personalities among
Cummings and Henry’s original sample: reorganisers and the
disengaged. Reorganisers are personalities who on retirement
reorganise their lives around new and old activities to fill the gap left by
withdrawal from the workforce. The disengaged personality voluntarily
withdraws from social roles, commitments and activities. Reorganisers
reported being very happy as did the voluntary disengaged who, despite
their inactivity, said they were highly satisfied with life. Thus it is useful
to note that:
‘Disengagement represents only one of many possible paths of
ageing. It has no blanket application to all people.’
Kermiss (1984)
Look up:
‘Successful Ageing: What does the “good life” look like?’ Concepts in
Gerontology by Lucille B. Bearon, Ph.D.
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/pub/aging.html
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Activity (or re-engagement) theory: a personal growth model of
ageing
The major alternative to social disengagement theory (as alluded to
earlier) is activity theory as proposed by Havighurst et al. (1964) and
Maddox (1964). It accepts the biological ageing process as fact but
disputes that psychological and social needs change in old age as a
consequence. Havighurst et al. say that the older person has the same
psychological and social needs as those of middle-age. Further, social
disengagement in the form of social interaction is one-way, in that it is
society withdrawing from the individual, not the individual voluntarily
withdrawing from society. There is no mutual relationship as Cummings
and Henry believe.
They suggest that optimal ageing is enhanced by keeping active and
compensating for any shrinkage of life space that may come with
industrial (Bromley) disengagement. Compensation for lost activities
allows for the upkeep of the ageing person’s role count and related selfesteem, self-respect and self-worth. While an optimistic theory it does
not account for findings which suggest that the disengaged are content
with their lot. Personality may be the key here. Neugarten and
Neugarten (1987) believe people will choose an ageing ‘style’ that
reflects their personality and previous past experiences. There is thus
no single activity style for psychologically healthy and successful ageing.
‘Activity’ appears to be what best suits you. Some will vigorously take up
pursuits they have always wanted to pursue but never had the time.
Some will concentrate on their immediate family, happy in their role as
grandparent. Others will take up educational opportunities or increase
their voluntary commitments. In contrast to disengagement theory,
activity theory sees social interaction to be as natural in old age as it was
in earlier years.
An overall evaluation of social disengagement and activity theory
Hayslip and Panek (1989) see both theories as ecologically valid. For
them disengagement or re-engagement are options, which may either
be voluntarily or enforced on us. Voluntarism is influenced by physical
health and social circumstance. As a result an older person could have
an option chosen for them that does not reflect their personality and is
thus maladaptive. Both theories ignore the individual’s phenomenology
and personal agency as regards the degree of control they truly have
over what ageing model they choose.
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It is apparent that disengagement is not an inevitable consequence of
growing older, even though it is equally clear that some people
disengage from society. A more likely explanation for disengagement
seems to lie in the combination of lack of opportunities for involvement
and the stereotyping of ageing, which can mean that many people do
not try to get involved. Both activity and disengagement, it would seem,
are appropriate strategies for some people but not for others. Although
many people clearly do benefit from the increased opportunities and
additional roles offered by Havighurst’s approach, there are other
people who look forward to retirement as a time when they can
deliberately take a rest, becoming less involved and disengaging
themselves from society, at least to some extent. Dyson (1975) proposed
that these differences might be explained by seeing retirement as a
social exchange or contract between the ageing individual and society.
According to Dowd (1975), who also looked at retirement as social
exchange, the two sides to this social contract are: the old person
implicitly agrees to participate less in society’s activities, thus freeing
places in the work force for younger people, while society agrees to
grant that person an ‘honourable discharge’ from their role as worker.
In retirement the older person gains social approval for their years of
leisure in retirement and the right to enjoy them as they feel inclined.
For some old people, this social exchange results in disengagement, as
they feel themselves to be no longer fully part of society, while for
others social exchange means that they seek alternative activities in
other fields. Atchley (1976) showed that there may be social class
differences regarding which choice is made. In a comparison between
working-class men and male teachers reaching retirement age, the
working-class men tended to disengage while male teachers would reengage looking for new activities in which to become involved.
Dyson suggested that the social exchange of retirement actually placed
the old person in a dilemma where they are trapped by their situation.
As members of society, old people acknowledge the fairness of the
unspoken agreement. As individuals, however, often with many healthy
and active years ahead, the contract is often seen as inappropriate for
them personally. This makes it difficult for old people to challenge the
way that society marginalises them, because any attempt to do so is seen
as demanding special and unfair treatment. This has the effect of
reducing the possibility for social cohesion among older people. Since
they implicitly accept the social contract they conclude that if they do
not fit the stereotypical view of the older person there must be
something wrong with themselves; that they are not typical. So where
victims of other social prejudices have been able to challenge these by
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banding together and becoming more vocal, it is much harder for old
people to do so.
Student activity: Essay
Describe, discuss and evaluate alternative theories of ageing. You
should write about 1000 words in your essay.
Social ageing
Reflecting developmental psychology’s emphasis on physical, cognitive,
social and emotional development and inter-relationships across the
human life span, another alternative to disengagement and activity
theory is Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of personality development,
in particular the psychosocial stage of integrity v despair.
Erik Erikson (1902–94), a neo-Freudian, proposed that it is our social
world at particular age-stages of our life, and not our instinctual sexual
urges, which affects personality development. Personality does not just
depend on childhood alone but is shaped, changed and developed
throughout the whole of our lives. He put forward a psychosocial theory
of personality development which stresses the importance of our
individual need for social approval and belonging, and that if this is
frustrated, hindered or impeded we can end up with a jaundiced
personality as a consequence of our negative experiences. Inherently a
positive growth theory, he divides the human lifecycle into eight stages.
At each stage we decide and make choices about our life based on what
we experience in and from our environment. We make positive or
negative psychosocial decisions which affect our personality. Erikson
terms these eight stages psychosocial crises. How we deal with each
psychosocial stage, or crisis, in life shapes our personality. It should be
noted that Erikson did not see these outcomes in an ‘either–or’ fashion.
Most personalities exhibit aspects of positive and negative outcomes
connected with a particular stage or stages. The healthy personality
would see more positive rather than negative outcomes (adaptive rather
than maladaptive psychosocial outcomes) being apparent.
Look up:
Erik Erikson compiled by Wendy Sharkey
http://elvers.stjoe.udayton.edu/history/history.asp?RURL=http://
elvers.stjoe.udayton.edu/history/people/Erikson.html
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Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Crisis: an age-stage approach
to personality development
Psychosocial crises
1.
Trust v Mistrust: Age 0–1
On the basis of a baby’s experiences in early life, an infant will
begin to form an impression of its world. If it has enjoyed a stable,
nourishing, loving and caring early life it should come to view the
world in a secure and trusting way. If, on the other hand, its early
life hasn’t been so stable, nourishing, loving, etc., it will see itself as
insecure in an uncaring, untrusting and harsh world.
2.
Autonomy v Shame or Doubt: Age 2–3
Showing a Freudian influence, Erikson says our ‘toilet training’
years lead us to begin to believe ourselves either to be in control
and physically competent or doubtful about our developing
independence, abilities and skills. How others react to our efforts
to become more autonomous affects how we view ourself.
Doubting our ability, especially on the basis of what those we love
tell us, gives rise to a lack of confidence in what we do and in our
dealings with others.
3.
Initiative v Guilt: Age 3–5
A time of increasing motor dependence, age 3–5 is also a period of
intense curiosity, questioning and enquiry for the young child.
How caregivers develop or discourage this can, Erikson believes,
affect the developing personality and related social skills. Having
our curiosity encouraged, satisfied and extended develops
initiative. Being made to feel a burden or a nuisance leads
alternatively to feelings of insecurity and guilt about how to deal
with, and solve, all the challenges life throws at us.
4.
Industry v Inferiority: Age 6–12
In their primary school years children are exposed to an
environment where cognitive, social and emotional growth is
demanded and encouraged. Their experiences here – from
teachers, parents, siblings (brothers and sisters) and increasingly,
their peer group – will result in individuals sensing that they are
competent, productive and valued or incompetent,
underproductive and undervalued. Where we get our feelings of
inferiority is most interesting here.
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5.
Identity v Role Confusion/Diffusion: Age 12–19
Puberty triggers our psychological journey for identity. We are
pulled between beginning to value and recognise our own unique
identity, and previous experience of knowing that to be seen as
different from everyone else can pose problems. These years see
teenagers begin to deliberately associate with others they see as
similar to themselves. As if having to confirm who they think they
are individually, a group of teenagers will very often dress the same
way, like the same type of music and enjoy the same activities and
social scene. Movement between different groups is normal as we
try and find friendship with those who better share our own
individual opinions, preferences, outlook on life, etc. Successful
resolution of Identity v Role Confusion/Diffusion would see
someone in their early 20s who is happy with their own unique self
and their role in life. If they thought about it long enough, they
would also realise that their unique personality and life also mean
something to others. They are valued as such. If you have been
unable to discover your true identity during the teenage years, on
the other hand, you can come through this crisis with a confused
or diffused (all over the place) identity. You would undervalue
your own unique personality and probably have difficulty
sustaining long-lasting friendships with others.
6.
Intimacy v Isolation: 20s–30s
This is the age-stage where we search for a partner with whom we
think we want to spend the rest of our life. Biologically, socially
and emotionally there is a great drive for intimacy with another
during this time. Everyone else around us, it seems, is doing the
same thing. Everyone else seems to have found love. How
successful, or otherwise, we are during this psychosocial stage sees
us either form an intimate, loving relationship with another or
doubt our ability to do so and facing a lifetime of isolation and
loneliness. The downside of this stage can be extremely destructive
for individuals.
7.
Generativity v Stagnation: 30s–50s
Between these years childcare responsibilities for adults diminish.
We begin to examine how productive and creative our work and
relationships are. Very often we use this time to widen our
education and also give something of ourselves back to the work
place, trade union, club, community group, religious organisation,
etc., to which we belong. We benefit others and simultaneously
feel we have ‘made a contribution’ in our own unique way. If,
however, you find that your life has become unproductive, routine
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and stagnant, you feel psychosocially and psychologically
unfulfilled. There is something missing from our lifelong quest to
discover what it means to be human. We lose direction and
purpose in life.
8.
Integrity v Despair: 60s+
This sees us approach the inevitable end of our life. During this
stage we reflect on what our past life has been like and what sort of
difference we have made as individuals. We each weigh up our life
‘balance-sheet’. Was it good, bad or indifferent? If, on balance, we
feel we have had a good and worthwhile life we go to our deaths
feeling good and at peace showing ego-integrity; if it has been not
so good we may feel despair, fear death and have a sense of never
having been here in the first place.
Points to note
Erikson, on the basis of cross-cultural comparison and working as a
practitioner in the USA, believes that we develop our personalities as a
result of particular social experiences at eight stages in our lives. His
theory is said to be universal in that it can be applied to all cultures. If
we had a negative experience during a particular psychosocial stage this
can affect the adult personality, e.g. if we conclude at the trust v mistrust
stage that our world and the people in it should not be trusted, this can
affect the establishment of relationships with others then and in the
future. He also says that we can ‘revisit’ past stages in our life, and if we
think we have made a negative decision which has affected our
personality and gives us discomfort we can realise and rectify this. This is
one reason why older people often try to mend bridges and make
amends with others they have had a serious fall-out with at some earlier
point in their life. Faced with integrity v despair they have a desire to die
more at peace and less in despair with themselves. His psychosocial
theory of personality has great worth at all points in the human lifecycle
to try and understand why we are as we are and what we might become.
It is an age-stage related theory of personality which allows us an insight
into the outcome of our physical, cognitive and social experiences
coming together to affect an important aspect of human emotion –
personality. What is clear from the point of view of ageing is that
previous outcomes, positive and negative, will affect who you are and
how you perceive yourself at 60+ before this outcome at the end of our
life can be addressed.
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Look up:
Erik Erikson
1902–94
Dr C George Boeree
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/erikson.html
Student activity: Essay
Describe, discuss, and evaluate Erik Erikson’s contribution to
developmental psychology in general and the psychology of ageing
in particular. You should write about 1000 words.
Further reading: ageing
Bromley, D B, Human Ageing (3rd ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin
Sugarman, L, Lifespan Development, London and New York: Routledge
Durkin, K, Developmental Social Psychology: From Infancy to Old Age,
Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995
Turner, J S and Helms, D R, Lifespan Development (5th ed.), Orlando,
FL: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995
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Glossary: Ageing
activity (or re-engagement) theory: a personal growth model of
ageing advocated by Havighurst et al. (1964) and Maddox (1964). It
accepts the biological ageing process as fact but disputes that
psychological and social need change in old age as a consequence.
ageing: growing old. The process that occurs with the passage of time of
progressive chronological ageing (the exact number of years a person
has lived); biological ageing (the condition of the body); subjective
ageing (how old a person feels in themselves); functional ageing
(what kind of life they lead); and social ageing (how we mix/interact/
are accepted with and by others).
cohort specific: a group of individuals investigated at a particular point
in historical time.
cross-sectional study: where different age groups are tested on the
same things at the same time,
crystallised intelligence (gc): the knowledge that you have already
acquired, e.g. vocabulary, arithmetic and general knowledge. It is
linked to education, experience and culture and is measured by tests
of general information.
decade-by-decade model: Burnside et al. (1979) identified in their
segmentation of the ‘elderly’: the young-old (60–69); the middle-aged
old (70–79); the old old (80–89); and the very old old (90–99).
decrement model: a view of ageing which is negative in orientation.
demographic imperative: recognition having to occur regarding the
fact of far more people living longer nowadays than ever before.
ego-integrity: the positive outcome of Erikson’s integrity v despair
stage. A psychological sense of well-being and ability to go to one’s
grave feeling good about one’s life.
fluid intelligence (gf): your ability to solve novel and unusual problems
creatively and learn and retain new information quickly based upon
memory span and mental dexterity.
life expectancy: the age that people are expected to live to given the
right conditions.
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lifespan: the actual amount of time a person lives for.
optimal ageing: the maximisation and potentialisation of all you can
psychologically be despite (or because of) the ageing process.
personal growth model: an alternative to the decrement model which
sees ageing as an opportunity rather than a threat.
psychological ageing: aspects of an individual’s thoughts, feelings and
behaviours affected by the ageing process, most especially
intelligence, memory and personality.
reorganisers: those people who on retirement reorganise their lives
around new and old activities to fill the gap left by withdrawal from
the workforce.
role count: the number of different responsibilities we acquire that
become part of our personality.
role structure: the roles you adopt in life that are part of your identity
which invariably change as a consequence of ageing, i.e. worker, nonworker, etc.
self-fulfilling prophecy: based on others’ low expectations you become
the low expectation in your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
senescence: primary biological ageing where obvious signs of ageing
become apparent, i.e. you get smaller, slower, weaker, lesser, fewer
(Bee and Mitchell, 1980).
social ageing: related to how the ageing process influences personality
and addressed by Erikson’s psychosocial crisis of integrity v despair
for 60s+.
social disengagement: where as a result of ageing you withdraw from
previously enjoyed social activities (see Cummings and Henry, 1961)
and is evident in shrinkage of life space, increased individuality and
acceptance, often wholeheartedly, of age-related changes.
WAIS (Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale): an IQ test for adults
measuring gf and gc.
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SECTION 3
Outcome 3 of this unit requires students to ‘analyse an issue in
development psychology’. See page 3 of this publication for further
details.
Two issues are considered in this section:
1.
2.
The use of non-human animals in research
Heredity and environment.
Teachers/lecturers and students should note that some detail on a third
issue, ‘attachment and separation’, is also included in this pack within
the key concept ‘Early socialisation’ in Section 2.
Issue 1: The use of non-human animals in research
Two major concerns are raised by the use of animals in psychological
research.
1.
First, ethical questions relating to the pain or suffering which may
be inflicted on laboratory animals.
2.
Second, ecological validity. There is a wide-ranging debate about
what animal studies can, in theory, reveal about human behaviour.
The early behaviourists believed that the basic principles of
learning operated in the same way in many species. Behaviourists’
‘laws’ of learning could be equally well demonstrated in rats as in
man. This belief is no longer accepted and generalisations from
animal to human behaviour have come to be regarded with a good
deal of suspicion.
Please read:
Richard Gross, Rob McIlveen, Hugh Coolican, Alan Clamp and Julia
Russell, Psychology – A New Introduction (2nd ed.), Chapter 63, pages
773–785.
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Ethics and non-human animal research in psychology
Jones, Gross and McIlveen (1999) presciently introduce the topic of
ethical considerations and psychological research by stating:
‘Just as Orne (1962) regards the psychological experiment as a
social situation, so every psychological investigation is an ethical
situation.’
To this end the British Psychological Society (BPS) lays down codes of
conduct which members in their research of human and non-human
participants should adhere to. In the UK this would see practitioners
using inter alia:
• The Code of Conduct for Psychologists (BPS, 1983)
• The Ethical Principles for Conducting Research with Human
Participants (BPS, 1990, 1993) and
• The Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research (BPS and
Committee of the Experimental Psychological Society, 1985).
Conducting research with human participants
The following notes are based on the British Psychological Society’s,
Ethical Guidelines and Code of Conduct, 1985.
1.
General considerations: especially as much developmental
psychology investigates children and young people, always ensure
that the research you do is done from the standpoint of the
participants taking part. Research should never be offensive to
anyone. This means that you should do nothing which threatens a
person’s health, well-being or dignity. You should also be aware
that we live in a multi-cultural country of diverse ethnic
communities. Research should be considered from a socially
inclusive, non-sexist, anti-racist and non-ageist perspective.
2.
Consent: wherever possible consent should always be obtained
from participants.
3.
Deception: deception is not allowed if participants would be
unlikely to co-operate in its absence. If in doubt the researcher
should seek advice from a teacher, lecturer, etc.
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4.
Debriefing: any research should provide participants with an
opportunity to discuss the outcomes of it. This is called debriefing,
and allows discussion of the specific purpose of the research,
interpretation of the participants’ particular performance, scores,
answers, etc., and gives them an opportunity to ask questions.
5.
Withdrawal from the investigation: all participants should give their
permission to take part in your research. They should also be
allowed to withdraw at any time if they so wish.
6.
Confidentiality: unless subject to Scots law and UK statute, e.g. the
Data Protection Act, confidentiality between participant and
researcher should be observed at all times. If in doubt seek advice
from your teacher, lecturer, etc.
7.
Protection of participants: all participants in a piece of research
should be protected from any physical or mental harm.
8.
Observational research: any observation should observe the privacy
and psychological well-being of those studied. If consent to be
observed is not possible, observations should only occur where it
would be normal that those observed would/could be by others. If
in doubt consult your teacher or lecturer.
9.
Giving psychological advice: sometimes during research the
researcher will be asked their advice concerning a psychological
matter which is of concern to a participant. The golden rule is not
to give advice if not qualified to do so. If in any doubt you should
seek advice from your teacher or lecturer.
10.
Colleagues: all of us who study psychology share the above set of
ethical principles. It is our duty to encourage others who do
psychological research to observe these ethical guidelines at all
times.
Look up:
BPS Code of Conduct
http://www.bps.org.uk/about/rules5.cfm
and
http://www.bps/org.uk.charter/codofcon.htm
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Why use animals in psychological research?
Cross-comparative species–species research has its origins in Darwin’s
Origin of Species research (1859) in that the study of simpler life forms
from our evolutionary history gives us a greater insight into why we
think, feel and behave as we do.
In 1992 Brehm wrote,
‘In our necessary concern with treating subjects well and protecting
them from any harmful effects, we must not overlook the other side of
the ethical issue: the ethical imperative to gain more understanding of
important areas of human behaviour. Intimate relationships can be a
source of the grandest, most glorious pleasure we human beings
experience; they can also be a source of terrible suffering and appalling
destructiveness. It is, I believe, an inherently ethical response to try to
learn how the joy might be increased and the misery reduced.’
What she means is that ethical and practical considerations are related,
in that while psychologists have a duty to protect the welfare of
individual participants (and implicitly non-human participants), there is
the over-riding duty to do socially relevant research as being the stuff of
psychology.
Put more bluntly, animal research allows for experimentation into
aspects of thinking, feeling and behaving that would be ethically difficult,
if not impossible, to conduct on human beings. These ethically sensitive
areas include: severe sensory deprivation (Reisen, 1947; Blakemore and
Cooper, 1970); complete social isolation (Harlow and Zimmerman,
1959); extreme stress (Brady, 1958; Seligman, 1974); surgical
procedures (Olds and Milner, 1954). In a clinical sense such procedures
and investigations with animals also allow for greater control of variables
in such experimentation, e.g. the Skinner Box whose environment is
completely under the control of the experimenter. Further, the use of
non-human animals in research allows the claim of evolutionary
continuity to be made. What this means is that differences between
humans and non-humans are quantitative rather than qualitative. We
share the same basic evolutionary adaptations. Mammals such as rats,
cats, dogs, monkeys, apes and humans have all developed similar brain
structure. It is size, number of neurons and the interconnections
between these nerve cells which make the inherent difference. It is said
that ‘at the level of its basic units, evolution has been highly
conservative’ and as a result parallels can be made via experimentation
with non-human animals concerning cognitive, conatative and affective
behaviours (Green, 1994).
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From a practical point of view, i.e. size, manipulation, shorter life-span,
shorter gestation period, etc., the use of animals in a laboratory
experiment is easier than using humans. Study of this kind also gives
rise to the generation of hypotheses and later testing of humans.
Examples of this from within developmental psychology would include
Bowlby’s theory of attachment (see later) which was greatly influenced
by the earlier work of the ethologist Lorenz into imprinting. From a
scientific point of view, due to easier manipulations, animal
experimentation gives rise to data about cause–effect relationships
between variables, as opposed to correlations between covariants when
using humans. The obvious example here, however distasteful from an
animal perspective, would be in the study of variables influencing
cancers. With humans we can only make correlations between smoking
and lung cancer. With animals, smoking can be induced (the
independent variable) and cancer observed and measured (the
dependent variable). Finally, Coolican (1994) affirms that species–
species comparisons across the phylogenic (evolutionary) scale can
indicate what we as humans have lost or gained in our evolutionary
history when compared to animals, i.e. the discovery of a redundant
structure in the human nervous system when found active in animals
today may suggest its previous purpose and function for human beings.
Why use animals at all?
The rationale behind animal experimentation is twofold:
• The pursuit of scientific knowledge
• The advancement of science.
As a result we have made inroads into cause, diagnosis, prognosis and
treatments in the form of vaccines for infectious diseases, the
development of antibacterial and antibiotic drugs, heart surgery, organ
transplants, kidney failure, diabetes, malignant hypertension gastric
ulcers, etc. The price is any distress and suffering caused to any animal
used in experimentation. Codes of practice make for such distress and
suffering to be minimised as much as possible. The decision to use, or
not to use, animals is taken using a cost-benefit analysis of animal pain,
distress and suffering as measured against the developments of new
scientific knowledge to alleviate human misery and suffering.
The medical and scientific justification argument concerning animal
experimentation is strong in that Gray (1991) argues that ‘not only is it
not wrong to give preference to the interests of one’s own species, one
has a duty to do so’ (Shackleton-Jones, Gross and McIlveen, 1999). This
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speciesism is countered by opponents who say that medical advances
have been delayed due to misleading results from animal experimentation
and that in the early stages of such investigation little in the way of
scientific advancement for human beings is forthcoming in that scientific
understanding of the issue is still developing. It can be many years
before any cost-benefit can be seen, tempered by the cost to the animal
in terms of pain and suffering, as against the scientific and medical
benefit for humans as a result.
Whether or not to use animals in experimentation can be decided upon
using Bateson’s Decision Cube (1986, 1992). The three dimensions
upon which the researcher’s decision is made are:
• The quality of the research
• The certainty of medical benefit
• The degree of animal suffering.
Bateson believes that his third dimension should only be excused if the
quality of research and medical benefit is deemed high. Experimentation
on animals should not be undertaken for its own sake.
Look up:
Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in the Care and Use of Animals
Developed by the American Psychological Association’s Committee on
Animal Research and Ethics (CARE)
http://www.apa.org/science/anguide.html
Ethology and imprinting
A fairly obvious example of the use of animals in developmental
psychology is in the area of ethology and imprinting which very much
influenced the development of Dr John Bowlby’s theory of attachment
in the 1950s and 60s.
The observation and study of species-to-species behaviours and human–
animal comparison is called ethology. Ethology emphasises that any
characteristic which increases the chances of successful reproduction
will be more likely to stay in the genetic make-up of the species. This
allows ethologists to identify behaviours they think are adaptive which
go towards better ensuring the survival of the species.
Ethology first gave us an insight into the impact the mother–infant bond
has on the successful development of a healthy adult animal. The
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process of the establishment of the mother–infant bond found in the
animal world is called imprinting. Imprinting is an adaptive behaviour.
Imprinting was first brought to our attention by Konrad Lorenz (Nobel
Laureate for Medicine in 1973) in 1952 in his book King Solomon’s Ring.
In it he recorded observations he had made of geese, mallard ducks,
cats, hedgehogs, horses, fish, etc. He also reported again on his classic
1935 observations of greylag geese. A teenage ethologist, Lorenz noticed
that species such as ducks appeared to instinctively follow (as a
consequence of genetics) the first moving object they saw (usually their
mother) from birth. He deduced this when he realised that ducklings
had imprinted on him, and followed him around thereafter. He said
ducklings have to develop this learnt imprinted bond within 24 hours in
order to develop the necessary duck survival, social and sexual
behaviours essential to adult life. If this bond is not formed within 4–24
hours – which Lorenz calls a critical period – ducks are socially and
sexually damaged. Imprinting is crucial to individual and general species
survival.
Lorenz (1935) divided a clutch of greylag goose eggs into two groups.
One group stayed with the biological mother goose while the other was
hatched in an incubator. On hatching the first moving stimulus the
incubated group saw was Lorenz.
They began following him around. He marked all the goslings and
placed them beside the mother goose. They very quickly separated into
two distinct groups: those naturally born in the presence of the mother
followed her; the incubated group followed Lorenz. The power of this
discovery from the point of view of an innate survival skill such as
imprinting cannot be underemphasised.
What happens if imprinting does not occur during the critical
period?
Sluckin (1965) reran Lorenz’s original experiment concerning
imprinting in ducklings. He hatched ducklings in isolation from a
mother-figure, and each other (bar one). He found that they could still
imprint on a parent-figure (or any large moving object), 4–5 days after
hatching. Lorenz’s critical period to imprint of less than 24 hours was
not as fixed and narrow as previously thought. Sluckin argued that the
reason Lorenz’s ducklings, who were hatched apart from their mother,
could not imprint on their mother or any large moving object after 24
hours was that they had imprinted on each other during this time.
Because Sluckin’s ducklings had been kept isolated from each other
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their period of imprintablity had increased fivefold. Sluckin therefore
renamed the critical period as the sensitive period, although it should
be said that it is thought the best time for imprinting to occur
successfully, at least for ducklings, is the critical period of the first 24
hours.
Are the effects of imprinting permanent?
As implied above, Lorenz believed imprinting to have a permanent effect
on a duck’s later social and sexual success. Imprinting appears to be of
huge significance from the point of view of personal, social and sexual
survival in prosocial species. It is only through this learnt imprinted
mother–infant bond that correct social and sexual behaviours are learnt.
Guiton (1966), in a most interesting experiment, disputed the
permanency of the imprinting bond. He reared some male leghorn
chicks in isolation for 47 days. During this time they were tended by an
assistant who wore yellow rubber gloves. The only physical contact they
had with anything/anyone else were these yellow rubber gloves coming
through the aperture of their pen to feed them. On their release from
isolation after 47 days, the chicks all attempted to mate with the yellow
rubber gloves! After this observation, Guiton kept the experimental
group of male chicks in an environment with normally reared female
hens of the same age. Although well past imprinting age the change in
company had its impact. The male chicks successfully mated with the
female hens and no longer yearned for the yellow rubber gloves!
Guiton argues that any subsequent social or sexual dysfunction
(disturbed behaviour) that might have arisen as a consequence of lack of
imprinting would only have come about if his male chicks had never
been exposed to others of the same species. For Guiton, therefore, the
effects of imprinting (or the lack of it) are neither permanent nor
irreversible.
Harlow’s monkeys
Interested in the emotional development of rhesus monkeys and
species–species comparison with humans, Harlow (1959) took eight
newborn rhesus monkeys and reared them in isolation in their own
individual cages. In each cage were two identical ‘models’. One model
had a large round head with eyes, ears and mouth with its wire-mesh
body covered in terry-towelling; the other had a rectangular head with
non-monkey-like features supported on a bare wire-mesh body.
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Harlow wanted to discover if the monkeys would develop a mother–
infant attachment to any of the models, and whether the introduction of
food had any part to play in the resulting attachment. To this end he
alternately had a feeding teat protruding from the body of one or other
of his terry-towelling or wire-mesh models in each of his eight cages.
Four were thus fed via the terry-towelling models while the other four
were fed via the wire-mesh ones.
He found that who fed his monkeys had no effect on whom they
attached to. While the monkeys fed from the teat coming from whatever
model was in their cage, all clung onto the terry-towelling one most. To
test whether they had formed an attachment to one or other of his
models he first removed the wire-mesh model from the cage. This
produced no reaction. When Harlow removed the terry-towelling model
from the cages however, all eight monkeys showed observable signs of
distress. In a variation of this, when a wind-up teddy was put into each
cage and let go, the monkeys all ran and clung to the terry-towelling
model burying their heads in its chest, in much the same way as a small
child might when confronted with an unusual and strange situation.
Interestingly, they all displayed similar ‘peeking’, or ‘keeking’, behaviour
to that of human children when, after a while, they would ‘keek’ up
from the terry-towelling ‘mother’s’ chest and look in the direction of the
teddy – becoming a wee bit more confident each time they did so. In a
field test situation (in this instance in the open air) the young monkeys
explored quite happily when the terry-towelling model was present but
became distressed if it was removed. Harlow’s work confirms that
attachment is not related to food (as thought at the time due to the
dominant influence of behaviourism) but more so to do with our need
for tactile, or sensual, comfort. It is the physical, and related mental,
experience of someone else’s love for us.
After this longitudinal study – which used elements of laboratory, field,
natural experiment and natural observation – Harlow (1962) wrote
another report on his monkeys. He reported that they had grown up
physically well, but it was evident that all eight had developed social and
emotional difficulties no matter whether their ‘mother’ had been wiremesh or terry-towel! In comparison to other normally reared rhesus
monkeys they were more timid and more frightened of new
experiences, had immense difficulty in social situations and found
reproduction impossible. They exhibited aspects of the autistic spectrum
as found with autistic people, i.e. detachment from environment and
repetitive, stereotyped movement. Harlow concluded that there is a
critical period of around 6 months where a rhesus monkey has to form
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an attachment with other monkeys otherwise social and emotional
development becomes impaired, or damaged.
To try to rectify the situation, and to measure the permanency of
maternal privation (not being able to experience monotropy due to
not having a mother around in the first place), Harlow put his monkeys
into rehabilitation with a community of more naturally reared monkeys
on ‘Monkey Island’. Visiting 6 months later, Harlow observed that this
‘group therapy’ had helped social and emotional development slightly,
though sexual reproduction still eluded them. Harlow concluded that
for rhesus monkeys, the outcome of maternal and social privation
jeopardises social, emotional and sexual development and that these
effects are permanent if a rhesus monkey is deprived of maternal or
other rhesus monkey contact for the first six months of its life. Making a
species–species comparison, Harlow went on to say that human babies
had a critical period of 2 years within which to form necessary
attachments with other humans, otherwise their social and emotional
development may be similarly affected.
A few interesting experimental variations have been forthcoming in this
area. Rosenblum and Harlow (1963) exposed monkeys to two types of
cloth mother. One blew compressed air from time to time. They found
that infant monkeys showed the strongest attachment to this ‘punitive’
mother – a finding relevant to the relationship found between abused
children and their parents. This has been confirmed by Hogg et al.
(1994) who looked at the effects of a 24-week separation on three young
gorillas who had previously been living with their mothers. During
separation the initial reactions were threat responses and pacing about
menacingly. This was thought to mirror human anaclitic depression.
When reunited with their mothers the infant gorillas did not
immediately exhibit attachment behaviours with them and spent more
time in contact with each other.
What can ethology tell us?
1.
That bonding is a consequence of body contact rather than
feeding.
2.
That this body contact has to be interactive between those
involved. Passive bonding to an inanimate object, for example, can
result in abnormal social and emotional development.
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3.
That absence of an interactive attachment figure (usually the
mother) can be compensated by other alternative attachment
figures (peer group).
Look up:
‘The Nature of Love’
Harry F. Harlow (1958)[1]
University of Wisconsin
http://www.yorku.ca/dept/psych/classics/Harlow/love.htm
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From: Boston Globe Online
http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/nobel/1989/1989w.html
KONRAD LORENZ, 85; NOBEL
LAUREATE PIONEERED STUDY OF
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
in their lives, become strongly attached
to their biological mothers, a process
known as imprinting.
Author: Associated Press Date:
Wednesday, March 1, 1989
Page: 37 Section: OBITUARY
He showed that the process could
be altered, however, by demonstrating
that mallard ducklings would happily
follow a human who greeted them
shortly after birth and imitated a
mother’s quacking.
VIENNA – Konrad Lorenz, the
Austrian scientist who won a Nobel
Prize in 1973 for his pioneering
studies of human and animal
behaviour, died of kidney failure
Monday in his home in Altenburg, 30
miles northeast of Vienna. He was 85.
Dr Lorenz, Austria’s most famous
scientist, held doctorates in medicine,
zoology and psychology.
His studies on the organization of
individual and group behaviour
patterns won him the Nobel Prize in
medicine together with Karl von Frisch
and Nikolaas Tinbergen.
Dr Lorenz turned to research in
animal behaviour shortly after
obtaining his medical degree. He had
become an animal lover as a child,
collecting a variety of animals at his
expansive boyhood home outside
Vienna. The collection included fish,
dogs, monkeys, insects and especially
ducks and geese.
His first important findings
concerned the social life of birds.
Those studies convinced him that
many aspects of the birds’ behaviour
were innate and instinctive, rather
than learned.
His views were controversial, and
they became even more controversial
when he suggested that such
instinctive behaviour might be
important in humans, too.
One of his best known findings was
that young animals will, at some time
In 1939, Dr Lorenz was given a
chair in psychology at Immanuel Kant
University in Koenigsberg, then a
German town and later the Soviet port
of Kaliningrad.
His tenure there and publications
during that time led in later years to
allegations that Lorenz was a Nazi
sympathizer.
When accepting the Nobel Prize, he
apologized for a 1940 publication
judged to reflect Nazi views of science,
saying that ‘many highly decent
scientists hoped, like I did, for a short
time for good from National Socialism,
and many quickly turned away from it
with the same horror as I.’
After World War II, Dr Lorenz
returned to Vienna, where he lectured
at the university and published dozens
of books.
One of his most controversial
publications was the 1966 study ‘On
Aggression’, in which he asserted that
aggressive impulses are to some degree
innate, drawing on analogies between
human and animal behavior.
Later best-selling books included
The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized
Humanity, a plea against
overpopulation and environmental
destruction, and The Decay of the
Humane, a gloomy look at mankind’s
future that sold 390,000 copies.
© 1997 Globe Newspaper Company
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Look up:
Lecture Support Material: Ethological Experiments
University of Plymouth Department of Psychology SALMON (Study and
Learning Materials Online)
http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/ETHEXPT.HTM#FAP
http://altweb.jhsph.edu/
You may need to download Apple Quicktime Plug-in to see videos on
this page.
Student activity: Essay
Analyse the use of non-human animals in research in
developmental psychology. Your answer should be around 1000
words in length.
• First you must tell the reader what it is you intend to do and
how you are going to tackle it.
• You then discuss in a non-emotive way the issue, why it
developed and its importance to developmental psychology.
• Identify and give arguments for the ‘issue’ with relevant
theorists/research.
• Identify and give arguments against the ‘issue’ with relevant
theorists/research.
• Identify and give arguments for relevant ‘solutions’ to the
difficulties/problems posed by the issue.
• Identify and give example(s) from at least one appropriate
concept of the issue.
• Identify and give relevant research indicating the importance of
the issue in relation to appropriate concept(s).
• Finally, state relevant conclusions related to the importance of
the issue for developmental psychology.
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Issue 2: Heredity and environment
Nature or nurture, or the heredity v environment issue or debate, has
raged within philosophy and psychology since their beginnings. In
summary what the issue concerns is to what extent behaviour is the
result of your genetic code (nature – the genes you inherit) or life
experiences (nurture – your parents, your upbringing, your experiences
generally). Heredity v environment is both a theoretical and practical
controversy, most importantly in the areas of thinking and problem
solving, language and atypical behaviour – but also perception,
aggression and gender. Undoubtedly nature and nurture interact, and
the best solution is to see nature as ‘potential’ (genotype) which is
modified by nurture (phenotype). This has been called a reaction
range.
Nature or nurture?
• Heredity/Nature: the view that behaviour is determined by inherited
factors.
• Environment/Nurture: the view that behaviour is determined by
acquired or environmental factors.
The nature–nurture, or ‘heredity–environment’, debate is a controversy
which has raged in philosophy and psychology for centuries, and
nowhere more vehemently than in the area of intelligence and thus
thinking and problem solving. The question then is: to what extent is a
person’s intelligence the inescapable product of his/her genetic make-up
or the outcome of his/her life experiences?
The nature–nurture debate has important practical consequences. For
example, if intelligence is entirely inherited then why should we not test
children as early as possible and place them in suitable schools and
occupations in order to potentialise their intellectual abilities on the
basis of identified fixed intellect? This was the position adopted in
psychology by the late Sir Cyril Burt. On the other hand if intelligence is
influenced by environmental factors, then it is critical that children are
given enriching experiences wherever possible to enhance their
abilities.
Other examples of the nature–nurture debate in psychology include:
• Perception. To what extent is what we ‘see’ – for example the
perception of depth or visual illusions – an innate aspect of our
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physical visual system? Or are some aspects of perception learned and
therefore different in different cultures?
• Language. To what extent are humans hardwired to acquire language,
or is their ability to use language based on exposure and imitation? If
the latter is true, then it should be possible to train non-human
animals who don’t have the innate brain mechanisms to use language.
• Aggression. To what extent is violent behaviour an aspect of a
person’s nature, or is it learned? For example we might propose that
men are more aggressive then women because they are innately more
aggressive or it may be that, in our society, men are taught/learn to
respond more aggressively than women (nurture). The question has
important practical applications in the reduction of aggression. If
aggression is determined by nature then drug therapies may offer the
best means of prevention.
• Gender development. Sex is determined by each individual’s
chromosomes; but gender identity and gender role behaviour are
moulded by society.
• Causes of mental illness. Recent research has found evidence of a
genetic basis for many atypical disorders; however the diathesis-stress
model suggests that a person’s genetic makeup will predispose them
to certain disorders but it is environmental factors (stressors) that
actually trigger the expression of the disorder. The more susceptible
an individual is, the fewer stressors are necessary. This means that
neither nature nor nurture individually cause most mental
dysfunction. Aytipical behaviour comes about as a result of the
interaction of nature with nurture.
Look up:
http://objana.com/frog/natnurt.html
Further reading
Richard Gross, Rob McIlveen, Hugh Coolican, Alan Clamp and Julia
Russell, Psychology A New Introduction (2nd ed.), Chapter 66, pages
812–824.
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Which is it that ‘makes’ us what we are – heredity, environment or
interaction?
There are a number of arguments that demonstrate that the answer
must be ‘an interaction’:
• Hebb (1949) said that the question ‘nature or nurture’ is a
meaningless one. It’s like asking whether the length or breadth of a
rectangle determines the area. The answer is simply – both.
• If you plant a seed in good soil and provide plenty of sunshine,
warmth and food, it thrives. If you plant the identical seed in poor
soil with little nourishment it will grow less well. If you plant
genetically different seeds in the same soil there will be differences; in
this case they are due to nature whereas in the first example the
differences are due to nurture. If we compare genetically different
groups of people (different racial groups) we must be certain they are
sharing the same environment before we attribute any differences to
nature, otherwise the differences must be at least in part due to
nurture.
• There is an inherited metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria
(PKU), where certain proteins are not processed properly leaving a
poisonous substance in the blood which causes brain damage. If the
condition is detected early (and all infants are tested) then the
particular proteins can be eliminated from the child’s diet and there
is no brain damage. The question is whether intellectual impairment,
should it occur in this instance, is due to nature or nurture? If the
child’s environment doesn’t contain the proteins, no damage will
occur. Therefore here is an interaction between nature and nurture.
This interactionist relationship is the same as the diathesis-stress
model described earlier.
• The concept of heredity presumes that we can isolate an individual
who has had no interaction with the environment. People often talk
of abilities being present at birth but at this time the human infant has
already had 9 months’ worth of environmental experience. Even
before conception the state of the infant is not all ‘nature’, as
illustrated by the ‘transgenerational effect’. If a woman has a poor diet
during pregnancy her foetus suffers. Perhaps more importantly if the
foetus is female the foetus’ eggs for her own children, which are
already formed, will be adversely affected. Therefore the next
generation will be underdeveloped because of its grandmother’s
poor environment. What may appear to be inherited by a future
generation of offspring is in fact environmentally determined.
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• There is no true experimental evidence. Nature–nurture studies
compare individuals with the same or different genetic makeup.
Study has focused in on identical twins (monozygotic) who are
genetically the same because they come from a single egg – one
zygote – and non-identical twins (dizygotic) who come from two
zygotes. They are genetically as similar as any siblings (other brothers
and sisters) except they share a more similar environment than other
siblings do right from conception. In recent years it has become clear
that even though identical twins are genetically the same there are
differences right from the start.
• The best solution to the heredity–environment controversy may lie in
Gottesman’s (1963) concept of a reaction range similar to the concept
of susceptibility and predisposition in the diasthesis-stress model
discussed above. Our genetic make-up limits our range of potential
development in terms of all our chacteristics, e.g. height, intelligence
and atypical behaviours. Actual development is related to
environmental opportunities, or lack of them. This is the concept of
potential.
Look up:
http://genetics.nature.com
Where do the different perspectives stand in the nature–nurture
debate?
• The biological perspective by definition takes a nature position
though, as in the case of phenylketonuria, the environment clearly
influences behaviour.
• The behaviourist perspective is entirely on the side of nurture,
though the potential for learning is innate.
• The cognitive perspective similarly makes no special claims for nature
except insofar as the structure of the mental system is innate; its
development however is a response to experience.
• The psychoanalytic perspective combines both nature and nurture in
the view that innate, sexual forces are modified by experience to
produce adult personality.
• The humanistic perspective emphasises nurture but holds certain
views about the nature of humankind – that it is positive, inclined
towards psychological good health, and has the potential for selfactualisation.
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Look up:
http://www.apa.org/releases/mother.html
and
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/personality/genes.html
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
‘Heredity And Environment’
Narrative by Carolyn N. Kinder
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1990/6/90.06.04.x.html#a
and
Heredity
http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/worldbook/atozscience/h/
253940.html
plus
‘Sources of human psychological differences: the Minnesota study of
twins reared apart’ by Thomas J. Bouchard Jr. et al. Science magazine,
Oct 12, 1990
http://www.duke.org/library/intelligence/bouchard.html
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DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (AH)
THE ISSUES
Student activity: Essay
Analyse the issue of heredity and environment in relation to
developmental psychology. Your answer should be about 1000
words in length.
• First you must tell the reader what it is you intend to do and
how you are going to tackle it.
• Define heredity and environment. Identify and give example(s)
from at least one appropriate concept of the issue, namely,
learning theory, sociability, cognitive development and
language, etc.
• Then discuss the issue in a non-emotive way, why it developed
and its importance to developmental psychology.
• Identify and give arguments for the heredity side of the ‘issue’
with relevant theorists/research.
• Identify and give arguments against the heredity ‘issue’ with
relevant theorists/research (the environment side of the issue).
• Identify and give arguments for relevant ‘solutions’ to the
difficulties/problems posed by the issue, i.e. interactionism.
• Elaborate the issue from at least one appropriate concept,
namely heredity and environment as regards learning theory,
sociability, cognitive development, language, etc.
• Identify and give relevant research indicating the importance of
heredity, environment and interactionism in relation to
appropriate concept(s).
• Finally, state relevant conclusions related to the importance of
‘heredity v environment’ for developmental psychology.
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (AH)
157
158
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APPENDIX
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