Introduction to Developmental
Psychology
Development = Change (Ever-changing)
“Change is from conception until the last
flicker of life”
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Qualitative Change
not measured by numbers. ex. Beauty
Quantitative Change
measured by numbers. ex. weight of
height
Development is...
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patterned and orderly and follows a
blueprint laid out by our evolutionary
history.
studies the stability of people
development includes more than infancy
and childhood
can be either positive or negative
It is messy, complex, multifaceted, and
shaped by interacting arcs of influence.
Can be best understood through theories
and research of different orientations,
consulting multiple disciplines.
rates and timing of development vary
Some important terminologies...
 Human development
- patterned and orderly and follows a
blueprint laid out by our evolutionary
history. Its goals include description,
explanation, prediction, and
intervention.
 life-span development
- concept of human development as a
lifelong process (from womb to tomb),
can be studied scientifically
 Developmentalist
- study processes of change and stability
in all domains, or aspects, of
development throughout all periods of
the lifespan
 Social Construction
- concept or practice may appear natural
and obvious to those who accept it, but
that is an invention of a particular
culture or society.
Goals of human development (DEPI)
 Describe (Description)
- to describe human development
 Explanation (explain)
explaining human development by
using theories/research
 Prediction (predict)
- to predict future human development
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 Intervention (intervene)
- to intervene in the development, like for
example using therapy.
Domains of Development (or Aspects of the
Self):
- All domains of development are holistic
(interconnected) and are affected by each
other.
- All domains are equally important
A. Physical Development
- Growth of body and brain, including
patterns of change in sensory
capacities, motor skills, and health.
B. Cognitive development
- The Pattern of change in mental
abilities, such as learning, attention,
memory, language, thinking, reasoning,
and creativity.
C. Psychosocial Development
- Pattern of change in emotions,
personality, and social relationships.
Some important terminologies…
 Individual Difference
- Differences in characteristics, influence,
or developmental outcomes.
People differ in gender, height, weight,
and body build; in health and energy
level; in intelligence; and in
temperament, personality, and
emotional reactions.
 Heredity (Nature)
- Inborn traits or characteristics
inherited from the biological parents.
- Does not always show but it makes
you vulnerable or at risk.
 Environmental (Nurture)
- The totality of nonhereditary, or
experiential, influences on
development.
- ex. social life.
- Nature and Nurture are both equally
important.
 Maturation
- Unfoding of a natural sequence of
physical and behavioral changes,
typical changes of infancy and early
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childhood, such as the abilities to walk
and talk, are tied to maturation.
We can’t control this unfolding.
Context of development
Immediate context normally is the
family of an infant
o Family in turn is subject to the wider
and ever-changing influence of
neighborhood, community, and society.
o Family isn’t always mother, father, and
child (always find the context)
 Nuclear Family
- Two-generational kinship, economic,
and household unit consisting of one or
two parents and their biological
children, adopted children, or
stepchildren, increased incidence of
divorce also has affected the nuclear
family
 Extended Family
- Multigenerational kinship network of
parents, children, and other relatives,
sometimes living together in an
extended-family household.
o
Some important terminologies...
 Socioeconomic Status (SES)
- Combination of economic and social
factors describing an individual or
family, including income, education,
and occupation.
 Risk Factors
- Conditions that increase the likelihood
of a negative development outcome.
 Culture
- A society’s or group’s total way of life,
including customs, traditions, beliefs,
values, language, and physical product
— all learned behavior, passed on from
parents to children.
- Culture is constantly changing, often
through contact with other cultures.
Today cultural contact has been
enhanced by computers and
telecommunications.
 Ethnic Group
- A group united by ancestry, race,
religion, language, or national origins,
contributes to a sense of shared
identity.
Ethnic and cultural patterns affect
development by their influence on the
composition of a household, its
economic and social resources, the way
its members act toward one another,
the foods they eat, the games children
play, the way they learn, how well they
do in school, the occupations adult
engage in, and the way family members
perceive the world.
 Ethnic Gloss
- Overgeneralization about an ethnic or
cultural group that obscure differences
(minor distinctions that are not easily
noticeable or understood) within the
group
- The problem of overgeneralization of
ethnic groups
 Normative
- Characteristic of an event that occurs in
a similar way for most people in a group
(Normal).
 Historical Generation
- A group of people strongly influenced by
a major historical event during their
formative period. (Cohort)
- ex. WWII
Includes different age groups.3 Types
of Influences:
Normative Influence:
1. Normative age-graded influences
- are highly similar for people in a
particular age group. The timing of
biological events is fairly predictable
within a normal range. (e.g.,
puberty)
2. Normative history-graded influence.
- Significant events that Shape the
behavior and attitudes of a
historical generation
3. Nonnormative.
- Characteristic of an unusual event
that happens to a particular person
or a typical event that happens at
an unusual time of life. Typical
events that happen at an atypical
time of life or atypical events.
Perceived as turning points. People
sometimes help create their own
nonnormative life events (e.g., early
pregnancy)
o Imprinting
- Instinctive form of learning in
which, during a critical period in
early development, a young animal
forms an attachment to the first
o
o
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moving object, it sees, usually the
mother.
Konrad Lorenz (1957),
- an Austrian zoologist, showed that
newly batched ducklings will
instinctively follow the first moving
object they see, whether it is a
member of their species or not. This
is a result of a predisposition toward
learning: the readiness of an
organism's nervous system to
acquire certain information during a
brief critical period in early life.
Critical Period.
- The specific time when a given event
or its absence has a specific impact
on development. Normal
development will not occur, and the
resulting abnormal patterns may be
irreversible. However, the length of a
critical period is not absolutely
fixed.
Plasticity:
- Range of modifiability of
performance.
o Sensitive Period- Times in development when a
person is particularly open to
certain kinds of experiences.
7 KEY PRINCIPLES OF A LIFE-SPAN
developmental approach by Paul Baltes:
1) Development is life-long- no period is
more or less important than any other.
2) Development is multidimensionalbiological, psychological, and social
3) Development is multidirectional- AS
people gain in one area, they may lose
in another, sometimes at the same time
4) Relative influences of biology and
culture shift over the life Spandevelopment is influenced by both
biology and culture
5) Development involves changing
resource allocations- resources of
time, energy, talent, money, and social
support in varying ways.
6) Development shows plasticityabilities can be improved significantly
with training and practice, even late in
life. In children, plasticity has limits
that depend in part on the various
influences on development.
7) Development is influenced by the
historical and cultural contextdevelops within multiple contexts—
circumstances or conditions defined in
part by maturation and in part by time
and place
Chapter 2: Theory and
Research
THEORY-HYPOTHESES-RESEARCH
RELATIONSHIP
 Theory
o coherent concepts or statements
organize data and fulfill the goal of
psychology.
 Hypotheses
o Possible explanations for phenomena,
used to predict the outcome of
research.
 Research
o can indicate whether a theory is
accurate in its predictions but cannot
conclusively show a theory to be true.
COMMON THEMES/ ISSUES OF
DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES:
1) Whether people are active or reactive in
their own development.
2) Whether development is continuous or
discontinuous (occurs in stages).
ACTIVE VS. REACTIVE
 Jean Jacques Rousseau
“children are “noble savages” who
develop according to their own natural
tendencies if not corrupted by society”
 Reactive
- hungry sponge shaped by input
 Active
- create experiences for themselves,
are motivated to learn about the
world around them
MECHANISTIC MODEL OR ORGANISMIC
MODEL?
 Mechanistic Model
development is a predictable
reaction in response to
environmental input
 Organismic Model
- development as internally initiated by
an active organism through
qualitatively different stages.
Development has an underlying orderly
structure (series of unpredictable
qualitative changes). Stages build upon
each other.
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CONTINUOUS OR DISCONTINUOUS?
 Continuous
gradual and incremental, agree
with the mechanistic model
(e.g., learning theorists /Vygotsky,
Bronfenbrenner, Informationprocessing theorists)
 Discontinuous.
- abrupt and uneven, linear with
sudden leaps that are considered
universal
(e.g stage theories of Freud, Piaget,
Kohlberg, and Erikson )
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QUALITATIVE CHANGE OR
QUANTITATIVE CHANGE?
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Quantitative.
- Changes in number or amount,
such as in height, weight, size of
vocabulary, or frequency of
communication.
Qualitative.
- Discontinuous changes marked by
the emergence of something that
can’t be easily predicted by the
previous functioning
Five (5) major perspectives used for
human development:
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Psychoanalytic
Learning
Cognitive
Contextual
Sociobiological
 PSYCHOANALYTIC
- View of human development as
shaped by unconscious forces that
motivate human behavior.
 FREUD (Psychoanalytic Theory)
- reactive development
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qualitative change
shaped by innate unconscious forces
(hunger, sex, and aggression) that
motivate human behavior.
Early experiences shaped later
functioning, and he drew attention to
childhood as an important precursor to
adult behavior.
consciousness as an iceberg.
Provinces of the mind (Id, Ego, and
Superego) and Levels of Consciousness
Erogenous Zones and Psychosexual
Stages
ERIK ERIKSON (Psychosocial
Development)
Pioneered life-span perspective
(development as a lifelong process)
qualitative change a balance of positive
and negative tendencies/ “crisis” /
conflicting or competing tendencies.
earning the virtue/ strength
sometimes can be resolved poorly but
leaves room for improvement.
social and cultural influences mattered.
social clock—the conventional,
culturally preferred timing of important
life events
LEARNING
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development was the result of learning
relatively long-lasting change based on
experience or adaptation
based on the observable (claimed to be
scientific)
“tabula rasa”
development as continuous and
reactive
LEARNING: BEHAVIORISM
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emphasizes the predictable role of the
environment in causing observable
behavior.
mechanistic model (reactive) and
continuous e.g., conditioning
Associative learning. mental link is
formed between two events
BEHAVIORISM: ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING
1) Classical Conditioning.
- associating a stimulus that does not
ordinarily elicit a response with
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another stimulus that does elicit the
response.
E.g. Pavlov’s Dog ( salivating)
“Little Albert” by John B. Watson
(conditioned fear)
2) 2. Operant Conditioning.
associating a stimulus that does
not ordinarily elicit a response with
another stimulus that does elicit the
response.
- +,- punishment
- +,- reinforcement
- E.g., Skinner Box of B.F. Skinner
LEARNING: SOCIAL SOCIAL-COGNITIVE
THEORY
 Behaviors are learned by observing
and imitating models.
 “rules” for learning in different
domains do not always follow
behavioral prediction.
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COGNITIVE
o Cognitive perspective
- focuses on thought processes and
the behavior that reflects those
processes and believes that they are
central to the development
- both organismic and mechanistic
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SOCIAL LEARNING: ALBERT BANDURA
 There is something going on inside
the impetus for development is
bidirectional.
 reciprocal determinism.
- Bandura’s term for bidirectional
forces that affect development. The
person acts on the world as the
world acts on the person.
 observational learning.
- learning through watching the
behavior of others. This can occur
even if a person does not imitate the
observed behavior
- People tend to choose models who
are prestigious, who control
resources, or who are rewarded for
what they do—in other words, those
whose behavior is perceived as
valued in their culture.
 self-efficacy.
- Sense of one’s capability to master
challenges and achieve goals
- learn chunks of behavior to form
complex ones.
OBSERVATION -> COGNITIVE
PROCESSES -> LEARNING ->
PERFORM -> FEEDBACK -> SELFEFFICACY
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COGNITIVE: JEAN PIAGET
Cognitive stage theory. children’s
cognitive development advances in a
series of four stages involving
qualitatively distinct types of mental
operations
he demonstrated that “real” science
could indeed investigate hidden
mental phenomena
Viewed development as organismic,
as the product of children’s
attempts to understand and act
upon their world
Organization (categorizing using
schemas), Adaptation
(assimilation and accommodation),
and equilibrium (what they
understand of the world must match
what they observe around them)
INFORMATION-PROCESSING
APPROACH
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Approach to the study of cognitive
development by observing and
analyzing the mental processes
involved in perceiving and handling
information (making sense of
incoming information)
Involves attention, memory,
planning strategies, decisionmaking, and goal setting.
Not a theory but a framework
Likened brain to computers (input/
output) but curious of what's in
between; why results vary.
Development as continuous
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speed of development is age-related
but undergo the same processes
across ages (e.g., estimate an later
intelligence)
often use information-processing
models to test, diagnose, and treat
learning problems
 CONTEXTUAL
- sees the individual as inseparable
from the social context.
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CONTEXTUAL: BIOECOLOGICAL
THEORY
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URIE BRONFENBRENNER
approach to understanding
processes and contexts of human
development identifies influence
Individual difference variables such
as age, sex, health, abilities, or
temperament are present
not an outcome of development but
a shaper
FIVE (5) LEVELS OF ENVIRONMENTAL
INFLUENCE:
1) microsystem.
- everyday environment using face-toface interactions
2) mesosystem.
interlocking influence of
microsystems, the linkages (e.g.,
parent-teacher association)
3) exosystem.
Interactions between a microsystem
and an outside system or
institution, effects are indirect (e.g.,
government policies)
4) macrosystem.
- political system in a generation or
local: overarchingcultural patterns,
such as dominant beliefs, ideologies,
and economic and political systems
5) chronosystem.
- dimensions of time, changes in
structures, and family composition
EVOLUTIONARY/SOCIOBIOLOGICAL
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View of human development that
focuses on evolutionary and
biological bases of behaviors.
Natural selection. incremental
changes passed down to species.
The differential survival and
reproduction of different variants of
members of a species, is the tool the
natural world uses to shape
evolutionary processes i
Natural selection of Charles
Darwin's postulates
1) organisms vary,
2) there are never enough
resources for all
organisms to survive
3) individual differences
in organisms are
heritable
“survival of the fittest” vs.
reproductive success
ETHOLOGY
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Study of distinctive adaptive
behaviors of species of animals that
have evolved to increase survival of
the species.
John Bowlbys attachment theory
proximity-seeking behavior in
animals as he formed his ideas
about attachment in humans.
Infants’ attachment to a caregiver
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
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Application of Darwinian principles
of natural selection and survival of
the fittest to individual behavior.
Morning sickness has been
theorized to have evolved to protect
the fetus from teratogens
Despite arguing that reproductive
success is the key feature driving
our adaptations, does not propose
that people are consciously seeking
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to maximize their reproductive
output.
People tend to have sex because it
feels good, just as natural selection
designed it to feel.
Evolutionary psychology is not
deterministic.
Some important terminologies in
research:
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qualitative or quantitative
sampling, random selection
Methods of data collection
Basic research designs
Variables
operational definition
random assignment
scientific method:
1) Identification of a problem to be
studied, often on the basis of a
theory or of previous research;
2) formulation of hypotheses to be
tested by research;
3) Collection of data;
4) Statistical analysis of the data to
determine whether they support the
hypothesis;
5) Formation of tentative conclusions;
and
6) Dissemination of findings so other
observers can check, learn from,
analyze, repeat, and build on the
results.
Ethics in research:
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informed consent
Avoidance of deception
Privacy and confidentiality
Right to decline/ withdraw
Three (3) principles when confronted by
Ethical
Dilemma:
1) Beneficence
2) respect for autonomy
3) justice