Developmental Psychology:
2110 E
Professor Scott Adler adler@yorku.ca
333 BSB http://www.psych.yorku.ca/adler/

What is psychology?
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The scientific study of behavior
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Types of behavior:
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Includes social, cognitive, emotional, physical, abnormal, etc.

What is developmental psychology?
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The scientific study of change in behavior as the organism grows, matures and gains experience with the world around them.

Why is research focused on infants and children?
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Rapid Development
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Long-term Effects
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Window into Adult Behavior
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Real World Applications
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Interesting Subject Matter
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The Starting Point

The Starting Point

Themes of Development
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Both biology and the social and physical environment affect our development, although they may influence different aspects of development to different degrees.
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Biological versus Environmental
Influences :
To explore how biological and environmental factors interact to produce developmental variations in different children.

Themes of Development
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The Active versus the Passive Child:
Modern developmentalists believe that children are usually active agents who shape, control, and direct the course of their own development.
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Continuity versus Discontinuity :
Recently, suggested that our judgment of continuity or discontinuity depends on the power of the lens we use in examining changes across development

Early Theorists
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Descartes - Cartesian Dualism
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Known as the Mind-Body Problem
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John Locke (17th) - Tabula Rasa
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Rousseau (18th)
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Born with knowledge and ideas
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Develop according to innate timetable

Early Theorists
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Darwin (19th)
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Evolutionary Theory and Natural
Selection
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Recapitulation Theory - ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

Recapitulation Theory
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Haeckel (1866)

Early Child Psychology
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Wundt - Development (and evolution) proceeds through 3 steps:
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Impulsive Acts - innate drives
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Voluntary Acts - several motives but one predominates
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Selective Acts - conscious choice

Early Child Psychology
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G. Stanley Hall
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First scientific study of the child
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Believed in recapitulation theory
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Watson returns to Locke’s environmentalism
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Behaviorism - changes in behavior occur through conditioning
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Little Albert - conditioned reflex method
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Used by Pavlov to make dog salivate to a bell

Early Child Psychology
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Freud - Theory of psychosexual development
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Stage theory
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Repression of desires
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Believed in interaction of innate and environment

Early Child Psychology
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Gesell
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Development due to biological mechanisms
Focused on motor skills
Found regular pattern and developed age norms
Piaget
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Interested in qualitative issues of children’s knowledge
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Used tasks and verbal problems instead of questionnaires
Stage theory of cognitive development

Early Child Psychology
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Erikson
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 conflict with a negative one
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Vygotsky
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Sociocultural approach to cognitive development
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Contrasts with Piaget, who believed in a common cognitive development