Chapter 1:

The People and The Field

What is Developmental Psychology?

Who does this research?

Child Psychologists

Gerontologists

Multidisciplinary approach

Biologists

Chemists

Nurses

Neuroscientists

Anthropologists

What do we study?

Prenatal life, childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, and gerontology - in effect, the lifespan of humans - is the subject of developmental psychologists.

Aspects from conception to birth through living to dying

Changes in capabilities, both thinking & moving

Working and playing

Cultural, social and biological influences on behavior

What makes us healthy? What diseases ravage us?

How do different cultures or other conditions effect change?

Why study development?

You, your friends and acquaintances, the people around you, your spouse, your children, your parents – everyone changes as they grow. 

Can we predict what those changes will be and how those changes will occur? 

Would it help you in your life to know how different people at different ages will react?

Would it help to know the variables that make change occur?

What factors influence development?

The impact of cohort

A cohort is our birth group

Example is the baby boomers (1946 to 1964)

Baby boomers can also be broken into separate cohorts

Changing conceptions of childhood

Children required for farm labor

Children farmed out for the industrial revolution

Children as blank slates and noble savages

Mandatory Education in High School

Child welfare laws

Adolescents and the Emerging Adulthood

Changing conceptions of old age

Lifespan improvements – increasing lifespan

Improving the quality of foods and antibiotics

Chronic Diseases of old age on the increase

The young and the old-old – new categories

Changing ideas about adult life

Is there only one acceptable behavior that defines an “adult” life?

Woman at home - man working

Honor and respect; the elderly - retirement age

Divorced and never married families

Childless couples and interracial couples

What Impacts Life –

Socioeconomic status

Within the United States -

Decreasing income leads to decreasing health, education & longevity

Other parts of the world dire conditions of poverty still exist

Culture

Gender and economic casts attitudes towards divorce & arranged marriage

Collectivism vs. Individualism

Gender

Roles, aggression, life expectancy & stereotypes

Theories

Broad theories attempt to explain behavior for all ages. 

Stage theories attempt to explain behavior at various ages of life.

Five broad theories:

Behaviorism – it’s all Nurture

Watson and Skinner

Classical conditioning

Operant conditioning

Reinforcement and extinction

We should not study thinking and only study what is observable

Find the rules of rewards

Social Learning – more Nurture

Bandura

Modeling and Learning by imitation

Self efficacy

Attachment - Nurture & Nature

Bowlby and Harlow

Parental treatment in early life

Caregiver comfort

Biologically programmed

Evolutionary psychologists - Nature

Behavior is genetic

We behave in ways that kept our ancestors alive

Nature is more important than Nurture

Behavioral Genetics - Nature

Studies of fraternal (dizygotic) and identical (monozygotic) twins

Adoption studies compare twins against both adoptive and birth parents

Looking for environmental  and genetic factors of traits

IQ has a heritability index of +.8

Nature and Nurture together

Living is Evocative

What behaviors do we evoke in others?

Reciprocal determinism

When a person’s thinking, behavior and environment mutually influence each other

Interactions between people are bidirectional

Living is Active

What activities do we actively seek out?

Our tendencies to seek out activities are shaped by our genetics. Seeking out those activities will increase our abilities in those areas, increasing the difference between us and them has we develop.

Nurturing helps us express our Nature

A genius IQ - without proper nutrition and forced to work as a migrant worker with no chance of proper education - will be wasted

We need the correct person-environment fit

Interactions of nature in any given trait are dependent on the canalization of the gene.

Highly canalized genes are those that do not react strongly to environmental influences

Stage Theories

Piaget

Piaget’s cognitive development theory

Qualitatively different stages exist in the way thinking develops

Sensorimotor stage

Preoperational stage

Concrete operational stage

Formal operational stage

Schemas & Assimilation & Accommodation

Focused on children

Erikson

Erikson’s psychosocial tasks

Erikson believed that we continue to develop throughout our lifetimes

Eight stages each with its own bifurcating task

Trust, Autonomy, Initiative, Industry, Identity, Intimacy, Generativity and Integrity

Successful navigation of initial tasks is required to successfully navigate later tasks

Successful navigation means finding a balance between the two tasks

Putting it all together:

The developmental systems approach

We need all the theories to completely understand human development.

We need to understand that complex relationships exist between everything.

We must take everything into consideration when examining human life development.

Research Methods

Two strategies for exploring causes:

Experiments manipulating variables

The scientific method, independent and dependent variables, control groups, placebos, random assignments

Correlational studies

Self Reports, Surveys, Case studies & Naturalistic Observations

Correlation does not mean Causation

Validity vs. Reliability

Bias

Cross-sectional studies:

Getting a single snapshot of groups

Different age groups compared at the same time

Gives differences between age groups

Does not tell us the changes that occur with age

Longitudinal studies:

The gold standard developmental science design

Test at intervals - one group over many years

Requires lots of time and expense

The longer it continues the more biased the sample becomes

Quantitative research

Research scientists use a lot of statistical analysis

We must quantify the differences within groups

Even genetics is used as an independent variable

Qualitative research

Involves in-depth studies of individuals