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Class notes on Themes and Perspectives, Developmental Psychology
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Full class notes on the themes and perspectives in developmental psychology, week 1
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Introduction to Developmental PsychologyThemes and Perspectives in Developmental Psychology
What is developmental psychology?
Development is the process by which an organism grows and changes through its
lifespan.
It takes a lifespan perspective and looks at everything that might change throughout
the time period.
Systematic changes – they are not random things, they seem to happen in a
coherent fashion.
Organised changes – they are not random, things that occur across the species at
different times throughout their lifespan
Successive changes – influenced by something that may have happened before but it
is also influencing something that might come later
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of neural, cognitive, emotional,
behavioural and social development.
Take a complex view when looking at development
Developmental psychology asks two fundamental questions about the mind:
o What develops? – What is that we are interested in? something that is a
systematic, organised or successive change
o What are the causes of development? – Explanation, how do you actually
explain the phenomenon?
It looks at things that may either cause or hinder development.
Concepts of development
Can be considered in a number of ways:
o Universals – what is typical for the species
o Individual differences – why do people differ from one another
o Continuity
o Discontinuity
o Stability
o Change
Universals and individual differences
Universals
o What is common across the species at a particular point in development?
o Focus on stages (qualitative differences) and assumes a ‘normal’ mature end
point.
o Variation is unimportant – focuses on mean and mode only
o ‘Experimental’ focus
o Looks at when children start to use language
, o They are not interested in the differences between each child and so will
compare two different age groups of children to find out any differences
Individual differences
o Why do members of a species differ from one another in their development?
o Focus on quantitative differences between people
o Variation is central
o ‘Natural’ focus
o They try to figure out what makes people different to one another and
whether development is a part of why there are differences.
o They are interested in the variation so tend to use longitudinal studies.
Continuity and stability
Continuity/discontinuity
o Degree of consistency in the group means
o Continuity = mean stays the same
o Discontinuity = mean changes
Stability/instability
o Degree of consistency in the individual
differences
o Stability = rank order stays the same
o Instability = rank order changes
o Homotypic: A A = can use the same measure at different times of
development to capture the same phenomenon
o Heterotypic: A A1 = may use a different measure to capture the same
phenomenon at different stages of development
Focus of developmental Theories
Domain Specific Theories
o Explains one specific topic in development
o Focus on a particular behaviour/trait/skill
o Emphasise mechanisms/processes with narrow effects
o For example, Hamlin’s ‘Moral Sense’ theory
Domain General Theories
o Proposes that there are general mechanisms that influence many different
developmental factors
o There are general processes that cause development
o Focus on a range of behaviours/traits/skills
o Emphasise mechanisms/processes with broad effects
o For example, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
Recurring Ideas in Developmental Psychology
Age is an ambiguous variable (Rutter & Rutter, 1993)
If it says something changes because of age this isn’t really an explanation
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