HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1 PSYCHOLOGY 3050: Introduction

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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050Introduction

• Dr. Jamie Drover
• SN-3094, 737-8383
• e-mail -- jrdrover_at_mun.ca
• Winter Semester, 2008

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Developmental Psychology

• The scientific study of the changes in (human)
  structure and function over time and the causes
  of the change.
• Changes occur in many interrelated domains
• biological/neurological
• sensory/perceptual
• cognitive
• linguistic
• social/emotional

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Cognition

• Cognition the processes by which knowledge is
  acquired and manipulated i.e., thinking
• All mental activities involved in acquiring,
  understanding, and modifying information.
• Separates humans from other species

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Cognition

• A reflection of what is in the mind
• Not observed directly inferred from behavior
• Includes unconscious and non-deliberate processes
  involved in routine activity (e.g., reading).

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Cognitive Development

• Development Changes in structure or function
  over time.
• Structure a substrate of the organism
• e.g., nervous system tissue, muscle, limbs
  (physical structures) or
• mental knowledge that underlies thinking
• e.g., schemas or concepts
• hypothetical

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Cognitive Development

• Function actions related to the structure
• Most commonly, something that the child does
• e.g., retrieving a memory, pressing a computer
  key, firing of a neuron, etc.
• Cognitive development assimilation of info into
  schemas, performing addition.
• Development is characteristic of the species and
  has its basis in biology
• Development is predictable.

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Cognitive Development

• Context in which the development occurs is
  important.
• Vygotsky (1978) proposed a sociocultural view of
  development in which cultural context was
  important.

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Structure and function are bi-directional

• Structures enable function, and function (e.g.,
  activity) feeds back to drive further development
  of structure
• Function maintains the structure and allows for
  proper development.
• For example Newborn infants have very poor
  vision
• Growth of cells in the visual cortex (structure)
  leads to better visual acuity
• Better acuity (sharpness) leads the baby to look
  at more patterns, objects (function)
• More looking stimulates further cell growth
  (structure)

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Development of the Infant Visual Cortex from
Birth to 6 months
From Conel (1939-1963)
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Visual Acuity is poor at birth
At 6 months
At 2 months
The Newborn
An Infants View of the Childs Face at a
Distance of 2 feet
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Structure and function are bi-directional

• Failure of bi-directionality results in visual
  dysfunction
• e.g., cataracts restrict seeing poor function,
  structural loss

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Developmental Functions and Individual Differences

• Developmental Function The species typical form
  that cognition takes over time.
• E.g. Looking at the development of mathematical
  skills
• What is a 2-year-olds understanding of numbers?
  What is a 4-year-olds understanding of numbers?
• Usually deals with developmental universals and
  are based on averages.
• E.g. Looking at increases in average IQ from
  preschool to adulthood.

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Developmental Functions and Individual Differences

• But, individual differences are also important.
• What leads to these differences? Are these
  differences stable over time?

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Key Issues in Cognitive Development

• Nature and Nurture
• Stages of Development
• Qualitative vs. quantitative differences
• Continuity vs. discontinuity
• Homogeneity of cognitive function
• Dynamic Systems Approaches to Development
• Domain General v. Domain-Specific Abilities
• Stability and Plasticity of Behavior

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Issue Nature and Nurture

• Nature (biology) and Nurture (environment)
• Oldest, most fundamental issue in psychology
• Which one drives development?
• Genes or environment
• Currently, not an either-or issue
• genetic potential for development established at
  conception
• genotype is not a blueprint
• sets a range of potential outcomes
• phenotypic (observed) outcome depends on
  interaction with environment

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Historically Heredity or Environment

• Nativists human intellectual abilities are
  innate
• Development constrained by inherited genetic
  material
• Empiricists nature provides only a
  species-general learning mechanism (brain)
• cognitive development arises from experience
• Context and culture (family, peers, school,
  media) are key

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Current View

• There is no dichotomy between nature and nurture,
  i.e., they can not be separated because the two
  continuously interact.
• How do they interact?
• Perhaps genetic constitution influences how one
  experiences the environment.
• E.g., A sickly lethargic child seeks less
  stimulation and gets less cognitively
  facilitating attention from adults than does a
  more active, healthy child. The result is a
  slower or less advanced child.

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What does innate mean?

• There are genetically based constraints on
  behavior or development.
• Representational Constraints Representations
  that are hard-wired into the brain.
• E.g., the nature of objects, mental math.
• We enter the world able to make sense of these
  aspects of the environment.

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What does innate mean?
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What does innate mean?

• Architectural Constraints Refers to the ways in
  which the architecture of the brain is organized
  at birth.
• Certain neurons/areas of the brain can only
  process certain types of information and pass it
  along to other brain areas.
• These constraints allow a high degree of learning
  to occur (e.g., language areas).

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What does innate mean?

• Chronotopic Constraints limitations on the
  developmental timing of events.
• E.g., certain brain areas develop before others,
  implying that early developing brain areas would
  likely have different processing responsibilities
  than later developing areas.
• E.g., some brain areas are receptive to certain
  types of experience at specific times
• Language Development

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What does innate mean?

• Critical (sensitive) periods
• time windows in development in which organisms
  are optimally sensitive to particular experiences
  or stimuli
• the same experience before or after critical
  period less effective

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Last Class

• Cognitive Development Change in structure and
  function over time.
• Bidirectional
• Key Issues
• Nature v. Nurture (interact)
• Innate constrained by genetic material
• Representational constraints
• Architectural constraints
• Chronotopic constraints

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Nature/Nurture and Developmental Contextualism

• Nature and nurture are interacting components of
  a larger system.
• Developmental Systems Approach According to
  Lerner (1991), all parts of the organism (genes,
  cells, tissues, and organs), as well as the whole
  organism itself, interact dynamically with the
  context in which the organism is embedded.
• The organism and the context form an
  organism-context unit.

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Nature/Nurture and Developmental Contextualism

• Cultural effects can not be separated from
  biological influences.

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Issue Stages of Development?

• What is the shape of the developmental function?
• Historically development assumed to be
  stage-like.
• A period during which a child displays a certain
  type of behaviors.
• e.g., infancy, terrible-twos, adolescence
• Aristotle, Freud, Piaget suggested stage-like
  development
• Piaget postulated four stages of cognitive
  development
• Currently debated

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Issue Stages of Development?
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Issue Stages of Development?

• Criteria for stages of development
• (a) Change is qualitative rather than
  quantitative
• (b) Change is abrupt (i.e., discontinuous)
• (c) Thinking within a stage is homogeneous

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(a) Qualitative vs. Quantitative

• Behavior at a given stage is qualitatively
  different from behavior at earlier or later
  stages
• Development is not a matter of more, but
  different
• Toy play in at 14 mths (sensory) vs. 20 mths
  (cognitive)
• See phone example (page 11)
• Problem is to define qualitative subjective
• It looks like a different type of behavior to
  me
• Does this mean the mechanisms underlying the
  behavior have changed?
• See apple example (page 11)

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(a) Qualitative vs. Quantitative

• Surface appearance of change may seem qualitative
  but be driven by a quantitative underlying change
• e.g., increase in speed of information processing
  and/or the amount of information that can be
  processed (quantitative) may mean that a child
  can hold several bits of info in mind and can
  then solve a new type of problem (qualitative).