Developmental Psychology

A Course Companion

Carol Brown

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781473903050
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Developmental Psychology provides student readers with essential help in all aspects of their first course in developmental psychology, including advice on revising exams, preparing and writing course assessment materials, and enhancing and progressing their knowledge and skills in line with course requirements on a developmental psychology course.

This Course Companion is designed to augment, rather than replace, existing textbooks for the course, and will provide:

- Helpful summaries of the course curriculum to aid lecture notes, seminars and written assignments

- Key summaries of the approach taken by the main developmental psychology textbooks

- Guidance on the essential study skills required

- Help with developing critical thinking

- Route-maps to aid the development of wider learning above and beyond textbooks

- Pointers to success in course exams

- A tutor?s-eye view of what course examiners are looking for

- An insider?s view of what key course concepts are really all about

part one
the basics of developmental psychology

The overall aim of this part is to familiarise you with the basics of developmental psychology. It will:

• define developmental psychology as a topic
• provide an outline of developmental psychology and its related disciplines
• give you a brief history of developmental psychology
• introduce the founding figures and their core ideas
• encourage you to think like a developmental psychologist
• help you understand the general principles of assessment and expected learning outcomes when studying this area of psychology
• provide tips and examples of the running themes you will find throughout the text.

1.1
definition

Developmental psychology looks at the changes we go through as we get older and examines the key stages that influence all aspects of our development from the foetus, through infancy and then transitions into adolescence and adulthood. It covers a range of developmental areas including physical, social, emotional, cognitive and language development as well as relationships with wider social agents such as peers and family.

Many of these areas are interchangeable ones and may be the result of nature or nurture, that is, the result of biological factors or environmental ones.

1.2
developmental psychology and related disciplines/theories

Biology

Since humans are biological creatures there is an inevitable overlap between physical functioning and the developmental process. For example it looks at heredity, genes, embryology and pre-natal development. The link between the two areas is evident in the apparent interaction between biological/physical development and childhood growth, and explicit links can be seen in the sections on physical/motor development and on the influences of biology/heredity on behaviour.

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology deals with topics such as perception, memory, attention, language and thinking/decision-making. Most critically it is based on the idea that we are like a computer when processing information and have input, storage and retrieval functions. Experimental cognitive psychology presumes that cognitive processes can be tested using empirical (scientific) methods because they can be inferred from behaviour obtained under controlled conditions. Introspection can however also be used whereby one examines one’s own mental processes. The development of cognitive development generally, and areas such as perception and language in particular, are key sections in this current text.

Social psychology

Social psychology is about understanding individual behaviour in a social context. Baron, Byrne and Suls (1989) define it as ‘the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behaviour in social situations’. It therefore looks at human behaviour as influenced by other people and the context in which this occurs. Social psychologists deal with the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others, and looks at the conditions under which certain behaviour/actions and feelings occur. It is to do with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions and goals are constructed and how such psychological factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others. This developmental text looks at how our development is aided/influenced by parents, peers and play, for example, and also at the development of gender.

Comparative psychology

The comparison between animal and human behaviour underlies this area of psychology, and the debate between the inheritance of species-specific behaviour patterns (phylogeny) and behaviour which is acquired during the species lifetime but is not shared with every member, is a running theme throughout this text. Perhaps most notably the concepts of imprinting and attachment behaviour highlighted in section 2.10 relate to this.

Although developmental psychology draws on the contribution of social, comparative and cognitive psychology, and biology, it is unique in its consideration of all of these disciplines when looking at development from a lifespan perspective.

1.3
history of developmental psychology

In any examination or essay you will be expected to know something about where developmental psychology comes from. This may simply be a matter of demonstrating a general understanding or not getting your origins muddled, but you may well be asked to write directly on the history of the discipline.

Understanding something of the history of developmental psychology will be crucial in helping you think like a developmental psychologist.

Key developments

• 1882 – Wilhelm Preyer produced The Mind of a Child (translated into English, 1888) which was a rigorous case study of his own daughter’s development, including observational records.
• 1894 – Alfred Binet founded the first scientific journal in this area (L’année Psychologique).
• 1891 – Stanley Hall founded a further journal – Pedagogical Seminary.
• 1890s – the first research institutes were set up in developmental psychology.
• 1905 – Binet published an intelligence test (Binet–Simon scale) which provided insight and guidance on the intellectual capabilities and potential of those suffering from mental retardation.
• 1915 – J.M. Baldwin published Genetic Logic, which introduced the concept that knowledge grows through childhood in a series of distinct stages, from initial physical development to language and cognitive abilities. This is believed to occur as an interaction between innate abilities and environmental feedback, such that the child emerges as a result of social and physical growth.
• 1916 – the Stanford–Binet test was produced which facilitated intelligence testing in children more widely.

As we will go now go on to see, the work of Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and John Bowlby then ensured the true establishment of the developmental psychology field.

1.4
founding figures and their core ideas

The core ideas of the founding figures had either a philosophical influence (their ideas and beliefs impacted on thinking about developmental psychology) or a methodological influence (their ways of working and research studies influenced the development and thinking about developmental psychology).

Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876) – challenged the existing ideas that development follows a predetermined course as characteristics are already set at birth (preformationism), or that it moves through various stages which imitate that of the adult form of the species from which it has evolved (recapitulationism). Instead he introduced the idea that development occurs in stages, allowing for individual characteristics to emerge from more general ones.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) – Darwin’s evolutionary theory paved the way for the idea that development occurs as the child gradually adapts to its environment. He also introduced the notion that systematic and scientific methods could be used to study such development.

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) – was influenced by early theorists Binet and Baldwin (see above). He used a clinical approach to look at the systematic cognitive errors children made, in an attempt to understand something of a child’s acquisition of knowledge and intellectual development. He initially proposed that the interaction of babies with their environment paved the way for thinking and language patterns. As we shall see later in this book he went on to propose a comprehensive theory combining evolutionary perspectives with the acquisition of knowledge as a biological process. This worked on the premise that babies are all born with similar biological properties and reflexes which mature to a state of ‘readiness’ whereby new information or experiences that cannot be assimilated challenge and then change a child’s thinking.

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) – was also influenced by the early work of Baldwin and Binet. He focused, however, on cultural input, suggesting that this was the critical factor that transforms experience from a basic elementary function to a higher-order one. Rather than looking at fixed stages of development he focused (particularly) on the interaction between language and thought, assuming them to be separate functions before the age of two, after which time language and cultural tools facilitate problem-solving and social interaction.

John Bowlby (1907–1990) – Bowlby believed a mother and child form an innate monotrophic bond and that maternal deprivation occurs when the bond is broken in some way. He saw attachment as a two-way, genetic process that provides a child with a secure base from which to explore the world. H...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Why use this course companion to developmental psychology?
• Part One The Basics of Developmental Psychology
• Part Two Course Companion to the Curriculum
• Part Three Study, Writing and Revision Skills (in collaboration with David McIlroy)
• Glossary
• References