Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
What is Developmental Psychology? - Coggle Diagram
What is Developmental Psychology?
Perspectives and concerns
Theoretical perspective:
Understanding human behaviour
Is behaviour innate?
Does behaviour develop during childhood?
Is behaviour a product of learning/experience?
Course and Cause
Course
: Timeline in which development proceeds
E.g. What age do children understand certain things?
Cause
: What is driving development
E.g. Genes, family, places, people, schools
Applied perspective: Practical uses
Should mothers work?
When should formal schooling begin?
Policies for society?
Concerned with:
Child psychology
Development - Age related changes in experience and behaviour throughout life
Nature vs Nurture
Nature
- Psychological processes due to our genetic inheritance (e.g. J. J. Rousseau)
E.g. Classical conditioning = instinctive behaviour + CS produces CR
Nurture
- Psychological processes due to environment and experience (e.g. J. Locke)
E.g. Operant/instrumental conditioning = Reinforcement from environment produces behaviour
Consensus that both are important, however debate about how much influence each has
Language development:
Specific language acquisition is determined by environment
Critical age for automatic language acquisition (2-12 years old) - suggests effect of maturation
Noam Chomsky:
Children possess an innate knowledge of language
Explains why children are so quick to acquire language
Bird song:
Some species require environmental input
E.g. the chaffinch learns through imitation of adult birds (Thorpe, 1972)
Imprinting:
A form of learning that occurs at a particular age
Attachment: Lorenz
Goslings imprint upon the first conspicuous, persistently moving object they see
Goslings attached to his rubber boots
Critical/sensitive period for imprinting - Less able to imprint/form attachments after this period
Influenced Bowlby's research of attachment
Key terms:
Instinct
- Innate behaviour resulting from genetic processing
Maturation
- Emergence of instinctive behaviour patterns at a certain point of development
Learning
- Change in behaviour due to environmental information
Methods used
Diaries
E.g. Jean Piaget's children, Charles Darwin's son
Observations
E.g. Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Preferential looking tasks
Infant presented with 2 stimuli, measure which of the two stimuli the baby looks at most/longer
Can be used for measuring preference and visual discrimination abilities
Habituation
Infant shown stimulus until loses interest, stimulus replaced with another stimulus
Infant shows renewed interest in new stimulus (dishabituation)
Physiological measures
E.g. fMRI, MEG, EEG, PET
Can be used without an overt behavioural response