Developmental Psych Lecture notes
What is development?
Development: systematic continuities and changes between conception and death
● Maturation and learning drive development
● The input from our environment shapes our experience in what we learn
● Developmental psychology is the study of these changes
● Developmentalist goals are to:
○ Observe
○ explain (why does development happen this way)
○ optimize (how can we increase the likelihood of positive outcome)
● There is a holistic nature in development
○ Cognitive development influences social development
Continuity and discontinuity
● The growth of a tree can be described using a numerical data quantitative)
○ Continually growing
● The growth of a egg to a ladybug can be described using descriptive information
(qualitative)
○ Moving from one stage to another
Nature vs. Nurture
● Common debate however there is no overarching theme, the two are intertwined
○ E.g. If a twin has schizophrenia the other twin is 50% likely to develop it also the
other 50% is influenced by the environment
○ Genetic expression is only triggered in certain environments
Active Children
● Children are active in their own development
○ Child that likes reading will unconsciously signal their mother happy cues that
she will mostly read him another book the next day
experience-expectant brain growth: the average or normal environment provides infants with the
necessary input to develop the neural connections to enable the baby to function across these
domains
Holistic nature of development
● There is a holistic nature in development
○ Cognitive development influences social development
Lecture 02
History and research methods
The history of developmental psych
● Plato and aristotle were interested in the development of children
○ Plato thought experience isn't the source of knowledge because we can be
tricked so we have innate knowledge
○ Aristotle believed in nurture shapes knowledge ‘
Western developmental science
● The industrial revolution had children entering the workforce
○ These harsh upbringings had outcomes on the kids so the negative effect
became a concern
● Darwin’s baby biography
Theories of child development
● The psychoanalytic perspective
○ Created by Freud
○ Id: the primitive passions
○ Ego: the rational component that aligns with society’s norms
○ Superego: moral compass that controls right and wrong
○ Early experiences shape development
○ His daughter anna created the field of child psychoanalysis and optimized on
development
● The learning perspective
○ John b. Watson and Ivan pavlov classical conditioning
○ B.f skinner: operant conditioning
○ Albert bandura observational learning
■ Production Processes: translating your observations into your own
actions.
■ Children learn by watching others
■ Bobo doll experiment
● The cognitive perspective
○ Focused on how children think and how thinking changes as they grow
○ Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky
● The ethological perspective
○ Konrad lorenz and the baby ducks
○ Evolutionary and biological perspective
○ Reflexes are adaptive
○ Certain learning can only happen at sensitive periods due to special reflexes in
that period
Research methods
The scientific method
1. Identify a question
2. Form a hypothesis
3. Collect data to test hypothesis
a. Naturalistic Observation
i. Non manipulative
b. Structured Observation (experiments)
i. People brought in for research might not be an accurate representation of
the population
c. Self-Report
d. Physiological Measures
i. Skin conduction, eye tracking, EEG, Fmri, pupil dilation
4. Draw conclusions
Reliability: will I get the same measurements every time?
Variability: am I measuring what I think I’m measuring?
Research designs
● Correlational studies
○ R > 0 = positive relationship
○ R < 0 = negative relationship
● Experimental studies
○ Independent variable: thing that the experimenter manipulates
○ dependent: the behaviour that is measured
Quasi - experiment: the researcher changes or watches an independent variable, but the
participants are not put into groups at random
● Children were made to watch violent and non-violent videos
○ Independent was the content of the film
○ Dependent how much aggression the child expressed
● QE are hard to infer causality
Age related changes
There are 3 main designs for studying age related changes
● Each design can use any data collection method
Longitudinal
● Looking at participants over a long period of time
● Microgenetic design: a short kind of longitudinal design
○ Emergence of a small particular thing
■ Ex. motor development
○ What processes promote developmental changes
Pros
● Tells us about developmental course
○ continuity/ discontinuity
○ Reveals links between early experiences and later outcomes
Cons
● The cross generational problem
● cost , time
● Selective attrition
● Practice effect
○ Signs of improvement can be attributed to practice
Attrition: people dropping out of research studies
● Selective attrition
Cross sectional
● Ages are test within the same year and results are cross sectioned
Pros
● Quick, cheap
● Demonstrates age difference
Cons
● cohort effect
○ What looks like a difference across age might be an experiential difference ex.
Certain world events
● Can say nothing about how development occur
Sequential
● include elements of both longitudinal and
cross-sectional research designs
Pros
● Same as longitudinal design but less cost and
time
● Can compare different cohorts at same age
● Can compare different cohorts’ patterns of
development across time
Cons
● Complicated
● Time consuming compared to cross sectional
Lecture 3a
Genetics
● Gametes (eggs and sperms) have 23 chromosomes
● Genotype: what traits the genetics code for
● Gene: a group of nucleotide bases on the DNA that provide a specific set of biochemical
instructions
○ 99% of our genes are the same across all humans
Single gene inheritance
● Single gene inheritance determines if the phenotype is expressed or not
○ E.g. eye color, dimples
Genes and complex traits
● Polygenic inheritance: a group of genes working together to result in an specific
phenotype
○ E.g. height
○ AA BB CC
● genotype+environment = phenotype
○ E.g. hungry rats maze example
Methods for studying hereditary influences
● Selective breeding: deliberately manipulating the genetic makeup animals to study
hereditary influences on behaviour
● Twin family studies: compare prevalence of attributes across varying degree of genetic
relatedness
○ Identical twins share a placenta
Lecture 3b
Neurodevelopment
● The brain is the fastest organ to reach adult size
● The brain is at 30% of an adult's brain weight when the child is born and 90% when the
child is age 6
● During gestation the cells that form the brain start as a neural tube
○ 10 billion neurons at the end of 9 months
● New neurons do form after birth for example the formation of new memories
The first brain growth spurt: infancy
● Glial cells account for brain growth
● The edition of myelination accounts for additional growth
○ 50% in adult brains
○ Without myelination a signal travels 7 km/h, with 50 km/h
● Synaptogenesis
○ the formation of synapses between neurons in the nervous system
○ When you’re 1 you have the most synapses you’ll ever have
○ After 1 year synapses that are not used are weaned out
■ 40% cut off
○ This happens first in sensory and motor, language, cognition and then planning
2nd brain growth spurt: adolescence
● Another wave of overproducing and weaning
● Adolescence is an evolutionary advantage to give our brains more time to grow
● The corpus callosum thickens
● Allows the prefrontal cortex to mature
○ attention , impulses and planning
2 kinds of specialization
Where
● The brain regions active in processing becomes more focused
What
● The kinds of stimuli that triggers activity become more specific
● Ex. specialization between faces and non face stimuli over the span of age
● Fusiform gyrus is specialized for faces
More specialization = less plasticity
● Less room to change and adapt
Nature needs Nurture
● Critical and sensitive periods
○ Ex. baby ducks
● Animal studies
○ Sewed eyelids shut at different ages then opened it and see how much cells
respond to light
○ The found that if the eye was covered for 3 or 4 days in the 4 or 5 weeks there
was a decline in the number of cells responded
○ If the eye was covered for 6 days it wouldn’t barely respond at all
○ If it was done to an adult cat there would be no difference
● Enriched vs. impoverished environments
○ And enriched environment in rats will create more dendrite branches on a neuron
Romanian orphans data
● Kids were adopted at various stages in life
2 stages of brain development
Experience expectant brain growth
● Our brains are prepared to receive certain types of experiences for development to occur
Experience dependent brain growth
● Unexpected things that can aid in brain growth e.g. playing a violin or taxi cab drivers
Adulthood and aging: the shrinking slowing brain
● 5% to 10% of brain weight lost between ages 20 – 90
● Shrinking in prefrontal cortex linked with a decrease in working memory
● Demyelination leads to slower responses and reflexes
The adapting brain
● Dendritic growth increases from age 40 to 70
● Keeping the brian active = healthy
○ The nun study
Motor development
Why do babies start to walk?
● The Maturational Viewpoint
○ The unfolding of a genetically programmed sequence
● The Experiential Hypothesis
○ Opportunities to practice are important
○ Babies born in the summer take a month longer to walk than babies born in the
winter
● Dynamical Systems Theory
○ Motivation to explore drives infants to combine motor patterns in new ways
○ Motivation of the child influences development
Lecture 4a
Learning
Learning: thinking, perceiving and reacting to the environment in a new way
● The change in your thinking/ perceiving is a result of an experience that you’ve had
○ That change relatively permanent
Habituation
● Recognizing something that has been experienced before
○ Behaviour change: Less and less attention directed to a repeated stimuli
● Habituation is related to processing efficiency
● “Habituated” = bored
Classical conditioning
● Pavlov’s dog
Operant condition
● B.f. skinner
● The outcome of responses can predict the possibility of that response happening
again
○ Positive, negative, reniforment, punishment
○ reinforcement = behavior happening again
○ punishment = decrease in behaviour
○ Positive = something added to the environment
○ Negative= something removed
Observational learning
● Albert bandura
○ Learning from observing the behaviour of others
● To learn this way, babies must be able to imitate
Perception
Sensation
● Info received by sensory organs
○ Input the brain receives from ears, eyes
Perception
● How your brain interprets information received by sensory organs
○ How the brain makes sense of that input
Sensation doesn’t always = perception
● If it did, then we wouldn’t be prone to illusions
Infant perception
We can study infant perception by
● Observable Infant behaviours: sucking, breathing, looking and heartbeat
○ These behaviors indicate understanding, preferences and expectations
● When examining depth perception, infants have a decrease in heart rate when they
become interested
Methods
Preference technique: visual perception
● Fantz looking chamber
● Babies are interested in visual complexity
● Techniques used today are video coding and eye tracking
Preference technique: sound perception
● The looking rate at the sounds produced can be measured to detect preference
● Do they prefer somethings that's familiar or something new
Lecture 4b
habituation / dishabituation technique
Habituation trial: a trial to measure a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated
presentations
● Measuring interest to see if a baby can distinguish A from B
○ Dishabituation is discriminating
Operant conditioning technique
Training session
● Train infants to turn their head when they hear a change in the stimulus by giving them a
reward
○ Ex. play a song but every few seconds something would change (volume level) if
a baby’s head directed towards to audio source, they would get a reward
(dancing puppet)
Testing session
● Stimuli of interest
○ E.g. da and hindi da
Development of perception
Taste
● Highly developed, even in utero
○ E.g. carrot juice vs. water babies
○ Experience with flavors in utero shapes preferences later
● Taste preferences at birth
● That are able to discriminate the concentration of flavors
Smell
● Present very early
● Linked to taste
● Detectable by facial expressions
Touch
● Fairly well developed in the womb
○ Grasp umbilical cord
○ Suck thumb
● Upin birth, touch sensitive develops earliest around the mouth, palm of hands then soles
of feet
● Premature babies that are held more are more calm compared to babies without
● Early on their have sensors that detect temperature and pain
Hearing
● Babies can hear from within the womb
○ They can hear
Hearing after birth
● Newborn babies have a preference for their own moms voice compared to a stranger
○ E.g. cat in the hat story, babies will listen longer if the book being read matches
the one they heard in utero
● Acuity
○ Their ability to pick up higher pitches improve outside of the womb
● Preference for vocalizations
Vision
● Acuity
○ Once a baby is born their vision is 20/600
○ They see the best from 6 to 8 inches
● Colour
○ Their cone cells in the retina aren’t mature yet
○ Babies are born with some ability to see colour
■ And the colours that they see depend on their cones develop (short
wavelengths: blue) take longer
■ Develops fully around 4 months
The mozart effect
● Popular idea that listening to mozart will make your baby smarter
● Actual study: a spatial rotation task was done on undergrads and the ones that listened
to mozart did a little better than the control group
The special way we sing to babies
● Higher pitched
● More rhythmic and even
● More emotional
● Cross-cultural universals
○ Done to capture their attention
Testing depth perception
● The visual cliff
