Developmental Psychology

Penney Upton

• Éditeur: Learning Matters
• Année: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857252777
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psychology
• Sous-sujet: Developmental Psychology

Covering core topics such as the development of attachment, social relations, cognitive and language development and social and cultural contexts of development, this introductory text addresses the core knowledge domain of developmental psychology. It provides concise and focused coverage of the central concepts, research and debates, while developing students? higher level skills.

Key chapters cover development across the lifespan, including the prenatal period, infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood, while activities help readers build the underpinning generic critical thinking and transferable skills they need to become independent learners, and to meet the requirements of their programme of study.

Chapter 1
Themes and theories in developmental psychology

Learning outcomes

By the end of this chapter you should:

– understand how developmental psychology has evolved as a discipline;

– be able to critically evaluate the main themes and theories in developmental psychology;

– know who the key historical and contemporary figures are in developmental psychology;

– have a critical understanding of the research methods commonly applied in developmental psychology;

– have developed your written communication and independent learning skills;

– be able to engage in reflection on contemporary and traditional approaches in psychology.

---

Introduction

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of age-related changes in mind and behaviour. Originally it was believed that the development of all our skills and abilities was completed in childhood. We now understand that development is a lifelong process; change does not stop because we have reached adulthood. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the lifespan approach to the study of development and to show you the importance of examining changes that occur in adulthood, as well as those that occur in childhood. In Chapter 7, for example, we see the way in which cognitive skills can continue to increase in adulthood or decline depending on personal experiences. Developmental psychology informs several applied fields, including educational psychology, child clinical psychology and child forensic psychology, and also complements the other main fields in psychology, including social, cognitive and individual differences.

Themes in developmental psychology

There are a number of themes that run right through developmental psychology. These are:

• the influence of nature verses nurture;
• continuity versus discontinuity in change;
• critical versus sensitive periods of development;
• stability versus change;
• the role of the individual in development.

Nature versus nurture

As a student of psychology you will come across the nature–nurture debate throughout your studies. It is one of the most fundamental and oldest issues in psychology and philosophy, and one that we will return to in later chapters. The debate concerns the relative contributions of inheritance and the environment in determining our knowledge and behaviour. Philosophers such as Plato and Descartes supported the idea that we are born with knowledge and innate skills. Other thinkers such as John Locke argued for the concept of tabula rasa – the idea that the mind is a blank slate at birth, with experience determining what we know. These philosophical viewpoints have influenced some of the great thinkers in developmental psychology as you will see later on in the chapter.

In developmental psychology the debate centres around two main questions.

• Are children born with innate knowledge or skills or are these acquired from interaction with the environment?
• Is development driven by external factors or by something inside each individual?

In this context, nature refers to traits, abilities and capacities that are inherited. It includes anything produced by the predetermined unfolding of genetic information. Development that relies on nature alone is known as maturation. In contrast, nurture refers to the environmental influences that shape development. These can be biological; for example, substance misuse in pregnancy may result in changes in growth and development of the unborn child. More often than not, nurture refers to the social and cultural factors that shape our environment and way that the behaviours of those around us influence our development. This includes the way we are raised as children, the attitudes and behaviours of our peer group, our experiences and even the choices we make as we get older. Societal factors, such as the socio-economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, may also be important.

One area where this debate has been quite prominent is that of language acquisition, a topic we will return to in more detail in Chapter 3. A major question here is whether or not certain properties of human language are specified genetically or simply acquired through learning. The nativist position argues that the environmental input from language is insufficient for infants and children to acquire the structure of language. A well-known proponent of this view is linguist Noam Chomsky, who asserted that there is a ‘universal grammar’ that applies to all human languages and is pre-specified (Chomsky, 1979). He calls this the language acquisition device (LAD). This view is supported by some contemporary psychologists, including Steven Pinker, who argues convincingly that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution (Pinker, 2007).

In contrast, the empiricist position on the question of language acquisition suggests that language input is sufficient to provide the information we require to learn the structure of language. This perspective proposes that infants acquire language through a process of statistical learning. Language is acquired by the general learning methods that apply to all aspects of human development.

There is evidence to support components of both the nativist and the empiricist position, both for language and for other aspects of development. In contemporary psychology the consensus view is that development results from an interaction between genes and environment. However, that does not mean that this issue has been put aside. The debate now concerns the relative role of nature and nurture for different aspects of development. In language development, for example, theorists such as Jerome Bruner (1983) agree with Chomsky’s notion of an LAD. However, Bruner asserts that Chomsky gives too big a role to this aspect of language acquisition, noting that social context, and the behaviour of parents in particular, have a significant impact on language development. This aspect of the environment he calls the language acquisition support system (LASS). According to Bruner, the LAD cannot function alone and every LAD therefore needs a LASS.

Continuity versus discontinuity

This issue concerns whether development follows a smooth continuous path, or whether it is a discontinuous stage-based process. In continuous change, development is gradual and cumulative. Changes are quantitative in nature and the underlying processes that drive change are the same over the course of the lifespan. In this view, one behaviour or skill builds upon another, such that later development can be predicted from what occurred early in life. Physical growth and changes in height provide one example of continuous change in childhood. In discontinuous change, development occurs in distinct, usually abrupt stages. Each stage is qualitatively different from the last. Examples sometimes cited from nature include the caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, or the tadpole that becomes a frog.

The question for developmental psychology concerns whether psychological skills and abilities in childhood are qualitatively different from those of adults. Or are children merely mini adults, who simply lack the knowledge that comes with experience? One area in which this debate has been of primary concern is cognitive development. Jean Piaget, for example, proposed a four-stage theory to describe how children reason and interact with their surroundings (1952, 1962, 1983). According to Piaget, children’s thinking is characterised at each stage by different forms of mental organisation. This gives rise to qualitative differences in thinking and reasoning at each stage. This, in turn, means that a child’s view of the world is different from that of an adult. In contrast to this, information-processing models of cognitive development have proposed that this idea is flawed and that cognitive change occurs because of an increase in quantitative advances, not qualitative differences. A child’s ability to engage in more sophisticated reasoning processes is believed to stem from a change in their capacity to handle information. This increased capacity, along with improved processing speeds, makes processing more efficient.

Once again, psychologists generally agree that neither approach is complete. It is more likely that some processes may be better described as continuous and others as occurring through stages. There is also some suggestion that continuous and discontinuous processes may interact. Neo-Piagetian theory (e.g. Case, 1999) suggests that the changes in information-processing mechanisms, such as speed and memory capacity, are responsible for the progression from stage to stage.

Critical versus sensitive periods for change

A critical period is a specific time during development when a particular event has its greatest impact. As you will see in Chapter 2, maternal diseases, such as rubella, have greater consequences for foetal development in the eleventh week of pregnancy than in the thirtieth week. Rubella contracted in the eleventh week may lead to blindness, deafness and heart problems. Rubella in the thirtieth week may have no significant impact on prenatal development. In this case, specific events during the critical period lead to atypical development. In developmental psychology, a critical period for development usually implies that certain environmental stimuli are necessary for typical development to occur. John Bowlby (1951), for example, suggested that, if children did not receive the right kind of care in the first two years of life, their emotional development would be adversely affected. According to Bowlby, between six months and two years of age is a critical period for relationship formation. If children are not able to form a strong attachment with a carer during this period, their ability to form relationships later in life will be permanently damaged.

Better understanding of the plasticity and resilience of human nature has led to a reassessment of this idea. Most developmentalists now agree that, rather than suffering permanent damage from a lack of stimuli during early periods of development, it is more likely that people can use later experiences to help them overcome deficits. It is now more common to talk about ‘sensitive’ rather than ‘critical’ periods. In a sensitive period we may be more susceptible to particular stimuli; however, the absence of those stimuli does not always result in irreversible damage.

Stability versus change

This issue concerns the extent to which early traits and characteristics persist throughout life or are able to change. Does the shy child become a shy adult? Can a shy child become a gregarious adult? The stability–change issue involves the degree to which we merely become older versions of our younger selves. Theorists who believe in stability in development often argue from a nativist stance, emphasising the role of heredity for the development of psychological characteristics. We inherit aspects of our personality, for example, in much the same way that we inherit eye colour. From this perspective we cannot change our psychological self, only learn to control it. Thus, the shy child remains shy as an adult even if he or she learns to act in an outgoing manner in social situations.

From an empiricist viewpoint, stability in psychological characteristics stems from the impact of early experiences that cannot be overcome. An individual is shy not because of a genetic predisposition, but because during early experiences of interacting with others they encountered considerable stress, leading th...