01 - Development 1 Module Notes

January 6, 2022
10:22 PM
INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENT
 Development: the changes and continuities that occur within the individual between
conception and death
Two different processes lead to developmental change:
 Maturation: the biologically timed unfolding of changes within the individual according
to that individual's genetic plan
o Ex. Genetic plan determine the timeline of development
 Learning: relatively permanent changes in our thoughts, behaviours, and feelings as a
result of our experiences; the acquisition of neuronal representation of new information
 Practice can make once controlled processes automatic
 Interactionist Perspective: the view that holds that maturation and learning interact
during development
o Central to developmental psychology
 Biological maturation restricts the timeline of learning from the environment
o Maturation --> Learning
o Learning --> Maturation
 Learning from the environment modulates the maturation of human processes
STUDYING DEVELOPMENT
 Most of human development occurs during the earliest stages of life
o Changes occurring early in life are more dramatic than changes occurring later in
life
o Plays an important role in who you become
 Studying the infant mind through their sensory capability
o Habituation Procedure - test for an infant's ability to detect novel stimuli (Can
the infant tell the stimulus has changed?)
i. Repeatedly presented the infant with the same stimulus while measuring
physiological responses (heart rate & breathing) and behavioural
orientating responses (head & eye movement)
ii. Initially presented - burst of activity; repeated presented - return to
baseline level
Habituation: a decrease in the responsiveness to a stimulus following its repeated
presentation
 Can be used to test colour perception
 Constant presentation of a stimulus will lead to habituation --> lose interest in the
stimulus
Dishabituation: an increase in the responsiveness to a stimulus that is somehow
different from the habituated stimulus
 Communicates the ability to perceive different stimuli
2. Event-related potentials (ERP) (How does the brain react to this stimulus?)
i. Changes in brain activity in specific areas indicate response to certain stimuli
 ii. Habituation in ERP provide complimentary behavioural and neural measure to
understand an infant sensory interactions with the environment
3. High-amplitude sucking method (Does the infant like this stimulus?)
i. Measurement of infants can control their sucking behavior
ii. The rate of sucking on the pacifier indicates the level of preference
iii. Pacifier contains electrical circuitry allows infant to control presentation of
stimulus
iv. Does not directly test whether one stimulus is preferred more than another
4. Preference Method - (Which of these two stimuli does the infant like more?)
i. Infant is placed in a looking chamber to simultaneously look at two different
stimuli
ii. The level of attention toward one stimuli relative to another indicates preference
 Prefers to look at big patterns with/and lots of black and white contrast
and faces
iii. Showing preference involves an increase in looking time at a stimulus when
presented simultaneously with another stimulus, not just a single stimulus
iv. Before this is completed, it is established that the individual already
discriminated between the two stimuli
 There are limitations to what can be inferred from behaviour alone
o A person presented a stimulus of a ghost - a broken leg confounds the validity of
escape time in measuring fear
 Competence-Performance Distinction: an individual may fail a task not
because they lack those cognitive abilities, but because they are unable
to demonstrate those abilities
 Ex. A child who is preverbal will be unable to respond to your
questions on preferences on two different toys -> may wrongly
assume they are unable to discriminate between the two toys
 Given a better test, the child may be able to demonstrate their
preference to you
 Researcher uses a research technique that properly measures
their variable of interest given their subject pool
 Through clever research, psychologist can tackle (almost) any problem
INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH METHODS
 Developmental studies look at how certain abilities change over a lifetime
 Longitudinal Design: a developmental research design in which the same individual are
studied repeatedly over some subset of their lifespan
o Allow for accurate and direct comparisons over time (track the same person
every few years; from 5 to 75 years old)
Not optimal for particularly long studies:
Cost & Time
o Expensive and time consuming
Selective Attrition
o Some people are more likely to drop out of a study than others, making samples non-
representative of the original population
 Practice Effects
o Changes in participants' responses due to repeated testing
 Cross-Sectional Design: a developmental research design in which individuals from
different age groups are studied at the same point in time
o Allow for faster comparisons between age groups
o Allows researchers to assess developmental change
o Relatively less time consuming and expensive; can uncover age differences
Disadvantages of Cross-Sectional Design
o Cannot distinguish age effects from generational effects
 Ex. Less experience
o Cannot directly assess individual developmental change
 Developmental research is challenging yet fruitful