PSYC1010 Lecture 2:

Child Development Part A

Dr Emily Freeman (She/Her)
Overview of Today

Issues in developmental psychology

Ways we study development

Physical development
 • Provide an overview of different research areas
Lecture • Lots of topics covered briefly
Objectives • Provide awareness of the different areas
• Greater detail in the next two years
Learning Outcomes
After today you should be able to:
1. Describe the key issues of developmental psychology
2. Distinguish between and describe 4 common research designs used in developmental psychology
3. Describe physical development across the lifespan
a) Discuss the effect of physical development on psychological functioning
Issues in Developmental
Psychology
Nature and
Nurture
• Which has the strongest influence?
• Are they both equal?
• What do we mean by nature and nurture?
Nature refers to:
• Genetically and biologically based maturation
• Maturation means biologically based changes that follow an
orderly sequence
• Crawl -> Stand -> Walk
• Babble -> Words -> Short Phrases
• Most humans follow the same patterns, in the same sequence, at
around the same ages
Nurture
refers to:
• Environmental influences including:
• Physical environment
• Family
• Society
• Educational
• Socioeconomic

Image: www.parentmap.com
It’s not a competition!
• “Nature provides a fertile field for development, but this field requires cultivation.”
• Environmental events turn genes on and off
• Focus is now more around the interaction and correlated action between genes and the environment
• Eg genes and environment might each have an effect, but the combination of both has an even stronger effect
• Anxiety disorders
• Eg genes can influence environments people choose/experiences they are exposed to
• Genetic predisposition to avoiding social situations -> experience fewer social situations -> social anxiety disorders

Image: www.fix.com
Experiences
• Experience-Independent
• Experiences, environmental input aren’t required for the behaviour to develop
• Maturation examples
• Experience-Dependent
• Behaviour or response doesn’t occur until experience some form of environmental input (visual, physical, auditory etc)
• Experience-Expectant
• Genetically predisposed behaviour, that only begins once the environment provides the conditions needed for the behaviour to
be experienced
Newborn Face Preferences
• Experience-independent?
• Faces are important social stimuli, innate predisposition to look at faces even without experience
• Evidence from studies with babies <5 days old, <1 hour old, minutes old!

• Experience-dependent?
• Later problems with face recognition if children missed early face exposure
• Experience-expectant?
• Visual system has evolved to process faces, without experience in viewing faces, this aspect of the visual system won’t
develop
Critical & Sensitive Periods
• Critical Periods:
• Periods of time when experiences may be crucial to our developmental outcomes
• Missing an experience, or detrimental experiences may mean we won’t develop a skill or function, or it could be
underdeveloped
• Sensitive Periods
• Similar, but not as decisive for development
• Skill/function development may be able to be later improved
Evidence for Critical Periods
• Initial evidence from embryology
• Teratogens: harmful agents that affect the developing embryo and foetus
• Exposure at very specific time points
• Many animal species show evidence of critical periods
• Eg Goslings are biologically prepared to follow whatever moving object they see upon hatching (hopefully their parent!)
• Our nervous system is primed for periods of synaptic growth and equally importantly, for periods of synaptic
pruning
Perceptual Narrowing
• Exposure to language and sensitivity to language sounds begins before infants babble or speak
• Perceptual narrowing occurs:
• Stronger connections for language infants are exposed to
• Weakening perceptual sensitivity to other languages
Measuring Perceptual Narrowing
The impact of deprivation
• A number of cases of severe deprivation / limited social interaction
• Eg Genie and language acquisition / Children from Romanian Orphanages later adopted by UK families
• Some never develop certain skills
• Some acquire skills rapidly, but plateau
• The longer the critical periods are missed, the fewer developmental gains are made
The impact of early abuse
• Australian Temperament Project (N=1000)
• Young people who had experienced multiple forms of maltreatment and victimisation were more likely to suffer depression at
23-24 years of age than those who were not maltreated
• Past Clinical PhD Student’s project
• Young people who had experienced multiple early life stressors were more likely to have working memory problems as adults
• Importantly, resilience and adaptiveness can attenuate these effects
Developmental Changes
• Is development staged or continuous?
• Discrete Stages Idea:
• Behaviour in each stage is qualitatively and quantitatively different
• EG Abstract thinking in adolescence is a novel development that reflects the maturation of the frontal cortex
• Continuous Idea:
• Steady and gradual change
• EG rebellious behaviour in adolescence may reflect the slow learning of expressing independent behaviour over previous years
• Likely both:
• Stages are more apparent in childhood, when the nervous system is maturing
• Adult development is more continuous
 Common
Research Designs
Single Age Group Studies
• Good to learn more about a particular point in time
• Can 3-year-olds do this task?
• How is father-child rough-and-tumble play quality related to preschool children’s emotion regulation?
• Limited in developmental scope
• Doesn’t provide information on developmental changes

Image: istockphoto.com
Cross-Sectional
Studies

• Compare different age groups at the same time

• How do 10-, 15-, and 20-year olds perform on a
mental rotation task?
• Good at providing a snapshot of age differences
• Don’t allow you to look at changes over time
• Hard to know if it is age differences causing effects –
could be other factors associated with each age group

Image: www.freepik.com
Longitudinal Studies
• One group tested across multiple time points
• Allows for examination of changes over time
• Increased statistical power as looking at differences within individuals
• The perceptual narrowing video is an example with two time-points
• Still only one age group so can’t look at generational differences
• Can be costly
• Can have problems with attrition
Sequential Studies
• Combine the cross-sectional and longitudinal designs
• Look at changes over time, for multiple cohorts

• Costly and take years/decades to complete

 Physical
Development
Why is Physical Development
Important in Psychology?
• Physical and psychological development don’t occur in isolation
• Physical development can affect psychological, cognitive, social development
• And vice versa…
Prenatal Stage
• Some of the most dramatic aspects of physical development occur before birth
• Prenatal period has 3 stages:
• Germinal Period – first two weeks
• The fertilised egg (zygote) undergoes rapid cell division
• Embryonic Period – 2-8 weeks
• Important for the development of CNS and organs
• Foetal Period – 9 weeks to birth
Why study prenatal development?
• The effects of teratogens can be long-lasting and impact ongoing development
• Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, radiation, viruses, toxic chemicals etc
• Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
• Physical deformities
• Learning disabilities, behaviour problems, attention problems
Alcohol Consumption During
Pregnancy
• Relatively common
• Large Study (N=18000, Australia, NZ, UK) showed 40-80% consumed alcohol while pregnant
• Most stopped by 2nd trimester
• Recommendation is to abstain
• Unclear how much is harmful
• 1-2 drinks per day is associated with attention and motor problems in Rhesus monkeys
• Teratogenic effects are greatest in the first few weeks when people may be unaware they are pregnant
Stress as a teratogen
• Significant maternal stress associated with lower birth weight, and attention and motor difficulties
• Some evidence of genetic representations of PTSD passed down from mother to baby
 Infancy
• Born with many adaptive reflexes
• Innate motor responses to stimuli that have an
adaptive element
• Rooting Reflex: turn head and open mouth when
touched on the cheek
• Sucking Reflex: infants suck rhythmically in response
to stimulation 3-4cm inside their mouth
Image: www.thebump.com
Early Reflexes
• Some resemble later development
• Many disappear by 6-7 months
• Generally motor skills progress from head to toe: head -> trunk -> arms/legs
Early Reflexes Demonstrated
Infant Physical Development
• Biologically based – typical sequence is universal
• BUT, culture and environment can affect pace
• EG infants in traditional and remote indigenous communities develop head
and neck strength earlier and sit earlier than non-indigenous infants
• EG Kenyan infants walk much earlier than Western infants

Image: www.healthline.com
 Recent Cultural
Effect
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) guidelines
• Parents asked to lie infants on their backs to sleep
• Infants are taking longer to walk and crawl
• Can lead to plagiocephaly (flattening of the head)
• ‘Tummy time’ is advised during waking hours as a possible solution

Image: www.babylist.com
Crawling
• Appears between 6-10 months
• The experience of moving around can affect cognition and perception
• Is the visual cliff experiment about fear of heights? Or better depth perception?
Babies on the Brink
Adulthood
• Physical growth is fairly complete
• Changes are gradual and subtle
• Ages 18-28 – weight increase
• 30s: deterioration of muscular strength and sensory abilities
• Use it or loose it (both muscles and mental abilities)
• Huge individual differences in pace and extent

Image: stumptuous.com
Changes in
Reproductive
System

• Women
• Menopause in 40s or 50s lasting several years
• Australian women average start is 51yrs
• Minority experience problematic symptoms
• Men
• More gradual
• No major change in reproduction
• Reductions in testosterone
Ageing
• Changes in physical appearance
• Wrinkles, grey hair, hair loss
• Reduced sensitivity to visual contrasts
• Can contribute to accidents
• Harder to perceive steps, longer to adapt in the dark
• Hearing loss
• Especially to high frequency sounds

Image: www.granddesignstairs.com
Later Years
• Huge individual variability
• Many people remain healthy and function well in later years
• Stereotypes and ageism is an issue
• By 2064, Australia is predicted to have 9.6 million people aged over 65 years old