Psychology

The Science of Mind and Behaviour

Chapter 12 Lifespan Development I: Physical and Cognitive Development

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Major Issues and Methods

Developmental Psychology: examines biological, physical, psychological, and behavioural changes that occur as we age

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Major Issues and Methods

Four Broad Issues:
Nature and Nurture: to what extent is our development the product of heredity (nature) and environment (nurture)?
How do nature and nurture interact?

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Major Issues and Methods

Four Broad Issues (continued):
Critical Periods: are some experiences especially important at particular ages?
Critical Period: an age range during which certain experiences must occur for development to proceed normally

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Major Issues and Methods

Four Broad Issues (continued):
Continuity versus Discontinuity: is development continuous and gradual, or is it discontinuous, progressing through qualitatively distinct stages?

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Major Issues and Methods

Four Broad Issues (continued):
Stability versus Change: do our characteristics remain consistent as we age?

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Major Issues and Methods

Cross-Sectional Design: compares people of different ages at the same point in time
Example: we may administer an IQ test to a group of 10-, 20-, and 30-year-olds Allows data from many age groups to be collected relatively quickly Problem: cohort effects - differences in historical periods in which people grew up
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Major Issues and Methods

Longitudinal Design: repeatedly tests the same cohort as it grows older
Example: we may administer an IQ test to a group of 10-year-olds; we retest the same group every five years Extremely time-consuming People may drop out of the study over time

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Major Issues and Methods

Sequential Design: combines the cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches
Most comprehensive Costly and time-consuming

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Prenatal Development

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Prenatal Development
Germinal Stage:
first two weeks
Zygote: fertilized egg Repeated cell division Attaches to mothers uterus about 10-14 days after conception
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Prenatal Development
Embryonic Stage: embryo develops
during weeks 2-8
Placenta: contains membranes that allow nutrients to pass from the mother to the umbilical cord Umbilical Cord: contains blood vessels that carry nutrients and oxygen to the embryo; carries waste from embryo back to mother Bodily organs and systems begin to form
Heart, brain, and facial features

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Prenatal Development

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Prenatal Development
Fetal Stage: week 9 to birth
Muscles strengthen; bodily systems develop Age of Viability: age at which a fetus is likely to survive outside the womb Currently 24 weeks; has changed with medical advancement

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Genetics and Sex Determination

Zygote has 23 pairs of chromosomes at conception
Father and mother each contribute one chromosome to every pair

23rd pair determines sex of baby

Father contributes X or Y chromosome (determines sex of the baby) Mother always contributes an X chromosome If XX pair, baby will be female If XY pair, baby will be male
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The Amazing Newborn

Sensory Capabilities and Perceptual Preferences:
Very nearsighted; immature visual system Can see objects about 1 foot away Preferential Looking Procedure: demonstrated that infants prefer complex patterns to simple patterns and solid colors Preference for mothers face within hours after birth

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The Amazing Newborn

Sensory Capabilities and Perceptual Preferences (continued):
Reasonably well-developed sense of taste Can respond to touch Can distinguish different odors Prefer human voices to other sounds
Can distinguish their mothers voices from that of strangers
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The Amazing Newborn

Reflexes and Learning:
Reflexes: automatic, inborn behaviours that occur in response to specific stimuli
Rooting Reflex: touch a babys cheek, and it will turn its head toward the touch and open its mouth Sucking Reflex: infant will suck on objects placed in his or her mouth

Newborns can acquire classically conditioned responses Infants can imitate facial expressions

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Physical Development

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Physical Development
Cephalocaudal Principle: tendency for development to proceed in a head-to-foot direction
Produces a disproportionately large head

Proximodistal Principle: development begins along the innermost parts of the body and continues toward the outermost parts
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Physical Development
Environmental and Cultural Influences:
Diet Enriching environment Physical touch Experience

Three Basic Principles:

Biology sets limits on environmental influences Environmental influences can be powerful Biological and environmental forces interact
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Cognitive Development

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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Piagets Stage Model: proposed that childrens thinking changes qualitatively with age
Results from an interaction of the brains biological maturation and personal experiences Schemas: organised patterns of thoughts and action
Development occurs as we acquire new schemas and as our existing schemas become more complex

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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Assimilation: the process by which new experiences are incorporated into existing schemas Accommodation: the process by which new experiences cause existing schemas to change
Disequilibrium: an imbalance between existing schemas and new experiences
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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Sensorimotor Stage: birth to age 2; infants understand their world primarily through sensory experiences and physical (motor) interactions with objects
Object Permanence: the understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen Increasingly use words to represent objects, needs, and actions
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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Preoperational Stage: age 2-7; the world is represented symbolically through words and mental images; no understanding of basic mental operations or rules
Rapid language development Understanding of the past and future

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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Preoperational Stage (continued):
No understanding of Principle of Conservation: basic properties of objects stay the same even though their outward appearance may change Irreversibility: cannot mentally reverse actions Animism: attributing lifelike qualities to physical objects and natural events Egocentrism: difficulty in viewing the world from someone elses perspective

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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Concrete Operational Stage: ages 7-12; children can perform basic mental operations concerning problems that involve tangible (concrete) objects and situations
Understand the concept of reversibility Display less egocentrism Easily solve conservation problems Trouble with hypothetical and abstract reasoning
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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Formal Operational Stage: begins around ages 11-12; increases through adolescence
Individuals are able to think logically and systematically about both concrete and abstract problems, form hypotheses, and test them in a thoughtful way

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Cognitive Development: Piaget

Assessing Piagets Theory:
General cognitive abilities associated with Piagets four stages occur in the same order across cultures Children acquire many skills and concepts earlier than Piaget believed Cognitive development within each stage seems to proceed inconsistently Culture influences cognitive development Cognitive development is more complex and variable than Piaget proposed
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Cognitive Development
Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky): the difference between what a child can do independently and what the child can do with assistance from adults or more advanced peers
Helps us recognise what children will soon be able to do on their own Emphasizes that we can help move a childs cognitive development forward, within limits

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Cognitive Development
Information-Processing Approaches: views cognitive development as a continuous, gradual process
The same set of information-processing abilities become more efficient over time

As children age:
Information-search strategies improve Information-processing speed quickens
Attention span and ability to inhibit impulsive responses to distracting stimuli also improves
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Cognitive Development
As children age (continued): Memory capabilities improve
Able to better retain and manipulate information in working memory Able to use strategies to improve memory

Metacognition improves

Discontinuity versus continuity debate is still unresolved

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Intelligence

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Intelligence
Intelligence: the ability to acquire knowledge, to think and reason effectively, and to deal adaptively with the environment

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Historical Perspective
Alfred Binet: commissioned by Frances Ministry of Public Education to develop an objective intelligence test Two assumptions:
Mental abilities develop with age The rate at which people gain mental competence is a characteristic of the person and is fairly consistent over time
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Historical Perspective
Mental Age: the age at which a child is performing on mental tasks Intelligence Quotient (IQ): the ratio of mental age to chronological age, multiplied by 100
Average IQ = 100 Current tests no longer use mental age
Now based on persons standing in a normative group of the same age
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Historical Perspective
Stanford-Binet: gold standard for measuring intelligence in the 1920s
Based on Binets test; revised by Lewis Terman Contained mostly verbal items

Early group-administered intelligence tests were used by the Army for recruiting during World War 1
Army Alpha Army Beta
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Historical Perspective
David Wechsler challenged Stanford-Binet intelligence test
Felt it relied too much on verbal skills

Wechsler created intelligence tests that measure both verbal and nonverbal abilities

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The Measurement of Intelligence

Weschler Tests:
Series of subtests that fall into the two classes of verbal and performance Test yields three summary scores:
Verbal IQ Performance IQ Full-scale IQ (Verbal + Performance)

Also offers various separate scores for a number of specific skills

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Psychometric Standards

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Historical Perspective
Important Questions:
Should we regard intelligence as a single aptitude or as many specific abilities? Is intelligence an innate mental capacity or a product of our upbringing? What kinds of brain processes underlie mental skills? Are there actually multiple intelligences?

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The Nature of Intelligence

Two major approaches:
Psychometric Approach: attempts to map the structure of intellect and to discover the kinds of mental competencies that underlie test performance Cognitive Processes Approach: studies the specific thought processes that underlie those mental competencies
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The Psychometric Approach

The g Factor
Charles Spearman (1923) concluded that intellectual performance is determined partly by a general intelligence factor
Also determined partly by whatever special abilities might be required to perform a particular task

g constitutes the core of intelligence

Important predictor of both academic and job performance
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The Psychometric Approach

Thurstones Primary Mental Abilities:
Thurstone was unimpressed by the moderate correlations between different mental tasks Proposed that human mental performance depends on seven distinct abilities

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The Psychometric Approach

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The Psychometric Approach

Crystallized Intelligence: the ability to apply previously acquired knowledge to current problems
Examples: vocabulary tests, information tests Based on the ability to retrieve previously learned information from long-term memory

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The Psychometric Approach

Fluid Intelligence: the ability to deal with novel problem-solving situations for which personal experience does not provide a solution
Involves inductive reasoning and creativity Requires the abilities to reason abstractly, think logically, and manage information in working memory
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The Psychometric Approach

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The Cognitive Process Approach

Cognitive Process Theories: explore the specific information-processing and cognitive processes that underlie intellectual ability Sternbergs Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: addresses both the psychological process involved in intelligent behavior and the diverse forms that intelligence can take
Divides cognitive processes into three specific components:
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The Cognitive Process Approach

Sternberg proposes three different classes of adaptive problem solving:
Analytical Intelligence: the kinds of academically-oriented problem-solving skills measured by traditional intelligence tests Practical Intelligence: the skills needed to cope with everyday demands and to manage oneself and other people effectively Creative Intelligence: the mental skills needed to deal adaptively with novel problems

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Broader Conceptions
Gardners Multiple Intelligences: proposes eight distinct varieties of adaptive abilities
Linguistic: the ability to use language well Logical-Mathematical: the ability to reason mathematically and logically Visuospatial: the ability to solve spatial problems or to succeed in a field such as architecture Musical: the ability to perceive pitch and rhythm and to understand and produce music
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Broader Conceptions
Gardners Multiple Intelligences:
Bodily-Kinesthetic: the ability to control body movements and skillfully manipulate objects Interpersonal: the ability to understand and relate well to others Intrapersonal: the ability to understand oneself Naturalistic: the ability to detect and understand phenomena in the natural world

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Broader Conceptions
Emotional Intelligence: emotional competence involves the abilities to:
read others emotions accurately respond to them appropriately motivate oneself be aware of ones own emotions regulate and control ones own emotional responses
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Heredity and Environment

Genetic factors can influence the effects produced by the environment
Accounts for 1/2 to 2/3 of the variation in IQ No single intelligence gene

Environment can influence how genes express themselves

Accounts for 1/3 to 1/2 of the variation in IQ Both shared and unshared environmental factors are involved Educational experiences are very important
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Group Differences in Intelligence

What factors underlie the differences?
Shrinking IQ difference between African-American and White Americans in the last 25 years Possibly due to environmental factors
Better nutrition and educational opportunities

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Group Differences in Intelligence

Gender differences in performance on certain types of intellectual tasks, not general intelligence Men generally outperform women on spatial tasks, tests of target-directed skills, and mathematical reasoning Women generally outperform men on tests of perceptual speed, verbal fluency, mathematical calculation, and precise manual tasks
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Group Differences in Intelligence

Gender differences are small but consistent Explanations:
Socialisation experiences Evolutionary sex role specialisation Effects of sex hormones on brain development Beliefs about our own abilities
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Group Differences in Intelligence

Stereotype Threat and Cognitive Performance:
The belief that engaging in certain behaviors would confirm a negative stereotype in the minds of others
Evokes anxiety and undermines performance

Influences performance in a number of domains

Women and math problems African-Americans and intelligence tasks

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Group Differences in Intelligence

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Extremes of Intelligence
The Intellectually Gifted:
An IQ of 130 or higher places in the top 1% of the population Many individuals are enormously talented in one area but average in others Achieving eminence:
Highly developed mental abilities specifically related to ones chosen field Ability to engage in creative problem solving Motivation and dedication

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