PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Zygosity, Dishabituation, Twin
Development 1
Multiple Levels of Analysis
- Consider the biological basis of thought and behaviour
o Development
▪ Gene- environment interactions across an individual’s lifespan
o Evolution
▪ Gene-evolution interactions across the evolutionary history of a species
o Neuroscience
▪ The study of the nervous system
Development: refers to the changes and continuities that occur within the individual between conception and
death. How you change and how you stay the same.
- Maturation: the biologically-timed unfolding of changes within the individual according to that
individuals genetic plan
o Can be influenced by environmental conditions
o Genetic plans determine the timeline of development
▪ Ex. When you die, when you enter puberty, etc.
- Learning: relatively permanent changes in out thoughts, behaviours, and feelings because of our
experiences
o The acquisition of neuronal representations of new information
o Allows you to properly respond to stimuli in the environment
o Practice can make once controlled processes automatic
- Interactionist Perspective
o The view that holds that maturation and learning interact during development
▪ Maturation restricts the timeline of learning from the environment
• Ex. Can’t learn to walk until muscles have developed
▪ Learning from the environment modulates the maturation of human process
• Without some minimal level of input to learn from the outside world, maturation
will be absent or delayed
Studying Development
- Most of human development occurs during the earliest stages
of life
Habituation Procedure
- Studying the infant mind through their sensory capabilities
o Habituation Procedure: can test for an infant’s ability
to detect novel stimuli and discriminate between
stimuli
▪ Repeatedly presenting the same stimulus, while
measuring physiological changes
▪ When a novel stimulus is presented an infant will show a burst of activity
▪ Can test for colour perception
- Habituation: a decrease in the responsiveness to a stimulus following its repeated presentation
- Dishabituation: an increase in the responsiveness to a stimulus that is somehow different from the
habituated stimulus
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Event-Related Potential (ERP)
- Measures brain activity in response to a presented stimulus
- Changes in brain activity in specific areas indicate response to certain stimuli
- Different areas of brain activity show the effects of stimuli
High-amplitude Sucking Method
- Sucking behaviour can indicate infant preferences
o First measure baseline sucking
o The rate of sucking on the pacifier indicates the level of preference
o The infant has control of the stimulus depending if they suck or don’t
Preference method
- Infant put in a looking chamber to look at two stimuli simultaneously
- Observes the amount of time an infant chooses to attend to different stimuli
- The level of attention toward one stimuli relative to another indicates preference
o Researchers found infants prefer to look at big patterns with lots of black and white contrasts and
prefer looking at faces
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
How Abilities Change Over Time
- Longitudinal Design: a development research design in which the same individuals are studied
repeatedly over some subset of their lifespan
o Design allows for accurate and direct comparisons over time
o Research the same people
o Drawbacks:
▪ Expensive and time consuming
▪ Selective Attrition: Loss of participants in study that the sample ends up being non-
responsive
▪ Practice Effects: changes in participants responses due to repeated testing
- Cross-Sectional Design: a developmental research design in which individuals from a different age
groups are studied at the same point in time
o Allows for faster comparisons between age groups
o Drawback:
▪ Cannot distinguish age effects from generational effects
▪ Cannot directly assess individual developmental change
Development 2
Chromosomes contain all your genetic information
- When a sperm penetrates an ovum, a zygote is formed
- Zygote contains 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent
- Chromosomes are made up of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
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Document Summary
Consider the biological basis of thought and behaviour: development, gene- environment interactions across an individual"s lifespan, evolution, gene-evolution interactions across the evolutionary history of a species, neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. Development: refers to the changes and continuities that occur within the individual between conception and death. How you change and how you stay the same. Maturation: the biologically-timed unfolding of changes within the individual according to that individuals genetic plan: can be influenced by environmental conditions, genetic plans determine the timeline of development, ex. When you die, when you enter puberty, etc. Interactionist perspective: the view that holds that maturation and learning interact during development, maturation restricts the timeline of learning from the environment, ex. Can"t learn to walk until muscles have developed: learning from the environment modulates the maturation of human process, without some minimal level of input to learn from the outside world, maturation will be absent or delayed.
