PSYC1003 Study Guide - Final Guide: Implicit Memory, Dementia, Cultural-Historical Psychology
PSYCHOLOGY 1003 – UNDERSTANDING MIND, BRAIN AND BEHAVIOUR
→ Psychologists study both cognition (thought processes) and meta-cognition
(thinking about thinking)
→ Psychology can provide answers to questions concerning:
o Attention and action
o Seeing what is real and what isn’t real
o Recognizing faces
o Development from infancy to old age
o Love and hate
o Prejudice and intergroup conflict
o Leadership
o Brain injury
o Depression
o Eating disorders
o Learning and achievement
o Economic productivity
o Refugees
o Climate change
→ Changes in the way people understand reality and cultural beliefs are a central focus
of developmental psychology, which studies the way humans develop and change
over time
→ Psychologists now tend to adopt a life-span developmental perspective that
considers both constancy and change, and gains and losses in functioning that
occur at different points over the entire human life cycle
Week 1 Reading (Pages 458-466):
Issues in developmental psychology:
→ Nature and nurture both contribute to development – roles not easily separated
because genetic blueprints do not express themselves without environmental input;
environmental events often turn genes on and off
o There is much debate surrounding the extent to which changes in individuals
over time reflect the influence of genetically programmed maturation
(nature) – biologically based changes that follow an orderly sequence, or of
learning and experience (nurture)
→ Debate surrounding whether development occurs in stages (relatively discrete steps
through which everyone progresses in the same sequence) or is continuous
(involving steady and gradual change)
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→ Human development – characterised by critical periods (periods central to specific
types of learning that modify future development); early environmental experiences
are important
→ Children will learn to speak, think, solve problems and love in ways accepted and
encouraged by their culture
→ Humans have sensitive periods, meaning that some times are more important but
not definitive to subsequent development than others
Studying development – glossary:
→ Cross-sectional studies – compare groups of participants of different ages at a
single time to see whether differences exist among them
• Useful for providing a snapshot of age differences or variations among
people of different ages
• However, a limitation of cross-sectional studies is that they do not directly
assess age changes, as in changes within the same individuals that occur with
age (do not take into account cultural changes)
• Most helpful when cohort effects (differences among age groups associated
with differences in culture) are minimal
→ Longitudinal studies – assess the same individuals over time, providing the
opportunity to assess age changes
• Advantage- ability to reveal differences among individuals and their changes
over time
• However, like cross-sectional studies, they are vulnerable to cohort effects.
They only investigate one cohort but don’t consider that people born at
different times might show different developmental paths
→ Sequential studies – minimise cohort effects by studying multiple cohorts
longitudinally
• Combines cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons allowing researchers
to distinguish between age effects (differences associated with age) and
cohort effects
• However, they take years/decades to complete. Ideally, psychologists
conduct sequential studies and find successors to carry on their research
after they have passed away
Physical development and its psychological consequences:
→ Prenatal period – three stages
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o Germinal period
o Embryonic period
o Foetal period
→ At birth, infants possess many adaptive reflexes (e.g. rooting and sucking) which
help ensure that the infant will get nourishment; motor development follows a
universal sequence
→ Growth rates for boys and girls are roughly equal until age 10 – girls begin a growth
spurt that usually peaks at age 12, whilst boys typically follow around two or three
years later
• Physical growth is virtually complete by the end of adolescence
→ Gradual and less dramatic growth changes occur during adulthood
• Gradual decline in physical abilities (including muscular strength and
sensory functioning that occurs with ageing)
Cognitive development in infancy, childhood and adolescence:
→ From birth, infants can perceive subtle differences (e.g. difference between the voice
of their mother and another woman)
→ Jean Piaget:
o Interested in epistemology (branch of philosophy concerned with nature of
knowledge)
o Constructivism – children construct knowledge themselves in response to
experience
o Child as a scientist – children generate hypotheses, perform experiment and
draw conclusions from observations
o Immanuel Kant’s ideas were the starting point of Piaget’s life work. Piaget
agreed that Kant was right that people’s understanding of time, space and
logic is not simply derived from experience but he didn’t agree that people
are born with this knowledge
• Piaget spent some time looking into the way children develop an
understanding of time, space etc.
• Proposed that children develop knowledge by inventing/constructing
reality out of their own experience, mixing what they observe with their
own ideas about how the world works
• Concluded that children think in qualitatively different ways at different
ages - stage theory of cognitive development.
→ Argues that children cognitively adapt to their environment through:
o Assimilation
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Document Summary
Psychology 1003 understanding mind, brain and behaviour. Psychologists study both cognition (thought processes) and meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) Changes in the way people understand reality and cultural beliefs are a central focus of developmental psychology, which studies the way humans develop and change over time. Psychologists now tend to adopt a life-span developmental perspective that considers both constancy and change, and gains and losses in functioning that occur at different points over the entire human life cycle. Debate surrounding whether development occurs in stages (relatively discrete steps through which everyone progresses in the same sequence) or is continuous (involving steady and gradual change) Human development characterised by critical periods (periods central to specific types of learning that modify future development); early environmental experiences are important. Children will learn to speak, think, solve problems and love in ways accepted and encouraged by their culture.
