Psychology 2040A/B Chapter 1,3,5-6: Chapter 1, 3, 5 & 6 Notes
1 Nov 2016
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Jordyn Browne
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Chapter 1: Themes and Theories
Nature and Nurture:
Influences of nature and nurture depend on how genetic and experiential variables interact to influence
behaviour
An implication of this: children play an active role in the process of development
Developmental outcomes depend on genes interacting with experience on multiple levels
Sociocultural Influence:
Social environments and cultural communities have a huge impact on behaviours of children
Continuity | Discontinuity of Development:
Changes in behaviour may come from quantitative, incremental developmental advances OR qualitative
reorganization
May also be influenced by multiple ways of responding
What is Development?
Developmental psychology: The scientific study of the changes in human behaviours and mental
processes over a lifetime
o Information gathered in research should be helpful in suggesting specific actions for social
policy, plans by government or private agencies to alleviate social problems
Developmental science: also used to a definition for developmental psychology because researchers
from many disciplines work together to consider biological, social, and other complex systems that
affect human development
Theories organize information gathered by researchers, explain observations, and predict behaviours
that should occur in future observations
5 Major Themes in Developmental Psychology:
1. Role of Nature vs. Nurture
o Concerned with how genetic and experience variables interact to influence behaviour
o There are multiple levels of interaction involving genes and experience
2. Sociocultural context influencing development
o Children grow up in a social environment and cultural community that can have huge impacts on
behaviour displayed
3. Continuous vs. discontinuous development
4. Interaction of various domains
5. Factors that promote risk or resilience in development
o Individual differences exist in the development of behaviour
o Some children can cope with biological/environmental conditions more effectively than others
o Some children are exposed to events that increase the risks associated with development
o Developmental scientists attept to idetif fatos that poote isk o esiliee i hilde’s
abilities to respond effectively to circumstances that influence their development
The Study of the Child: Historical Perspectives
How have views of childhood changed from medieval and Renaissance times to today?
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o In medieval and premodern times, although seen as vulnerable, children quickly became a part
of adult society
o By the 17th and 18th centuries, children were viewed as worthy of special attention in terms of
parenting and education
o By the beginning of the 20th century, children became objects of scientific study
Views of Childhood:
o John Locke = empiricism: view that experience (primarily sensory experience) shapes the
development of an individual
o JJR = wrote about the curious and active nature of the child
o Baby biographers such as Charles Darwin and Wilhelm Preyer carried out the first systematic
observations of individual children
o G. Stanley Hall introduced the questionnaire method for studying large groups of children to
stud idiidual diffeees i hilde’s ehaiou ad ailities
o Theorist James Mark Baldwin viewed the child as a participant in his/her own cognitive and
social development
Feud’s Pshoseual Theo of Deelopet:
o Emphasized the importance of early experience on development and posited a series of
psychosexual stages that children must successfully negotiate in order to demonstrate normal
personality development
1) Oral 2) Anal 3) Phallic 4) Latency 5) Genital
Theories of Development:
Learning: the permanent change in behaviour that results from experience
Behaviourism: relies on 2 basic forms of learning, classical and operant conditioning, to bring about
behavioural change
Social Learning Theory: created by Albert Bandura, adds observational learning as an important
mechanism by which behaviour is continuously modified and changed
Piaget’s Cogitie-Developmental Theory: the active construction of psychological structures to
interpret experience
o Outlines a hild’s ostutio of schemes: patterns of acting on and thinking about the world
o Through assimilation (a component of adaption; process of interpreting an experiences in terms
of current way (schemes) of understanding things), and accommodation (a component of
adaption; process of modification of thinking schemes that takes place when old ways of
understanding something no longer fit), a hild’s sheas atiel adapt to the deads of the
environment by becoming more organized, conceptual and logical
o These regulatory processes of adaption (the inborn tendency to adjust to conditions imposed by
the environment) and organization (tendency for structures and processes to become more
systematic and coherent) result in equilibration (an innate self-regulatory process that, through
accommodation & assimilation results in more organized and powerful schemes for adapting to
the environment)
o Cognitive development progresses through a series of qualitatively different stages according to
Piaget’s theo
Information-processing models: compares humans and computers in accounting for cognitive
development
o Developmental differences in cognitive structures and processes, such as rules, strategies and
procedures account for changes in attention, memory, thinking, and problem solving
Erikso’s Theory of Psychosocial Deelopet: focuses on the socio-cultural context in which
behavioural needs are met
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o Personality development proceeds through a series of stages in which self and societal demand
ae esoled to otast oe’s identity, the acceptance of both self and society
o Individuals who successfully negotiate these demands become contributing members of society
System Approaches: view human development from a broad framework involving multiple,
bidirectionally interacting levels of influence
The Bioecological Model looks beyond the immediate experiences of family, peers, and friends, and
considers the biological as well as the broader sociocultural contexts in which development proceeds
o In particular, processes within the microsystem- school, home f&f, mesosytem- interrelations
among microsystem, exosystem- social, political, religious influences, macrosystem- spiritual and
religious values, political practices, customs of a cultural group, and chronosystem- the
constantly changing temporal component of the environment, are considered
Sociocultural theory: views culture as a historical legacy of a community and emphasizes the social
interactions by which this heritage is transferred from others and adopted by the child to become part
of their way of thinking
Dynamic Systems theory: new, complex and sometimes qualitatively different behaviours arise from the
interaction of events at many different levels in the system.
Ethology: attends to the biological, evolutionary heritage each individual brings to the world as the basis
for species-specific behaviours found to be adaptive in interacting with the environment
o Ethologists emphasize that some experiences may be especially important during sensitive
periods (a period of time where specific kinds of experiences have significant positive or
negative effects for development and behaviour) in development and further suggest that
relative permanent influences on behaviour may occur through the mechanism of imprinting (a
form of learning, difficult to reverse, happens during a sensitive period in which an organism
tends to stay near a particular stimulus)
Chapter 3: Genetics and Heredity
Nature & Nurture: How do nature and nurture interact in development?
Risk | Resilience: What factors promote risk or resilience in development?
Principles of Hereditary Transmission:
Blueprint for development is replicated in nearly every cell of our body
Genotype: a peso’s ostat, iheited geeti edoet
Phenotype: observable, measureable features, characteristics, and behaviours
o A given phenotype is constructed from the complex interactions involving the genotypes and
the a eets that ae pat of a idiidual’s epeiee
Modern theories of the genotype were created from a series of experiments reported in 1866 by Gregor
Mendel, an Australian monk
o Observed generations of peas, Mendel theorized that hereditary characteristics are determined
by pairs of particles called factors (aka genes – the specialized sequences of molecules that form
the genotype)
o Proposed that the info given by the 2 members of a pair of genes is not always identical
called alleles which are alternate forms of a specific gene that provide a genetic basis for many
individual differences
o Outlined that offspring randomly receive one member of every pair of genes from the mother
and one from the father because gametes carry only 1 member of each pair of genes
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Document Summary
Influences of nature and nurture depend on how genetic and experiential variables interact to influence behaviour. An implication of this: children play an active role in the process of development. Developmental outcomes depend on genes interacting with experience on multiple levels. Social environments and cultural communities have a huge impact on behaviours of children. Changes in behaviour may come from quantitative, incremental developmental advances or qualitative reorganization. May also be influenced by multiple ways of responding. Developmental psychology: the scientific study of the changes in human behaviours and mental processes over a lifetime. Information gathered in research should be helpful in suggesting specific actions for social policy, plans by government or private agencies to alleviate social problems. Developmental science: also used to a definition for developmental psychology because researchers from many disciplines work together to consider biological, social, and other complex systems that affect human development.
