PYC4805 EXAM NOTES
CHAPTER 1
THEME 1
Erik Erikson:
- psychoanalyst who parted with Freud in several crucial ways
- Nurture: is this baby experiencing basic trust? Where is this teenager in terms of
identity?
- Erikson believed that our basic human goals center on becoming an independent self
and relating to others (psychosocial stages)
- Erikson argued that development occurs throughout life
- Childhood and Teenage psychosocial tasks: Erikson argues that these build on each
other as one cannot master the issue of a later stage unless we have accomplished the
developmental milestone of the previous ones
- Developed a roadmap for making sense of children’s emotional growth
Jean Piaget:
- Gave incredible insight into the way children think
- How does this child understand the world? What is his thinking like?
- Rather than ranking children according to how much they knew, Piaget became
fascinated by children’s incorrect responses
- Piaget believed that from birth through to adolescence, children progress through
qualitatively different stages of cognitive growth
- Qualitative = rather than simply knowing less or more, infants, preschoolers,
elementary-school-age children and teenagers think about the world in completely
different ways
- Believed that all learning occurs via a dual process called assimilation and
accommodation
- PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY: from infancy to
adolescence, children progress through four qualitatively different stages of
intellectual growth
- ASSIMILATION: the first step to promoting mental growth, which involves fitting
environmental input to current mental capacities
- ACCOMODATION: enlarging mental capacities to fit input from the wider world
1
, ERIKSON VS PIAGET
ERIK ERIKSON’S PSYCHOSOCIAL TASKS: PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OF CHILDHOOD, THEORY: PIAGET’S STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
ADOLESCENCE & EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Infancy (Birth to one year) – Basic Trust versus 0-2: Sensorimotor Stage – the baby manipulates
Mistrust objects to pin down the basics of physical reality. This
stage ending with the development of language
Toddlerhood (1 to 2 years) – Autonomy versus shame 2-7: Preoperations Stage – children’s perceptions are
and doubt captured by their immediate appearances. “What they
see is what is real”. They believe among other things,
that inanimate objects are really alive and that if the
appearance of a quantity of liquid changes, the amount
actually changes.
Early Childhood (3 to 6 years) – Initiative versus guilt 8-12: Concrete Operations Stage – children have a
realistic understanding of the world. Their thinking is
really on the same wavelength as adults’. While they
can reason conceptually about concrete objects,
however, they cannot think abstractly in a scientific
way.
Middle childhood (7 to 12 years) – Industry versus 12+: Formal Operations Stage – reasoning is at its
Inferiority pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible, fully adult.
The person’s full cognitive human potential has been
reached.
Adolescence and emerging adulthood (teens into
twenties) – Identity versus role confusion
Emerging Adulthood (twenties) – Intimacy versus
Isolation
THEME 2
CROSS-SECTIONAL AND LONGITUDINAL DESIGNS
CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES:
- Researchers typically use this strategy to explore changes over long periods of
development
- Researchers compare different age groups at the same time on the trait or
characteristic they are interested in, be it parenting, personality, or physical health.
- “A developmental research method that involves comparing different age groups at
a single time”
- Satisfaction with physical appearance study in USA*
- While cross-sectional studies offer snapshots of different age groups taken at a single
point in time, they don’t tell us about real changes that occur over years
- Because they measure only group differences, they can’t reveal anything about the
individual variations that give spice to life
2
,LONGITUDINAL STUDIES: THE GOLD-STANDARD DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
DESIGN
- in longitudinal studies, researchers typically select a group of children at a particular
age and periodically test those boys and girls over many years
- now you can track changes in children’s feelings in the flesh and you can other
compelling questions too
- “A developmental research strategy that involves testing the same group repeatedly
over years”
- Longitudinal research demands a lot of time and effort and is very daunting to carry
out
- Subject attrition: “The fact that people drop out at each testing point in longitudinal
research”
- Longitudinal studies that track development into adulthood have their own bias
Critiquing the research:
- Examine the study’s participants
- Examine the study’s measures
- What interpretations can one come up with to explain the researcher’s results
- With cross-sectional findings, beware of making assumptions that this is the way
children really change with age
- Look for longitudinal studies and welcome their insights
Quantitative and Qualitative Research?
3
, CHAPTER 2
THEME 1: INFUENCES ON THE EMOTIONAL QUALITY OF PREGNANCY
First Trimester: Often feeling tired and ill
- Pregnancy often signals its presence through unpleasant symptoms
- Some may faint, get headaches or urinate frequently
- Hormones, or chemicals that target certain issues and cause them to change, trigger
these symptoms
- After implantation, the production of progesterone surges
- “Hormones” = chemical substances released in the bloodstream that target and
change organs and tissues
- Given this hormonal onslaught, the tiredness, dizziness, and headaches make sense
Second Trimester: Feeling much better and connecting emotionally
- Morning sickness, the other unpleasant symptoms, and the relatively high chance of
miscarriage make the first trimester less than an unmitigated joy
- Around week 18: “quickening” occurs. This is a sensation like bubbles that signals the
baby kicking in the womb
- The woman feels viscerally connected to a growing human being
- “Quickening” – a pregnant woman’s first feeling of the fetus moving inside her body
- Another landmark event that alters the emotional experience of pregnancy happens
at the beginning of the third trimester, when the woman can give birth to a living child
Third Trimester: Getting very large and waiting for birth
- Feelings during this final trimester include backaches, leg cramps, numbness and
tingling as the uterus presses against the nerves of the lower limbs, heartburn,
insomnia and anxious anticipation as focus shifts to birth
- Issues relating to working and having loving support loom large during all nine months
FORCES THAT SHAPE WOMEN’S EMOTIONS DURING THIS LANDMARK TIME:
Work Worries:
- One influence destined to erode happiness is financial concerns
- Couples struggling economically and, especially, low-income single parents worry,
“Can we (or I) afford this child?”
- These anxieties are legitimate
- Family-work-conflict, or being pulled between the demands of caregiving and career,
is a major issue for working parents
- “Family-work conflict” = a common developed-world situation, in which parents are
torn between the demands of family and a career
4
CHAPTER 1
THEME 1
Erik Erikson:
- psychoanalyst who parted with Freud in several crucial ways
- Nurture: is this baby experiencing basic trust? Where is this teenager in terms of
identity?
- Erikson believed that our basic human goals center on becoming an independent self
and relating to others (psychosocial stages)
- Erikson argued that development occurs throughout life
- Childhood and Teenage psychosocial tasks: Erikson argues that these build on each
other as one cannot master the issue of a later stage unless we have accomplished the
developmental milestone of the previous ones
- Developed a roadmap for making sense of children’s emotional growth
Jean Piaget:
- Gave incredible insight into the way children think
- How does this child understand the world? What is his thinking like?
- Rather than ranking children according to how much they knew, Piaget became
fascinated by children’s incorrect responses
- Piaget believed that from birth through to adolescence, children progress through
qualitatively different stages of cognitive growth
- Qualitative = rather than simply knowing less or more, infants, preschoolers,
elementary-school-age children and teenagers think about the world in completely
different ways
- Believed that all learning occurs via a dual process called assimilation and
accommodation
- PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY: from infancy to
adolescence, children progress through four qualitatively different stages of
intellectual growth
- ASSIMILATION: the first step to promoting mental growth, which involves fitting
environmental input to current mental capacities
- ACCOMODATION: enlarging mental capacities to fit input from the wider world
1
, ERIKSON VS PIAGET
ERIK ERIKSON’S PSYCHOSOCIAL TASKS: PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OF CHILDHOOD, THEORY: PIAGET’S STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
ADOLESCENCE & EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Infancy (Birth to one year) – Basic Trust versus 0-2: Sensorimotor Stage – the baby manipulates
Mistrust objects to pin down the basics of physical reality. This
stage ending with the development of language
Toddlerhood (1 to 2 years) – Autonomy versus shame 2-7: Preoperations Stage – children’s perceptions are
and doubt captured by their immediate appearances. “What they
see is what is real”. They believe among other things,
that inanimate objects are really alive and that if the
appearance of a quantity of liquid changes, the amount
actually changes.
Early Childhood (3 to 6 years) – Initiative versus guilt 8-12: Concrete Operations Stage – children have a
realistic understanding of the world. Their thinking is
really on the same wavelength as adults’. While they
can reason conceptually about concrete objects,
however, they cannot think abstractly in a scientific
way.
Middle childhood (7 to 12 years) – Industry versus 12+: Formal Operations Stage – reasoning is at its
Inferiority pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible, fully adult.
The person’s full cognitive human potential has been
reached.
Adolescence and emerging adulthood (teens into
twenties) – Identity versus role confusion
Emerging Adulthood (twenties) – Intimacy versus
Isolation
THEME 2
CROSS-SECTIONAL AND LONGITUDINAL DESIGNS
CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES:
- Researchers typically use this strategy to explore changes over long periods of
development
- Researchers compare different age groups at the same time on the trait or
characteristic they are interested in, be it parenting, personality, or physical health.
- “A developmental research method that involves comparing different age groups at
a single time”
- Satisfaction with physical appearance study in USA*
- While cross-sectional studies offer snapshots of different age groups taken at a single
point in time, they don’t tell us about real changes that occur over years
- Because they measure only group differences, they can’t reveal anything about the
individual variations that give spice to life
2
,LONGITUDINAL STUDIES: THE GOLD-STANDARD DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
DESIGN
- in longitudinal studies, researchers typically select a group of children at a particular
age and periodically test those boys and girls over many years
- now you can track changes in children’s feelings in the flesh and you can other
compelling questions too
- “A developmental research strategy that involves testing the same group repeatedly
over years”
- Longitudinal research demands a lot of time and effort and is very daunting to carry
out
- Subject attrition: “The fact that people drop out at each testing point in longitudinal
research”
- Longitudinal studies that track development into adulthood have their own bias
Critiquing the research:
- Examine the study’s participants
- Examine the study’s measures
- What interpretations can one come up with to explain the researcher’s results
- With cross-sectional findings, beware of making assumptions that this is the way
children really change with age
- Look for longitudinal studies and welcome their insights
Quantitative and Qualitative Research?
3
, CHAPTER 2
THEME 1: INFUENCES ON THE EMOTIONAL QUALITY OF PREGNANCY
First Trimester: Often feeling tired and ill
- Pregnancy often signals its presence through unpleasant symptoms
- Some may faint, get headaches or urinate frequently
- Hormones, or chemicals that target certain issues and cause them to change, trigger
these symptoms
- After implantation, the production of progesterone surges
- “Hormones” = chemical substances released in the bloodstream that target and
change organs and tissues
- Given this hormonal onslaught, the tiredness, dizziness, and headaches make sense
Second Trimester: Feeling much better and connecting emotionally
- Morning sickness, the other unpleasant symptoms, and the relatively high chance of
miscarriage make the first trimester less than an unmitigated joy
- Around week 18: “quickening” occurs. This is a sensation like bubbles that signals the
baby kicking in the womb
- The woman feels viscerally connected to a growing human being
- “Quickening” – a pregnant woman’s first feeling of the fetus moving inside her body
- Another landmark event that alters the emotional experience of pregnancy happens
at the beginning of the third trimester, when the woman can give birth to a living child
Third Trimester: Getting very large and waiting for birth
- Feelings during this final trimester include backaches, leg cramps, numbness and
tingling as the uterus presses against the nerves of the lower limbs, heartburn,
insomnia and anxious anticipation as focus shifts to birth
- Issues relating to working and having loving support loom large during all nine months
FORCES THAT SHAPE WOMEN’S EMOTIONS DURING THIS LANDMARK TIME:
Work Worries:
- One influence destined to erode happiness is financial concerns
- Couples struggling economically and, especially, low-income single parents worry,
“Can we (or I) afford this child?”
- These anxieties are legitimate
- Family-work-conflict, or being pulled between the demands of caregiving and career,
is a major issue for working parents
- “Family-work conflict” = a common developed-world situation, in which parents are
torn between the demands of family and a career
4
