Summary Development and Mental
Health
Chapter 1: Approaching psychological development
Why study development?
- To gain insight into mature organisms by considering how they emerge and change in the
course of development
- Helps to answer questions on social policies such as education etcetera
Periods of development:
1. Prenatal period
- Conception to birth
- Focus lies on anatomical and physical development
2. Infancy
- First year to year and a half
- Infants are not able to think about anything that’s not present
3. Preschool period
- 1.5 to 4 years
- Language appears and flourishes
- Can think about things not immediately present
- Improved memory
- Ability to understand other people’s minds
4. Young school age
- 5 to 7 years
- Social and cognitive skills expand considerably
- More sophisticated mathematical skills
- Learn to read
- Understand more complex discussions
5. Later school age
- 8 to 12 years
- Improve ability to express complex thoughts and solve complex problems
- Improved self-control and increased real world knowledge
- Social networks expand and focus on friend networks with same sex peers
1
, 6. Adolescence
- 13 to 20
- Can consider hypothetical situations
- Agreeing to disagree
- Enter romantic and sexual relations and become independent from parents
7. Young adulthood
- 21 to 30
- Consolidation of changes that have occurred earlier
- More detailed knowledge and applied skills
8. Middle adulthood
- 31 to 60
- Varies considerably across cultures
9. Late adulthood
- 60 to death
- Huge individual variations
- Decline in motor and cognitive skills
Areas of development:
Perceptual development
- How people grow in their ability to pick up information from the world by using their senses
and by processing sensory information
Development of action
- How people change in their ability to move about in the world and purposefully guide their
bodies and limbs
- Development of reflexes and conditioning
Cognitive development
- How people change over the lifespan in the ways that they understand and use the
information
- Research usually involves observing changes in behavior
Moral development
- How a child’s sense of values emerges as well as how moral and immoral behaviors develop
2
,Social development
- How a wide range of relationships between people form and change
Emotional development
- How the full range of emotions takes shape, starting in infancy
Is development stage-like or continuous?
Qualitative change:
- When new kind of structure or process emerges that was not present before
- A child is said to be in one state before a qualitative change occurs and in another one after
the change
Quantitative change:
- Same structures and processes remain but show differences in their magnitude
- Focusses on incremental expansions to a mental or physical process or capacity
Is development global or local?
Global changes:
- Similar developments occur at roughly the same time in very different areas of thought
- General changes that apply across all situations or domains
Local changes:
- Different kinds of psychological capacities develop relatively independent of each other
- Specific changes that occur in restricted areas or domains
How do nature and nurture shape development?
Nature:
- Patterns of thought and behavior emerging in much the same way regardless of experience
Nurture:
- Psychology and behavior resulting from specific experiences
Both are very much intertwined and interact with each other!
Empiricism:
- Emphasizes the idea that a general learning system with few to no biases is present at birth
3
, - All human knowledge is built up by forming links or mental associations between the things
we experience
- Experiences as basis for knowledge
Nativism:
- A set of different learning systems is present at birth
- Certain aspects of life are intrinsic to being human and are present at birth
Comparative perspective:
- Comparisons across species
Evolutionary perspective:
- How and why a particular trait emerged over multiple generations of a population through
natural selection
Ethology:
- The study of traits from an evolutionary perspective involving comparisons across species
Cross-Cultural perspectives:
- How do cultural variations influence patterns of development?
- What aspects of behavior or mind develop in the same way throughout the world?
Neuroscience perspective:
- Focusing on neurobiological systems that give rise to psychological development
- How the nervous system changes as a result of experience
Cognitive science perspectives:
- Focusses on questions about how ways of representing and using information changes over
the course of development
Observational studies:
- Design: no manipulation (non-experimental)
- Measurement: observation in natural setting
- Pro: assessing children’s behavior under natural and normal circumstances, possibility of
unexpected discoveries outside RQ
- Con: only correlational not causal patterns
4
Health
Chapter 1: Approaching psychological development
Why study development?
- To gain insight into mature organisms by considering how they emerge and change in the
course of development
- Helps to answer questions on social policies such as education etcetera
Periods of development:
1. Prenatal period
- Conception to birth
- Focus lies on anatomical and physical development
2. Infancy
- First year to year and a half
- Infants are not able to think about anything that’s not present
3. Preschool period
- 1.5 to 4 years
- Language appears and flourishes
- Can think about things not immediately present
- Improved memory
- Ability to understand other people’s minds
4. Young school age
- 5 to 7 years
- Social and cognitive skills expand considerably
- More sophisticated mathematical skills
- Learn to read
- Understand more complex discussions
5. Later school age
- 8 to 12 years
- Improve ability to express complex thoughts and solve complex problems
- Improved self-control and increased real world knowledge
- Social networks expand and focus on friend networks with same sex peers
1
, 6. Adolescence
- 13 to 20
- Can consider hypothetical situations
- Agreeing to disagree
- Enter romantic and sexual relations and become independent from parents
7. Young adulthood
- 21 to 30
- Consolidation of changes that have occurred earlier
- More detailed knowledge and applied skills
8. Middle adulthood
- 31 to 60
- Varies considerably across cultures
9. Late adulthood
- 60 to death
- Huge individual variations
- Decline in motor and cognitive skills
Areas of development:
Perceptual development
- How people grow in their ability to pick up information from the world by using their senses
and by processing sensory information
Development of action
- How people change in their ability to move about in the world and purposefully guide their
bodies and limbs
- Development of reflexes and conditioning
Cognitive development
- How people change over the lifespan in the ways that they understand and use the
information
- Research usually involves observing changes in behavior
Moral development
- How a child’s sense of values emerges as well as how moral and immoral behaviors develop
2
,Social development
- How a wide range of relationships between people form and change
Emotional development
- How the full range of emotions takes shape, starting in infancy
Is development stage-like or continuous?
Qualitative change:
- When new kind of structure or process emerges that was not present before
- A child is said to be in one state before a qualitative change occurs and in another one after
the change
Quantitative change:
- Same structures and processes remain but show differences in their magnitude
- Focusses on incremental expansions to a mental or physical process or capacity
Is development global or local?
Global changes:
- Similar developments occur at roughly the same time in very different areas of thought
- General changes that apply across all situations or domains
Local changes:
- Different kinds of psychological capacities develop relatively independent of each other
- Specific changes that occur in restricted areas or domains
How do nature and nurture shape development?
Nature:
- Patterns of thought and behavior emerging in much the same way regardless of experience
Nurture:
- Psychology and behavior resulting from specific experiences
Both are very much intertwined and interact with each other!
Empiricism:
- Emphasizes the idea that a general learning system with few to no biases is present at birth
3
, - All human knowledge is built up by forming links or mental associations between the things
we experience
- Experiences as basis for knowledge
Nativism:
- A set of different learning systems is present at birth
- Certain aspects of life are intrinsic to being human and are present at birth
Comparative perspective:
- Comparisons across species
Evolutionary perspective:
- How and why a particular trait emerged over multiple generations of a population through
natural selection
Ethology:
- The study of traits from an evolutionary perspective involving comparisons across species
Cross-Cultural perspectives:
- How do cultural variations influence patterns of development?
- What aspects of behavior or mind develop in the same way throughout the world?
Neuroscience perspective:
- Focusing on neurobiological systems that give rise to psychological development
- How the nervous system changes as a result of experience
Cognitive science perspectives:
- Focusses on questions about how ways of representing and using information changes over
the course of development
Observational studies:
- Design: no manipulation (non-experimental)
- Measurement: observation in natural setting
- Pro: assessing children’s behavior under natural and normal circumstances, possibility of
unexpected discoveries outside RQ
- Con: only correlational not causal patterns
4
