HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1 PSYCHOLOGY 3050: Introduction

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HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050Introduction

• Dr. Jamie Drover
• SN-3094, 864-8383
• e-mail -- jrdrover_at_mun.ca
• Winter Semester, 2013

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Cognition

• Cognition the processes by which knowledge is
  acquired and manipulated i.e., thinking
• All mental activities involved in acquiring,
  understanding, and modifying information.
• Separates humans from other species

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Cognition

• A reflection of what is in the mind
• Not observed directly inferred from behavior
• Includes unconscious and non-deliberate processes
  involved in routine activity (e.g., reading).

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Cognitive Development

• Development Changes in structure or function
  over time.
• Structure a substrate of the organism
• e.g., nervous system tissue, muscle, limbs
  (physical structures) or
• mental knowledge that underlies thinking
• e.g., schemas or concepts
• hypothetical

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Cognitive Development

• Function actions related to the structure
• Most commonly, something that the child does
• e.g., retrieving a memory, pressing a computer
  key, firing of a neuron, etc.
• Cognitive development assimilation of info into
  schemas, performing addition.

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Structure and function are bi-directional

• Structures enable function, and function (e.g.,
  activity) feeds back to drive further development
  of structure
• Function maintains the structure and allows for
  proper development.
• For example Newborn infants have very poor
  vision
• Growth of cells in the visual cortex (structure)
  leads to better visual acuity
• Better acuity (sharpness) leads the baby to look
  at more patterns, objects (function)
• More looking stimulates further cell growth
  (structure)

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Development of the Infant Visual Cortex from
Birth to 6 months
From Conel (1939-1963)
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Visual Acuity is poor at birth
At 6 months
At 2 months
The Newborn
An Infants View of the Childs Face at a
Distance of 2 feet
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Structure and function are bi-directional

• Failure of bi-directionality results in visual
  dysfunction
• e.g., cataracts restrict seeing poor function,
  structural loss

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Five Truths of Cognitive Development

• Dynamic and reciprocal transaction of internal
  and external factors.
• Constructed within a social context.
• Stability and plasticity over time.
• Changes in the way information is represented.
• Increasing intentional control over behavior and
  cognition.

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Dynamic and reciprocal transaction of internal
and external factors.

• Nature (biology) and Nurture (environment)
• Oldest, most fundamental issue in psychology
• Which one drives development?
• Genes or environment
• Currently, not an either-or issue
• genetic potential for development established at
  conception
• genotype is not a blueprint
• sets a range of potential outcomes
• phenotypic (observed) outcome depends on
  interaction with environment

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Historically Heredity or Environment

• Nativists human intellectual abilities are
  innate
• Development constrained by inherited genetic
  material
• Empiricists nature provides only a
  species-general learning mechanism (brain)
• cognitive development arises from experience
• Context and culture (family, peers, school,
  media) are key

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Current View

• There is no dichotomy between nature and nurture,
  i.e., they can not be separated because the two
  continuously interact.
• How do they interact?
• Perhaps genetic constitution influences how one
  experiences the environment.
• E.g., A sickly lethargic child seeks less
  stimulation and gets less cognitively
  facilitating attention from adults than does a
  more active, healthy child. The result is a
  slower or less advanced child.

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What does innate mean?

• There are genetically based constraints on
  behavior or development.
• Representational Constraints Representations
  that are hard-wired into the brain.
• E.g., the nature of objects, mental math.
• We enter the world able to make sense of these
  aspects of the environment.

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What does innate mean?
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What does innate mean?

• Architectural Constraints Refers to the ways in
  which the architecture of the brain is organized
  at birth.
• Certain neurons/areas of the brain can only
  process certain types of information and pass it
  along to other brain areas.
• These constraints allow a high degree of learning
  to occur (e.g., language areas).

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What does innate mean?

• Chronotopic Constraints limitations on the
  developmental timing of events.
• E.g., certain brain areas develop before others,
  implying that early developing brain areas would
  likely have different processing responsibilities
  than later developing areas.
• E.g., some brain areas are receptive to certain
  types of experience at specific times
• Language Development

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What does innate mean?

• Critical (sensitive) periods
• time windows in development in which organisms
  are optimally sensitive to particular experiences
  or stimuli
• the same experience before or after critical
  period less effective

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Dynamic Systems Approach

• Dynamic system a set of elements that undergo
  changes over time due to interactions among the
  elements.
• The childs mind, body, and physical and social
  worlds form an integrated, dynamic system that
  guides the mastery of new skills.

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Dynamic Systems Approach

• Development involves continuous and bidirectional
  interaction between all levels of organization
  from molecular to cultural, and complex cognitive
  or behavioral characteristics emerge from these
  interactions.
• A change in any part of the system (e.g., brain
  growth, changes in physical or social
  surroundings) disrupts the organism-environment
  relationship. The entire system is changed.

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Dynamic Systems Approach

• Self-organization The process whereby pattern
  and order emerge from interactions of the
  components of a complex system.
• The child must actively reorganize her behavior
  so that the components of the system work
  together in a more complex, effective way.

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Dynamic Systems Approach

• E.g., Stepping reflex a newborn makes stepping
  movements.
• This reflex disappears completely after 2 months
  of age.
• What causes the disappearance?
• There is a change in one of the components.

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Dynamic Systems Approach

• The change from one state to another is a phase
  transition.
• These changes are abrupt and discontinuous, but
  predictable.
• attractors

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Cognitive development is constructed within a
social context

• Development always occurs within a social
  context.
• Vygotsky viewed development as being a
  sociocultural process where development is guided
  by adults interacting with children, where
  cultural context determines how, where, and when
  these interactions take place.
• This implies that development will be different
  across cultures.

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Cognitive development involves both stability and
plasticity over time

• To what extent do characteristics remain constant
  over time? How critical is early experience?
• Stability the degree to which children maintain
  their relative rank order in comparison to their
  peers over time.
• Plasticity the extent to which children can be
  shaped by experience.

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Cognitive development involves both stability and
plasticity over time

• For most of the 20th century, individual
  differences in intelligence were seen as being
  stable over time.
• Some researchers believed that early experience
  played a key role in the stability of individual
  differences.
• Kagan (1976) proposed the tape recorder model in
  which our early experience was recorded and could
  not be erased.

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Cognitive development involves both stability and
plasticity over time

• Evidence for this was found in institutionally
  raised children reared in nonstimulating
  environments (Dennis, 1973).
• Show signs of retardation that were exacerbated
  the longer they were institutionalized.
• These delays were present long after they left
  the institution.

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Cognitive development involves both stability and
plasticity over time

• A number of exceptions to stability were found.
• Skeels (1966) removed infants with signs of
  mental retardation from orphanages to an
  institution for the mentally retarded.
• They received lavish attention from women inmates
  and later demonstrated normal intelligence.

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Cognitive development involves both stability and
plasticity over time

• Kagan (1976) explained that in some cases,
  development is transformational, with drastic
  changes occurring between stages.
• The tapes are changed during these
  transformations and the earlier codes of the
  tapes are lost.
• Plasiticity should be the rule.

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Increasing Attentional Control Over Behavior and
Cognition

• There is interest in the degree to which children
  of different ages guide their problem solving.
• Strategy use.
• Strategies deliberate, goal-directed mental
  operations aimed at solving a problem.
• Used intentionally to solve a problem.
• Even infants will use strategies, but strategies
  change with development.

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Increasing Attentional Control Over Behavior and
Cognition

• Developmental psychologists are interested in
  childrens increasing ability to use strategies.
• Goal-directed problem solving is especially
  evident in technologically advanced societies.
• Strategy use involves regulating thoughts and
  behavior.
• Executive Function Processes involved in
  regulating attention and in determining what to
  do with information gathered or retrieved from
  long-term memory.

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Increasing Attentional Control Over Behavior and
Cognition

• Comprised of working memory the structures and
  processes for temporarily storing and
  manipulating information, selectively attending
  to relevant info, and inhibiting responding, etc.

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Change in Both Domain-General and Domain-Specific
Abilities

• Domain-General Abilities A childs thinking is
  influenced by a single set of factors, with these
  factors affecting different aspects of cognition
  equally.
• Domain-Specific Abilities A childs ability for
  one specific aspect of cognition may reveal
  nothing about his/her level of cognitive
  abilities on other aspects of thinking.

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Change in Both Domain-General and Domain-Specific
Abilities

• Fodor proposed the concept of modularity
  certain areas of the brain are dedicated to
  performing specific cognitive tasks.
• These modules are independent and may be innate.
• True development is probably a compromise between
  these concepts.
• Schneider looked at soccer experts in grades 3,
  5, and 7 (p. 26)

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Change in Both Domain-General and Domain-Specific
Abilities

• They were presented with a soccer narrative text
  and were later asked to recall it.
• Soccer experts were better than novices.
• There was no difference between successful
  learners and unsuccessful ones.
• The performance of experts may be due to their
  use of domain-general mechanisms.