HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1 PSYCHOLOGY 3050: Introduction

1. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1PSYCHOLOGY 3050:Introduction Dr. Jamie Drover SN-3094, 864-8383 e-mail -- jrdrover@mun.ca Winter Semester, 2015

2. 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

3. 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).

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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)

7. Development of the Infant Visual Cortex from Birth to 6 months From Conel (1939-1963)

8. Visual Acuity is poor at birth TheNewborn At 2 months At 6 months An Infant’s View of the Child’s Face at a Distance of 2 feet:

9. Structure and function are bi-directional • Failure of bi-directionality results in visual dysfunction • e.g., cataracts restrict seeing – poor function, structural loss

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. What does innate mean?

16. 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).

17. 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

18. 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

19. 19 Dynamic Systems Approach • Dynamic system: a set of elements that undergo changes over time due to interactions among the elements. • The child’s mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated, dynamic system that guides the mastery of new skills.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

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

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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 delayed. • They received lavish attention from women inmates and later demonstrated normal intelligence.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. Increasing Attentional Control Over Behavior and Cognition • Developmental psychologists are interested in children’s 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.

32. 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.

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

34. 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)

35. 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.