Developmental Psychology: Goals and Cognition

Goals of Developmental Psychologists

• The two primary objectives are to understand the process of growth and to use this knowledge to improve the lives of children and families.
• Understanding the process of development involves studying how children change, grow, and learn over time, looking into mental, emotional, and physical changes during childhood.

Applying Knowledge

• Applying knowledge includes creating educational programs, parenting plans, or therapy sessions to support healthy child development.
• Studies on teaching methods, like teamwork, can improve mental abilities such as reasoning and understanding different points of view.

Basic Concepts of Cognitive Development

• Cognitive development: How one's thinking changes over time.
• Cognition: Refers to the processes of how knowledge is gained or changed, studying the mechanisms behind a child's thinking at a specific age, including conscious and unconscious processes.
• Development: Refers to changes in structure or function over time, where structure is the mental knowledge and function is an action taken by an individual.
• Structure and function have a bidirectional relationship.
• Developmental functions: the form that cognition takes over time, i.e., age-related changes in thinking.
• Individual differences: Occur normally across individuals in development, such as the time it takes to master a skill, and children develop at different rates but with similar milestones.

Truths of Cognitive Development

• Cognitive development proceeds as a result of the dynamic and reciprocal transaction of internal and external factors, and is a combination of genetics and the environment.
• Cognitive development is constructed within a social context, so culture shapes and constructs intellect, while the development of children is guided by adults interacting with them.
• Cognitive development involves both stability and plasticity over time: stability is the degree to which children maintain the same relative rank order over time, and plasticity is the extent to which experience can shape children.
• Cognitive development involves changes in the way information is represented, also known as the mental encoding of information, where age affects the levels of how kids represent experience
• Knowledge base: a significant influence on how children think.
• Children develop increasing intentional control over their behavior and cognition, and are able to be strategic, and regulate thoughts and behaviors.
• Cognitive development involves changes in both domain-general and domain-specific abilities with modularity in brain functions to perform specific cognitive tasks.

The Social Origins of Children's Cognitive Competencies

• Cognitive processes originate in a social context and then are internalized by the child at a psychologically individual level.
• Cognition exists in a social context, even if the thought process is individual contemplation.
• Important revelations that children have often occur in a cooperative or collaborative dialogue.

Cognitive Artifacts and Thinking Connection

• Cognitive artifacts are artifacts (physical or mental) that help with thinking, solving problems, memory, and reasoning.
• Physical cognitive artifacts include written documents, maps, and computers.
• Mental cognitive artifacts include literacy, mathematics, logic, and scientific reasoning.
• Intellectual adaptation involves methods and ways that a culture teaches their children how to think, which can differ across cultures.
• Different languages' number systems influence children's math abilities.
• Historical practices of ancestors influence modern-day ontogeny.

Vygotsky’s ZPD and Rogoff’s Apprenticeship

• The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): People learn best when they get help with tasks beyond what they can do alone, with guidance.
• Apprenticeship: Someone learns by working alongside an expert.
• Scaffolding: A teacher or mentor gives structured help that is slowly removed as the learner improves.
• Guided participation: People learn by being involved (hands-on and natural).
• Both scaffolding and guided participation help people grow, but scaffolding is a more organized way of offering support.

Development and Cultural Context Connection

• The question is how nature affects nurture and vice versa, thus affecting development; cultural context can be seen as the environment, and in some cases, biology as well.
• Different cultures hold different values: individualistic societies vs. collectivist societies.
• Cultures vary in how they learn (memorization by repetition vs. creating symbols).
• Culture and cultural context are inseparable from development.
• Research is needed in different cultures to understand species-typical cognitive abilities and how those abilities develop with similarities amongst cultures.

Explore the primary goals of developmental psychologists: understanding child growth and improving lives. Learn how cognitive development shapes a child's thinking through mental, emotional, and physical changes. Discover the importance of applying this knowledge to education and therapy.