Developmental Psychology Overview

Developmental Psychology Study Notes

• Developmental psychology examines systematic changes and consistencies in people from conception to death.
• Lifespan development considers development across the entire lifespan, from infancy to old age.
• Key goals of human development involve describing, explaining, predicting, and intervening in the development process.
• Development encompasses distinct domains: physical, cognitive, and psychosocial.
• Influences on development include nature (genetics) and nurture (environment), with both impacting development interactively.
• Human development takes place within various contexts, including family, socioeconomic status, culture, ethnicity, and history.
• Lifespan development follows various approaches: lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, and multidisciplinary.
• Certain periods of critical and sensitive importance (e.g., imprinting, critical periods, and sensitive periods) demonstrate how influential particular durations are during developmental stages.
• Different perspectives exist in developmental psychology (e.g., psychodynamic, learning, cognitive, contextual, and evolutionary). These perspectives contribute unique insights and are helpful in understanding various aspects of human development.
• Developmental stages are marked by various concepts including sensitive periods and critical periods, where a given event or lack of an event will have an impact on development.
• Human development involves the interplay of active and reactive influences. Active, or organismic models, view people as taking initiative in their own development, and reactive, or mechanistic models, emphasize the role of environment in influencing development.
• Theoretical perspectives in developmental psychology include psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive, contextual, and evolutionary/sociobiological frameworks.
• Research methods in developmental psychology include self-report, naturalistic observation, laboratory observation, behavioral and performance measures, case studies, ethnographic studies, correlational studies, and experiments.
• Different theoretical perspectives address development in unique ways.
• Different research methods offer various research methods.

Psychoanalytic Perspective (Sigmund Freud & Erik Erikson)

• Freud's theory proposes distinct psychosexual stages impacting personality development.
• Erikson's psychosocial theory emphasizes social crises and tasks throughout the lifespan stages.

Learning Perspective (e.g., Classical & Operant Conditioning)

• Learning perspectives focus on observable behaviors.
• Principles of classical and operant conditioning help us understand how behaviors change based on the environment.
• A type of learning perspective involves modelling. Here, individuals observe and imitate behaviors they see exhibited by those around them.

Cognitive Perspective (Jean Piaget)

• Piaget's theory focuses on how the mind structures knowledge and changes over time.
• Cognitive stages represent distinct ways of thinking or understanding the world.
• Aspects of Piaget's approach focus on how individuals adapt structures or schemata with new knowledge from the world.

Contextual Perspective (e.g., Brofenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory)

• Contextual approaches examine how biological, psychological, and environmental processes work together in development and how individual development operates in various contexts. 
• Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory suggests nested systems that influence development.

Biological Foundations

• Biological processes influence development in intricate ways starting from the moment of conception.
• Influences of heredity and environment impact biological factors involving genetic abnormalities and disorders, developmental timelines, and the relationship between heredity and the environment.
• Understand genetics, including meiosis, mitosis, and chromosomal abnormalities, and how they relate to human development. 

Prenatal Development

• Prenatal development encompasses germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages.
• Understanding the critical periods during prenatal development helps to consider how external factors and environments can have a significant influence on a child's life.

Infancy

• Infancy is a period of rapid physical growth and development.
• Important topics in this stage include nutrition and feeding, brain development, reflexes, milestones of motor development, and theories of motor development.

Additional Study Points

• Research methods are important for advancing knowledge, and various types offer distinct strengths and limitations.
• Various theoretical perspectives contribute to the understanding of human development and provide significant insights into how people grow and develop along the lifespan.