Developmental Psychology with Dr. Arnel Bañaga Salgado

• Introduction to Developmental Psychology by Dr. Arnel Bañaga Salgado

Dr. Arnel Bañaga Salgado Background

• Trained as a school and clinical psychologist, licensed teacher, and registered nurse.
• Holds advanced degrees in school and clinical psychology, teacher education, and nursing.
• Degrees were issued equivalency by the Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research, UAE, in 2015.
• Possesses almost 30 years of experience in educational leadership and management.
• Experience in hospital administration, as director of nursing, school principal, and college founding dean.
• Work as academic support service coordinator, school psychologist, and academic in research and teaching.
• Authored several books and published numerous research papers.
• Granted a golden visa by the UAE government.
• Pictured with Philip George Zimbardo, Daniel Kahneman, Antonio Puente, Martin Seligman and Jerrold Lee Shapiro.

Learning Objectives

• Differentiate between development, developmental psychology, and developmentalist.
• Explain the scope of development.
• Distinguish between nature and nurture.
• Explain the conception of age.
• Discuss the themes of development.

Introductory Discussion

• The case of 10-year-old Marco, a Filipino caregiver for his siblings, highlights the pressures of responsibility and their impact on education and social interactions.

Definition of Development

• Development involves systematic changes and continuities in an individual from conception to death (Carol Sigelman and Elizabeth Rider).
• Development encompasses changes over time in a person's body, thoughts, and behavior due to biological and environmental factors.

Definition of Developmentalist

• A developmentalist is any professional or scholar seeking to understand the process of development.
• Developmentalists include psychologists, biologists, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and historians.

Definition of Developmental Psychology

• Developmental psychology is a branch of psychology focused on identifying and explaining the continuities and changes individuals display over time.
• Primary causes of developmental change include maturation and learning.
• Maturation refers to developmental changes in the body or behavior resulting from aging, not learning, injury, or illness.
• Learning involves a gradual but permanent change of behavior resulting from experience or practice.

Scopes of developmental psychology

• Physical Development: Physical changes of the body and its organs including body size, proportions, appearance, brain development, motor development, perception capacities, and physical health.
• Psychosocial Development: Socioemotional interplay of personal and interpersonal development, emotions, personality traits, and interpersonal skills development.
• Cognitive Development: Changes in mental processes, intellectual abilities, attention, memory, problem-solving, imagination, creativity, academic, everyday knowledge and language development.

Influence Factors on Human Development

• Nature (maturation): the aging process and genetic makeup
• Nurture (learning): observation and interactions with parents, teachers, and others in our environment (experiences)
• Many developmental changes are due to the interaction between nature and nurture.

Goals of a Developmentalist

• Description of development: to describe how human beings change over time both normatively and ideographically
• Normative development is common developmental patterns
• Stages of development are what a majority of children of that specific age are expected to achieve (Meggit, 2006)
• Ideographic development emphasizes understanding individual differences and unique experiences.

Description of Development

• Ideographic Development emphasizes individual differences and unique experiences within the study of human behavior and mental processes.
• Ideographic approach contrasts with nomothetic approaches, which seek to identify general laws and principles that apply broadly across populations.
• Explain development: Determine why individuals develop as they typically do and why there are individual differences in development
• Optimize development by applying what has been observed to help individuals develop in a positive direction.

Themes in the study of human development

• "Nature vs. Nurture" – genetics versus environment
• John Watson in the early 20th century, emphasized that the environment is everything
• Arnold Gesell in the 1930s, emphasized that development is determined by genes.
• Modern developmentalists believe that both interact to produce change.

Themes in the study of human development (continued)

• Active vs. Passive Child - Most modern developmentalists believe that children actively shape, control, and direct their development.
• Continuity vs. Discontinuity
• Continuity is measured by gradual and smooth occurances
• Quantitative changes are measured by change in degree or amount
• Changes in height are associated with non-stage theories
• Discontinuity is measured by abrupt changes or stages (discontinuous)
• Qualitative changes are a change in form (step-like)

Themes in the study of human development (continued)

• Some theorists view development as a continuous process with smooth, gradual change, while others see it as a series of qualitatively different steps or stages.
• The more closely and frequently child development is examined, the more gradual the process appears.
• Continual vs. Cumulative Process
• Continual changes transpire at each major phase of life and can affect future development.
• Cumulative (Holistic) Process development focus is physical, cognitive, and social-emotional are interrelated and are affected by each other.
• Plasticity is the ability to change as a result of positive and negative life experiences

Themes in the study of human development (Cont.)

• Situational Influences versus Individual Characteristics
• Some developmentalists continue to debate whether situational influences or individual personality characteristics are more important in determining how stable a child's behavior will be across varying contexts.
• contemporary psychologists avoid this debate by taking an interactionist viewpoint that stresses the complementary roles of personality and situational factors.
• Risk vs Resilience is a number of child psychologists that have become interested in contradictions posed to a child's development by high-risk factors early in life.
• High risk factors include family disintegration, poverty, and illness.
• A child's quality of resilience allows them to cope with negative influences, and to create a satisfying and useful life for themselves.

Human Development

• Psychologists attempt to separate the biological (red), cognitive (yellow), social (blue), and contextual (white) factors that influence human development
• Development is considered holistic and at an early age, the variables being studied have already begun to interact.
• A single domain or variable alone does not influence development; the influence of other domains and their variables modify the effects.
• Influences from the four domains interact to produce confluent effects that are difficult to trace to a single factor.