1. Developmental Psychology: 2110 E Professor Scott Adler adler@yorku.ca 333 BSB http://www.psych.yorku.ca/adler/

2. What is psychology? The scientific study of behavior Types of behavior: Includes social, cognitive, emotional, physical, abnormal, etc.

3. What is developmental psychology? The scientific study of change in behavior as the organism grows, matures and gains experience with the world around them.

4. Rapid Development Long-term Effects Window into Adult Behavior Real World Applications Interesting Subject Matter The Starting Point Why is research focused on infants and children?

5. The Starting Point

6. Themes of Development Both biology and the social and physical environment affect our development, although they may influence different aspects of development to different degrees. Biological versus Environmental Influences: To explore how biological and environmental factors interact to produce developmental variations in different children.

7. Themes of Development The Active versus the Passive Child: The Active versus the Passive Child: Modern developmentalists believe that children are usually active agents who shape, control, and direct the course of their own development. Continuity versus Discontinuity: Recently, suggested that our judgment of continuity or discontinuity depends on the power of the lens we use in examining changes across development

8. Early Theorists Descartes - Cartesian Dualism Known as the Mind-Body Problem John Locke (17th) - Tabula Rasa Rousseau (18th) Born with knowledge and ideas Develop according to innate timetable

9. Early Theorists Darwin (19th) Evolutionary Theory and Natural Selection Recapitulation Theory - ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

10. 10 Recapitulation Theory Haeckel (1866) 10

11. Early Child Psychology Wundt - Development (and evolution) proceeds through 3 steps: Impulsive Acts - innate drives Voluntary Acts - several motives but one predominates Selective Acts - conscious choice

12. Early Child Psychology G. Stanley Hall First scientific study of the child Believed in recapitulation theory Watson - returns to Locke’s environmentalism Behaviorism - changes in behavior occur through conditioning Little Albert - conditioned reflex method Used by Pavlov to make dog salivate to a bell

13. Early Child Psychology Freud - Theory of psychosexual development Stage theory Repression of desires Believed in interaction of innate and environment

14. Early Child Psychology Gesell Development due to biological mechanisms Focused on motor skills Found regular pattern and developed age norms Piaget Interested in qualitative issues of children’s knowledge Used tasks and verbal problems instead of questionnaires Stage theory of cognitive development

15. Early Child Psychology Erikson Personality Development Epigenetic approach - personality is in genes In stage theory, a positive characteristic is in conflict with a negative one Vygotsky Sociocultural approach to cognitive development Contrasts with Piaget, who believed in a common cognitive development