CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO
DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:
• differentiate between development, developmental
psychologist and developmentalist
• explain the scopes of development
• distinguish between nature and nurture
• explain the goals of developmentalist
• explain the conception of age
• discuss the themes of development.
 Definition

Development:
systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur
between conception and death (Carol Sigelman and Elizabeth Rider's).
changes over time in a person’s body, thought, and behavior due to
biological and environmental influences.

Developmentalist:
any professional or scholar who seeks to understand the process of
development
Example - psychologists, biologists, sociologists, antropologists,
educators, historican
 Definition

Developmental psychologist:
branch of psychology devoted to identfying and explaining the
continuities and changes that individual display over time.
Primary cause of developmental change – maturation and learning
Maturation – developmental changes in the body or behaviour than result
from the aging process rather from learning, injury, illness or some other life
experince.
Learning – a relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from
one’s experience of practice.
 Scopes of developmental
psychology
1. Physical Development
- The physical changes of the body and its
organs.
- Body - body size, body proportions,
appearance
- Organ - brain development, motor
development, perception capacities,
physical health.
 Scopes of developmental
psychology
2. Psychosocial Development
•Aka socioemotional Development
-Changes that occur in the interplay of personal and
interpersonal aspects of development.
-Interpersonal aspect of development -emotions, personality
traits and interpersonal skills
-Interplay of personal – interpersonal relationship with others
people such as family and societal interactions. Includes
development of emotions, temperament and social skills.
-Psychosocial scopes - family, friends, community
 Scopes of developmental
psychology
3. Cognitive Development
Changes in mental processes and
intellectual abilities
- attention, memory, problem solving,
imagination, creativity, academic and
everyday knowledge and language.
 Influence factor on human
development
• Nature (maturation) – Aging Process and
genetic make up.
• Nurture (learning) – Observation and
interactions with our parents and teachers
and others in our environment (Our
experiences)
• Many developmental changes are due to the
interaction between both nature and nurture.
 Goals of developmentalist
1. Description of development
- to describe how human beings change over time
both normatively and ideographically
- Normative Development:
a. common developmental patterns
b. stages of development that the majority of children
of that specific age are expected to achieve.
(Meggit, 2006)
 Goals of developmentalist
1. Description of development
- Ideographic Development
a. pattern of changes of individual
 Goals of developmentalist
2. Explain development
-what they observe to determine why
• Individuals develop as they typically do
• Why there are individual differences in development
 Goals of developmentalist
3. Optimize development
- by applying what they have observed in order to help
individuals develop in a positive direction.
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
1. The Nature vs Nurture
– Genetics versus environment
– John Watson, early 20th century:
Environment is everything.
– Arnold Gesell in the 1930s: Development
determined by an 'inner timetable which
is produced by genes.
– Modern developmentalist - both
interact to produce change
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

2. The Active vs Passive Child

– Most modern developmentalist believe that
children actively shape, control and direct
their own development.
– Some of developmentalists still hold that
children are the passive recipients of
environmental influence.
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
3. The Continuity vs Discontinuity
– Continuity – development occurs gradually and
smooth
• Quantitative changes: measurable change in
degree or amount
• Changes in height
• associated with non-stage theories
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
3. The Continuity vs Discontinuity
– Discontinuity - development occurs with
abrupt changes or stages (discontinuous)
• Qualitative changes: changes in form (step like) .
• A number of theorists view development as a continuous
process, whereby change over time takes place smoothly and
gradually, but others see development as a series of
qualitatively different steps or stages.
• The more closely and more frequently we examine the child's
development, the more gradual the process appears.
• Figure 2.2 The course of development as described by continuity and discontinuity (stage) theorists.
• Step-Like Change
(Associated with Stage Theories) 

  Formal Operational
Concrete Operational
  Preoperational Stage
Sensorimotor Stage
 THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
4. A continual vs Cumulative Process
- Continual - The changes that transpire at each major phase of life may affect future
development.
-Cumulative (Holistic Process) – Focus of scopes of development- whether it is
physical, cognitive and socialemotional are interrelated and effect each other.
-Plasticity – The ability to change as a result of positive and negative life experiences
• Figure 2.3 Psychologists attempt to tease apart the biological (red), cognitive (yellow), social (blue), and
contextual (white) factors that influence human development. However, development is holistic and at a very
early age the variables that we choose to study have already begun to interact. A single domain or variable never
influences development independently of other factors. The chosen variable’s effect is modified and modulated
by the influences of other domains and their variables, just as they are modified and modulated by it. Like the
colors in this illustration, influences from the four domains interact to produce confluent effects that are not
easily traced to a single, or even a handful, of variables.
5. Situational Influences versus Individual
Characteristics
-Some developmentalists continue to debate the question
of whether situational influences or individual personality
characteristics are more important in determining how
stable a child's behavior will be across varying contexts.
-Many contemporary psychologists avoid this debate by
taking an interactionist viewpoint that stresses the
complementary roles of personality and situational factors.
6. Risk vs Resilience
-A number of child psychologists have become
interested in the contradictions posed to a child's
development by the presence, early in life, of high risk
factors such as family disintegration, poverty, and
illness and the evolution in the child of the quality of
resilience, the ability to cope with such negative
influences and to create a satisfying and useful life for
himself/herself.