Captain Psychology

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Developmental Characteristics

Garbage bin by Kyle Glenn

Photo

Story

Let’s follow Dave.

Dave is a hypothetical typical person. And we’ll follow his entire lifespan. But let’s start with what development is.

Here’s what is included in this lesson:

  • 11 characteristics of development
  • 4 goals for studying development
  • Maturation
  • Lifespan

Mind Map

Notes

  • Developmental Psych
    • Lifespan Development
    • Child Development
    • Adolescence
    • Geriatrics
  • Includes all aspects of humans
    • from conception to death
    • life span
  • Constancy and change
    • Consistent
    • Always changing
  • Principles
    • Maturation = rogrammed series of change
    • Maturation must be:
      • Relatively resistant
      • Sequential
      • Universal
    • Early development is elated to later development
      • Not perfect correlation
  • 4 Goals for studying development
    • Describe
    • Explain
    • Predict
    • Modify
  • 11 Primary Characteristics
    • 1. Lifelong
      • Lifespan
      • understanding all aspects of humans
      • from conception to death (life span)
    • 2. Consistent & Dynamic
      • Stability vs Change
        • happy kids, what when grown
        • dynamic: always changing
      • One Course w many sub-paths
      • Cultural norms are not requirements
    • 3. Continuous & discrete
      • Stages: overlapping or separate
      • Everyone goes thru the same steps in same order
      • Universal
      • Sequential
      • Relatively resistant
      • Steps or Waves
    • 4. Multidimensional
      • Many things change at once
      • 3 Domains
      • A. Biosocial Domain
        • How body affected
        • genetics, nutrition & health
        • motor movement, cognition, experience, breastfeeding
      • B. Cognitive Domain
        • Mental processes
        • Knowledge & awareness
        • Sensation & perceptions
        • Language & memory
      • C. Psychosocial Domain
        • Culture & society
        • Social skills
        • Emotional characteristics
    • 5. Multi-disciplinary
      • Medicine & neuroscience
      • Psychology & sociology
      • Chemistry & biology
      • Anthropology
    • 6. Multi-directional
      • Change is not linear
        • failures & successes
      • Both unpredictable & predictable
        • morphogenesis = getting more organized
        • apoptosis = programmed cell death
    • 7. Multi-contextual
      • Many contexts
      • Flexible
      • Rules don’t always apply; even in the same context
      • Social context
      • Rules change from place to place
    • 8. Multi-cultural
      • Each culture has own
      • Traditions
      • Values
      • Tools
      • Age-graded
        • Drive when 16
        • Married by 21
      • History-graded
        • Everyone get at same time
        • Phone, TV, internet
    • 9. Plastic
      • Can change at any point in time
        • Positively or negatively
      • Great potential for change
        • Usually don’t
    • 10. Sensitive
      • Sensitive periods
      • Critical periods
      • Summative & Existential
      • Early experiences cause later problems
    • 11. Interactive
      • Person, heredity & environment
      • Multiple interacting forces
      • Active child
        • Actively influence own develop
      • Passive child
        • At mercy of the environment

Terms

  • age-graded influences
  • behavior modification
  • behaviorism
  • chronosystem
  • clinical interview
  • clinical method (case study)
  • cognitive-developmental theory
  • cohort effects
  • contexts
  • continuous development
  • correlation coefficient
  • correlational design
  • cross-sectional design
  • dependent variable
  • developmental cognitive neuroscience
  • developmental science
  • discontinuous development
  • ecological systems theory
  • ethnography
  • ethology
  • evolutionary developmental psychology
  • exosystem
  • experimental design
  • history-graded influences
  • independent variable
  • information processing
  • lifespan perspective
  • longitudinal design
  • macrosystem
  • mesosystem
  • microsystem
  • naturalistic observation
  • nature–nurture controversy
  • nonnormative influences
  • normative approach
  • psychoanalytic perspective
  • psychosexual theory
  • random assignment
  • resilience
  • sensitive period
  • sequential designs
  • social learning theory
  • sociocultural theory
  • stage
  • structured interview
  • structured observation
  • theory

Quiz

  • 1. Development is both consistent and:
    • a.           uni-dimensional
    • b.           overlapping
    • c.           dynamic
    • d.           passive
  • 2. Maturation must be:
    • a.           overlapping
    • b.           sequential
    • c.           reversible
    • d.           localized
  • 3. Driving when you are 16 is an:
    • a.           age-graded tradition
    • b.           morphogenesis
    • c.           critical period
    • d.           bad idea
  • 4. Children who actively influence own develop are:
    • a.           rapid processors
    • b.           segmented
    • c.           precocious
    • d.           active
  • 5. Things can change at any point, so development is said to be:
    • a.           progressive
    • b.           contextual
    • c.           simplistic
    • d.           plastic

Answers

  • 1. Development is both consistent and:
    • a.           uni-dimensional
    • b.           overlapping
    • c.           dynamic
    • d.           passive
  • 2. Maturation must be:
    • a.           overlapping
    • b.           sequential
    • c.           reversible
    • d.           localized
  • 3. Driving when you are 16 is an:
    • a.           age-graded tradition
    • b.           morphogenesis
    • c.           critical period
    • d.           bad idea
  • 4. Children who actively influence own develop are:
    • a.           rapid processors
    • b.           segmented
    • c.           precocious
    • d.           active
  • 5. Things can change at any point, so development is said to be:
    • a.           progressive
    • b.           contextual
    • c.           simplistic
    • d.           plastic

Summary

Bonus

Photo credit

Saga of Dave

Dave, our fictional character, does not exist…yet. When he does, there are a lot of things we are going to want to know about him. All of the following characteristics will be a part of understanding Dave.

Before we get to Dave, let’s discuss development itself. There are five things you should know.

[Read more…] about Developmental Characteristics

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How To Calculate Sum of Squares

Viewed over 100,000 times!

A clear description of how to calculate Sum of Squares (S).

Here’s What You Need To Know

Sum of squaresSum of Squares (SS for short) is part of a trio. SS, variance and standard deviation all measure dispersion. When all the scores are the same, each is zero. When there is some variation in scores, all three increase. When there is a lot of variation, such as when everyone has a different score, all three are large. More diversity, more dispersion, higher SS, variance and standard deviation.

Theoretically, SS is the sum of deviations from the mean squared. Conceptually this is fine. The mean is subtracted from each score, squared and the added up. No one calculates SS this way because it is tedious, and the rounding errors get compounded evert step along the way.

The proper way to calculate SS is with a computer. Failing that, use a formula.

Variance the second member of the dispersion trio. It is the average of the squared deviations. Variance of a population SS divided by the number of scores (N , for short). Variance of a sample is SS divided by n-1b(that is, the number of scores minus one).

The more different the scores of a distribution are, the larger the variance. The more homogenous the scores, the smaller the dispersion. If all the scores are identical, variance equals zero. If you compare two distributions, the one with the smallest variance has the least dispersion.

The nice thing about variance is that the concept is in the name. Variance measures variance from the mean. It is the average amount of squared variation.

Standard deviation is the third part of the dispersion trio. And it is interpreted the same way. Large standard deviation (sometimes called Steve. Or s) means scores differ. Small Steve. Means less diversity. Zero means everyone has the same score.

For more on the topic, check out Statistics.

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Hobbes, Galileo & Descartes

Hobbes, Descartes & Galileo

Hobbes, Galileo & Descartes were friends. They were from different countries (England, Italy and France(. They had different specialties, styles and beliefs. But they shared a love for science and the importance of rational thought.

Together, this trio formed the basis for rationalism. Got a problem? Think things through. In contrast to the experience your way through life approach of the empiricists, rationalists believed in the power of deduction. Here’s a quick overview.

[Read more…] about Hobbes, Galileo & Descartes

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What Is Developmental Psych

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A Quick Introduction to Developmental Psychology.

For more on the topic, including class notes, check out Lifespan Development.

Transcript

Development means change. And psychology is the study of people. So developmental psychology is the study of how people change.
Lifespan development is the subset of psychology that tries to understand how people change over time.
People come fully assembled at birth but not fully operational. We’re not prepackaged as a completely formed being. It takes a couple of months for our color vision systems to stabilize. It takes even longer to gain an understanding of the world around us and our place within that context.

We think of development is acquiring skills and abilities but it isn’t limited to positive change. Bones can break, muscles weaken and diseases spread. As we age, our eyes get worse, our gait is less stable and our internal temperature systems become less responsive. We develop osteoporosis, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

And development can be rapid or slow. Your hair grows about half a millimeter day. You change taste buds every couple weeks. And about once a month, you get new skin cells to replace some of the old ones.

You are composed of multiple systems, and each is on its own developmental schedule. Changes across the lifespan is so abundant and complex, researchers usually restrict their study to a particular topic or to a particular period of time. Topical researchers select a specific process or faculty. They may follow the rise, maintenance and fall of cognition across the lifespan but they stay with a single topic.

They may track the entire lifespan of language perception or reproductive processes. They might focus on something as specific as fine gross motor skills or something as broad as a sense of self.

The other way to conserve energy is to specialize in a specific period of time. Studying children is still popular but with people living longer more attention is being given to maintaining the health of the elderly. Advances in brain imagery have increased the studying of the rapid brain growth period.

Like alll sciences, developmental psychology has a strong preference for controlled experiments, so studies are conducted laboratory settings. These use random assignment to treatment conditions, clear operational definitions and control groups.

Humans are complex beings, so it’s not surprising that we must be seen within our biological, environmental and social contexts. These contexts impact our decisions and change our personal experiences, and in return, our environment is impacted by our choices of behaviors.

To understand developmental psychology better, I am trying to create a fictional character we can trace over his lifespan. If you’d like to help decide what challenges our fictional friend should face, come to DevelopmentalDave.com and give your input. It’s still under construction, but probably always will be, so come on ahead.

 

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Brain

 

Brain

The brain is both an easy and difficult thing to define. In many ways there are three brains. The first, called the cerebrum, is what every one pictures. It is about three pounds, and composed of 20-30 billion neurons and synapsing with each other.

The second definition of the brain is the cerebellum. It too is a cortex. It is like a second small brain tucked behind the brain stem and under the cerebrum. The cerebellum has more neurons that the cerebrum but they are tiny and tightly compacted.

The third definition is that the brain is everything in the head. This includes the cerebellum, the cerebrum and everything under the cerebrum. In many ways this is the best definition because all of these parts work together.

Let’s take a quick tour of the brain’s development, structures and processes.

[Read more…] about Brain