An introduction to thoeries in developmental Psychology

1. Theories and Methods
8 September 2022

2. Themes of development
Development is multicontextual

3. Contexts of development
Historical context
Influences development
Cohort: individuals born
around the same time
Specific experiences
Socioeconomic
context—income,
education, occupation

4. Cultural Context
Culture: System of enduring
shared beliefs, norms,
expectations and behaviors that
prescribe social behavior
Less studied than it should be
Difference does not equal deficit!

5. Themes of development
How and why do individuals differ? To what
extent is development similar across
individuals?
Relates to other themes
Methodologically challenging!

6. Themes of development
What are the effects of change?
Large changes may have little effect
Eg, moving across the country
Eg, changing school
Small changes may have huge effects
Eg, small physical change enables new behavior
Smiling changes interaction
Change in one area can affect many other areas
Eg. Learning to walk

7. Development is multidisciplinary
Psychology
Education
Linguistics
Economics
Sociology
History
Genetics
Medicine
Neuroscience

8. Why study
development?
Fascinating process
Insight into origins and mature form
Parenting
Applications of development
Education
Clinical
Social work
Development and social policy

9. The role of theories in
development
Theory: set of interrelated concepts that
organizes, explains, and predicts patterns and
problems of development
Produce testable hypotheses
Generate discoveries
Offer practical guidance
Vary in:
Domain investigated
Research methods
Issues addressed

10. Good theories
Have explanatory power
Can be proven wrong based on data
Untestable or unfalsifiable proposals:
 Mint chip is the best ice cream flavor
 A giant monster lives at the bottom of
Loch Ness
 Democratic party members are engaging
in sex trafficking
Can (and should) be revised!

11. Developmental theories
No theory explains all of development
Each illuminates some aspects!
What doesn’t work and what does
Provide different perspectives to understand
complex problem
Structure for posing and answering questions
Understanding grand theories

12. Good measures are
Objective: free from bias
Reliable: consistent across observers/time
Valid: accurately measures phenomenon
Ecological validity: Extent to which child’s behavior
is similar across different environments
Produce replicable findings

13. Reliability and validity in
developmental research
Challenge to find reliable, valid measures
Children change over time!!
Measure that works at one age may not
work with older or younger kids

14. Methods: Naturalistic observation
Observing behavior in
everyday context
Types
Ethnographic
May also include interviews,
conversations
Case study

15. Naturalistic observation
Advantages:
Ecological validity: Evaluates real behavior in
real settings
Good for describing phenomena
Disadvantages:
No control, complex
Rare behaviors
Must decide what to record

16. Methods: Structured observation
Bring child into lab, present with specific
situation
Strange situation

17. Structured observation
Advantages
More consistency
Controlled comparisons
Disadvantages
Less naturalistic
Does not reveal subjective experience

18. Interviews/Questionnaires
Clinical interview: Ask same set
of questions to many children
Follow up tailored to child
Parents may complete
questionnaires

19. Interviews/Questionnaires
Advantages:
Lots of data
Can provide unexpected insight
Disadvantages:
Limited use of interview with young children
Biased responding

20. Correlational designs
Relation between two variables
Example: Is there a relation
between sensitivity in parenting
and irritability in children?
Causality?
Third factor?

21. Why use correlational designs?
Identifying relationships are a good
first step
Establish relation between variables
that can’t be experimentally
manipulated
Depression, achievement, aggression,
etc
Gender, SES

22. Experimental designs
Systematic manipulation of variables and
comparison across groups supports causal
inference
Random assignment
Experimental control
Independent variable: Variable manipulated by
experimenter
Dependent variable: Outcome measure

23. Experimental designs
Cause/effect relations
Random assignment  group diffs caused by
manipulation of indep variable
Not always ethical
Natural experiments

24. Developmental designs
Cross-sectional:
Children of different
ages studied all at once
Longitudinal: Same
children followed across
time
Cohort sequential:
Combination TIME
AGE

25. Developmental designs pros and
cons
Cross-sectional
Lots of data fast, easy, cheap
No info about individual dev trajectories
Cohort effects (germ example)
Longitudinal
Info about individual dev trajectories
Time-consuming, expensive, drop-outs
Cohort effects (pandemic example)
Cross-sequential—best overall, but rarely done

26. Ethical considerations in
Development
Informed consent/assent
Withdrawal of consent
Confidentiality
Protection from harm
Deception

27. Methods Overview
No method, no expt is flawless
Converging methods
Same results with different methods, designs
Replication—with varied methods,
participants, labs