This document provides an overview of developmental psychology and some of its key concepts and theorists. It defines developmental psychology as the scientific study of behavioral changes as an organism grows and interacts with its environment. Some important themes discussed are the interaction between biological and environmental influences on development, and the active role children play in shaping their own development. Early influential theorists mentioned include Darwin, Freud, Piaget, Erikson, and Vygotsky. Their various stage theories and approaches, such as psychosexual development and sociocultural influences, contributed to understanding of child development.

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
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