NOTES AND TEST
There are three recurring issues in the
study of human development:
Basic forces in human development - the Biopsychological
framework
a. biological forces - include all genetic and health related
factors that have an affect in the development
b. psychological forces - include all the internal perceptual,
cognitive, emotional and personality factors that influence human
development
c. sociocultural forces - include interpersonal, societal,
cultural and ethnic factors that have an affect on development
d. the biopsychosocial framework - which emphasizes that all
three forces are interactive and you can not understand
development by examining these forces in isolation
Developmental Theories
1. Psychodynamic theories - behavior is determined by unconscious
motives. Freud believed that development proceeds in a universal
sequence of stages and that personality development is complete
by the time the individual reaches adolescence. Erikson came up
with the life span theory, and proposed that there are eight
stages, and each one is characterized on a particular struggle
the individual has to overcome
2. Learning theory - the focus is on the development of
observable behavior. Operant conditioning is based on the idea of
reinforcement and punishment and environmental control of the
behavior. The Social Learning Theory is based on the belief that
people learn by observing others
3. Cognitive-Developmental theory - the focus is on thought
processes. Piaget believed there are four stages of cognitive
development. The Information-Processing theory argues that
individuals deal with information just like a computer does, and
that development consists of how efficiently the individual is
handling the information
4. Ecological and Systems approach - Bronfenbrenner believed that
development occurs in the context of several interconnected
systems of increasing complexity. The comptence-environmental
framework believes that there is an optimal "best fit"
between an individual's abilities and the demand placed on the
individual by the environment
5. Life Span and Life course theories - argue that we must view
development in terms of all the four forces in the
biopshychosocial framework and that if we are to understand one
point in development we must understand where the individual came
from and where the individual is heading
Doing Developmental Research
1. Measurement in human development
a. Systematic observation - watching people and recording what
they do in a natural setting
b. Sampling behavior with tasks is used when a behavior cannot be
observed directly. The researcher creates a task .
c. Self-reports - involve the use of questionnaires and
interviews
d. The major issue on all these methods is that they must be
reliable and valid. Reliability refers to the consistency of the
measure. Validity refers to whether it really measures what the
researcher thinks it measures
e. A representative sample - must represent the characteristics
of the population the researcher is interested in
2. General Designs for Research
a. Correlational studies - the researcher investigates
relationship between variables. The number that describes the
relationship is the correlation coefficient
b. Experimental studies - involve systematic manipulation of an
independent variable
3. Designs for Studying Development
a. Longitudinal studies - examine a single cohort over many times
of measurement. Limitations are participant drop out and repeated
testing effects
b. Cross-sectional designs - they compare groups of individuals
of different age at one point in time. These studies only give
you age differences.
c. Sequential designs - those are multiple longitudinal or cross-sectional
studies
4. Conducting Research Ethically
Researchers must follow strict ethical codes when doing human
development research. The project must be reviewed by ethics
boards and the researchers must obtain informed consent from the
human subjects
5. Communicating Research Results
After the study is completed the researcher, writes a report
describing the study. This report then is submitted for
publication