Developmental Psychology

The scientific study of how and why human beings change over the course of their life. It aims to explain how children and adults change over time.

The Psychodynamic Perspective

• Freud’s theory that most of our behaviours come from Unconscious motivations.
• The unconscious thoughts are repressed in our mind because they may be upsetting or disturbing us.

They are represented in symbols – dreams or slips of the tongue.

Mind is divided in three parts:

• ID: Pleasure principle (Primary process thinking) = the unconscious.
• Ego: Reality principle (Secondary process thinking) = the preconscious.
• Superego: Moral imperatives (Self-critical conscience)

The Behaviourist perspective

• All our behaviours are results of our environmental surroundings.
• The environment provides a Stimulus – our behaviour is the Response.
• Two types of learning:
• Classic Conditioning: Association of a certain stimulus with a certain response.

• Operant Conditioning: The consequences of an action determine whether it is repeated or changed.
• Bandura’s SLT: We learn through punishments and reinforcements as well as observing other people’s behaviours.

Strengths:

• Useful applications to real life: It helps to understand the psychological development of children, which has influenced practices for their cognitive and emotional well-being.
• Reliable: Children require simple experiments and standardized procedure to know what they are doing. Therefore, by doing so, the results are likely to be the same if replicated.

• Longitudinal Studies: These provide rich data and allows the studies of individuals over time, such as case study.

Weaknesses:

• Demand Characteristics: Children are easily influenced by other people; therefore, the results may be affected by extraneous factors making the research less reliable.
• Ethics: Children under 16 need parental consent, however the kids may not want to participate in the study, so it would violate their privacy. Furthermore, young children may not understand the right to withdraw.
• Subjectivity: Researches might become subjective when they study children over a long period since they get to form a bond. This makes the results less applicable to the wider population.

• Low ecological validity: Children are studied by strangers in a strange environment: therefore, extraneous factors may affect their behaviour.