Developmental Psychology

Lecture – 2nd Year – DEVP211

Week 3

COGNITIVE - DEVELOPMENTAL predicted events do not occur,

THEORIES the child must revise her theory.
• Focuses on thought processes Cognitive growth occurs through
and the construction of three (3) interrelated processes:
knowledge. 1. ORGANIZATION -creating categories
• In cognitive-developmental 2. ADAPTATION - handling new
theory, the key is how people information in light of what they
think and how thinking changes already know.
over time.
• Assimilation - taking in new
Two distinct approaches have information and incorporating
developed: it into existing cognitive
1. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive structures
Development - States that thinking • Accomodation - adjusting
develops in a universal one’s cognitives structures to
sequence of stages. fit the new information.
2. Information-Processing Theory - 3. EQUILIBRATION - Balancing
States that people process cognitive structures and new
information as computers do, experiences
becoming more efficient over much of
the life span.

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive

Development Theory
• Piaget believed that children
naturally try to make sense of
their world.

• This theory is regarded as the

cornerstone in the field of
developmental psychology.
• Children try to weave all that they
know about objects and people
into a complete theory, which is INFORMATION PROCESSING
tested daily by experience THEORY
because their theories lead • Information-processing
children to expect certain things theorists draw heavily on how
to happen. computers work to explain the
• As with real scientific theories, thinking and how it develops
when the predicted events do through childhood and
occur, a child’s belief in her adolescence.
theory grows stronger. When the • For example, an information-
processing psychologist would

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Developmental Psychology
Lecture – 2nd Year – DEVP211
Week 3

say that, for a student to do well • However, in Mali (an African

on an exam, she must encode country), Bambara parents want
the information as she studies, their children to learn to farm,
store it in memory, and then herd animals such as cattle and
retrieve the necessary goats, gather food such as honey,
information during the test. and hunt because these skills are
The theory proposes that human key to survival in their
cognition consists of mental environment.
hardware and mental software. • Vygotsky viewed development as
MENTAL HARDWARE refers to an apprenticeship in which
cognitive structures, including different children develop as they work
memories where information is stored. with skilled adults, including
teachers and parents.
MENTAL SOFTWARE includes
• Social and cultural processes
organized sets of cognitive processes
guide children’s cognitive
that enable people to complete specific
development.
tasks, such as reading a sentence,
playing a video game, or hitting a • Cognitive growth is a
baseball. collaborative process
• People learn through social
Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural
interaction
Theory
• Zone of Proximal Development
• Emphasizes that children’s (ZPD) - A gap between what
thinking does not develop in a children are already able to do
vacuum but rather is influenced and what they are not quite ready
by the sociocultural context in to accomplish by themselves.
which children grow up. • Scaffolding - Temporary support
• Vygotsky focused on ways that given to a child in doing a task.
adults convey to children the
THE ECOLOGICAL & SYSTEMS
beliefs, customs, and skills of
APPROACH
their culture.
• Vygotsky believed that, because a • In ecological theory, human
fundamental aim of all societies is development is inseparable
to enable children to acquire from the environmental
essential cultural values and contexts in which a person
skills, every aspect of a child’s develops.
development must be considered • In ecological theory, human
against this backdrop. development is inseparable
• For example, most parents in the from the environmental
United States want their children contexts in which a person
to work hard in school and be develops.
admitted to college because • In ecological theory, human
earning a degree is one of the development is inseparable
keys to finding a good job. from the environmental

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Developmental Psychology
Lecture – 2nd Year – DEVP211
Week 3

contexts in which a person between the two change over time (for
develops. example, the birth of a new sibling
Urie’s Bronfenbrenner’s when the child is 8 years old, the
Bioecological Theory separation and remarriage of the
child's parents to other people when
• Proposed that the developing
the child is a teenager.)
person is embedded in a series
of complex and interactive OMPETENCE-ENVIRONMENTAL
systems. PRESS THEORY
• Bi-directional/Reciprocal • People adapt most effectively
influence when there is a good match
Environmental systems include between their competence or
the following: abilities and the environmental
1. MICROSYSTEM - immediate physical “press”or the demands put on
and social environment, everyday them by the environment.
environment of home, school, work, • For example, the match
etc. (for example, a between a child’s social skills
young child might have the and her peer group’s demands
microsystems of the family and of the can determine whether she is
day-care setting) accepted by the peer group.
• In order to understand people’s
2. MESOSYSTEM - interrelationships
functioning, it is essential to
between two or more microsystems
understand the systems in
(for example, if you have a stressful day
which they live.
at work or school then you’re often
grouchy at home.)
3. EXOSYSTEM - social settings that
individuals do not experience directly
but that can still influence their
development (for example, changes in
government policy regarding welfare
may mean that poor children have less
opportunity for enriched
preschool experiences)
4. MACROSYSTEM -larger cultural or
societal context in which the
microsystem, mesosystem, and
exosystem are embedded (for
example, the education, law, and
cultural systems, and the geographic
location in which a child is raised)
5. CHRONOSYSTEM - people and their
environments and the relations

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