Psychology 312HCourse Director:

Michelle Martin-Rhee

Fridays 1-4

Welcome!!

Outline for today

• Course outline

• Intro to cognitive development

• Some evolution

• Some biology

• Questions??

Course content

• Text / website

• Articles

• Outside material

• 2 exams

• 2 small assignments, 1 essay

• I count grammar and spelling

• E-mail is best: michelle.martin@uhn.on.ca

How to pass my course

• FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS

• ASK QUESTIONS

• Do not plagiarize

Example:

According to some researchers, cognition can largely be explained by underlying neurological processes (Nelson, 2001; Martin, 2004; Piaget, 1952; Johnson, 1765; Smith, 2003; Brown, 1999).

DO NOT DO THIS!!

How to pass my course

• FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS

• ASK QUESTIONS

• Do not plagiarize

• Do not use internet as primary source

Example

Writing essays is easy when you can just take thirty seconds to look up dyslexia (http:/www.ilovetostealothers’work.com).

DO NOT DO THIS!!

How to pass my course

• FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS

• ASK QUESTIONS

• Do not plagiarize

• Do not use internet as primary source

• Do the work, hand it in on time, pay attention to green and red underlining in Word

Fields of Psychology

• Clinical

• Clinical Developmental

• Experimental

• History

• Theory

• Developmental

• Cognitive

Fields of Psychology

• Clinical

• Clinical Developmental

• Experimental

• History

• Theory

• Developmental

• Cognitive

What we mean by Cognitive Development

• Infancy (0-3)

• Childhood (3-11)

• Adolescence (12-19)

• Early adulthood (20-35ish)

• Middle adulthood (35ish-65ish)

• Late adulthood (65+)

What we mean by Cognitive Development

• Infancy (0-3)

• Childhood (3-11)

• Adolescence (12-19)

• Early adulthood (20-35ish)

• Middle adulthood (35ish-65ish)

• Late adulthood (65+)

Definitions…• Cognition

– Hidden thought processes (top-down and bottom-up)– Can’t see it directly

• Development– Systematic continuities in the individual that occur

between conception and death– Can be physical, mental, neurological

• Structures and functions– Structures have a function, but functions affect structures

• Cognitive development– Changes that occur over time to our thought processes

Influences on Development

• Development is somewhat regular– Lots of individual variation…

• Effects of genes– E.g. personality traits– Possible developmental issues (e.g. autism, Down Syndrome)

• Effects of environment– Culture– Religion– Home environment

• Interaction of both– Humans as a dynamic system…

Debates in developmental psychology

• Nature vs. Nurture– Interactions and constraints

• Stability vs. Plasticity– E.g. personality vs. social competencies

• Nature of developmental change– Continuous or Discontinuous?– Qualitative or Quantitative?– Homogeneity of cognitive function

• Modularity vs. domain-generality– Or general processes that control information to smaller

sub-areas?

Brief History of Human Evolution

4 3 2 1

Australopethicus Africanus

Homo Erectus

Presen

t

Homo Sapiens

Neanderthal

Earliest Homonid Fossils

Earliest stone tools

Brain expansion

FireAdvances in stone tools

Art

Cities

Evolution• R-selected vs. K-selected species

– r-selected are smaller, live less time, have more offspring (mice)

– K-selected are larger, live longer, have fewer offspring (humans)

• Through evolution, our brains got bigger– Therefore our heads are bigger– We have to be born earlier– We are born very immature and require much care– Both before and after birth, there is a tremendous, rapid

growth in brain size

Neuronal Development

• 3 stages– Proliferation– Migration– Differentiation

Neuronal Development

• 3 stages– Proliferation– Migration– Differentiation

• Synaptogenesis and Synaptic pruning– Excessive synapse production…why?– Experience-expectant vs experience-dependant processes

• Myelination• Critical periods• Canalization

Features of the Cortex

• Asymmetry– Left side typically larger than right in almost all species– Brain is actually torqued

• Lateralization of function– Left vs. Right functions– Connected by corpus callosum

• Plasticity of Cortex– Can we recover lost function after damage?– Adaptive value of plasticity and immaturity

Summary for Today…• In this course, we will look at changes in children’s

thinking over time• Lots of debate about genes vs environment, nature

of developmental change, and in how we represent information in the brain

• Evolution has given humans and non-human primates bigger brains, and hence we are born very immature; a lot of development occurs over the first years of life

• An understanding of how the brain works can help us to understand some of the mechanisms of change in children’s cognition