Summary of the first unit of Developmental Psychology

DRAWING DEVELOPMENT

   First of all, we started drawing what development means to us.

Here we have some examples: 

   Each of us made the draw in a different way. Studying them, we conclude that they could be divided in many diverse types. But we saw later that there were two types that were more important: draws without end and draws with ends, which are cyclical. We saw that these types of draws had interest all cultures all around the world.

   

   Apart from that, we can divide the draws in these categories: 

          -For the content: abstract, industrial evolution, life cycle, intellectual, stages, physical development…

-Lineal or cyclical, dynamic or static, continuous or discontinuous, individual or contextual…

           -For the representation of development: Dynamic process (phases, different stages), image more or less "static" (product).

          -By the focus of development: individual, individual and their context…

The predominant category is development represented linearly. We can divide the linear model in:

          -How temporarily covers the development? From birth to maturity or from birth to death.

          -Where is development going? Up, ascending; down, descending; first up, then down, rise and decline; forward and unidirectional; forward or backward, bidirectional; forward but with multiple alternatives.

          - How does development happen? Continuous or discontinuous.

There also exists the circular model: The individual is part of a circle of consecutive generations and is nested in a system (family ecosystem), in which it interacts.

            WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE AGE?

   Other topic that we studied is the broad concept of the age.

We can find a lot of definitions of that because of its complexity and its applications. The age is the duration of some things, for example, the period in the time that a person, animal or vegetable has lived.

   The years are the instrument of measure that are provided by the months, weeks, days, hours and seconds. But it is more complex than this, in some situations the age is given depending on the grade of development, independently of the time. 

It is here, with this point of view, where appear different kinds of age, based on all the factors that surround the object of the studio. These types are:

          -Biological: the age of our bodies and the objective age.

          -Subjective:  the age that we feel we had.

          -Functional: the age that seems we had.

          -Social: the age related to the individual in the society and how is our behaviour.

   In class: The teacher explain us this with a simple but direct example. We had to complete the spaces of some sentences with a number; this number was the age that we think we had in each context. 

   With this activity, we realised that we can have more than one age, because all of them are different.

   Then, the teacher suggested completing some sentences about our perception of the age and things related to that.

   In our opinion it was a great idea for understanding and reflects about the age and ourselves.

   

   Example:

 ORTHOGENETIC PRINCIPLE AND EPIFENESIS

   Epigenesis consists that the structure shape is built by building process itself, instead of coming due.

   With the orthogenic principle we've learned that development is originated form its precedent, this means, that we create new content completely different from itself. Every process step creates the conditions for the next one and it is irreversible.

   Thanks to this principle we've learned how we can achieve to more complex systems from a simpler unit and though a development. One example could be the schemes systems, they started from a simple structure, and it turned little by little in a a much more elaborated one.

CHANGE

   When we talk about change in development we are talking about the changes in development through time.

   There are different tipes of change: variational change and transformational change. In variational change, the change is gradual and irreversible, it gets better from the average. In transformational change, the change is in the structure of the system and it leads to a complex structure.

   Change can also be continuous or discontinuous depending on this we can be talking about stages if it is discontinuous or lineal if it’s continuous.

   This change depends on the influences that we received and the interest that we have in each moment of our lives. For example when we are talking about interests the most interest of a kid can be playing but when he grows up and becomes a teenager his interest change, so interest change through time and so does development because development is linked to your interest and influences.

   Also, we talked about changes. First, we have variational change, which is a quantitative and qualitative change, individual and group differences that define a particularity, a change movement from one side to the other. It gives us stability and continuity. We can represent variational changes by “time cycles”.

   

   Example os Variational Change:

   Secondly, we have transformational change, which has the following characteristics; it’s a pattern or organization change, a morphologic change, emergency of novelty, increasing complexity, sequence of universal patterns that define a way or trajectory. We can represent transformational changes by “time arrows”. An example to explain this change could be embryological changes or the change from the symbolic thought to reflexive symbolic one. 

   Example os Transformational Change:

   Apart from that, we talked about what is more important for us in our lives. The teacher explained that as time goes by, we give more importance to things that maybe in the past weren’t. He gave us the following factors: love, family, school, friends, reflection and health. We can see, for example, that when we’re young, we give more importance to school than to reflection, which increase as we get older. Moreover, I want to remark the important role that love lays in our lives. It’s the most constant factor.

TRANSIT, TRANSFER AND TRANSFORMATION

   We also have learnt the different stages of developing that could be applied for many cases in life. 

   The exercise consisted in drawing a line of life with our most important moments, both good and bad, and then, we had to compare these moments with the tree process, transit, transfer and transformation. For making this exercise easier and in a deeply way, we went out of class and with two or the classmates, we had to tell the moments aloud and at the same time we had to walk in every step we made, so at this way we could appreciate the tree process better:

          -Transit is the whole movement, without stops, it is represented by the walk.

          -Transfer is every step we make while we are walking along. It is a change but not a qualitative one.

          -Transformation is a big and important change which tell us that there is a before and after, it is represented by a jump. It is a qualitative change.

   We made another exercise to see the three steps again but by our own experience. We went out of class and experimented the changes by passing through doors, crossing the gateway, going into the café, etc. And then we realized that the whole movement has these three stages that could be applied in many situations.

DEDUCTION, INDUCTION AND ABDUCTION

   Inference is essential to, and part of, being human. Inferences are not random. There are three kinds of reasoning: Deduction, induction, and abduction, are three basic forms of inference in everybody.

   Deduction is the reasoning that parts of the general towards the specific conclusions. However, this definition is incomplete because, from the logical point of view, a valid deductive reasoning is that which guarantees that the conclusion is apparent from the premises or conclusively that these imply the conclusion.

   Induction is the type of inference from particular premises claiming that two or more members of a group have a property to conclude, with probability, that all members of this group also have it.

   While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given.

   The term “abduction” was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce in his work on the logic of science. He introduced it to denote a type of non-deductive inference that was different from the already familiar inductive type. Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference that goes from an observation to a hypothesis that accounts for the observation, ideally seeking to find the simplest and most likely explanation. In abductive reasoning, unlike in deductive reasoning, the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. One can understand abductive reasoning as "inference to the best explanation". 

Three Kind of Inference:

Example:

SCAFFOLDING

  In education, scaffolding refers the support given during the learning process.

   The term itself offers the relevant descriptive metaphor: teachers provide successive levels of temporary support that help students reach higher levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to achieve without assistance.

   These supports are gradually removed as students develop autonomous learning strategies, thus promoting their own cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning skills and knowledge.

Scaffolding is like when you build a building and you need scaffolding in construction or when someone breaks his leg and you need crutches. Are things that help you in the process but when the product is finished, the scaffolding disappears. 

Beatriz Alonso, Lucía Cavero, Lucía Moreno, María Matilla, María Cordero, Rocío González, Miriam Sánchez and Sara García.