Hulme_Taylor_PSYC2450_Fall_2023_Critical Analysis of Leanring Paper

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Critical Analysis of Learning Taylor Hulme 1262684 Department of Psychology, Guelph University PSYC 2450: Developmental Psychology Dr. Gabrielle E. Pitt November 30 th , 2023

Reflecting on Your Learning Generally and Specifically When I first entered this course, I had some knowledge of developmental psychology. I had done research on Erik Erikson Psychosocial Development theory, but wanted to learn more about cognitive development, hereditary influences, and moral development. I gravitated towards moral development and hereditary influences genuinely enjoying these topics. In my initial reflection paper, I talked about Erikson. Prior to this course I was intrigued by his theory due to the concept of stages reaching from infancy to old age. I spoke of battling trust issues turning them into healthier thoughts, identity and intimacy and the desire to break generational trauma. Although I knew Erikson developed stages from infancy to elderly age influenced by socio-emotional developmental issues, focusing on the significant social and cultural influences on development (Pitt, 2023), I did not know of the issues with his theory. I also disagree with the idea was that you had to successfully complete one stage to reach the next stage and it is vague about the causes of development (Shaffer et al., 2020) I did not know much about cognitive development, but I wanted to learn about it when I mentioned it in my initial reflection paper. Now I understand cognitive development is linked to moral development, intelligence and building schemes. Cognitive development is changes in our mental skills and abilities used to acquire knowledge and solve problems in our lives (Pitt, 2023). Intelligence helps us to adapt to our environment and construct knowledge. This is known as achieving cognitive equilibrium. (Pitt, 2023). Piaget used schemes and consisted of thoughts and actions about a specific experience that children create to relate new experiences too (Pitt, 2023). Adaptation was the building of

schemes though direct interaction with the environment, organization was the rearing of existing schemes into more complex ones and two ongoing complementary activities were the assimilation and accommodations. To use current schemes to interpret the world and created new schemes by adjusting old ones to better fir the environment. Later in moral development, one of the topics I enjoyed the most, we also see how cognitive development and moral development are linked. Critically Analyze Your Learning My favourite topic was hereditary influences on development. Learning about hereditary disorders and its relation to child development, how one’s genotype is expressed as a phenotype and how our most noteworthy phenotypic characteristics are partially influenced by genes passed down (Shaffer et al., 2020). I currently work with kids with disabilities and see healthy parents often. I knew some disabilities were related to complications at birth such as Cerebral Palsy, but I did not know if hereditary disorders were passed on or not, so-to-speak, like Type 1 Diabetes. Its interesting to learn that “genetic abnormalities are often associated with recessive alleles” (Pitt, 2023). Recessive alleles means both parents are healthy but are still carriers and dominant alleles means a parent contributing allele has the disorder (Pitt, 2023). On a simpler scale a gene associate with normal vision is a dominant allele and recessive allele which is the weaker gene would have nearsightedness (Shaffer et al., 2020). Congenital defects are present at birth and five out of one-hundred infants are born with these conditions (Shaffer et al., 2020). Learning about the inherited defects which are chromosomal abnormalities such as Down Syndrome or genetic abnormalities such as Type 1 Diabetes (Shaffer et al., 2020) has helped me to further understand the different disabilities and

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how they affect people. There are also environmental defects which can be complications at the process or birth, such as Cystic Fibrosis, or prenatal exposure to damaging effects such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Understanding aspects of disability has also challenged my thoughts on Eriksons theory. A person with a disability will learn and grow at different paces then a neurotypical person, let alone the fact that everyone has a different path, and it is never linear. Although hereditary influences are not only about disabilities, but this is also where I was most fascinated. Other hereditary influences on development are sex-linked inheritance like colour blindness. A normal male only has one x chromosome and if that chromosome carries a recessive gene for colour blindness the male will likely be colourblind (Shaffer et al., 2020). Polygenic Inheritance are the traits “influenced by a single pair of alleles” (Shaffer et al., 2020). Polygenic traits influence the most important human characteristics such as height, intelligence, skin colour, temperament, and susceptibility to cancer (Shaffer et al., 2020). Lastly, genetic counselling was a great service we learned about that can help families assess the possibility that their children may or may not have hereditary defects (Shaffer et al., 2020). This is done through pedigree, blood tests and screening tests often sought out by people who have had difficulties bearing children, existing genetic problems, or maternal age over thirty-five and paternal age over forty (Pitt, 2023). Detection techniques include and analysis of amniotic fluid called Amniocentesis, fetal cells extracted from chorion membrane called Chorionic Villus Sampling which can be performed earlier than amniocentesis, Non-invasive prenatal testing which assesses fragment of cell-free DNA circulating in the maternal blood stream and an Ultrasound which scans the womb with soundwaves (Pitt, 2023).

Another area I enjoyed learning about was Moral Development. I did not know much about it other then to be moral is to act morally, but I did not know the study of it. Moral development focuses on a person’s perception of what is right or wrong influenced by the changed in their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (Pitt, 2023). The movement of moral development goes from moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action in a continuous circle (Pitt, 2023). Understanding that nature, nurture, and the individual help to create one’s moral character (Shaffer et al., 2020) seems important in developmental psychology. For example, if you grow up with a parent who lies, you in turn may think it is morally okay to lie also. This can be related to observational learning. In Bandura’s experiment of observational learning with Bobo the clown children in the model-punished were offered a reward to show what the had learned and in turn started striking Bobo (Shaffer et al., 2020). This can also relate to the Empirical support for Kohlberg’s theory under the social-experience hypothesis because both parents and peers have an influence on a child’s moral reasoning and influences on their self control (Pitt, 2023). Many kids at an early age know what is morally acceptable. In Tauriel’s Social Domain Theory there was a study done where hitting, taking candy from another addressing the teacher by her first name or wearing pyjamas to a funeral was an infraction on the rules (Shaffer et al., 2020). Two and a half to three-year-olds were asked if these behaviours were okay to engage in, as well as if they were okay to engage in if an authority allowed it, if everyone did it or if they changed the rules (Shaffer et al., 2020). The children said that moral infractions such as hitting or taking from another were universally unacceptable, but conventional rules could change (Shaffer et al., 2020). Moral rules that focus on the basic rights and welfare of others are universal in

other words, where as social-conventional rules are determined by social census in certain social situations (Shaffer et al., 2020). Moral foundations can result from different adaptive challenges people face such as care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Shaffer et al., 2020. Parents need this foundation to protect their children and for people to have good relationships with others in small and in larger groups (Shaffer et al., 2020). Humans need to form social bonds, but these bonds also need to go beyond close relationships where people will accept hierarchical group organization also (Shaffer et al., 2020). When children are toddlers, their aggression peaks and often declines as they age because they learn to supress antisocial impulses and act on their prosocial proclivities (Shaffer et al., 2020). Learning through positive reinforcement, punishing and social modeling, but there are still differences between moral behaviours and behaviours that cannot be learned through reward and punishment (Shaffer et al., 2020). Moral behaviour often means you must resist the urge to be antisocial, rule breaking behaviour can be rewarding and positive reinforcement can have negative side effects canceling out the positive effects (Shaffer et al., 2020). Overall, this is like bribing a child, creating a desire for incentives rather then concern for others. (Shaffer et al., 2020). Moral development linked to cognitive rationales because self-restraint is functioned by cognitive control (Shaffer et al., 2020). Children need to be able to internalize the feeling that they did something wrong, so they are more likely not to do that immoral thing again. If they do not have this ability, it becomes hard for the child to understand negative consequences leading to future transgressions (Shaffer et al., 2020). These children often tend to make external

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attributions rather than internal attribution focusing on punishment if caught making them more likely to comply with moral norms in the presence of authority figures (Shaffer et al., 2020). In Piaget’s theory of moral development has three stages. Pre-moral period are pre- schoolers who often have little concern for rules as they do not understand morality (Pitt, 2023). The heteronomous stage is at age five. Children believe that rules are made by authority figures and have a strong respect for them, children are likely to judge an act by its objective features rather than the person intent and favour expiatory punishment (Shaffer et al., 2020). By age ten they are in autonomous morality and realize that social rules are at times arbitrary agreements that are changeable (Shaffer et al., 2020). The Big Picture I would like to take the knowledge I have learned to one day be a MSW practicing in psychotherapy. I would like to continue learning more about hereditary influences on development and what you can do in genetic counselling after a child is born and into their lives. I wonder what roles do genetic counsellors have in long-term and short-term treatments to help people with disabilities or is there a separate job for families and kids individually once they are born? My knowledge has defiantly been strengthened learning about how developmental psychology has many subcategories that overlap. It makes much more sense to me now that moral development is linked to cognitive development and social learning. It is especially important to consider all the categories and ask yourself many questions in the field of psychology to better help others. Even now, I wonder and would like to go back and learn more

about how hereditary development can affect our choices, generational trauma, and emotional development. How do different disabilities effect various aspects of development?

References Pitt, G. (2023). Week 2- Theories of Child Development. University of Guelph Pitt, G. (2023 ) Week 3 -Hereditary Influences on Development P itt, G. (2023). Week 5 - Cognitive Development. University of Guelph Pitt, G. (2023). Week 11 Moral Development- Moral Emotions. University of Guelph. Pitt, G. (2023). Week 11 Moral Development. University of Guelph. Shaffer, D. R., Kipp, K., Wood, E., Willoughby, T., Roaberts, K. P., Gottardo, A., Krettenauer, T., Lee, J., & Newton, N. (2020). In Developmental psychology: Infancy and childhood (5th ed., pp. 429–461). essay, Nelson.

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