Edexcel GCSE Psychology: Development
Topic 1: Development — How did you develop?
Paper 1 | Compulsory | 16 marks
This topic explores how the human brain develops from before birth and examines three key theories that explain how children develop cognitively, how mindset affects learning, and how we come to understand right from wrong.
Early brain development
The brain begins developing just weeks after conception. By around 3 to 4 weeks, three distinct sections form: the forebrain, the midbrain and the hindbrain.
The forebrain is responsible for higher order thinking and complex functions. The midbrain processes sensory information, regulates sleep and controls simple movement. The hindbrain is the most primitive region and manages basic survival functions, connecting directly to the spinal cord.
Two further structures to know are the cerebellum, which controls motor skills, balance and coordination, and the medulla, which regulates involuntary responses such as breathing and heart rate. The medulla is fully formed by around 20 weeks in the womb.
From birth to age 3, the brain makes between 700 and 1000 new neural connections every second. This is why early stimulation and experience are so important for a child's development.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development
Jean Piaget proposed that all children move through four universal stages of cognitive development in a fixed order. Central to his theory are the following concepts:
A schema is a mental framework or plan built from experience. When we encounter something new, we try to fit it into an existing schema — this is called assimilation. When a schema no longer works and needs updating, this is called accommodation. When our schemas explain our experiences well, we are in a state of equilibrium.
The four stages
Sensorimotor (0 to 2 years): children learn through their senses and physical movement. Object permanence (understanding that objects still exist when out of sight) develops during this stage.
Pre-operational (2 to 7 years): children are egocentric, meaning they struggle to see the world from another person's point of view. They are not yet able to think logically.
Concrete operational (7 to 11 years): children can think logically about concrete, real-world objects. They can decentre, meaning they can consider more than one perspective.
Formal operational (11 years and above): children develop the ability to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical situations.
Evaluation
One strength of Piaget's theory is that it has been widely applied to education. The key stage system in England and Wales reflects Piaget's idea that children must reach a certain stage before they can access certain kinds of learning.
One weakness is that Piaget may have underestimated children's abilities. Later research, including work by Samuel and Bryant (1984), showed that children perform better on tasks when they are made more meaningful and familiar. This suggests the stages may be less rigid than Piaget claimed.
Dweck's mindset theory
Carol Dweck proposed that children hold one of two beliefs about their own intelligence.
A child with a fixed mindset believes that ability is innate and cannot change. When they struggle or fail, they see it as evidence that they simply are not capable, and they tend to give up.
A child with a growth mindset believes that intelligence can be developed through effort and practice. They see challenges as opportunities to improve and are more likely to persevere.
Dweck's key finding was that the type of praise a child receives has a significant influence on which mindset they develop. Praising ability ("you're so clever") tends to encourage a fixed mindset. Praising effort ("you worked really hard at that") tends to encourage a growth mindset.
Evaluation
One strength is that the theory has clear practical applications. Teachers and parents can change the way they praise children to support a growth mindset, which research suggests leads to greater achievement and resilience.
One weakness is that some replication studies have found smaller or inconsistent effects, which reduces the reliability of the theory. There is also a concern that focusing on mindset may unfairly place responsibility on the child rather than considering factors like teaching quality or the learning environment.
Willingham's learning theory
Daniel Willingham is a cognitive scientist whose work focuses on how learning actually happens and how it can be supported. His theory has three main principles.
First, factual knowledge must come before skills. You cannot problem-solve or think critically in a vacuum — you need prior knowledge to give those skills something to work with. Knowledge also frees up space in working memory, which is the limited capacity system we use to process information in the moment.
Second, practice and effort are essential. Skills only become automatic through repeated practice. Once a skill is automatic, it no longer takes up working memory, which frees up mental resources for higher-level thinking.
Third, development can be supported through deliberate strategies. For cognitive development, tasks should be challenging but achievable. For physical development, motor movements should be broken down and practised repeatedly. For social development, children benefit from modelling behaviour, developing self-regulation and learning to delay gratification.
Evaluation
One strength is that Willingham's ideas are grounded in a wide range of evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience, and they translate directly into practical teaching strategies.
One weakness is that the theory does not account sufficiently for individual differences. Willingham acknowledges that traits like self-regulation have a genetic component, but his strategies aim to be universal, which may not suit every learner.
Key studies
Piaget and Inhelder (1956) — the three mountains task
Aim: to investigate egocentrism in children by testing whether they could take the perspective of someone in a different position.
Procedure: 100 children aged 4 to 12 were shown a model of three mountains, each with different features. A doll was placed in different positions around the model. Children were asked to select from pictures what the doll could see from its position.
Results: younger children (pre-operational stage) consistently chose the picture that matched their own view, not the doll's. Older children were more likely to correctly identify the doll's perspective.
Conclusion: children in the pre-operational stage are egocentric and cannot take another's perspective.
Strengths: used a large sample of 100 children across different age groups, giving results that can be compared across developmental stages.
Weaknesses: the task is artificial and unfamiliar to children, which may have made it harder. Later research (Donaldson, 1978; Hughes, 1975) showed children could take another's perspective when the task was made more meaningful, suggesting Piaget underestimated children's abilities.
Gunderson et al. (2013) — parent praise and mindset
Aim: to investigate whether the type of praise parents give young children predicts the motivational mindset those children hold five years later.
Procedure: researchers observed 53 families at home when children were aged 14 months, 26 months and 38 months, recording the type of praise parents used. Five years later, the children's mindset beliefs and responses to challenges were assessed.
Results: children who had received more process praise (focused on effort, actions and strategies) were more likely to hold a growth mindset at age 7 to 8. Children who received more person praise (focused on ability or character) were more likely to hold a fixed mindset.
Conclusion: early parental praise shapes children's beliefs about intelligence and their response to challenges.
Strengths: the longitudinal design allows researchers to see a genuine link between early experiences and later mindset. The naturalistic observation of real parent-child interaction improves ecological validity.
Weaknesses: the sample size is relatively small at 53 families, which limits how far the findings can be generalised. As an observational study, it cannot establish cause and effect.
Issues and debates: the development of morality
Morality refers to our understanding of right and wrong. Moral development is the process by which children come to understand and internalise moral rules.
Piaget distinguished between two stages of moral understanding. Younger children show heteronomous morality, where rules are seen as fixed and handed down by authority figures. Older children develop autonomous morality, where rules are understood as social agreements that can be questioned and changed.
Kohlberg extended Piaget's ideas into a three-level model:
Pre-conventional morality (up to around age 9): moral decisions are based on avoiding punishment or gaining reward. The child asks "what happens to me?"
Conventional morality (most teenagers and adults): moral decisions are based on conforming to social rules and expectations. The individual wants to be seen as a good person and to maintain social order.
Post-conventional morality (reached by only around 10% of people): the individual recognises universal ethical principles that apply to everyone, regardless of the laws of any particular society.
One key criticism of Kohlberg's theory is that it used only male participants. Carol Gilligan argued that this makes the theory a model of male moral reasoning, which tends to emphasise justice and rules, and that it overlooks a care-based approach to morality that is more common in women's reasoning.
Key terms
Schema: a mental framework built from experience that shapes how we interpret new information.
Assimilation: incorporating new information into an existing schema.
Accommodation: changing a schema when new information does not fit.
Equilibrium: the state of balance when existing schemas successfully explain experiences.
Egocentrism: the inability to see a situation from another person's perspective.
Fixed mindset: the belief that intelligence and ability are innate and cannot change.
Growth mindset: the belief that intelligence and ability can be developed through effort and practice.
Working memory: the limited capacity system used to hold and process information in the short term.
Heteronomous morality: morality based on rules imposed by others, typical of younger children.
Autonomous morality: morality based on self-chosen principles, developing later in childhood.
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