Developmental and Atypical Psychology: Cognitive Development and Schizophrenia

This article discusses cognitive development and schizophrenia in developmental and atypical psychology. It explains Piaget's preoperational stage theory and psychodynamic explanations of schizophrenia. It also evaluates criticisms surrounding theories explaining atypical psychology.

DEVELOPMENTAL AND ATYPICAL PSYCHOLOGY
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QUESTION 1
Part A: Cognitive Development
Concept Explanation
Adolescence Stages in development are subdivided mainly by age. A different
stage of development will be for a certain age limit. At the age of
12 to 18 children change their thinking from concrete to formal
logical thinking(Steinberg 2005).
Cultural impact Adverse cultural experiences are impactful on human mind.
Cultural biases and disrespectful cultural gesture in various
workplaces and social institutions often increases the stress level.
Part B: Concepts used to define abnormality
Concept Explanation
Statistical infrequency Statistical infrequency defines the behaviour having abnormalities
or having dissimilarities with the behaviours of others. The
difference between normality and abnormality in this concept is
degree. This concept explains abnormality and superior as
deviations from the normal regarding intelligence(Sharma, 2018).In
a nutshell, statistical infrequency states a statistically unusual
behaviour.
Deviation from social norms The social behaviour are greatly impactful on human mind.
Awkward behaviour or several biasness use to reduce the normal

cognitive growth deviates human mind due to social experiences
Question 2
Essay 1 part A
Introduction
Cognitive development defines the reconstruction of the thought process. This includes
various processes like memory propose, problem-solving process and thought process. People go
through various developmental changes in their lives. Developmental psychology aims at
explaining these changes in more details at various stages. This essay focuses on evaluating the
preoperational development stage which takes place between the age of two years and seven
years. It is the second stage after the sensorimotor stage and before the operational stage.It is the
stage that a child can communicate through speech thus making it easier to understand the
development. It is also the stage the brain of the child develops to understand various
perspectives due to brains sophistication.
Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Theory
From 2 years to seven years are considered to be the preoperational stage of the children
live. Language development is one of the foremost characteristic of the preoperational age and
between the age of two and seven years, there exists significant development. It is in this stage
that toddlers think symbolically and develop memory and imagination. A recent study has
unfolded the fact that, this initial stage is effectively characterized by the acquisition progression.
For example- if the caregiver tries to spell some new words, the child too starts saying the words
with several fumble attempts. It is in the pre-operation stage that children become more active in

playing and also pretending. Playing in this stage will see children try to imitate mature people's
roles such us pretending to be a doctor, being a mother of a father among many other characters.
The memory developed allows them to understand past, present, and future.The children try to
identify the numbers separately and they develop he role-playing capabilities. Moreover, the
children try to use syntaxes and develop a little grammatical capability. They are however not
fully developed to understand multifarious concepts such as time, comparison, cause and effects
(Webmd.com 2017 n.p).
In Piaget's theory, he noted that children in this stage do not understand other people's
perspective and concrete logic. Piaget termed this concept as egocentrism. In illustrating
egocentrism, Piaget used a three dimension mountain scene. Here the children were able to
identify what they had seen easily but could not identify from another persons' point of view.
The imagination power starts developing in this stage and intuition starts getting stronger. This
point has been criticized by more recent studies that argue the three mountain task was not the
proper way to illustrate this. These studies point out that those children failed to illustrate other
people’s point of view because the task was not well understood by the children. Other
researches have been conducted to improve on the understanding of egocentrism where a small
dollhouse was used, and a doll was hidden behind a couch. Children could notice without
difficulty that the doll was hidden behind this piece of furniture. When this experiment was done
on an actual room which was a replica of the dollhouse, younger children belowthe age of four
years were not able to figure out where the doll was hidden. Slightly older children figured this
out with less difficulty(Cherry 2018 n.p).
Another major characteristic of this stage is that the understanding conservation of
children.The ethical perspective of conservation defines the properties of a number of

components; volume, mass and number system. Moreover, they try to attempt and conserve the
change of shape of any kind of arrangement. The stage of conservation can be differentiated into
three parts centration, irreversibility and class inclusion.
Centration: The requirements of the conservation are depicted in centration. This
includes height and width. In this stage, the children do not have the multitasking capability
(Steinberg, 2005).
Irreversibility: This stage defines the incapability of the children regarding the perception
of the reconstruction. This stage is of ageing from 3-5 years or the preschool children (Fischer,
1980).
Class inclusion: The class inclusion defines the new objects with larger mental classes.
The children are yet not capable of identifying two objects at a time.
Piaget used several experiments that involved transferring an equal amount of matter to a
different sized or shaped jar. Children before the age of5were seen to choose from the jar that
seemed more full when asked to choose(Cherry 2018 n.p). At this stage, children are not able to
understand the constant properties of an object for instance volume and mass.
Criticisms
Piaget’s theory on preoperational stage was more focussed on what children at this age
could not do rather than what they were able to do. Egocentrism and conservation explanations
focus on abilities that children have not yet developed(Webmd.com 2017 n.p).
Piaget uses a small group of children from well-educated professionals together with his
three children as a sample for his research.This, Piaget’s theory lacked the authentication and it

is completely depended on the perception of a small group of children. Children in different
nations have different characteristics. Thus, it is impossible to generalise the characteristics of all
the children ageing from 2 to 7. These children were all from well-up families, and therefore it is
hard to generalize these research findings for the entire world population(Cherry 2018 n.p).
The fundamental logic of Piaget's preoperational stage is the ability to sort objects, the ability to
classify the objects according to their colour and size and ability to understand the conservation.
However, the researchers have stated that this general perception is completely irrelevant as
many of the children having undeveloped cognitive state or autistics do no surpass these
generalise stages (Cherry, 2018). Apart from that, the development depends on the domestic
environment, food habit and the type of care the child is getting. Hence, a child of four to five
years has a more sophisticated understanding than what Piaget thought which has been illustrated
by more recent research. They can understand another person's perspective which means they are
not as egocentric as argued in Piaget's preoperational theory(Cherry 2018 n.p).
Conclusions
The pre-operation development stage is involved in enhancing the abilities of children
that were present in the first development stage. A child’s rate of development, however, is
dependent on the environment the child is brought up and also the development of the brain. A
child left to discover with the help of the caretaker is at a higher chance to develop more
confidence than the one raised by an overprotective caretaker. This study has been helpful
especially in the education of children as it explains the thinking of small children and their
abilities at different ages in their life.

Reference List
Cherry, K. (2018). Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development in Young Children. [online]
Very well Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/preoperational-stage-of-cognitive-
development-2795461 [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].
Cherry, K. (2018). Support and Criticism of Piaget's Stage Theory. [online] Verywell Mind.
Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/support-and-criticism-of-piagets-stage-theory-
2795460 [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].
Webmd.com (2017). Piaget Cognitive Stages of Development. [online] WebMD. Available at:
https://www.webmd.com/children/piaget-stages-of-development#2 [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].
Steinberg, L., 2005. Cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Trends in cognitive
sciences, 9(2), pp.69-74.
Fischer, K.W., 1980. A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of
hierarchies of skills. Psychological review, 87(6), p.477.

Essay 2 part B: Schizophrenia
Introduction
Schizophrenia is characterised by delusions, abnormal hallucinations and cognitive
impairment. It is a mental disorder that is most common among the adolescences or early
adulthood. Atypical psychology deals with the behaviour termed as abnormal. Abnormal
behaviour often inclines into the clinical context where mental healthcare is needed. The term
abnormal covers a wide range of disorders such as depression, anxiety, and
hallucinations(Sharma, 2018). Behaviour is considered abnormal when it is affecting an
individual negatively, or it is affecting the people around the individual in a negative way.
The reason for the choice of Schizophrenia topic is because of its wide express of
thoughts in explaining this condition.This essay focuses on the explanation of Schizophrenia in
atypical psychology using psychodynamic.This essay also evaluates criticism surrounding
theories explaining atypical psychology.
Psychodynamic Explanations of Schizophrenia

The human behaviour according to Freud is controlled by three psyche parts which are
the Ego, the ID, and the Superego. These different psyches play different roles in controlling an
individual's behaviour. The superego is the part of the mind that contains the social norms and
taboos. This part bars the person from doing something that may be regarded as a taboo in a
particular community. The ID, on the other hand, hosts primitive desires that affect a person's
behaviour.For example- a man called Martin from London had long psychotic episodes from his
academic day. He had barren in a hallucination of getting a job and showing his work efficiency
to the employers. The seeking for a job after his university days can be considered as his
primitive desire and his hallucination of getting a job was a reflection of his primitive desire.
Such attractions include rage, hunger, and sex. The ego act as a go-between the other two parts
and is responsible for giving rise to the sense of self(Robinson 2011 n.p).
This disorder is caused by a past event that may have taken place in the early stages of a
child's development that was saved in the subconscious part of the brain. The event may have
caused trauma which remained unresolved at that time and later in life. Freud argues that this
trauma or unresolved conflict happened before ego could be separated from ID and thus
suppressing ego.The unresolved conflicts differentiate itself from ID defines the auto-saving
capability of the subconscious mind. After fixation, the child faces ‘loss of reality’ which is one
characteristic that is experienced by the schizophrenics (McLeod 2018 n.p). All this is brought
by Ego failing to control the impulses of the ID.
This can only be resolved by making one remember the unresolved conflicts and transfer
them to the conscious part of the brain. By doing this, a Schizophrenic can resolve the conflict
and therefore heal from the disorder (McLeod 2018 n.p).
Criticism of Freud’s Study

Freud's study, however, cannot be said as representative as he studied himself, his
patients and only one child. His interpretations are also biased as he concentrates more on
information that supports his theories and ignores other information.This is significant that Freud
only searched for the cognitive information that he requires. The larger perception of getting
more information lacked in his study. Cognitive philosophy has demonstrated the existence of
an unconscious process such as automatic processing. This explanation conflicts Freud's' theory
concerning the unconscious mind (McLeod 2018 n.p).
The definition according to Freud's theory fails to differentiate the desirable behaviour
from undesirable behaviour. Obesity, for instance, is normal according to the definition of
abnormality but it is abnormal when it comes to other definitions concerning health. It is
therefore undesirable while other instances of abnormality may be desirable (McLeod 2018 n.p).
An example of the desirable abnormality is the conversely high IQ which may be regarded as an
advantage by many people.
The abnormality definition also fails to classify various behaviours and characteristics as
either desirable or undesirable. Left-handedness, for instance, is a rare characteristic that the
description fails to give a bearing on whether it is normal or abnormal. Some characteristics are
regarded as abnormal whereas the cases are quite frequent. Depression, for instance, affects 27%
of people who are old but is regarded as an abnormality (McLeod 2018 n.p). Such instances limit
the understanding of abnormality and also the use of Freud’s theory.
Conclusions
Although there does not exist a set quantitative measure of disorders associated with an
abnormality, there exist mechanisms to identify and explain these disorders for a given

definition. Theories explaining these disorders have some drawbacks which must be taken into
account when handling atypical psychology case. Psychodynamic fail to explain the unconscious
activities that take place in one’s body such as dreams.
There also exist many states of the physical or psychology body which it cannot be
categorized as either normal or abnormal such as obesity. Other behaviours and characteristics
are not categorized as either desirable or undesirable such as left-handedness. One, therefore,
needs to examine the situation carefully before terming it as a disorder.
Reference List
McLeod, S. (2018). Abnormal Psychology | Simply Psychology. [online] Simplypsychology.org.
Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/abnormal-psychology.html [Accessed 5 Oct.
2018] n.p.

McLeod, S. (2018). Sigmund Freud's Theories | Simply Psychology. [online]
Simplypsychology.org. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
[Accessed 5 Oct. 2018] n.p.
Robinson, E. (2011). Psychodynamic Explanations of Schizophrenia. [online] prezi.com n.p.
Available at: https://prezi.com/udtu9nlo-uqx/psychodynamic-explanations-of-schizophrenia/
[Accessed 21 Nov. 2018] n.p.
Sharma, A. (2018). Concepts of Abnormality: Notes on the Concepts of Abnormality. [online]
Psychology Discussion - Discuss Anything About Psychology. Available at:
http://www.psychologydiscussion.net/abnormal-psychology/concepts-of-abnormality-notes-on-
the-concepts-of-abnormality/481 [Accessed 21 Nov. 2018] n.p.