ch. 1 the science of child development

epistemology

the study of the nature of knowledge

• humans need to know where knowledge comes from so they can trace it back

platonic epistemology

• says that knowledge is innate

• learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul

• plato

plato

believed that each soul existed before birth with and a perfect knowledge of everything

• we're born with knowledge (innately)

• our soul existed before birth

• when something is ‘learned' it is actually ‘recalled’

aristotle epistemology

• there are no innate ideas: we know things through experience/ observation

  • the most reliable way to use knowledge is throguh observation and experience

rationalism

• there are innate ideas

• the senses are poor, unreliable means to knowledge

• the most reliable mean to gain knowledge and truth is via a priori reason and introspect

which philosophers represent the theory of rationalism

• parmenides?

• plato

• augustine

• auselm

• descartes

• spinoza

• leibnitz

empiricism

• there are no innate ideas

• the senses are a reliable, indeed the only means to knowledge

• a priori reasoning is fine as dar as it goes but it is very limited as to what it can provide us in the way of knowledge

• the most reliable way to useful knowledge is through observation and experience

• aristotle

which philosophers represent empiricism

• heraclitus?

• aristotle

• aquinas

• locke

• berkley

• hume

Descartes

“i think therefore i am"

• he wondered if the world was real

• he knows he exists which is proof that it is

Rousseau (check pp)

"“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world
but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man.”

• a form of rationalism

• believes that we already have ethical principles and ways to be good

Locke (check pp)

“Children are born with minds as blank as slates, but they have natural inclinations
which include personalities, likes and dislikes. For Locke, educating children, then,
entails instructing their minds and molding their natural tendencies.”

• we're born with the structures to incorporate info into (blank slate doesnt mean born with nothing)

theory of child development

• “An organized set of ideas that is designed to explain and make
predictions about development”

foundational theories of child development - how did it start?

• 17th century England used children for chimney sweeping (job for children of poor parents)

• there were no worker unions protecting their rights

• worked in terrible conditions: had nothing they needed to develop in a normal way

  • social, physical, emotional development were stunted

  • this is what got people thinking about child development

• Progress in Western science had merged with growing
  concerns about children’s welfare to bring about the first
  Western scientific theories of child development
  • There are many different theories about how children
  develop

what are the 5 foundational theories of child development?

• biological perspective

• psychodynamic perspective

• learning perspective

• cognitive-developmental perspective

• contextual perspective

the biological perspective

• development is deterined mainly by biological forces

• heavily on the nature side

• includes the maturational theory and ethological theory

maturational theory

development reflects the natural unfolding of a pre-arranged biological plan

ethological theory

• many survivors are viewed as adaptive because they have survival value

Charles Darwin

• believed that understanding the development of individuals within a species can help understand how a species developed

• baby biographies : he studied his own children

• believed that any species of animal will have more offsprings that can survive in the wild

• the offsprings that were fit to survive would pass on their genes; those that were not do not survive and thus, dont pass on their genes

Stanley Hall

• largely influence by Darwin

• Child development was based on the premise that growing children would recapitulate evolutionary stages of development as they grew up, that it was counterproductive to push a child ahead of its development stage

• belived that children must go through certain stages to develop appropriately

• humans are psychologically similar to “primitive” humans and “primitive” humans are psychologically similar to our children today
  

Haeckel

• proposed that the embryonic development of each organism follows the evolutionary history of its species

• “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”

• any species can be determined by the development of the embryo???

Gesell's maturational theory

• child development occurs according to a predetermined, naturally unfolding plan of growth

• his most notable acheivement was his contribution to the “normative” approach to studying children

what does “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” mean

• ontogeny: child development from conception → (the child's developmental history from birth to now)

• phylogeny: evoluntionary history : how through natural selection, we went from amphibians and evolved to humans

• this quote was eventually debunked
  

what is the “normative” approach to studying children

• normative: things that are the same in development that differ across children

• psychologists observed children of various ages and took notes on when most children acheived various developmental milestones

• Gesell was among the first to make knowledge about child development meaningful to parents by informing them of what to expect at each stage

• we need to be aware of the child's development and when teaching them, tailor it to their learning stages

Lorenz

• ethology

  • critical period hypothesis

  • implinting

ethology

concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value of behavior and its evolutionary history

what are the two important concepts of ethology

1. critical period (sensitive period)

2. Imprinting

critical period (sensitive period)

• Time during which a child is ready and able to learn something (not too early or too late)

imprinting

• forming an emotional bond between the child and the first moving object (usually the mother)

Konrad Lorenz's imprinting study

• when chicks hatch the first thing they see is theur mother

• imprinting is so powerful that the chicks will follow anyone

• Lorenz tested this by being present when the chicks were born -- they learned to follow him

the psychodynamic perspective

• development is determined by how a child resolves conflicts at different ages

what are the two major theories in the psychodynamic perspective

• freud's psychosexual theory

• erikson's psychosocial theory

What are freud's 3 components of personality

1. id

2. ego

3. superego

children experience conflict between their desires and what they “should" do

id

• our primary impulses, pleasures, wants, biological needs

• largest portion of the mind

ego

• our conscious awareness which mediates between the id and superego

• emerges in early infancy

• redirects id impulses in acceptable ways

superego

• the conscience

• the child learns what is acceptable and that they can be punished for their actions

• our sense of guilt

• develops late (3-6) through interactions with caregivers

preconscious

what we are not thinking of but can easily come to mind

what are the different psychosexual stages

1. oral

2. anal

3. phallic

4. latency

5. genital

oral stage

• birth - 1

anal

1-3

phallic

3-6

latency

6-11

genital

• adolescence

phallic fixation

anything that has a sexual connotation **check pp

Erickson stages of psychosocial development

• each stage involves a crisis that must be resolved

• believed freud put too much emphasis on sexuality and not enough emphasis on the social environment '

• was inspired by freud
  

what are Erickson's pschosocial stages

1. basic trust/ mistrust (oral)

2. autonomy vs shame and doubt (anal)

3. initiative vs guit (phallic)

4. industry vs inferiority (latency)

5. identity vs role confusion (genital)

6. intimacy vs isolation

7. generartivity vs stagnation

8. integrity vs despair

basic trust/ mistrust

autonomy vs shame and doubt

initiative vs guilt

industry vs inferiority

identity vs role confusion

intimacy vs isolation

generativity vs stagnation

integrity vs despair

the learning perspective - theorists and main beliefs involved

• emphasis on the importance of experience in development

• learning is a continuous theory

• Pavlov- classical conditioning: forming associations between stimuli

• B.F. Skinner- operant conditioning: reinforcement and punishment

Skinner

• one of the most important people in psychology

• believed the mind is unobservable

• it is unecessary to dealve into someone's mind

• all we need to do is observe behaviour

• the enviornment is what shapes behavior

Skinner- ocasion setting

**another word for the discriminative stimulus

• a place becomes associated with the behavior

• ex. if you pick a spot where you only do one behavior (Study), everytime you go to that place it will make you want to study (operant)

• the fact that you feel a sense of accomplishment when you go to that location is classical conditioning because the desk becomes a conditioned stimulus that now elicits a behavior

positive reinforcement

when behavior is followed by a positive consequence, it increases the idea that the behavior will occur again

• adding something following the behavior

  **the best way to do it according to Skinner

negative reinforcement

the removal of a negative event in the environment (ex. the child is too hot, so parent takes off blanket)

• removing something bad in child's environment

positive punishment

• the child does something bad, so you give them something bad

negative punishment

a behavior removes something good (ex. you misbehaved so no phone)

shaping

a rewarding chain whereby the child learns through steps and is reinforced for successive approximations

• ex. child is learning to make pancakes: child successively puts flour into bowl (good job), then reinforce them as they do more things right

• adults also learn like this

• we learn through small steps

Pavlov

• reflexes are innate behaviors

• pavlov's dog experiment where he rang the bell and gave the dog food repetitvely (making dog salivate) until one day, the bells itself made the dog salivate → bell becomes the CS

  • shows that reflexes can be malleable and learned

Watson and Raynor - Little Albert

• little albert loved the white rat at beginning of study

• eventually the experimenters starting making loud noises while albert was playing with the rat and he started to cry (emotional reaction)

• the white rat became an object of fear (went from NS to CS)

• little albert became afraid of other things that were similar to the white rat because he generalized

the learning perspective in sum

some theorists believed in:

• learning through imitation

• social cognitive theory

bandura's social cognitive theory

• children actively interpret events and respond based on their perceptions

• children develop a sense of ‘self-efficacy' through experinence and this influences their behavior

• “self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure
  

self-efficacy

an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments

• reflects confidence in ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior and socila environment

bandura - bobo doll experiment

• children observe their parent either treating a Bobo Doll nicely or beating it up— being mean

• then, the experimenters observed how the kids interacted with the doll when they were alone with it

• results: children imitated how their parents treated the doll

  • this suggests that children do learn through observation and they not only model the behavior but also model the aggression (if they saw parent being aggressive)

    • ex. child might use gun even though the parents didn’t

cognitive-developmental perspective

• Piaget

• development reflects children’s efforts to understand the world

• children participate in their own cognitive development

• They are viewed as “little scientists” who develop and revise theories with experience

• they learn from the effects of the environment

Piaget

• invented the cognitive-developmental perspective

• developed a 4 stage sequence that characterizes children’s changing understanding of the world

• circular reactions: child learns about the effects of the world (ex. child is conducting an experiment when they keep throwing off a spoon from the table)

Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development

1. sensorimotor

2. preoperational

3. concrete operational

4. formal operational

sensorimotor stage

• birth to 2 years old

• infant’s knowledge of the world is based on senses and motor skills

• by the end of the period, infant uses mental representations

• child has to see actions happen, they cannot imagine them

preoperational

• 2-6 years old

• child learns how to use symbols such as words and numbers to represent aspects od the world but relates to the world only through their own perspective

• 3 mountains test: child can only see the world from their own perspective

concrete operational

• 7-11 years

• child understands and applies logical operations to experiences, provided the experiences are focused on here and now

• child cannot form hypotheses about the world

  • cannot think into the future

formal operational

• ado and beyond

• adolescent or adult thinks abstractly, speculates on hypothetical situations, and reasons deductively about what may be possible

• Piaget argues that for some people, this never fully develops

• some adults are not good at thinking of alternative ways to do something

sociocultural theory of development

a person’s cognitive development is largely influenced by their surrounding culture

the contextual perspective

• Vygotsky

• development is determined by immediate and more distant environments, which typically influence each other

• people and institutions together form a culture - the knowledge, skills and attitudes of a group of people

Vygotsky

believed that adults convey to children the beliefs, customs, and skills of their culture

• it is important for kids to identify what they can and cannot do by themselves

zone of proximal development

when the child realizes that they can do something w/o the help of others

• what needs to be done to take the learner where he needs to be

**this continues throughout life

the contextual perspective—Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory

• views development within the set of nested, interacting systems

  • microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem

• continuous and discontinuous

ecological system’s theory includes:

• microsystem

• mesosystem

• exosystem

• macrosystem

• chronosystem