Chapter 1: Introduction to Infant and Child Development

Physical domain

Changes in height and weight, changes in gross and fine motor skills, sensory capabilities, the nervous system, as well as the propensity for disease and illness.

Cognitive domain

Changes in intelligence, wisdom, perception, problem-solving, memory, and language.

Social and emotional domain (psychosocial)

Changes in emotion, self-perception, and interpersonal relationships with families, peers, and friends.

Multi-contextual

Involving many contexts

Nature

Genetics

Nurture

Environment

Teratogens

Environmental factors that can lead to a birth defect.

Nature/nurture debate

Whether genes or environment play more of a role in development.

Discontinuous development

Development occurs in distinct stages that are qualitatively different from each other, in a set sequence.

Continuous development

Development is gradual.

Theory

An explanation of something

John Locke

Children are largely shaped by their social environments, especially their education as adults teach them important knowledge. Blank slate

Tabula Rasa

Blank slate

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Believed development occurs according to a natural plan which unfolded in different stages. Considered the father of developmental psychology.

Sigmund Freud

Belief that the personality forms during the first few years of life and that the ways in which parents or other caregivers interreact with children have a long-lasting impact on children’s emotional states.

Neurology

Study of the brain

Hysteria

Extreme, uncontrollable emotional excess or physical symptoms without a clear organic cause (Outdated)

Unconscious

What motivates our desires, fears, and anxieties that drives our actions.

Consciousness

Tip of the mental iceberg

Id

Part of self with which we are born. Instinct and drives

Pleasure principle

The criteria for determining whether something is good or bad is whether it feels good or bad.

Ego

Part of self that develops as we learn that there are limits on what is acceptable to do and that often, we must wait to have our needs satisfied. The mediator.

Reality principle

Recognition that sometimes need gratification must be postponed for practical reasons.

Superego

Control impulses, especially societally forbidden ones. Persuading ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than realistic ones.

Defense mechanisms

Tools used to help a person distort reality so that the truth is less painful

Denial

Not accepting the truth or lying to the self

Regression

Going back to a time when the world felt like a safer place, perhaps reverting to one’s childhood

Sublimation

Transforming unacceptable urges into more socially acceptable behaviors.

Displacement

Taking out frustrations on to a safer/weaker target

Projection

A person attributes their unacceptable thoughts onto others.

Reaction formation

A person outwardly opposes something they inwardly desire, but that they find unacceptable.

Fixated

Becoming stuck at a stage of development