Chapter 1 - Introduction to Child Development

Reasons to learn about child development

It improves child rearing, promotes adoption of wiser social policies about children’s welfare, answers basic questions about human nature

Effect of spanking on children

Makes matters worse, no matter the race or culture. Effects on child’s behaviour held above other relevant factors like parent’s income and education.

Alternatives to spanking

* Express sympathy
* Encourage them to do something they enjoy while they cope with hostile feelings
* Use the Turtle Technique

Turtle Technique

* Tucking themselves into a ball to recognize their own and other children’s emotions.

Meta-analysis

* a statistical technique that combines results from independent studies) was used to reach conclusions.

Nativisits

A group of contemporary philosophers and psychologists that argue evolution has created many capabilities in early infancy especially, particularly the understanding of basic properties of physical objects, plants, animals, and other people.

Empiricists

Infants possess general learning mechanisms but they do not have the specialized capabilities nativists believe them to.

Plato’s view on children’s development

* thought boys were the most difficult to handle, so he emphasized self-control and discipline

Artistotle’s views on children’s development

* agreed with Plato but cared more about accomodating to the different needs of each individual child.

Locke’s views on children’s development

* believed children were born as a blank slate (concept of *tabula rasa)*
* believed their development was largely influenced by the nurture provided by parents and society

Rousseau’s views on children’s development

* believed parents and society should give children maximum freedom
* claimed children learn primarily from their own spontaneous interactions & shouldn’t receive formal education until they are 12 (old enough to judge validity of teachings in this eyes)

Child Psychology + Social Reform Movements

* Child psychology investigated the adverse effects harsh environments can have on children.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

* This theory focuses on variation, natural selection, and inheritance.
* It influenced the thinking of modern scientists in the field of child development (developmentalists) on wide range of topics.
* ex. Infant attachment to maternal care, innate fear of natural dangers, sex differences, aggression and altruism, and learning mechanisms.

Nature

* Influence everything; physical appearance, personality, intellect, mental health & specific preferences.

Nurture

* Physical & social factors that influence our development.
* ex. womb, homes, schools, communities, people we interact with

Developmentalists + Nature & Nurture

* Developmentalists ask how nature *and* nurture work together to shape development.

Genome

* each person’s complete set of hereditary info
* influences behaviour and experiences and vice versa.
* contain proteins that regulate gene expression by turning activity on and off

Epigenetics

* the study of stable changes in gene expression influenced by the environment.

Methylation

* biochemical process that influences behaviour by suppressing gene activity.
* involved in regulating reactions to stress

How do children shape their own environment?

* direction of attention, language use, and play.

Example of direction of attention

* Children pay more attention to things that move which helps them learn about important parts of world, like people, animals, and vehicles.
* They are particularly drawn to faces, especially their mothers’s.
* This preference leads to social interactions that strengthen the mother-infant bond.

Example of Language

* Toddlers 1-2 years old talk when they are alone.
* This is an internal motivation to learn language.

Example of Play

* teaches babies about reactions
* teaches children how to cope with fears, resolve disputes, and interact with others
* older play is more organized, promoting self-control, following rules, and controlling emotions.

Continuous Development

* the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that of a pine tree growing taller and taller.

Discontinuous Development

* the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly.

Stage Theories

* approaches proposing development involves a series of large, discontinuous, age-related phases
* These theories propose that entry into new stage affects the child’s way of thinking and behaviour.

Cognitive Development

* development of thinking and reasoning.

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

* This theory says that between birth & adolescence, children go through 4 stages of cognitive growth.

Is development fundamentally continuous, or fundamentally discontinuous?

* Many researchers have concluded that most developmental changes are gradual rather than sudden & and development occurs skill by skill.
* The answer is, it depends on how you look at it. It is gradual in some cases, and sudden in others.

The role of brain activity, genes, and learning experiences in the development of effortful attention

* Control of one’s emotions and thoughts: Inhibiting impulses, controlling emotions, and focusing attention.

Neurotransmitters

* chemicals involved in communication among brain cells

Learning and effortful attention

* Learning can impact effortful attention.

Brain activity and parenting

* Variations of genes that influence the production of key **neurotransmitters** (chemicals involved in communication among brain cells) are associated with variations in quality of performance on tasks that require effortful attention.

Role of sleep in promoting learning and generalization

* Infants spend a lot of time sleeping, which is important in promoting learning.
* The type of learning sleep encourages changes with the maturation of the hippocampus (brain structure that is important for learning & remembering).
* In the first 18 months of birth, sleep promotes learning of frequently encountered patterns.
* After 24 months, children often remember the specifics after a nap better than those who did not take a nap, but memory of general patterns is no better than those who did not nap.

Active Systems Consolidation Theory

* This theory suggests the hippocampus and cortex encode new information during learning at the same time.
* The hippocampus learns details after one or two experiences, and the cortex produces abstraction of general patterns over many experiences.
* This theory also suggests that in older children and adults, hippocampal memories (specifics) are replayed during sleep, which allows the cortex to take the general, frequently encountered patterns and, vice versa, to improve retention of the content.
* These findings showed that before 18-24 months of age, the hippocampus is not mature enough to handle the rapid details of specific experiences, so sleep doesn’t help with retention of information, but after 24 months, it does.

Sociocultural context

* physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child’s environment.

Uri Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model

* This model includes:
* People with whom children interact with (parents, grandparents, siblings, day-care providers, teachers, friends, peers)
* The physical environment (house, day-care center, school, neighbourhood...)
* Institutions (education systems, religious institutions, sports leagues, social organizations)
* Society (economic & technological advancement, values, attitudes, beliefs, traditions, laws, political structure...)

Cross-cultural comparisons

* A method used to understand influence of sociocultural context is to compare the lives of children who grew up in different cultures
* This reveals practices that are rare in one culture and very common in another and vice versa.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

* the measure of social class based on income and education.

Cumulative risk

the accomulation of disadvantages over years of development

EFfects of cumulative risk

* more likely to have serious health problems by infancy
* less surface area in the brain in areas that support spoken language, reading and spatial skills
* more emotional problems, small vocab, lower IQs, lower math and reading scores on standardized tests
* more likely to have a baby or drop out of school in high school

How do children overcome the obstacles of poverty?

1. Positive personal qualities
2. A close relationship with at least one parent
3. A close relationship with at least one adult other than parents

Factors that lead children to turn out very different from one another

1. Genetic differences
2. Differences in treatment by parents and others
3. Differences in reactions to similar experiences
4. Different choices of environments

How does providing children with information about how learning their brain affect their motivation?

* Providing children with information about how learning changes the brain increases their motivation to learn, but struggle stories of famous people are also motivating.

hypotheses

* *testable* predictions of the presence of absence of phenomena or relations.

4 basic steps to the scientific method

1. Choosing a question to be answered.
2. Formulating a hypothesis.
3. Developing a method for testing the hypothesis.
4. Using the resulting data to draw a conclusion regarding the hypothesis.

Reliability

* The degree of which independent measurements of given behaviour are consistent.

Interrater reliability

* the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behaviour.

Test-retest reliability

* the degree of similarity of a participant’s performance on two or more occasions.
* This is attained when child’s performance of the same test administered under the same conditions are similar on two or more conditions.

Validity

* The degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.

Internal validity

* the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing.

External validity

* The degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research.

Structured interview

* The degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research.

Questionnaires

a method that allows researchers to gather information from a large number of participants simultaneously by presenting them a uniform set of printed questions.

* often used for young children orally, but are printed for children of reading age

Clinical Interview

* a procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers in the interviewee provides.
* they can get a lot of data quickly, but they can also be biased

Naturalistic observation

* examination of ongoing behaviour in an environment not controlled by the researcher.
* it is hard to know what influenced the behaviour specifically with naturalistic observation
* Many behaviours only occur occasionally which makes limits the researcher’s opportunities to observe them.

Differences between trouble households and typical households

Troubled households

* Parents are more self-absorbed and less responsive to children than parents in typical households.
* Parents are more self-absorbed and less responsive to children than parents in typical households.
* Interactions were in a cycle where the child acted hostile, the parent reacted angrily, the child became more hostile, the parent became more angry, and so on.

Typical househodls

* Children responded to punishment by becoming less aggressive.
* Interactions were in a cycle where the child acted hostile, the parent reacted angrily, the child became more hostile, the parent became more angry, and so on.
* Typical households did not fall into this cycle.

Structured observation

a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each participant and recording participant’s behaviour.

Variables

attributes that vary across individuals and situations, such as age, sex, and popularity.

**Correlational designs**

**s**tudies intended to indicate how two variables are related to each other.

**Correlation**

the association between two variables

**Direction-of-causation problem**

**T**he concept that a correlation between 2 variables does not indicate which, if either, variable is the cause of the other.

**Third-variable problem**

the concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable.

**Experimental designs**

**a** group of approaches that allow inferences about causes and effects to be drawn.

**Random assignment**

a procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each group within an experiment.

**Experimental control**

**T**he ability of researchers to determine the specific experiences of participants during the course of an experiment.

**Experimental group**

the group of participants in an experimental design who are presented the experience of interest.

**Control group**

**Th**e group of participants in an experimental design who are not presented the experience of interest but in other ways are treated similarly.

**Independent variable**

**T**he experience that participants in the experimental group receive and that those in the control group do not receive.

**Dependent variable**

a behaviour that is measured to determine whether it is affected by exposure to the independent variable.

**Cross-sectional design**

**A** research method in which participants of different ages are compared on a given behaviour or characteristic over a short period.

**Longitudinal design**

**A** method of study in which the same participants are studied twice or more over a substantial length of time.

**Microgenetic design**

**A** method of study in which the same participants are studied repeatedly over a short period.

Ethical principles

* Be sure that the research does not harm children physically or psychologically.
* Obtain informed consetn for participating in the research.
* The experimenter should inform children and relevant adults of all aspects of the research that might influence their willingness to participate and should explain that refusing to participate will not result in any adverse consequences to them.
* Preserve individual participants’ anonymity, and do not use information for purposes other than that for which permission was given.
* Discuss with parents or guardians any information yielded by the investigation that is important for the child’s welfare.
* Try to counteract any unforseen negative consequences that arise during the research.
* Correct any inaccurate impressions that the child may develop in the course of the study.
* Debrief the participants after the research has been completed.