Studied by 5 peopleReasons 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?
Positive personal qualities
A close relationship with at least one parent
A close relationship with at least one adult other than parents
Factors that lead children to turn out very different from one another
Genetic differences
Differences in treatment by parents and others
Differences in reactions to similar experiences
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
Choosing a question to be answered.
Formulating a hypothesis.
Developing a method for testing the hypothesis.
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
studies intended to indicate how two variables are related to each other.
Correlation
the association between two variables
Direction-of-causation problem
The 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
The 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
The group of participants in an experimental design who are not presented the experience of interest but in other ways are treated similarly.
Independent variable
The 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.
Note
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