PSYO 321: Midterm 1: Chapter 1.1

What influences the lives of children?

• Health and well- being

• Parenting and education

• Sociocultural contexts and diversity

Culture:

behaviour patterns, beliefs, and other products of people that are passed on from generation to generation. Studied in cross-culture studies.

Ethnicity:

characteristics based on cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language.

Socioeconomic status (SES):

a person’s position within society based on occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.

Gender:

the social construct of people as males, females, or gender divers

Resilience:

is exemplified by children who develop confidence in their abilities despite obstacles.

What are the several factors that influence resiliency at the individual, contextual, and social levels?

• High self-control, self- esteem, and active coping strategies

• Intact intellectual functioning

• A close, warm relationship with a significant attachment figure

• Bonds to caring adults and community resources outside the family

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES):

Potentially traumatic or challenging experiences in childhood (0-17)

• Include physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect and challenging household environments

• Relationship between ACES and long-term physical and mental health consequences established in research

• Results in last biological changes (nervous, endocrine, immune system)

Social policy:

The government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.

• Considering children at increased risk

• Strategies for improving the lives of children via social policy

• Developmental psychologists and other researchers seek ways to help families living in poverty or other challenging circumstances to improve their well- being.

• Healthy families make healthy communities

What contributes to changes in childhood?

• Biological processes

• Cognitive Processes

• Socioemotional Processes

Biological Processes:

produce changes in an individual’s physical nature.

• Think: height, weight, and motor skills.

Cognitive processes:

involve changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language.

• Think: two-word sentences and solving a puzzle

Socioemotional Processes:

involve changes in an individual’s relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.

• Think: smiling in response to a parent’s touch.

Periods of Development:

• Prenatal

• Infancy

• Early childhood/Preschool years

• Middle and late childhood

• Adolescence

Issues and Debates:

• Nature-nurture

• Continuity- discontinuity

• Early-later experience

• Cross- and within- cultural differences

Nature and Nuture:

• Nurture = Environment factors, including upbringing, culture, and life experiences

• Nature/Genome = Individual's complete set of hereditary, which refers to innate biological factors, such as genetics and heredity, that shape personality and physical traitsinformation

• Interactions!

Continuous Development:

Changes with age occur gradually, in small increments.

• Development occurs skill by skill and task by task.

Discontinuous Development:

Changes with age include occasional large shifts.

• Qualitative differences occur such as moving from pre-logical thought to logical reasoning

• Stage theorists: Piaget, Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg.

Developmental neuroscience:

is helping us understand how and why experience interacts with biology to shape a child’s development.

What are the three important findings of Developmental neuroscience?

1. The early years are a time of rapid brain growth.

2. Toxic stress from early experiences shapes a child’s neural circuits underlying social and emotional behaviour and cognitive abilities.

3. Learning processes are rooted in healthy emotional development.

Scientific research:

is objective, systematic, and testable, reducing the likelihood that information will be based on personal beliefs, opinions, and feelings.

• Researchers use this to ask and answer questions

Theory:

An interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain and to make predictions.

Frued:

Birth to 1½ Years: Infant’s pleasure centers on the mouth. (Oral stage)

1½ to 3 Years: Child’s pleasure focuses on the anus. (Anal stage)

3 to 6 Years: Child’s pleasure focuses on the genitals. (Phallic stage)

6 Years to Puberty: Child represses sexual interest and develops social and intellectual skills. (Latency stage)

Puberty Onward: A time of sexual reawakening; source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside the family. (Genital stage)

Erikson:

Infancy (first year): Trust versus mistrust

Infancy (1 to 3 years): Autonomy versus shame and doubt

Early childhood (preschool years, 3 to 5 years): Initiative versus guilt

Middle and late childhood (elementary school years, 6 years to puberty): Industry versus inferiority

Adolescence (10 to 20 years): Identity vs identity confusion

Early adulthood (20s, 30s): Intimacy versus isolation

Middle adulthood (40s, 50s): Generativity versus stagnation

Late adulthood (60s onward): Integrity versus despair

Piaget’s theory:

states that children actively construct their understanding of the world in four stages of cognitive development.

Two processes move us through the stages: organization and adaptation.

• Cognition in each age-related stage is qualitatively different.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development:

• Sensorimotor

• Preoperational

• Concrete Operational

• Formal Operational

Sensorimotor:

The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions; Progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.

• Birth to 2 years

Preoperational:

The child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action.

• 2 to 7 years

Concrete Operational:

The child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets.

• 7 to 11 years

Formal Operational:

The adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways.

• 11 years through adulthood

Bandura's Social Cognitive Model:

Person/Cognition → Behavior → Environment