Module #1 - Introduction

The Nature of Child Development (introduction A)

To better care for children, we need to examine:

  • areas in which children’s lives need to be improved

  • the roles of resilience and social policy in development

    • Development is the pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues through the life span (growth and decline, but we focus on conception through adolescence)

Improving the lives of children

  • some topics of contemporary concern:

    • health and well-being

    • parenting and education

      • checking on both the child and the parent - how one affects another

    • sociocultural contexts and diversity

Resilience, Social Policy, and Children’s Development

  • resilience is exemplified by children who develop confidence in their abilities despite serious obstacles

    • how much will individuals fight

Characteristics of Resilient Children and Their Contexts:

  • Social policy: governments course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens

  • developmental psychologists and other researchers seek ways to help families living in poverty improve. their well-being

Developmental Processes, Periods, and Issues

  • psychologists who study development are drawn to both our shared characteristics and those that make us unique

  • Biological processes: height, weight, and motor skills (change in the body)

  • Cognitive processes: two-word sentences and solving a puzzle (change in thought and language)

  • Socioemotional processes: smiling in reponses to a parent’s touch (how one interacts with the world)

Changes in development are the result of Biological, Cognitive, and socioemotional processes

Periods of Development:

  • Prenatal period: the time from conception to birth, roughly 9 months

  • Infancy: from birth to 18-24 months of age

  • Early childhood: the end of infancy to about 5-6 years of age (learn to be self sufficient)

  • Middle and late childhood: 6-11 years (elementary school years, becomes more exposed to world. Self control increases)

  • Adolescence: a period of transition from childhood to early adulthood. from 10 or 12 to about 18 or 19 (seeking independence outside of the family)

The Nature of Child Development (Introduction B)

Cohort Effects

  • A cohort is a group of people born at a similar point in history who share similar experiences as a result

  • Cohort effects: effects due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation but not to actual age

    • ex. baby boomers, millenials, gen Z

      • share similar experiences with those born around the same time

        • people who experienced 9/11 as adults have a bigger impact on their lives than those who were infants at the time

Issues in Development

  • Nature/Nurture Issue

    • Nature: Traits/characteristics based on genetics

    • Nurture: Traits/characteristics based on environment

  • Both work together

  • Continuity/Discontinuity Issue

    • Continuity: development is a gradual/continuous change (quantitative change: height, weight, size of vocab)

    • Discontinuity: development is (organismic, qualitative: emergence of new phenomenon)

  • Early/Later experience Issue

    • Early: keys to determining development (if someone develops early,

    • Late: keys to determining development

The Science of Child Development

  • Child development as a science:

    • how parents nurture children

    • the ways in which children’s thinking develops over time

    • whether mentoring can improve children’s achievement

  • it is the way in these topics are studied that makes the approach scientific

The Importance of Research

  • Scientific research is objective, systemic, and testable

  • the scientific method used by researchers is a four step process:

    • conceptualize a process or problem to be studied

    • collect research information (data)

    • analyze data

    • draw conclusions

  • Theory: interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain and make predictions

  • Hypothesis: a specific, testable assumption or prediction

    • if ____, then ____, because____

    • can use hypothesis to create theorys

Theories of Child Development: Psychoanalytic Theories #1:

  • psychanalytic theories describe development as primarily unconscious (beyond awareness) and heavily colored by emotion

    • Sigmund Freud

    • Erik Erikson

  • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) envisioned five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital

  • Erik Erikson (1902-1994) said we develop in psychosocial rather than psychosexual stages

Theories of Child Development: Cognitive Theories (Introduction C)

Cognitive theories emphasize conscious thought

  • Piaget

  • Vygotsky

  • Information Processing

Theories of Child Development: Cognitive Theories

  • among these is the cognitive developmental theory of Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

  • Lev Vygotsky (1896-1945) also argued that children actively construct their knowledge

  • with the advent of computers, psychologists began to draw analogies between computer hardware and the brain, and between computer software and cognition (information processing)

    • helps with scaffolding of child’s brain

Theories of Child Development:Social Cognitive Theories

  • behaviorism holds that we can study scientifically only what can be directly observed and measured

    • Pavlov

    • Skinner

    • Bandura

Theories of Child Development: Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories

  • in the early 1900’s, Ivan Pavlov discovered the principle of classical conditioning: a neutral stimulus produces a response originally produced by another stimulus

  • B.F. Skinner argued that a second type of conditioning — operant conditioning — accounts for other types of behavior

  • Social cognitive theory: behavior, environment, and cognition are the key factors in development

    • Albert Bandura (1925) is the leading architect

Theories of Child Development: Ethological Theory

  • ethology: a field that stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods

    • John Bowlby

  • Ecology theory emphasizes environmental factors

  • one such theory significant to children’s development was proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)

    • Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory: development reflects the influence of five environmental systems

Research Methods (Introduction D)

Research Methods for Collecting Data

  • observation: systemic observation takes place in the laboratory and in the everyday world

  • laboratory: a controlled setting where many complex factors of the “real world” have been removed

  • Naturalistic Observation: observing behavior in real-world setting with no effort to manipulate the situation

  • Surveys (or questionnaires) and interviews are conducted in person, over the phone, and online

  • Standardized test: a test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring

  • case study: an in-depth look at a single individual

  • physiological measures include:

    • blood samples, showing the blood levels of certain hormones, neuroimaging (especially fMRI)

Research Designs

  • Descriptive research: aims to obsesrve and record behavior; cannot prove cause/why

  • correlational research: aims to describe the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics

  • Experiment: a carefully regulated procedure in which one or more of the factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant

    • independent variable is the manipulated factor

    • dependent variable is a factor that can change in response to changes in the independent variable

    • experimental group is a group whose experience is manipulated

    • control group is a comparison group that is treated the same way except for the manipulated factor (independent variable)

Research Methods for Collecting Data: Time Span of Research

  • Cross-Sectional approach: a research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at the same point in time

    • test different people at different ages

  • longitudinal approach: a research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over time - usually several years or more

    • test same person over time

Challenges in Child Development Research: Conducting Ethical Research

  • The American Psychological Association (APA) has developed ethical guidelines for its members

    • informed consent

    • confidentiality

    • debriefing

    • deception

  • studies are most useful when they are conducted without bias or prejudice

  • of special concern is bias based on gender and bias based on culture or ethnicity