Childhood: Voyages in Development. Chapter 1

Childhood: Voyages in Development. Chapter 1

1. 1.1 What is Child Development? Coming to Terms with Terms.

   • What is Child Development?
     • The field of child development attempts to advance knowledge of the processes that govern the development of children's physical structures, traits, behaviors, and cognitions. Growth consists of changes in size or quantity, whereas development also includes changes in quality.
   • Why do researchers study child development?
     • Researchers study child development to gain insight into human nature, the origins of adult behavior, the origins of developmental problems, and the effect of culture and development.
   • What views of children do we find throughout history?
     • Locke focused on the role of the environment, or experience, in development. Rousseau argued that children are good by nature, and if allowed to express their natural impulses, they would develop into moral and giving people. Darwin originated the modern theory of evolution and was one of the first observers to keep baby biography. Hall founded child development as an academic discipline. Binet developed the first modernized intelligence test.

2. 1.2 Theories of Child Development

   • Why do we have theories?
     • Theories are related sets of statements about events. Theories develop help us describe, explain, predict development, and they enable researchers to influence development through education of caregivers and teachers.
   • What is the psychoanalytical perspective on child development?
     • Freud viewed children as caught in conflict. he believed that people undergo ORAL, PHALLIC, LATENCY, and GENITAL stages of psychosexual development. too little or too much gratification in a stage can lead to fixation. Erickson's psychosocial theory sees social relationship as more important than sexual aggression impulses. Erickson extended Freud's five developmental stages to eight and named stages after life crisis.
   • What Is the learning perspective on child development?
     • Watson argued that scientist must address observable behavior only, not mental activity. behaviorism relies on two types of learning: Classical Conditioning and Operant Conditioning. In Classical Conditioning, one stimulus comes to elicit that same as another by being paired repetitively with it. In operant conditioning children learn to engage in or to discontinued behavior because its effects (reinforcement or lack of). Social cognitive theorists, such as Bandura, argued that too much learning occurs by observing models and that they choose whether or not to engage in behavior they have learned.
   • What is thecognitive perspective on child development?
     • Piaget saw children as actors on the environment, not reactors. He studied how children form mental representations of the world and manipulate them. Piaget's theory relies on the concepts of schemes, adaptions, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. He hypothesized that children's cognitive processes develop in an invariant series of stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. information-processing theory deals with the ways in which children encode information, transfer it to working memory (short-term), manipulate it, place information in storage (long-term), and retrieve it from storage.
   • What is the scope of biological perspective?
     • The biological perspective focuses on heredity and on developments such as the formation of sperm and ova, gains in height and weight, maturbation of the nervous system, and the way hormones spur the changes of puberty. Ethology involves instinctive, or inborn, behavior patterns, termed fixed action patterns (FAPs). Many FAPs, such as those involved in attachment, occur during a critical period of life.
   • What is the ecological system theory of child development?
     • Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory explains development in terms of the reciprocal interactionbetween children and the setting in which development occurs. These settings are microsystem, mesosytem, exosystem, marcosystem, and chronosystem.
   • What is the sociocultural perspective?
     • The socioculture perspective emphasizes that children are social who are influenced by their cultural backgrounds. Vygotsky introduced the sociocultural concepts of scaffolding and te zone of proximal development (ZPD). Children internalize conversations and explantions taht help them gain skills. Children learn ways of solving problems within a cultural context. The sococultural perspective also addresses the richness of children's diversity, including their ethnicity and sex. Understanding the cultural heritages and historical problems of children from various ethnic groups necessary for effective education and psychological intervention.

3. 1.3 Controversies in Child Development

   • Which exerts the greater influneces on children: Nature vs Nurture?
     • Development would appear to reflect the interaction of nature (genetics) and nurture (nutrition, cultural and family backgrouonds, and oppertunities to learn about the world).
   • Is development continous or discontinous?
     • Maturational, psychoanalytic, and cognitive developmental theorists see development, such as the adolesentgrowth spurt, do occur in stages. Learning theorists tend to see devlopment as more continous.
   • Are children active ("prewired" to act on the world) or passive (shaped by experience?
     • Bronfenbrenner and Bandura do not see children as entirely passive. They believe that children are influneced by the environment but that the influenece is reciprocal.

4. 1.4 How Do We Study Child Development?

   • What is the scientific Method?
     • The scientific method is a systematic way of formulating and answearing research questions, developing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, drawing conclusion, and publishing results.
   • What methods of observation do devlopmentalists use to gather information about children?
     • Developmentalist use naturalistic observation, the case study, and survey. Natualistic observation is conducted in "the field"--in the actual setting in which children develop. The case study isa carfefully drawn account or biography of the behavior of a child. Information may be derived from diaries, observation, questionnaries, standarized tests, interviews, and public records. Surveys can be used to learn about behavior and mental processes that cannot be observed in the natural setting or studied experimenatlly.
   • What is an Experiment?
     • An experiment is an investigation in which a hypothesis is scientifically tested. In an experiment, an independent variable (the cause) is manipulated and the dependent variable (the effect) is measured; any extraneous variables are controlled. An advantage is that experiments should be objective.
   • How do researchers study development over time?
     • Longitudinal research studies the same children repeadly over time. Cross-sectional research observes and compartes children of different ages. A drawback to cross-sectional is the cohort effect. Cross-sequential research combines the longitunal and cross-sectional methods by breaking dow the span of the ideal longitudinal study into segments.

5. 1.5 Ethical Considerations

   • What ethical guidelines are invloved in research in child development?
     • Ethical standards are established to promote the dignity of individual, foster human welfare, and maintain scientific integrity. Researchers are not to use treatments that may do harm. Subjects must participate voulntarily.