Download November 7 DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

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Development
The major issues
Life-span development
Areas of development
How to conceptualize developmental changes
Heredity vs. environment
• Before 1970 or 1980
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Life-span development
Development covered basically ages 2-12
Infants were thought to be uninteresting
Adolescents were creepy
And adults didn’t change
• Now the majority of work takes place at the ends
– Major work on adult development
– And infants have a lot more tricks than previously thought
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Areas of development
Cognitive
Social/personality
Brain development is not hot area
And aging
Conceptualizing developmental changes
• The traditional blank slate
• Stages – Piaget
• Modularization and evolution
The traditional approach
• At birth few skills or cognitive processes
• Behaviorism
– Tabula rasa
– Everything is learned
• Reinforcement based learning
• Imitation
• Development is basically linear
• Many versions
– Piaget
The stages approach
– Freud
Piaget’s general version
• Development is non-linear
– Rapid changes at some points
– And relatively static at others
• Child has to have mental apparatus to benefit from experience and learn –schema
– Assimilation
– Contrast
• Processing at each stage
– Has its own integrity – works for the child
– Yet seems immature
• Not that the child lacks a few facts and skills
• But seems to reason differently
Sensorimotor Period
• Age
– 0–2 years
• Major achievements
– Object permanence
– Imitation
Preoperational Period
• Age
– 2–7 years
• Major achievement
– Conservation
• Age
Concrete Operations Period
– 7–11 years
• Major achievements
– Classifying objects
– Logic tied to physical world
– Basic reversibility
• Age
Formal Operations Period
– 11 years (at the earliest)
• Major achievements
– Abstract concepts
– Logic
– Reversibility
– Hypothetical thinking
Modularization and evolution
• Children has certain competencies at birth or shortly after
• May not show up immediately – maturation
– Walking
– Speech
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Some examples
Biology
Object constancy
Folk psychology
Physics
Number
Some examples from biology
• Children distinguish animate from inanimate movement
• Have notion of essences from early age
– “Insides” vs. “outsides”
– Understand that flamingos are birds but bats are not
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Nature vs. nurture
An issue since time of ancient Greeks
Until about 1920 most psychologists emphasized heredity
Then until recently experience
Changes
– New knowledge about genetics and the genome
– New research showing importance of genetics
– Evolutionary arguments
The issue for developmental
• How does the home environment affect children
– Parental influences
– Sibling influences
• Obvious that such effects occur
– Children similarity to parents is often obvious
– Plus we know that children often do what their parents wish
How might we study this formally?
• Usual strategy is to correlate parental behavior with children’s behavior
• Many examples
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Spanking and disobedient behavior
Age of weaning and oral behaviors
Parental style and children’s maturity
Parental reading and IQ
Parental responsiveness and secure attachment
Parental behavior and gender stereotypic behavior
• Also adoption and twin studies
The usual problems with correlations
• Could children behavior cause parental behavior?
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Disobedient children get spanked more
Children who are mature create parents who are more relaxed and flexible
Children who have IQ enjoy being read to more often
Children who are securely attached to moms encourage more responsive behavior
Children want to do gender stereotypic things and parents find it easier to go with the
program
Also third variables may enter in
• Genetic influences
• Parents create compatible outside home environments
– Churches
– Schools
– Children’s activities which affect friendship patterns
Bushels of data
• Literally millions of correlations
• But problems
– Correlates are often quite small
– Inconsistent from study to study
– Adoption studies show low to non-existent correlations between adopted sibs
in same family
The Harris argument
• Judith Rich Harris (1995, 1999)
• Correlations between parents and children are almost all genetic
• Environmental influences are almost all peer
– Even shared environmental influences within the family are largely peer
– Same schools, same neighborhoods
Genes in the family -- Reiss
• High correlation between antisocial behavior by children and punitive parental
behavior
• Passive model – same genes that make child antisocial make parents explosive
• Child effects evocative – genetic effects on antisocial which influence parental
behavior
• Parental effects evocative – genetic effects on child (not antisocial directly e.g.,
stubbornness)
– Influence parent)
– Parental behavior creates antisocial
Habitability may increase over life span
• For IQ genetic effects increase
• Effects on genes on environment selection
– Smarter kids select activities that make them smarter
– Education
• Genes affect peer groups
– Kids of different abilities tend to become more isolated
– “Smart” peer groups encourage academic achievement
– And less smart ones tend to denigrate academics
What about sibling influences?
• Weak effects but mostly genetic
– Almost no sib effects for adopted kids in same family
– And effects can be accounted for by environment
• Birth order
– Weak to non-existent effects for personality
– Some effects for ability
• Small for IQ
• Educational attainment
• Prestige of occupation
– Huge stereotypes
• Within family perceptions
• Not necessarily extended outside family
The peer group
• Harris argues that in all cultures peer groups do most of the socializing
– Language spoken – important because not genetic
– Peer cultures
– Children obsessed with not being different
• Peer groups often reflect shared environment
Peer influence
• Children do imitate adults
– But much adult behavior is inappropriate for children
– Tends to wane by school age
• But peers are more important
– Children don’t want to be like adults but like other children
– So they adopt whatever is “cool” at any point in time
Is Harris correct?
• Correct in emphasizing importance of genetics in parent-child
similarities
• Correct in emphasizing the importance of peer effects
• Probably incorrect in emphasizing the null role of parents
Does parental behavior have any impact on children?
• Inside family but not outside
• Single episodes
• Group vs. individual effects
– Correlations are across individuals
– Same parental behavior may have opposite effects on different children
• May be stronger effects for some domains
– Attitudes?
– Values?