Download doc Child Development notes #2

September 7th -9th 2010
Lecture 2-3
CHAPTER 1
Tabula Rosa – John Locke
 Tabula Rosa: Blank state – child id product of his environment – no knowledge, no preferences.
All content (data, rules) is derived from experiences
1. Associations
2. Repetition
3. Imitation
4. Rewards
5. Punishment
 Implications of this view of development from bringing up a child?
 Side note: Locke's self → “The little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have vert important
and lasting consequences”
Seminal Developmental Ideas
Rousseau:
 Development proceeds according to an inborn timetable.
 Rousseau: “Nature provides children with its own guide for growth, including their own modes of feeling and
thinking”. But children are not unfilled vessels.
Nativism:
1. Development unfolds in a series of stages.
Experience world through senses, ar active; intuitive, concrete reasoning relates to experience; minimal interest in social
rels till puberty; eventual interest in theoretical reasoning emerges.
2. Experience provides knowledge, but child ought to be the guide.
Environment can certainly shape children. But we run risk orf interfering with nature's plan: “Everything is good in leaving
the hands of the creator of things: everything degenerates in the hands of men”
Von Herder (1870s):
Cultural Relativism
 Recognition culture/community plays a role in developmental
Darwin (1850s):
Natural Selection
1. In any species there will be a variation among certain traits (hair color, your speed, strength)
2. These variations are biologically based (behaviors)
3. Not all members of a species can survive, so there's competition.
 So in a given environment, some are more able to reproduce, survive than others, so they have a benefit.
Pavlov, Watson, Skinner
Behaviorism
 From introspection to empiricism
 Watson: Conditioning of reflexes explains all changes in behavior, simple or complex.
Ex: Popping balloon associated with white rabbit (now, conditioned response – rabbit - makes baby cry)
 Empiricism: objectivity (but too narrow).
Gesell
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Believed human development guided by species-specific, biologically-unfolding processes, what might you expect
to see in terms of the sequence of the species' developmental progress?
 Used 1-way mirror
 Innovative observational methods:
1. There is a highly predictable sequences to normal development. And a range of timing for it.
2. Norms (motor characteristics,
3. Minimal effects of environment on sequences (if any).
*Normative/Nature
Freud
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Interactionist Perspective: neither strictly nativist nor environmentalist
Psychosexual stages (biology)
Fixations often due to lack (or surfeit) of libidinal gratification at a given stage (environment)
If you gratify too much, child becomes immature
If you deprive the child too much, child gets passive personality
Early experiences can impact later behavior
Early fixations manifest later in life
Erikson
Psychosocial model
 Development through life-span
 Identity develops gradually according to a rough timetable of stage-related conflicts
 Social, cultural experiences shape resolution of conflict, and thus personality
ex: Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
*Nature & Nurture
The Four approaches
Environmental Learning
 Much Human behavior is acquired through environment, not inborn
 Learning: a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from practice or experience
 Learning types:
→ Habituation (get use to something)
→ Classical conditioning (when object is uncond. & becomes cond when elicits a response)
→ Operant learning (generates response by positive or negative reinforcement)
 Social-Learning theory (Bandura): some learned behaviors upon certain cognitive abilities
 Observational Learning: Explanatory power increases. They learn vicariously (by watching)!
*Skinner, Bandura, Locke
Study: “Bobo Doll”: Version A (grp 1 see no aggression, grp 2 see aggression) + Version B (grp 1 see aggression rewarded
and grp 2 sees no reward to aggression)
 Bandura: 4 cognitive abilities
Cognitive Developmental
*Piaget: Structures and Functions
 Studies kids intelligence level at different ages – patterns (sees responses to questions)
 Intelligence consists of
1. Structures (Scheme = object + action) ex: grabbing objects
2. Functions (processes by which change is guided) ex: assimilation and accommodation
 Believes in self-organizing principles
 You reorganize things as you go along, and you do it to be able to function, you adapt.
 So for example, you grab an object (schema) and you assimilate it depending on what it is (assimilation and
accommodation).... schema changes into grabbing or not grabbing after assimilating the object.
Stages
 Qualitative differences, mark major shifts (ex: recognizing that objects can symbolize other objects too)
 Continuous or discontinuous?
 Info-processing Models
Sociocultural
*Lev Vygotsky
 Studied primarily mental development
 Intellectual development occurs through interactions with others
 Culture influences content as well as processes (tools for school for ex)
 Dialectic: Through learning with others, child gradually internalizes knowledge (language is crucial) dialect as in
back and forth...
 *Microsystem
*Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Model
 Development always occurs in a context
 Context interacts with individual, so we should consider both when studying development
 This occurs in a transactional way (affects one another) – bidirectional
 Must not generalize from one context to another
 Child is part of a system that affects him from the outside
Evolutionary/Biological
 Ethology: scientific study of behavior and development based on principles of evolutionary
 Innate mechanisms: humans sometimes behave due to innate, evolutionary processes passed on through our genes?
 Sample application: Bowlby and Attachment
Survival depends on mother-infant bond (innate)
CHAPTER 16
GENDER ROLES
Gender Roles – Evolutionary approach
 Survival advantages to certain behaviors in certain environments
 Women tend to be more nurturing than men
 The environments for males and females differ when it comes to having children: during carriage of the baby,
women can have 1 while men can have many
 Females who are not invested in baby can lose child (less chance of survival in genes). Also true for males, but
men can have other chances with other women. So survival of genes is larger for men.
Gender Roles – Sociocultural approach
 Sex differences seen in investment in parenting due to differences in social roles
 Gender role: pattenr of behaviors considered appropriate for M and F in a given culture.
 Biological differences between the sexes do exist and may influence activities.
Gender Roles – Cognitive Development Approach
 Schemas: mental structures, organize our knowledge, also used to process and interpret new information
 Gender Schema: cognitive representations of characteristics associated with being a “girl” or “boy”
1. Child forms gender schemas (girls like dolls, boys like trucks)
2. Child adopts a gender schema (self-schema)
Gender Roles – Learning approach
 Children learn gender roles through experience
ex: girls are more emotionally expressive than boys are, how might learning theorists explain it?
1. Operant Learning
2. Observational Learning
CHAPTER 2
RESEARCH METHODS & THE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT
1. Difference between hypothesis and theory
2. Purpose of objectivity in psychological research and important ways that psychologists attempt to achieve it
-Replicable/verifiable by others: observable and quantifiable (operationalize)
3. Meaning of a positive or negative correlation, basic ability to interpret/understand “r” statistic
-Strength and direction (-1 to +1)
4. What is an independent and dependent variable
5. Ways to recognize whether a study uses a correlational vs. An experimental methodology
6. How to describe and interpret research using appropriate terminology (correlation/causality)