1. Background & Theories

Question 1

What do developmental psychologists systematically study?

Answer 1

How children’s brains, personalities, and behavior develop alongside their bodies.

Question 2

What are the two basic goals of developmental research?

Answer 2

Description & Explanation

Question 3

Why study children? (5)

Answer 3

• Period of rapid development
• Long-term influences
• Insight into complex adult processes
• Real-world applications
• Interesting subject matter

Question 4

What were the views on childhood in the ancient greek and roman periods?

Answer 4

Despite Aristotle and Plato writing of the importance of education, severe punishment, exploitation and infanticide were also defended.

Question 5

What were the views on childhood in the Medieval and Renaissance periods?

Answer 5

Catholic church promoted their image as pure and innocent, even offering parents of unwanted children alternatives to infanticide, though abuse and exploitation were still prevalent.

Question 6

What was John Locke’s theory on development and which modern view does it belong to?

Answer 6

Tabula Rasa: All knowledge comes through experience and learning, children are a product of their environment and upbringing.
Environmentalism

Question 7

What was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory on development and which modern view does it belong to?

Answer 7

Children are born with knowledge and ideas that unfold naturally with age. Development follows a predictable series of stages that are guided by an inborn timetable. Whatever knowledge the child doesn’t posses innately is acquired gradually from interactions with the environment, guided by the child’s own interest and level of development.
Nativism

Question 8

What was Johann Gottfried Von Herder’s theory on development and which modern view does it belong to?

Answer 8

Everyone is born into a specific cultural community with a shared language and historical traditions, which shape the minds of its members.
Special emphasis on language as the means by which cultural practices and values are transmitted.

Question 9

On the topic of language and culture, what was another one of Von Herder’s emphases?

Answer 9

Their dynamic nature. He believed language and culture are not passively absorbed by children but continually reinterpreted and changed by the members of the community.

Question 10

What was Charles Darwin’s theory on development and which modern view does it belong to?

Answer 10

Some of the present-day behaviors of humans had their origins countless years ago, when they somehow contributed to the survival of an earlier form of a species.

Question 11

What is a baby biography, and what was its historical importance?

Answer 11

The intensive study of one’s own child’s development.

It was an important early method attempting to develop a scientific approach to the study of childhood.

Question 12

Who is G. Stanley Hall and what were his major contributions to the field of child psychology?

Answer 12

Credited with founding the field of developmental psychology, Hall trained the first generation of developmental researchers.
He also:
-established several scientific journals for reporting the findings of said research
-founded and became the first president of the APA
-invited Sigmund Freud to lecture in the USA, leading to the introduction of psychoanalytic theory into North American psychology.

Question 13

Who is James Mark Baldwin and what were his major contributions to the field of child psychology?

Answer 13

The first academic psychologist in Canada, he set up the first psych lab here in 1899.
Strongly inclined toward theories of mental development, he argued that development progresses through a sequence of stages, and stresses the interaction of heredity and environment, influencing Piaget’s theories.

Question 14

Who is John B. Watson and what were his major contributions to the field of child psychology?

Answer 14

He was the first major psychologist to adopt Locke’s environmentalist view (emphasizing experience and learning).
His new behavioralist approach differed radically regarding what psychologists should study and which methods of investigations they should use.

Question 15

Why did Watson reject introspection as a research method?

Answer 15

• Little agreement was ever found across participants’ descriptions of their internal experiences
• Psychology should deal only with objective, observable behavior
• His interest in animal led him to reject any method that could not also be used to study other species.

Question 16

What were Watson’s basic behavioralist views?

Answer 16

Changes in behavior result primarily from conditioning. Learning occurs through a process of association. All human behavior begin as simple reflexes. Then, through an association process, various combinations of simple behaviors become conditioned to many stimuli in the environment.

Question 17

Why did Watson believe it was crucial to study children?

Answer 17

To study the first steps in the conditioning process that produce complex human behavior.

Question 18

Who is Arnold Gesell and what were his major contributions to the field of child psychology?

Answer 18

Conducting the first large-scale study to examine children’s behavior in great detail, his research revealed a high degree of uniformity in children’s development. They didn’t all develop at the same rate but the pattern (sequence) of development was very consistent.

Question 19

What were Arnold Gesell’s views on child development?

Answer 19

Gesell believed that development is guided primarily by biological processes. Through maturation, growth and the emergence of motor skills follow very predictable patterns.

Question 20

What role does environment play in Gesell’s scheme?

Answer 20

environment plays only a minor role - perhaps affecting the age at which certain skills appear - but never affecting the sequence or pattern of development

Question 21

What were Gesell’s major contributions to the field of Child Psychology?

Answer 21

He established statistical norms - a sort of developmental timetable.
He devised sophisticated research techniques for observing and recording children’s behavior. Pioneered the use of film cameras and one-way viewing screens.

Question 22

Who is Sigmund Freud and what were his major contributions to the field of child psychology?

Answer 22

His greatest contribution was in the area of clinical psychology with his models of personality and techniques of psychoanalysis.
His contribution to developmental psychology was his stage theory of psychosexual development.

Question 23

Explain Freud’s developmental theory

Answer 23

Each child is born with a certain amount of libido (sexual energy - the ability to experience pleasure), which is biologically guided to certain erogenous zones (locations on the body) as the child grows.

Question 24

In Freud’s psychosexual theory, what marks a new stage in the child’s development?

Answer 24

The arrival of the libido at each erogenous zone, during which the child receives the greatest physical pleasure in that bodily location.

Question 25

How is Freud’s theory of child development actually a theory of personality formation?

Answer 25

It assumes that many aspects of adult personality result from events during childhood psychosexual stages, in which a person would get Fixated (stuck) in an erogenous zone (rather than moving onto the next stage) if a child’s experiences during that stage are not as they should be.

Question 26

During which of Freud’s psychosexual stages do children become sexually attracted to the parent of the opposite sex? What is it called? How do children resolve this conflict?

Answer 26

During the Phallic stage, the Oedipus complex emerges.
First, they force their desires into the unconscious (Repression) which erases their memory of these feelings.
Then, they compensate for this loss by trying to adopt the characteristics of the same-sex parent (Identification)

Question 27

Why haven’t North American developmentalists never fully accept Freud’s theory?

Answer 27

It is vague, and its key elements cannot be scientifically verified. Relies heavily on unobservable and unmeasurable mechanisms, such as unconscious motives.

Question 28

What two Freudian concepts are generally accepted today?

Answer 28

• The rejection of a purely nativistic or environmentalist explanation of behavior. He was the first major developmentalist to argue for an Interactionist Perspective.
• His suggestion that early experiences can have important effects on behavior in later life.

Question 29

What are Freud’s 5 psychosexual stages and at what ages do they occur?

Answer 29

Oral 0-1.5
Anal 1.5-3
Phallic 3-6
Latency 6-12
Genital 12-18

Question 30

Although based on Freud’s theories, how does Erik Erikson’s model differ in major ways?

Answer 30

• Erikson believed that development continues throughout life, replacing Freud’s model by an 8 stage model which continues into old age.
• He also believed that we cannot understand personality development without considering the environment in which it occurs, developing a psychosocial model of personality.
• Erikson’s model was based on the study of normal individuals rather than neurotics.

Question 31

What, according to Erikson, is each individual’s ultimate goal?

Answer 31

The quest for Identity, which develops gradually across the eight stages.

Question 32

What conflicts, according to Erikson, are encountered in the quest for identity?

Answer 32

At each stage, a positive personality characteristic associated with the search for identity conflicts with a negative characteristic resulting from interaction with the social world.

Question 33

According to Erikson, how would these conflicts best be resolved?

Answer 33

The best resolution of these conflicts would have the child leaving the stage with a strong sense of the positive personality characteristic, but also with a small degree of the negative characteristic.

Question 34

Briefly describe Erikson developmental theory.

Answer 34

In this interactionist model, each person is guided through the psychosocial stages by genetic processes, but the individual’s social and cultural surroundings help determine how the conflicts are resolved at each stage and so also contribute heavily to personality development.

Question 35

What are Erikson’s 8 psychosocial stages and at what ages do they occur?

Answer 35

0-1.5 Basic Trust vs. Basic Mistrust
1.5-3 Autonomy vs. Shame 
3-6 Initiative vs. Guilt
6-12 Industry vs. Inferiority
12-18 Identity vs. Role Confusion
Young Adult Intimacy vs. Isolation
Adult Generativity vs. Stagnation
Older Adult Ego Integrity vs. Despair

Question 36

What are three issues in developmental psychology?

Answer 36

Nature vs. Nurture
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Normative vs. Idiographic Development

Question 37

In today’s interactionist view, what has become of the nature vs. nurture problem.

Answer 37

The issue today is rather, to what degree do nature and nurture each influence development and behavior. The debate is made even more complex since the advances in behavioral genetics and brain sciences. for example: biological entities such as genes and basic brain chemistry (Nature), once thought to be unchanging, are themselves responsive to environmental influence (Nurture).

Question 38

What is the Continuous vs. Discontinuous issue?

Answer 38

Is development smooth and stable, with new abilities, skills, and knowledge gradually added at a relatively uniform pace (Continuous)?
or
Does development occur at different rates, alternating between between periods of little change and periods of abrupt, rapid change (Discontinuous)?

Question 39

How does continuity and discontunuity view connectedness of development?

Answer 39

Continuity theorists think many behaviors and abilities we see in teens and adults can be traced back to development early in life.
Discontinuity theorists suggest that some aspects of development emerge relatively independently of what has come before and cannot be predicted from the child’s previous behavior.

Question 40

Briefly explain Continuity theories.

Answer 40

Behavior consists of many individual skills that are added one at a time, usually through learning and experience. as children aquire more of these skills, they combine and recombine them to produce increasingly complex abilities. this approach emphasizes quantitative change and tends to characterize Environmentalist models of development

Question 41

Briefly explain Discontinuity theories.

Answer 41

Development is guided primarily by internal biological factors. Stage theorists argue that the unevenness of children’s development reflects the discontinuous nature of the changes taking place in the underlying structures of the body and brain. Development is thought to involve qualitative changes in previous abilities or behaviors.

Question 42

Differentiate Normative development and Idiographic development.

Answer 42

Normative development involves what children have in common or how development is similar for all children. universals of development.
Idiographic development involves the differences from one child to the next. human diversity.

Question 43

Briefly describe the cognitive-developmental approaches to the theory of development.

Answer 43

Rooted in the 18th-century writtings of Rousseau, this approach emphasizes cognition. according to these theories, the changes we witness in children’s behaviors and abilities arise largely from changes in their knowledge and intellectual skills.

Question 44

How can development be described according to Piaget’s theory?

Answer 44

Human development can be described in terms of functions and cognitive structures. the functions are inborn biological processes that re the same for everyone and remain unchanged throughout our lives. Their purpose is to construct internal cognitive structures. The structures, in contrast, change repeatedly as the child grows.