Chapter 1 Flashcards
Arnold Gessell focussed on what? (+ Definition)
Maturation: A genetically determined process of growth that unfolds naturally over a period of time.
John Watson believed that…
… biological factors placed no restrictions on the ways that the environment can shape the course of a child’s development.
Two basic patterns of developmental change are debated …
- Development is continuous, where each new event builds on an earlier one.
- Development occurs in steps.
Sleeper Effects
Problems are exhibited later in development.
Theories … (2)
- Organize and integrate existing information into coherent and interesting accounts.
- Generate testale hypotheses or predictions about children’s behaviour.
Theoretically Eclectic
Mix and match concepts from different theories to explain different types of observations.
Structuralism
Formal structure of the system would provide insight into function.
Freud and Piaget used the …
… Structural - Organismic Perspective
Structural - Organismic Perspective
Theoretical approaches that describe psychological structures and processes that undergo stage-like changes.
Psychodynamic Theory (3 Components)
Id: Person’s instinctual drives, the first component to evolve. Operates on the basis of the pleasure principle.
Ego: Rational, controlling component. Tries to satisfy need through appropriate, socially acceptable behaviours.
Superego: Component that is the repository of parental or societal values, morals, and roles.
Freud’s Five Stages
Oral Stage: Pleasurable activities such as eating, biting, and sucking.
Anal (2-3): Learns to postpone personal gratification, such as the pleasure of expelling feces.
Phallic (3-6): Curiosity about sexual anatomy and sexuality appears. Critical stage to the formation of gender identity.
Latency (6-Puberty): Sexual drives are temporarily submerged and children avoid relationships with peers of the other gender.
Genital: Sexual desires emerge and are directed toward peers.
Psychosocial Theory
Erikson’s theory of development that sees children developing through a series of stages largely through accomplishing tasks that involve them in interaction with their social environment.
Piagetian Theory
Theory of cognitive development that sees the child as actively seeking new information and incorporating it into his knowledge base through the process of assimilation and accomodation.
Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development
- Infants rely on sesnsory and motor skills to learn.
- Preschool children rely on mental structures and language.
- In the school years, children rely more on logic.
- In adolescence, children can reason about abstract ideas.
Piaget states cognitive development is …
… a process in which the child shifts from a focus on the self, immediate experiences, and simple problems to a more complex, multi-faceted, and abstract understanding of the world.
Behaviourism
School of thought that holds theories of behaviour must be based on direct observations of behaviour.
Classical vs. Operant Conditioning
Pavlov vs. Skinner
Pairing stimuli vs. Punishment
Cognitive Social Learning Theory
Stresses learning by observation and imitation mediated by cognitive processes and skills.
Four processes govern how well a child learns through observation… they are?
- Child must attend to a model’s behaviour.
- Child must retain the observed behaviour in memory.
- Child must have the capacity, physically and intellectually, to reproduce the observed behaviour.
- Child must be motivated or have a reason to reproduce the behaviour.
Information Processing Approaches
Focus on the flow of information through cognitive system.
- Operations child performs between input and stimulus phases.
Dynamic Systems Perspectives
Theory that proposes that individuals develop and function within systems.
Sociocultural Theory
Sees development as evolving out of children’s interactions with more skilled others in their environment.
Ecological Theory
Theory of development that stresses the relations among systems themselves.
Microsystem
Context in which children live and interact with their closest people.
Mesosystem
Interrelations that occur among the components of the microsystem (between parents and teachers).
Exosystem
Collection of settings that impinge on a child’s development but in which the child does not play a drect role.
Macrosystem
System that surrounds the other 3 that represents values, ideologies, and laws of the society or culture.
Chronosystem
Time based dimension that can alter the operation of all other levels.
Lifespan Perspective
Sees development as an ongoing process throughout life.
Age Cohort
People born within the same generation or the same general historical period of time.
