Chapter 1 Flashcards
Discontinuous
Quantitative change with periods of rapid transformation followed by plateaus
One course development
Universality of change (stage theories)
Many courses of development
Importance of context
Medieval times
6th-15th century: childhood was regarded as a separate period of life as easily as medieval Europe. Distinguished children under age 7 or 8 from other people and that recognized even young teenagers as not fully mature.
The Reformation
16th century - the Puritan belief in original sin gave riser to the view that children were born evil and stubborn and had to be civilized.
John Locke
The Enlightenment (17th century) - served as the forerunner of a 12th century perspective: behaviorism. Children begin with nothing at all. Tabula rasa “blank slate”.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Enlightenment (18th century) believed that children are “Nobel savages” naturally endowed with a sense of right and wrong and an innate plan for orderly, healthy growth.
Charles Darwin
Mid 19th century - evolution
Normative study of child development
Early 1900s - G. Stanley Hall & Arnold Gesellschaft - measure of box are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development.
Mental Testing movement
Alfred Binet - also normative.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
Conflict between biological drives and social expectations at various stages
+focus on individuals, inspired research in many areas
- vagueness of ideas makes it difficult to test
Freud
Psychosexual theory - focus on personality development.
Continuous development
quantitative, gradual change
Ericson
Psychoanalytic - psychosocial theory; focus on development and the contribution an individual makes to society.
+ looks at development over the lifespan
Recognized the importance of culture
Behaviorism and social (cognitive learning theory)
Focus on directly observable events
+contributed to knowledge of how people learn, helpful for eliminating bad behaviors and increasing acceptable behaviors
- underestimated children’s contribution to their own development limited environmental influences to the immediate environment.
Watson
Classical conditioning responses are learned through associations
Skinner
operant conditioning; reinforcers will increase behaviors and punishment will decrease behaviors
Bandura
Modeling/imitation/observational learning
Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
Children construct knowledge as they actively explore and manipulate their worlds
+promoted children as active learners, stimulated vast amount of research
-underestimated competencies of learners and preschoolers
Personable on his tasks can be improved with training
Information Processing
Mind is viewed as a system that manipulates symbols as info flows through it
+step-by-step approach is useful for determining where learning or processing difficulty is occurring
- doesn’t provide a comprehensive theory, creativity, and imagination
Ethology/evolutionary psychology
Focus is on the adaptive or survival value of a behavior and how competencies change with age.
+seeks to understand the entire organism-environment system
- difficult to determine if behavior is truly an adaptation
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
Focus is on how culture and social interactions affect children’s behavior and thinking.
+ recognized importance of social and cultural factors
- recognized importance of heredity and brain growth but neglects biological and child’s own contributions to development
Bio-Ecological systems theory
Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships
+ incorporates all levels of the environment
- can be difficult to examine all environmental levels in 1 study
Dynamic systems theory
The child’s mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills.
+constantly in motion, disruptions cause reorganization, focus on why/how children vary
-can require non-trad Analysis
Systematic observations
Naturalistic observations
