Chapter 1: An introduction to Child Development

Question 1

What is development?

Answer 1

Systematic continuities and changes between conception to death

Question 2

What Drives Development?

Answer 2

Maturation: hereditary influences on the aging process

Learning: Change in behaviour due to experience

Question 3

What are the 3 domains of development?

Answer 3

1: Physical
2: Cognitive
3: Social-Emotional

Question 4

What are the main (3) Goals of Developmentalists?

Answer 4

1: Describe Development: normative and ideographic
2: Explain Development: why do individuals development differently?
3: Optimize Development: Apply Research to “Real World”

Question 5

Plato’s beliefs about children and their development

Answer 5

believed that children have innate knowledge

Question 6

Aristotle Beliefs about children and their development

Answer 6

believed that children are born a blank slate and that all knowledge comes from experience

Question 7

Beliefs about children in medival times

Answer 7

• Awareness of children as vulnerable

- Questioned whether they were mini adults or if it was just a phase?

Question 8

Reformation (15th/16th Century)

Answer 8

Children in service to adults, given harsh treatment

Question 9

Enlightenment

Answer 9

Locke (17th Century): born blank slate, environment important, treatment of children gets better, and need for freedom is thought to be important

Rousseau (18th Century): Innate purity, noble savage that unfolds to blossom

Question 10

Scientific Foundations: G.S. Hall

Answer 10

normative approach, questionnaire method

adolescence as a unique period

Question 11

Scientific Foundations: Freud

Answer 11

Linked early experience to later outcome

Question 12

Scientific Foundations: Watson

Answer 12

Behaviourist theory –> learning focused, lots of information for development came from this

Question 13

Health and Economics

Answer 13

• Contributes to family survival
• Adult like responsibility early if necessary
• Socioeconomic status –> SES, impacts a lot of factors in development, did the child have enough nourishment, did they have enough attention, did they get spoken to in a way in which they will be enriched and better off down the line?

Question 14

Important Issues in Development

Answer 14

1: Hereditary and Environment: nature vs. nurture, very intertwined and can’t be separated.
2: Relative Importance of: biological predispositions, environmental influences, environmental influences,
3: epigenetics: whats happening around the gene and how is it being expressed? –> Social determinants

4: Continuity/ Discontinuity:
Continuous: gradual- add more quantity of some skills
discontinuous: stages that are qualitatively different

Question 15

What role does the child play?

Answer 15

Active: Contributes to own development (theoretically)

Passive: recipients of environmental influence. What can an infant vs. 6 year old vs. 18 year old do in terms of their own development and the environment they are in.

Question 16

What propels development?

Answer 16

1: Effortful Attention: brain, genes, learning environment
2: Brain development: gene influence on neurotransmitters
3: Sleep: Different areas depending on age (cortex vs. hippocampus)

Question 17

Contexts affecting development

Answer 17

• Distinct set of circumstances (genetic and environmental)
• Treatment of parents and others
• different reactions
• different choices of environments

Question 18

Correlational vs. Experimental studies

Answer 18

Correlation used to see if two things are related

Experiment used to determine whether a causal relationship exists

fundamental difference is causation!

Question 19

What is a Quasi Experiment?

Answer 19

Can control some variables but not all

its a mix of correlation and experimental studies.

Question 20

Longitudinal Study

Answer 20

• repeated measures of some individuals over a period of time
• time may be brief (1 year) or decades
• studying people of the same age over period of time

pros:
- steady group = better control of extraneous variables
- sleeper effects

Cons:

• lots of time and effort
• costly
• attrition of subjects: loss of data/people
• cohort effect: experience same things (difficult to generalize to a reg/large population)
• Selection
• is question still important after all this time?
• obsolete or invalid measures after time

Question 21

Cross Sectional Study

Answer 21

• Studying people of different ages at same point in time
• one task, multiple age groups participate

pros:
- simple, doable, cost effective

Cons:
- misses out on things, simple

Question 22

Sequential Study

Answer 22

• Combination of cross sectional and longitudinal
• Participants of different ages selected at outset (like cross sectional)
• helps to cover the cohort problem
• uses strengths of both ex: optimal age to introduce drug and alcohol education into school

Question 23

Longitudinal Study Example:

Answer 23

Are there effects of quality daycare on social behaviour?
- if so do those effects have long term consequences?

• assessed aged 4 and 8
• quality of daycare affected cooperativeness and social skills at age 4

Question 24

Cross Sectional Example

Answer 24

• 10 and 14 years old compared on effectiveness/maturity of time monitoring
• 2 groups on two tasks at home or laboratory

Question 25

Microgenic Research

Answer 25

• Participants observed over short time during time of expected developmental change
• repeated experiences provoke change
• try to reveal how and why changes occur
• difficult and time consuming
• practice effect (negative)

Question 26

Notes on Children of the Garden Article

Answer 26

Two important trends :

1: impact of reproductive stress reduced over time
2: Outcome of biological risk mitigated by quality of rearing environment

• Resilience considered a process not something you have or don’t have

Resilient Children Protective Factors:
- constitutional/dispositional characteristics of individual temperament (activity level high, low excitability, high social ability)

Environmental Characteristics of Resilient Children:
- close relationship with rearing parental figure in first years
- # of children and the spacing between them
- Supportive family network
external of family:
- connections to organizations
- effective schooling
- Adults outside the family, teachers, leaders etc. providing support.