Chapter 1 - Historical Views of Children and Childhood Flashcards
Define theory:
A theory is an organized set of ideas that are designed to explain and make predictions about development
True or False: Development unfolds in a predictable way
True: this is what makes it easy to determine what is essential, or not essential, in development
Plato argued that _________, while Aristotle saw __________.
Children are born with innate knowledge; knowledge as rooted in experience
Locke asserts an infant is a “__________”, while Rousseau believed children are ___________.
blank slate; born with an innate sense of justice and morality
The contrasting views of Locke and Rousseau are seen during the age of:
Enlightenment
Detailed systematic observations of individual children were kept by:
G. Stanley Hall
Detailed systematic observations of individual children were kept by:
G. Stanley Hall
The first English language scientific journal in which scientists could publish findings from their child development research was founded by who?
G. Stanley Hall
What does ‘The Contents of Children’s Mind’ aim to do?
It aims to use the scientific method to understand the source of the human mind’s development
What are the 5 Theoretical Perspectives?
The Biological Perspective, The Psychodynamic perspective, The Learning perspective, The Cognitive-developmental perspective and the Contextual perspective
Explain the Biological Perspective
Development is determined primarily by biological forces. Environmental forces can affect genes
What are the two theories that come out of the Biological Perspective?
The Maturational theory and the Ethological theory
What is the Maturational theory?
The maturational theory argues that development reflects the natural unfolding of a prearranged biological plan. The fetus develops in a systematic, observable way.
What is the Ethological theory?
The ethological theory sees many behaviours that young children have as adaptive because they have a survival value, which maximizes the survival of the child
What are the two concepts to come out of the biological perspective?
The critical period, and Imprinting
What is the critical period?
A time in which the child is ready and able to learn something. It is very important in developmental psychology because it is highly unlikely for a child to learn something if they miss the critical period
What is imprinting?
Imprinting is the forming of an emotional bond between the child and the first moving object it sees, which is usually the mother. Imprinting is critical
What is the Psychodynamic Perspective?
Development is determined by how a child resolves conflict at different ages
What are the two major theories to come out of the Psychodynamic Perspective?
Freud’s Psychosexual theory, and Erikson’s Psychosocial theory
What is Freud’s Psychosexual Theory?
Freud’s Three Components of Personality, Freud’s five stages of development. Experiences affect children’s development. if they don’t move from one stage to the next, they get stuck at one stage. Children experience the conflict between desire and what they should do.
What are Freud’s three components of personality?
The id, the ego, and the superego
What are Freud’s 5 stages of development
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
What is Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
Children are part of a community and a society. Erickson’s stages are defined by unique challenges. He sees that development is not only in children but throughout their whole life. He doesn’t go far from Freud’s theory but works on it. He argues that there is a combination of social and personal conflicts.
What is the Learning Perspective?
Early learning theories emphasized the importance of experience in development. Learning theorists suggested that children learn by observing others - Pavlov, B.F Skinner, Bandura
Pavlov studied ___________ and B.F Skinner studied ______________.
classical conditioning; operant conditioning
What is operant conditioning?
Reinforcement and punishment
True or False: Negative Reinforcement and Punishment is the same thing
False: Negative Reinforcement is taking something negative away to increase the likelihood of something happening, and punishment is applying something negative
What is Bandura’s Theory?
Bandura’s social cognitive theory holds that children actively interpret events and respond based on their perceptions
According to the Social Cognitive theory, children develop a sense of ________ through experience that influences their behaviour
self-efficacy
What is the Cognitive-Developmental Perspective?
In this perspective, development reflects children’s efforts to understand the world. As a child develops, they attempt to understand the world
______ believes that children are seen as little scientists because they develop and revise their theories of the world with experience
Piaget
What is the difference between Assimilation and Accommodation? - IMPORTANT
Assimilation: As a child is experiencing the world, they are taking in all the data and using their current knowledge to see how the world fits in with what they already know.
Accommodation: The child realizes that they must modify their existing knowledge base to accommodate new information.
What are Piaget’s 4 stages of Cognitive Development?
Sensorimotor, Pre-Operational, Concrete Operational, Formal Operational.
Explain the Sensorimotor Stage
Birth to 2 years - infants’ knowledge of the world is based on senses and motor skills. By the end of the period, they use mental representations
Explain the Pre-Operational stage
2 to 7 years - children learn how to use symbols, such as words and numbers to represent aspects of the world but relate to the world only through their own perspective
Explain the concrete operational stage
7 to 11 years - the child understands and applies logical operations to experiences, provided the experiences are focused on the here and now
Explain the formal operational stage
Adolescence and beyond - they think abstractly, and speculate on hypothetical situations, and reason deductively about what may be possible
Explain the Contextual Perspective
Development is determined by immediate and more distant environments, which typically influence each other. Culture comes together to influence development - cults convey to children the beliefs and customs of their culture
What is Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory?
Views development within a set of nested, interacting systems
What are the interacting systems in the Ecological Systems theory?
Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem, and Chronosystem
What is the Continuity-Discontinuity issue?
Development is not perfectly predictable, nor completely flexible
What is the Nature-Nurture issue?
They interact with each other to encourage development. the major goal of child development research is to understand how genes and the environment the child is raised in interact to determine the child’s development.
What is the Active-passive issue?
The environment can only go so far when it comes to development. The child’s personality will then affect the environment around them
True or false: Parent child relationships are one-directional
False: They are bi-directional; the child influences their parents just as much as the parents influence their children
What are the 5 domains of development?
- Physical growth, 2. Cognition, 3. Language, 4. Personality, 5. Social Relationships
What is the Scientific method?
- Formulate a question, 2. Form a hypothesis, 3. Test the hypothesis, 4. Draw a conclusion
What are the goals of research?
Describe, Explain, Predict, Influence
What are the two types of systematic observation?
Naturalistic, structured
What is naturalistic observation?
The research observes children in their natural environment
What is structured observation?
The researcher creates an environment to elicit a reaction
What is observer bias?
When you interpret your data in a certain way. You look at information from your study and interpret in your own way to support your hypothesis, even if the data does not support it.
What is observer influence?
Children change how they act because they know they are being watched. You are a new person, your presence may change how they interact.
True or false: Measures should provide consistent results overtime and measure what they are meant to measure
True: Measures should be both valid and reliable
What is a negative correlation?
When researchers do not consider a third variable. Two things may change systematically, but there is a third variable that is the actual correlation
What is the correlation coefficient?
-1.0 to +1.0
What is quantitative research?
Studies with data, graphs, and math
Qualitative methods allow researchers to investigate children’s ______ and _______ about a topic of interest
thoughts; feelings
What is the problem with qualitative research?
You cannot predict future studies
What is a longitudinal study?
A study in which the same children are tested across a span of many years, you look at the same individuals over a span of time
What is a micro genetic study?
Children are repeatedly tested over a short period of time - i.e. a couple weeks or a few days
What is a cross-sectional study?
Children at different ages are tested in the same year
What is a longitudinal-sequential study?
Children at different ages are tested across several years
A meta analysis involves __________ to address a single issue
many different studies
What are the guidelines for ethical research in Canada?
- Seek to do research that benefits humanity.
- Minimize risks to research participants.
- Describe the research to potential participants.
- Avoid Deceiving.
- Keep results confidential or anonymous
- give a debriefing after.
