Chapter 1 - Intro to Child Dev't Flashcards
What are some reasons for learning about child development? (3)
- raising children
- choosing social policies
- understanding human nature
What is a specific example of how studying child development has helped raise children?
studying ways to help children control their anger
What are the researched methods found to help children better control their anger?
- offering sympathy
- finding positive alternatives to express anger (turtle method)
What is a specific example of how studying child development has helped improve social policy?
Creating laws to help improve the quality of course testimonies given by children?
What are the researched methods fund to yield accurate court testimonies from children?
Avoiding asking leading questions to children and instead asking neutral questions
What is a specific example of how studying child development has helped improve our understanding of human nature?
studying how inadequate treatment of toddlers affects their development down the line
What specific research/ findings were there about the long-lasting effects of children raised in inadequate conditions?
- The longer a child is living in inadequate conditions, the longer lasting the effects of the abuse are on the child
- less likely to end up developing “normally”
List the enduring themes in child development.
1) Nature vs nurture
2) The Active Child
3) Continuity/ Discontinuity
4) Mechanisms of Development
5) Sociocultural Context
Explain the Nature vs Nurture theme in child development.
- nature = one’s genes
- nurture = environment
- nature and nurture almost always interact with each other to evoke change/ development
What is the heritability coefficient?
how much of the variation seen in a certain trait within a population can be attributed to genetic variation, as opposed to environment.
What does a heritability coefficient of 0.7 mean?
- 70% of the variability in the trait in a population is due to genetic differences among people
Explain the Active Child theme in child development.
- Investigates how children shape their own development
- this is done through how they control their environment
What are some ways the “Active Child” is seen in different stages of child development
Newborns:
- prefer things that make noise
- prefer their mother’s face
Toddlers:
- motivated to learn/ practice speech
- use self-speech to practice language
Young Children:
- internally motivated play
- dramatic and fantasy play
Older Children:
- use organized play to control personal and social development
Explain the Continuity/Discontinuity theme in child development.
- development can either be seen through the lense of being continuous or discontinuous
- the lense used to analyze development vastly influences the perspective of matter
Explain the Mechanisms of Development theme in child development.
- looks at how interactions of genome and environment determine what changes and when
What is effortful attention?
- ability to inhibit impulses which control emotions, focus, and attentions
- related to mechanism of development
- when do changes in attention happen?
Explain the Sociocultural Context theme in child development.
- looks at how sociocultural context influences child development
- context influences every aspect of development
What is reliability?
- measures how consistent independent measurements of a behavior are
What is interrater reliability?
- level of agreement between 2 different people’s observations of the same thing
What is test-test reliability?
- how similar a child’s performance is on two or more occasions
(reliably getting the same answer from a test)
What is validity?
how variables influence both the results of the research and the generalizability to the population at large.
What is internal validity?
- the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the intentionally manipulated variables
What is external validity?
how generalizable are results to people outside of the study
What are two methods used to study children?
interviews and observations
What are the two types of interviews?
structured and clinical
State and explain the two types of observation methods.
Naturalistic observation:
- observes behavior in an uncontrolled environment
Structured observation:
- observed behavior in controlled environment
Are correlation and causation the same thing?
no
What is correlation?
how variables are related to one another
What is positive vs negative correlation
Positive correlation:
- variables move in same direction
Negative correlation:
- variables move in opposite directions
What are some reasons for not knowing casual directions in correlational studies?
- the 3rd variable problem
- unknown direction of cause
What are some essential characteristics to define in experiential designs? (5)
1) random assignment of participants to groups
2) experimental control
3) inference about causes and effects allowed
4) operational definitions
5) control of confounding variables
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What are 4 types of sampling? Which 2 are bad to use?
1) random sampling
2) stratified sampling
3) volunteer sampling
4) opportunity sampling
- volunteer and opportunity sampling are bad sampling methods
