Chapters 1-7 Kail + Barnfield Key Words Flashcards
Baby Biographies
Darwin’s theory of selective evolution.
Wrote detailed systematic observations of individual children.
Often subjective, but still paved the way for objective, analytical research.
Applied developmental science
uses developmental research to promote healthy development, particularly for vulnerable children and families
Plato
believed that experience couldn’t not be the source of knowledge because human senses are too fallible.
Children are born with innate knowledge of many concrete objects and abstracts.
Aristotle
Denied innate knowledge;
Knowledge is rooted in perceptual experience;
Locke
The human infant is a tabula rasa - blank slate
Experience molds one into a unique individual
Parents should be strict and relax as the child gets older.
Supported by the Learning Perspective.
Rousseau
Newborns come with an innate sense of justice and morality;
Parents should be receptive to child’s needs.
Maturational Theory
Child development reflects a specific prearranged scheme or plan within the body
Ethological Theory
views development from an evolutionary perspective.
Many behaviours are adaptive and have survival value.
All animals are biologically programmed such that some kinds of learning only occur at certain ages (critical periods)
Critical period
The time when a specific type of learning can take place; before or after the critical period the same learning is difficult or impossible.
Supported by imprinting
Imprinting
Creating an emotional bond with the mother.
The first moving object a chick sees after hatching - they will follow anything
Psychodynamic Theory
Created by Freud using case hitories;
HOlds that development is largely determined by how well people resolve certain conflicts at different ages;
Three components of personality according to Freud
1) Id - a reservoir of primitive instincts and drives
2) Ego - practical, rational component of personality. Emerges in the first year of life.
3) Superego - the ‘moral agent’ in the child’s personality. Emerges during preschool yeras.
Psychosocial Theory - Erikson
Development comprises of stages, each defined by a unique crisis or challenge.
The earlier stages provide a foundation for the later stages.
Classical Conditioning
A previously neutral stimulus can become associated with a naturally occurring response and eventually come to elicit a similar response on its own.
Operant Conditioning
Consequence of a behaviour determines whether or not that behaviour is repeated in the future
Reinforcement
Punishment
Observational learning
AKA imitation
Children sometimes learn without reinforcement or punishment, by simply watching those around them
Social Cognitive Theory
Bobo doll
Example of direct observational learning and that observation doesn’t always lead to imitation
Children are more likely to imitate if they perceive the personal as smart, popular or talented.
Self-efficacy
Experience gives children a sense of self-efficacy - beliefs about their own abilities and talents.
This influences their behaviour.
Cognitive developmental perspective
How children think and how their thinking changes as they grow.
Children naturally try to make sense of the world.
Children are like little scientists - theories and revisions.
Piaget had a four-stage model about how children come to understand the world.
Culture
The knowledge, attitudes and behaviour associated with a group of people.
Contextual perspective
Vygotsky - learn your cultural skills.
Theory of ecological systems
Microsystem - consists of people and objects in the immediate environment;
Mesosystem - created by the connections among the microsystem;
Exosystem - social settings that a person may not experience first-hand but that still influence development;
Macrosystem - the subcultures and cultures in which the microsystem, mesosystem and exosystem are embedded;
These system all change over time, in a dimension known as the CHRONOSYSTEM
Continuity-vs-discontinuity issue
Early development is related to later development.
Continuity = if a child starts on a path, they continue that way
Discontinuity = previous way of being can’t predict the future way of being
It’s a mixture!
Nurture-nature issue
The roles of biology and environment in development
Active-passive child issue
Are children simply at the mercy of their own environment (passive child) or do they actively influence their own development through their unique individual characteristics (active child)?
Passive - Locke’s blank slate
Active - Rousseau’s natural unfolding that takes place within the child.
it goes both ways. Duh.
Parent-child relat is bidirectional.