Historic Background Flashcards
What is development?
all physical and psychological changes undergone during the lifetime.
What is developmental psychology?
interdisciplinary field of study devoted to understanding human growth throughout life
What is Nature and what does it propose?
Hereditary information received from parents at conception. It proposes a form of stability in development that environmental factors are not likely to be influential as opposed to genetic information.
What is Nurture and what does it proposes?
Surrounding physical and social forces influences before and after birth. It proposes what is known as plasticity. Our environment shapes us continually - we are flexible to change.
What is Continuous Development? As opposed to Discontinuous Development?
In continuous development, it is process of gradually upgrading the same type of skills present from the start whereas in discontinuous development, it is context-dependent process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world suddenly emerge at specific times.
How can you recognize a discontinuous theory from a continuous theory in researchers?
Discontinuous development is often represented by milestones in researchers.
Is everyone on the same developmental processes or everyone has a distinct developmental process? What is the current view about this?
People have a distinct developmental process where environmental factors count heavily in the development. The current view on this is that both genetics and environmental factors play a role in development.
What are the 4 main assumptions in Development?
1.Lifelong development with changes in physical, cognitive, social-emotional areas
2.Development is multidirectional & multidimensional
3.Development is plastic at all ages
Resilience
4.Development is influenced by multiple interacting forces
Age-graded influence
History-graded influence
How were children treated prior to the 17th century?
Poor treatment of children; child labor and maltreatment. There was a high poverty and high mortality
During the 17th and 18th century, there was a scientific revolution. How were children affected by this scientific revolution and who were the scientists who changed the population’s view of children?
There was John Locke who said that children were a blank slate - tabula rasa - as opposed to coming into the world with innate knowledge. Jean-Jacques Rousseau then said that children were born with an innate innocence which contradicted the view that children were thought as “mini-adults”.
From nature, to men to things.
How was Darwin involved in the developmental field?
He kept “baby biographies” which were recordings of the development of his own children and acknowledged that children had different developmental courses.
How did Stanley Hall and Arnold Gesell changed the field of development of children?
They first defined development as genetically determined maturation processes unfolding automatically through behavioral observations and questionnaires of large # of individuals. Then they came up with “age norms” which included the first attempt at separating teenagers from children and adults - they termed it “storm and stress”.
What did Alfred Binet do? What did he want?
Binet wanted to emphasizes individual difference as opposed to other theorists who emphasized the universality of development. He focused mostly on the mental abilities of children to which he developed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale to predict school achievement vs. learning problems. It is still used today.
Freud - the lil’ coked up bitch
anything to do with his psychosexual theory and the states of awareness.
What is the theory of Erik Erikson? Who is he?
His theory is Psychosocial theory where human development is a product of interaction between individual’s needs, abilities, societal expectations and demands. He developed the first developmental table that included adulthood and late adulthood. He agreed with the ego but didn’t agree much with the psychosexual basis of Freud’s theory. He’s considered to be the father of Lifespan development.
