Introduction Flashcards
What are the main reasons to learn about child development?
Raising children - allows parents to be aware of dos and donuts
Choosing social policies - decisions about age restrictions etc and children’s testimony reliability
Understanding human nature - understand factors that determine our individual differences e.g Romanian adoption study
What are the historical foundations of the study of child development?
Early philosophers views such as Plato and Aristotle
Social reform movements such as improving working conditions for children
Darwins theory of evolution - studying children’s can lead to insights into human nature
The beginnings of research based theories - Freud and Watson
What are the enduring themes in child development?
Nature and nurture
Active child
Continuity vs discontinuity
Mechanisms of change
The sociocultural context
Individual differences
Research and children’s welfare
Nature vs nurture
Nature - genetic inheritance
Nurture - physical and social environments
How they interact together
Epigenetics: genes can be influenced by environment
The active child
They aid their own development
Toddlers talk when alone showing they are internally motivated
Fantasy play aids social development
Continuity vs discontinuity
Continuous- change occurs gradually in small increments
Discontinuous - change occurs in large occasional shifts - stage theories
Effortful attention
Voluntary control of ones emotions and thoughts e.g inhibiting impulses
Difficultly exerting this is associated with behavioural problems
Sociocultural context
The physical, social, economic and historical circumstances that make up any child’s environment
Socioeconomic status (SES)
A measure of social class based on income and education
Cumulative risk
The accumulation of disadvantages over years of development
What are the individual differences?
Genetic
Treatment by parents and others
Reactions to similar experiences influenced by interpretations (cognition)
Choices of environment (active child)
Reliability
The degree to which independent measurements of a given behaviour are consistent
Interrater reliability
The amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behaviour
Validity
The degree to which a test measures what it is intended
Internal v external validity
Internal: the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing
External: the degree to which results can be generalised beyond the particulars of the research
Clinical interview
A procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers the interviewee provides
Naturalistic vs structures observation
Natural: environment not controlled
Structured: present identical situation to each participant
Direction of causation problem
The concept that a correlation between two variables does not indicate which if either variable is the cause of the other
Third variable problem
The concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable
Cross sectional design
A research method in which participants of different ages are compared on a given behaviour or characteristic over a short period
Micro-genetic design
A method of study in which the same participants are studied repeatedly over a short period of time
