PSC 142

Question 1

What are the 13 critical questions?

Answer 1

1. How do biological and environmental influences affect social development? (nature vs nurture)
2. What role do children play in their own development? (transactional model of social development)
3. What is the appropriate unit for studying social development? (individual child vs social dyads)
4. Is development continuous or discontinuous? (depends on how you look at it)
5. Is social behavior the result of the situation or the child? (personality vs situational factors)
6. Is social development universal across cultures?
7. How does social development vary across historical eras?
8. Is social development related to other developmental domains?
9. How important are mothers for children’s social development?
10. Is there a single pathway of social development? (multifinality vs equifinality)
11. What influences how we judge children’s social behavior?
12. Do developmental psychologists “own” social development?
13. Is social development focused on only basic research or on applied and policy relevant concerns as well?

Question 2

History of social development

Answer 2

• social development is a recent field
• children used to be considered little adults, not treated specially
• forced to labor
• charles darwin first person to study children’s development in the 1800s, followed by g. stanley hall (questionnaires), john b. watson (conditioning and learning), sigmund freud (biologically oriented view), arnold gesell (socially oriented view, contrary to freud)
• competing views of social development, no focus on right or wrong

Question 3

Psychodynamic perspective

Answer 3

• id - instinctive drives based on pleasure principle
• ego - rational component of brain, tries to satisfy the id
• superego - how the child internalizes social/societal mores and develops a conscious
• oedipus complex - boys become attracted to their mother and jealous of their father
• electra complex - girls blame their mothers for their lack of a penis and focus their sexual feelings on their mother
• 5 stages
• • oral stage (0-1)
• • anal stage (1-3)
• • phallic stage (3-6)
• • latency stage (6-12)
• • genital stage (12-20)

Question 4

Traditional learning

Answer 4

• classical conditioning - learning that results by association of one stimulus with another
• operant conditioning - learning based on rewards and punishment
• drive reduction theory - idea that learning results only if it is accompanied with the reduction of a basic drive such as hunger or thirst

Question 5

Cognitive social learning

Answer 5

• definition - learning by observing and imitating others
• four factors determine how well children learn by observing - attention (they are more likely to pay attention if they have have positive relationship with model or don’t know what to do), retention (how well they remember it), reproduction (if it is within their abilities), motivation (incentive to learn)
• reciprocal determination - child and model affect each other in reciprocal relationship by producing responses in each other
• self-efficacy - perceiving yourself as confident; ppl high in self efficacy see themselves as capable of solving social problems and are willing to try
• self-efficacy comes from five sources: direct experience from previous successful attempts, watching people like them succeeding at similar tasks, from parents or peers, individual differences, and from a group (collective efficacy)

Question 6

Pros and cons of psychodynamic perspective

Answer 6

• influential, freud was first to study and point out many aspects of psychology (aggression, gender roles, morality, attachment, focus on early childhood as influential on later behavior)
• difficult to test empirically
• use of retrospective data collecting (memories, dreams, etc) was unreliable and biased results
• freud himself was biased in what he chose to focus on
• focus on child sexuality was too narrow and exaggerated (particularly gender roles)

Question 7

Pros and cons of traditional learning

Answer 7

• can explain some aspects of child development (emotion, behavior modification)
• desensitization can be used to overcome phobias
• not enough to explain everything about child development
• not sensitive to changes as the child grows older, conditioning is no longer enough and reasoning and problem solving is more effective
• neglects biological / individual differences

Question 8

Pros and cons of cognitive social learning

Answer 8

Strengths
Advanced understanding of several areas of social development, especially aggression and self-control
Practical applications
TV effects, modeling therapies to modify behavior (e.g., fear reduction)
Strong empirical evidence
Weaknesses
Not very developmental in scope
Minimal attention to individual differences
Questionable generalizability to real-world contexts

Question 9

social information processing

Answer 9

• definition - using computer processing as a metaphor for the way people think; An explanation of a person’s social behavior in terms of his or her assessment and evaluation of the social situation as a guide in deciding on a course of social action

Question 10

pros and cons of social information processing

Answer 10

Strengths
Emphasis on links between cognition and social behavior
Clear specifications of the social decision making steps in solving social problems
Weaknesses
Not clear how cognitive-social behavior links change with age
Not enough attention to emotion
Too much emphasis on cognitive processes as deliberate vs. impulsive or automatic

Question 11

Accommodation

Answer 11

from Piaget; Modifying an existing schema to fit a new experience.

Question 12

Assimilation

Answer 12

from Piaget; Applying an existing schema to a new experience.

Question 13

Critical period

Answer 13

Important in Ethological theory (a Biological perspective that emphasizes the important role of biological factors); a specific time in an organism’s development during which external factors have a unique and irreversible impact.

Question 14

Equifinality

Answer 14

Where children follow very different paths to reach the same developmental end point

Question 15

Generativity

Answer 15

from Erikson psychosocial theory (built on Freud but unlike Freud extended into adulthood); A concern for people besides oneself, especially a desire to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation.

Question 16

Multifinality

Answer 16

Divergence of developmental paths, in which two individuals start out similarly and end up at very different points

Question 17

Object permanence

Answer 17

from Piaget; The realization in infancy that objects and people do not cease to exist when they are no longer visible.

Question 18

Social dyad

Answer 18

A unit of studying social development, important in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory; A pair of social partners, such as friends, parent and child, or marital partners.

Question 19

Systems

Answer 19

from Systems-Theory Perspective; Developmental contexts made up of interacting parts or components, for example, a family.

Question 20

Zone of proximal development

Answer 20

from Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory; The difference between children’s level of performance while working alone and while working with more experienced partners.

Question 21

Attrition

Answer 21

Loss of participants in a longitudinal study due to their unwillingness or unavailability to participate in subsequent assessments.

Question 22

Construct

Answer 22

An idea or concept, especially a complex one such as aggression or love.

Question 23

Effect size

Answer 23

An overall estimate of the magnitude of the difference between experimental and control groups or the strength of associations between factors in correlational studies. More important in meta analyses?

Question 24

Habituation

Answer 24

An individual reacts with less and less intensity to a repeatedly presented stimulus until he or she responds only faintly or not at all.

Question 25

Operationalization

Answer 25

Defining a concept so that it is observable and measurable.

Question 26

Prospective

Answer 26

Measurement that occurs while experiences are occurring (in other words, measuring experiences while they unfold) rather than after they occurred (i.e., via retrospective measurement).

Question 27

IV’s, DV’s

Answer 27

IV - Independent Variable, The factor that researchers deliberately manipulate in an experiment.
DV - Dependent Variable, The factor that researchers expect to change as a function of change in the independent variable.

Question 28

Types of studies

Answer 28

• Correlational method
• Experimental method
• Case study - A form of research in which investigators study an individual person or group intensely.
• Field experiment - An experiment in which researchers deliberately create a change in a real‐world setting and then measure the outcome of their manipulation.
• Intervention - A program provided to improve a situation or relieve psychological illness or distress.
• Natural experiment - An experiment in which researchers measure the results of events that occur naturally in the real world.
• Cross-sectional design - A research design in which researchers compare groups of individuals of different age levels at approximately the same point in time.
• Longitudinal design - A study in which investigators follow the same people over a period of time, observing them repeatedly.
• Cross-sequential design - A way of studying change over time that combines features of both cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs, for example selecting groups of individuals at different ages and following them through time.
• National survey
• Meta-analysis - A statistical technique that allows the researcher to summarize the results of many studies on a particular topic and to draw conclusions about the size and replicability of observed differences or associations.

Question 29

Autism

Answer 29

An umbrella term for a family of similar disorders, it is known to be a troubling condition that begins in childhood, lasts a lifetime, and disrupts a person’s social and communication skills. Autistic children can appear to lack interest in other people; sometimes they even seem to be averse to human contact. They tend to avoid eye contact and fail to modulate social interactions. Absent early intensive intervention, they do not develop normal social attachments or express empathy in social relations. Many fail to develop friendships and become social isolates.

Question 30

Corpus Callosum

Answer 30

The band of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain (the left and right hemispheres). The left and right hemispheres are anatomically different and control different functions but there is a great deal of cross-wiring between them, done by the corpus callosum. This allows the other half of the brain to take over some functions in the case of damage to one half.

Question 31

Dizygotic/monozygotic

Answer 31

Dizygotic - Fraternal twins from two different eggs, fertilized by two different sperm, producing two different zygotes.
Monozygotic - Identical twins created when a single zygote splits in half and each half becomes a distinct embryo with nearly the same genes; both embryos come from one zygote.

Question 32

Mirror neurons

Answer 32

Key to the social brain; A nerve cell that fires both when a person acts and when a person observes the same action performed by someone else, as if the observer himself or herself were acting.

Question 33

Synapses

Answer 33

The connections between neurons; A specialized site of intercellular communication that exchanges information between nerve cells, usually by means of a chemical neurotransmitter.

Question 34

Synaptogenesis

Answer 34

The forming of synapses that begins early in prenatal life, as soon as neurons appear, until there are more synapses than neurons.

Question 35

Genes/alleles

Answer 35

Genes - A portion of DNA located at a particular site on a chromosome and coding for the production of a specific type of protein.
Alleles - An alternative form of a gene; typically, a gene has two alleles, one inherited from the offspring’s mother and one from the father.
** Homozygous - the two alleles inherited from both parents are the same
** Heterozygous - the two alleles are different

Question 36

Glial cells/myelination

Answer 36

Glial cells - A cell that supports, protects, and repairs neurons. They also provide structural support to the neurons, regulate their nutrients, and repair neural tissue.
Myelination - The process by which glial cells encase neurons in sheaths of the fatty substance myelin. Myelination makes neurons more efficient in transmitting information and occurs mainly in the first two years, but continues to some extent into adulthood.

Question 37

Attachment

Answer 37

A strong emotional bond that forms between infant and caregiver in the second half of the child’s first year.

Question 38

Imprinting

Answer 38

Birds and other infrahuman animals develop a preference for and follow the person or object to which they are first exposed during a brief, critical period after birth.

Question 39

Types of attachment

Answer 39

Secure attachment - Babies are confident about the parent’s availability, responsiveness, and reliability to simultaneously serve as a “secure base” of exploration and as a “safe haven” when she or he is distressed. They are able to explore novel environments, may or may not be disturbed by brief separations from their mother, and are efficiently comforted by her when she returns.
Insecure-avoidant attachment - Babies seem not to be bothered by their mother’s brief absences but specifically avoid her when she returns, sometimes becoming visibly upset.
Insecure-ambivalent attachment - Babies tend to become very upset at the departure of their mother and exhibit inconsistent behavior on the mother’s return, first seeking contact, and then pushing their mother away. (This is sometimes referred to as insecure‐resistant or anxious‐ambivalent attachment.)
Insecure-disorganized attachment - Babies seem disorganized and disoriented when reunited with their mother after a brief separation. They look dazed, freeze in the middle of their movements, or engage in repetitive behaviors, such as rocking. These children seem to be apprehensive and fearful of their attachment figure and are unable to cope with distress in a consistent and organized way even though their mother is available.

Question 40

Strange Situation

Answer 40

A research procedure in which parent and child are separated and reunited so that investigators can assess the nature and quality of the parent–infant attachment relationship.

Question 41

Secure base

Answer 41

A starting point from which the infant can venture forth to explore the world and a haven of safety to which he or she can return in times of danger or stress.

[alt def. - The flip side of the safe haven function of attachment, which reflects the fact that primary caregivers represent a safety zone the infant can retreat to for comfort and reassurance when stressed or frightened, the secure base function of attachment is the idea that secure attachments to primary caregivers support infants’ confident exploration of the environment.]

Question 42

History of social development

Answer 42

Charles Darwin (1872)
Study of emotion in children
Observing children
G. Stanley Hall (1904)
Use of questionnaires for children’s thoughts, activities and attitudes
Started codifying it
John B. Watson’s (1913) behaviorally oriented theory
Conditioning of social and emotional behavior
Conditioned fear in babies
Freud’s (1905, 1910) biologically inspired theory
Social development a product of how basic drives were handled at different ages causing fixations
Arnold Gesell’s (1928) maturational theory
How skills unfold through time

Question 43

cognitive development

Answer 43

Piaget’s stages
Stage
Age range
Sensorimotor
0-2 years
Preoperational
2-7 years
Concrete operations
7-12 years
Formal operations
>12 years

Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory
Strengths
Links between cognition and social reactions
Object permanence
The realization in infancy that objects and people do not cease to exist when they are no longer visible
Egocentrism
Tending to view the world from one’s own perspective and to have difficulty seeing things from another’s viewpoint
Weaknesses
Not enough acknowledgement of how children’s interactions with others (vs. objects in the environment) contributes to development
Neglect of social, emotional, and cultural influences on development
Stage theory criticized

Question 44

social cognitive domain

Answer 44

Cognitive Developmental Perspectives Social Cognitive Domain Theory
Social cognitive domain perspective
Domain specificity
Talks about Piaget’s ideas in different domains such as peer relationships & moral judgments
Processes of development are different for different types of behavior, for example, moral judgments, manners, and peer relationships. This notion of domain specificity is a challenge to Piaget’s theory, which suggested that all domains of knowledge are governed by the same cognitive processes and principles

Question 45

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural

Answer 45

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
Theory that development emerges from interactions with more skilled people and the institutions and tools provided by the culture
(Brought in the idea of) Principles of cultural influence
Zone of Proximal Development
The difference between children’s level of performance while working alone and while working with more experienced partners
Evaluation of Vygotsky’s Theory
Strengths
Focused on assessing child potential via the ZPD
Offered new perspective on ways to teach children
Increased focus on cultural variation and historical influence
Weaknesses
Not clear how interactions between partners shift over the course of development
Is interacting with a 4 year old and 7 year old different?
Not clear how other areas of development contribute to the types of contexts that are made available to children
Measurement of ZPD is difficult
How do we measure it?

Question 46

systems perspective

Answer 46

Systems approach
Describes how children’s development is affected by the interacting components that form one of these systems as well by single factors within the system
Aims
To discover the levels or organization in social interactions and relationships and how these levels or contexts of social experience are related to each other and, in turn, promote children’s social development

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory
Microsystem
The context in which children interact with the people and institutions closest to them
System where the child is the center. Examples include parents, family, peers, schools, religious institutions. Has individual impacts on the child
Mesosystem
Interrelations among the components of the microsystem
For example: how the school interacts with the child’s family
Exosystem
Collection of settings that impinge on a child’s development but in which the child does not play a direct role
Friends of family, mass media, neighbors, extended family, local law enforcement, etc
Macrosystem
System that surrounds the microsystem, mesosystem and exosystem representing the values, ideologies and laws of the society or culture
Very wide net and varies widely from place to place aka in Europe vs in the US
Chronosystem
Time based dimension that can alter the operation of all other systems in Bronfenbrenner’s model, from the microsystem through the macrosystem
What it’s like being a kid now vs being a kid ten years ago
The different systems a child works with
Evaluations of Bronfenbrenner’s Theory
Strengths
Attention to broad range of influential contexts
Provides a bridge to other disciplines
For example bringing in sociology such as the focus on family
Weaknesses
Useful descriptive guide but does not explain processes
Very descriptive but does not explain why it is happening
Does not explain how different contexts have different influences across development

Question 47

biological perspective

Answer 47

Ethological theory
Theory that Behavior must be viewed in a particular context and as having adaptive or survival value
If interested in children, need to understand children’s needs and the setting of their behavior
How a child acts at school vs with friends vs with family might be different
Critical period
A specific time in an organism’s development during which external factors have a unique and irreversible impact
Lots of important work done with animals
Example: Lorenz’s study on geese and “imprinting”
For birds, the first living thing that a bird sees is that bird’s “mom”
Evaluation of Ethological Theory
Strengths
Several significant discoveries regarding social development based on animal research
E.g. emotional expression, attachment, group formation
Expressions have different meanings for different organisms, aka smiling for humans vs for gorillas
Methods
Studying organisms in natural environment
Weaknesses
Largely descriptive
Narrowly defined “critical” period with regards to human development
What is a “critical period”?
Is there a critical period for language acquisition? Story of Genie

Biological Perspectives
Evolutionary Developmental Theory
Focus on behaviors that ensured past survival of the species
The main questions are how and when in the course of childhood these adaptive capabilities emerge
Central principle
Parents give their children attention and resources to ensure the passage of their genes through the next generation
Evaluation of Evolutionary Developmental Theory
Strengths
Brings attention to adaptive value of several behaviors observed in childhood
Weaknesses
Limited relevance for addressing issues associated with rapid changes, such as new technological advances or sudden social shifts
No longer relevant in civilized society
Post hoc explanations
After the fact explanations
Can’t be used to predict the future, it’s used to make guesses about the past that can’t really be wrong
Other Biological Perspectives
Life History Theory
An application of evolutionary developmental theory
Suggests schedule of key events over life course is influenced by natural selection to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring
But nowadays, it is difficult to have large amounts of children
Maximize successful passing on of organism’s genes
Different strategies: smaller amount of offspring but higher investment vs larger amount of offspring but lower investment in each one
Key events include age of sexual maturity and first reproduction, number of offspring produced, and level of parental investment in children
His study showed that female children with divorced parents and lived with a stepfather went through menarche faster, perhaps to leave the house faster
Human Behavior Genetics
Focuses on relative contributions of genes and environments to individual differences in human behavior using statistical estimation
Understanding how environment affects expression of genetics
Understanding how genes work together
Evaluations
Strengths
Provided important corrective to emphasis on environmental causes of behavior
Modern behavior geneticists acknowledge inputs from many sources
Weaknesses
Need more specific measure of environment

Question 48

life span theory

Answer 48

Based on the notion that people are open to changes across their lives
Change results from
Normative events
Puberty, (cultural normative events such as) high school, graduation
Non-normative events
Early parent death
Not something that happens to everyone but has a huge effect
Historical events
Age cohorts
People who were born in the same time period and share historical experiences
Someone born in 2016 has different experience than someone born earlier or later
Evaluation of Lifespan Perspective
Strengths
Emphasis on development as a life-long process
Versus just focusing on life development up to the age of 20
Emphasis on effect of historical events
Examines changes in adults’ lives that can affect children’s development
Weaknesses
Too much emphasis on older populations to influence the study of child social development

Question 49

biological preparedness: how?

Answer 49

Biological rhythms (e.g., sleep-wake cycle) to social rhythms
Acquisition of biological regulatory skills leads to interactional synchrony
Mother and infant show a predictable degree of responsiveness to each others signals
Development of biological rhythms that help babies deal with the time-based nature of social interaction
Visual preparation for social interaction
Babies attracted to visual social stimuli
Faces, especially the eyes
Brain region specifically attuned to faces
1 month old babies spend more time finding the borders of the face while 2 month olds spend more time looking at the eyes and mouth. The scanning pattern of the two month old is more organized around the center of the face
Auditory preparedness for social interaction
Well developed before birth
EX: The Cat in the Hat study
Babies that heard the book read pre-birth preferred it to other books after birth
Prefer high pitch and exaggerated contours
Hi-swee-eet-ee
Adults speak in shorter sentences and more slowly, in “baby talk”
Babies become attuned to native language by 9 months of age
Smell, taste and touch
Newborns can discriminate among different odors and tastes and prefer those that adults also find pleasant
They prefer mother’s smell
This helps facilitate the development of relationship
Sense of touch develops early
Touch has a soothing effect
When babies are born, skin to skin contact with the mother is initiated as soon as possible.
Beyond faces and voices: Primed to be a social partner
Infants prefer face-to-face play to other activities
Capable of regulating interactions with gaze
If it is too stimulating, infants will turn away, cry or distract themselves
Some infant-parent dyads have difficulty
EX: Cocaine exposed infants, depressed mothers
Still face experiments: When mothers are asked to keep a still, placid face, babies first try to garner attention, and then become withdrawn

Question 50

biological preparedness: why?

Answer 50

Evolutionary theory
Preparedness is adaptive and useful for ensuring the survival of the human infant, and more generally, the species
Infants are biologically “programmed” for social interactions that ensure that their needs are met
Modern evolutionary theorists that assume that development depends on being born into and reared in species-typical environment that supports adaptive behaviors such as the ability to send, receive and understand social messages

Question 51

neurological basis of social development

Answer 51

The brain
Cerebrum — the two connected hemispheres of the brain
Largest part of the human brain
Allows for attributes that make us human (e.g., speech, self-awareness
Cerebral cortex — the covering layer of the cerebrum, which contains the cells that control specific functions such as seeing, hearing, moving and thinking
The cortex is divided into four lobes — frontal, temporal, occipital and parietal — and specific areas within the lobes tend to specialize in particular functions