TEST 1 Flashcards
Developmental psychology
the scientific study of the mental and behavioral changes in individuals as they mature
five reasons for learning about child development
Raising children (individual)
Choosing social policies (societal)
Education
Child Health & Welfare
Understanding Human Nature
How does studying child development relate to raising children
Knowledge could help parents, teachers, professional caretakers, etc.
What kinds of practices should we use or avoid?
examples: optimal/risky influences (e.g., TV/screen time?)
practical advice (e.g., managing problem behaviors)
i.e. spanking to manage anger:
in Canada, prevalence rate for spanking
25%
Studies show: more often spanked at age 4 or 5 =
more acting with inappropriate behaviour in grade 3 (held true beyond other factors)
Effective alternatives to spanking which lead to better outcomes (4)
Expressing sympathy and acknowledging emotions
Finding positive alternatives (distraction)
Recognizing and labeling emotions
Self-control strategies (tools)
E.g. turtle technique - remove yourself, retreat into turtle shell, think/calm, then reemerge from shell (notice, understand, manage)
effects of praise: what is the difference between telling a child:
“You are a good drawer”
“You did a good job on that drawing”
“You are a good drawer”
Refers to ability
Study showed this feedback led to distress when later criticized - felt sad, wanted to avoid drawing, couldn’t generate strategies to fix
“You did a good job on that drawing”
Refers to performance
Study showed this feedback led to good reactions when later criticized
How does studying child development relate to social policies - What are some examples?
violent video games (increase aggressive behaviors?)
hold back children who do poorly or promote them to the next grade to be with their peers?
how much should preschoolers’ courtroom testimonies be trusted?
In 2012, __% of victims of sexual offences in Canada were 11 years of age or younger
40
Are children reliable witnesses? ____! (age 3-5) UNLESS…which 3 things?
YES! (age 3-5) UNLESS…
Asked leading questions - tend to believe what adult believes - therefore, interviewers shouldn’t be given prior knowledge of the case
Asked repeated questions - begin to believe adult wants a different answer and so they change answers
Given props (e.g. dolls) - this is NOT helpful and may make more inaccurate claims because they don’t understand the symbolism of the doll (that they represent their body or the body of another person) - also, dolls are toys which are used for pretend play
What is an example of how researching child development relates to education?
Applications of research to enhance learning
E.g., no longer using circles to represent fractions - using lines or bars instead
What are some examples of how researching child development relates to child health and welfare?
Better diagnosis & treatment of developmental problems
examples: visual impairment, language delay, autism spectrum disorder, etc.
Complex ways to diagnose those who can’t communicate
Resting on our ability to get into a child’s mind
How does studying child development relate to understanding human nature?
How are we the same or different from other animals?
What makes people different from one another?
Where do our abilities come from?
What makes us who we are?
Addressing the questions of whether differences occur because of biology or environment
Nativism/Nativists believe that…
infants have substantial innate knowledge of evolutionarily important domains (e.g., physical objects, people)
Famous early nativist philosopher
Plato
Empiricists believed that…
infants possess general learning mechanisms that allow them to learn quickly, but lack the specialized capabilities nativists attribute
Famous early empiricist philosopher
Aristotle
When do differences emerge between male and female infants? Example
E.g., study of 36 hour old infants:
Girls looked longer at a woman’s face (more social)
Boys looked longer at the mobile of random parts of the face (more mechanical)
What are the 6 Enduring Themes of Child Development
Nature & Nurture
Active Child
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Mechanisms of Change
Sociocultural Context
Individual Differences
Early philosophers of the nature/nurture debate:
Nature - Plato
Experience - Aristotle and later, John Locke (tabula rasa)
Nature/nurture is not really either/or - current question is what?
more about how they come together across time - All human characteristics are created through interactions of genes and environment.
Explain the nature/nurture question in relation to schizophrenia
Nature - more likely to have if a parent has (inherited biologically)
Nurture - more likely to have if exposed to a troubled home
Studies of adopted children show that the condition is most likely to occur if both the above nature and nurture situations occur
What do we mean by the Active Child theme?
How do children play an active role in their own development?
How are children active in their own development?
- shape their own development
- are both passive and active (what they’re learning and how)
Preferences to attend to certain things (selective attention):
- Moving objects preferred over Other objects
- People preferred over Objects
- Caregivers preferred over Others
Motivated to learn
- little “experimenters” (e.g., dropping food tests - figuring out physical rules and social rules)
- play (role-playing)
Actively select their own environment - choosing friends, activities, clothes, toys, decorations, etc.
Continuity theories are related to what kind of change?
Quantitative change
changes with age occur gradually, in small increments
development occurs skill by skill and task by task
The human is not changing fundamentally
Stage theories are related to what kind of change?
Qualitative change
changes with age are sudden/quick large shifts
at each stage, a coherent way of thinking and experiencing the world
development is global and discontinuous (fundamental changes)
What are some examples of discontinuous theories?
Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson’s theories
Is development fundamentally more continuous or discontinuous?
Depends on:
- How you look at it
- How often you look at it
- What aspect of development you’re studying
E.g., height looks continuous but skills look discontinuous when tracked on a graph
What question does the theme Mechanisms of Change address?
How & Why does change occur?
What are the mechanisms of change?
Maturation – biological change that occurs on its own
- e.g., frontal lobes & self-control; puberty, brain development
Learning (experience-based cognitive change) – exposure to information
e.g., insight, creativity, problem solving
How does the sociocultural context influence development? (3)
We all have different circumstances:
physical environment
SES
Social environment
What is the physical environment and its effect on development?
urban vs. rural, neighborhood, house, daycare, school, etc.
Economic (resources) = national wealth, societal wealth, family/individual wealth - shapes the type of opportunities and exposure to skills
What is SES and its effect on development?
measure of social class based on income and education - food, daycare, school
What is the social environment and its effect on development?
parents, siblings, other family members, teachers, friends, peers, etc.
Cultural traditions = language, values, attitudes/beliefs, laws, political structure, etc.
Illustrates the need for cross-cultural research - not just conducted on WEIRD populations
What question does the theme of Individual Differences address?
How do children become so different from one another? E.g., Even siblings can be very different
How do children become so different from one another? (4)
Feedback loop created between:
Genetic differences
Different reactions to similar experiences
Treatment by others
Choice of environments
Important to understand how early differences emerge in order to understand…
where they come from
Conception is…
Union of a sperm and an egg (gametes, germ cells)
gametes/germ cells each contain…
23 chromosomes
come together to form 46 chromosomes (23 pairs)
A fertilized egg is called a…
it contains…
Zygote = 46 chromosomes
The zygote becomes what? When does this happen?
Embryo (3rd- 8th week)
Fetus (9th week - birth)
Early beliefs about prenatal development pertained to what concept?
Preformationism - Idea that there was a tiny preformed human inside the egg or the sperm - the baby is just getting bigger
What kind of theory was preformationism?
(continuous theory) - quantitative change
The internal debate among preformationists was what?
Spermists vs Ovists - arguing whether the tiny preformed baby was in the sperm or in the egg
Current beliefs about prenatal development are based on…
qualitative change
What did Aristotle call qualitative change in prenatal development? How did he discover this?
epigenesis - new structures and functions emerge during development - Aristotle opened up chicken eggs to see the development process
In prenatal development, the first stage in many species looks…
pretty similar and then differentiates through cells multiplying - structures and functions emerge
What are the four stages of cells in prenatal development?
Cell division – mitosis
Cell migration
Cell differentiation
Cell death – apoptosis
What is mitosis? When does it begin?
cell division - zygote splits into two equal parts - and then splits again over and over
begins 12 hours after fertilization and continues throughout fetal development
What is an example of cell migration?
embryonic brain cells (created deep inside the brain and travel to the outer layers of the cortex)
What is cell differentiation?
cells begin to specialize, fulfilling the needs of separate bodily structures and functions
initially all the cells are interchangeable and can become more than 200 different types of cells - start to specialize
How do the cells know what type of cell to become?
Location
the development of the cells is influenced by the location and the cells around it - research with frog embryos - took cells from a region of the frog embryo that would normally develop into an eye - grafted onto cells which would become stomach - those cells became stomach - the cells hadn’t yet specialized and were influenced by the cells around it (cells have to be moved early enough, before specialization occurs) - when cells were moved later in development, the cells still became eye cells on the stomach
What is apoptosis? What is an example?
selective death of certain cells as they are no longer needed
e.g., when human hands are forming, the webbing between the fingers dies so that fingers can be separated
What is the blastocyst? What do the outside and inside become?
fertilized egg containing a rapidly dividing ball of cells - outside will become cells that nourish and protect, inside will become embryo
What is the embryoblast?
bulge on one side that takes form on the 4th day- inner cell mass - this is where mono twins can form
monozygotic twins
identical
inner cell splits in half
have 100% same genes
dizygotic twins
fraternal
2 eggs & 2 sperm
- only 50% genetically similar
(no more alike than siblings)
fraternal twins can be fathered by two different men
The inner cell mass (embryoblast) becomes what? What does it develop?
cell mass becomes embryo and then develops into three layers that have different/distinct functions
once the three layers are formed, there is a U-shaped tube that forms (neural tube)
After the first week, what 3 things happen to the blastocyst?
it will attach to uterine lining
become dependent on mother
cells start differentiating
What does the top of the neural tube become?
What does the bottom become?
top = brain
bottom = spinal cord