theories of development

Question 1

what areas does understanding child development contribute to

Answer 1

education: helps parents and educational settings raise children effectively
social policy: children’s rights, lead society to adopt policies into child wellbeing

Question 2

chronology of child development

Answer 2

1. prenatal period: conception to birth
2. infancy: birth to 18 months
3. toddlerhood: 18 months-3 years
4. preschool period: (young children) 3-5 years
5. middle childhood: (older children) 6-12 years
6. adolescence: 12-20 years (puberty to independence from parents)

Question 3

what is development

Answer 3

systematic changes and continuities that individuals display over the course of their lives
-continuous and cumulative process
-holistic
-shows plasticity
-dependent on historical and cultural context

Question 4

what are the two major processes in development

Answer 4

maturation: developmental changes in body (biological), behaviour results from ageing process e.g babies sit up at 6 months ish

learning: developmental change in behaviour resulting from experience or practice

Question 5

what is normative development

Answer 5

typical patterns of development seen across most individuals

Question 6

individuals changes/development

Answer 6

individual variations in the rate, extent or direction of development that is unique to the individual

Question 7

issues in developmental psychology

Answer 7

-nature vs nurture debate
-active vs passive (is the individual active or passive in their learning)
-stability vs change
-is it a continuous process or do we learn through a series of leaps (quantitative vs qualitative differences)

Question 8

who founded baby biographies in developmental psych

Answer 8

Darwin
-looked at development of own children
-Hall 1900 distributed questionnaires to large samples of children aiming to understand children’s minds

Question 9

who founded psychoanalysis in developmental psych

Answer 9

Freud
-unconscious drives and motives that stem from early life experiences

Question 10

who founded the psychosocial theory in developmental psych

Answer 10

Erikson
-cultural demands
-8 stages of major conflicts that must be resolved e.g trust, autonomy, initiative, industry etc

Question 11

behaviourism and learning

Answer 11

-classical conditioning: skinner and pavlov
-operant cond: watson and rayner, reinforcement
-SLT: bandura, imitation, vicarious reinforcement etc

Question 12

cognitive theory in developmental psych

Answer 12

Piaget
-4 stages of cog development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational

Vygotsky
-sociocultural, cog growth as socially mediated process, influenced by culture
-zone of proximal development and scaffolding
-information processing: computer model

Question 13

evolutionary theory

Answer 13

-Lorenz: contribution of human evolution to human psych
-Bronfenbrenner’s approach:
1.microsystem: school, family, peers (immediate environment)
2.mesosystem: other connections interactions in microsystem
3.exosystem: influential settings e.g legal services/social services
4.macrosystem: culture and subcultural ideas
5.chronosystem: passage of time