PSYC 2700 Lecture 1 Outline of Current LectureI. Centuries of ChildhoodII. Methods of Research in Child DevelopmentIII. Important Early InvestigatorsCurrent LectureI. Centuries of Childhooda. The changing views on children over time.b. Medieval view: viewed the child as an “ill-formed adult at the edges of society.”i. Children previously thought of as small adults.c. Infant and childhood mortality rates were horrific. Only in the last ten years have the numbers in this country gone significantly down.i. One reason people did not focus much on children was because they often did not survive.d. Influence of the church: added increased focus in the previous millennium of children having a soul and having the need to be churched.e. In the 1600/1700’s a shift occurs where scholars begin focusing more on children’s education.II. Methods of Research in Child Developmenta. Longitudinal- to follow a population of children over time. b. Disadvantage: time consuming, families move, families stop participating in study, participants die, it is expensive to follow participants for such a long time.i. Advantage: you see the course of development, how things unfold, enable predictions inother cases similar to what you are studying.c. Cross-sectional- test a pool of participants just one time.i. Disadvantage: Cannot assume that one test predicts certain future behaviors.d. Longitudinal-Sequential (a.k.a. Short-term Longitudinal)- want to study children of overlapping groups of ages (ex. ages 2-4 & 3-5) for a shorter time such as two or three years. i. Essentially you have a series of short term, overlapping longitudinal studies. e. Case studies- these are not really experimental, but often investigators are curious about children with atypical cases so they follow them for long periods of time. III. Important Early investigatorsa. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)- did some of the very early in depth observation of children’s development. He took detailed notes on the development of his son, William (a.k.a. Dobby). i. He was stunned by the abilities displayed by his son at such a young age.ii. John Bowly was one of the leaders in attachment theory. He also wrote a biography of Charles Darwin, realizing that Darwin’s studies of William Darwin were some of the best analysis he had seen. iii. Darwin also begins to look at the course of child development and compares it with the development of non-human primates.b. Alfred Binet (1857-1911)- was a lawyer who assed children’s cognitive abilities and how those abilities developed over time. These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.i. He was the pioneer of IQ tests. ii. He came up with the idea that depending on the age of children there are different mental and cognitive skills which will unfold over time. iii. He had three daughters, and he tested them to see how their cognitive abilities increased with age. This resulted in the Binet test.c. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780)- Philosopher in his time. i. Presents idea that we build up a lot of our knowledge over time through our sensory-motor understanding of the world.ii. He thought that we build up a lot of our knowledge through our senses, so rather than focusing like Descartes or Kant on intrinsic ideas, he focuses on how we perceive things. d. Itrard (researcher) and Victor (wild child) (1781-1828)- theorizes that the environment can be structured and filtered to facilitate the child’s development and behavior. e. Maria Montessori (1926)- created the first successful early childhood developmental program. i. She created schools for underprivileged children in Rome, and these children had very advanced development. She focuses on filtering the environment to promote learning. f. Jean Piaget- interested in child development studies. Joined the Montessori