Ch 1 Three issues of development 1 Continuous or discontinuous Continuous a process of gradually adding more of the same types of skills that were there to begin with Discontinuous process by which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at different times stages 2 One course of development or many Stage theorists believe in one course and common influences Many children grow up in distinct contexts that are unique personal and environmental circumstances that different paths of change combinations of can result in 3 Nature or nurture Are genetic or environmental factors more of an influence on development Nature biological givens Nurture complex forces of the physical and social world Historical views of childhood Medieval Childhood regarded as separate period of life Recognized that children needed to be cared for and protected Considered a child until about 7 or 8 years old were seen as vulnerable beings The Reformation Belief in original sin and that children were innately evil Prevalence of strict punishment but parents loved their children and prioritized child rearing and instilling values ethics in children Enlightenment More humane conceptions of childhood Locke viewed the child as a blank slate that is shaped entirely by experience This led to the idea of behaviorism Rousseau was a philosopher who introduced a new view of childhood He believed children were naturally good and born with a sense of right and wrong His view was that children are born good and eventually become corrupted by the world and its evil His child centered philosophy focused on meeting children s needs throughout 4 stages Infancy childhood late childhood and adolescence Darwin Known for the theory of evolution which emphasized natural selection and survival of the fittest He also discovered that prenatal growth is very similar in many species An aftermath was scientific efforts to try to find parallels between child development and the evolution of human species Increased the study of children and development Normative Period Hall and Gesell developed theories based on evolutionary ideas and regarded development as a maturational process Then they came up with the normative approach where measures of behavior are taken on large numbers of individuals and age related averages are computed to represent typical development Baldwin James Baldwin was an early developmental theorist who believed that children s understanding of the physical and social worlds develops through a series of stages starting with the simplest behavioral patterns of infants and ending with the adult s capacity to think abstractly and reflectively Psychoanalytical perspective The idea that children move through a series of stages in which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations How these conflicts are resolved determines the person s ability to learn get along with others and to cope with anxiety Freud Id Ego Superego become integrated during a series of 5 stages He was the first to stress the influence of the early parent child relationship on development Erikson was one of Freud s followers who expanded the picture of development at each stage In his psychosocial theory he emphasized that in addition to mediating between id impulses and superego demands the ego makes a positive contribution to development acquiring attitudes and skills that make the individual an active contributing member of society Behaviorism Idea that directly observable events stimuli and responses are the appropriate focus of study in child development Watson Social Learning Albert Bandura emphasized modeling or observational learning as a powerful source of development His theory emphasizes the importance of cognition or thinking Limitations Offer too narrow a view of important environmental influences and underestimate children s contributions to their own environment Piaget s Cognitive Developmental Theory Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world Sensorimotor stage Cognitive development starts as the child begins to use senses and movement to explore the world Birth 2 years Pre operational stage Symbolic yet illogical behavior Development of language and make believe play occur 2 7 years Concrete operational stage Cognition is transformed into more organized logical reasoning 7 11 years Formal operational stage Possess the abstract systematic reasoning system of adolescent and adult 11 years Contributions Convinced field that children are active learners whose minds consist of rich structures of knowledge Limitations Underestimated the competencies of infants and preschoolers Information Processing Perspective The design of digital computers led to this idea that the human mind might also be viewed as a symbol manipulating system through which information flows Focus on input and output functions Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Brings together researchers from psychology biology neuroscience and biology to study the relationship between changes in the brain and the developing child s cognitive processing and behavioral patterns Ethology Concerned with the adaptive or survival value of behavior and its evolutionary history Roots trace back to the work of Darwin Imprinting A type of behavioral pattern that promotes survival This led to major concept in child development the critical period that refers to a limited amount of time during which the child is biologically prepared to acquire certain adaptive behaviors but needs the support of an appropriately stimulating environment A sensitive period is the optimal time for certain capacities to emerge Evolutionary Developmental Psychology Seeks to understand the adaptive value of the species wide cognitive emotional and social competencies as those competencies change with age Vygotsky s Sociocultural Theory focuses on how culture is transmitted to the next generation Vygotsky believed that social interaction between children and more knowledgeable members of society is necessary so that children can acquire the ways of thinking and behaving that make up a community s culture Ecological Systems Theory Views a child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment including the microsystem mesosystem exosystem macrosystem and chrono system Dynamic Systems Perspective Idea that a child s mind body and physical and social worlds form an
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