DEP3103 Chapter 1 The field of child development o Understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence An area within developmental science Has applied importance Is interdisciplinary Domains of development o Physical cognitive emotional and social Periods of development o Prenatal conception to birth o Infancy and toddlerhood birth to 2 years o Early childhood 2 to 6 years o Middle childhood 6 to 11 years o Adolescence 11 to 18 years o Emerging adulthood 18 to 25 years What is a theory Describes Explains Predicts behavior Basic issues in development o Continuous or discontinuous o One course of development or many o Nature or nurture o An orderly integrated evidence based set of statements that One course of development or many o Does everyone reach milestones at the same time or in the same way o What are some factors that may affect how a child develops Contexts of development o Unique combinations of personal and environmental circumstances Results in different developmental paths o Factors Heredity and biological makeup Environment home child care school neighborhood Circumstances community resources social values historical time period Nature vs nurture o Nature Inborn biological givens Based on genetic inheritance o Nurture Physical and social world Influence biological and psychological development before and after birth Stability vs plasticity o Stability usually associated with heredity Lifelong characteristics Early experiences establish patterns o Plasticity responsive to experience A balanced view o Both continuous and discontinuous changes occur o Development has both universal features and features unique to each individual and his or her contexts o Heredity and environment are inseparably interwoven 3 grand theories of development o Psychoanalytic theory A grand theory of human development that hold that irrational unconscious drives and motives often originating in childhood underlies human behavior Sigmund freud Erik erikson emphasized o Cultural diversity social change and psychological crises o Family and culture not sexual urges o Behaviorism o Cognitive theory Behaviorism and social learning o Goal to create an objective science of psychology o John Watson Classical conditioning inspired by Pavlov o BF Skinner Operant conditioning Reinforcers and punishments o Albert bandura Social learning Modeling Piaget s stages of cognitive development Self efficacy o Sensorimotor birth to 2 years o Preoperational 2 to 7 years o Concrete operational 7 to 11 years o Formal operational 11 years and older Recent theoretical perspectives o Information processing o Developmental cognitive neuroscience o Ethology o Evolutionary developmental psychology o Vygotsky s sociocultural theory o Ecological systems theory o Development as a complex dynamic system Information processing o The human mind can be viewed as a symbol manipulating system through which information flows Developmental cognitive neuroscience o Brings together researchers from psychology biology neuroscience and medicine to study relations between brain and developing child s cognitive processing behavior patterns o Some important neuroimaging techniques include EEG and ERPs fMRI NIRS Ethology o Concerned with adaptive value of behavior o Sensitive period Individual is especially responsive to environment An optimal time for certain capacities to emerge Development is hard to induce later Boundaries less defined than a critical period Evolutionary developmental psychology o Seeks to understand the adaptive value of human competencies o Studies cognitive emotional and social competencies and how they change with age Role of learning What behaviors are no long adaptive o Complete organism environment system Vygotsky s sociocultural theory o Transmission of culture to a new generation Beliefs customs skills o Cognitive development as a socially mediated process Cooperative dialogue with more knowledgeable members of society Vygotsky stressed the importance of language Ecological systems theory o Child develops within complex system of relationships o Environment is ever changing o Chronosystem Development as a complex dynamic system o Simple components Relative to whole system o Nonlinear interactions among components o No central control o Emergent behaviors Information processing Hierarchical organization Dynamics Evolution and learning DEP3103 Chapter 2 How do we investigate developmental psychology o It begins with empirical evidence o Empirical evidence is based on observation experience or experimentation not theory o However you then build theory by looking for more empirical evidence in specific situations and conditions Observational research o Method of testing a hypothesis by unobtrusively watching and recording participants behavior o Can be done systematically quantitative Systematic observation can further be divided into Naturalistic Structured o Or subjectively qualitative Ethnography o Descriptive qualitative technique o Goal to understand a culture or social group Participant observation Researcher lives in community for months or years Woks to capture unique values and social processes Limitations of observational research o Observer bias Observers record what they expect rather than what participants actually do Those with no knowledge of hypothesis are best observers o Observer influence Participants may react in unnatural ways Eg Hawthorne effect Clinical interviews o Flexible conversational style o Proves for the participants point of view o Limitations Accuracy of participants expression Distortions in participants recall judgments Flexibility may make responses too varied Structured interviews and questionnaires o Each participant is asked the same questions in the same way o Limitations Eliminates most interview bias Efficient Answers from entire group at same time Can still be affected by inaccurate reporting Social desirability Not as in depth Neurobiological methods behavior o Measures relationship between nervous system processes and A way to infer perceptions cognitive abilities emotions of infants and young children who cant self report o Measures of autonomic nervous system activity sensitive to psychological state hormones Heart rate blood pressure respiration pupils stress Methods of measuring brain functioning o Electroencephalogram EEG o Event related potentials ERPs o Functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI o Positron emission tomography PET o Near
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