Psyc 307 Week 1 Notes Review

Front 1

Reasons for studying child development

Back 1

Raising children

Understanding Social Policy

Understanding Human Nature

Front 2

Why is raising children a reason for studying developmental psychology?

Back 2

Knowledge of child development can help parents and teachers meet the challenges of rearing and educating children

Front 3

How does studying developmental psychology help in choosing social policies?

Back 3

Knowledge of child development permits informed decisions about social-policy questions that affect children

Helps policies to be written and enforced based on reality rather than perceptions

Front 4

How does studying developmental psychology help us understand human nature?

Back 4

Child-development research provides important insights into some of the most intriguing questions regarding human nature

Examples of this are the knowledge of the existence of innate concepts and the relationship between early and later experiences

Front 5

Who were the main two early philosophers that helped lay the historical foundations for studying child development?

Back 5

Aristotle
Plato

Front 6

What did Plato believe about children and raising children?

Back 6

Emphasized self-control and discipline

Believed that children are born with innate knowledge

Front 7

What did Aristotle believe about children and raising children?

Back 7

Concerned with fitting child rearing to the needs of the individual child

Believed that knowledge comes from experience

Front 8

Who were the two later philosophers with an impact on developmental psychology?

Back 8

John Locke

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Front 9

How did John Locke view children?

Back 9

The English philosopher John Locke saw the child as a "tabula rasa" and advocated first instilling discipline, then gradually increasing the child's freedom

Front 10

How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau view children?

Back 10

French philosopher who argued that parents and society should give children maximum freedom from the beginning

Front 11

How did social reform movements impact developmental psychology?

Back 11

Established a legacy of research conducted for the benefit of children

provided some of the earliest descriptions of the adverse effects that harsh environments can have on child development

Front 12

How did Charles Darwin's theory of evolution impact developmental psychology?

Back 12

inspired research in child development in order to gain insights into the nature of the human species

Front 13

When did child development emerge as a formal field of inquiry?

Back 13

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Front 14

Who formulated influential theories of development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

Back 14

Sigmund Freud and John Watson

Front 15

What are the different types of data gathering situations for child development?

Back 15

Interview

Naturalistic Observation

Structured Observation

Front 16

Key features of interviews

Back 16

Children answer questions asked either in person or on a questionnaire

Front 17

Advantages and Disadvantages of Interviews

Back 17

Advantages: Can reveal children's subjective experience, structured interviews are inexpensive means for collecting in-depth data about individuals, clinical interviews allow flexibility for following up unexpected concepts

Disadvantages: Reports are often biased to reflect favorably on interviews, memory of interviewee often inaccurate and incomplete, Prediction of future behaviors is often inaccurate

Front 18

Key Features of Naturalistic Observation

Back 18

Activities of children in everyday settings are observed

Front 19

Advantages and Disadvantages to Naturalistic Observation

Back 19

Advantages: Useful for describing behavior in everyday settings, helps illuminate social interaction processes

Disadvantages: Difficult to know which aspects of situations are most influential, limited value for studying infrequent behaviors

Front 20

Key Features of Structured Observation

Back 20

Children are brought to a laboratory and presented prearranged tasks

Front 21

Advantages and Disadvantages of Structured Observation

Back 21

Advantages: Ensures that all children's behaviors are observed in same context, Allows controlled comparison of children's behavior in different situations

Disadvantages: Context is less natural than in naturalistic observation, reveals less about subjective experience than interviews

Front 22

What are the enduring themes in child development?

Back 22

1. Nature and Nurture
2. The Active Child
3. Continuity/Discontinuity
4. Mechanisms of developmental change
5. The Sociocultural Context
6. Individual Differences
7. Research and Children's Welfare

Front 23

How does nature and nurture affect child development?

Back 23

Developmentalists now recognize that every characteristic we possess is created through the joint workings of nature and nurture

Accordingly, they ask how nature and nurture work together to shape development

Front 24

How do children shape their own development?

Back 24

Children contribute to their own development and their contributions increase as they grow older

Older children and adolescents choose many environments, friends, and activities for themselves; their choices can exert a large impact on their future

Front 25

What are three of the most important contributions during children's first years are what?

Back 25

Attentional patterns
Use of language
Play

Front 26

Continuous development

Back 26

age-related changes occur gradually

Front 27

Discontinuous development

Back 27

Age-related changes include occasional large shifts so that children of different ages seem qualitatively different

Front 28

Who and what provided the framework for thinking about the mechanisms that produce change in a children's development?

Back 28

Darwin's theory of evolution

Front 29

Wat are the mechanisms that produce change in a child's environment?

Back 29

Variation and Selection

Front 30

Variation

Back 30

refers to differences in thought and behavior within and among individuals

Front 31

Selection

Back 31

Describes the more frequent survival and reproduction of organisms that are well adapted to their environment

Front 32

Sociocultural Context

Back 32

refers to the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child's environment

Contexts of development differ within and between cultures

Front 33

How do children become so different from each other?

Back 33

Individual differences among children arise very quickly in development

Contributing factors to these differences (some even seen within the same family) include:
Genes
Treatment by other people
Subjective Reactions to other people's treatment of them
Choice of environments

Front 34

How can research promote a child's well-being?

Back 34

Child-development research yields practical benefits in diagnosing children's problems and in helping children to overcome them

Front 35

Preferential looking

Back 35

A child-development research method that has enabled the diagnosis of the effects of cataracts in infants as young as two months of age - followed by the appropriate treatment

Front 36

Successive Approximation

Back 36

The principle that has been used to develop training programs to foster speech comprehension among young children with specific language impairments

Front 37

Ethical issues in research

Back 37

Researchers have a vital responsibility to anticipate potential risks that the children in their studies may encounter, to minimize such risks, and to make sure that the benefits of the research outweigh the potential harm