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Learning Objectives
► Issues in the study of development
Chapter 1: ► Theories of development
BASIC ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF ► Research designs and methods
DEVELOPMENT
PSY202: Child Psychology
Question Issues in the Study of Development
What are some beliefs on childhood that you have? ► Nature-Nurture:
• Heredity versus environment
• On the side of nature:
► Developmental science: The study of age-related changes in
behavior, thinking, emotions, and social relationships. -Child is born with some sort of knowledge
-Plato and Descartes: knowledge is inborn
• On the side of nurture:
-All knowledge is created by experience, child only responds to the
environment
-Locke: the mind is a blank slate
-Developmental change is the result of external, environmental factors
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Discussion Issues in the Study of Development
Are we determined by hereditary variables? ► Other philosophers: development involves interaction between
internal and external forces
OR ► Hall: milestones of childhood dictated by inborn developmental plan,
was on the nature side.
Does experience outweigh heredity? Norms: average ages at which milestones happen
► This could be used to learn about the evolution of the species and to
track the development of individual children.
Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
► Watson: behavior changes are caused by environmental influences ► Continuity-Discontinuity:
(Behaviorism) • Continuity: quantitative change, change in amount, developing or
► Behaviorism, the theoretical view that defines development in terms evolving on a previously acquired skill.
of behavior changes caused by environmental influences Example: a 2-year-old is likely to have no individual friends among her
playmates, while an 8-year-old is likely to have several.
► Children could be trained to be or do anything by manipulating the
environment • Discontinuity: qualitative change, change in kind of skill, emergence
of a new activity.
► All age-related changes are the result of learning Example: friendships at 2 are quite different from friendships at 8 and
► Little Albert experiment: [Link] differ in ways that cannot be captured by describing them solely in
terms of the number of friends a child has.
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Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
Most modern psychologists agree that a child’s development is an ► Influences on development:
interaction between nature and nurture. • Maturation (Gesell): genetically programmed sequential patterns of
Additionally, most recognize that some aspects of development are change.
continuous while others are more stage-like. • Maturational patterns are marked by 3 qualities:
-Universal: appearing in all children, across cultural and historical
boundaries
-Sequential: pattern of unfolding skill or characteristics
-Resistant to environmental pattern
Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
• The timing of experience: specific experiences had different or stronger ► Example of a critical period:
effects at some points in development than at others
Baby ducks will become imprinted on (become attached to and follow)
• Critical period: any time period during development when an organism is any duck or any other quacking, moving object that happens to be
especially responsive to and learns from a specific type of stimulation. The around them 15 hours after they hatch. If nothing is moving or
same stimulation at other points in development has little or no effect. quacking at that critical point, they don’t become imprinted at all.
• Sensitive period: A period during which particular experiences can best ► Example of a sensitive period:
contribute to proper development. It is similar to a critical period, but the
effects of deprivation during a sensitive period are not as severe as during A child who is physically isolated from other humans by an abusive
a critical period. parent during sensitive periods of language development will not
• In humans, we more often see sensitive periods than true critical periods develop normal language, but she will develop some language function
once she is reintegrated into a normal social environment.
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Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
► Inborn biases: babies come into the world with certain preexisting ► Gene-environment interaction:
conception about the behavior of objects. Development is a result of • Child’s genetic heritage may affect environment
experience filtered through these initial biases. Example: parents who themselves have higher IQ scores are not only
► Behavior genetics: study of genetic contributions to behavior or likely to pass their “good IQ” genes on to their children, but also likely
traits. Heredity affects a broad range of behaviors. to create a richer, more stimulating environment for those children.
Example: The study of identical and fraternal twins and the study of • Child’s genetic heritage may affect behavior
adopted children. If identical twins are more like each other on some Example: A cranky or temperamentally difficult baby may receive fewer
dimension than other kinds of siblings are, despite having grown up in smiles and more scolding than an even-tempered one.
different environments, this is rather compelling evidence of a genetic • Child’s interpretation of experiences may be affected by genetic
contribution for that trait. tendencies
Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
• Internal models of experience: set of core ideas or assumptions of ► Aslin’s Model of Environmental Influence: 5 models of possible gene-
environment interaction
the world, about self and relationships with others through which all
(1) Maturation: maturational pattern with no environmental effect
subsequent experience is filtered
(2) Maintenance: some environmental input is necessary to sustain a skill or
Example: A child who expects adults to be reliable and affectionate will behavior that has already developed maturationally
be more likely to interpret the behavior of new adults in this way and Example: kittens are born with full binocular vision, but if you cover one of
will create friendly and affectionate relationships with others outside of their eyes for a period of time, their binocular skill declines.
the family. (3) Facilitation: a skill or behavior develops earlier than it normally would
because of some experience.
Example: children whose parents talk to them more often in the first 18 to
24 months of life, using more complex sentences, appear to develop two-
word sentences and other early grammatical forms somewhat earlier than
do children who are talked to less.
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Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
(4) Attunement: a particular experience leads to a permanent gain, or ► The ecological perspective and the cultural context of development
an enduringly higher level of performance. • Each child grows up in a complex social environment (a social ecology)
Example: children from poverty-level families who attend special • Culture: a system of meanings and customs, including values, attitudes,
enriched child care in infancy and early childhood have consistently goals, laws, beliefs, morals, and physical artifacts
higher IQ scores. -Individualism: world is made up of independent persons whose
achievement and responsibility are individual rather than collective
(5) Induction: a pure environmental effect, the absence of some
-Collectivism: emphasis is on collective rather than individual identity, on
experience, a particular behavior does not develop at all. group solidarity, sharing, duties and obligations, and group decision making
Example: learning a second language. • Individual variation within cultures, people who live in individualistic
societies may nevertheless, as individuals, develop a collectivist
orientation.
Issues in the Study of Development Issues in the Study of Development
► Vulnerability and resilience: • Facilitative environments: environment that increases the
• Resilience: ability to adaptively cope in the face of negative probability of a certain quality to have a certain effect.
situations • The best outcomes would occur for resilient infants reared in optimal
• Vulnerability: quality that makes an individual more likely to face environments, and the worst outcomes for vulnerable infants in poor
harm. environments
Example: difficult temperament, a physical abnormality, allergies, or a • A resilient child in a poor environment may do quite well
genetic tendency toward alcoholism
• Protective factors: characteristics that make individual more resilient • A vulnerable child may do quite well in a highly facilitative
environment
Example: high intelligence, good coordination, an easy temperament,
or a lovely smile
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Issues in the Study of Development Theories of Development
► 3 kinds of change: ► Psychoanalytic theories: behavior is governed by unconscious as
• Normative age-graded: universal, common to every individual at a specific well as conscious processes
age
• Freud:
Example: a baby’s first step.
(1) Basic, unconscious, instinctual sexual drive (libido) is the motive
• Normative history-graded: historical forces that affect each generation
differently force behind behavior. Unconscious material is created through the
functioning of defense mechanisms
Example: children of the current generation are more skilled in technology
use than older generations. (2) Personality has a structure: id (source of libido), ego (conscious,
• Nonnormative changes or individual differences: result from unique executive) and superego (conscience, morality)
unshared events
Example: intelligence, personality, blood type.
Theories of Development Theories of Development
• Erikson: ► Cognitive theories: emphasize primarily cognitive development
-Psychosocial stages: stages of personality development suggested by rather than personality
Erikson, involving basic trust, autonomy… • Piaget:
-Each child moves through a fixed sequence of tasks, each centered on -Nature of the human organism is to adapt to its environment
the development of a particular facet of identity -Did not think that the environment shapes the child
In both Freud’s and Erikson’s theories, the critical point is that the -All infants begin with the same skills and built-in strategies
degree of success a child experiences in meeting the demands of these
various stages will depend very heavily on the interactions he has -Children’s thinking moves are also similar, they go through the same
with the people and objects in his world. growth stages
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Theories of Development Theories of Development
• Vygotsky: • Information processing system:
-Explain how the mind manages information, use the computer as a model of
-Complex forms of thinking have their origins in social interactions, a human thinking
child’s learning of new cognitive skills is guided by an adult -Memory: encoding (organizing information to be stored in memory), storage
-Scaffolding: process by which someone models and structures the (keeping information) and retrieval (getting information out of memory)
learning experience of a child -Short-term memory or working memory: the component of the memory system
where all information is processed, limited capacity
-Zone of proximal development: the range of tasks that are slightly too
Example: when you repeat your grocery list to yourself on the way to the store.
difficult for a child to do alone but that can be accomplished
-Long-term memory: the component of the system where information is
successfully with guidance from an adult or more experienced child permanently stored, unlimited capacity
Example: knowing how to ride a bicycle.
Theories of Development Theories of Development
► Learning theories: • Operant conditioning (Skinner): the type of learning in which the probability of a
person’s performing some behavior is increased or decreased because of the
• Emphasis is much more on the way the environment shapes the child consequences it produces
than on how the child understands his experiences, human behavior -Positive reinforcement: the process of strengthening a behavior by the
presentation of some pleasurable or positive stimulus
is enormously plastic, shaped by predictable processes of learning Example: praise, smile, attention.
• Classical conditioning (Pavlov): An automatic, or unconditional -Negative reinforcement: the process of strengthening a behavior by the removal of
response such as an emotion or a reflex comes to be triggered by a an unpleasant stimulus
new cue, called the conditional stimulus, after having been paired Example: studying to avoid getting a bad grade.
several times with that stimulus -Punishment: the removal of a desirable stimulus or the administration of an
unpleasant consequence after some undesired behavior in order to stop the
behavior
Example: grounding, spanking, scolding.
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Theories of Development Research Designs and Methods
• Social cognitive theory (Bandura): ► Goals of developmental science:
-Observational learning or modeling: learning doesn’t always require
reinforcement, may occur as a result of observation
Example: Someone learns how to be generous by watching others donate
money or share goods.
-Intrinsic reinforcement: feeling of satisfaction after completing a
challenging activity
Example: The sense of satisfaction you may experience after strenuous
exercise.
► Eclecticism or eclectic approach: use of multiple theoretical perspectives
to explain and study human development
Research Designs and Methods Research Designs and Methods
► Studying age related changes: ► Descriptive methods:
• Cross-sectional designs: study different groups of people of different • Case studies are in-depth examinations of single individuals; and
ages, cannot tell us anything about sequences of change over age or naturalistic observations is a method where participants are
about the consistency of individual behavior over time observed in their normal environments
• Longitudinal designs: study the same people over a period of time, • Correlations statistic used to describe the strength of a relationship
consistencies or changes in behavior across age, comparisons of between two variables. It can range from -1.00 to +1.00. The closer it
individual differences is to +1.00 or -1.00, the stronger the relationship being described
• Sequential designs: combine cross-sectional and longitudinal Correlation ≠ Causation
designs, stronger evidence than either cross-sectional or longitudinal
data alone
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Research Designs and Methods Research Designs and Methods
► Experimental methods: research method that tests a causal hypothesis ► Cross-cultural research: research comparing cultures or contexts
(experiment)
• Identifies events that are universal across cultures
• Participants are assigned randomly to one of several groups
• Produces findings that can be used to improve people’s lives
• Experimental group receive the treatment the experimenter thinks will
produce a particular effect • Can identify variables that explain culture differences
• Control group receive either no special treatment or a neutral treatment
• Independent variable: condition or event that an experimenter
manipulates in order to observe its impact on participants’ behavior
• Dependent variable: variable in an experiment that is expected to show
the impact of manipulations of the independent variable
Research Designs and Methods
► Example of a cross-sectional design:
A study aims to investigate the relationship between use of electronic
devices and performance on school tasks among Lebanese preschoolers.
► Example of a longitudinal design:
A study aims to investigate the long term relationship between use of
electronic devices and performance on school tasks over the span of 5 years.
The data will be collected from the same sample of participants for 5
consecutive years.
► Example of a sequential design:
investigators use a group of 3, 5, and 7-year-olds, examining their use of
electronics and performance at school every six months for a period of
several years.