A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 {CHAPTER 1} I. II. Studying A Child’s World The Study of Child Development: Then and Now a. From the moment of conception, children begin a process of change that will continue throughout their lives. b. Although various influences can modify changes and traits, the changes human beings experience have common patterns. c. The field of child development focuses on the study of systematic processes of change and stability in human children. d. Developmental scientists are people engaged in the professional study of child developmental. They look at ways in which children change from conception through adolescence as well as the characteristics that remain stable. i. Which of a child’s characteristics are most likely to endure? ii. Which are likely to change, and why? e. Early Approaches i. The formal scientific study of child developmental is relatively new ii. Predecessors to the scientific study were baby biographers who kept journals to record the early development of a single child iii. German philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann (1787) observed his infant son’s sensory, motor, language, and cognitive development. He concluded after watching his son suck more continuously on a cloth tied around something sweet than on a nurse’s finger, that sucking appeared to be “not instinctive, but acquired.” iv. Charles Darwin (1877) first emphasized the developmental nature of infant behavior with the belief that human beings could better understand themselves by studying their origins (both as species and individuals). Studied his son’s sensory, cognitive, and emotional developmental during his first 12 months. His journal gave baby biographies scientific respectability. v. Stanley Hall; Father of Child Psychology? (look up in textbook) f. Developmental Psychology Becomes a Science i. Adolescence wasn’t considered a spate period of development until the early twentieth century when G. Stanley Hall published a book called Adolescence. ii. The establishment of research institutes in the 1930’s and 1940’s at universities such as Iowa, Minnesota, Columbia, Berkley, and Yale marked the emergence of child psychology as a true science. iii. Longitudinal studies, such as Arnold Gesell’s (1929) studies of stages in motor development, provided research-based information about developments that normally occur at various ages. g. Studying The Life Span i. Today, researches consider development to be from “womb to tomb,” comprising the entire human life span from conception to death. A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 III. IV. ii. Development can be either positive (i.e., becoming toilet trained or enrolling in college) or negative (i.e., wetting the bed after a traumatic event) iii. Development is complex and multifaceted and shaped by interacting arcs of influence. The Study of Child Development: Basic Concepts a. The processes of change and stability occur in all aspects of the self and throughout all of childhood and adolescence b. Domains of Development; developmental scientists study three domains, or aspects of the self i. Physical (biological) Development: growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health ii. Cognitive Development: learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity iii. Psychosocial Development: emotions, personality, and social relationships iv. These domains are all interrelated and development is a unified process. c. Periods of Development i. Division of the life span into periods of development is a social construction: a concept or practice that may appear natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention of a particular culture or society ii. In fact, our understanding of childhood itself can be viewed as a social construction Influences on Development a. Children experience individual differences in characteristics, influences, and developmental outcomes. Every child has a different developmental trajectory—a unique and individual path to follow. b. Heredity, Environment, and Maturation (influencing development) i. Heredity (nature): inborn traits or characteristics inherited from a child’s biological parents. ii. Environment (nurture): inner and outer, the world outside the self beginning in the womb, and the learning that comes from experience iii. Maturation: of the body and brain, the unfolding of a universal, natural sequence of physical changes and behavioral patterns. iv. These maturation processes act jointly with the influences of heredity and environment. As children grow into adolescents and then into adults, individual difference in innate characteristics (heredity) and life experience (environment) play an increasing role as children adapt to the internal and external conditions in which they find themselves. c. Contexts of Development; humans are social beings and right from the start they develop within a social and historical context. i. Family A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 1. The nuclear family is a two generational household unit consisting of one or two parents and their biological children, adopted children, or stepchildren. a. Historically, the two-parent nuclear family has been the dominant family unit in the United States and other Western societies. However, the nuclear family today is different from what is used to be. Instead of large, rural families working side-by-side on the family farm, we now see smaller urban families in which both parents work outside the home and children spend much of their time in school or childcare. b. The increased incidence of divorce has also affected the nuclear family. Children of divorced parents may live with one or the other parent or may move back and forth between them. The household may include a stepparent and stepsiblings or unmarried parents and gay and lesbian couples. 2. In many societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and among some U.S. families that trace their lineage to those countries, the extended family—a multigenerational kinship network of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more distant relatives—is the traditional family form. a. Adults often share breadwinning and child-raising responsibilities, and children are responsible for younger brothers and sisters. Women often head these households. b. Today, the extended family household is becoming slightly less typical in developing countries due to industrialization and migration to urban centers. However, in the United States, economic pressures, housing shortages, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have helped fuel a trend toward three and even four generational family households. ii. Culture and Race/Ethnicity 1. Culture refers to a society’s or group’s total way of life, including customs, traditions, laws, knowledge, beliefs, values, language, and physical products, from tools to artworks—all of the behavior and attitudes that are learned, shared, and transmissted among members of a social group. Culture is constantly changing, often through contact with other cultures. Today cultural contact is enhanced by computers and telecommunications that offer almost immediate communication across the globe. 2. An ethnic group consists of people united by a distinctive culture, ancestry, religion, and language, or national origin, A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 all of which contribute to a sense of shared identity and shared attitudes, beliefs, and values. a. Ethnic and cultural patterns affect child development by their influence on the composition of a household, its economic and social resources, the way its members act toward one another, the foods they eat, the games children play, the way they learn, how well they do in school, the occupations adults engage in, and the way family members think about and perceive the world. b. In time, however, immigrants tend to acculturate, or adapt, by learning the language, customs, and attitudes needed to get along in the dominant culture while trying to preserve some of their cultural practices and values. iii. Socioeconomic Status and Neighborhood 1. A family’s socioeconomic status (SES) is based on family income and the educational and occupational levels of the adults in the household. a. SES affects these processes and outcomes indirectly, through such associated factors as the kinds of homes and neighborhoods people live in and the quality of nutrition, medical care, and schooling available to them. i. SES to developmental processes such as a mother’s verbal interactions with their children ii. SES to developmental outcomes such as health and cognitive performance b. Poverty can damage the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial well being of children and families. Poor children are more likely than other children to go hungry; to have frequent illness to lack access o health care; to experience accidents, violence, and family conflict; and to show emotional or behavioral problems. Their cognitive potential and school performance suffer as well. Threats to well being multiply by several risk factors—conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative outcome. c. Affluence doesn’t necessarily protect children from risk. Some children in affluent families face pressure to achieve and are often left on their own by busy parents. These children have high rates of substance abuse, anxiety, and depression. iv. The Historical Context; the time in which people live A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 1. Certain experiences, tied to time and place, do affect the course of people’s lives. 2. The historical context is an important part of the study of development. d. Normative and Nonnormative Influences; these three types of influences contribute to the complexity of human development as well as to the challenges people experience in trying to build their lives. i. Normative Influences are biological or environmental events that affect many of most people in a society in similar ways. In order to understand similarities and differences in development you need to look at these normative influences and well as events that touch only certain individuals. 1. Normative Age-Graded Influences are highly similar for people in a particular age group. The timing of biological events is fairly predictable within a normal range (i.e., children don’t experience puberty at age 3 or menopause at age 12). 2. Normative History-Graded Influences are significant events that shape the behavior and attitudes of a historical generation (a group of people strongly influenced by a major historical event during their formative period). (i.e., the generation that came of the age during the Depression and World War II tend to show a strong sense of social interdependence and trust that has declines among more recent generations). a. A historical generation is not the same as an age cohort (a group of people born about the same time) A historical generation may contain more than one cohort, but not all cohorts are part of historical generations unless they experience major, shaping historical events at a formative point in their lives. ii. Nonnormative Influences are unusual events that have a major impact on individual lives because hey disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle. 1. They are either typical events that happen at an atypical time of life (such as the death of a parent when a child is young) or atypical events (such as surviving a place crash) 2. Some of these influences are largely beyond a persons control and may present rare opportunities or challenges that the person perceives as a turning point. 3. On the other hand, young people sometimes help create their own nonnormative life events (i.e., driving after drinking or applying for a scholarship) and thus participate actively in their own development. e. Timing of Influences: Critical Or Sensitive Periods A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 i. Imprinting is an instinctive form of learning in which, during a critical period in early development, a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees, usually the mother. ii. A critical period is a specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development. If a necessary event does not occur during a critical period of maturation, normal development will not occur; and the resulting abnormal patterns may be irreversible. However, the length of the critical period is not absolutely fixed. 1. The concept of critical periods in humans is controversial because many aspects of development, even in the biological/ neurological domain have been found to show plasticity, or modifiability of performance. 2. It is more useful to think about sensitive periods (times in development when a given event or its absence usually has a strong effect on development) A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 I. II. {CHAPTER 2} A Child’s World: How We Discover It Basic Theoretical Issues a. A scientific theory is a set of logically related concepts or statements that seek to describe ad explain development and to predict what kinds of behavior might occur under certain conditions. b. Theories organize and explain data, the information gathered by research. c. Theories inspire further research and predict its results by generating hypotheses, tentative explanations or predictions that can be tested by further research. Research can indicate whether a theory is accurate in its predictions but cannot conclusively show a theory to be true. Theories can be disproved, but never proved. d. Developmental science cannot be completely objective. Theories and research about human behavior are products of very human individuals, whose inquiries and interpretations are inevitably influenced by their own values and experience. e. The way theorists explain development depends in part on their assumptions about two basic issues: f. Issue 1: Is Development Active or Reactive? i. Psychologists who believe in reactive development conceptualize the developing child and a hungry sponge that soaks of experiences and is shaped by this input over time. ii. Psychologists who believe in active development argue that people seek to create experiences for themselves and are motivated to learn about the world around them. Things aren’t just happening to them, they are involved in making their world what it is. iii. The 18th century English philosopher John Locke believed that a young child is a tabula rasa—a “blank slate”—upon which society “writes.” How the child developed in wither positive or negative ways, depended entirely upon experiences. iv. The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that children are born “noble savages” who develop according to their own positive natural tendencies if not corrupted by society. v. The debate over Locke’s and Rousseau’s philosophies led to two contrasting models of development: mechanistic and organismic. 1. Mechanistic Model (Locke’s views); in this model people are like machines that react to environmental input. It results from the operation of biological parts in response to external or internal stimuli. Mechanistic research seeks to identify the factors that make people behave as they do. 2. Organismic Model (Roussaeu’s views); this model sees children as active, growing organisms that set their own development in motion. They initiate events, they do not just react. Thus, the driving force for change is internal. Environmental influences do not cause development, though they can speed or slow it. A Child’s World: Infancy through Adolescence Chapters 1, 2 & 3 III. g. Issue 2: Is Development Continuous or Discontinuous? i. Continuous; gradual and incremental ii. Discontinuous; abrupt or uneven iii. Mechanist theorists see development as continuous: as occurring in small incremental stages. Development is always governed by the same processes and involve the gradual refinement and extension of early skills into later abilities, allowing one to make predictions about future characteristics on the basis of past performance. This type of change is known as quantitative change—a change in number or amount, such as height, weight, or vocabulary size. iv. Organismic theorists see development as discontinuous; as marked by the emergence of new phenomena that could not be easily predicted on the basis of past functioning. Development at different points in the lifespan is fundamentally different in nature—not just more or less of the same thing. It is a change in kind, structure, or organization, not just in number. This type of change is known as qualitative change. 1. Organismic theorists are advocates for stage theories. In these approaches developmental is seen as occurring in a series of distinct stages. Each stage is different from the previous but they build on it to prepare for the next. Stages cannot be skipped and development only proceeds in a positive direction. Theoretical Perspectives a.