INTRODUCTION
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
• What is good about children today?
• What is bad about children today?
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WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT
Systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur
between conception and death or pattern of change that begins at
conception and continues through death.
Dimensions of Development
• Biological
• Cognitive
• SocioEmotional
BioPsychoSocial Development
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BIOLOGICAL, COGNITIVE, AND
SOCIOEMOTIONAL PROCESSES
Biological processes
• Changes in an individual’s body
Cognitive processes
• Changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language
Socioemotional processes
• Changes in an individual’s relationships with other people,
changes in emotions, and changes in personality
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CHANGES IN DEVELOPMENT ARE THE RESULT
OF BIOLOGICAL, COGNITIVE, AND
SOCIOEMOTIONAL PROCESSES
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PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT
Prenatal period
• The time from conception to birth
Infancy
• The developmental period that extends from birth to 18 to 24
months of age
Early childhood
• The developmental period that extends from the end of
infancy to about 5 to 6 years of age
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PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT
Middle and late childhood
• The developmental period that extends from about 6 to 11
years of age
Adolescence
• The developmental period of transition from childhood to
early adulthood, entered at approximately 10 to 12 years of
age and ending at 18 to 22 years of age
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AGE AND COHORT EFFECTS
• Cohort effects: Effects due to a person’s time
of birth, era, or generation but not to actual age
• Millennials: The generation born after 1980 that
is the first to come of age and enter emerging
adulthood in the new millennium
• Two characteristics
• Their ethnic diversity
• Their connection to technology
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ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT
• Nature and nurture: The issue regarding whether
development is primarily influenced by nature or
nurture
• Continuity and discontinuity issue: The issue
regarding whether development involves gradual,
cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages
(discontinuity)
• Early and later experience: The issue of the
degree to which early experiences or later
experiences are the key determinants of the child’s
development
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THEORIES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT
• Psychoanalytic theories: Describe development
as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by
emotion
• Behavior is merely a surface characteristic, and the
symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to
understand behavior
• Early experiences with parents are emphasized
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FREUD’S THEORY OF PSYCHOSEXUAL
DEVELOPMENT
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
• Parts of personality
• Id
• Ego
• Superego
• Stage Theory
• Too much or too little gratification - Fixated at that
stage
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FREUDIAN STAGES
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ERIKSON’S THEORY OF PSYCHOSOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT
• Erik Erikson (1902–1994)
• Modified and expanded Freud’s theory
• Successful resolution of life (Psychosocial) crises bolsters sense of
identity
• Differences from psychosexual development
• Development of self-identity through expanding social interactions
• Includes conscious and purposeful acts in development
• Extends stages to eight; throughout adulthood
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ERIKSON’S EIGHT LIFE-SPAN STAGES
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EVALUATING THE
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES
• The contributions of psychoanalytic theories
include these ideas:
• Early experiences play an important part in
development
• Family relationships are a central aspect of
development
• Personality can be better understood if it is examined
developmentally
• Activities of the mind are not entirely conscious—
unconscious aspects need to be considered
• In Erikson’s theory, changes take place in adulthood as
well as in childhood
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EVALUATING THE
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES
• Criticism:
• The main concepts of psychoanalytic theories are
difficult to test scientifically
• Much of the data used to support psychoanalytic
theories come from individuals’ reconstruction of the
past and are of unknown accuracy
• The sexual underpinnings of development are given too
much importance
• The unconscious mind is given too much credit for
influencing development
• Psychoanalytic theories present an image of humans
that is too negative and are culture- and gender-biased
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THE COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
• Focuses on children’s mental processes
• How children perceive and mentally represent the
worldz
1. Jean Piaget (1896–1980)
Cognitive-developmental theory
2. Information-processing theory
3. Lev Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory
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PIAGET’S COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL
THEORY
• Worked with Binet on IQ tests for children
• Piaget was interested in children’s wrong answers
• Piaget’s work was not widely read until mid 1950s
• Difficult to understand
• Introduced when behaviorism and psychoanalysis
were popular
• Piaget’s view of children as “natural physicists” –
Children are scientists, testing their view of the
world
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PIAGET’S BASIC CONCEPTS
• Scheme
• An organized understanding of something
• Adaptation
• Organize our world by interacting with the environment
1. Assimilation
Fitting something new into an existing scheme
2. Accommodation
Adjusting scheme to a new object or event
• Equilibration
• Restore equilibrium
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PIAGET’S FOUR STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
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INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORY
• Influenced by the concepts of computer science
• Process of encoding information (input)
• Storage of information (long-term memory)
• Retrieval of information (short-term memory)
• Manipulation of information to solve problems
(output)
• Software (mental processes)
• Hardware (brain)
• Applications in education
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COGNITIVE THEORIES
• Vygotsky’s theory: A sociocultural cognitive
theory that emphasizes how culture and social
interaction guide cognitive development
• Our thoughts are “created” by the culture we
live in and the tools we use.
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EVALUATING THE COGNITIVE
THEORIES
• The primary contributions of cognitive theories
are that:
• They present a positive view of development,
emphasizing conscious thinking
• They emphasize the individual’s active construction of
understanding
• Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories underscore the
importance of examining developmental changes in
children’s thinking
• Information-processing theory offers detailed
descriptions of cognitive processes
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EVALUATING THE COGNITIVE
THEORIES
• Criticism
• Piaget’s stages are not as uniform as he theorized
• The cognitive theories do not give adequate attention to
individual variations in cognitive development
• Information-processing theory does not provide an
adequate description of developmental changes in
cognition
• Psychoanalytic theorists argue that the cognitive
theories do not give enough credit to unconscious
thought
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THE LEARNING PERSPECTIVE
BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL COGNITIVE
THEORIES
• Behaviorism - John B. Watson
• Classical conditioning - Ivan Pavlov
• Operant conditioning - B. F. Skinner
• Observable Behavior; individual passively learn behaviors
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Observational learning – Albert Bandura
• Active participants in learning
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BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL
COGNITIVE THEORIES
• Pavlov’s classical conditioning
• A neutral stimulus acquires the ability to produce a
response originally produced by another stimulus
• Skinner’s operant conditioning
• The consequences of a behavior produce changes in the
probability of the behavior’s occurrence
• A behavior followed by:
• A rewarding stimulus is more likely to recur
• A punishing stimulus is less likely to recur
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SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
• Albert Bandura
• Acquire basic behavior through observational
learning
• Key experiment: Bobo Doll
• Learning alters child’s mental representation of
environment and influences belief in ability to
change the environment
• Reciprocal Determinism (B  E  P)
• Child is an active learner
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BANDURA’S SOCIAL COGNITIVE
MODEL
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EVALUATING THE BEHAVIORAL AND
SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES
• Contributions of the behavioral and social
cognitive theories include:
• Their emphasis on the importance of scientific research
• Their focus on environmental determinants of behavior
• The identification and explanation of observational
learning The inclusion of person/cognitive factors
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EVALUATING THE BEHAVIORAL AND
SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES
• Criticism
• Too little emphasis to cognition
• Too much emphasis to environmental determinants
inadequate attention to developmental changes
• Inadequate recognition to human spontaneity and
creativity
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ETHOLOGICAL THEORY
• Ethology: Stresses that behavior is strongly
influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and
is characterized by critical or sensitive periods
• Concern with instinctive behavior patterns
• Influenced by Charles Darwin, & Konrad Lorenz
• Pre-wired—instinctive behavior patterns
• Fixed action patterns (FAPs)
• Influence of prenatal hormones
• Lorenz’s work on attachment during the first year
• Imprinting
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THE ECOLOGICAL THEORY
• Explains development through interactions between
children and the settings in which they live
• Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005)
• Reciprocal interactions between individual and their
environment.
• Focus on interactions between parent and child
(bidirectional)
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BRONFENBRENNER’S ECOLOGICAL
THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT
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A COMPARISON OF THEORIES AND
ISSUES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
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THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
• Scientific research is objective, systematic, and
testable
• It reduces the likelihood that information will
be based on personal beliefs, opinions, and
feelings
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THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
• Scientific research is based on the scientific
method
• Scientific method: An approach that can be
used to obtain accurate information
• It includes these steps:
•
•
•
•
Conceptualize the problem
Collect data
Draw conclusions
Revise research conclusions and theory
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THE IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
• Theory: An interrelated, coherent set of ideas
that helps to explain and make predictions
• Hypothesis: A specific assumption or prediction
that can be tested to determine its accuracy
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OBSERVATION
• To be effective, observations have to be
systematic
• Where should be observations made?
• Laboratory: A controlled setting in which many of the
complex factors of the “real world” are removed
• Naturalistic observation: Observing behavior in realworld settings
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OTHER RESEARCH METHODS
•
•
•
•
Survey and interview
Standardized test – uniform procedures
Case study – in-depth on individual
Physiological measures
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RESEARCH DESIGNS
• Descriptive research: A research design that
has the purpose of observing and recording
behavior
• Correlational research: A research design
whose goal is to describe the strength of the
relationship between two or more events or
characteristics
• Correlation coefficient: A number based on statistical
analysis that is used to describe the degree of
association between two variables
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RESEARCH DESIGNS
• Experiment: A carefully regulated procedure in
which one or more of the factors believed to
influence the behavior being studied are
manipulated, while all other factors are held
constant
•
•
•
•
•
Independent variable (gets manipulated)
Dependent variable (gets measured)
Control group (forms baseline measure)
Experimental group (gets manipulated)
Random assignment (assignment by chance)
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PRINCIPLES OF EXPERIMENTAL
RESEARCH
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TIME SPAN OF RESEARCH
• Cross-sectional approach: A research strategy
in which individuals of different ages are
compared at one time
• Longitudinal approach: A research strategy in
which the same individuals are studied over a
period of time, usually several years or more
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RESEARCH CHALLENGES
• Conducting ethical research
• Protect rights of research subjects
• Do not cause any harm
• Adhere to code of ethics
• Informed consent
• Confidentiality
• Debriefing
• Deception
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MINIMIZING BIAS
• Gender bias
• Preconceived ideas about female and male abilities,
magnifying differences found
• Cultural and ethnic bias
• Excluding minorities, preconceived ideas of not being
‘average’
• Ethnic gloss: Use of ethnic label portraying
ethnic groups as more homogeneous than they
really are
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