Introduction

Question 1

1- Why study child
development?

Answer 1

Raising Children
* Child development research helps answer questions about how to
raise children

Choosing Social Policies
* Child development research can help inform social policies that affect
children

Understanding Human Nature and
Individuals
* Child development research is vital to understanding how nature and
nurture shape human psychology
* Also can help explain individual differences between people

Question 2

2- What is childhood?

Answer 2

Childhood
* “Every human being below the age of 18 years”
* A human that is physically immature
* What about psychologically speaking?

What does it mean to be a child?
1- Dependent on adult caregivers
-Longer childhood compared to other species
-Humans have longest childhoods amongst primates
* Long childhood makes children very vulnerable, thus caring for them is
very time-consuming

Why is human childhood so long?
* Large-brain, narrow hips trade-off
- Our brains are large for our size and more complicated/ neurondense than any other animal
-Larger brains necessitate larger heads
-At the same time, the evolution of our ability to stand upright
favoured narrower hips
-Conflict between large head and narrow hips
* To solve this conflict, babies evolved to be born earlier
-Brain continues to develop once born

• Being born not fully formed allows for more learning

2- Fundamentally about learning
* Long childhood is adaptive for maximizing learning
* Many aspects of childhood demonstrate that children are “adapted” to focus on learning
-Highly curious
-Highly suggestible, not critical thinkers
-Readily imitate others
-Overestimate own abilities
-Brains are malleable
* Focus on learning is only possible if taken care of by adults

Question 3

3- What is child development?

Answer 3

• Process of learning of perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social
  capabilities that allows an individual to grow from the dependence of
  infancy to the independence of adulthood