Chapter 1 Flashcards
(25 cards)
Discontinuous
Quantitative change with periods of rapid transformation followed by plateaus
One course development
Universality of change (stage theories)
Many courses of development
Importance of context
Medieval times
6th-15th century: childhood was regarded as a separate period of life as easily as medieval Europe. Distinguished children under age 7 or 8 from other people and that recognized even young teenagers as not fully mature.
The Reformation
16th century - the Puritan belief in original sin gave riser to the view that children were born evil and stubborn and had to be civilized.
John Locke
The Enlightenment (17th century) - served as the forerunner of a 12th century perspective: behaviorism. Children begin with nothing at all. Tabula rasa “blank slate”.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Enlightenment (18th century) believed that children are “Nobel savages” naturally endowed with a sense of right and wrong and an innate plan for orderly, healthy growth.
Charles Darwin
Mid 19th century - evolution
Normative study of child development
Early 1900s - G. Stanley Hall & Arnold Gesellschaft - measure of box are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development.
Mental Testing movement
Alfred Binet - also normative.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
Conflict between biological drives and social expectations at various stages
+focus on individuals, inspired research in many areas
- vagueness of ideas makes it difficult to test
Freud
Psychosexual theory - focus on personality development.
Continuous development
quantitative, gradual change
Ericson
Psychoanalytic - psychosocial theory; focus on development and the contribution an individual makes to society.
+ looks at development over the lifespan
Recognized the importance of culture
Behaviorism and social (cognitive learning theory)
Focus on directly observable events
+contributed to knowledge of how people learn, helpful for eliminating bad behaviors and increasing acceptable behaviors
- underestimated children’s contribution to their own development limited environmental influences to the immediate environment.
Watson
Classical conditioning responses are learned through associations
Skinner
operant conditioning; reinforcers will increase behaviors and punishment will decrease behaviors
Bandura
Modeling/imitation/observational learning
Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
Children construct knowledge as they actively explore and manipulate their worlds
+promoted children as active learners, stimulated vast amount of research
-underestimated competencies of learners and preschoolers
Personable on his tasks can be improved with training
Information Processing
Mind is viewed as a system that manipulates symbols as info flows through it
+step-by-step approach is useful for determining where learning or processing difficulty is occurring
- doesn’t provide a comprehensive theory, creativity, and imagination
Ethology/evolutionary psychology
Focus is on the adaptive or survival value of a behavior and how competencies change with age.
+seeks to understand the entire organism-environment system
- difficult to determine if behavior is truly an adaptation
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
Focus is on how culture and social interactions affect children’s behavior and thinking.
+ recognized importance of social and cultural factors
- recognized importance of heredity and brain growth but neglects biological and child’s own contributions to development
Bio-Ecological systems theory
Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships
+ incorporates all levels of the environment
- can be difficult to examine all environmental levels in 1 study
Dynamic systems theory
The child’s mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills.
+constantly in motion, disruptions cause reorganization, focus on why/how children vary
-can require non-trad Analysis
