Chapter 1 - Introduction Flashcards
DEVELOPMENT
Development is the pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the lifespan - it includes both growth and decline
CONTEXT
The term CONTEXT refers to the settings in which development occurs - 4 contexts that we pay special attention to in development are:
1) CULTURE, which encompasses the behavior patterns and beliefs of a specific group of people that are passed on from generation to generation;
2) ETHNICITY, which is rooted in cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion and language;
3) SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES), which refers to a person’s position within society based on occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
4) GENDER, or the characteristics of people as male and females.
3 types of DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES
The pattern of human development is created by the interplay of 3 key processes:
1) BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES produce changes in an individual’s body - they are the result of genetic expression and include brain development, height and weight gains and hormonal changes in puberty;
2) COGNITIVE PROCESSES refer to changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language.
3) SOCIOEMOTIONAL PROCESSES involve changes
in relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.
Biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes can influence each other - their relationship is the interest of two emerging fields, namely DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE and DEVELOPMENTAL SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE.
PERIODS of DEVELOPMENT
The most widely used classification of developmental periods describes a child’s development in terms of the following sequence:
1) The PRENATAL PERIOD, the time from conception to birth - roughly a nine-month period.
2) INFANCY, from birth to 2 years of age, which is a time of extreme dependence on adults, for many psychological skills are still developing;
3) EARLY CHILDHOOD, from 2 to 6 years of age, in which children spend much time engaging in play with peers - it is also called the “preschool period”.
4) MIDDLE and LATE CHILDHOOD, between 6 and 11 years of age, in which children master the fundamental skills of writing, reading and arithmetic - it is also called the “elementary school period”.
5) ADOLESCENCE, between 11 and 19 years of age, which is a time of rapid physical changes. The pursuit of independence and an identity are prominent features of this period - thought becomes more abstract, idealistic, and logical.
COHORT
A COHORT is a group of people who are born at a similar point in history and share similar experiences as a result. Cohort effects are due to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation but not to actual age.
3 DEBATES in DEVELOPMENT
Debate continues about the relative importance of factors that influence the developmental processes.
The most important issues in the study of children’s development include:
1) The NATURE-NURTURE issue;
2) The CONTINUITY-DISCONTINUITY issue;
3) The EARLY-LATER EXPERIENCE issue;
4) The INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES issue - how does a person come to have characteristics that make him/her different from others, and how stable are these characteristics over time?
The NATURE-NURTURE issue
The NATURE-NURTURE ISSUE involves the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or by nurture - nature refers to an organism’s biological inheritance, nurture to its environmental experiences.
Early terminology focused on hard-and-fast contrasts, such as the dichotomy between LEARNING (changes in response to experience) and MATURATION (changes driven by genetic processes), or the concept of strict CRITICAL PERIODS of development.
Such distinctions have been criticised for being too simplistic, and this is acknowledged in later terminology:
- EXPERIENCE-EXPECTANT PROCESSES are processes that make use of environmental information that is highly reliable for all members of the species - such as hearing a language;
- EXPERIENCE-DEPENDENT PROCESSES are processes that make use of environmental information whose importance vary across individuals - such as the specific language that is heard;
- SENSITIVE PERIODS are time-limited windows when specific experiences have their largest effects. Unlike CRITICAL PERIODS, learning can still be effective - although limited - outside those time windows.
According to EMERGENTISM, developmental courses are not established by genetic information, but emerge from the CONSTRUCTIVE interaction between genes and their environment. Thus, nothing can be considered to be strictly genetic - an exclusive product of genetic information. Still, there are genetically based constraints that guide development which account for those universally shared milestones.
They can be divided in:
1) REPRESENTATIONAL CONSTRAINTS: we enter the world able to make sense of some aspects of the environment thanks to representations that are hard-wired in the brain, such as the ability to recognise faces;
2) ARCHITECTURAL CONSTRAINTS: they organise the prenatal development of the architecture of the brain - they are universal, for virtually every individual share a similar brain architecture. They result in the ability of certain areas of the brain to process only certain types of information, which allows for a greater area specialisation.
3) CHRONOTOPIC CONSTRAINTS: they impose limitations on the timing of developmental events, such as the fact that certain brain areas develop before others or the fact that the timing of the onset of puberty does not vary sensibly across individuals.
The CONTINUITY-DISCONTINUITY issue
The CONTINUITY-DISCONTINUITY issue focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change - continuity - or distinct stages - discontinuity.
Developmentalists who emphasize nurture usually stand on the continuity side, whereas for developmentalists that emphasize nature the opposite is true.
The EARLY-LATER EXPERIENCE issue
The EARLY-LATER EXPERIENCE debate focuses on the degree to which early experiences - especially in infancy - or later experiences are key determinants of the child’s development.
Early-experience advocates claim that, unless infants and young children experience warm, nurturing care, their development will never quite be optimal. On the other hand, later-experience supporters maintain that children are malleable throughout development and that later sensitive caregiving is just as important as earlier sensitive caregiving.
THEORIES of CHILD DEVELOPMENT - 5 theoretical orientations
There are 5 theoretical orientations to child development:
1) PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES, which include:
(A) FREUD’s THEORY;
(B) ERIKSON’s PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY.
2) COGNITIVE THEORIES, which include:
(A) PIAGET’s COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY,
(B) VYGOTSKY’s SOCIOCULTURAL COGNITIVE THEORY;
(C) INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORY.
3) BEHAVIORAL and SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES, which include:
(A) PAVLOV’s CLASSICAL CONDITIONING;
(B) SKINNER’s OPERANT CONDITIONING;
(C) BANDURA’s SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY.
4) ETHOLOGICAL THEORY;
5) BRONFENBRENNER’s ECOLOGICAL THEORY.
FREUD’s THEORY
According to FREUD’s THEORY - which is one of two PSYCHODYNAMIC theories of child development - every individual goes through five stages of PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT, in each of which the source of sexual pleasure changes:
1) Oral;
2) Anal;
3) Phallic;
4) Latency, in which the child represses sexual interest and develops social and intellectual skills;
5) Genital, in which the source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside the family.
Freud claimed that adult personality is determined by the way we resolve conflicts between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of reality.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES of CHILD DEVELOPMENT
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES of child development - such as FREUD’s THEORY and ERIKSON’s PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY - describe development as primarily unconscious. Psychoanalytic theorists emphasize that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that a true understanding of development requires analyzing the symbolic meanings of behavior. Psychoanalytic theorists also stress that early experiences with parents extensively shape development.
Criticism to psychodynamic theories include a lack of scientific support and, especially for Freud’s theory, and undue emphasis on sexuality.
ERIKSON’s PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY
ERIK ERIKSON developed a PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY of development called PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY - he recognized Freud’s contributions but argued that we develop in PSYCHOSOCIAL stages, rather than in psychosexual stages; if for Freud the primary motivation for human behavior is sexual drive, Erikson believed that it is the desire to affiliate with other people. Furthermore, Freud viewed early experience as far more important than later experiences, whereas Erikson argued that developmental change occurs throughout the lifespan.
According to Erikson’s theory, 8 stages of development - characterised by 8 crisis that call for resolution and, therefore, development - unfold as we go through life:
1) TRUST vs MISTRUST (first year), in which the infant forms a lifelong expectation of whether the world will be a pleasant place to live.
2) AUTONOMY vs SHAME and DOUBT (1 to 3 years), in which toddlers start to understand their sense of independence and can developed feelings of shame if punished too harshly.
3) INITIATIVE vs GUILT (3 to 5 years), in which children encounter the social world and face new challenges that require active behaviour - feelings of guilt may arise if the child is irresponsible and is made to feel
too anxious.
4) INDUSTRY vs INFERIORITY (6 to 10 years), in which children master knowledge and intellectual skills - poor performance may lead to feelings of inferiority.
5) IDENTITY vs IDENTITY CONFUSION (10 to 20 years), in which adolescents face the challenge of finding out who they are - that is, developing an identity - and where they are going in life.
6) INTIMACY vs ISOLATION (20s, 30s), in which individuals face the task of forming intimate relationships.
7) GENERATIVITY vs STAGNATION (40s, 50s), in which individuals either help the younger generation to develop and lead good lives or stagnate, that is, they have the feeling of having done nothing.
8) INTEGRITY vs DESPAIR (60s onward), in which a person reflects on the past and takes stock of her achievements.
COGNITIVE THEORIES of CHILD DEVELOPMENT
COGNITIVE THEORIES of child development - which include PIAGET’s COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY, VYGOTSKY’s SOCIOCULTURAL COGNITIVE THEORY and the INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORY - emphasize conscious thoughts.
Criticism to these theories include too little attention paid to interindividual variability in development.
PIAGET’s COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
PIAGET’s COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY states that children go through 4 stages of cognitive development, in each of which they actively construct their understanding of the world. Each stage is age-related and consists of a distinct way of thinking, a different way of understanding the world - that is, cognition is QUALITATIVELY different from one stage to another. Such stages are:
1) The SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (from birth to 2 years), in which infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions;
2) The PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 to 7 years), in which children represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
3) The CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7 to 11 years), in which children can perform CONCRETE OPERATIONS, or operations that involve objects - OPERATIONS are internalized mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously could only do physically.
4) The FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (11 years onwards), in which adolescents learn to perform ABSTRACT OPERATIONS - they imagine ideal circumstances, and plan possibilities for their future.
