PSYCH 250 Flashcards
(233 cards)
What are 3 reasons as to why we should study child development?
- To improve ones own child-rearing
- To help society promote the well-being of children in general
- To better understand human nature.
What are two positive ways to approach your child’s bad behaviour?
- Using sympathy
2. By helping them find alternative ways to express their anger
What did Plato believe in regards to child development?
- longterm welfare of society depended on the proper raising of children
- view the rearing of boys especially challenging for parents
- emphasized self-control and discipline as the most important goal of education
- believed children have innate knowledge
What did Aristotle believe in regards to child development?
- longterm welfare of society depended on proper raising of children
- believed discipline was necessary, but more concentrated on fitting child-rearing to the needs of individual children
- believed all knowledge comes from experience
- believe that an infants mind is a “tabula rasa”
What does tabula rasa mean?
- means blank slate
- Aristotle used this to describe infants mind
What is a genome?
Is each person’s or organisms complete set of hereditary information
Define epigenetics:
Is the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment
Define methylation:
A biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is involved in regulating reactions to stress
What is a stage theory?
Is approaches that propose that development involves a series of discontinuous, age-related phases
What percent of all siblings (including fraternal twins) share and differ in their genes?
50/50
Define Internal Validity:
Is the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing
Define external validity:
Is the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research
What are 3 ways researchers can collect data on children?
- Interviews
- Naturalistic observations
- Structured observations
What is a structured interview?
Is where all participants are asked the same set of questions
What is a clinical interview?
Is where questions are adjusted in accordance with the answers the interviewee provides
Define Structured Observation:
- where researchers design a setting that will elicit behaviour that is relevant to their hypothesis and then observe the differences
- advantage: it excludes a vast number of environmental variables as the setting is exactly the same for all participants
What is the direction-of-causation problem?
Is the concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influenced by some third variable
What is the third-variable problem?
Concept that a correlation between two variables may stem from both being influence by some third variable
What is a microgenetic design?
Is a method of study in which the same children are studied repeatedly over a short period
What action has been known to be one of the earliest signs of a child understanding another’s mind?
Pointing or responding to pointing
What percent of parents still spank their children?
50-66% of parents still spank their children
What did John Locke believe in regards to child development?
- He saw children as tabula rasa’s
- advocated first installing discipline and then gradually increasing the child’s freedom (this is a nurture perspective)
How did Jean-Jacques Rousseau view child development?
-argued that parents and society should give maximum freedom from the beginning (nature perspective)
Describe Darwin’s theory of evolution :
- developed baby biography (diary) as a method of studying children
- this theory still influences research in modern child development in which he attempts to understand where human capacities come from