| why study child development? | understanding how children develop can;
eduction - help parents contribute to raising children effectively.
social play - lead society as a whole to adopt wiser policies that promote children's well-being |
| development; chronology | parental period - conception to birth
infancy - birth to 18 months
toddlerhood - 18 months to 3 years
preschool - 3 to 5 years
middle childhood - 6 to 12 years
adolescence - 12 to 20 or so |
| development? | refers to the systematic changes and continues that individuals display over the course of their lives...
- is a continuous and cumulative process
- is a holistic process
- shows plasticity
- is dependent on historical and cultural context |
| two processes of development | maturation - the development changes in the body or behaviour that results from the ageing process
learning - a developmental change in behaviour that results from ones experience or practice |
| key areas of study | - normative development refers to typical patterns of development that are seen across most or all individual
- individual changes refers to an individuals variations in the rate or direction of development that is unique to the individual
- developmental theories need to account for findings in all areas |
| issues in developmental psychology | - nature/nurture debate - impacts on development?
- active versus passive
- stability versus change
- is this a continuous process, or do we develop through a series of leaps? |
| the founders of developmental psychology in 1800s | baby biographies (e.g. darwin)
- inexact, but served to put child development on scientists agenda
G.S Hall
- in order to obtain more reliable data, he distributed questionnaires to larger samples of children |
| theoretical orientations | psychoanalysis
- this approach seeks to understand human behaviour in terms of unconscious drives and motives that stem from early life experiences |
| psychoanalytic theories | freud (psychosexual)
- basis unconscious drives, maturation
- 5 stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)
- use of defence mechanisms
Erikson (psychosocial)
- cultural demands
- more active
8 stage of major conflicts that must be resolved (trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, ego integrity) |
| theoretical orientations | behaviourism/ learning theory
- this approach argues that human behaviour is learned through experience with the environment |
| learning theories | classical conditioning
- conditioning (pairing) of stimuli
operant conditioning
- behaviour is shaped by consequences (i.e. reinforcement- positive or negative and punishment
social learning
- human behaviour is learned through observation. imitation of models |
| theoretical orientations | cognitive developmental
- this approach attempts to understand developments in children's thinking in terms of the acquisition of new mental operations. |
| cognitive theories | piaget
- active explorer, construct schemas
- four stages - sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete-operational, formal operational
vygotsky
- cognitive growth as a socially mediated process
- heavily influenced by culture
information-processing
- computer model of cognitive development and thinking |
| theorectical orientations | ethological (evolutionary) perspective
- this approach is concerned with the contribution of human evolution to human psychology
- it assumes that behaviour and development depend on inborn motives that are species-specific due to natural selection
ecology/contextual approach
- a newer approach, it considers the context, or ecology, of how an individual child grows up
bronfenbrenner's 1979 ecological system approach
- considers a detailed analysis of environmental influences |
