Children

1. 1 Children The Nature of Children’s Development

2. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Images of Children • Stories of Ted Kaczynski and Alice Walker • A child genius becomes a social misfit and a murderer. • An impoverished and painful childhood leads to creativity and award-winning publications.

3. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Child Development • Development –pattern of change from conception, throughout the life span • Importance of studying development • Improving children’s lives • Improving health and well-being • Learning better parenting • Improving child education • Better social policies affecting children

4. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Historical Views of Development • Early views of childhood • Medieval Europe • No distinction from adults • Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans • Rich conceptions of childhood

5. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Historical Views of Development • Three influential philosophical views • Middle Ages • Original sin view • End of 1800s • Tabula rasa (John Locke) • Eighteenth century • Innate goodness (Rousseau) • Today: childhood is unique

6. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Modern Studies of Childhood • Began in late 1800s • Use of sophisticated science • New ways of thinking about children • Shift from philosophical view to systematic observation and experimentation

7. Why Is Caring For Children Important? Major Theories • Evolutionary view – G.S. Hall • Stages of distinct motives and capabilities • Psychoanalytic theory – S. Freud • Stage theory stressing parenting • First 5 years influence later life • Behaviorism – John Watson • Environment influences behavior

8. What Characterizes Development? Biological, Cognitive, andSocioemotional Development • Genetic epistemology (J. Baldwin) • Child knowledge changes over development • Biological processes • Physical changes in a person • Cognitive processes • Changes in thought, IQ, and language • Socioemotional processes • Personality, emotions, relationships

9. What Characterizes Development? Periods of Development • Prenatal – conception to birth • Infancy – birth to 18-24 months of age • Early childhood – infancy to 5-6 years • Middle/late childhood – 6 to 11 years (elementary years) • Adolescence – 10 or 12 until 18 years (may vary beyond these years)

10. What Characterizes Development? Issues in Development • Nature-Nurture issue • Nature • Influences of biological inheritance • Development seen as orderly • Nurture • Influences of environment • Influenced by social experiences • Deprivation or enrichment have impact

11. What Characterizes Development? Issues in Development • Continuity-discontinuity issue • Continuity • Gradual, continuous changes • Discontinuity • Distinct stages, abrupt changes • Early-later experiences • Hotly debated • Malleable or resilient to experiences?

12. Discontinuity Continuity • Nature and nurture • Continuity and discontinuity

13. What Characterizes Development? Importance of Research • Scientific Method • Conceptualize or identify a problem • Refer to a theory (set of ideas that predict) • Develop a hypothesis (testable assumption) • Collect the data (to test the hypothesis) • Analyze the data (by statistical methods) • Draw conclusions • Compare to other research outcomes

14. What Characterizes Development? Theories of Development • Psychoanalytic theories • Behavior affected by underlying emotions and unconscious mind • Personality (S. Freud) • Id (unconscious instincts) • Ego (executive branch of mind, deals with reality) • Superego (moral branch of mind, one’s ‘conscience’)

15. Freud’sStages Oral: Birth to 18 months Anal: 18 months to 3 years Phallic: 3 to 6 years (Oedipus complex) Latency: 6 years to puberty Genital: Puberty onward What Characterizes Development?

16. What Characterizes Development? Theories of Development • Psychosocial theory (E. Erikson) • Change occurs over life span in 8 stages • Each stage has unique crisis to resolve, not a catastrophe to future development if not resolved • Each stage has developmental task

17. Psychosocial theory Late adulthood Integrity vs. despair Generativity vs. stagnation Middle adulthood Early adulthood Intimacy vs. isolation Identity vs. identity confusion Adolescence Middle and late childhood Industry vs. inferiority Initiative vs. guilt Early childhood Infancy: 1 to 3 years Autonomy vs. shame and doubt Trust vs. mistrust Infancy: 1st year of life

18. Caring for Children Strategies Based on Erikson’s Theory • Nurture infants, develop trust, encourage and monitor autonomy • Encourage initiative • Promote industry in elementary years • Stimulate adolescent identity exploration

19. Caring for Children Cognitive Theories • Cognitive development theory (J. Piaget) • Children actively construct their understanding of the world • Accommodation and Assimilation • Four stages of cognitive development • Two underlying processes: • Organization • Adaptation

20. Caring for Children Cognitive Development Theory

21. Caring for Children Cognitive Theories • Sociocultural theory (L. Vygotsky) • Social and cultural interaction guide cognitive development • Child needs interaction with more skilled adults and peers • Interactions teach adaptive skills for success • Knowledge is situated and collaborative • Memory, attention, reasoning involves learning to use society’s inventions

22. Caring for Children Cognitive Theories • Information processing theory • Capacity is gradually developed (no stages) • Comparing computer to human brain • Hardware analogous to brain • Software analogous to cognition • Emphasizes how individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it

23. Sensory information STORAGE INPUT RETRIEVAL literature economics Information is used as basis of behaviors and interactions Information is taken into brain science culture religion Information gets processed, analyzed, and stored until use history math Information Processing Theory

24. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Behaviorism • Development is observable behavior • Behavior is learned from environmental experiences • Scientific measurements possible • Change environment to affect behavior • Four major theorists: Skinner, Pavlov, Bandura, and Watson

25. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Classical Conditioning (I. Pavlov) • Neutral stimulus acquires ability to produce response originally produced by another stimulus • Dogs salivated to food • Pairing food with bell produces salivation • Sound of bell will produce salivation without food

26. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Classical conditioning (J. Watson) • Experiment: Little Albert and the white rat • Generalizing fear as an involuntary response • Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner) • Consequences of behavior change probability of behavior’s occurrence • Use of punishments and rewards shapes behavior and development

27. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Social Cognitive Theory (A. Bandura) • Observational learning: use imitation or modeling to adopt behaviors • Behavior, environment, and cognition are key factors in development • Most recent model of learning • Three elements: behavior, environmental, and person/cognitive operate together

28. Behavior Environment Person/ Cognitive Caring for Children Social Cognitive Model

29. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Ethological theory • Ethology stresses behavior influenced by biology • Critical (sensitive) periods for learning • Lorenz experiment: imprinting • Bowlby: attachment to caretaker is important in first year of life • Can be positive or negative

30. Caring for Children Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories • Ecological theory (U. Bronfenbrenner) • Development influenced by several environmental systems • Current modification • Added biological influences • Renamed Bioecological theory • Has merits and criticisms

31. Caring for Children Ecological Theory

32. Caring for Children Research Methods • Observation • Laboratory or naturalistic observation • Survey and interview • Standardized test – uniform procedures • Case study – in-depth on individual • Physiological measures • fMRI (electromagnetic waves used)

33. Caring for Children Research Methods • Research designs (for data collection) • Descriptive research: observe and record • Correlational research: measure strength of association • Correlation coefficient – shows strength and direction, not causality • Statistical number

34. Caring for Children Research Methods • Experimental research • Behavior manipulated, change measured • Demonstrates cause and effect • Independent variable (gets manipulated) • Dependent variable (gets measured) • Control group (forms baseline measure) • Experimental group (gets manipulated) • Random assignment (assignment by chance)

35. Caring for Children Research Methods • Time span of research • Cross-sectional approach • Several groups (usually different ages) compared at one time • Longitudinal approach • Follows same group over long period of time (usually years)

36. Caring for Children Research Challenges • Conducting ethical research • Protect rights of research subjects • Do no harm (?) and adhere to code of ethics • Use of informed consent • Respect confidentiality • Conduct debriefing • Avoid deception (controversial here)

37. Caring for Children Minimizing Bias • Gender bias – preconceived ideas about female and male abilities, magnifying differences found • Cultural and ethnic bias – excluding minorities, preconceived ideas of not being ‘average’ • Ethnic gloss – use of ethnic label portraying ethnic groups as more homogeneous than they really are

38. 1 The End