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History, Theories and Methods

History, Theories and Methods. Chapter 1. What are the Theories of Child Development?. 1. Psychoanalytic 2. Learning 3. Cognitive 4. Ecological 5. Sociocultural. 1. Psychoanalytic:.

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History, Theories and Methods

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  1. History, Theories and Methods Chapter 1

  2. What are the Theories of Child Development? • 1. Psychoanalytic • 2. Learning • 3. Cognitive • 4. Ecological • 5. Sociocultural

  3. 1. Psychoanalytic: • Children are caught in a conflict inside between their sexual/aggressive drives, and conflict with parental and societal expectations. • Child’s observable behavior, thoughts and feelings reflect the outcome of this hidden conflict. • How parents manage child’s sexual/aggressive drives is crucial to their development. • First to focus on the child-parent interaction in development. There are two Theorists:

  4. a. Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development • Focus on emotional and social development • Study of the origins of psychological traits such as dependence, obsessive neatness, and vanity. • Believe our personality has several components that develop over time. • Theorized that there are 3 parts to the personality.

  5. Parts of the Personality: 1. Id: Unconscious. Biological demands and instant gratification present at birth 2. Ego:Conscious. The conscious self that seeks gratification, but curbs the id to avoid social disapproval 3. Superego:Conscious. Monitors the intentions and behavior of ego by allowing guilt and shame for behavior. The internalization of society and parental right or wrong.

  6. b. Erikson’s Psychosocial Development • Extended stages to adulthood. • Focus on our emotional life and psychological traits, but there is a focus on social relationships rather than sexual/aggressive instincts. • Emphasis is on the ego, or sense of self • Social relationships and physical maturation contributes tour our development • Mastery of developmental task/challenge at each stage needed to move to next stage • Early experiences of parent/child relationship affect future developments and/or accomplishments

  7. Erickson’s Stages of Personality Development

  8. 2. Learning • Focus on how learning affects a person’s behavior. • Emphasis on experience and the consequences of our behavior.

  9. a. Behaviorism: • Children are born a blank slate, learning determines what the child will be: John B. Watson: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” (1930) • Study of development must be more scientific and focus on observable behavior only, not on things like thoughts, feelings, and drives.

  10. Examples of Behaviorism: Little Albert Pavlov’s Dogs Rat in a Skinner Box

  11. b. Social Cognitive Theory • Developed by Bandura; learning occurs by observing other people, by reading, or by engaging in different media. • Observational learning occurs through modeling the same behavior of another person (called a model) • Observational learning can lie latent until the behavior observed is needed or applicable. • A combination of reward, punishment, and imitation.

  12. Bandura’s Early ExperimentIn ObservationalLearning: BoBo Doll

  13. 3. Cognitive Theory • Focus on peoples mental processes. • How children perceive and mentally represent the world, how they develop thinking, logic, and problem solving abilities. • Developed by Piaget; intrigued by children’s wrong answers (pg. 9-10) Piaget viewed children as mentally assimilating and accommodating aspects of their environment.

  14. 3. Cognitive Theory, cont. • The way children construct knowledge changes over time depending on their age. • These changes fall into distinct stages of cognitive development, which change as the child's thinking changes and develops. Q: What are Piaget’s stages of Cognitive development?

  15. 4. Ecological Systems Theory: • Explains development in terms of the interaction between people and the settings in which they live. • Each layer of our environment has a powerful effect on our development. • The developing person is imbedded in a series of complex and interacting systems.

  16. Bronfenbrenner’s Systems Approach • Microsystem – interactions of the child with other people in the immediate setting such as the home, school or peer group • Mesosystem – interactions of various settings with the microsystem such as the parent-teacher conference or the school field trip to the zoo • Exosystem – institutions which indirectly affect the development of the child such as the school board or the parent’s place of employment • Macrosystem – involves the interaction of the child with the beliefs, expectations, and lifestyle of their cultural setting • Chronosystem – refers to the influence of environmental changes that occur over the life course.

  17. 5. Sociocultural Perspective • Developed by Vygotsky • Humans are affected by the cultural and social environment in which they are born • Focus is on the transmission of information and cognitive skills from generation to generation • Learning consists of social engagement from a more skilled individual to a lesser skilled individual (example: an older sibling teaching a younger sibling to ride a bike) • Believed social interaction is necessary for child to acquire cultural skills.

  18. How do we Gather Information about Children for Research? • Naturalistic observation: Research conducted in the natural setting, out in the field. Observer takes great pains not to disturb the environment. Interference can result in “bias” in the research results. • Case study: Carefully drawn account of an individual’s behavior; may use diaries, questionnaires, standardized tests, interviews, information from public records.

  19. What are the Two General Research Designs? • 1. Correlational studies • 2. Experimental studies

  20. 1. Correlational Studies • Correlation: Determines whether one behavior or trait being studied is correlated with, or is related to another behavior or trait. • Use of a statistical formula to obtain information on the strength and direction of a relationship between two variables. • The strength and direction of the relationship is expressed as a number called the correlational coefficient. IMPORTANT: Correlational studies never indicate a cause and effect relationship between variables. This is one of its weaknesses.

  21. Correlation Coefficients: What do they tell us? Strength • Size of the number between 0 and 1 • Closer to 1 is a stronger relationship Direction • Indicated by + or - sign • Positive (+): as one variable increases, so does the other • Negative (-): as one variable increase, the other decreases

  22. Correlations:

  23. 2. Experimental Method • A study where one group of subjects receives the treatment and the other group does not. Subjects are then observed to see if the treatment makes a difference in their behavior. • Most preferred method for investigating cause and effect. • Experiments are usually conducted to test a hypothesis.

  24. An Experiment Has 2 Variables: Independent • Experimenter manipulates directly • Expected to be the cause for changes in the dependent variable. (“treatment” or “experimental” group) Dependent • Experimenter measures, but does not manipulate • Expected to be the effect from the independent variable (“placebo” or “control” group)

  25. Experiments, cont. • Random assignment – subjects assigned to a group randomly • Ethical/practical consideration – researchers look at the ethics and practical assignment of participants; sometimes correlational evidence must be settled for rather than experimental. • Animal subjects – used to generalize findings to humans when it is not ethical or practical to use humans in the experiment

  26. What are the 3 Common Methods Used to Study Children Over Time? • 1. Longitudinal studies • 2. Cross Sectional studies

  27. 1. Longitudinal Research • Seeks to study development over time; some subjects’ characteristics such as height, weight, and/or changes in mental capabilities observed repeatedly over time; a larger number of participants is needed for this type of study • Typically time of study spans months or a few years • Longitudinal researchers have to enlist future researchers to continue the study.

  28. 2. Cross-sectional Research • Cross-sectional research observes and compares subjects of different ages; a larger number of participants is needed for this type of study • Cohort effect – group of people born at the same time; experience cultural and other events unique to their age group; children of a particular cohort will have different life experiences than their parents

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