Developmental Psychology Chapter Quiz

Child Development - Introduction

• The book is titled Child Development, 16th Edition, by John W. Santrock, Kirby Deater-Deckard, and Jennifer E. Lansford.
• Learning changes everything.
• Learning goals include identifying areas needing improvement in children's lives, explaining resilience and social policy roles, discussing key developmental processes, periods, and issues, and summarizing research importance, related theories, methods, and challenges.

Caring for Children

• Examines development and contemporary topics of concern related to children's well-being.

Improving the Lives of Children

• Discusses sociocultural contexts and diversity, including:
  • Context (setting)
  • Culture (passed behaviors and beliefs across generations)
  • Cross-cultural studies (comparing 2+ cultures)
  • Ethnicity (cultural heritage, race, and language)
  • Socioeconomic status (SES) [position in society]
  • Gender

Resilience, Social Policy, and Children's Development

• Resilience is linked to social policy, good self-control, intellectual functioning, close parent/adult relationships.
• Strategies for improving children's lives include improvements in social policy for families.
• Governments may intervene when families fail or endanger a child's well-being.

Characteristics of Resilient Children

• Individual characteristics: good intellectual functioning, appealing personality, high self-esteem, talents, and faith.
• Family characteristics: close relationships with caring parents, authoritative parenting (warmth, structure, high expectations), socioeconomic advantages, and supportive family networks.
• Extrafamilial context characteristics: bonds with caring adults outside the family, connections to positive organizations, and attending effective schools.

Exposure to Stressors

• A chart (Figure 3) shows the percentages of poor and middle-income children exposed to stressors: family turmoil; child separation; exposure to violence; crowding; excessive noise; and poor housing quality.

Developmental Processes, Periods, and Issues

• Psychologists studying development focus on shared characteristics and unique traits of individuals; they explore the path and milestones of human development.

Changes in Development

• Development results from biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes, which interact as individuals develop.

Processes and Periods of Development

• Diagram illustrates prenatal, infancy, early childhood, middle/late childhood, and adolescence as periods of development, with biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes interconnected throughout.

Cohort Effects

• Cohorts are groups born around the same time in history.
• Examples include those who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II.
• Cohort effects are due to era, not necessarily age (e.g., Millennials).

Issues in Development

• Nature-nurture issue: extent of biological vs. environmental factors in development.
• Continuity-discontinuity issue: gradual change vs. distinct stages in development.
• Early-later experience issue: influence of early and later events on development.

The Science of Child Development

• The science examines:
  • How parents nurture their children.
  • How peers interact.
  • Ways children's thinking evolves over time.
  • Links between screen time and obesity.
  • Whether interventions can mitigate negative effects of neglect.
  • Mentoring's impact on children's achievements.

The Importance of Research

• Scientific research is objective, testable, and provides answers to questions.
• The scientific method has four steps: problem, data collection, data analysis, and conclusion.
• A theory is a broad explanation, a hypothesis is a testable prediction.

Psychoanalytic Theories

• Sigmund Freud proposed five psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital).
• Erik Erikson proposed psychosocial stages (eight stages with social motivation and crises).

Freudian Stages (Figure 7)

• A table outlining the five stages: Oral (birth-1.5 yrs) - Pleasure centers on the mouth; Anal (1.5-3 yrs) - Pleasure focused on the anus; Phallic (3-6 yrs) - Pleasure on genitals; Latency (6 yrs-puberty) - Repression of sexual interest, social & intellectual skills develop; Genital (puberty onwards) - Sexual reawakening.

Erikson's Eight Life-Span Stages (Figure 8)

• A table outlining the stages across the lifespan- Trust vs Mistrust, Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt, Initiative vs Guilt, Industry vs Inferiority, Identity vs Role Confusion, Intimacy vs Isolation, Generativity vs Stagnation, and Integrity vs Despair.

Cognitive Theories

• Jean Piaget (four stages): organization and unknown second process.
• Lev Vygotsky: argued that children actively construct their knowledge.
• Cognitive Information Processing: draws parallels between computers and brains

Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development (Figure 9)

• A table outlining four stages- Sensorimotor: Infants construct understanding of the world through coordinating sensory with physical actions. Birth-2 yrs; Preoperational: Child represents the world with words & images. 2-7 yrs; Concrete Operational: Child reasons logically about concrete events and classify objects. 7-11 yrs; Formal Operational: Adolescent reasons in abstract, idealistic, and logical ways. 11 years - adulthood.

Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories

• Behaviorism studies observable data.
• Pavlov's classical conditioning: neutral stimulus produces a response.
• John Watson and Rosalie Raynor demonstrated classical conditioning in humans.
• Skinner's operant conditioning: behavior changes due to rewards and punishments.
• Bandura's social-cognitive theory: behavior influenced by environment & cognition.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Model (Figure 10)

• A triangular model depicting the interaction between behavior, person/cognition, and environment.

Ethological Theory

• Ethology studies biology tied to evolution.
• Konrad Lorenz's imprinting studies in goslings.
• John Bowlby's attachment theory: attachment in the first year impacts the entire lifespan.

Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory (Figure 11)

• The model depicts concentric circles representing different ecological systems, including the microsystem (immediate environment), mesosystem (interactions between microsystems), exosystem (indirect influences), macrosystem (cultural values), and chronosystem (time).

Research Methods for Collecting Data

• Observation (highly systematic, lab-based, naturalistic).
• Surveys (questionnaires, interviews).
• Standardized tests.
• Case studies (in-depth look at individuals).
• Physiological measures (e.g., hormone levels).

Parents' Explanations of Science (Figure 13)

• A bar graph showing the percentage of parent-child interactions in which parents explained science concepts to their children, with differences between boys and girls.

Brain Imaging of Adolescents (Figure 14)

• Brain images illustrating differences or changes in brain activity related to teenage development (left and right hemispheres).

Research Designs

• Descriptive research: Observe and record behavior.
• Correlation research: Finds relationships.
• Experimental research: Factors influencing behaviors, independent vs dependent variables. Experimental and control groups.
• Time span research (developmental): lifespan developments
• Cross-sectional approach [different ages at the same time]
• Longitudinal approach [same individuals at different times]

Possible Explanations of Correlations (Figure 15)

• Explains that correlation doesn't equal causation; other factors may be involved in a correlation (parents’ parenting style, children's problems, genetics, socioeconomic status).

Connections of Research Methods to Theories(Figure 17)

• Relates different research approaches to a variety of theoretical perspectives (Observation, Survey/Interviews, Standardized test, Correlational, Experimental, Cross-sectional/longitudinal)

Conducting Ethical Research

• APA ethical guidelines for research: informed consent; confidentiality; debriefing; and deception (in some instances).

Minimizing Bias

• Importance of conducting unbiased studies; avoiding gender and cultural biases.

Review

• Summarizes the key elements discussed in the chapter: areas needing improvement in children's lives, developmental processes, periods, issues, importance of research, key theories, and research methods .