Introduction to Child Development

Introduction to Child Development

• 698 children born on Kauai in a given year were studied for 40 years.
• Researchers examined prenatal records, interviewed parents and teachers and assessed children's intelligence & behavior at various ages (1, 10, 18, 32, 40).
• Prenatal issues and environmental factors combined to produce developmental outcomes like disabilities, mental illness, and learning problems. This was particularly true when raised in challenging home conditions.
• About one-third of the children demonstrated resilience and thriving into adulthood despite facing these challenges.

Why Study Child Development?

• Improves child rearing practices.
• Helps create better social policies.
• Answers basic questions about human nature.

Spanking

• Is a common child-rearing technique.
• Research indicates that spanking may worsen child behavior problems.

Alternative Techniques

• Positive discipline strategies and encouraging activities may be considered as alternatives.
• Timeouts may be effective in managing behavior.

Socio-Cultural Context

• A child's environment including social, cultural, political, economic, and historical factors heavily impacts development.
• Bio-ecological model describes how different factors in environment influence.
• Poverty is correlated with challenges in child development.
• Income, education & family health are major influences.
• Cross-cultural comparison helps examine cultural differences in values and practices.

Nature vs Nurture

• Development is a result of a complex interplay of biology and environment.
• Genes, environment, and experiences contribute.
• Epigenetics: environmental factors, such as a person's experiences, can affect gene expression without altering the DNA sequence itself. This is the area where nature and nurture interact.

The Active Child

• Children actively shape their own development.
• Infants choose, and pay attention to, environmental events.
• Their choices shape the kind of experiences they will get.
• They grow, change and develop their own thoughts and behavior.

Continuity and Discontinuity

• Development can be gradual and continuous, or have larger shifts and stages.
• Discontinuous is characterized by distinct periods of change.
• Continuity is characterized by gradual change.

Development Methods

• Structured Interviews: All participants get the same questions.
• Clinical Interviews: Questions tailored to the participant during interaction.
• Naturalistic Observation: Watching children in their natural environment.
• Structured Observations: Observing children in standardized settings.
• Correlational Studies: Examining relationships between variables.
• Experimental Studies: Manipulating variables to study cause-and-effect relationships.
• Microgenetic Studies: Intensive study of children over a short period to show rapid developmental changes.
• Cross-sectional Studies: Studying participants of different ages at a single point in time.
• Longitudinal Studies: Studying the same participants over an extended period to track changes.