Intro to Child Development Ch 1 PDF

Intro to Child Development Ch 1 Werner 2005: - Subject: 698 children born on Kauai: that year - Studying: the children development for 40 years o Examined physicians record for possible complication during the prenatal period/birth o Nurses+ social...

Intro to Child Development Ch 1 Werner 2005: - Subject: 698 children born on Kauai: that year - Studying: the children development for 40 years o Examined physicians record for possible complication during the prenatal period/birth o Nurses+ social workers observed the families and learned about interactions and behaviors o Interview the child’s mom at age 1 and 10 o Interviewed teachers for academics and class behavior o Administered standardized intelligence and personality tests at age 10 and 18 o Interviewed at age 18,32, and 40 to see what they thought of their development - Outcome: illustrated some of the many ways in which biological/environmental factors combine to produce child development o Prenatal issues are more likely to develop handicap, mental illness, learning issues  All depends on home conditions o Parents income, education, mental health, quality of relationship, especially influences the child’s development o By the time the children were 10, prenatal issues were consistently related to psychological di iculties sonly if the child grew up in poor conditions o Children with both biological and environmental challenges faced major developmental and behavioral problems by age 10 and kept regressing o 1/3 showed resilience and grew into strong young adults - Why Study Child Development? o Improves child rearing. o Promotes wiser social polices towards children o Answers basic questions about human nature - Raising children o Spanking is very commonly sued o Research shows spanking worsens the problem  More spanking means more outbursts regardless of any factors o Alternatives   Express sympathy  Find positive alternatives  Encouraging some activity they enjoy  Timeouts - Denham+ Burton 1996 o Special curriculum for helping preschoolers o Encouraged teachers to help kids recognize feelings and how to control/manage them o Use the “turtle technique”  When a child felt angry they moved away and retracted into their “shell” o Outcome: it was very successful and kids became more skillful in recognizing and regulating their anger - Budling Empathy for diverse populations of children o Empathy: a persons capacity to understand and share the feelings of another person  Key part of emotional/moral development o It’s easier to share empathy from experience but it is very important to learn - Choosing Social Policies o Fergueson 2015  Through metanalysis- combining results form independent studies to reach conclusions based on all of them- he reviewed 1010 studies on the e ects of video games  He studied specifically the e ects of video game son kids and adults and there aggression due to video games  Outcome: the benefits of preventing potentially harmful activities outweigh the cost of impinging on people freedom o Ceci and Bruck 1998  Subject 3 to 6 year olds  Study: played a game similar to Simon says and touched their own bodies as well as the bodies of other children  1 month later social workers interview the children about their experience during the game  Social worker was given false information about the kids experience  The social worked asked normal interrogative question and led kids to change their answers or make false agreement because of leading questions   Outcome: in order to get accuracy questions should be asked that are not leading or repetitive  The use of realistic props is not necessary. o Understanding Human Nature  Studying infants o ers the ability to learn what people are like before they are a ected by the influence of family and society  Nativist: believe babies understand basic properties of objects, plants, animals, and people  Empiricists: infants posses general learning mechanisms that allow them to learn more quickly- lack what nativist believe they have o Enduring themes in Child Development  7 basic questions about child development  1) Nature and nurture: how do nature and nurture together shape development? o Nature: our biological endowment, genes we receive from our parents o Nurture: the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that influence our development o All human characteristics are created through the joint workings of nature ad nurture o Genome: each person complete set of hereditary information o Studies on schizophrenia children and how they were raised revels how the genes influence behavior/ experience and vice versa o Genome includes DNA and proteins that regulate gene expression, turning them on and o base don experience o Epigenetics: study of stable changes in gene expression meditated by the environment o Methylation: a biochemical proves that influence behavior by suppressing gene activity and expression  2) The active child: how do children shape their own development? o Infants shape their development through selective attention o Newborns gravitate towards moving or noisy object  Helps them learn factors of the world   Infants are drawn to face, typically to mom, and at first have no emotion but this develops over time and more expressions are made by both mom and baby which strengthens their bond o Toddlers talking when their alone shows intentional motivation to learn o Children play by themselves which helps them discover sounds, joy, speed, etc. o Younger children: play teacher, cope with fears, resolve disputes, and have interactions o Older children: have self control, listen to rules, and can control their emotions o Children contribute to their own development and this increases in strength and broadens as the grow older and are able to choose their environment more  3) Continuity/discontinuity: In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? o Continuous development: change with age, occurs gradually, and in small increments o Discontinuous development: change with age includes occasional large shifts o Researchers who view this start from a common observation: children of di erent ages seem to qualitative act di erent  Think of how the child at 4 and 6 perceived the milk as being the same amount because the level of milk inside the two containers was the same but then at age six knew that it wants the same amount of milk base don the shape od the cup o Why do 4/5 year olds have improbable beliefs?  Stage theories: approach proposing that development involve a series of large discontinuous age relate phases  Childs thinking or behavior is broadly changed form one coherent experience to a di erent one  Cognitive development: the development of thinking and reasoning   Between birth and adolescence the child experiences 4 stage, each characterized by intelligence and world view  Age 2-5 can only focus on one aspect of an event  By age 7 children can focus on 2 or more aspects and cam do many tasks  Research shows developmental changes are gradual, occur concept by concept, and skill by skill rather than a broad unified way  Children often act with one stage on one task and another stage for another task  Development is hard to classify as continuous or discontinuous and it depend son how you look at it an dhow often  4)mechanism of change: How does change occur? o Mechanisms: producing increasingly precise accounts of the processes that produce an outcome of interests  can be genetic, behavioral, or neural o genetics: presence or absence of specific alleles o neural: increased interconnection between the frontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus o e ortful attention: voluntary control of ones emotions and thought  Ex: inhibiting impulses, controlling, emotions, and focusing attention  Di iculty with e ortful attention is associated with behavioral problems, weak math/reading scores, and mental illness  Promotes brain activity in the limbic area and the anterior cingulate o neurotransmitters chemicals involved in communication among brain cells o variation in gene among children are associated with variation in the quality of performance on tasks that require e ortful attention  di ered based on quality of parenting   less variation in these genes lead to chemical imbalances and therefor bad regulation of attention o a full understanding of the mechanisms that produce developmental change requires specifying how the genes and brain structures/ proves and all their experiences interact  5) the sociocultural context: how does the sociocultural context influence development o Sociocultural context: physical, social, cultural, political, economic, and historical circumstances that make up a child’s environment  Impact every aspect of development o Bioecological model: people, physical environments, institutes, economic and technological advancement, values, attitudes, beliefs, traditions, and political structure all in one environment o Cross cultural comparisons: reveal practices that are rave in one culture in comparison to others  Ex: sleeping arrangements of kids  Helps to show di ering values in cultures that are then instilled in their children o Socioeconomic status (SES): a measure of social class based on income an education  Poverty rates are especially high in black and Hispanic families or single parents  Poverty leads to the children facing mor challenges such as less surface area on brain, serious health problems, reading and speaking issues, and spatial skills  Overall lower IQ and abilities o Cumulative risks: the accumulation of disadvantages over years of development o Resilient children have qualities of  High intelligence, easy going  1 close relationship with a parent  1 close relationship with an adult   These qualities reflect their personal qualities but also their interactions with people they’ve had around them  6) individual di erences: how do children become so di erent from one another? o 4 factors that lead to children from a single family to turn out di erent  Di erence in genetics  Di erence in treatment by parents and others  Di erence in reactions to similar experiences  Di erences in choice of environments o Genomes for all people are genetically di erent because of mutations or copying error which results in several hundreds of gene di erences o Di erent treatment is often due to preexisting di erences in character  Parents are more prone to be sensitive with an easy going infant than a di icult one  Teachers are nicer to students who don’t misbehave  Children also have subjective interpretations of their treatment  Ex: siblings react di erently to an event that e ects the whole family  Children grow older and choose their environment and this influences tehri own development  Thet accept niches such as “smart” and are driven to live up to the nicknames o Di erences in biology and experience and how they interact om a complex way create the infinite diversity of human beings  7) research and children’s welfare: How can research promote children’s well being? o Children’s reasoning, remembering, conceptualizing, and problem solving is directly related to their education o Method for studying child development  Scientific method: an approach to testing beliefs that involves choosing a question, formulating a hypothesis, and drawing a conclusions  Hypothesis: testable predictions of the presence or absence of a phenomenon or relation  4 steps  Chose a question to be answered  Formulate a hypothesis about the question  Develop a method for testing the hypothesis  Using the resulting data to draw a conclusion regarding the hypothesis  Reliability: the degree to which independent measurement of a behavior are consistent  Interrater reliability: the amount of agreement in the observation of di erent raters who witnessed the same behavior  Raters evaluation are in close agreement means good data  Test retest reliability: the degree of similarity of a participants performance in 2 or more occasions  Validity: degree to which a test measure what it is intended to measure  Degree to which a cause b  Internal validity: the degree to which e ects observed within an experiment can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing  External validity: the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research  Goal is to draw conclusions that apply to children more generally  How widely can the findings be generalized   Replicability: the genre to which subsequent studies using the same proves yield the same results as the original study  Reflects the degree to which subsequent studies designed to be identical yield the same rules when conducted with di erent people o Context for gathering data about children  Interviews: + questionnaires  Structured interview: research producer in which all participants are asked to answer the same question o Young children are asked question orally but if able are asked to read questions themselves o An=advantageous because researchers get a lot of data simultaneously about feelings, beliefs, and behaviors  Clinical interview: a procedure in which questions are adjusted according to the answers the interview provides o Strength of interview: great deal of in depth questions quickly o Weakness: often biased, children don’t disclose information that they think will make them look bad  Naturalistic observation: examination of ongoing behavior in an environment not controlled by the researcher o How kids behave in their usual environment  Ex: troubled bs typical family  Troubled parent: self absorbed and less responsive leads to kids who respond to punishment with aggression and become viscous cycle  Typical parents: kids respond to punishment with less aggression o Limitations: naturally occurring context varies on many dimensions and its hard to know what influences the behavior of interest o Behavior of interest typically only occurs in the everyday environment making it hard to observe   Structured observation: a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each participant and recording the participants behavior  Advantages: o Identical situation o More discrete and alone o Makes it possible to establish generality of each child’s behavior  Disadvantage o Doesn’t provide extensive data o Cant provide open ended data o Correlation and Causation  Variables: attributes that vary across individuals and situations such as age, sex, and popularity  Correlation design: studies intended to indicate how 2 variables are related to each other  Ex: child aggression is related to number of hours in daycare or if parents take care of them  Correlation: the association between 2 variables  When variables are strongly correlated, knowing a child’s score on eye allows accurate prediction of the score on the other  Correlation does not equal causation  Direction of causation problem: a correlation does not indicate which variable is the cause and which is the e ect  3rd variable problem: the concept that a correlation between 2 variable may stem from both being influenced by some 3rd variable  Ex: reading scores and hours reading could be caused by a family that values reading  Why do researchers often use correlational design?  Influence of many variables of interest can be studied experimental because they cant be manipulated or considered unethical  They are very valuable designs when trying to describe relationships among variables rather than a cause o Experimental design a group of approaches that allow inferences about causes and e ects to be drawn   If one group has a particular experience and compared to a similar group who didn’t experience tit then it must have di erent results  Essential techniques: random assignments of participants and control group  Random assignment: a procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each group within an experiment  Makes the group almost equal on all variables  Experimental control: the ability of the researchers to determine specific experiences that children in each group encounter during the study  Experimental group: the group of participants in n experimental design who are pressed the experience of interest  Control group: the group of participants in an experiment who are not presented the experience of interest but in other ways are treated identically  Independent variable: the experience those in the experimental group receive and the control do not  Dependent variable: a behavior that is measured to determine whether it is a ected by exposure to the independent variable  Experimental designs are good for establishing causal relationships of variables but are limited due to needing or be randomized  Many are preformed in lab which leads to doubt of external validity o Research designs for examining children development  Cross sectional design: participants of di erent ages are compared in a given behavior or characteristic over a short period  Illustrates how they are useful for revealing similarities and di erence between older and younger kids but not about the stability pr patterns of kids  Longitudinal design: method of study in which the same participants are studied twice or more over a substantial length of time  Disadvantages  Relocating children  Children stop participating  Constant re taking of tests create familiarity and false improvement  Used primarily when the main issue are stability ad change in children over time   Microgentic design: a method of study in which the same participants are studied repeatedly over a short period of time  Recruit kids o the verge of development , heighten the experience and study it as it is occurring  Typically more session over a short period of time  Ex: use of repeated addition questions to encourage children to learn to add on instead of start form 1  Allowed them to identify exactly when each child discovered the strategy  Often was accompanied by excited  Provides insight into the process of change over brief periods  Doesn’t yield information about stability and change ’used to understand how the change occurs o Ethical issues in child development research  Vital responsibility to anticipate potential risks and minimize them  Important ethical codes  Maximizing benefits and minimizing harm to children  Respect for the dignity of the people involved’  Equity  Scientific integrity