PSYCH 315 - Childhood and Adolescence PDF

Nature - Nurture Debate - Plato: we are born with knowledge (innate) - Aristotle: knowledge is learned through experience Philosophical Roots - Nativism: Nature (innate) - Empiricism: Experience (nurture) John Locke (1600s) - Tabula Rasa (meaning: a blank slate) – emphasized...

Nature - Nurture Debate - Plato: we are born with knowledge (innate) - Aristotle: knowledge is learned through experience Philosophical Roots - Nativism: Nature (innate) - Empiricism: Experience (nurture) John Locke (1600s) - Tabula Rasa (meaning: a blank slate) – emphasized nurture - Importance of early strict parenting – progressive freedom Jean Jacques Rousseau (1700s) - Greater emphasis on nature children are innately good - Children learn through spontaneous interactions with objects and people rather than instructions The study of child development - During 19th and early 20th centuries - Social reform movements: child labor laws - Darwin’s theory of evolution: diary of his own child’s development Sigmund Freud (1865-1939) - Unconscious desires could influence development - One of the first to emphasize the importance of early years and emotional bonds G. Stanley Hall (1844-1904) 1878 – earned 1st Ph.D in Psychology in North America 1887– founded 1st psychological journal in North America 1892 – Founded American Psychological Association 1904 – Wrote Adolescence John Watson (1878-1958) - Founded Behaviorism  - Heavily influenced by Ivan Pavlob’s work on conditioning - Development is controlled by environmental conditions particularly rewards and punishments - Emphasized Nurture Behaviorism - Principles of conditioning - Behavior that is rewarded will increase - Behavior that is not rewarded or punished will decrease Development - Is not just about change in knowledge (or content of our thoughts) - The underlying cognitive processes may grow (and change) - Experience alone can’t account for every aspect of development, that there must be something cognitively going on that shape what we learn and when we can learn it Jean Piaget (1896 -1980) - Moving beyond behaviorism - Founded field of cognitive development - Broad theory to account for the changes in children’s thinking - Not just about conditioning as behaviorists (a la watson et al.) thought - Substantial changes across development in how a child processes information (i.e brain maturation) 6 Themes in Child Development 1. Nature and Nurture 2. The Active Child 3. Continuity/Discontinuity 4. Mechanisms of Change 5. Sociocultural Context 6. Individual Differences Nature and Nurture - Nature = genes/biology - Nurture = everything in one’s environment (e.g prenatal toxins, parents, peers, culture, etc) - Nature AND Nurture = language development (biologically prepared that prepare us to learn a language but the specific language we learn is dependent on the community we’re growing up)  - changes from an either or debate to a question of how large a role does each play - Implications of Waston’s Little Albert Study - Using conditioning, we can teach be fearful spiders and snakes but it was difficult to teach them to be fearful of flowers even with the same principles of conditioning - There might’ve been some innate fears and the environmental input triggers that fear - Not everything is about conditioning The Active Child - Children play a role in shaping their own development - They exhibit preferences to attend to certain things - People over objects, caregivers over other people - More likely to learn from people that are familiar to them than unfamiliar - They are motivated to learn - Little experimenters: e.g. dropping food - Practice language in the absences of people - Engage in pretend play - Actively seek out their own environment - Friend they play with, activities they engage in, places they go, books they read, etc Continuity and Discontinuity - Continuity: changes/ enrichment over time (language) - Discontinuity: more stages like changes (motor) Mechanisms of Development Change - How and why does change occur? - Effortful attention - Modeling - Something Biological Sociocultural Context of Development - How does the sociocultural context influence development? - Physical = home, school, neighborhood, etc - Social = parents, siblings, teachers, friends, peers, etc - Economic = national wealth, societal wealth, family wealth - Cultural = language, values, traditions, attitudes/beliefs, laws, political structure, technology, etc  - Historical = influences of these other factors, e.g traditional practices, policies, economy, technology, etc Individual Differences - As well as sharing a vast number of common capacities for language, perception, thought, ect., individuals also differ from one another - E.g even 2 children from within the same family who sharee both a lot of their genes and a lot of the same environment - Why might they differ? - Genetics are shared and environment is the same - Genetic differences - Birth order: differences in ways parents and others treat them - Gender differences: differences in children’s choices of environment - Personality: active child Cognitive Development - Jean Piaget (1896-1980) moving beyond behaviorism - Founded field of cognitive development - Broad theory to account for changes in children’s thinking Constructivism 1. Children construct knowledge on the basis of their experiences with the world 2. Children proceeds through stages of development 3. It’s discontinuous and on the side of nurture Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development - Assimilation: is a process by which children translate information into a form they can understand - Children have a somewhat knowledge of a “dog” (4 legged creature that barks) - When they hear someone utter word dog for a creature that looks different than they can associate it with their knowledge of a dog - Accommodation: is a process by which children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences - Children can change their definition of what it means to be a dog - Equilibration: is a process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding Stages of Development - Sensorimotor (birth - 2 years) a. Basic motor systems (reflexes) b. Sensory/perceptual systems c. Learning mechanisms of assimilation, accommodation & equilibrium - Preoperational (2-7 years) a. Toddlers begin to represent experiences in language, imagery & symbolic thought b. Cannot perform operations (reversible mental activities) - Common mistakes children make at this age: conservation of liquid quantity, solid quantity, number c. Focus on a single, perceptually-salient aspect of an event (centration) - Bear Name example d. Other Failures of Preoperational - Transitivity: logic - Egocentricity - Communication game - Mountain problem - False belief - Appearance vs reality - Concrete Operational (7-12 years) a. Children can reason logically about concrete objects and events b. However, they have difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms and in combining information systematically c. Failures: - Deductive reasoning - Systematic testing - Formal Operational (12 and beyond) a. Children and adults can think about abstractions and hypotheticals b. Can perform systematic “experiments” to draw conclusions about the world Problems with Piaget & constructivism & with the stages: - Poverty of experience argument - In the absence of experiences, children have knowledge - Competence/Performance distinction - Inconsistency of the timeline - Children can do things way earlier than Piaget thought in the sensorimotor stage - Object Continuity: - Object Coherence: object still exists when it’s out of sight and two objects can’t pass through the same space - Contact causality: inanimate objects don’t move on their own, only animate objects move on their own Strengths - A good overview of children’s thinking at different points - Appealing due to its breadth - Fascinating observations Weaknesses/Criticisms - Stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is - Children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized - Understates contribution of the social world - Vague about cognitive processes/mechanisms that produce cognitive growth Theories of Development - Piagetian Theory - Evolutionary Theories - Socio-cultural Theories - Information Processing Theories Ethological and evolutionary models: - We know that evolution influenced human traits such as bipedalism, opposable thumbs, and brain size - So it is plausible that evolution also influenced behavior - Evolution is geared towards reproduction and survival - Certain genes predispose individuals to behave in way that are more successful toward these goals Core Knowledge Theories: - Principles of core-knowledge theories: - Children have innate cognitive capabilities - Focus on areas (such as understanding people and objects) that have been important throughout our evolutionary theory - Often endorse a modularity approach: parts of the brain are helping us to solve problems that are important through evolutionary - Example core knowledge domains - Physics (object cognition) - Number (numerical cognition) - People/agency - Biology - Language - Core knowledge: object cognition goes beyond the sense data (contra Piaget) Social Learning Theories: - Experience is the most important factor in a child’s social and personality development - Observation and imitation of others are the mechanisms of change in this theory - Albert Bandura: aggression against the doll Sociocultural Theories of Cognitive Development - Whereas Piaget depicted children as trying to understand the world on their own - Vygotsky portrayed them as social beings intertwined with other people who were eager to help them learn and gain skills - Cognitive development occurs in interpersonal contact - Interactions with parents, siblings, teachers and playmates - Emphasized importance of play - Children are products of their cultures Ecological Theories of Development: the bioecological model - Brofenbrenner: a child’s environment is composed of multiple layers, extending from the child at the center, outward to the entire society - Microsystem: child’s immediate environment (things that they are doing, activities, relationships they have) where they are in a place and time - Mesosystem: connections between these in the items in the microsystem - Exosystem: environments of the child that are not directly present affect them (parent’s workplace, MSP coverage) - Macrosystem: broader culture, country, laws, social class, cultural stereotypes - Chronosystem: place in history can have an affect on your development Vygotsky: How Cognitive Change Occurs - Zone of proximal development: range between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal social support - Social Scaffolding: more competent people provide temporary frameworks that lead children to higher-order thinking. (used interchangeably with guided participation) - Joint attention: intentional focus on a common referent - Intersubjectivity: mutual understanding established during communication - a meeting of the minds - Social referencing: children look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar events Information Processing Theories: - View children as undergoing continuous cognitive change - Important changes are viewed as constantly occurring, rather than being restricted to special transition periods between stages  - Views children as active problem solvers - With development, children’s cognitive flexibility helps them pursue their goals - Cognitive development arises from children gradually surmounting their processing limitations through - Increasing efficient execution of basic processes - Expanding memory capacity - Acquisitions of new strategies and knowledge Increasing Efficient Execution of: Basic Processes - Simplest and most frequently used mental activities - Associating events with one another - Recognizing objects as familiar - Recalling facts and procedures - Generalizing from one instance to another - Encoding – the process of representing in memory information specific features of objects and events Processing Speed - The speed with which children execute basic processes increases greatly over the course of childhood - Biological maturation and experience contribute to increased processing speed - Two biological processes that contribute to faster processing are myelination and increased connectivity among brain regions Expanding Memory Capacity: - Sensory: refers to sights, sounds, and other sensations that are just entering the brain (brief period of time, not stored) - Working: can hold a moderate amount of information for a fraction of a second. It’s capacity is relatively constant over much of development - Longterm: a workspace in which information from environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to and actively processed Acquisitions of new strategies and knowledge: Mental stages - Rehearsal: the process of repeating information over and over to aid memory - Selective attention: the process of intentionally focusing on information that is most relevant to the current goal Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development 1. Basic Trust vs Mistrust (0-1 yr) 2. Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt (1-3.5 yrs) 3. Initiative vs Guilt (4-6 yrs) 4. Industry vs Inferiority (6 to puberty) 5. Identity vs Role Confusion (adolescence-early - adulthood) a. Resolve who they really are or face negative outcome b. Successful resolution of this crisis results in identity achievement c. If you can’t resolve this, there a number of different outcomes that last into adulthood | Adolescent or young adult either develops an identity or experiences one of several negative outcomes: i. Identity confusion: an incomplete and sometimes incoherent sense of self, with resulting feelings of isolation and depression 1. Identity diffusion: you have given up on figuring out sense of self ii. Identity foreclosure: can arise if adolescents prematurely commit themselves to an identity without adequately considering their choices 1. Ex. parents pressure their children to be something they don’t want 2. Influenced by parental and cultural factors iii. Negative identity: an identity that represents the opposite of what is valued by people around the adolescent 1. You do the opposite of what people are telling you to do Psychosocial Moratorium - Erikeson argued for the importance of psychosocial moratorium - A time-out period during which the adolescent is not expected to take on adult roles and can pursue activities that lead to self discovery - Only possible in some cultures and typically to the more privileged classes Evidence from autobiographical memories Influence of the unconscious mind Often a lot of it is about independence Influences on Identity Formation - Approaches parents take with their children - (e.g. parenting styles) - Individual own behavior  - (e.g drug use undermines teen’s abilities to develop healthy identities) - If you aren’t clear headed, your not gonna have the bandwidth to do that intentional work and result in negative identity or identity confusion, etc. - Larger social context - (e.g., SES) - Resources for counselling services can be useful because it’s professional support - Historical context - (e.g., equal rights movements, religious rules/expectations) - Values that they can or cannot express Functions of Families - Survival of offspring - Keeping the kid alive | so basic but it’s actually very hard to do - Economic function - Providing basic resources (clothing, food, healthcare) - Does not include luxury resources like taking them a trip - Cultural training - Teaching/reflecting the children about the culture, beliefs, etc Family Dynamics - Family members all influence one another, both directly and indirectly - Family dynamics must be examined developmentally because dynamics change as children reach different ages Ways of Socialization - Parents as direct instructors - Parents as indirect socializers - Parents as social managers Parenting Styles and Practices