PSYC 251 Midterm Notes 2022

PSYC 251 Midterm Notes 2022. PSYC 251 Midterm Notes Week 1 Chapter 1 Reasons to learn about child development ● Learning about child development is valuable for many reasons: ○ it can help us become better parents ○ Inform our views about social issues that affect children ○ Improve our understanding of human nature Historical Foundations of the Study of Child Development ● Great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Locke, and Rousseau raised basic questions about child development and proposed interesting hypotheses about them, but they lacked the scientific methods to answer the questions Enduring Themes in Child Development ● The field of child development is an attempt to answer a set of fundamental questions: ○ How do nature and nurture together shape development? ○ How do children shape their own development? ○ In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? ○ How does change occur? ○ How does the sociocultural context influence development? ○ How do children become so different from one another? ○ How can research promote children's well-being? ● Every aspect of development, from the most specific behaviour to the most general trait, reflects people's biological endowment (their nature) as well as the experiences that they have had (their nurture) ● Even infants and young children actively contribute to their own development through their patterns of attention, use of language, and choices of activities ● Many developments can appear either continuous or discontinuous, depending on how often and how closely we look at them ● The mechanisms that produce developmental changes involve a complex interplay among experiences, genes, and brain structures and activities ● The contexts that shape development include the people with whom children interact directly, such as family and friends; the institutions in which they participate, such as schools and religious organizations; and societal beliefs and values, such as those related to race, ethnicity, and social class ● Individual differences, even among siblings, reflect differences in children's genes, in their treatment by other people, in their interpretations of their own experiences, and in their choices of environments ● Principles, findings, and methods from child-development research are being applied to improve the quality of children's lives Methods for Studying Child Development ● The scientific method has made possible great advances in understanding children. It involves choosing a question, formulating a hypothesis relevant to the question, developing a method to test the hypothesis, and using data to decide whether the hypothesis is correct ● For a measure to be useful, it must be directly relevant to the hypotheses being tested, reliable, and valid. Reliability means that independent observations of a given behaviour are consistent. Valid means that a measure assesses what it is intended to measure ● Among the main situations used to gather data about children are interviews, naturalistic observation, and structured observation. Data-Gathering Situation Features Advantages Disadvantages Interview/Ques tionnaire Children answer questions asked either in person or on a questionnaire Can reveal children's subjective experience Structured interviews are inexpensive means for collecting in-depth data about individuals Clinical interviews allow flexibility for following up on unexpected comments Reports are often biased to reflect favourably on interviewee Memories if interviewees are often inaccurate and incomplete Prediction of future behaviours often is inaccurate Naturalistic Observation Children's activities in one or more everyday settings are observed Useful for describing behaviour in everyday settings Helps illuminate social interaction processes Difficult to know which aspects of situation are most influential Limited value for studying infrequent behaviours Structured Observation Children are brought to laboratory and presented prearranged tasks Ensures that children's behaviours are observed in same context Allows controlled comparison of children's Context is less natural than in naturalistic observation Reveals less about subjective experience than interviews behaviour in different situations ● Correlation does not imply causation. The two differ in that correlations indicate the degree to which two variables are associated, whereas causation indicates that changing the value of one variable will change the value of the other Types of design Features Advantages Disadvantages Correlational Comparison of existing groups of children or examination of relations among each child's scores on different variables Only way to compare many groups of interest (boysgirls, rich-poor, etc.) Only way to establish relations among many variables of interest (IQ and achievement, popularity and happiness, etc.) Direction-of-causation problem Third-variable problem Experimental Random assignment of children to groups and experimental control of procedures presented to each group Allows causal inferences because design rules our direction-of-causation and third-variable problems Allows experimental control over the exact experiences that children encounter Need for experimental control often leads to artificial experimental situations Cannot be used to study many differences and variables of interest, such as age, sex, and temperament ● Data about development can be obtained through cross-sectional designs (examining different children of different ages), through longitudinal designs (examining the same children at different ages), or through microgenetic designs (presenting the same children repeated relevant experiences over a relatively short period and analyzing the change process in detail) Design Features Advantages Disadvantages CrossSectional Children of different ages are studied at a single time Yields useful data about differences among age groups Uninformative about stability of individual differences over time Quick and easy to administer Uninformative about similarities and differences in individual children's patterns of change Longitudinal Children are examined repeatedly over a prolonged period Indicates the degree of stability of individual differences over long periods Reveals individual children's patterns of change over long periods Difficult to keep all participants in study Repeatedly testing children can threaten external validity of study Microgenetic Children are observed intensively over a relatively short period while a change is occurring Intensive observation of changes while they are occurring can clarify process of change Reveals individual change patterns over short periods in considerable detail Does not provide information about typical patterns of change over long periods Does not yield data regarding change patterns over long periods ● It is vital for researchers to adhere to high ethical standards. Among the most important ethical principles are striving to ensure that the research does not harm children physically or psychologically; obtaining informed consent from parents and, where possible, from children; preserving participants' anonymity; and correcting any inaccurate impressions that children form during the study ** Here are the module 1 textbook questions written out and some important people (definitely not all) and a timeline of some things mentioned over a child's lifespan from module 1- I plan to do this for all 6 modules but likely won’t get it done lol - Hannah Uens 1.1 Developmental Psychology: Now and Then Why Study Developmental Psychology? ● Better understanding of child rearing ● Better understanding of how our social policy decisions influence development ● Gaining insights into human nature Historical Influences ● Early Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believed that the welfare of society depended on proper child rearing ● They differed in how they believe that children developed and acquired knowledge ○ Plato believe that children are born with innate, conceptual knowledge ○ Aristotle believe that all knowledge arises from experience ● John Locke () viewed children as a tabula rasa, or blank slate ○ He viewed learning and development as the product of the environment ○ Given this belief, Locke was a strong proponent of the importance of effective parenting and societal boundaries ○ He believed that discipline was more important than individual autonomy or freedom, and this was crucial for human development ● Jena-Jacques Rousseau () believed that childre...............