Samenvatting Development, Learning and Behavior
Week 1
Siegler hoofdstuk 1
Reasons to Learn About Child Development
Understanding how children develop can improve child rearing, promote the adoption of wiser social
policies regarding children’s welfare, and answer basic questions about human nature.
1) Raising Children
- Ouders zijn soms geneigd om hun kinderen een ‘tik’ te geven wanneer deze iets fout hebben
gedaan. Uit onderzoek blijkt echter dan dit een omgedraaid effect heeft en negatief gedrag
stimuleert. Een goed alternatief is sympathie te uiten en positieve alternatieve te vinden om
hun emoties te uiten.
o Turtle technique: When children felt themselves becoming angry, they were to move
away from other children and retreat into their “turtle shell,” where they could think
through the situation until they were ready to emerge from the shell. children who
participated in it became more skilful in recognizing and regulating anger when they
experienced it.
2) Choosing Social Policies
Another reason to learn about child development is to be able to make informed decisions about the
wide variety of social-policy questions that affect children in general. For example, does playing
violent video games increase aggressive behavior?
- Meta-analyse: a method for combining the results from independent studies to reach
conclusions based on all of them.
- Meta-analysis Ferguson 2015: This meta-analysis indicated that the effect of playing violent
video games on children’s and adolescents’ aggression was minimal. Minimal is not the same
as nonexistent—playing violent video games did appear to increase aggressive behavior by a
small amount—but the meta-analysis contradicted claims that violent video games are a major
cause of children’s and adolescents’ aggression
Another issue of social policy in which child-development research has played an important role
concerns how much trust to put in preschoolers’ courtroom testimony. More than 40% of children who
testify in sexual-abuse trials, for example, are younger than 5 years.
- One important finding is that when 3- to 5-year-olds are not asked leading questions, their
testimony is usually accurate as far as it goes, though they leave out a great deal of
information. However, when prompted by leading questions, young children’s testimony is
often inaccurate, especially when the leading questions are asked repeatedly. The younger the
children are, the more their recall tends to reflect the biases of the interviewer’s questions.
- In addition, realistic props, such as anatomically correct dolls and drawings, which are often
used in judicial cases in the hopes of improving recall of sexual abuse, turn out not to improve
recall of events that occurred but to actually increase the number of inaccurate claims, perhaps
by blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
3) Understanding Human Nature
A third reason to study child development is to better understand human nature.
Nativists: One major group of contemporary philosophers and psychologists, known as nativists,
argues that evolution has created many remarkable capabilities that are present even in early infancy,
,particularly in areas of special importance, such as understanding basic properties of physical objects,
plants and animals, and other people.
Empiricists: Another major group of philosophers and psychologists, known as empiricists, has
argued that infants possess general learning mechanisms that allow them to learn a great deal quite
quickly, but that infants and young children lack the specialized capabilities that nativists attribute to
them.
The Romanian Adoption Study
This research examines children whose early life was spent in horribly inadequate orphanages in
Romania in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Children in these orphanages had almost no contact with
any caregiver.
- Romeense kinderen die na 6 jaar werden geadopteerd door Britse gezinnen wogen gemiddeld
minder en bleven kleiner. Hetzelfde voor intellectual development, al was dit na de leeftijd 22
normal range.
- Almost 20% of the Romanian-born children who were adopted after the age 6 months showed
extremely abnormal social behavior at age 6 years old, persisted into adulthood.
- This atypical social development was accompanied by abnormal brain activity. Brain scans
obtained when the children were 8 years old showed that those adopted after living for a
substantial period in the orphanages had unusually low levels of neural activity in the
amygdala, a brain area involved in emotional reactions
- These findings reflect a basic principle of child development that is relevant to many aspects
of human nature: The timing of experiences influences their effects. (bij kinderen onder de 6
jaar veel minder landurige gevolgen)
Early Philosopher’s Views of Children’s Development
- Plato and Aristotle proposed some of the earliest recorded and most influential ideas about
children’s development. They were particularly interested in how children are influenced by
their nature and by nurture they receive. Both philosophers believed that the long-term welfare
of society depended on the proper raising of children. Careful upbringing was essential
because children’s basic nature would otherwise lead to their becoming rebellious and unruly.
Plato viewed the rearing of boys as a particular challenge: Now of all wild things, a boy is the
most difficult to handle. Just because he more than any other has a fount of intelligence in him
which has not yet “run clear,” he is the craftiest, most mischievous, and unruliest of brutes.
Consistent with this view, Plato emphasized self-control and discipline as the most important
goals of education. Aristotle agreed with Plato that discipline was necessary, but he was more
concerned with fitting child rearing to the needs of the individual child. That a study of
individual character is the best way of making education perfect, for then each [child] has a
better chance of receiving the treatment that suits him.
- Plato and Aristotle differed considerably in their views of how children acquire knowledge.
Plato believed that children have innate knowledge. For example, he believed that children are
born with a concept of “animal” that, from birth onward, automatically allows them to
recognize that dogs, cats, and other creatures they encounter are animals. In contrast, Aristotle
believed that all knowledge comes from experience and that the mind of an infant is like a
blackboard on which nothing has yet been written.
- Roughly 2000 years later, the English philosopher John Locke (1632– 1704) and the French
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) refocused attention on the question of how
parents and society in general can best promote children’s development. Locke, like Aristotle,
viewed the child as a tabula rasa, or blank slate, whose development largely reflects the
nurture provided by the child’s parents and the broader society. He believed that the most
important goal of child rearing is the growth of character. To build children’s character,
, parents need to set good examples of honesty, stability, and gentleness. They also need to
avoid indulging the child, especially early in life. However, once discipline and reason have
been instilled, Locke believed that: authority should be relaxed as fast as their age, discretion,
and good behavior could allow it…. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will
begin to be one.
- In contrast to Locke’s advocating discipline before freedom, Rousseau believed that parents
and society should give children maximum freedom from the beginning. Rousseau claimed
that children learn primarily from their own spontaneous interactions with objects and other
people, rather than through instruction by parents or teachers. He even argued that children
should not receive any formal education until about age 12, when they reach “the age of
reason” and can judge for themselves the worth of what they are told. Before then, they should
be allowed the freedom to explore whatever interests them.
- Kagan (2000) concluded that children have an innate moral sense, encompassing five abilities
that even our closest primate relatives lack. These include the ability to infer the thoughts and
feelings of others, to apply the concepts of good and bad to one’s own behavior, to reflect on
past actions, to understand that negative consequences could have been avoided, and to
understand one’s own and others’ motives and emotions.
Social reform movements
The contemporary field of child psychology also has roots in early social reform movements that were
devoted to improving children’s lives by changing the conditions in which they lived. Like during the
Industrial Revolution of the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s. Young kids had to work under harsh
conditions.
- Earl of Shaftesbury brought a law forbidding employment of girls and of boys younger than
10.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
- A Biographical Sketch of an Infant one of the first methods for studying children His -
infant son William, systematic description of William’s day-to-day development.
- Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which employs variation, natural selection, and inheritance as
its fundamental concepts, also continues to influence the thinking of modern
developmentalists on a wide range of topics:
Enduring Themes in Child Development
The most important seven basic questions about child development
1. How do nature and nurture together shape development? (Nature and nurture)
2. How do children shape their own development? (The active child)
3. In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous?
(Continuity/discontinuity)
4. How does change occur? (Mechanisms of change)
5. How does the sociocultural context influence development? (The sociocultural context)
6. How do children become so different from one another? (Individual differences)
7. How can research promote children’s well-being? (Research and children’s welfare)
1) Nature and Nurture: How do Nature and Nurture Together Shape
Development?
- Nature refers to our biological endowment, in particular, the genes we receive from our
parents. This genetic inheritance influences every aspect of our makeup, from broad
, characteristics such as physical appearance, personality, intellect, and mental health to specific
preferences, such as political attitudes and propensity for thrill-seeking.
- Nurture refers to the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that influence our
development, including the womb in which we spend the prenatal period, the homes in which
we grow up, the schools that we attend, the broader communities in which we live, and the
many people with whom we interact.
- Popular depictions often present the nature–nurture question as an either/or proposition:
- Genome: each person’s complete set of hereditary information genome influences
behaviors and experiences, behaviors and experiences influence the genome. It is the proteins
that change, not the DNA
- Epigenetics: the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the
environment.
- Evidence for the enduring epigenetic impact of early experiences and behaviors comes from
research on methylation, a biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes
and is involved in regulating reactions to stress. hogere waarde bij newborns van moeders
met depressive en volwassenen die vroeger als kind misbruikt zijn.
- As these examples illustrate, developmental outcomes emerge from the constant bidirectional
interaction of nature and nurture. To say that one is more important than the other, or even that
the two are equally important, drastically oversimplifies the developmental process.
2) The Active Child: How do Children Shape Their Own Development?
Children’s own actions also contribute to their development. Even in infancy and early childhood, this
contribution can be seen in a multitude of areas, including attention, language use, and play.
- Infants shape their own development through selective attention. Even newborns attend more
to objects that move and make sounds than to other objects. This preference helps them learn
about important parts of the world, such as people, other animals, and inanimate moving
objects, including cars and trucks. When looking at people, infants’ attention is particularly
drawn to faces, especially their mother’s face. Infants’ preference for attending to their
mother’s face leads to social interactions that can strengthen the mother– infant bond.
- Toddlers often talk when they are alone in a room. This “crib speech” is entirely normal, and
the practice probably helps toddlers learn language.
- Children play by themselves for the sheer joy of doing so, but they also learn a great deal in
the process. Anyone who has seen a baby bang a spoon against the tray of a high chair or
intentionally drop food on the floor would agree that, for the baby, the activity is its own
reward. At the same time, the baby is learning about the noises made by colliding objects,
about the speed at which objects fall, and about the limits of his or her parents’ patience.
- Young children’s fantasy play seems to make an especially large contribution to their
knowledge of themselves and other people.
- In addition to being inherently enjoyable, play teaches children valuable lessons, including
how to cope with fears, resolve disputes, and interact with others (Lillard, 2017). Older
children’s play, which typically is more organized and rule-bound, promotes additional useful
capabilities, such as the self-control needed for turn-taking, adhering to rules, and controlling
one’s emotions in the face of setbacks.
- children’s contributions to their own development strengthen and broaden as they grow older
and become increasingly able to choose and shape their environments.
3) Continuity/ Discontinuity: In What Ways Is Development Continuous,
and in What Ways Is It Discontinuous?
continuous development the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that
of a pine tree growing taller and taller
