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Development, learning & behavior summary
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Summary of all the lectures and book chapters (Siegler, 6th edition) we had to read for this course
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Development, learning and behavior summaryLecture 1: Introduction to the course
Important information:
- 9 lectures (in your own time before seminar)
- 5 seminars
• Prepare MC questions
• Presentations (practice)
- 1 MC exam (result and review direct after test)
- Graded presentation (online)
• Dress up a bit
• Eye contact
• Not too much text on slides, otherwise viewers lose focus for your story (1 message per slide)
• Attention snatchers (not too much)
◼ Movement
◼ Signal colours
◼ Contrast
◼ Bigger words = more attention
Elke wg een mc voorbereiden en neerzetten in teams!
Siegler chapter 1: an introduction to child development
Reasons to learn about child development:
- Raising children: trying to be a good parent raises endless questions
- Choosing social policies: able to make informed decisions about the wide variety of social-policy
questions that affect children.
- Understanding human nature
Historical foundations of the study of child development
Philosopher Believes Education goals
Believed that the long-term welfare of society
Plato emphasized self-control and discipline
depended on the proper raising of children.
as the most important goals of education.
Plato Careful upbringing was essential because
He believed that children have innate
children’s basic nature would otherwise lead to
knowledge.
their becoming rebellious and unruly
Believed that the long-term welfare of society Aristotle agreed that discipline was
depended on the proper raising of children. necessary, but he was more concerned with
Aristoteles Careful upbringing was essential because fitting child rearing to the needs of the
children’s basic nature would otherwise lead to individual child. He believed that all
their becoming rebellious and unruly. knowledge comes from experience.
Viewed the child as a tabula rasa, whose
Locke believed that the most important
development largely reflects the nurture
Locke goal of child rearing is the growth of
provided by the child’s parents and the broader
character.
society.
Children learn mainly from their own
Believed that parents and society should give spontaneous interactions. Children should
Rousseau
children maximum freedom from the beginning. not receive any formal education until their
12, when they reach the age of reason
The classic Greek philosophers Plato and Aristoteles were particularly interested in how children are
influenced by their nature and by the nurture they receive. Roughly 200 years later John Locke and Jean-
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,Jacques Rousseau refocused attention on the question of how parents and society in general can best
promote children’s development.
The contemporary fields 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. (Child labour laws)
Charles Darwin’s work on evolution inspired a number of scientists to propose that intensive study of
children’s development might lead to important insights into human nature. Darwin himself was also
interested in child development and published an article which presented careful observations of the
growth of his infant son.
Enduring themes in child development
1. How do nature and nurture together shape development? (nature and nurture) All human
characteristics are created throughout the joint workings of nature and nurture. A biological
mechanism in which nature and nurture interacts is in the genome (:each person’s complete set
of hereditary information). The genome influences behaviors and experiences, and behavior and
experiences influence the genome. A person’s DNA is constant throughout life, but the genome
includes not only DNA but also proteins what regulate gene expression by turning gene activity on
and off. These proteins change in response to experience. This discovery has given rise to a new
field called 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 influences behavior by
suppressing gene activity and expression).
2. How do children shape their own development? (the active child)
Infants shape their own development through patterns of attention, use of language, and choice
of activities.
3. In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? (continuity/
discontinuity).
Some scientists envision children’s development as continuous development (:the idea that
changes with age occur gradually, in small increments) others see the process as discontinuous
development (: the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts). One common
approach to answering questions about development comes from stage theories (:approaches
proposing that development involves a series of large discontinuous, age-related phases), like the
cognitive development theory of Piaget. If development is continuous or discontinuous depends
on how you look at it and how often you look.
4. How does change occur? (mechanisms of change)
Developmental mechanisms can be behavioral, neural, or genetic. The mechanisms that produce
developmental changes involve a complex interplay among experiences, genes, brain structures
and activities.
5. How does the sociocultural context influence development? (the sociocultural context)
The contexts that shape development include the people with whom children interact directly,
the institutions in which they participate and societal beliefs and values.
6. How do children become so different from one another? (individual differences)
Genetic differences, differences in treatment by parents and others, differences in reactions to
similar experiences, different choices of environment.
7. How can research promote children’s well-being? (research and children’s welfare) Improved
research-based understanding of child development often leads to practical benefits.
Methods for studying child development
The scientific method: approach to testing beliefs that involves choosing a question, formulating a
hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion. Basic assumption is that all belief may be
wrong, until beliefs have been repeatedly tested.
The measurement must be directly relevant to the hypothesis and must possess reliability (the degree to
which independent measurements of a given behaviour are consistent) and validity (the degree to which a
test measures what it is intended to measure).
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, - Interrater reliability: the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness
the same behavior
- Test-retest reliability: the degree of similarity of a participant’s performance on two or more
occasions
- Internal validity: the degree of which effects observed within the experiments 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
Researchers obtain data about children in three main contexts:
- Interviews: advantages: 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. Disadvantages: reports are often biased to
reflect favorably on interviewee, memories of interviewees are often inaccurate and incomplete,
prediction of future behaviors often is inaccurate.
• Structured interviews: a research procedure in which all participants are asked to answer the
same questions
• Questionnaire: a method that allows researchers to gather information from a large number of
participants simultaneously by presenting them a uniform set of printed questions
• Clinical interview: a procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers the
interviewee provides.
- Observation:
• Naturalistic observation: examination of ongoing behavior in an environment not controlled by
the researcher. Naturalistic observation is useful for describing behavior in everyday settings.
Disadvantages: in naturalistic observation it is difficult to know which aspects of the situation are
most influential, naturalistic observation has a limited value for studying infrequent behaviors.
• Structured observation: a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each
participant and recording the participant’s behavior. Structured observation allows controlled
comparison of children’s behavior in different situations. Structured observation ensures that all
children’s behavior are observed in the same context. Helps illuminate social interaction
processes. Disadvantages: in structured observation the context is less natural and structured
observation reveals less about subjective experience than interviews.
The primary goal of studies that use correlational designs is to indicate how two variables are related to
each other. The association between two variables is known as correlation. Correlations do not justify
inferences about causal relations between the variables. This is true for two reasons. The first is the
direction-of-causation problem: a correlation does not indicate which variable is the cause and which
variable is the effect. The second reason is the third-variable problem: the correlation between variables
may actually be the result of some third, unspecified variable.
Experimental designs can indicate cause-effect relations. Two techniques are crucial to experimental
designs: random assignment (:a procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being
assigned to each group within the experiment) and experimental control (: the ability of researchers to
determine the specific experiences of participants during the course of an experiment).
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, To study development over time, investigators use three types of research designs:
- Cross-sectional: a research method in which participants of different ages are compared on a
given behavior or characteristic over a short period.
- Longitudinal: a method of study in which the same participants are studied twice or more over a
substantial length of time
- Microgenetic: a method of study in which the same participants are studied repeatedly over a
short period.
All research with human beings raises ethical issues, and this is especially the case when the research
involves children.
Begrippen:
Meta-analysis: a method for combining the results from independent studies to reach conclusions based
on all of them.
Amygdala: an area of the brain that is involved in emotional reaction.
Nature: our biological endowment; the genes we receive from our parents.
Nurture: the environments, both physical and social, that influence our development.
Genome: each person’s complete set of hereditary information.
Epigenetics: the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment.
Methylation: a biochemical process that influences behavior by suppressing gene activity and expression.
Continuous development: the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that of
a pine tree growing taller and taller.
Discontinuous development: the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like the
transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly.
Stage theories: approaches proposing that development involves a series of large discontinuous, age-
related phases.
Cognitive development: the development of thinking and reasoning.
Neurotransmitters: chemicals involved in communication among brain cells.
Sociocultural context: the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up
any child’s environment.
Socioeconomic status (SES): a measure of social class based on income and education.
Cumulative risk: the accumulation of disadvantages over years of development.
Reliability: the degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent.
Validity: the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.
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