1. 1 Children
The Nature
of
Children’s Development
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Images of Children
• Stories of Ted Kaczynski and Alice
Walker
– A child genius becomes a social misfit and a
murderer.
– An impoverished and painful childhood leads
to creativity and award-winning publications.
View video of
Alice
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

3. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Child Development
• Development – pattern of change from
conception, throughout the life span
• Importance of studying development
– Improving children’s lives
– Improving health and well-being
– Learning better parenting
– Improving child education
– Better social policies affecting children
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Historical Views of Development
• Early views of childhood
– Medieval Europe
• No distinction from adults
– Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans
• Rich conceptions of childhood
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

5. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Historical Views of Development
• Three influential philosophical views
– Middle Ages
• Original sin view
– End of 1800s
• Tabula rasa (John Locke)
– Eighteenth century
• Innate goodness (Rousseau)
• Today: childhood is unique
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

6. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Modern Studies of Childhood
• Began in late 1800s
– Use of sophisticated science
– New ways of thinking about children
– Shift from philosophical view to systematic
observation and experimentation
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

7. Why Is Caring For Children Important?
Major Theories
• Evolutionary view – G.S. Hall
– Stages of distinct motives and capabilities
• Psychoanalytic theory – S. Freud
– Stage theory stressing parenting
– First 5 years influence later life
• Behaviorism – John Watson
– Environment influences behavior
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

8. What Characterizes Development?
Biological, Cognitive, and
Socioemotional Development
• Genetic epistemology (J. Baldwin)
– Child knowledge changes over development
• Biological processes
– Physical changes in a person
• Cognitive processes
– Changes in thought, IQ, and language
• Socioemotional processes
– Personality, emotions, relationships
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

9. What Characterizes Development?
Periods of Development
• Prenatal – conception to birth
• Infancy – birth to 18-24 months of age
• Early childhood – infancy to 5-6 years
• Middle/late childhood – 6 to 11 years
(elementary years)
• Adolescence – 10 or 12 until 18 years
(may vary beyond these years)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

10. What Characterizes Development?
Issues in Development
• Nature-Nurture issue
– Nature
• Influences of biological inheritance
• Development seen as orderly
– Nurture
• Influences of environment
• Influenced by social experiences
• Deprivation or enrichment have impact
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

11. What Characterizes Development?
Issues in Development
• Continuity-discontinuity issue
– Continuity
• Gradual, continuous changes
– Discontinuity
• Distinct stages, abrupt changes
• Early-later experiences
– Hotly debated
– Malleable or resilient to experiences?
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

12. • Nature and
Discontinuity
nurture
Continuity
• Continuity
and
discontinuity
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

13. What Characterizes Development?
Importance of Research
• Scientific Method
– Conceptualize or identify a problem
– Refer to a theory (set of ideas that predict)
– Develop a hypothesis (testable assumption)
– Collect the data (to test the hypothesis)
– Analyze the data (by statistical methods)
– Draw conclusions
– Compare to other research outcomes
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

14. What Characterizes Development?
Theories of Development
• Psychoanalytic theories
– Behavior affected by underlying emotions
and unconscious mind
– Personality (S. Freud)
• Id (unconscious instincts)
• Ego (executive branch of mind, deals with
reality)
• Superego (moral branch of mind, one’s
‘conscience’)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

15. What Characterizes Development?
Freud’s Stages
Oral: Birth to 18 months
Anal: 18 months to 3 years
Phallic: 3 to 6 years
(Oedipus complex)
Latency: 6 years to puberty
Genital: Puberty onward
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

16. What Characterizes Development?
Theories of Development
• Psychosocial theory (E. Erikson)
– Change occurs over life span in 8 stages
– Each stage has unique crisis to resolve, not a
catastrophe to future development if not
resolved
– Each stage has developmental task
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

17. Psychosocial theory
Late adulthood Integrity vs. despair
Middle adulthood Generativity vs. stagnation
Early adulthood Intimacy vs. isolation
Adolescence Identity vs. identity confusion
Middle and late childhood Industry vs. inferiority
Early childhood Initiative vs. guilt
Infancy: 1 to 3 years Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
Infancy: 1st year of life Trust vs. mistrust
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

18. Caring for Children
Strategies Based
on Erikson’s Theory
• Nurture infants, develop trust, encourage
and monitor autonomy
• Encourage initiative
• Promote industry in elementary years
• Stimulate adolescent identity exploration
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

19. Caring for Children
Cognitive Theories
• Cognitive development theory (J. Piaget)
– Children actively construct their
understanding of the world
• Accommodation and Assimilation
– Four stages of cognitive development
– Two underlying processes:
• Organization
• Adaptation
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

20. Caring for Children
Piaget’s
Cognitive Development Theory
Birth to 2 Sensorimotor Uses senses and motor skills, items
yrs known by use; object permanence
2 - 7 yrs Pre-operational Symbolic thinking, language used;
egocentric thinking, imagination/
experience grow, child de-centers
7 - 11 yrs Concrete Logic applied, objective/rational
operational interpretations; conservation,
numbers, ideas, classifications
11 yrs Formal Thinks abstractly, hypothetical ideas;
on operational ethics, politics, social/moral issues
explored
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

21. Caring for Children
Cognitive Theories
• Sociocultural theory (L. Vygotsky)
– Social and cultural interaction guide cognitive
development
– Child needs interaction with more skilled
adults and peers
– Interactions teach adaptive skills for success
– Knowledge is situated and collaborative
– Memory, attention, reasoning involves
learning to use society’s inventions
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

22. Caring for Children
Cognitive Theories
• Information processing theory
– Capacity is gradually developed (no stages)
– Comparing computer to human brain
• Hardware analogous to brain
• Software analogous to cognition
– Emphasizes how individuals manipulate
information, monitor it, and strategize about it
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

23. Information Processing Theory
Sensory
information
STORAGE
INPUT RETRIEVAL
economics literature Information is Information is used
taken into brain as basis of behaviors
and interactions
culture science
religion
Information gets
processed, analyzed,
and stored until use
history math
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

24. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Behaviorism
– Development is observable behavior
– Behavior is learned from environmental
experiences
– Scientific measurements possible
– Change environment to affect behavior
• Four major theorists: Skinner, Pavlov,
Bandura, and Watson
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

25. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Classical Conditioning (I. Pavlov)
– Neutral stimulus acquires ability to produce
response originally produced by another
stimulus
• Dogs salivated to food
• Pairing food with bell produces salivation
• Sound of bell will produce salivation
without food
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

26. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Classical conditioning (J. Watson)
– Experiment: Little Albert and the white rat
– Generalizing fear as an involuntary response
• Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner)
– Consequences of behavior change
probability of behavior’s occurrence
– Use of punishments and rewards shapes
behavior and development
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

27. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Social Cognitive Theory (A. Bandura)
– Observational learning: use imitation or
modeling to adopt behaviors
– Behavior, environment, and cognition are
key factors in development
– Most recent model of learning
• Three elements: behavior, environmental,
and person/cognitive operate together
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

28. Caring for Children
Social Cognitive Model
Behavior
Person/ Environment
Cognitive
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

29. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Ethological theory
– Ethology stresses behavior influenced by
biology
– Critical (sensitive) periods for learning
– Lorenz experiment: imprinting
– Bowlby: attachment to caretaker is important
in first year of life
• Can be positive or negative
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

30. Caring for Children
Behavioral and Social
Cognitive Theories
• Ecological theory (U. Bronfenbrenner)
– Development influenced by several
environmental systems
– Current modification
• Added biological influences
• Renamed Bioecological theory
– Has merits and criticisms
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

31. Caring for Children
Ecological Theory
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

32. Caring for Children
Research Methods
• Observation
– Laboratory or naturalistic observation
• Survey and interview
• Standardized test – uniform procedures
• Case study – in-depth on individual
• Physiological measures
– fMRI (electromagnetic waves used)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

33. Caring for Children
Research Methods
• Research designs (for data collection)
– Descriptive research: observe and record
– Correlational research: measure strength of
association
• Correlation coefficient – shows strength
and direction, not causality
• Statistical number
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

34. Caring for Children
Research Methods
• Experimental research
– Behavior manipulated, change measured
– Demonstrates cause and effect
– Independent variable (gets manipulated)
– Dependent variable (gets measured)
– Control group (forms baseline measure)
– Experimental group (gets manipulated)
– Random assignment (assignment by chance)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

35. Caring for Children
Research Methods
• Time span of research
– Cross-sectional approach
• Several groups (usually different ages)
compared at one time
– Longitudinal approach
• Follows same group over long period of
time (usually years)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

36. Caring for Children
Research Challenges
• Conducting ethical research
– Protect rights of research subjects
– Do no harm (?) and adhere to code of ethics
• Use of informed consent
• Respect confidentiality
• Conduct debriefing
• Avoid deception (controversial here)
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

37. Caring for Children
Minimizing Bias
• Gender bias – preconceived ideas about
female and male abilities, magnifying
differences found
• Cultural and ethnic bias – excluding
minorities, preconceived ideas of not
being ‘average’
• Ethnic gloss – use of ethnic label
portraying ethnic groups as more
homogeneous than they really are
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

38. 1
The End
© 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.