CHAPTER 1
Basic Concepts of Child and Adolescent Development
The Goals of Child Psychology and an Overview of Development Why
is Child Psychology Important?
Two key questions to consider when discussing child psychology:
1. Is a child’s behaviour the result of nature (their biology) or nurture (their
environment)?
2. How can a child’s development be optimised?
The Goals of Child Psychology:
Goal Example(s)
1 To describe changes from conception • How an unborn baby develops
to about 18 years old in the womb.
• How children at various ages
differ from one another.
2 To explain what causes these • What factors could possibly
developmental stages influence the development of
the baby?
• How does peer pressure/
bullying affect a child’s
selfimage?
3 To predict based on past and future • Effect of smoking and/or alcohol
characteristics what behaviour the on an unborn baby.
child will manifest later in life • Will the aggressive infant turn
into an aggressive teenager?
4 To improve well-being • Making pregnant women aware
Make positive changes in peoples’ of the environmental factors
lives or to prevent problems from that could harm their child.
developing • Inform teachers about the
negative influence of bullying
on children.
Developmental Stages
• The development of a child is a continuous process, but is still subdivided into
stages.
Why?
, This is useful as indicators for specific milestones on life (e.g. going to
school), but also a means of measurement of whether a child’s development
is below or above the norm (average).
• Some boundaries (characteristics and skills) are obvious and clearly
demarcated, which makes it easier to distinguish between the boundaries and
this generally accepted. (e.g. birth is accepted as the stage between prenatal
and postnatal stages respectively)
• It is important that individual and cultural differences be taken into account.
• Prenatal stage subdivided into:
• germinal, embryonic and fetal (or
foetal) periods
• Neonatal stage First 2-4 weeks in life and Infancy is
the two subsequent years
These are grouped together
• Early childhood +/- ages 2 – 6
• Middle childhood From +/- the age of 6 until puberty
starts, approximately at the age of 12
• Adolescence From puberty to adulthood
Developmental Domains
Similar to developmental stages, for practical reasons, psychologists decided to deal
with this by dividing development into different areas. The following divisions are
usually used:
• Physical development - Entails changes in the child’s
body:
weight and height
development of the brain effect
of heredity, hormones
and nutrition
- NB ASPECT: motor
development (e.g. sitting,
crawling etc.)
• Cognitive development Cognition refers to how we acquire,
process and interpret information and
how we store, retrieve and use this
knowledge to direct our behaviour.
, making, imagination, creativity,
language, intelligence
• Personality development - Personality is the totality of a
person’s psychological, social,
moral and physical
characteristics.
Key terms in personality
development:
- The self: Core of a person’s
personality.
- Self-concept: Person’s
evaluation of him-/herself
- Identity: The way a person
identifies him-/herself in relation
to other individuals or social
groups.
• Social development - Involves the development of the
individual’s interaction and
relationships with other people.
- It also refers to the influence of
society and significant other
persons on the individual.
- Important aspect is socialisation
and moral development.
- Religion and spirituality are also
usually learned in social
contexts.
Key term:
- Socialisation: An aspect of
social development where the
individual acquires socially
acceptable behaviour through
social interactions with others.
Developmental Issues
Nature or Nurture? (genetics
or environment?)
THE QUESTION:
• Whether child’s development is the result of biological and genetic factors
, (nature) or environmental influences (nurture)
KEY TERMS
• NURTURE:
Refers to the environmental factors such as the social (e.g., parenting styles)
and the physical environment (e.g., poverty).
• NATURE:
Refers to the biological determinants such as genetic, neurological and
hormonal factors.
• It is important to note that the focus of the debate no longer centres on which
one is more important, but rather on how each of these factors contribute to
specific behaviours, situations, and individuals.
• This debate has become more emotive than scientific (e.g., homosexuality
being regarded as a result of nurture implying that people therefore do have a
choice in their sexual orientation).
• Motor development can be regarded as an example that behaviour is
genetically determined, where as socialisation may be used as evidence that
behaviour is a product of the environment.
• A factor which makes the nature-nurture debate difficult to solve is the fact that
the cause of a specific behaviour is often very difficult to prove.
CAUSE-EFFECT ISSUE:
• A serious issue to be considered in development.
• Can be explained by use of the following two examples:
Example 1 (day-to-day generalisation) Example 2 (serious)
• Diet drinks cause people to • People who abuse drugs are not
become overweight. intelligent.
This is joked about through the lenses Critic: Is it reliable to say that drug
of the quantity of people who are abuse leads to low intelligence?
overweight who drink diet drinks. Someone may be abusing drugs
because of a low intelligence.
• Thus, by support of above examples, if two factors (A and B) co-exist or are
linked it is difficult to determine whether A caused B OR B caused A.
• It is generally accepted that the interaction between hereditary and
environment is much more important than the respective contribution of each.
The unique effect of the interaction is also acknowledged.
• There is no set formula to determine the respective effect of nature or nurture
on a particular individual.
Continuity or Discontinuity?
THE QUESTION:
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