Comprehensive Summary of Literature Developmental Psychology
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Course
Ontwikkelingspsychologie
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Book
The Development of Children
This is a comprehensive summary of all the literature that is tested during the Developmental Psychology exam. This consists of the complete book: The development of Children (8th edition) and associated articles and chapters on Canvas. This course is part of the bachelor's degree in Educational Sc...
Samenvatting van alle Literatuur Ontwikkelingspsychologie
Hoorcollege 1 – Inleiding
Chapter 1 (LCC) – The study of human development
Developmental science
Developmental science – a field of study that focuses on the range of children’s physical,
intellectual, social, and emotional development. 2 goals:
1. Understand the basic biological and cultural processes that account for the remarkable
complexities of human development.
2. Devise effective methods for safeguarding children’s health and well-being.
In recent decades, the study of development has become increasingly interdisciplinary,
profiting from the insights of a wide range of disciplines. It has also become increasingly
international, reflecting a growing appreciation of the many ways developmental processes
are influenced by cultural contexts.
Periods of development
Five broad periods: the prenatal period, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and
adolescence.
1. Each period is marked by major changes in children’s bodies, and in how they think,
feel, and interact with others.
2. Each is also marked by significant changes in how children are treated by members of
their society, as a consequence of cultural assumptions and expectations about what
children can and should be doing at different ages.
Domains of development
As they move through each period of development, they undergo remarkable changes in
several domains: social, emotional, cognitive, and physical.
Contexts of development
Contexts of development present children with both resources and risks that profoundly shape
the course of their development. Researchers often compare children who experience or grow
up under different conditions.
Children, society, and science
Historical beliefs about children and childhood
Beliefs about children and childhood differ from one historical era to another.
Before the 16th century, people did not give much thought to children or their special needs.
During medieval times, there was a limited understanding of childhood as a unique period of
the life course. Children were considered miniature adults.
The belief that adultlike capacities, desires, interests, and emotions are present in early
childhood is known as preformationism.
,A major turning point in the history of Western beliefs about children and childhood came in
the 16th century, with the Protestant Reformation. It was associated with harsher child-rearing
practices, which followed from the belief that children are born in original sin. Protestant
denominations generally held that salvation would only be possible through obedience and
submission to authority.
Obedience naturally requires the suppression of individual goals an desires: parents
were advised to adopt practices that would hold children’s innate sinfulness in check
and replace their willful impulses with humility and compliance.
Industrialization transformed the contexts in which children developed in 3 major ways:
1. Schooling and/or factory work came to replace family farm work as the child’s
primary social obligation (shift from rural to urban conditions).
2. The birthrate dropped significantly, altering family relationships.
3. The child death rate plummeted, also with impacts on family relationships.
With increasing schooling, children were removed from the workforce and become economic
burdens rather than assets → drop in birthrate.
The emergence of developmental science
1. Industrialization – children had to do labor in textile factors. Conditions under which
they worked became a matter of social concern and sparked the attention of science.
2. Also crucial to the rise of scientific interest in children was the work of Charles
Darwin. If human beings had evolved from earlier species, then might not the different
stages of children’s behavior offer clues to stages of human evolution?
William Preyer wrote the first textbook on child development, proposing that development of
emotion, language etc. could be studies by strict rules of observation:
- Rely only on direct observations.
- Record observations immediately so that details are not forgotten.
- Make every effort to be unobtrusive.
- Etc.
Whereas Preyer’s greatest contributions to developmental science were his methods of study,
other developmentalists focused directly on the nature of development (e.g. stage theories), or
practical applications (e.g. Binet – mental testing).
The new field of developmental science
Erly 20th century: study of development has become a recognized field of scientific inquiry.
The central issues of developmental science
1. Sources of development – how do forces of biology, environment, and child’s own
activities interact to produce new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving?
While our shared biological heritage plays a part in universal human developments, humans
share more than genes. All humans grow up in physical, social and cultural environments that
interact with each other and with our biological makeup to produce developmental change.
, 2. Plasticity – the degree to which, and the conditions under which, development is open
to change and intervention.
The limits of plasticity are influenced by sensitive periods in development – times in
development during which a particular experience (or lack of it) has a more pronounced effect
on the organism than does exposure to that same experience at another time.
3. Continuity/discontinuity – extent to which development is continuous (gradual
accumulation of small changes), and the extent to which it is discontinuous (series of
abrupt, radical transformations).
Primary a continuous, gradual process – developmentalists emphasize quantitative change.
Abrupt, discontinuous changes – developmentalists emphasize qualitative change.
Qualitatively new patterns that emerge during development are referred to as developmental
stages. Supporters argue that the qualitative changes the child undergoes in a new stage alter
the way the child experiences the world and the way the world influences the child.
Supporters of the continuity view maintain that even when development appears to make an
abrupt shift, continuity prevails in the underlying processes.
4. Individual difference – 2 questions:
- What makes individuals different form one another?
- To what extent are individual characteristics stable over time?
The features that make you unique from everyone else reflect the capacity of certain traits to
be more easily modified by experience.
The extent of the stability of children’s psychological characteristics over time depends in part
on the extent of stability in their environment.
Theories of development
Theory – framework of ideas or body of principles that can be used to guide the collection and
interpretation of a set of facts.
Theory in developmental science
Development is approached from several theoretical perspectives that differ in a number of
important ways:
1. Domains of development under investigation.
2. Research methods used – observational, experimental etc.
3. Central issues addressed – source, plasticity, continuity/discontinuity, individual
differences.
Grand theories
1. Psychodynamic theories (Freud, Erikson)
Freud reasoned that, whatever their significance for the individual, all biological drives have a
single goal: the survival and propagation of the species (fundamental sex drive). The behavior
of children – even infants – is motivated by a need to satisfy the fundamental sex drive.
, The form of sexual gratification changes, passing through an orderly series of psychosexual
stages related to the parts of the body through which gratification is achieved.
Each stage is associated with conflicts between the child’s desires and social prohibitions and
expectations that militate against the expression of those desires. The way children experience
the conflicts and if they resolve these, affects their later personality.
➔ E.g. anal stage (second year) – the anus is the focus of pleasurable sensations as the
baby learns to control elimination.
In addition, Freud thought that personality is made up of 3 mental structures:
a) Primitive id – biological drives that demand immediate gratification.
b) Ego – rational component of personality that mediates between demands of the id the
constraints imposed by the outside world.
c) Superego – one’s conscience, attempts to suppress the forbidden demands of id and
force the ego to make choices that are morally acceptable.
Erikson – departed from Freud in 2 significant ways:
- Erikson emphasized social and cultural factors, rather than biological drives, as the
major force behind development.
- Developmental process as continuing throughout the life span rather than ending in
adolescence.
Main challenge of life – quest for identity. Each psychological stage is associated with a
particular main task (crises: source of conflict). Our culture provides us with the contexts in
which we must resolve the crises and the tools with which we can resolve them.
2. Behaviorism – basic idea: personality and behavior are gradually and continuously
shaped by the individual’s learning experiences.
Thorndike and the law of effect – behaviors that produce a satisfying effect in a given
situation are likely to be repeated in a similar situation, whereas behaviors that produce an
uncomfortable effect are less likely to be repeated.
3. Piaget’s constructivist theory – cognitive development is driven by the interaction of
children’s biologically driven motivation to learn and explore, the maturation of their
brain and body, and all the experiences that they learn from their actions in the world.
Hallmark → active role of children in their own cognitive development.
He believed that children progress through a series of stages of cognitive development. Each
stage reflects a unique age-related way of understanding or organizing reality.
Development can be speeded up or slowed down by variations in the environment, but all
children go through the same basic stages.
The most basic unit of cognitive functioning is the schema – general framework that provides
a model for understanding some aspect of the world. As children interact with the
environment, they change their schemas through adaptation to new information:
- Assimilation – individuals incorporate new experiences into their existing schemas.
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