Boek Development of Children
Hoofdstuk 1 The study of human development
Hedonic motive: comes out of gratification, things you enjoy, desire for pleasure
Normative influence: to get approval from others you do something
Informational influence: other people give us information about reality (we expect)
Behaviorism > Law of effect: Thorndike’s notion that behaviors that produce a satisfying
effect in a given situation are likely to be repeated in the same or similar situations whereas
behaviors that produce an uncomfortable effect are less likely to be repeated.
Equilibration: the main source of development, consisting of a process of achieving a
balance between the child’s present understanding and the child’s new experiences.
Zone of proximal development (Vygotsky): the gap between what children can accomplish
independently and when interacting with others who are more competent.
Preyer’s rules of observation
Rely only on direct observations; avoid the reports of ‘persons not practiced in
scientific observing.’
Record observations immediately so that details are not forgotten.
Make every effort to be unobtrusive, to ‘observe without the child’s noticing the
observer at all’.
Avoid any training of the young child in order to observe unadulterated mental
development.
If regular observations are interrupted for more than 1 day, another observer must
be substituted, and his or her observations should be checked for accuracy.
Everything should be recorded, even behaviors that seem uninteresting at the time.
, Approximate age Freud (psychosexual) Erikson (psychosocial)
First year Oral Stage; mouth is the Trust versus mistrust;
focus of pleasurable infants learns to trust others
sensations > sucking, biting to care for their basic needs
Second year Anal stage; baby learns to Autonomy versus shame
control elimination and doubt
Third to sixth year Phallic stage; children Initiative versus guilt
develop sexual curiosity
Seventh year - puberty Latency; children focus on Industry versus inferiority;
mastery of skills valued by children learn to be
adults competent and effective at
activities or they feel
inferior
Adolescence Genital stage; adult sexual Identity versus role
desires, seek to satisfy them confusion
Early adulthood - Intimacy versus isolation
Middle age - Generativity versus
stagnation
Old age - Integrity versus despair
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor (birth to 2)
Infants’ achievements consist largely of coordinating their sensory perceptions and simple
motor behaviors. As they move through the six substages of this period, infants come to
recognize the existence of a world outside themselves and begin to interact with it.
Preoperational (2 to 6)
Young children can represent reality to themselves through the use of symbols, including
mental images, words and gestures. Still, children often fail to distinguish their point of view
from that of others, become easily captured by surface appearances, and are often confused
about causal relations.
Concrete operational (6 to 12)
As they enter middle childhood, children become capable of mental operations, internalized
actions that fit into a logical system. Operational thinking allows children to mentally
combine, separate, order and transform objects and actions.
Formal operational (12 to 19)
In adolescence, the developing person acquires the ability to think systematically about all
logical relations within a problem. Adolescents display keen interest in abstract ideas and in
the process of thinking itself.
Most of the ethical guidelines address certain fundamental concerns:
Freedom from harm. Above all, scientists need to ensure that study participants will
not be physically or psychologically harmed through their involvement.
Informed consent. Participants must voluntarily agree to be in the study. This means
that they must be given a reasonable understanding of what their participation
entails, and it means their participation must not have been forced, coerced, or
based on inappropriate incentives (e.g., the offer of money to low-income
participants or higher grades to students). With children, “informed” consent
, becomes more difficult because young children cannot really understand what their
participation entails. Usually, parental consent is required, as well as consent from
other child advocates, such as school officials.
Confidentiality. Personal information obtained in the course of research must be
kept confidential—that is, confined to scientific uses and not made publicly available
in a way that might embarrass or harm the participant. Often, investigators will
assign code numbers to the participants to ensure the participants’ anonymity.
However, investigators sometimes uncover a serious problem that threatens the
well-being of the participant, as when a child reports abuse or seems suicidal. Under
such circumstances, the higher ethic of the participant’s welfare requires that the
researcher break confidentiality and inform authorities who are in a position to
intervene and protect the child.
Descriptive approach: goal to describe or document a particular behavior.
Correlational approach: goal to predict the occurrence of a particular behavior.
Experimental approach: goal to explain a behavior or understand why it occurs.
Hoofdstuk 2 Biocultural foundations
Culture is rooted in everyday activities, such as acquiring and preparing food, caring for
children and children’s play. Culture consists of material and symbolic tools that accumulate
through time, are passed on through social processes and provide resources for the
developing child.
- Material tools: when the focus is on physical objects or on observable patterns of
behavior.
- Symbolic tools: when they want to explore how abstract knowledge, beliefs and
values affect development.
Both tools organize children’s activities and the way they relate to their environments.
(mediation)
Children inherit culture through social processes:
- Social enhancement: children use cultural resources simply because the activities of
others have enhanced the immediate environment by making these resources
available.
- Imitation: learn by observing and coping the behaviors of others.
- Explicit instruction: purposefully taught to use the material and symbolic resources
of their culture (symbolic communication)
Culture continues to evolve because individuals produce variations in the tools they use. The
dynamic process of cultural change through variation is known as cumulative cultural
evolution.
Evolution is made possible by heredity, the transmission of biological characteristics from
one generation to the next. Genes contain instructions that guide formation of all the
individual traits (physical, psychological, behavioral).
, Natural selection (Darwin): the process through which species survive and evolve, in which
individuals with phenotypes that are more adaptive to the environmental conditions survive
and reproduce with greater success than individuals with phenotypes less adaptive.
There are two types of cells:
- Germ cells: the sperm and ova (for sexual
reproduction)
- Somatic cells: (body cells) All the cells in the body
except for the germ cells.
Mitosis: the process of creating new somatic cells > process
of cell duplication and division that generates all of an
individual’s cells except sperm and ova. This process
continues throughout the life of an individual.
- Each somatic cell contains an exact copy of the
original 46 chromosomes inherited by the zygote at
conception.
- Our genotype remains constant.
Meiosis: the process of creating new germ cells. Each germ
cell consists of 23 chromosomes.
Special cases:
- Monozygotic twins (MZ): from one zygote and therefore two identical genotypes.
- Dizygotic twins (DZ): (or fraternal twins) from two zygotes.
Allele is a specific form of a gene that influences a particular
trait. When a child is homozygous for the trait influenced by
that gene, the child will display the particular characteristic
associated with that allele. When a child is heterozygous
there are three possible outcomes:
The child will display characteristics associated with only one
of the two alleles > this is a dominant allele. The other one is
the recessive allele.
- The child will be affected by both alleles and will
display characters that are intermediate between
those associated with the two alleles.
- Child will fully express the characters associated with
each of the two alleles (co-dominance).
Most traits, especially behavioral traits, involve poly genetic
inheritance; the contribution of a variety of genes to a
particular trait.
