Seminar 1: 28 April Siegler: Ch1
CHAPTER 1 An Introduction to Child Development
Reasons to Learn About Child Development
Understanding how children develop can improve child rearing, promote the adoption of
wiser social policies regarding children’s welfare, and answer basic questions about human
nature.
Raising Children
For example, one problem that confronts almost all parents is how to help their children
control their anger. One tempting reaction is to spank children who express anger in
inappropriate ways, such as fighting, name-calling, and talking back. In fact, spanking made
the problem worse.
Fortunately, research suggests several effective alternatives to spanking. One approach that
children were taught for coping with anger was the “turtle technique.” When children felt
themselves becoming angry, they were to move away from other children and retreat into
their “turtle shell,” where they could think through the situation until they were ready to
emerge from the shell. As this example suggests, knowledge of child-development research
can be helpful to everyone involved in the care of children.
Choosing Social Policies
Another reason to learn about child development is to be able to make informed decisions
about the wide variety of social-policy questions that affect children in general. For example,
does playing violent video games increase aggressive behavior?
Understanding Human Nature
A third reason to study child development is to better understand human nature. Many of
the most intriguing questions regarding human nature focus on infancy and childhood. For
example, does learning start only after children are born, or can it occur in the womb?
Studying infants and young children offers an opportunity to learn what people are like
before they are affected by the innumerable influences of family and society. One major
group of contemporary philosophers and psychologists, known as nativists, argues that
evolution has created many remarkable capabilities that are present even in early infancy,
particularly in areas of special importance, such as understanding basic properties of
physical objects, plants and animals, and other people. Another major group of philosophers
and psychologists, known as empiricists, has argued that infants possess general learning
mechanisms that allow them to learn a great deal quite quickly, but that infants and young
children lack the specialized capabilities that nativists attribute to them.
Historical Foundations of the Study of Child Development
From ancient Greece to the early years of the twentieth century, a number of profound
thinkers observed and wrote about children. Their goals were like those of contemporary
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,researchers: to help people become better parents, to improve children’s well-being, and to
understand human nature.
Early Philosophers’ Views of Children’s Development
The classic Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, who lived in the fourth century B.C.,
proposed some of the earliest recorded and most influential ideas about children’s
development. Both philosophers believed that the long-term welfare of society depended on
the proper raising of children. Careful upbringing was essential because children’s basic
nature would otherwise lead to their becoming rebellious and unruly. Although formulated
long ago, these and other philosophical questions continue to underlie many contemporary
debates about human nature.
Social Reform Movements
The contemporary field 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. During the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, a great many
children in Europe and the United States worked as poorly paid laborers with few if any legal
protections.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which employs variation, natural selection, and
inheritance as its fundamental concepts, also continues to influence the thinking of
modern developmentalists on a wide range of topics.
Enduring Themes in Child Development
1 Nature and Nurture: How Do Nature and Nurture Together Shape Development?
The most basic question about child development is how nature and nurture interact to
shape the developmental process. Nature refers to our biological endowment, in particular,
the genes we receive from our parents. This genetic inheritance influences every aspect of
our makeup, from broad characteristics such as physical appearance, personality, intellect,
and mental health to specific preferences, such as political attitudes and propensity for thrill-
seeking. Nurture refers to the wide range of environments, both physical and social, that
influence our development, including the womb in which we spend the prenatal period, the
homes in which we grow up, the schools that we attend, the broader communities in which
we live, and the many people with whom we interact.
Accordingly, rather than asking whether nature or nurture is more important,
developmentalists ask how nature and nurture work together to shape development.
A remarkable recent series of studies has revealed some of the biological mechanisms
through which nature and nurture interact. These studies show that just as the genome—
each person’s complete set of hereditary information—influences behaviors and
experiences, behaviors and experiences influence the genome.
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, Epigenetics = the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the
environment.
Methylation = a biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is
involved in regulating reactions to stress.
2 The Active Child: How Do Children Shape Their Own Development?
Children’s own actions also contribute to their development.
Infants shape their own development through selective attention. Even newborns attend
more to objects that move and make sounds than to other objects. When looking at people,
infants’ attention is particularly drawn to faces, especially their mother’s face.
Once children begin to speak, usually between 9 and 15 months of age, their contribution to
their own development becomes more evident.
Children play by themselves for the sheer joy of doing so, but they also learn a great deal in
the process.
Young children’s fantasy play seems to make an especially large contribution to their
knowledge of themselves and other people. Starting at around age 2 years, children
sometimes pretend to be different people in make-believe dramas.
3 Continuity/Discontinuity: In What Ways Is Development Continuous, and in What Ways Is
It Discontinuous?
Some scientists envision children’s development as a continuous process of small changes,
like that of a pine tree growing taller and taller. Others see the process as a series of
occasional, sudden, discontinuous changes, like the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to
butterfly.
Researchers who view development as discontinuous start from a common observation:
children of different ages seem qualitatively different. A 4-year-old and a 6-year-old, for
example, seem to differ not only in how much they know but in the way they think about the
world.
Children’s behavior on Piaget’s conservation-of-liquid-quantity problem is often used to
exemplify the idea that development is discontinuous. The child first sees equal amounts of
liquid in similarly shaped glasses and an empty, differently shaped glass. Then, the child sees
the liquid from one glass poured into the differently shaped glass. Finally, the child is asked
whether the amount of liquid remains the same or whether one glass has more. Young
children, like this girl, are unshakable in their belief that the glass with the taller liquid
column has more liquid. A year or two later, they are equally unshakable in their belief that
the amount of liquid in each glass is the same.
Stage theories = which propose that development occurs in a progression of distinct age-
related stages, much like the butterfly example. Among the best-known stage theories is
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the development of thinking and reasoning.
This theory holds that between birth and adolescence, children go through four stages of
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