Lecture 1 Introduction to the
module
Textbook
Chapter 1 (Enduring Themes in Child Development Section & Methods for
Studying Child Development sections)
Chapter 3 (Brain Development section & box 3.3)
CH1: WHAT DO WE STUDY WHEN WE STUDY CHILD
DEVELOPMENT?
How do nature and nurture together shape development (Nature and
nurture)
How do children shape their own development (The active child)
In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it
discontinuous (Continuity/discontinuity)
How does change occur? (Mechanisms of change)
How does the sociocultural context influence development? (The
sociocultural context)
How do children become so different from one another? (Individual
differences)
How can research promote children’s well-being (Research and children’s
welfare)
Nature and nurture: How do nature and nurture
together shape development?
Nature
biological endowment, gene receive from our parents
genetic inheritance influences from physical appearance, personality,
傾向
intellect, and mental health to political attitudes, propensity for
thrill-seeking (Plomin, 2012)
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 1
, Nurture
wide range of environments, both physical and social
influence development including the womb we spend the prenatal
period, the homes we grow up, the school that we attend, the
communities in which we live and people.
Misleading: popular depiction often present nature-nurture as either/or
“what determines how a person develops, heredity or environment?”
Joint working of nature and nurture, through constant interaction of our
biology and environment
Development of schizophrenia 精神分裂症(findings)
a label for a family of serious mental illness, have obvious genetic
component
characterised by hallucination, delusions, confusion and irrational
behaviour
Family study: children who have schizophrenic parents have a much
higher probability than other children of developing the illness later in
life, even when they are adopted as infants (means they are not
exposed to their parents’ schizophrenic behaviour) (Kety.1994)
Twins study: among identical twins, if one has schizophrenia, the other
has around 40-50% chance of also having it, as opposed to the roughly
1% probability for the general population ( 一般人機率 1%) (Cardno &
Gottesman, 2000; Gejman, Sanders & Duan, 2010; Gottesman, 1991)
Genetic relatedness: the closer the biological relation, the stronger the
probability that relatives of a person with schizophrenia will have the
same mental illness (Gottesman, 1991)
Environmental influence: roughly 50-60% children who have an
identical twins with schizophrenia do not become schizophrenic
Environmental influence: children who grow up in troubled homes are
more likely to become schizophrenic than those raised in a normal
household
Adopted children study: indicated that the only children who had any
substantial likelihood of becoming schizophrenic were those who had a
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 2
, schizophrenic biological parents and also adopted into a troubled family
(Tienari, Wahlberg & Wynne, 2006)
Genome 基因組
biological mechanisms through interaction of nature and nurture
each person’s complete set of hereditary information
influence behaviours and experiences, behaviours and experiences
influences the genome (Meaney, 2010; Slavich & Cole,2013)
genome includes not only DNA but the proteins that regulate gene
expression by turning gene activity on and off
These proteins change in response to experience and without
structurally altering DNA, they can produce enduring changes in
cognition, emotion and behaviour. > lead to epigenetic
Epigenetic 表觀遺傳
the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated
by the environment
examines how experience gets under the skin
Evidence for impacting early experiences and behaviours:
methylation
Methylation: a biochemical process that reduces expression of a
variety of genes and is involved in regulating reaction to stress
(Lam, Hastie, 2012)
Main study: the amount of stress that mothers reported
experiencing during their children’s infancy was related to the
amount of methylation in the children’s genomes 15 years later
(Essex, 2013)
Other study: increased methylation in the cord-blood DNA of
newborns of depressed mothers (Oberlander, 2008); adultes who
were abused as children (McGowan, 2009); leading researchers to
speculate that such children are at heightened risk for depression
as adults (Rutten Mill, 2009)
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 3
, The active child: How do children shape their own
development?
Selective attention
infants shape their own development through selective attention
even newborns attend more to object that move and make sound than
to other objects, help them learn about important parts of the world (EG:
people, animals and inanimate moving object)
When looking at people, infants’ attention is particularly drawn to faces,
especially their mother’s face, given a choice of looking at stranger’s
face or their mother’s, even 1 month old choose to look at Mom (Bartrip,
Morton & de Schonen, 2001)
infants’ attention to their mother’s face is not accompanied by any
visible emotion until the end of the 2nd month, they smile and coo more
when focusing intently on their mother’s face than at other times.
(smiling and cooing elicits smiling and talking by the mother, which
elicits further cooing and smiling by the infant) (Lavelli Fogel,2005)
infant preference for attending to their mother’s faces leads to social
interactions that can strengthen the mother-infant bond
Learning to speak
between 9-15 months, their contribution to their own development
becomes more evident
toddlers (1-2 years old) often talk when they are alone in a room
“crib speech”: only if children were internally motivated to learn
language would they practice talking when no one was present to react
to what they are saying. This is normal and help toddlers learn language
Internally motivated activity
children play by themselves for the sheer joy of doing so, they also
learn a great deal in the process
play contributes to children’s development in many ways: spatial
understanding and attention to detail required to complete puzzles
a baby bang a spoon against the tray of a high chair or intentionally
drop food on the floor would agree that the activity is own reward (for
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 4
module
Textbook
Chapter 1 (Enduring Themes in Child Development Section & Methods for
Studying Child Development sections)
Chapter 3 (Brain Development section & box 3.3)
CH1: WHAT DO WE STUDY WHEN WE STUDY CHILD
DEVELOPMENT?
How do nature and nurture together shape development (Nature and
nurture)
How do children shape their own development (The active child)
In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it
discontinuous (Continuity/discontinuity)
How does change occur? (Mechanisms of change)
How does the sociocultural context influence development? (The
sociocultural context)
How do children become so different from one another? (Individual
differences)
How can research promote children’s well-being (Research and children’s
welfare)
Nature and nurture: How do nature and nurture
together shape development?
Nature
biological endowment, gene receive from our parents
genetic inheritance influences from physical appearance, personality,
傾向
intellect, and mental health to political attitudes, propensity for
thrill-seeking (Plomin, 2012)
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 1
, Nurture
wide range of environments, both physical and social
influence development including the womb we spend the prenatal
period, the homes we grow up, the school that we attend, the
communities in which we live and people.
Misleading: popular depiction often present nature-nurture as either/or
“what determines how a person develops, heredity or environment?”
Joint working of nature and nurture, through constant interaction of our
biology and environment
Development of schizophrenia 精神分裂症(findings)
a label for a family of serious mental illness, have obvious genetic
component
characterised by hallucination, delusions, confusion and irrational
behaviour
Family study: children who have schizophrenic parents have a much
higher probability than other children of developing the illness later in
life, even when they are adopted as infants (means they are not
exposed to their parents’ schizophrenic behaviour) (Kety.1994)
Twins study: among identical twins, if one has schizophrenia, the other
has around 40-50% chance of also having it, as opposed to the roughly
1% probability for the general population ( 一般人機率 1%) (Cardno &
Gottesman, 2000; Gejman, Sanders & Duan, 2010; Gottesman, 1991)
Genetic relatedness: the closer the biological relation, the stronger the
probability that relatives of a person with schizophrenia will have the
same mental illness (Gottesman, 1991)
Environmental influence: roughly 50-60% children who have an
identical twins with schizophrenia do not become schizophrenic
Environmental influence: children who grow up in troubled homes are
more likely to become schizophrenic than those raised in a normal
household
Adopted children study: indicated that the only children who had any
substantial likelihood of becoming schizophrenic were those who had a
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 2
, schizophrenic biological parents and also adopted into a troubled family
(Tienari, Wahlberg & Wynne, 2006)
Genome 基因組
biological mechanisms through interaction of nature and nurture
each person’s complete set of hereditary information
influence behaviours and experiences, behaviours and experiences
influences the genome (Meaney, 2010; Slavich & Cole,2013)
genome includes not only DNA but the proteins that regulate gene
expression by turning gene activity on and off
These proteins change in response to experience and without
structurally altering DNA, they can produce enduring changes in
cognition, emotion and behaviour. > lead to epigenetic
Epigenetic 表觀遺傳
the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated
by the environment
examines how experience gets under the skin
Evidence for impacting early experiences and behaviours:
methylation
Methylation: a biochemical process that reduces expression of a
variety of genes and is involved in regulating reaction to stress
(Lam, Hastie, 2012)
Main study: the amount of stress that mothers reported
experiencing during their children’s infancy was related to the
amount of methylation in the children’s genomes 15 years later
(Essex, 2013)
Other study: increased methylation in the cord-blood DNA of
newborns of depressed mothers (Oberlander, 2008); adultes who
were abused as children (McGowan, 2009); leading researchers to
speculate that such children are at heightened risk for depression
as adults (Rutten Mill, 2009)
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 3
, The active child: How do children shape their own
development?
Selective attention
infants shape their own development through selective attention
even newborns attend more to object that move and make sound than
to other objects, help them learn about important parts of the world (EG:
people, animals and inanimate moving object)
When looking at people, infants’ attention is particularly drawn to faces,
especially their mother’s face, given a choice of looking at stranger’s
face or their mother’s, even 1 month old choose to look at Mom (Bartrip,
Morton & de Schonen, 2001)
infants’ attention to their mother’s face is not accompanied by any
visible emotion until the end of the 2nd month, they smile and coo more
when focusing intently on their mother’s face than at other times.
(smiling and cooing elicits smiling and talking by the mother, which
elicits further cooing and smiling by the infant) (Lavelli Fogel,2005)
infant preference for attending to their mother’s faces leads to social
interactions that can strengthen the mother-infant bond
Learning to speak
between 9-15 months, their contribution to their own development
becomes more evident
toddlers (1-2 years old) often talk when they are alone in a room
“crib speech”: only if children were internally motivated to learn
language would they practice talking when no one was present to react
to what they are saying. This is normal and help toddlers learn language
Internally motivated activity
children play by themselves for the sheer joy of doing so, they also
learn a great deal in the process
play contributes to children’s development in many ways: spatial
understanding and attention to detail required to complete puzzles
a baby bang a spoon against the tray of a high chair or intentionally
drop food on the floor would agree that the activity is own reward (for
Lecture 1 Introduction to the module 4
