PSYX 330 CHILD DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Enduring Themes and Historical Foundations
Exploring nature v.s. nurture ; Physical and social environment v.s. genes
Which one has more influence on development? Is development continuous or
discontinuous?
It is important to remember that how you look at development frames it in different ways.
Historical Foundations
Philosophical Roots of Child Development
Plato: Nativism
The idea that certain kinds of knowledge are inborn/innate
Aristotle: Philosophical empiricism
All knowledge is acquired through experience
John Locke: Tabula rasa (Behaviorism)
Children are a blank slate. He emphasized the importance of instruction and strict
parenting.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
He believed children are innately good. Maturation is a natural course of growth. He
believed that children learn through spontaneous interactions with objects and people.
Scientific Roots of Child Development
G. Stanley hall: Normative development (maturation process)
Hall studied all aspects of child development. He tried to find what the “normal”
development process was.
Alfred Binet: Intelligence test
He defined intelligence as good judgment, planning, and critical reflection. Intelligence
tests rose quickly to the forefront of the nature vs nurture debate.
James Baldwin: Early developmental theorist
He believed nature and nurture had equal importance. He also studied children's
understanding of the physical and social world developed through stages. Children
learn through internal revision and also learn through imitation.
Sigmund freud: psychoanalytic perspective
Sugmund emphasized the importance of early development children move through
stages of conflicts between biological drive and social expectation. He was interested in
how these were resolved.
Ivan Pavlov: Behaviorism
Explored classical conditioning
John Watson: Behaviorism
Extended Pavlov’s approach to human behavior
B.F. Skinner: Operant conditioning
He explored reward and punishment which is still used in less aggressive ways
Lisel Keller
, PSYX 330 CHILD DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Jean Piaget: Father of cognitive development
Constructivist theory: Child constructs knowledge through interactions with the social
and physical world. He believed children are active in constructing their knowledge.
Nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development.
Three processes to proper development
Assimilation: The process of incorporating new information and experiences into
concepts they already understand
Accommodation: process of improving current understanding as a result of new
information and experiences
Equilibration: the process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to create
stable understanding
Piaget’s cognitive development stages
Sensori-motor stage: Birth-2yrs.
Infants' sensory and motor ability are used to perceive and explore the world they are in.
These are the foundations of intelligence. This stage is the ability to hold mental
representations. However these children lack object permanence-normally up until 8
months old. They make A-not-B errors, usually from 8-12 months. They are capable of
deferred imitation from 18-24 months.
Pre-operational stage: 2-7yrs.
Impressive cognitive acquisitions like playing and talking pretend
Scale model task, using info from a representation and applying it in real life- 3 year
olds pass this. However they still have limitations in certain mental operations.
Egocentrism: Limited ability to take another's perspective
Centration: focusing on the most striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of
other relevant but less striking features
Piaget also found that facilitated learning can spur development of knowledge but it is
less complete than spontaneous learning.
Basically if the child already is starting to spontaneously understand information, then
facilitated learning can sort of push them over the edge of complete understanding.
Concrete operations, 7-10yrs
CHildren are able to reason logically about concrete features
They develop more effective spatial reasoning
Their limitations are that they still have some difficulty with a few abstract concepts and
reasoning systematically, like the pendulum problem. The children were extremely
unsystematic in how they approached solving this problem.
Formal operations, 12yrs+
Lisel Keller
, PSYX 330 CHILD DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Children are able to develop abstract and hypothetical reasoning. They are capable of
systematic and scientific thinking. This stage is not believed to be universal because it
depends on experience.
Biology
Epigenome: These are the “on” genes and refer to all modifications to genes other than
changes in the DNA sequence itself. It tells the genes what to do, when, and where.
Genotype: The inherited genetic material (DNA)
Phenotype: The observable expression of genotype
Environmental factors also affect gene expression by gurning genes on and off.
Epigenetic changes are passed down.
Chromosomes and sex chromosomes
23 pairs, 23 from each parent. Each chromosome in a pair of two carries a
corresponding gene, like hair color.
Y chromosome is shorter, 200 genes
X chromosome is longer, 1500 genes
In boys, XY, not all genes on the X have a corresponding gene on the Y. There are
sex-linked disorders that manifest in males. The SRY gene is responsible for male
anatomy.
Patterns of inheritance
Genes and alleles
Alleles are gene variants, they can be dominant or recessive. Dominant recessive
pattern governs gene expression, the phenotype. I.e. Bb, Bb, BB, bb.
Single gene inheritance: One gene affects a trait
Polygenic inheritance: several different genes contribute to the expressed trait
Homozygous: the same allele on both genes
Heterozygous: two different alleles
Sources of differences for genetic and chromosomal variations are formations of
gametes, dominant and recessive-gene disorder, chromosomal variation, and
epigenetic changes. These are differences not defects.
Dominant gene disorders
A person who inherits one copy of the gene always gets the disease
Recessive gene disorders
Child must inherit two copies of the abnormal gene that causes the disorders chances
are ¼.
Chromosomal variations
Down syndrome is a variation with 47 chromosomes. Trisomy 21, 3 copies at
chromosome 21, instead of 2.
Some chromosomal variations are simply not viable and the child will not develop in the
womb, they will miscarry.
Lisel Keller
Enduring Themes and Historical Foundations
Exploring nature v.s. nurture ; Physical and social environment v.s. genes
Which one has more influence on development? Is development continuous or
discontinuous?
It is important to remember that how you look at development frames it in different ways.
Historical Foundations
Philosophical Roots of Child Development
Plato: Nativism
The idea that certain kinds of knowledge are inborn/innate
Aristotle: Philosophical empiricism
All knowledge is acquired through experience
John Locke: Tabula rasa (Behaviorism)
Children are a blank slate. He emphasized the importance of instruction and strict
parenting.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
He believed children are innately good. Maturation is a natural course of growth. He
believed that children learn through spontaneous interactions with objects and people.
Scientific Roots of Child Development
G. Stanley hall: Normative development (maturation process)
Hall studied all aspects of child development. He tried to find what the “normal”
development process was.
Alfred Binet: Intelligence test
He defined intelligence as good judgment, planning, and critical reflection. Intelligence
tests rose quickly to the forefront of the nature vs nurture debate.
James Baldwin: Early developmental theorist
He believed nature and nurture had equal importance. He also studied children's
understanding of the physical and social world developed through stages. Children
learn through internal revision and also learn through imitation.
Sigmund freud: psychoanalytic perspective
Sugmund emphasized the importance of early development children move through
stages of conflicts between biological drive and social expectation. He was interested in
how these were resolved.
Ivan Pavlov: Behaviorism
Explored classical conditioning
John Watson: Behaviorism
Extended Pavlov’s approach to human behavior
B.F. Skinner: Operant conditioning
He explored reward and punishment which is still used in less aggressive ways
Lisel Keller
, PSYX 330 CHILD DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Jean Piaget: Father of cognitive development
Constructivist theory: Child constructs knowledge through interactions with the social
and physical world. He believed children are active in constructing their knowledge.
Nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development.
Three processes to proper development
Assimilation: The process of incorporating new information and experiences into
concepts they already understand
Accommodation: process of improving current understanding as a result of new
information and experiences
Equilibration: the process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to create
stable understanding
Piaget’s cognitive development stages
Sensori-motor stage: Birth-2yrs.
Infants' sensory and motor ability are used to perceive and explore the world they are in.
These are the foundations of intelligence. This stage is the ability to hold mental
representations. However these children lack object permanence-normally up until 8
months old. They make A-not-B errors, usually from 8-12 months. They are capable of
deferred imitation from 18-24 months.
Pre-operational stage: 2-7yrs.
Impressive cognitive acquisitions like playing and talking pretend
Scale model task, using info from a representation and applying it in real life- 3 year
olds pass this. However they still have limitations in certain mental operations.
Egocentrism: Limited ability to take another's perspective
Centration: focusing on the most striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of
other relevant but less striking features
Piaget also found that facilitated learning can spur development of knowledge but it is
less complete than spontaneous learning.
Basically if the child already is starting to spontaneously understand information, then
facilitated learning can sort of push them over the edge of complete understanding.
Concrete operations, 7-10yrs
CHildren are able to reason logically about concrete features
They develop more effective spatial reasoning
Their limitations are that they still have some difficulty with a few abstract concepts and
reasoning systematically, like the pendulum problem. The children were extremely
unsystematic in how they approached solving this problem.
Formal operations, 12yrs+
Lisel Keller
, PSYX 330 CHILD DEVELOPMENT NOTES
Children are able to develop abstract and hypothetical reasoning. They are capable of
systematic and scientific thinking. This stage is not believed to be universal because it
depends on experience.
Biology
Epigenome: These are the “on” genes and refer to all modifications to genes other than
changes in the DNA sequence itself. It tells the genes what to do, when, and where.
Genotype: The inherited genetic material (DNA)
Phenotype: The observable expression of genotype
Environmental factors also affect gene expression by gurning genes on and off.
Epigenetic changes are passed down.
Chromosomes and sex chromosomes
23 pairs, 23 from each parent. Each chromosome in a pair of two carries a
corresponding gene, like hair color.
Y chromosome is shorter, 200 genes
X chromosome is longer, 1500 genes
In boys, XY, not all genes on the X have a corresponding gene on the Y. There are
sex-linked disorders that manifest in males. The SRY gene is responsible for male
anatomy.
Patterns of inheritance
Genes and alleles
Alleles are gene variants, they can be dominant or recessive. Dominant recessive
pattern governs gene expression, the phenotype. I.e. Bb, Bb, BB, bb.
Single gene inheritance: One gene affects a trait
Polygenic inheritance: several different genes contribute to the expressed trait
Homozygous: the same allele on both genes
Heterozygous: two different alleles
Sources of differences for genetic and chromosomal variations are formations of
gametes, dominant and recessive-gene disorder, chromosomal variation, and
epigenetic changes. These are differences not defects.
Dominant gene disorders
A person who inherits one copy of the gene always gets the disease
Recessive gene disorders
Child must inherit two copies of the abnormal gene that causes the disorders chances
are ¼.
Chromosomal variations
Down syndrome is a variation with 47 chromosomes. Trisomy 21, 3 copies at
chromosome 21, instead of 2.
Some chromosomal variations are simply not viable and the child will not develop in the
womb, they will miscarry.
Lisel Keller
