psyc315

• 6 Themes in Child Development

  1. nature and nurture
  2. the active child
  3. continuity/discontinuity
  4. mechanisms of change
  5. sociocultural context
  6. individual differences
• sociocultural constraints

  1. physical
  2. social
  3. economic
  4. cultural
  5. historical
• piaget:

  Assimilation: process of translating new information into a form they can understand

  Accommodation: process where children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences

  Equilibration: process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
• Piaget stages of development

  1. sensorimotor: birth-2
  2. preoperational: 2-7
  3. concrete operational: 7-12
  4. formal operational: 12+
• according to piaget - failures' ages/stages?

  • failure of object permanence: until ~1

  preoperational:

  • transitivity, egocentricity, appearance vs. reality
• piaget / constructivism critiques:

  • inconsistency of the timeline:
  • poverty of experience
  • competence/performance distinction
• understanding of piaget stages

  • sensorimotor: intelligence expressed thru sensory and motor abilities
  • preoperational: can represent experiences in language, mental imagery, and symbolic thought
  • concrete operational: can reason logically about concrete objects and events
  • formal operational: can think about abstractions and hypothetical situations
• Core-knowledge theories:

  • Children have innate cognitive capabilities
  • Focus on evolutionary important areas
  • modularity approach: certain types of knowledge is innate
• Social Learning theories

  • observation and imitation
  • Experience >>> For social and personality development
  • Continuous learning theories: same mechanisms control learning/behaviour thru life
  • conditioning and reinforcement = Behaviourist learning
  • reciprocal determinism (reading): child & environment influence each other
• Sociocultural theories of Cog. development

  Vygotsky: children = social beings & active learners, connected w others who want to help them learn

  • Contrast w piaget - children are self motivated to learn
  • Cog development thru interpersonal contact
  • Interaction with people
  • PLAY = important
  • Children as the product of their cultures
  • knowledge/skills > cog processes
• • Zone of proximal development
  • Range of what children can do unsupported — what they can do with optimal social support
  • Ability to learn smth, can master it with support
  • vygotsky
• • Social scaffolding
  • More competent people provide temporary frameworks → lead children to higher-order thinking
  • Aka guided participation 
  • vygotsky
• • Joint attention
  • Intentional focus on a common referent (thing, person, concept, etc)
• • Intersubjectivity
  • Mutual understanding established during communication; meeting of minds
• • Social referencing
  • In an unfamiliar situation - children use social partners for guidance
• Brofenbrenner: Bioecological model

  • Microsystem: direct environment
  • Mesosystem: interaction of the above
  • Exosystem: kid not present, but environment fx kid
  • Macrosystem: broad, culture, law, class, etc.

  Chronosystem: changing person/environment over time
• Information processing theories

  • continuous cognitive change
  • Children = active problem solvers
  • Cognitive flexibility + development → goal pursuit
  • Cog. dev. = surpassing processing limitations: 
  • Efficiency in basic process execution !!!!
  • Memory capacity
  • Acquiring new strategies and knowledge
• Info Processing theory:

  • Basic processes: simple, frequent mental activities 
  • event association, recognizing obj as familiar, recalling facts/procedures, generalization between instances, encoding (representing specific info re: obj and events in memory)
  • Processing speed: of executing basic processes 
  • Increased by biological maturation (myelination & increased connectivity among brain regions) and experience 
• Memory system components

  • Sensory memory: moderate amt of just-acquired info for a fraction of a second
  • Working memory: workspace, actively attending to info
  • Long-term memory: no upper bound, increases a ton over development
  • relevant to info processing theory
• Mental strats

  • info processing
  • 5-8yrs: 
  • rehearsal - repeating info to aid memory
  • Selective attention: focusing on goal-relevant info
• task analysis

  • technique of specifying the goals, obstacles to their realization, and potential solution strategies involved in problem solving
• Overlapping waves theory

  • using progressively more complicated prob-solving strategies as they age
  • the frequency of each strategy used changes and overlaps
  • planning ability development.
• self: age 3-4

  • concrete/observable characteristics
  • here and now
  • Increased engagement in social comparison in primary school → refining self view
  • Unrealistically positive 
  • Self-view coincides w first memories 
• Middle - late primary school

  • Integrated & more broadly encompassing of self
  • Objective performance reliance (older)
  • Relations: peer groups and others opinions = increasingly impactful on self
• Early adolescence

  personal fable: (form of egocentrism, “no one can understand me except me, so what do they think about me ??”

  ^imaginary audience - belief that everyone is focused on your appearance/behaviour
• Middle teens

  • Begin agonizing over contradictions in behaviour and characteristics (and others)
  • Most lack the cognitive skills needed to integrate their recognition of these contradictions into a coherent conception of self 
• Late adolescence/early adulthood

  • More integrated self, less determined by others 
  • reflects (now Coherent) internalized values/beliefs/standards 
  • Adult support is important in helping adolescents understand the complexity of personalities 
• Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development 

  • Freud influence
  • 8 stages from infancy → late adulthood (we only need 5)
  • 1 crisis per stage, either resolved or not

  1. Basic trust vs. mistrust (yr 1)
  2. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1-3.5yrs)
  3. Initiative vs. guilt (4-6)
  4. Industry vs. inferiority (6-puberty)
  5. Culturally appropriate skills
  6. Identity vs role confusion (adolescence - early adulthood)
• Resolve self-identity or face negative outcome 

  1. Identity confusion - incomplete / incoherent sense of self, isolation/depression
  2. Identity foreclosure - prematurely committing to an identity w/o adequately considering choices 
  3. Negative identity -opposite of what surrounding people value; rejection of others pressures
  4. Identity diffusion - not committed to identity, not forming new one
  5. Successful resolution of this crisis; explored then committed → identity achievement 
• erikson: self discovery period, not expected to take on adult roles: Psychosocial moratorium
• Influences on identity formation

  • Parental approach/style 
  • Individual’s own behaviour 
  • Larger social context
  • Historical context 
• Family Functions

  1. Survival of offspring
  2. Economic function
  3. Cultural training
• Parent Socialization influence

  1. direct instructors
  2. indirect socializers
  3. social managers
• • Cliques - Voluntarily formed
  • often based off similar salient features
  • Age 11: Most social interaction occurs within the clique 
  • 11-18: more adolescents w ties to cliques and an increase in clique stability, less movement
  • Early-middle adolescence: high value on popularity of the group, conforming to group norms
  • increased focus on individual relationships with age
  • 7th grade → increase in cross-sex relationships 
  • High school: multiple-gender cliques 
• • Crowds: assigned by others, not necessarily involved in
  • Gangs: voluntary, sense of belonging, doing illegal stuff
• • Adolescent girls tend to be more integrated in cliques
  • adolescent boys tend to have greater friend diversity
• Bullying

  • Physical
  • Verbal
  • Social
  • Cyber
• Romantic relationships 

  • Younger adolescents select partners that bring them status
  • Older adolescents more likely to select based on intimacy-enhancing compatibility and characteristics
• Thurstone - Primary mental abilities - basic 

  • Word fluency
  • verbal meaning,
  • reasoning,
  • spatial vis.,
  • Numbering,
  • memory,
  • perceptual speed
• Crystallized intelligence 

  • Factual knowledge
  • Tends to increase across life span
  • Eg. word meaning

  Fluid intelligence 

  • Ability to think on the spot
  • Tends to peak early in adulthood
  • Eg. solve novel puzzles