Psych 223

• Child psychology


  Tells you more about your own and child's behaviour & helps you acquire a better understanding of other people
• Goals of child psychology

  • To describe how changes typically occur from conception to ± 18 years of age
  • To explain what causes these developmental changes
  • To predict based on past and present characteristics what behaviour child will manifest at a later stage of life
  • To improve well-being
• Developmental crisis


  Development is a continuous process, yet it is useful to divide it into stages
• Developmental stages


  • Prenatal Stage
  • Neonatal Stage
  • Infancy
  • Early Childhood
  • Middle Childhood
  • Adolescence
• Developmental domains


  • Physical Development
  • Personality Development
  • Social Development
  • Cognitive Development

  
• Physical development


  Physical aspects of child development
• Physical development


  • Biological factors and psychological factors affect physical development
  • Pertinent factors: Genetics, Physical changes, The brain, Motor development, Hormones, Nutrition
• Personality development


  Totality of a person's lasting pattern of both inherent and acquired psychological, social, moral, physical characteristics

  
• Important aspects of personality

  • Temperament
  • Personality traits
  • The self
  • The self-concept
  • Self-esteem
  • Identity
  • Emotional experience and expression
• Social development


  The development of the individual's abilities, attitudes, relationships, and behaviour that enable them to interact with others and to function as members of society & the influence of society and significant others on individual
• Aspects of social development

  • Oral development
  • The development of attachment between a caregiver and a child
  • The expansion of a person's interpersonal relationships
  • The modelling of behaviour
  • The development of relationships between the sexes
  • Moral development
  • Religion & Spirituality
• Cognitive development


  How we acquire information about the world by means of our senses, how we process and interpret such information, and how we store, retrieve, and use this knowledge to direct our behaviour
• Aspects of cognitive development

  • Perception
  • Learning
  • Memory
  • Thinking
  • Decision-making
  • Imagination
  • Creativity
  • Language
  • Intelligence
• Nature vs nurture

  Is a child's development the result of biological and genetic factors (nature) OR environmental influences (nurture)?
• The Wild Boy of KwaZulu-Natal


  • A boy was raised by monkeys after being abandoned as an infant, exhibiting behaviours like a monkey even after being rescued
• The Boy who Became a Girl


  • A boy had his penis accidentally removed as an infant and was raised as a girl, but struggled with gender identity issues
• There is wide variety of behaviours that it is relatively easy to find an example that will support either viewpoint
• The Boy who Became a Girl

  • In the mid-1960s, eight months old David Reimer and his twin brother had a routine circumcision in a hospital in Canada. Unfortunately, David's circumcision was seriously botched — the entire penis was removed accidentally. Following advice from medical experts, the parents decided to raise David as a girl. Soon afterwards, the parents started dressing David as a girl and let her hair grow long. At the age of 21 months, plastic surgery was performed to create female genitalia. During the preschool years, she was encouraged to take part in girlish play and housework. (Her brother was raised as a typical boy.)
• Problems started when Brenda went to school. Children were cruel to her and, for example, would not allow her to use the boys' or girls' bathroom. At the same time, she experienced serious mental anguish, knowing that something was terribly wrong, but did not know what.
• By the age of 13, she was so unhappy that she considered committing suicide. During this time, the truth was revealed to Brenda. She later said that everything then became clear, and she understood who and what she was.
• David immediately started to resume his male identity. The breasts that had developed because of hormone injections were removed. An artificial penis was also created from cartilage and muscle by means of reconstructive surgery. David then tried to live a normal life and eventually married and became a stepfather to three children. However, it seems that David had not come to terms with himself or the world — in 2004, at the age of 38, he committed suicide. (His brother had died two years earlier, apparently also committing suicide due to schizophrenia). At David's funeral, his mother said, "He was the most generous, loving soul who ever lived. He was a hero. He showed the doctors he was a worldwide hero."
• Biological factors such as genetics may be used as evidence to explain motor development
• Socialisation may be used as evidence that it is largely a product of the environment
• The cause of a specific behaviour is often difficult to prove
• If a child who was traumatised develops depression, how could one prove that the depression was caused by the trauma
• Many children are traumatised but never develop depression, while many others in a positive environment do
• This cause & effect issue is particularly important in psychology
• The focus of debate no longer centres on which one is more important, but rather on how each of these factors contribute to specific behaviours, situations, and individuals
• The interaction between heredity and environment is much more important than the respective contributions of each
• Meaning that the effect of this interaction on the individual will differ from person to person, from situation to situation, and from time to time
• Heredity sets the limits, and the environment determines to what extent a specific characteristic will develop between these limits


  Useful guideline
• Continuous (gradual and smooth)


  Human development
• Discontinuous (abrupt and occurring in distinct steps or stages)

  Human development
• There seems to be enough evidence to conclude that both these viewpoints are correct, depending on the type of behaviour
• The gradual way in which children learn to talk, express themselves as their vocabulary expands, and develop cognitively, is practical evidence that the continuity viewpoint holds water to a certain extent
• The relatively sudden hormonal changes that lead to sexual maturation during adolescence show that the discontinuity viewpoint is also valid
• Do the early characteristics of children continue into their later life as adults?
• Example: Will the child who started walking early, be an athlete?
• However, it is not easy to predict future human behaviour
• Past and present behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour


  But this does not imply that it is fully reliable