Lesson One
Lecture 1
Chapters 1 & 2
Welcome to Child Development and Sociology 4. I trust you have read and printed out your syllabus, weekly schedule and points sheet for this class. Following your schedule should help you keep up with the very fast pace of this course. I look forward to stimulating conversations in the discussion groups and to some very interesting papers from you. Should you have any questions at any time, please feel free to email me during office hours if you want an immediate response, or anytime in between and I will get back to you as soon as I am able. As an adjunct professor I do not have an office on main campus or time between classes in which to answer emails several times a day like full time professors do, but I do my best to get back to you within two days. I work full time as a social worker for the county Monday through Friday, so your patience is appreciated. A portion of the material presented here comes from materials provided by the publisher for instructor use. Where clarification or elaboration was warranted I have added my own information.
Key Terms: You should look up all the key terms for both chapters so that you have a good understanding of the terminology used prior to reading the chapters. This does not need to be submitted to me and is optional, doing so will improve your understanding of the material.
Chapter 1 introduces the study of human development as the study of how and why people change as they grow older, as well as, how and why they stay the same.
The first two sections define development and identify five characteristics of the scientific study of human development. This section also explains different aspects of the overlapping contexts in which people develop. The interactive nature of these contexts is emphasized in the example of David, whose physical handicaps affected and were affected by the socioeconomic and cultural contexts into which he was born.
The next section discusses the strategies used by developmentalists in their research, including scientific observation, experiments, surveys, and case studies. It also compares and contrasts cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-sequential research designs. Also discussed in this section is the ecological-systems approach---Bru Broffenbrenner's description of how the individual is affected by and affects many other individuals, groups of individuals, and larger systems in the environment.
The final section discusses several cautions regarding the use of scientific methods, including possible pitfalls of quantitative research and the ethics of research with humans. In addition to ensuring confidentiality and safety, developmentalists who study children are especially concerned that the benefits of research with children outweigh the risks.
Defining Development:
Your book gives a terrific introduction to the science of human development, stating "that it seeks to understand how and why people--all kinds of people, everywhere, of every age--change or stay the same over time?" It further states that we "recognize that growth is multidirectional, multidisciplinary, multicontextual, multicultural, and plastic." With all those characteristics in use for development is it a wonder then, that what you are born with can be enhanced or eliminated depending on your environmental influences?
Five Characteristics of Development:
Development is multidirectional, multicontextual, multicultural, multidisciplinary, and plastic. Three important insights of the multidirectional aspect of this perspective are the concepts of dynamic change, which refers to the continual change that occurs within each person and each social group; the butterfly effect, in which even a tiny change in one system can have a profound effect on the other systems of development; and the power of continuity, in which even large changes seemingly have no effect. Researchers take a broader view of development, recognizing the influence on development of external forces, that is, the context of development. This larger perspective makes it imperative that development be understood in its social context, including its historical and socioeconomic contexts.
A cohort is a group of people born within a few years of each other who tend to share certain historical and social influences and perspectives, such as baby boomers and each successive decade of people. All have their own style, music, individual expression of what is cool, or the norm. Socioeconomic status (SES) is determined by several overlapping variables, including income, education, place of residence, and occupation. At the bottom of the SES ladder, for example, limited opportunities and intensified social pressures conspire to make growing up especially difficult. Culture affects development in a multitude of interrelated ways, from whether to cover your mouth when laughing, to what to eat for breakfast. Cultures are dynamic, always changing, as people change and grow older. People can belong to more than one culture, with their choice dependent on their immediate context. For example a person that has one parent from two different cultures can assimilate either culture or a mixture of the two depending on their situation and exposure to each parent and their families.
Building Healthy Family Atmosphere
The three domains of development include the biosocial, cognitive, and the psychosocial. The biosocial domain includes the brain and body as well as changes in them and the social influences that guide them. The cognitive domain includes thought processes, perceptual abilities, and language mastery, as well as the educational institutions that encourage them. The psychosocial domain includes emotions, personality, and interpersonal relationships with family, friends, and the wider community. All three domains are important at every age, and each of the domains is affected by the other two.
With nature versus nurture no longer a major argument over which is most influential to human development due to the acceptance by both sides that nature and nurture work interactively with each other. Their work now consists of trying to figure out how much each contributes to the other in a given area. Because every human has a different set of genetic code and different weaknesses and strengths it is not, in my opinion, possible to determine or predict how one individual will react to a stressor by the way another reacts to the same stressor.
When researchers look at the big picture, "zoom out" they see the effects of nurturing on an individual through the environment in which they are in, when they "zoom in", they see the effects of nature on an individual through that which a child was born with. Consequently, both perspectives give differing opinions on why a person reacts/behaves the way they do to certain stressors. Where one person may not be bothered by a traffic accident, others are afflicted with nightmares for days or weeks; why do they react differently and which is more to blame nature or nurture. Thus are the new questions of this argument.
Although the fear response is localized in the brain area known as the amygdala, research from the new field of "social cognitive neuroscience" has revealed that each person's past experience and the immediate context affect activity in the amygdala. Fearfulness is also genetically based; the person with the shorter version of the serotonin transporter gene is more likely to be fearful. Fear of rejection or non-acceptance among ones family or peers is a very powerful one. It has been responsible for many negative responses from people young and old alike, with everything from hurtful gossip/comments to murder on the menu for serving.
There are new developments in genetic codes and brain activity from the cognitive neuroscience people and one of the promising findings is the monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) Those that have low MAOA genes coupled with abuse or maltreatment were about two times more likely to end up in trouble with the law for a violent offense. But those with low MAOA gene that were not abused or maltreated were not found to be violent or overly aggressive. So here again they come to a difference in affect by both nature and nurture, but is it possible to tell which is more to blame?
One of the most encouraging aspects of the science of development is that development is characterized by plasticity, or the capability to change. One remarkable example is resilience, which is the ability of some children to overcome severe threats to their development. Read the Personal Perspective on the authors nephew David and Depression and the Brain. Collective efficacy refers to the degree to which neighbors create a functioning, informal network of people who show concern for each other.
Developmental Study as a Science
The scientific method consists of five basic steps: formulate a research question, develop a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, draw conclusions, and make the findings available. Replication of research findings verifies the findings and leads researchers to more definitive and extensive conclusions. In replicating research, scientists use a different but related set of participants. In designing research, scientists are concerned with four issues: validity, reliability, generalizability, and usefulness. There are many ways to test hypotheses. One method is scientific observation of people in their natural environment or in a laboratory setting. Observation is limited in that it tells us only if two variables are correlated. Experiments can reveal cause-and-effect relationships by allowing experimenters to observe whether a change in an independent variable affects some of specific behavior, or dependent variable. In an experiment, the participants who receive a particular treatment constitute the experimental group; the participants who do not receive the treatment constitute the comparison group (control group). Experiments are not, however, without their limitations.*Remember this portion for your research paper.
Statistics are often used to analyze experimental results. Sometimes results are reported by effect size. To determine whether a difference between two groups has occurred purely by coincidence, or chance, researchers apply a test of significance. The survey is especially vulnerable to bias: the group being surveyed may not be representative of the group of interest, the phrasing and order of the questions may affect the responses obtained, and people may give answers to make themselves look better. An ethnic group is a collection of people who share certain attributes, such as ancestry, national origin, religion, and/or language, and, as a result, tend to have similar beliefs, values, and cultural experiences. Race is defined as the biological traits that people use to distinguish one group from another. However, it is a misleading social construct.
Racial Stereotypes and Discrimination
The interpretation of case study data depends on the researcher's insightfulness and interpretations. In cross-sectional research, groups of people who are different in age but similar in all other important ways are compared on the characteristic that is of interest to the researcher(s). One limitation of cross-sectional research is that it is always possible that some variable other than age differentiates the groups. In longitudinal research, the same people are studied over a period of time. Longitudinal research is particularly useful in studying developmental trends that occur over a long age span. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional researchers must bear in mind that research on a cohort may not be valid for people developing in an earlier or later cohort. In cross-sequential research, several groups of people at different ages (cross-sectional component) are followed over time (longitudinal component).
The approach that emphasizes the influence of the systems, or contexts, that support the developing person is Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological-systems approach. According to this model, human development is supported by systems at four nested levels: the microsystem (immediate social setting), the exosystem (the local institutions such as school and church), the macrosystem (cultural values, political processes, economic policies, and social conditions), and the chronosystem, which emphasizes the importance of historical time on development. A fifth system, the mesosystem, involves connections between microsystems.
Correlation is a number indicating the degree of relationship between two variables. A correlation is positive if both variables tend to increase together or decrease together, negative if one variable tends to increase when the other decrease4s, and zero if no connection is evident. Correlation does not prove causality. Since numbers can be easily summarized and compared, scientists often rely on data produced by quantitative research. This method may be particularly limiting when researchers describe child development. Also, many developmental researchers use qualitative research that asks open-ended questions. When studying people, scientists take special are to ensure that participation is voluntary and harmless and that the study's benefits outweigh its costs. They do this by establishing a code of ethics for researchers to follow. The future of developmental psychology is what to study. Many topics are taboo and are therefore not funded. We don't know enough about prenatal nutrition and drugs, AIDS, education, sexual behavior, poverty or any other life characteristic to give a definitive answer to many of our future's dilemmas. We will shape what gets studied in the future.
Qualitative vs Quantitative Research
Chapter 2 introduces the many theories associated with psychology. A theory provides a framework of ideas that permits a cohesive view of development, produces new hypotheses to test, generates discoveries, and offers practical guidance. Chapter 2 describes, compares, and critiques several theories that have significantly influenced developmental study. Because each theory emphasizes a different aspect of development and is, in itself, too restricted to explain the diverse ways in which development occurs, the theories may be said to complement one another.
Blended Methods for Studying the Family
Three of the theories presented--psychoanalytic, cognitive and behaviorism--are "grand theories" that are comprehensive in scope but inadequate in the face of recent research findings. Two of the theories--sociocultural and epigenetic--are considered "emergent theories" because they may become the comprehensive theories of tomorrow.
Grand Theories
Each theory has contributed to our understanding of development. Psychoanalytic theory has helped to focus attention on the importance of early experiences and potential conflicts in daily life. Behaviorism has increased awareness of the ways in which the environment influences development. Cognitive theory has broadened our understanding of how thinking influences behavior. Sociocultural theory has reminded us that development is embedded in a rich and multifaceted cultural context. And epigenetic theory has called attention to the interaction of environmental and genetic forces in development. Most developmentalists today have adopted an eclectic perspective. In other words, they apply insights gleaned from various theoretical views rather than limiting themselves to only one school of thought. This boils down to "If it works, use it." There is no one theory that will answer all questions about development. Anyone that clings to just one theory is severely limiting themselves in their scope of practice. It also applies to education, in that you must present educational materials in many different modalities if you are to reach the most students, and then you will still have those few that have to learn the hard way by doing it themselves. There is no better teacher than life itself.
What Theories Do
A developmental theory interprets human development in terms of inner drives and motives, many of which are irrational and unconscious. According to Sigmund Freud, development progresses through three stages; at each stage, sexual interest and pleasure is focused on a particular part of the body--the mouth during infancy ( the oral stage), the anus during early childhood ( the anal stage), and the genitalia later in the preschool years (the phallic stage). Following a period of sexual latency, the adolescent enters the fourth stage, the genital stage, which lasts throughout adulthood. Freud believed that each stage has its own potential conflicts between child and parent and that how the child experiences and resolves the conflicts during the first three stages influences his or her personality and lifelong patterns of behavior.
In his theory of human development, Erik Erikson proposed eight developmental stages, each of which is characterized by a particular challenge, or developmental crisis. Erikson emphasized each person's relationship to the social environment and the importance of family and cultural influences in determining how well prepared individuals are to meet these crises.
Instead of advancing a stage theory of development, proponents of behaviorism have formulated laws of behavior that operate at every age. The basis of all varieties of behaviorism is the idea that psychology should focus on the objective and scientific study of behavior. According to early behaviorism, conditioning is the process of learning. As demonstrated by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, classical conditioning (also called respondent conditioning) involves learning by association: the organism comes to associate a neutral stimulus with a meaningful one. In operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning), proposed by B.F. Skinner, the individual learns that a particular behavior produces a particular consequence. Reinforcement is the process that makes it more likely that a behavior will recur. The consequence that increases that likelihood is the reinforcer.
During the 1950's, researcher Harry Harlow investigated the origins of attachment in infant monkeys. These studies, which demonstrated that infant monkeys clung more often to "surrogate" mothers that provided contact comfort, disproved behaviorism's view that reinforcement was most important and psychoanalytic theory's concept of the mother satisfying the infant's oral needs.
Social learning theory emphasizes the ways in which people learn new behaviors by observing and imitating, or modeling, the behavior of other people they consider admirable, powerful, nurturing, or similar. Modeling is most likely to occur when the observer is uncertain or inexperienced. Social learning is related to self-understanding, self-confidence, social reflection, and self-efficacy.
Cognitive theory focuses on the structure and development of the individuals thought processes and their effect on his or her attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Jean Piaget viewed cognitive development as a process that follows a universal sequence of age-related periods: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. According to Piaget, each person strives for cognitive equilibrium--that is, a state of mental balance achieved through the development of mental concepts that explain his or her experiences. Cognitive disequilibrium (a state of imbalance) promotes a search for knowledge as the person modifies old concepts and constructs better ones to fit new experiences. According to Piaget, people adapt to new experiences either by reinterpreting them to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas. Some new experiences force people to revamp old ideas so that they can accommodate new experiences. This is the aim of this course, to have you develop a sense that you can change your beliefs and opinions and that it is okay to do so as new information is received. If people didn't do this, the world would still be flat.
Each grand theory has a different focus: emotions (psychoanalytic theory), actions (behaviorism), and thoughts (cognitive theory). Each also uses different methods and reaches different conclusions.
Emergent Theories
Sociocultural theory seeks to explain individual knowledge, development, and competencies in terms of the guidance, support, and structure provided by the broader cultural context. Rather than considering the individual in isolation, sociocultural theorists focus on the dynamic interaction between developing persons and the surrounding social and cultural forces.
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, a major pioneer of the sociocultural perspective believed that the development of cognitive competencies results from social interaction between children and more mature members of the society in what has been called an apprenticeship in thinking. The basis of this apprenticeship is guided participation, in which a skilled tutor or mentor engages the learner in joint activities. According to sociocultural theory, in order to understand developmental processes in different cultures, it is essential to understand the values and beliefs of the culture, how they affect children, and how particular competencies fit into the child's cultural context. In sociocultural theory, a child's social partners progressively challenge the child's ever-shifting abilities and motivation. To do so, the mentor draws the child into the zone of proximal development, which is the range of skills that the child can exercise only with assistance. Sociocultural theorists have been criticized for overlooking developmental processes that are not primarily social in nature. There is direct instruction and indirect instruction...things we are taught by others (older or younger), and things that we learn through our own observations or trial and error. All this must be taken into account when discussing ways to improve development.
The newest developmental theory, epigenetic theory, emphasizes the interaction between genes and the environment. Epi refers to all the factors that affect the expression of each person's genetic instructions. These include facilitating factors such as nourishing food, loving care, and freedom to play, as well as stress factors such as injury, temperature, or crowding. Genetic refers both to the genes that make each person unique and to the genes humans share with all other humans. The idea of epi-genetic development contrasts sharply with that of preformism, according to which everything is set in advance by genes. Some epigenetic factors are the result of the evolutionary process of selective adaptation, in which, over generations, genes for traits that promote survival become more prevalent in a species.
The book describes this with an example of drug addiction and the newer evidence shows dramatic evidence of a person's potential to become addicted is genetic. For this potential to be realized the person must have access to the substance in the environment. Even identical twins can have differing outcomes if they are raised in different environments. Another crucial aspect of this theory is that genes never function in solitude, and cannot be actualized without certain epi- conditions. Disorders such as autism are genetically there, but sometimes an environmental stressor will trigger the psychopathology into being. Such as divorce, trauma to the body or mind, moving, adding a sibling or losing one are good examples.
The study of the evolutionary origins and species survival of patterns of animal behavior is called ethology. The ethological perspective has increased our awareness that newborn animals and human infants are genetically programmed for social contact as a means of survival and that adult animals and humans are genetically programmed for caregiving.
What Theories Contribute
The five theories complement one another, as each emphasizes a somewhat different aspect of development. Psychoanalytic theory has drawn attention to the importance of early childhood experiences. Behaviorism has highlighted the effect of the immediate environment of behavior. Cognitive theory has led to a greater understanding of how intellectual processes and thinking affect actions. Sociocultural theory has reminded us that development is embedded in a rich and multifaceted cultural context. Epigenetic theory emphasizes the interaction between inherited forces and immediate contexts. Each theory has faced criticism: psychoanalytic theory, for being too subjective; behaviorism, for being too mechanistic; cognitive theory, for undervaluing cultural diversity; sociocultural theory, for neglecting individual initiative; and epigenetic theory, for neglecting the human spirit.
Today, most developmentalists have an eclectic perspective. Instead of limiting themselves to only one school of thought, they apply insights drawn from various theoretical views. Developmentalists agree that, at every point, the interaction between nature and nurture is the crucial influence on any particular aspect of development.
Children who are especially impulsive, restless, and unable to attend to anything for more than a moment may be suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This disorder is more common in boys than girls. Among the evidence that genetic inheritance is responsible for ADHD is the fact that ADHD children often have close male relatives with the same problem, are overactive in every context, and calm down when they take stimulants. ADHD is, I believe, over diagnosed in children, and often misses another underlying cause for the behavior. Children should be energetic and inquisitive as this is their nature. It is our job to ensure that they are able to do so safely and without distracting from the whole of the class. When children are correctly diagnosed and treated with the correct chemical, it is like flipping a switch. They can do as they are asked, read and understand material, and focus on single or multiple tasks as necessary, without any serious side effects. They should not be zombies, lethargic, or uninterested in the normal pleasures of life. They should still have a healthy level of activity.
How much activity is too much?
Discussion Question #1
Behaviorism has been used to change personal habits/behavior. Think of a habit you'd like to change or start a positive behavior. Count the frequency of that behavior for a few days, noting the reinforcers for each instance. Then, and only then, try to develop a substitute behavior by reinforcing yourself for it. Keep careful records; chart the data over several days. In your first post present the habit you want to change and why. Then when you post at the end of the week present your plan and how you are going to reinforce your new habit/behavior. Next week we will continue with the outcomes of your research and self-development.
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