Transcript chapter 1 - HCC Learning Web

CHAPTER 1
THE SCIENCE OF DEVELOPMENT
DEFINING DEVELOPMENT
The Science of Human Development ?
 3 Crucial elements in the definition
 Understanding How and Why
 Including All Kinds of People
 Observing Changes Over Time
UNDERSTANDING HOW AND WHY
 Scientific Method
 Steps of the Scientific Method
 Formulate a research question
o Examples?
 Develop a hypothesis
o Examples
 Test the hypothesis
 Draw conclusions
 Make the findings available
INCLUDING ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE
 Diversity
 The challenge is to identify universalities and differences then
describe them in ways that unify humanity and distinguish each
human being
 The Nature-Nurture Debate
 Nature
 Genes
 Nurture
 Environmental Influences
 Nature and Nurture Always Interact
 How much of any characteristic, behavior, or pattern of
development is the result of genes and how much is the
result of experience?
The Nature-Nurture Debate
 Hyperactivity
 Nature
 They are usually boys who have male relatives with the same problem
 They are overactive in every context, home as well as school
 They are often calmed by stimulants, such as Ritalin, Adderall, and even
coffee
 Nurture
 The rapid increase in ADHD (from 1 to 5 percent of all U.S. children within
the past 50 years) cannot be genetic, since selective adaptation takes centuries
 Many environmental factors correlate with ADHD, including crowded
homes, television, lead, food additives, and rigid teaching
THE NATURE-NURTURE DEBATE
 Sexual Orientation
 Nature v. Nurture
 Children raised by homosexual couples (either adopted
or the biological offspring of one of the parents) become
heterosexual or homosexual in about the same
proportions as children raised by heterosexual couples
 More support for the influence of NATURE on sexual
orientation
 Homosexual urges and heterosexual urges (Nature)
 Sexual orientation is different than sexual expression
INCLUDING ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE
 Critical And Sensitive Periods
 Critical Period
 A time when a particular type of developmental growth must
occur for normal development
 For example, the fetus develops arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers
and toes, each on a particular day between 28-54 days after
conception. If this is disrupted, the child never develops normal limbs.
o Thalidomide
 Sensitive Period
 A time when a certain type of development occurs most easily
 For example, if a child does not master a first language during the
sensitive period, they may still do so later, but might experience
difficulty.
OBSERVING CHANGES OVER TIME
 Do individuals change or remain the same over
time?
 The science of human development studies all
the changes and the consistencies of human life,
from conception until death.
 Change is lifelong
THE LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE
 An approach to the study human development that takes into
account all phases of life, from conception to death
 Development throughout life is
 Multidirectional
 Multicontextual
 Multicultural
 Multidisciplinary
 Plastic
THE LIFEPSAN PERSPECTIVE
 Development is Multidirectional
 Gains and losses
 Often occur together as people age and that losses may lead
to gains or vice versa.
 Changes in one area may spread to other areas of
development
 Tend to focus on declines in late adulthood
o Why is this problematic?
o Are there any gains in late adulthood?
 Butterfly effect
 Example?
THE LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE
 Development is Multicontextual
 The socioeconomic context
 How does SES affect development?
 The historical context
 Cohort
 How will the historical context affect your
development?
 National trends and events affect individuals
DETECTING COHORT INFLUENCES
DETECTING COHORT DIFFERENTS
 Mary, Dorothy, Betty, Helen, Margaret
 Lisa, Mary, Karen, Kimberly, Susan
 Emily, Emma, Madison, Abigail, Olivia
 Mary, Linda, Barbara, Patricia, Carol
 Jessica, Ashley, Jennifer, Amanda, Sarah
 Robert, John, William, Charles
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
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1925
1965
2005
1945
1985
1925
Michael, John, David, James, Robert
1965
Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew, Ethan
2005
James, Robert, John, William, Richard
1945
Michael, Christopher, Matthew, Joshua, Daniel 1985
THE LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE
 Development is Multicultural
 How does culture affect childrearing?
 Learning Within A Culture
 Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Guided Participation
 Scaffolding
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=hx84h-i3w8U
THE LIFEPSAN PERSPECTIVE
 Development is Multidisciplinary
 Many disciplines study development
 Epigenetic Theory
 Environmental forces affect the expression of
an individual’s genetic inheritance
THE LIFESPAN PERSPECTIVE
 Development is Plastic
 Human traits can be molded
 Every individual, and every trait within each
individual, can be altered at any point in the life
span
 Hope and realism
THEORIES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
 Developmental Theory
 A systematic statement of principles and
generalizations that provides a coherent
framework for understanding how and why
people change as they grow older
 Lead to pivotal hypotheses
 Generate discoveries
 Offer practical guidance
THEORIES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
 Psychoanalytic Theory
 A theory of human development that holds that
irrational, unconscious drives and motives,
often originating in childhood, underlies human
behavior
 Freud
 Erikson
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory (Psychosexual
Development)
 Freud 1856-1939
 Development in the first six years has
three stages, each characterized by sexual pleasure…
 infancy – the mouth – the oral stage
 early childhood – the anus – the anal stage
 preschool years – the penis – the phallic stage
 beginning of adolescence through death – latency –
genital stages
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

Erikson – 1902-1994

A follower of Freud, Erikson’s Theory differs from Freud’s

Cultural diversity

Social change

Psychological crises

Development throughout the lifespan

Described eight developmental stages
1. Trust vs. Mistrust
2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
3. Initiative vs. Guilt
4. Industry vs. Inferiority
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation
8. Integrity vs. Despair
BEHAVIORISM (LEARNING THEORY)
Watson 1878 – 1958
•A theory of human development
that studies observable behavior
•Behaviorism arose in direct
opposition to psychoanalytic theory
•Psychologists should study only
what they could see and measure
•All behavior is learned
•Specific laws of learning apply to
conditioning
BEHAVIORISM/LEARNING THEORY
 Three Learning Principles of Behaviorism
 Classical Conditioning
 A person or animal is conditioned to associate a neutral stimulus with a
meaningful stimulus
 Who discovered classical conditioning?
 Classical Conditioning terms: NS, UCS, UCR, CS, CR
 Operant Conditioning
 The learning process in which the consequences that follow a behavior will
serve to strengthen or weaken those behaviors
 Name the consequences
 Social Learning Theory (Observational Learning/Modeling)
 An extension of behaviorism
 The central process of social learning by which a person observes the actions
of others and then copies them
Positive Reinforcement!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J
A96Fba-WHk
 Mistake in the video??
Cognitive Theory
 Piaget-the most famous cognitive theorist
 1896-1980
 A theory of human
development that focuses
on changes in how people
think over time
COGNITIVE THEORY
 Jean Piaget’s 4 Stages
 Sensorimotor
 Preoperational
 Concrete Operational
 Formal Operational
USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
(RESEARCH METHODS)
 Observation
 A method of testing a hypothesis by unobtrusively watching and
recording participants’ behavior
 Naturalistic observation
 Laboratory observation
USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
(RESEARCH METHODS)
 The Survey
 The Case Study
USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
(RESEARCH METHODS)
 The Experiment
 A research method in which the researcher
tries to determine the cause-and-effect
relationship between two variables
 Independent variable
 Dependent variable
 Experimental group
 Control group / Comparison group
DESIGN AN EXPERIMENT
 Research Question
 Will essay tests increase students’ multiple-choice final exam
grades?
 Hypothesis
 Students who take essay tests will score higher final exam
grades than students who take multiple-choice exams
 Independent Variable?
 Dependent Variable?
 Experimental Group?
 Control/Comparison Group?
STUDYING CHANGES OVER TIME
 Cross-Sectional Research
 Longitudinal Research
 Cross-Sequential Research (Schaie)
 For example, The Seattle Longitudinal Study
 Intellectual abilities increase throughout
adulthood
CAUTIONS FROM SCIENCE
 Correlational Research
 Correlation Coefficient
 Strength / Magnitude
 Direction
 Positive Correlation
 Negative Correlation
 Conclusions Garnered from Correlational
Research
For each of these three pairs of variables, indicate whether the correlation
between them is positive, negative or nonexistent. Then try to think of a third
variable that would determine the direction of the correlation.
For each of these three pairs of variables, indicate whether the correlation
between them is positive, negative or nonexistent. Then try to think of a third
variable that would determine the direction of the correlation.
TWO VARIABLES
CORRELATION
3RD VARIABLE
Ice cream sales & murder rate
Positive
Heat
Learning to read & number of baby teeth
Negative
Age
Adult gender & number of offspring
Zero
Each child must have
a parent of each sex;
No 3rd variable
QUANTITY AND QUALITY
 Quantitative Research
 Research that provides data that can be expressed with numbers
 Using children’s TAKS scores to measure the effectiveness of education
 Qualitative Research
 Research that considers qualities instead of quantities
 Descriptions of particular conditions and participants’
expressed ideas are used
 Open-ended questions are used
ETHICS
 American Psychological Association Code of
Ethics – Protection of Research Participants
 Participants must sign informed consent
 Voluntary
 Harmless
 Confidential
 Deception?
 Debrief
ETHICS
 What should we study?
 Studying issues that will help humans live satisfying and
productive lives
 Controversial Research Topics
 Do we know enough about prenatal drug abuse to protect every fetus?
 Do we know enough about the effects of poverty to enable everyone to be
healthy?
 Do we know enough about sexual urges to eliminate AIDS, unwanted
pregnancy, and sexual abuse?
 Do we know enough about dying to enable everyone to die with dignity?