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` What is child development?
` What is the scope of the field?
` What are the key issues and questions in the field
of child development?
` What is the future of child development likely to
hold?
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` Child development is the scientific study of the
patterns of growth, change and stability that occur
from conception through adolescence.
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Child development includes:
` Physical development
` Cognitive development
` Social and personality development
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Physical development examines:
` the brain
` nervous system
` muscles
` developmental milestones
` needs for food, drink, and sleep
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Cognitive development examines:
` learning
` memory
` problem solving
` intelligence
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` Personality development includes the stability and
change of enduring characteristics that
differentiate one person from another.
` Social development examines how socialrelationships grow, change, and remain stable
over the course of life.
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` Researchers divide childhood and adolescence intobroad ranges:
Prenatal (conception to birth)
Infancy and toddlerhood (birth to age 3)
Preschool period (ages 3 6)
Middle childhood (ages 6 12)
Adolescence (ages 12 20)
` However, there are substantial individual differencesin the timing of milestones -- age ranges areaverages.
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` Cohort - A group of people born at around the same time
in the same place
` Cohort effects provide an example ofhistory-graded
influences, which are biological and environmental
influences associated with a particular historical
moment.
` In contrast, age-graded influences are biological and
environmental influences that are similar for individualsin a particular age group, regardless of when or where
they are raised.
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` Development is also affected by sociocultural-
graded influences, which include:
ethnicity
social class subcultural membership
other factors
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` Finally, non-normative life events also influence
development.
` Non-normative life events are specific, atypical
events that occur in a particular persons life at atime when such events do not happen to most
people.
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Early Views ofChildren:
` Locke considered a child to be a tabula rasawhich
is Latin for blank slate. In this view, children entered
the world with no specific characteristics or
personalities. Instead, they were entirely shaped by
their experiences as they grew up.
` Rousseau argued that children were noble savages,
meaning that they were born with an innate sense ofright and wrong and morality.
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` Among the first instances in which children were
methodically studied came in the form ofbaby
biographies, which were popular in the late 1700s
in Germany.` Observerstypically parentstried to trace the
growth of a single child, recording the physical and
linguistic milestones achieved by their child.
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` It was not until Charles Darwin, who developed
the theory of evolution, that observation of children
took a more systematic turn.
` Darwin was convinced that understanding thedevelopment of individuals within a species could
help identify how the species itself had developed.
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` Women made significant contributions to child
development.
` Hollingworth one of the first psychologists to
focus on child development
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` In continuous change, development is gradual.
` Discontinuous change occurs in distinct steps or
stages.
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` Critical periods are specific times during
development in which a particular event has its
greatest consequence.
` Sensitive periods are particular times when anorganism is susceptible to certain kinds of stimuli
in their environment.
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` Early developmentalists tended to focus on the
periods of infancy and adolescence, largely to the
exclusion of other parts of childhood.
` Today, however, the entire period encompassingconception through adolescence is now regarded
as important.
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` ature traits, abilities, and capabilities inherited
from ones parents
ature = Genetic
` urture environmental influences that shapebehavior
urture = Environment
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` Specialization new areas of study and
perspectives will emerge
` Genetics the explosion in information about
genes and the genetic foundations of behavior willinfluence all spheres of child development
` Diversity the increasing diversity of U.S.
population will focus greater attention to related
issues
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` Research in child development will find uses in
numerous other fields
` Public interest issues will increasingly be
influenced by child development research
