PSY205 Child Psychology Chapter 1: Basic Issues in the Study of Development

Perspectives on

Development

Nature versus NurtureStages and SequencesInternal and External Influences on DevelopmentThe Ecological PerspectiveVulnerability and Resilience

Theories of

Development

Psychoanalytic TheoriesCognitive-Developmental andInformation-Processing TheoriesLearning TheoriesComparing Theories

Finding the Answers:

Research

Designs

and Methods

Relating Goals to MethodsStudying Age-Related ChangesIdentifying Relationships between VariablesCross-Cultural (or Cross-Context) Research Research Ethics

CHAPTER

Summary

Key Terms

12

rowse the shelves of

1/

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- ,Olll-/.

OCil/6

OU

will

find no shortage of

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v

i' o

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b

oks for

parents.

il'let

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o

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q

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Titles such as

Toilet Tra.ining in a.Day

and

How to Talk to Your Teenaser abound . Typically, the authors of such books

are

psychologists, counselors ,social workers ,

edu-

cators, or

pediatricians.

Many

are

also

parents and support

their

advice

with

anec-

dotes from their own

parenting experience. Ingeneral,

though, todays

parents regard

formal training

as a

more reliable indicator of

expertise

on

parenting

issues thanhands-on

experience

with children (/tulbert, 2003). /tow

did

this

trend-a fairly re-

cent one, by the way-begin? According to many observers,

parental

preoccupation with

"expert"

child-rearing

advice began

in the

early

years of the 20th century, when

popular

magazines

started

pubLishing

articles

on child-rearing that

referred

to the theories of Sigmund

Freudand

other psychologists (Torrey ,

1992).

Soon, child-rearing books authored by

expertsbecame

best-sellers. These

articles and

book srecommended ' scientific" approaches to child-rearing.

No

longer

were grandparents

or other older adults to

be viewed as au-

thorities on bringing

up

children.

Instead,

young

parents were encouraged

to turn to

pediatricians and

psychologists.One of the first such child-rearing

experts was

John Watson

(1878-1958).

/te ad-vocated

rigid feeding schedules for infants

and an

orderly

approach

to child-rearing.Watson beLieved that

American parenting

traditions

caused

children to grow

up

to

be

emotionally

weak.

Accordingly, he

advised parents:Never

hug

and

kiss them, never let them sit in your

lap. If

you must ,kiss themonce on the

forehead

when they say good night .shake hands with them in themorning.

~ive

them

a pat

on the head

if

they have

made an extraordinarily

good job of

a

difficult

task.

(1928,

pp.

81-82)

Watson's

popularity ebbed as

the

radically

different

ideas

of

Dr.Beryamin spock

(1903-1990), author of the classic book Baby and Child Care,

became predominant

inthe 1950s.

Spock

urged

parents

to

openly

display affection

toward

children.

Influenced

by

Freud's ideas about

the

impact

of early childhood emotional

trauma

on

later per-

sonaLity,

spock warned parents against

engaging in too much conflict with childrenover weaning or toilet-training.

/te

emphasized the need to

wait

until children

wereready

to

take

on such challenges.Today, Watsons

ideasare vkwed as

emotionally cold

and

excessively rigid by

pedia-

tricians, psychologists,

and parents alike.

Similarly ,many

view

spocks recommendations

as

overly indulgent .

Yetparents

continue to look to

experts

for help with

parenting

issues ,often turning to the

rapidly

growing number of Internet sites devoted to child-rearing is-sues. In one survey,

71

%

of mothers

reported

that they had

searched

the Internet for helpwith

a parenting

issue (Allen

&

Rainie,

2002). Child-rearing recommendations

repre-

senting diverse philosophical orientations abound on the World

Wide

Web. Conse-

quently,

there is no single

expert"voice"

that

predominates.

/tealth-oriented sites ,such

as

kidshealth.org

and

askdrsears.com,

are

very

popular.Lik ewise,

sites sponsored by child psychologists

receive

millions of hits each day.

But parents

also search for

advice

on their children's spiritual

development

or for nontraditional

treatments

for conditions such

asattention-deficit

hyperactivity disorder (Bussing, Zima, ~ary,

&

~arvan,

2002).One reason for the diversity

and quantity

of information

available

is that, thank sto more than

a

century of research ,

we

now know

agreat deal

more

about

the

vari-

ables that contribute to

human development.

Identirying

variables

that

influence de-velopment and explaining

how they work together to shape

an

individuals life iswhat

developmental

science is

all about.Developmental

scientists

develop

theories

and conduct

research

aimed at

describing,

explaining, and

predicting

age-related

changes

in

behavior,

thinking,

emotions,

and

social relationships. H :istorically ,

develop-mental

science has

been associated

with the field of psychology ,

and

most of the

de-

velopmentalists whose work you will

read about in

this text were or

are

psychologists.

But developmental

science also

draws

from other field s ,

including

biol-ogy,

neuroscience,

anthropology, sociology,

and education.In addition,

most

developmental

scientists

want

to

find

ways to help

parents,

teachers, therapists,

and

others who work with children to do so effectively.

In pursuit

of these goals,

developmental

researchers often focus

on

highly specific issues, such

as

how

many

items children of different

ages can

remember.

H:owever,a

few

ideas arecentral

to every theory

and

r esearch

study in developmental

psychology.

We

willbegin our discussion with

a

brief overview of these

ideas.

Perspectives

on

Development

C

enturies before researchers began to use scientific methods to study age-relatedchanges, philosophers proposed explanations of development based on everydayobservations. Many of their questions and assertions about the nature of human devel-opment continue to be central to modern-day

developmental

science.Theargument about nature versus nurture, also referred to as heredityversus environ- ment or

nativism

versus

empir icism,

is one of the oldest and most central theoretical is-sueswithin both psychology and philosophy.For example, haveyou ever heard someone say that "baby talk" will interfere with a child's language development? If so,then you have heard an argument for the nurture side of the debate.Such a statementassumes that language development is mostly a matter of imitation: The child must hear language that is properly pronounced and grammatically correct in order to de-velop linguistic fluency. The nature side would counter that children possess some kindof internal mechanism to ensure that they develop fluent language, no matter how many "goo-goo-ga-gas"they hear from those around them. "Which side is right?"stu- dents invariably ask .If there were a simple answer to that question, the debate wouldhave ceased long ago. Instead,the controversy continues today with regard to many developmental processes, including language development. Philosophically, the nature side of the controversy was represented by the

idealists

and

rationalists ,

principally Plato and Rene Descartes, both of whom believed that atleastsome knowledge is inborn. On the other side of the argument were a group of British philosophers called

empiricists,

including John Locke, who insisted that at birththe mind is a blank slate-in Latin, a

tabula rasa.

All knowledge, the empiricists ar-gued, is created by experience.From this perspective, developmental change is the re-sult of external, environmental factors acting on a child whose only relevant internal characteristic is the capacity to respond.In contrast to both rationalists and empiricists, other philosophers believedthat development involved an interaction between internal and external forces. For example, the Christian notion of

original sin

teaches that children are born with a