PSY 302 - MIDTERM NOTES.pdf - PSY302: CHILD DEVELOPMENT...

PSY302: CHILD DEVELOPMENT
MIDTERM
WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT
WHY DO WE STUDY CHILDREN?:
· Raising
· Social policies f
· To understand human nature
RAISING CHILDREN: Gain knowledge and information that can help parents and
teachers rearing and educating children.
o Developing effective approaches to help children manage anger and other negative
emotions (i.e turtle technique ”)
o Turtle technique: This is a regulation children are can be taught when dealing with
negative emotions is to reminded to retreat into their turtle shell, think through the
situation and whenever ready they can come out
§ proved to be effective in regulating children excuses and regulating negative
emotions. – the effect could be long term.
CHOOSING SOCIAL POLICIES : Knowledge of child development permits informed
decisions about social-policy questions that affect children (i.e inform social policies,
such as those involving testimonies from preschool children.)
·
Knowledge of child development permits informed decisions about
social-policy questions that affect children in general;
o
For example, research on children’s responses to leading interview
questions can help us decide how much trust to put in preschooler’s
courtroom testimony
o RESEARCH STUDY: (children aged 3-6 played the “Simon says”
game, and one month later, test their memory of which part of the
body of themselves or their playmates were actually touched during
the game)
RESULTS : Repeated questions such as “are you sure… ? is it possible
that…?”can make a substantial percentage of children of that age,
particularly aged 3-4 (preschoolers) change their original answers
(34%) to be consistent with the experimenter’s false belief.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN: indicates how what has happened,
repeated questions and how the question is asked can influence the
responses of young children and can lead to false/wrong questions.
THEREFORE: Cautious should be taken when obtaining testimonies
from young children.
- questions should be stated in a neutral fashion, should not
presuppose the answer, and should not be repeated
UNDERSTANDING HUMAN NATURE: Child development research provides insights
into intriguing questions regarding human nature. ( Nature vs nurture )
o helps us understand how flexible human nature is
o RESEARCH STUDY: orphanages in Romania: studies show the infants could
overcome the effects of early adversity as long as it didn’t last longer than 6
months of their life
o Specifically in this study, children were found sufficiently flexible and could fully
overcome the adversity effect if the deprivation did not last longer than
o the first 6 months of their lives.
- THEREFORE: Human nature is sufficiently flexible, but the timing of experiences
is also important.- (research with children who experienced severe
deprivation early in their lives has led to the conclusion that human nature is
sufficiently flexible to overcome extreme adversity in early life, but the timing of
experiences often influences these effects.)
- The results suggest that both nature and nurture are important in shaping a child’s
development. The early experience, if occurred before a critical timing, may be
fundamentally important and can have a long-term influence across life span.