Chinese brought toys painted with lead paint and

Chinese brought toys painted with lead paint, and society got mad
 They’re cute!
o Evolutionary benefit – we are more caring towards cute things
OVERARCHING THEMES
 Directionality of development
o Do we become more complex?
o Sometimes we have to become simpler for proper development to occur
 E.g. Synaptic Pruning leads to several milestones including the Loss of Language
phenomena
 Failure in synaptic pruning is shown to be correlated with autism
 Continuity & Discontinuity
o Continuity: Very slow growth or flowing process – like a tree
o Discontinuity: Step-like processes – like a butterfly
 Huge changes mixed with long periods of stagnancy
o Continuous is usually synonymous with NURTURE
o Discontinuous is usually synonymous with NATURE
o Both happen in different processes and at different stages of development
 Active vs Passive
o Children are somewhat active in their development
 Attitudes and unique characteristics shape how parents and others interact with
them.
 E.g. parents would be less eager to read to a grumbling child
o Parent-child interactions are bi-directional, but development becomes more active over
time.

RESEARCH METHODS
 Basic Research Methodology
 Changing variables that are age related – age-related research design
DATA COLLECTION
 Case Studies
o A few people (and their families) are observed
o Rare and unusual situations are studied and published
o E.g. Dr. John Money studied child with circumcision accident. Penis was then removed
and replaced with female parts.
 Is gender a biological (XX or XY) or cultural phenomenon?
 “Gender is Nurture” – Dr. Money
 Bias – wanted child to be happy with life
 Child was always unhappy and felt uncomfortable to the point that he was
relieved to find out about his infant accident. He then became male with
hormone treatment but killed himself – irreparable damage had been done
 Systematic Observation/Observational Research
o Naturalistic Observation
 Monitoring children in real-life situations as they behave spontaneously
classrooms, playgrounds, etc.
 Children are completely unaware about study
 Variables are decided beforehand
o Structured Observation
 Researcher creates setting likely to elicit behaviour of interest
 Especially scenarios that don’t occur in everyday or public life
 Children’s awareness of study may cause them to behave differently
o Observer Bias
 Researcher tends to notice or interpret behaviours to support hypotheses
 Solutions:
 Create firm guidelines and definitions prior to observation
 Blind observation – someone who doesn’t know the hypothesis take
observations
 Inter-observer reliability – multiple observers cross-check to make sure
percentage of agreement is acceptable
o Observer Influence
 Subjects’ change behaviours because of awareness of observation
 Solutions:
 Disguise observations
 Habituate participates to researchers’ presence
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