Child Development

Nature/nurture, stability/change, ages/stages

Longitudinal vs. cross-sectional studies (cohort effects)

Prenatal development – germinal (zygote), embryonic, fetal, fetal behavior

Teratogens – fetal alcohol syndrome, smoking, measles, malnutrition, sexually transmitted diseases, critical periods, preterm vs. small for date infants

Neonate period – reflexes (walking, grasping, rooting, sucking, Babinski), senses (smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision, depth perception), learning

Motor development - maturation

Temperament – easy, difficult, slow to warm up, research

Piaget – organization, schemes, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration

Sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (egocentric, animalistic thinking, centration), concrete operations (conservation, reversibility), formal operations

Problems with theory (technique problems, stage issues, rate of development, formal thought not universal)

Vygotsky’s sociocultural view – private speech, proximal development, scaffolding

Neural development

Information processing – recognition, working memory, processing time, metamemory

Attachment – Harlow monkey study, securely attached, cold rejecting parent, inconsistent/ambivalent parent and problems later in life

Secure, avoidant, resistant, disorganized/disoriented attachment

Father-child interactions

Separation anxiety, stranger anxiety

Parenting style – authoritarian, permissive (indulgent, neglectful), authoritative

Day care controversy, TV

Peer relationships

Culture and child development – contexts of development – microsystems, exosystems, macrosystems