PSYC 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Active Child
9 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Why study child development: understanding how kids develop can help parents raise children more effectively (or in daycares so caregivers can best watch over kids), and society can adopt wiser policies regarding children"s welfare. It can also help answer questions about human nature. Enduring themes of child development p. 11: nature and nurture: Nature: our biological endowment/genes we get from our parents. Nurture: the range of environments we can be/are exposed to which shapes us as humans. Physical and social environments including the womb/school we attend/community we are in/ people we interact with, etc. Humans characteristics are a result of the constant interactions of our genes with the environment: the active child. Attentional patterns: kids shape their own development through what they choose to pay attention to. Their preference to pay attention to things that move or make sounds help them learn important parts of the world, such as people, other animals, and inanimate moving objects like cars.
