PSYC 319 full course lecture notes part I (36 pages) - from start of the semester until midterm
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PSYC 319 09-13-11 Context
Examples of contemporary social problems affecting children, adolescents, and families
•Substance abuse
•Competence issue; why are some substances legal when they could be more dangerous?
•Bullying
•What leads to antisocial behavior? Peer interactions; violent TV/video games
•Daycare
•What are the effects of daycare vs. home care? How are we defining daycare and home
care? Children are also not randomly assigned (confounding factors); research also
confounded by ideology
•Changes in families
•Decreased family size, delayed marriage and childbirth, single parents
•Obesity
•What subjects does the government value in school?
•Who gets to determine what goes on in the classroom?
•Government (budget issue)? Teachers (professional issue)?
Historical context
•Views toward childhood
•Changed dramatically over time
•Different understanding of children and their development
•Origins of applied developmental psychology
•Values and emphasis of different theories
•Issues and theories occur in a social context
•Historical events, attitudes, and values in society at the time
•Ancient times
•Infanticide (children easily disposed of)
•Medieval society
•Infancy → adulthood
•Dependent → independent
•Incompetent → competent
•Majority of children died (lack of social support, medical care)
•Decreased emotional attachment to children
•17th/18th centuries
•Emergence of concept of childhood, due to:
•Unique psychological, educational, and physical needs
•Intellectual Renaissance of the 15th century
•Decreased infant mortality
•Increase prosperity → change in social structure
•People could improve their social standing by investing in their children's
education and welfare
•John Locke (philosopher and social commentator)
•British empiricism
•Child's urges and passions needed to be controlled
•Environmental perspective (emphasis on role of environment in inducing change)
•Influence on current environmental-learning approaches (behaviorism)
•“Tabula rasa” - child is like a passive (but NOT neutral) blank state acted upon
by the environment
•Policy implications: interventionist strategy (from early childhood)
•Jean-Jacques Rousseau
•Swiss-French rationalism
•Development is a naturally unfolding process
•Society viewed as harmful
•Child is good until corrupted by adult society
•Child is passive
•Children should master things at their own rate
•Metaphor – flowering seed
•Influence on current biological-nativist approaches
•Policy implications: non-interventionist strategy
•Industrial revolution
•Shift from agrarian farming society to machine factories
•Urbanization → slums
•Mass migration
•Children – cheap source of labor (labor shortage)
•Deplorable conditions
•US Civil War
•Children also fought
•Reformers
•Women + evangelical Christians → advocacy for children
•Key ideas:
•(1) Childhood is vulnerable and need to be protected
•(2) First public policies introduced on children
•Childhood institutionalized
•(1) Child labor laws
•Children have rights
•(2) Universal primary education
•Provided by government, imposed on families (societal interest in
children outweighs family interest)
•19th century
•Baby biographies
•Popular in 19th century
•Comprehensive diaries
•Descriptive only and biased
•Not good accounts of the rate of development, but helpful for order of
development
•Charles Darwin
•Baby biography
•Notion of evolutionary biology and development
•Since then the idea of development dominated science
•Recapitulation (no longer a credible idea)
•Individual development captures the development of the species
•G. Stanley Hall
•Father of child psychology
•Among the first to conduct empirical research with children (instead of casual
observation) → gave surveys to children
•Shared Darwin's general evolutionary viewpoint
•Founded APA and was the first president
•Emergence of Adolescence
•Agrarian → industrial society (machines made youth's labor dispensable)
•Industrialization required specialized skills
•Increased lifespan
•Changes in nuclear family and urbanization → decreased support from
extended family → youth more independent
•Universal education and child labor laws
•Academics became more interested in adolescence
•Product of modern cultures
•Previously, puberty (confirmation, etc.) was a celebration of adulthood
•New criteria for adulthood:
•Function – attainment of responsible roles
•Status – adult privileges and status (age at which we can drive, drink,
undergo adult trial, vote, etc.)
•20th century
•Alfred Binet
•Hired by Paris school board to distinguish intellectually subnormal from normally
functioning children
•For the purpose of special instruction
•Devised first IQ tests
•Now adapted and revise (Stanford-Binet test)
•IQ tests were widely used during WWI to recruit soldiers
•Continued focus on intelligence, its assessment, and its comparison
•Sometimes other values and characteristics are diminished in comparison
to intelligence
•Sigmund Freud
•Psychoanalytic theory
•Emphasis on unconscious drives and motivations (negative); implicit
understandings
•Id, ego, superego
•Early childhood experiences
•Significant in forming personality
•Emphasis on emotional maturity (personality)
•Identification with same-sex parent
•Introduced stages in psychoanalytic development (oral, anal,
Oedipal/Electra)
•Appraisal