Term
| How do Freud's and Erikson's views of personality development in the first 2 years differ? |
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Definition
| Freud suggested that individual differences in personality originated in the nursing and weaning practices of infants' mothers. Erikson emphasized the roles of both mothers and fathers, as well as other adults in the infants environment, in providing for all the infants needs, thereby instilling a sense of trust concerning the social world. |
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Term
| What are the main idea of attachment theory? |
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Definition
| Ethologists hypothesize that early emotional bonds are teh foundation of later personality and social development. They further suggest that the first 2 years of life are a sensitive, or critical period for the development of attachment. |
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Term
| How does synchrony affect parent-infant relationships? |
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Definition
| For parents to form a strong attachment relationship with an infant, what is most crucial is the development of synchrony, a set of mutually reinforcing and interlocking behaviors that characterize most interactions between plant and infant. Fathers as well as mothers form strong bonds with their infants, but fathers show more physically playful behaviors with their children than do mothers. |
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Term
| What are the four phases of attachment and the behaviors associated with them? |
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Definition
Bowlby proposed that the child's attachement to a caregiver develops four phases:
1) indiscriminate aiming of attachment behaviors toward anyone within reach
2) focus on one or more figures
3)"secure base behavior" at about 6 months of age signaling the prescence of a clear attachment
4) an internal model of attahcment that influences current and future close relationships |
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Term
| what are the four attachment paterns that Ainsworth discovered? |
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Definition
| using a procedure called the Strange Situation, Ainsworth identified four paterns of attachment distinguished by infants responses to separations from and reunions with their mothers. securly attached infants separate easily and greet mothers positively at reunion. Infants with insecure/disorganized attachment display confused, contradictory patterns such as moving toward teh mother while looking elsewhere. |
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Term
| What variables might affect a parents ability to establish an attachment relationship with an infant? |
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Definition
| caregiver charactersitics such as marital status, age, education level, and income can affect infants' attachment quality. Also, infants whose parents have psychiatric illness are more likely to form insecure attachments than babies whose paretns do not have these disorders. |
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Term
| what are the long-term consequences of attachment quality? |
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Definition
| The security of the initial attachment is reasonably stable; later in childhood, securely attached children appear to be more socially skillful, more curious and persistent in approaching nw tasks, and more mature. The internal model of attachment that individuals develop in infancy affects how they parent their own babies. |
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Term
| In what ways do patterns of attachment vary across cultures? |
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Definition
| studies in many countries suggest that secure attachment is the most common pattern everywhere, but cultures differ in the frequency of different types of insecure attachment. |
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Term
| On which dimensions of temperament do most developmentalists agree? |
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Definition
| temperament theorists generally agree on the following basic temperament dimensions: activity level, approach/ positive emotionally, and effotful control/ task persistence |
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Term
| What are the roles of heredity, neruological processes, and environment in the formation of temperament? |
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Definition
| There is a strong evidence that temperamental differences have a genetic component, and that they are at least somewhat stable over infancy and childhood. However, temperament is not toally determined by heredity or neurological processes. The "fit" between children's temperaments and their environments may be more important than temperament itself. |
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Term
| How do the subjective self, the objetive self, and the emotional develop during the first 2 years? |
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Definition
| The infant also begins to develop a sense of self, including the awarness of a separate self and the understanding of self-permanace (which may be collectively called the subjective self) and awareness of herself as an object in the world (the objective self). An emotional self also develops in the first year. The range of emotions infants experience-- as well as their ability to make use of information about emotions, such as facial expressions-- increases dramatically over the first year. |
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Term
| Why is it difficult to study the effects of nonparental care on development? |
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Definition
Comparing parental to nonparental care is difficult because there are so many types of nonparental care arrangements. Families who choose nonparental care also differ from families who care for their children at home. |
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Term
| What might be the effects of nonparental care on physical and cognitive development? |
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Definition
| Infants in nonparental care are more likely to be overweight than those who are cared for exclusively by parents. Research on the effects of nonprenatal care on cognitive developmental variables such as intellegence test scores and academic achievement have produced incosistent results. Some studies show positive effects, but others do not. When a child receives more intellectual stimulation in nonparental care than he would at home, there are likely to be positive effects on cognitive development. But when the reverse is true nonparental care may have neutral or negative effects on cognitive development. |
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Term
| What does research suggest about the risks of nonparental care with respect to social development? |
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Definition
| The impact of day care on children's social development is unclear. Some studies show a small difference in security of attachment between childen in day care and those reared at home; others suggest hat home-care and day-care children do not differ with respect to attachment. Some studies show children who spend more time in day care to be more aggressive; others show them to be more socially skillful. |
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Term
| What variables should be taken into account in interpretations of research on nonparental care? |
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Definition
| Infants' physiological responses to the stress associated with nonparental care may underlie its association with developmental outcomes. The quality of nonparental care a child receives may be as important as the quantity of nonparental care. Individual differences and gender may interact with the quality of a care arrangement, the quantity of outside-the-home care a child revieves, or both. Average differneces between children who receive nonparental care and those who are cared for entirely in their own home are small. |
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Term
| What are the major milestones of growth and motor development between 2 and 6? |
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Definition
| Physical development is slower from age 2 to 6 than it is in infancy, but it nevertheless progresses steadily. Motor skills continue to improve gradually, with marked improvement ing gross motor skills (running, jumping, galloping) and slower advances in fine motor skills. |
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Term
| What important changes happen in the brain during these years? |
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Definition
| Significant changes in brain lateralization occur in early childhood. Handedness is another neurological milestone of this period. |
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Term
| what are the nutritional and health-care needs of young children? |
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Definition
| slower rates of growth contribute to declines in appetite. Stress is a factor in early childhood illnesses such as colds and flu. |
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Term
| What factors contribute to abuse and neglect, and how do these traumas affect children's development? |
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Definition
| Children between the ages of 2 and 9 are more likely to be abused or neglected than are infants or older children. Certain characteristics of both children and parents increase the risk of abuse. Long-term consequences of abuse have been found across all domains of development. |
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Term
| What are the characteristics of children's thought during Piaget's preoperational stage? |
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Definition
| Piaget marked the beginning of the preoperational period about 18-24 months, at the point when the child begins to use mental symbols. Despite this advance, the preschool child still lacks many sophisticated cognitive skills. In Piaget's view, such children are still egocentric, lack understanding of conservation and are often fooled by appearances. |
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Term
| What is a theory of mind and how does it develop? |
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Definition
| By the end of early childhood, children have a well-developed theory of mind. They understand that other people's actions are based on their thoughts and beliefs. The theory of mind includes the false-brief principle, an understanding of the factors that cause another person to believe something that isn't true. |
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Term
| How do information-processing and sociocultural theorists explain changes in young children's thinking? |
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Definition
| Neo-Piagetian and information-processing theories explain early childhood cognitive development in therms of limitations on young children's memory systems. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory asserts that children's thinking is shaped by social interaction through the medium of language. |
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Term
| How does fast-mapping help children learn new words? |
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Definition
| Fast-mapping, the use of categories to learn new words, enables young children to acquire new words rapidly. It involves the rapid formation of hypotheses about the meaning of new words based on the contexts in which they occur. |
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Term
| What happens during the grammar explosion? |
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Definition
| During the grammar explosion, children make large advances in grammatical fluency. Inflections, complex word orders, negatives, and questions appear in their speech. |
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Term
| What is phonological awareness, and why is it important? |
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Definition
| Development of an awareness of the sound patterns of a particular language during early childhood is important in learning to read during the school years. Children seem to acquire this skill through word play. |
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Term
| What kinds of evidence support the nature and nurture explanations for individual differences in IQ? |
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Definition
| Differences in IQ have been attributed to both heredity and environment. Twin and adoption studies make it clear that at least half the variation in IQ scores is due to genetic differences, the remainder of environment and the interaction of heredity and environment. Family variables and preschool experiences also contribute to variation of IQ scores. |
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Term
| What theories and evidence have been offered in support of genetic and cultural explanations of group differences in IQ scores. |
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Definition
| Genetic explanations of group differences are based on twin studies showing that individual differences in IQ are highly heritable an don the long-term stability of cross-group differences in average IQ scores. Cultural explanations are supported by research showing that groups with lower average IQ scores experience greater levels of exposure to risk factors such as poverty, poor nutrition, and toxic substances. The Flynn effect also demonstrates the power of cultural and historical forces in shaping IQ scores. |
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Term
| What major themes of development did the psychoanalytic theorists propose for the early childhood period? |
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Definition
| Freud and Erikson each described two stages of personality development during the preschool years: the anal and phallic stages in Freud's theory and the stages in which autonomy and initiative are developed in Erikson's theory. Both theories, but especially Fraud's, place primary importance on the parent-child relationship. More recent psychoanalytic approaches emphasize the importance of relationships with peers and siblings. |
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Term
| What are the findings of social-cognitive theorists with respect to young children's understanding of the social world? |
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Definition
| Social-cognitive theorists assert what advances in social and personality development are associated with cognitive development. Three topics of interest to such theorists are person, perception, understanding of others' intentions, and understanding of different kinds of rules. |
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Term
| How does temperament change in early childhood? |
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Definition
| During early childhood, children's temperament are modified by social experiences both within and outside of the family to form their personalities. |
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Term
| What changes take place in the young child's categorical, emotional, and social selves during the preschool years? |
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Definition
| The preschooler continues to define himself along a series of objective dimensions but does not yet have a global sense of self. Children make major strides in self-control and in their understanding of their own social roles in the preschool years, as parents gradually turn over the job of control to the child. |
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Term
| How do the major theoretical orientations explain gender development? |
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Definition
| Freud's explanation of gender development has not received much support from researchers. Social-learning explanations are more persuasive but ignore the role of cognitive development. Cognitive-developmental theory claims that gender development depends on the children's understanding of the gender concept and that the latter develops in three stages. Between ages 2 and 6, most children move through a series of steps in then understanding of gender constancy: first labeling their own and other's gender, then understanding the stability of gender, and finally comprehending the constancy of gender at about age 5 or 6. Gender schema theory claims that children organize ideas about gender using a mental framework (schema) that they construct as soon as they can reliably label themselves and others as male and female. |
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Term
| How does attachment change during the early childhood years? |
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Definition
| The young child's attachment to the parents remains strong, but except in stressful situations, attachment behaviors become less visible as the child gets older. Preschoolers refuse or defy parental influence attempts more than infants do. Outright defiance, however, declines from age 2 to age 6. Both these changes are clearly linked to the child's language and cognitive skills. |
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Term
| How do parenting styles affect children's development? |
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Definition
| Authoritative parenting, which combines warmth, clear rules, and communication with high maturity demands, is associated with the most positive outcomes for children. Authoritarian parenting has some negative effects on development. However, permissive and uninvolved parenting seem to be the least positive styles. |
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Term
| How are ethnicity and socioeconomic status related to parenting style? |
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Definition
| Ethnicity and socioeconomic class are linked to parenting style. Asian American And African American parents are more authoritarian than those in other ethnic groups, and poor parents in all ethnic groups tend to be authoritarian. studies of parenting style and developmental outcomes in ethnic groups suggest that, in some situations, authoritative parenting may not be the best style. |
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Term
| How is family structure related to children's development? |
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Definition
| Family structure affects early childhood social and personality development. Data from U.S. studies suggest that any family structure other than one that includes two biological parents is linked to more negative outcomes. |
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Term
| How does divorce affect children's behavior in early childhood and in later years? |
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Definition
| Following a divorce, children typically show disrupted behavior for several years. Parenting styles also change, becoming less authoritative. However, many effects of divorce on children are associated with problems that existed before the marriage ended. |
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Term
| What are the various kinds of play exhibited by preschoolers? |
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Definition
| Play with peers is evident before age 2 and becomes increasingly important through the preschool years. At every age, children spend some time in solitary play and may exhibit onlooker play, a pattern in which they watch another child play. By 14-18 months, children engage in parallel play, playing alongside each other but not interacting. At 18 months, associative play- play that includes some interaction- is apparent. By 3 or 4, children begin to engage in cooperative play, in which they work together to accomplish a goal. |
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Term
| How do prosocial behavior and friendship patterns change during early childhood? |
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Definition
| Children as young as 2 show prosocial behavior toward others, and this behavior seems to become more common as the child's ability to take another's perspectives increases. Stable friendships develop between children in this age range. |
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