Book Cover Human Development 7/e Vander Zanden, Crandell, and Crandell
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Chapter 1: Introduction



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Chapter Outline

Chapter 1: Introduction

  1. The Major Concerns of Science
    1. Continuity and Change in Development
    1. To live is to change.
    1. Change occurs across many dimensions: biological, psychological, social-emotional.
    1. Many aspects of our lives carry across different life periods, and therefore, are continuous.
    1. Development: A Definition
    1. The orderly and sequential changes that occur with the passage of time as an organism moves from conception to death
    1. What Are the Goals of Developmental Psychologists?
    1. Describe the changes that typically occur across the human life span.
    2. Explain these changes—to specify the determinants of developmental change.
    3. Predict developmental changes.
    4. Control or intervene in the course of events.
  1. A Framework for Studying Development
  1. Major Domains of Development
    1. Physical development entails those changes that occur in a person's body.
    2. Cognitive development involves those changes that occur in mental activity.
    3. Emotional-social development includes those changes that concern a person's personality, emotions, and relationships with others.
  1. Processes of Development
    1. Growth refers to the increase in size that occurs with changing age.
    2. Maturation concerns the unfolding of biological potential in a set, irreversible sequence.
    3. Learning refers to the modification in behavior that results from the individual's experience in the environment.
  1. The Context of Development (Bronfenbrenner's ecological approach)
    1. Developmental influences must include the person's changing physical and social settings, the relationship among those settings, and how the entire process is affected by the society in which the settings are embedded.
    1. Microsystem — network of social relationships and physical settings in which a person is involved each day.
    2. Mesosystem — interrelationships among various settings in which a person is immersed.
    3. Exosystem — social structures that directly or indirectly affect a person's life.
    4. Macrosystem — overarching cultural patterns of a society.
  1. The Timing of Developmental Events (Baltes)
    1. Normative age-graded influences — strong relation to chronological age
    2. Normative history-graded influences — unique for each age cohort
    3. Nonnormative life events — significant for individual life histories but are not closely associated with either age or history
  1. Partitioning the Life Span: Cultural and Historical Perspectives
  1. The Age-Old Question: Who Am I?
    1. All societies use age as a master status: People are assigned roles independently of their unique abilities or qualities.
  1. Cultural Variability
    1. Culture — the social heritage of a people; learned patterns for thinking, feeling, and acting that are transmitted from one generation to the next
    2. Age strata—social layers that are based on time periods in life—but societies differ in the prestige they accord various age positions
  1. Changing Conceptions of Age
    Not always the way it is viewed now—infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age
  1. Connecting Historical "Areas of Concern"
    Three different historical points in time show how beliefs about needed research changed and stayed the same over the years.
    1. Turn of the century: scientific exploration of development, discovering if emotions were innate, cognitive development with Jean Piaget, differentiation of conscious and unconscious thought, and the preoccupation of researchers with the notion of the self
    2. Midcentury research: Behavioral theory dominated psychology
    3. Contemporary issues: biological bases of behavior, the timing of emotional development and the nature of social relationships (such as parent-infant attachment studies)
  1. The Nature of Developmental Research
  1. The Longitudinal Method — study the same individuals at different points in their lives
  2. The Cross-Sectional Method — simultaneously compare different groups of persons varying in age
  3. Sequential Methods — combines the advantages of the longitudinal and cross-sectional methods of research by measuring more than one cohort over time
  4. The Experimental Method — rigorously objective approach for establishing a cause-and-effect relationship.
    1. The factor that is manipulated in an experiment is the independent variable.
    2. The factor that is affected—that occurs or changes as a result of the manipulation of the independent variable—is called the dependent variable.
    3. In experiments a control group provides a neutral standard against which changes in the experimental group(s) can be measured.
  1. The Case-Study Method — longitudinal method is used to study a single individual
  2. The Social Survey Method — data are gathered using in-person interviews and questionnaires that are distributed through the mail. The representativeness of the sample is based on random sampling, where each member of the population sampled has an equally likely probability of being chosen.
  3. The Naturalistic Observation Method — intensively watch and record behavior as it occurs. The use of time sampling and event sampling techniques can enhance the scientific rigor of naturalistic observation.
  4. The Cross-Cultural Method — compare data from two or more societies
  1. Research Analysis
  1. Correlational Analysis — statistical procedure to determine the degree to which two or more behaviors are associated with each other
    1. A correlation coefficient is the numerical expression of the degree of relationship between two variables or conditions.
  1. Ethical Standards for Human Development Research
  1. Guidelines for ethical research using human subjects
    1. Subjects should not be compelled to participate in an experiment.
    2. Subjects should have the freedom to discontinue participation if they wish.
    3. Informed consent must be granted from subjects.
    4. Anonymity of subjects must be protected.
  1. Boxes
  1. Human Diversity: Rethinking Women's Biology
    1. Concepts of woman and man are social constructs.
    2. Efforts to fit these constructs have biological as well as social consequences.
    3. Women's biology is socially constructed, as well as political.
    4. Women have been characterized as weak, emotional, and at the mercy of raging hormones.
  1. Childhood: Two Hundred Years of Profound Change
    1. A shift from farming to an urban life
    2. A dramatic decline in large families
    3. A sharp rise in school enrollment
    4. An increase in the number of mothers participating in the paid labor force
    5. An increase in the number of young children in day-care centers and preschool settings
  1. Tips for Observing Children
    1. Add diversity by observing children in a variety of settings.
    2. Have the purpose of the observation firmly in mind.
    3. Describe both the behavior and the social context in which it occurs.
    4. Describe the relevant body language.
    5. Do not substitute interpretations that generalize about behavior for descriptions of behavior.
    6. Limit periods of observation to half an hour.
    7. Remember that the goal of the observations is objectivity.
    8. Use time sampling for some observations and event sampling for others.

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