Introduction to Developmental Psychology, Slater and Bremner

Contents Pages
Part I Introduction
1	The Scope and Methods of Developmental Psychology Darwin Muir and Alan Slater
2	Theories and Issues in Child Development Alan Slater, Ian Hocking, and Jon Loose
3	The Nature-Nurture Issue Elena L. Grigorenko and Robert J. Sternberg

Part II Infancy
4	Prenatal Development William P. Fifer and Christine Moon
5	Perception, Knowledge, and Action Gavin Bremner
6	Emotional Development and Early Attachment Relationships Elizabeth Meins
7	Social Interaction and the Beginnings of Communication H. Rudolph Schaffer

Part III Childhood
8	Cognitive Development Michael Siegal
9	The Development of Language Stan A. Kuczaj and Heather M. Hill
10	Acquiring a Theory of Mind Peter Mitchell
11	Reading and Mathematics Peter Bryant
12	Memory Development and Eyewitness Testimony Stephen J. Ceci, Stanka A. Fitneva, and Livia L. Gilstrap
13	Play and Peer Relations Peter K. Smith
14	Prosocial Tendencies, Antisocial Behavior, and Moral Development Daniel Hart, Debra Burock, Bonita London, and Robert Atkins

Part IV Adolescence
15	Cognitive Development Kang Lee and Alejo Freire
16	Social Development Tanya Bergevin, William M. Bukowski, and Richard Miners

Part V Practical Issues
17	Educational Implications Alyson Davis
18	Social Problems in School Dan Olweus
19	Disorders of Development Vicky Lewis


1. The Scope and Methods of Developmental Psychology Darwin Muir and Alan Slater
Introduction
Studying Changes with Age
Concepts of Human Development
	Folk theories of development: punishment or praise?
	Defining development according to world views
Ways of Studying Development
Designs for Studying Age-Related Changes
	Cross-sectional designs
	Longitudinal designs
	When longitudinal and cross-sectional results tell a different story
	Sequential designs
	Research Methods
	Observational studies
	Experimental methods
	Psychological testing
	Correlational studies
	Choosing the method of study
Beyond Common Sense: The Importance of Research Evidence
Social policy implications of child development research
Developmental Functions: Growing and Changing
	Continuous function (a) – increasing ability
	Continuous function (b) – decreasing ability
	Discontinuous (step) function
	U-shaped functions
	Comparing developmental functions
Summary and Conclusions
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2. Theories and Issues in Child Development Alan Slater, Ian Hocking, and Jon Loose
Introduction
Motor Development
	Maturational theories
	Dynamic systems theory
Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory of Development
	Developmental psychology before Piaget
	Fundamental aspects of human development, according to Piaget
	The four stages of cognitive development
Cognitive Development: Information-Processing Approaches
	Comparing information-processing approaches with Piaget’s approach
	Connectionism
Social-Cognitive Development
	Vygotsky
	Behaviorism and social learning theory
Evolution and Ethology
	Evolution
	The ethological approach
	Emotional development
	Psychoanalytic Theories
	Sigmund Freud: The founder of psychoanalysis
	The five psychosexual stages
	Problems with Freudian theory
	Psychoanalysis, then and now: An overview
	Modern psychoanalysts: Anna Freud and Eric Erikson
Humanistic Theory: Abraham Maslow
	Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Putting it All Together: Different Theories for Different Needs
	Gender development
Issues in Child Development
The Nature–Nurture Issue
Stability versus Change
Continuity versus Discontinuity
Summary and Conclusions
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3. The Nature–Nurture Issue Elena L. Grigorenko and Robert J. Sternberg
Why Do People Differ in the Way They Think?
The Behavior-Genetic Approach to Studying Individual Differences
	The concept of individual differences
	Genes and environment
	Definition of terms
	The Forces Determining Individual Differences in Cognition
	Genetic influences (G): Types and effects
	Environmental influences (E): Types and effects
	When the two are brought together: Gene–environment effects (G × E)
Major Concepts Utilized in Behavior-Genetic Research
	What heritability and environmentality are . . .
	. . . And what they are not
What Do We Know Today About Causes of Variation in Various Cognitive Abilities?
	What have we learned from behavior-genetic studies about the heritability of general cognitive ability (as approximated by IQ)?
	Summary comments
	What have we learned from behavior-genetic studies about the heritability of specific cognitive abilities?
Summary and Conclusions
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4. Prenatal Development William P. Fifer and Christine Moon
Introduction
The Brain, the Spinal Cord and the Emergence of Mind
	Subdivisions of the primitive brain
	Processes and sequencing of brain development
	Development of the cerebral cortex
Behavioral Organization
The Earliest Sensations
The Chemosensory System
The Vestibular System
The Visual System
	Development of the eyes
	Development of the visual pathway
	Development of the visual cortex
The Auditory System
	Responses to sounds
Transnatal Auditory Learning
	Learning about the mother’s voice
	Summary
Risks to Fetal Development
	Effects of maternal substance abuse
	Nutrition and fetal development
	Effects of maternal stress
Prenatal Development of Postnatal Functions: The Bridge to Infancy
Summary and Conclusions
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5. Perception, Knowledge, and Action Gavin Bremner
Introduction
Visual Perception from Birth to 4 Months
	Early limitations of vision: Are they really a problem?
	How can we investigate infant perception?
	Shape perception in newborns
	Newborns perceive a three-dimensional world
	Perceptual development in the first 6 months
	Summary
Infants’ Perception of People
	Face perception
	Discriminating between faces
	Preference for attractive faces
	Imitation
	Voice perception
	Voice and speech discrimination
	Summary
Infants’ Knowledge of the World
	Jean Piaget and the development of object permanence
Recent Work on Infant Cognition
	The violation of expectation technique
	Evidence of object knowledge: The “drawbridge study” and others
	Young infants reason about the number of objects in an event
	Young infants discriminate different numbers of items
	Young infants can count!
	Summary
Object Search Revisited
	Search failure is not due to lack of motor skill
	Seeking an explanation of the A not B error
	Summary and Conclusions
	Early knowledge
	Early knowledge does not guide action
	Remodeling the Piagetian account
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6. Emotional Development and Early Attachment Relationships Elizabeth Meins
Introduction
Are Expressions of Emotion Innate?
	Cross-cultural evidence
	Expression of emotion in infancy
	Emotion and self-awareness
Infant Discrimination of Facial Expressions
Emotional Discrimination in Context
	Social referencing
	Expectations about emotional responses of others
Beyond Infancy: Linguistic Expression of Emotion
	Understanding emotions
	Emotional judgment and cognition
	Summary
Emotion in the Family
	Understanding the causes of emotion
	Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment
	Attachment as an innate drive
	The phases of attachment
Ainsworth’s Empirical Work
	The strange situation procedure
	Different attachment types
	Cultural differences in predominant attachment type
Attachment and Emotional Development
	The internal working model
	Attachment and emotional regulation
	Secure attachment and emotional understanding in childhood
	Caregiver characteristics related to attachment and emotional development
Summary
Summary and Conclusions
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7. Social Interaction and the Beginnings of Communication H. Rudolph Schaffer
Introduction
Changes in Social Interactions in Early Development
A Developmental Framework
Initial Encounters
	Macro-level adjustments
	Micro-level adjustments
	Two conditions of early social interactions
	Individual differences
Face-to-Face Exchanges
	Mutual gazing
	Vocal exchanges
	Infants learn quickly about interactions!
	Infants send emotional messages
	Social signaling
Incorporating Objects in Social Interactions
	The problem of limited attentional capacity
	The development of shared attention
	From asymmetry to symmetry in social interactions
	Toward a “theory of mind”
From Interactions to Relationships
	The development of object (and person!) permanence
	Learning to take the initiative
	Social referencing
Communicating By Means of Symbols
	From sensorimotor functioning to the use of symbols
	Talking to babies: Is “motherese” necessary?
	The desire to communicate
	Summary: The development of effective communication
Summary and Conclusions
	When development goes wrong
	The complexity of the task facing the child
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8. Cognitive Development Michael Siegal
Introduction
The Ability to Solve Logical Problems
Cognitive Abilities in 2- to 6-Year-Olds
	The appearance–reality distinction
	Understanding spatial relations in 2-year-olds
	Summary
Conservation
	The different conservation problems
	Alternatives to Piaget’s interpretation of the conservation problems
	Do we understand the conservation problems?
Class Inclusion
	The effects of changing the task
	Linguistic misunderstandings?
	Young children’s conceptual difficulties
Transitive Inferences
Perspective-Taking
What is the Cause of the Transition in Cognitive Development?
	Information-processing changes
	The development of specific brain structures
	Conversational awareness
	Cultural influences on cognitive development
Summary and Conclusions
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9. The Development of Language Stan A. Kuczaj and Heather M. Hill
Introduction
What is Human Language?
	A communication system
	A symbolic system
	A rule-governed system
	Language is productive
The Development of the Pragmatic System
	Turn-taking
	Initiating interactions
	Maintaining conversations
	Repairing faulty conversations
The Development of the Phonological System
	Speech perception
	Speech production
	The development of articulation
The Development of the Syntactic System
	The one-word period
	The two-word period
	Later syntactic development
	The significance of overregularization errors and creative overgeneralizations
	How can syntactic development be explained?
The Acquisition of Word Meaning
	Guessing a word’s meaning
	The complexity of the task
	Is children’s acquisition of word meaning constrained?
	The importance of semantic relations
The Interaction of Language and Cognitive Development
Summary and Conclusions
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10. Acquiring a Theory of Mind Peter Mitchell
Introduction
	Early attunement to others’ minds
	Focusing on false beliefs: The unexpected transfer test
When Do Children Begin to Understand that People Hold Beliefs?
Do Children Acquire a Theory of Mind?
	The deceptive box test
Is There a Developmental Stage?
	The case for gradual change
	Do children suddenly begin giving correct judgments of false belief ?
	Understanding the question asked
	The state change test
	Hybrid of deceptive box and state change tests
	The posting version of the deceptive box test
Adults’ Difficulty with False Beliefs
	Confusing one’s own and others’ knowledge
Factors that Influence Development
	Nature versus nurture
	Do humans possess a special module that is dedicated to understanding minds?
	The role of the family: Siblings
	The role of the family: Adults
	The characteristics of the child
Autism
	Lack of imagination
	Socialization and communication deficits
	Causes of autism
	Failure to understand the mind
Summary and Conclusions
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11. Reading and Mathematics Peter Bryant
Introduction
Reading and Writing
	The difficulty of alphabetic language
	Learning to read and phonemic awareness
	Summary
Rhymes and Rimes
	Early awareness of rimes predicts reading success
	Using onsets and rhymes to learn letter sequences
	Summary
Conditional Spelling Rules
	Children’s awareness of conditional spelling rules
	Invented spelling, the final “e” rule, and the “c” rule
	Morphemes: The units of meaning
	Morpheme-based spelling rules
	Children’s errors in spelling morphemes
	Overgeneralization of learned spelling patterns
	Summary
Number and Counting
	The logical principles of number and counting
	Different counting systems
	Infants’ knowledge of number
	Infants’ knowledge of addition and subtraction: Wynn’s work
	Criticisms of Wynn’s work
	Principles before skills
Number as a Cultural Tool
	The decimal system
Logic in the Understanding of Number
	Logic and cardinality
	Young children do not realize that same number = same quantity
	The importance of one-to-one correspondence
	Conclusions about the beginnings of the understanding of number
Summary and Conclusions
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12. Memory Development and Eyewitness Testimony Stephen J. Ceci, Stanka A. Fitneva, and Livia L. Gilstrap
Introduction
	The Bronx case
	How reliable are children’s reports?
The Development of Memory
	Recognition and recall
The Memory Process
	Encoding
	Storage
	Retrieval
	Semantic and episodic memory
Three Factors that Influence the Development of Memory: Knowledge, Strategies, and Metamemory
Knowledge development
	Strategy development
	Metamemory development
	Other factors influencing memory development
Children’s Eyewitness Testimony
	Suggestibility
	Ecological validity
	Influences on children’s reports
	The relationship between suggestibility and memory development
	Social factors leading to false reports
	Is suggestibility a personality trait?
Summary and Conclusions
	Ecological validity
	Individual differences in suggestibility
	Alternative models of memory
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13. Play and Peer Relations Peter K. Smith
Introduction
The Beginnings of Play
	Sensorimotor play
	Pretend play
Early Peer Relationships
Are Siblings Important?
	Sibling relationships and the development of social understanding
The Growth of Social Participation
	Social play
	Physical activity play
	Rough-and-tumble play
Functions of Play
	Effects of play on language and cognition
	Play and theory of mind
	Functions of physical play
Social Status and Sociometry: The Measurement of Social Relationships in the Peer Group
	Consequences of sociometric status
	Reasons for peer rejection
Friendship
	What is special about friends?
	Why is it important to have friends?
Sex Differences in Play
	Explanations of sex differences
Ethnicity
Summary and Conclusions
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14. Prosocial Tendencies, Antisocial Behavior, and Moral Development Daniel Hart, Debra Burock, Bonita London, and Robert Atkins
Introduction
What Do Prosocial and Antisocial Mean?
Continuity and Transformation
Are Prosocial and Antisocial Poles on the Same Dimension?
The Development of Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior and Thought: Early Childhood
	Personality traits and social behavior
	Personality traits and antisocial behavior
	Personality traits and prosocial behavior
	Extreme antisocial behavior, and breaks in the continuum
	Summary
The Development of Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior and Thought: Middle Childhood
	Moral reasoning and judgment
	Piaget’s two stages of moral reasoning
	Kohlberg’s research on moral judgment
	Kohlberg’s five stages of moral reasoning
	Claims about the stages of moral judgment
	Summary
Social Influences on Prosocial and Antisocial Development
Development Within Relationships: Parents and Peers
	Parents
	Peers
Culture and Development
	Cultural variability
	Media and development
	Culture and identity
Summary and Conclusions
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15. Cognitive Development Kang Lee and Alejo Freire
Introduction
Perception and Attention
	Perception
	Selective attention
	Memory
	Memory for faces
	Short-term memory
	Long-term memory
	Memory strategies
Intelligence
	Rapid development
	Stability of development
	Fluid and crystallized intelligence
	Intergenerational IQ gains: We’re brighter now!
Reasoning
	Deductive and inductive reasoning
	Analogical reasoning
	Moral reasoning
Formal Operational Thinking
	Abstract thought
	Realms of possibility
	The adolescent as an apprentice scientist
	Scientific problems
Controversies About Piaget’s Theory and Research Regarding Formal Operational Thought
	Do all adolescents reach this stage?
	The role of experience
	Cross-generational gains
Beyond Piaget’s Theory
	The information-processing approach to adolescent thinking
	Adolescents as intuitive scientists
	Three common flaws in children’s and adolescents’ use of theories
	General characteristics of adolescent thinking
Summary and Conclusions
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16. Social Development Tanya Bergevin, William M. Bukowski, and Richard Miners
Introduction
Key Characteristics of Development
Relations Between Social and Cognitive Development
G. Stanley Hall: Adolescence as Storm and Stress
	Adolescence as a second birth
	Criticism of Hall’s account
The Adolescent Social Environment: Kurt Lewin
	Field theory
	What do adolescents do?
Puberty and Psychological Development: The Work of Anna Freud
	The ego, defense mechanisms, and libidinal forces
	The role of pubertal development
The Family and Adolescence: The Work of Peter Blos
	Independence versus maintaining parental bonds
	Acquisition of autonomy
	The effects of parental style
	Why does authoritative parenting work so well?
Peer Relations: The Ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan
	Interpersonal needs stimulate psychological growth
	Subperiods of adolescence
	Research supporting Sullivan’s account
	The role of the peer group
	Romantic relationships
Erik Erikson and the Development of Identity in Adolescence
	Adolescence as transition to adulthood
	Identity formation and self-concept
Summary and Conclusions
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17. Educational Implications Alyson Davis
Introduction
Child-Centered Psychology and Education
	Piaget’s image of the child
Social Interaction, Learning, and Development
	The effects of peer interaction
Adult Interaction: What is Effective Teaching?
	Vygotsky’s theory
	Are adults effective natural teachers?
	Implications for educational practice and assessment
Psychology, Schools, and Educational Reform
	The move to criterion referencing
	Increasing parental involvement
Summary and Conclusions
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18. Social Problems in School Dan Olweus
Introduction
What is Bullying?
Basic Facts About Bully/Victim Problems
	Prevalence
	Bully/victim problems in different grades
	Bullying among boys and girls
	Three common “myths” about bullying
	What characterizes the typical victims?
	What characterizes the typical bullies?
	Development of an aggressive reaction pattern
	Some group mechanisms
	A question of fundamental human rights
The Effects of a School-Based Intervention Program
	Participants and design
	Main results
	Key principles of the intervention program
	Measures used at the school, class, and individual levels
	Additional characteristics
	A whole-school policy approach to bullying
Summary and Conclusions
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19. Disorders of Development Vicky Lewis
Introduction
	Difficulties in studying children with disabilities
	Three disabilities: Profound visual impairment, autism, and Down’s syndrome
Children with Profound Visual Impairments
	Knowing that objects and people are there
	Differences in understanding the environment
	Development of pretend play
	Language development
	Representational ability
	Autistic behaviors
Children with Autism
	Wing’s triad of impairments
	Islets of ability: Savant skills
	Explanations of autism
Children with Down’s Syndrome
	Development of children with DS
	Intelligence test scores
	Delayed or different development?
Summary and Conclusions
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