Berk_IC9_PPT_Ch_01

Infants and Children
Ninth Edition
Chapter 1
History, Theory, and
Research Strategies
Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Learning Objectives (1 of 3)
•
1.1a Describe the field of child development, along with
factors that stimulated its expansion.
1.1b Explain how child development is typically divided
into domains and periods.
•
1.2 Identify three basic issues on which theories of child
development take a stand.
•
1.3 Describe major historical influences on theories of
child development.
•
1.4 Describe theories that influenced child development
research in the mid-twentieth century.
•
1.5 Describe recent theoretical perspectives on child
development.
1.6 Identify the stand taken by each major theory on the
basic issues of child development.
1.7a Describe research methods commonly used to
study children.
1.7b Distinguish between correlational and experimental
research designs, noting strengths and limitations of each.
1.7c Describe designs for studying development, noting
strengths and limitations of each.
•
1.8 Discuss special ethical concerns that arise in doing
research on children.

Introduction
• Child development: a
field of study devoted to
understanding constancy
and change from
conception through
adolescence
• Developmental science:
a larger, interdisciplinary
field that includes all
changes we experience
throughout the lifespan
© Blend Images/Shutterstock

1.1 The Field of Child Development (1 of 3)
Domains of Development
• Physical:
– Body size and proportions
– Appearance
– Functioning of body systems
– Perceptual and motor capacities
– Physical health
• Cognitive:
– Intellectual abilities

Domains of Development
• Emotional and social:
– Emotional communication
– Self-understanding
– Knowledge about other people
– Interpersonal skills
– Friendships
– Intimate relationships
– Moral reasoning and behavior

Periods of Development
• Prenatal (conception to birth)
• Infancy and toddlerhood (birth to 2 years)
• Early childhood (2 to 6 years)
• Middle childhood (6 to 11 years)
• Adolescence (11 to 18 years)
• Emerging adulthood (18 to the mid- to late-twenties)

1.2 Basic Issues (1 of 7)
• Theory: an orderly, integrated set of statements that
describes, explains, and predicts behavior
– Helps us understand development in order to improve
the welfare and treatment of children
– Depends on scientific verification
• Theories in child development take a stand on three basic
issues:
1. Continuous or discontinuous development?
2. One course of development or many?
3. Roles of genetic and environmental factors?

Continuous or Discontinuous Development?
• Continuous: a process of gradually adding more of the
same types of skills that were there to begin with
• Discontinuous: a process in which new ways of
understanding and responding to the world emerge at
specific times
• Stages: qualitative changes in thinking, feeling,
and behaving that characterize specific periods of
development

Figure 1.2: Is development continuous or
discontinuous?
(a) Some theorists believe that development is a smooth, continuous process. Children gradually add more of the
same types of skills that were there to begin with. (b) Other theorists think that development takes place in
discontinuous stages. Children change rapidly as they step up to a new level and then change very little for a while.
With each step, the child interprets and responds to the world in a qualitatively different way.

One Course of Development or Many?
• Stage theorists assume that people everywhere follow
the same sequence of development
• New evidence emphasizes mutually influential relations
between individuals and their contexts: unique
combinations of personal and environmental
circumstances that can result in different paths of change
• Researchers today are increasingly conscious of cultural
diversity in development

Relative Influence of Nature and Nurture?
• Nature–nurture controversy: debate over relative
influence of genetic and environmental factors
• A theory’s position on nature and nurture affects how it
explains individual differences
• Theorists disagree on the question of stability versus
plasticity
– Stability: heredity and early experiences are key to
establishing lifelong pattern of behavior
– Plasticity: development is open to change in
response to influential experiences

A Balanced Point of View
• Today, many theorists believe:
– Both continuous and discontinuous changes occur
– Development has both universal features and those
unique to the individual and his or her contexts
– Heredity and environment are inseparably interwoven
– Impact of experiences varies across individuals and
domains of development
• Developmental systems perspective: development as an
ongoing process molded by a complex network of
genetic/biological, psychological, and social influences

Biology and Environment – Resilient Children
• Resilience: ability to adapt
effectively in the face of
threats to development
• Factors in resilience:
– Personal characteristics
– Warm parental
relationship
– Social support outside
© iofoto/Shutterstock
the immediate family
– Community resources
and opportunities

1.3 Historical Foundations (1 of 2)
Historical Views of Childhood
• Medieval times: childhood first regarded as separate
period of life
• Reformation: view of children as depraved and child
rearing as an important obligation
• Enlightenment:
– John Locke: child as a tabula rasa (blank slate) and
development as continuous
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau: children as noble savages
with built-in moral sense and innate plan for growth
– Rousseau introduced concepts of stage and
maturation
1.3 Historical Foundations (2 of 2)
Scientific Beginnings
• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution emphasized two
related principles:
– natural selection
– survival of the fittest
• Normative approach (G. Stanley Hall and Arnold
Gesell): age-related averages of measures of behavior
taken on large numbers of individuals are computed to
represent typical development
• Mental testing movement (Alfred Binet and Theodore
Simon): developed first successful intelligence test in
early 1900s
1.4 Mid-Twentieth-Century Theories (1 of 5)
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
• Psychoanalytic perspective: children move through
stages in which they confront conflicts between biological
drives and social expectations
• Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory: id, ego, and
superego become integrated during five stages:
– oral (birth–1 year)
– anal (1–3 years)
– phallic (3–6 years)
– latency (6–11 years)
– genital (adolescence)

Erikson’s Theory
• Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory emphasizes the
ego’s positive contribution to development
• Psychosocial stages:
– Basic trust versus mistrust (birth–1 year)
– Autonomy versus shame and doubt (1–3 years)
– Initiative versus guilt (3–6 years)
– Industry versus inferiority (6–11 years)
– Identity versus role confusion (adolescence)
– Intimacy versus isolation (emerging adulthood)
– Generativity versus stagnation (adulthood)
– Integrity versus despair (old age)

Behaviorism and Social Learning Theory
• Behaviorism: views directly observable events—stimuli
and responses—as appropriate focus of study
• Traditional behaviorism:
– Classical conditioning (Ivan Pavlov and John Watson)
– Operant conditioning (B. F. Skinner): behavior is affected by
reinforcers and punishment
• Social learning theory (Albert Bandura): modeling

(imitation or observational learning) as a powerful source
of development
• Social-cognitive approach: greater emphasis on
cognition, or thinking
Contributions and Limitations of Behaviorism
and Social Learning Theory
• Contributions:
– Applied behavior analysis: observations of relationships
between behavior and environmental events, followed by
systematic changes based on conditioning and modeling
– Goal: to eliminate undesirable behaviors and increase desirable
responses
• Limitations:
– Narrow view of important environmental influences
– Children’s contributions are often underestimated
– Only Bandura’s work grants children an active role in their own
learning

Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
• Jean Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory:
– Children actively construct knowledge as they
manipulate and explore their world
– Central to this theory is the biological concept of
adaptation
• Piaget’s stages:
– Sensorimotor (birth–2 years)
– Preoperational (2–7 years)
– Concrete operational (7–11 years)
– Formal operational (11 years on)

1.5 Recent Theoretical Perspectives (1 of 11)
Information Processing
• Information processing: views the human mind as a
symbol-manipulating system
– From input to output, information is actively coded,
transformed, and organized
– Researchers design flowcharts to map the precise
steps individuals use to solve problems and complete
tasks
• The information processing approach
– regards children as active, sense-making beings
– views development as continuous

Figure 1.3: Information-processing flowchart
The information-processing flowchart shows the steps that a 5-year-old used to solve a bridge-building problem. Her
task was to use blocks varying in size, shape, and weight, some of which were planklike, to construct a bridge across
a “river” (painted on a floor mat) too wide for any single block to span. The child discovered how to counterweight and
balance the bridge. The arrows reveal that even after building a successful counterweight, she returned to earlier,
unsuccessful strategies, which seemed to help her understand why the counterweight approach worked. (Based on
Thornton, 1999.)

Developmental Neuroscience
• Developmental cognitive neuroscience: studies the
relationship between changes in the brain and the child’s
cognitive processing and behavior patterns
• Developmental social neuroscience: studies the
relationship between changes in the brain and emotional
and social development
• Researchers today examine the impact of various
treatments on both brain functioning and behavior
• Findings sometimes result in excessive emphasis on
biological processes

Ethology and Evolutionary Developmental
Psychology
• Ethology: concerned with the adaptive, or survival, value
of behavior and its evolutionary history
• Roots of ethology can be traced to Darwin:
– Imprinting: early following behavior of certain
baby birds
– Critical period: limited time span during which the
child is biologically prepared to acquire certain
adaptive behaviors, if supported by an appropriately
stimulating environment

Ethology and Evolutionary Developmental
Psychology
• Sensitive period: time span that is biologically optimal
for certain capacities to emerge because the individual is
especially responsive to environmental influences
• Evolutionary developmental psychology:
– Seeks to understand the adaptive value of species-
wide cognitive, emotional, and social competencies
as those competencies change with age
– Goal: to understand the entire person–environment
system

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
• Sociocultural theory:
– Lev Vygotsky’s perspective, focusing on how culture
(values, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group)
is transmitted to the next generation
– Social interaction (in particular, cooperative dialogues
with more knowledgeable members of society) is
necessary for children to acquire the ways of thinking
that make up a community’s culture
– Cognitive development is a socially mediated process
• Contemporary sociocultural theorists grant balanced,
mutually influential roles to individual and society

Ecological Systems Theory
• Ecological systems theory: views the child as
developing within a complex system of relationships
affected by multiple levels of the surrounding
environment:
– Microsystem
– Mesosystem
– Exosystem
– Macrosystem
– Chronosystem
• Urie Bronfenbrenner characterized his perspective as a
bioecological model
Figure 1.4: Structure of the environment in
ecological systems theory
The microsystem concerns relationships between the child and the immediate environment; the mesosystem,
connections among immediate settings; the exosystem, social settings that affect but do not contain the child; and
the macrosystem, the values, laws, customs, and resources of the culture that affect activities and interactions at all
inner layers. The chronosystem (not pictured) is not a specific context. Instead, it refers to the dynamic, ever-
changing nature of the child’s environment.

Social Issues: Health – Family Chaos
Undermines Children’s Well-Being
• Family chaos contributes to children’s behavior problems
• Factors that contribute to chaotic households:
– Economic disadvantage, especially single mothers
– Parental multitasking of child care with other tasks
– Disrupted family routines
• Exosystem and macrosystem supports can help prevent
chaos

Development as a Dynamic System
• Dynamic systems perspective:
– View that the child’s mind, body, and physical and
social worlds form an integrated system that guides
mastery of new skills
– System is dynamic, or constantly in motion
– When change disrupts the system, the child actively
reorganizes his or her behavior so the system works
again, in a more effective way
– Children often master skills in unique ways

Figure 1.5: The dynamic systems view of
development
Rather than envisioning a single line of stagewise or continuous change, development from a dynamic systems view
is more like a web of fibers branching out in many directions. Each strand in the web represents a skill within the
major domains of development—physical, cognitive, and emotional/social. The differing directions of the strands
signify possible variations in paths and outcomes as the child masters skills necessary to participate in diverse
contexts. The interconnections of the strands at each row of “hills” portray stagelike changes—periods of major
transformation in which various skills work together as a functioning whole. As the web expands, skills become more
numerous, complex, and effective. (Based on Fischer & Bidell, 2006.)
1.6 Comparing Child Development Theories (1 of 3)
Continuous or Discontinuous?
• Continuous development:
– Behaviorism and social learning theory
– Information processing
• Discontinuous development:
– Psychoanalytic perspective
– Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory
• Both continuous and discontinuous development:
– Ethology and evolutionary development psychology
– Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
– Dynamic systems perspective

One Course of Development or Many?
• One course of development:
– Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory
• Many possible courses of development:
– Ecological systems theory

Relative Influence of Nature and Nurture?
• Emphasis on nurture:
• Emphasis on both nature and nurture:
– Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory
– Ecological systems theory

1.7 Studying the Child (1 of 12)
• Hypothesis: a prediction drawn directly from a theory
• Research methods: the specific activities of participants
– Taking tests
– Answering questionnaires
– Responding to interviews
– Being observed
• Research designs: overall plans for research studies that
permit the best possible test of the hypothesis

Common Research Methods
• Systematic observation:
– Naturalistic observation: observation of behavior in the
natural environment
– Structured observation: observation of behavior in a
laboratory, where conditions are the same for all
participants
• Self-reports:
– Clinical interview: flexible interviewing procedure in which
the investigator obtains a complete account of the
participant’s thoughts
– Structured interview: self-report instrument in which each
participant is asked the same questions in the same way

Common Research Methods
• Clinical, or case study, method:
– Provides a full picture of a single individual’s
psychological functioning
– Includes interviews, observations, and sometimes test
scores
• Ethnography:
– Descriptive, qualitative technique, directed toward
understanding a culture or distinct social group
– Conducted through participant observation: months or
years of participation in the daily life of the cultural
community

Cultural Influences – Immigrant Youths:
Adapting to a New Land
• Many immigrant children adapt amazingly well
• Less likely than their agemates to
– commit delinquent and violent acts
– use drugs and alcohol
– have early sex
– miss school because of illness
– suffer from obesity
• Family and community cohesion, supervision, and high
expectations promote favorable outcomes

General Research Designs
• Correlational design:
– Information on individuals is gathered in natural life
circumstances without altering participants’ experiences
– Reveals relationships between participants’ characteristics and
their behavior or development
– Does not permit researcher to infer cause and effect
• Correlation coefficient:
– Number describing how two variables are associated with each
other
– Magnitude, or size, of the number, shows strength of the
relationship
– Sign of the number (+ or –) shows direction of the relationship

Figure 1.6: The meaning of correlation
coefficients
The magnitude of the number indicates the strength of the relationship. The sign of the number (+ or –) indicates the
direction of the relationship.

• Experimental design:
– Researchers use an evenhanded procedure to assign
people to two or more treatment conditions
– Permits inferences about cause and effect
– Independent variable: the one the investigator
manipulates and expects to cause changes in another
variable
– Dependent variable: the one the investigator expects
to be influenced by the independent variable

• Experimental design (continued):
– Confounding variable: a variable that is so closely
associated with the independent variable that the
researcher cannot tell which one is responsible for
changes in the dependent variable
– Random assignment: an unbiased procedure to
more equally distribute participant characteristics
across treatment groups

• Modified experimental designs:
– Field experiments: make use of rare opportunities for
random assignment in natural settings
– Natural, or quasi-, experiments: compare differences
in effects of treatments that already exist

Designs for Studying Development
• Longitudinal design: participants are studied
repeatedly, and changes are noted as they get older
• Cohort effects: children born at the same time are
influenced by particular cultural and historical conditions
that may not apply to children developing at other times
• Cross-sectional design: groups of people differing in
age are studied at the same point in time
– Does not provide evidence about change at the
individual level
– Is also subject to cohort effects

Improving Developmental Designs
• Sequential designs: researchers conduct several similar
cross-sectional or longitudinal studies (called sequences)
• Microgenetic design:
– adaptation of the longitudinal approach
– children are presented with a novel task, and their
mastery is tracked over a series of closely spaced
sessions
• Research that combines experimental strategies is
becoming increasingly common

Figure 1.8: Example of a sequential design
Three cohorts, born in 2005 (blue), 2006 (orange), and 2007 (pink), respectively, are followed longitudinally for
three years. Testing the cohorts at overlapping ages enables researchers to check for cohort effects by comparing
participants born in different years when they reach the same age (see diagonals). In a study using this design,
same-age adolescents who were members of different cohorts scored similarly on a questionnaire assessing family
harmony, indicating no cohort effects. By following each cohort for just three years, the investigator could infer a
developmental trend across five years, from ages 11 to 15.
1.8 Ethics in Research on Children
• Ethical concerns are especially complex when children
take part in research
• Children’s research rights:
– Protection from harm
– Informed consent/assent
– Privacy
– Knowledge of results
– Beneficial treatments
• Institutional review boards (IRBs): guide researchers in
ensuring the ethical integrity of research

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Infants and Children

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

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Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

• Social learning theory (Albert Bandura): modeling

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

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Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

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Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

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Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

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Copyright © 2021 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved

This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is

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