PSYC 2500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cognitive Development, Observational Learning, Participant Observation

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2500
• Professor: Anne Bowker

Document Summary

Multi-faceted: physical development, cognitive development, social development, biology/genetics. Reasons for studying child development: learning how to be a good parent, choosing social policies, understanding human nature. Sigmund freud: first major theory of child development, unconscious mental factors, early childhood experiences, role of unconscious. Inadequacy of evidence: lack of testability, sexism. Change in behaviour due to individual experience in a specific situation: skinner and operant conditioning. Learn to repeat behaviours which are rewarded and not repeat behaviours which are punished: social learning (bandura) Jean piaget: child is an active participant, series of stages of development, stages are universal and invariant, move through stages to adapt to environment. Describe and explain the developmental changes in all forms of thinking, reasoning and intellectual activity, from birth to adulthood. Bronfenbrenner: microsystems, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, chronosystem. Measurement: a set of rules for assigning numbers to objects, representing quantities of attributes. Research studies measure components of behaviours in children (i. e. empathy, intelligence, etc. : behavioural observations.