PSYC 2110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Canadian Economics Association
30 May 2018
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PSYC 2110 Lecture 14 Notes
Introduction
Darwin’s Curiosity
• Dari’s uriosity aout hild deelopet steed fro his theory of eolutio.
• Quite simply, he believed that young, untrained infants share many characteristics with
their nonhuman ancestors, and he advanced the (now discredited) idea that the
development of the individual child retraces the entire evolutionary history of the
speies, therey illustratig the deset of a.
• So Darwin and many of his contemporaries viewed the baby biography as a means of
answering questions about our evolutionary past.
• Baby biographies left much to be desired as works of science.
• Differet ay iographers ephasized ery differet aspets of their hildre’s
behaviour, so that different baby biographies were difficult to compare.
• In addition, parents are not entirely objective about their own children, and baby
biographers may also have let their assumptions about the nature of development bias
their oseratios so that they foud hat they ere lookig for.
• Finally, each baby biography was based on a single child—and often the child of a
distinguished individual. Conclusions based on a single case may not hold true for other
children.
• Despite these shortcomings, baby biographies were a step in the right direction.
• The fact that eminent scientists such as Charles Darwin were now writing about
developing children implied that human development was a topic worthy of scientific
scrutiny.
• Deelopet of Childre’s Rights i Caada Issues regardig hildre’s rights eoled to
match the development of the concept of childhood.
• For example, societies had to struggle with defining who was responsible for children—
society or parents—as well as defining how to protect children.
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