PSYCH 140 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Behaviorism, Blackboard, Epigenetics
Document Summary
Amygdala: an area of the brain that is involved in emotional reactions. There are 3 good reasons to learn about child development: to improve one"s own child-rearing practice. To help society promote the well-being of children in general. Aristotle believed that all knowledge comes from experience and that the mind of an infant is like a blackboard on which nothing has yet been written. Freud"s psychoanalytic theory proposed that biological drives, especially sexual ones are a crucial influence on development. Watson"s behaviorist theory argued that children"s development is determined by environmental factors, especially the rewards and punishments that follow the children"s actions. Nature: biological endowment, the genes we receive from our parents. Nurture: wide range of environments, both physical and social that influence our development, including the womb in which we spend the prenatal period, the homes in which we grow up, the schools that we attend . Genome: each person"s complete set of hereditary information.
