PSYC20008 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Disaster, Natural Disaster, Child Development
14 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC20006 - BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 24
3/7 THEMES OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
SIEGLER et al. CHAPTER 16
TODAY
•The sociocultural context
•Individual differences
•Child development research can improve children’s lives
1. SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT
THE FAMILY
•Children develop within a personal context of other people – their family, friends, neighbours,
teachers, classmates, groups and clubs
•We need to understand the environment in which the chid is growing up.
COMMUNITY
•The political and economic landscape will also shape their development
•Example: Belfast, in Northern Ireland
•The Troubles is a period of time from 1968 to 1998 in which political violence escalated in
Northern Ireland
•To date over 3,700 were killed and 40,000 injured in a population of 1.68 million
•The community is divided along sectarian lines: Protestants (Unionists, Loyalists, pro-Royals)
and Catholics (Republicans). Not really a religious battle; about power.
•Kids grow up near these murals on the walls (like what we saw in crim), and it influences their
development of identity and self vs other.
NORTHERN IRELAND
•A 2003 epidemiological study
of a sample of 1700 people in
Northern Ireland found that:
•21% reported that the
Troubles had either “quite
a bit” or “a lot” of impact
on their lives or lives of
their family.
•A 2008 study then looked at a
group of people with chronic
schizophrenia living in the
community and investigated
the impact of the Troubles on
these patients.
•You could live in a bubble and
not be confronted with the
Troubles very often, or be involved very often.
EXPOSURE TO TRAUMA
•Involved with or witnessed bombings, shootings, punishment beatings, hijackings, intimidation
and petrol bombings
•Traumatic events were recorded in 5 categories:
•Crime, general disaster (serious accident, natural disaster), sexual abuse, physical abuse,
Troubles- related trauma
PSYC20006 - BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
FINDINGS
•Patients with a history of Troubles-related trauma (n = 34) had significantly higher levels of
anxiety, depression, dissociative symptoms and a greater number of admissions to hospital
compared with participants with no reported exposure to any trauma (n = 21).
•Patients with SCZ may have less effective strategies for coping with
stress and may have less social support available to them to buffer
the stress effects.
COMMUNITY (CONTINUED)
•Children may also grow up in communities that share different
values, morals, attitudes and beliefs amidst the larger society.
•Community context is very important in terms of how it shapes
the child’s development.
•Children might grow up in a subgroup that is different in general
to the rest of the community (picture is an example of this: Amish
people)
•Values and practices of different cultures can vary substantially.
•These variations can alter the rate and form of development of the
child.
•Some tribes encourage children to walk, others don’t.
•Motor development
•Dependency: Japanese infants tend to have very strong attachment to their mothers.
•Cognitive skills
SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY OF VYGOTSKY
•Cognitive growth occurs in a sociocultural context that influences the form it takes.
•Many of a child’s most noteworthy cognitive skills evolve from social interactions with parents,
teachers, and other more competent associates.
•Intellectual development is closely tied to culture.
•Cognition is inherently sociocultural – affected by the beliefs, values and tools of adaptation
handed to a child via the culture.
FOUR INTER-RELATED LEVELS
•Ontogenetic development refers to development of the individual over his or her lifetime.
•Microgenetic development refers to changes that occur over relatively brief periods of time.
•Eg. A sudden ‘click’ with a mathematical context.
•Phylogenetic development refers to changes over evolutionary time.
•Socio-historical development refers to the changes that have occurred in one’s culture and the
values and norms, and technologies that this history has generated.
CULTURE & INTELLECT
•Vygotsky proposed that infants are born with a few elementary mental functions.
•Attention, sensation, perception, memory
•These are transformed by the culture of the child into new and more sophisticated higher mental
functions.
•The course and content of intellectual growth may not be as universal as Piaget assumed.
•Each culture provides the child with tools of intellectual adaptation, permitting them to use their
basic mental functions more adaptively
•Rote learning vs. typing a knot in a string (socially transmitted memory strategies)
•Subtle differences in culture & language can make measurable differences in task performance...
Document Summary
Today: the sociocultural context, individual differences, child development research can improve children"s lives, sociocultural context. The family: children develop within a personal context of other people their family, friends, neighbours, teachers, classmates, groups and clubs, we need to understand the environment in which the chid is growing up. Community: the political and economic landscape will also shape their development, example: belfast, in northern ireland, the troubles is a period of time from 1968 to 1998 in which political violence escalated in. Northern ireland: to date over 3,700 were killed and 40,000 injured in a population of 1. 68 million, the community is divided along sectarian lines: protestants (unionists, loyalists, pro-royals) and catholics (republicans). Not really a religious battle; about power: kids grow up near these murals on the walls (like what we saw in crim), and it influences their development of identity and self vs other. Northern ireland: a 2003 epidemiological study of a sample of 1700 people in.
