Why are we investigating the development of a child?

How doe we raise children?

The development of a child can raise various questions. A question that most parents have is how they can teach their children how to deal with anger and other negative emotions. Sometimes parents are spanking their children, but this turns out to be counterproductive. However, several effective ways are known to control the anger of a child. One way is to respond sympathetically to children who show negative emotions, so  children be able to cope in a better way with the situation causing the negative emotions. Another way is to help the children look for positive alternatives when they show negative emotions.

Chosing social policies?

Furthermore, the development of a child can raise questions about a responsible social policy, which is one more reasons learn about child development. Research can be done using meta-analysis, a method combining results from independent studies to arrive at conclusions based on all the studies. It can be asked whether it is better to invest in the prevention of developmental problems in children, or to invest in solving developmental problems that already exist in children.

For example, think about the reliability of a  young childs courtroom testimony. It may happen that the judge believes the statement of a child, whereby an innocent person is punished, or vice versa, a guilty person can go free. Research has shown that young children tend to forget details, but that what they say is largely based on the truth. Important is that young children are sensitive to certain questioning techniques, especially when suggestive questions are repeated. Questions asked to young children in a court must be neutral. Also, questions can not be repeated if they have already been answered. These information must be considered to ensure a reliable statement.

How to understad human nature ?

Studying child development  can lead to  better understanding of the nature of human. Child developmental researchers have found methods to observe, describe and explain the development of children at a young age.

An illustration of how science can help to understand human nature comes from studies on how children overcome the effects of abuse, depending on point of time the child got abused. It appears that children who are in an unstable environment for less than 6 months after birth do not suffer from any negative effects later in life. However, if this period lasts longer than 6 months, they may experience problems, even if they are in a stable environment afterwards. Children who live in unstable environments for more than 6 months could suffer, among other, from an atypical social development. Atypical social decelopment originates from abnormal brain activity. For example, reduced activity in the amygdala, a brain area that is involved in emotional reactions.

What were the historical ideas about child development?

What was the view of early philosophers?

Plato stated that self-control and discipline are the goal of good upbringing and education. Plato also believed that children have innate knowledge. Aristotle stated that it is important to take the individual character of a child into account when it comes to child rearing. So, quality of parenting is very

How do nature and nurture play a role?

The first studies on development are trying to answer the question which of the following is more ifluental on the childs development: the genes or the environment. Since the discovery of the DNA, the basic component of heredity, enormous advances have been made in deciphering the genetic code. Researchers have mapped the entire genome, the complete set of genes of an organism. Later studies on development found both, the genes and the environment, as important influences in the development of a child. The genes and the environment interact continuously with each other,  therefore both influence the development of a child.

Which genetic and environmental influences are there?

There are three elements that are important in the development of a child: genotype, phenotype and the environment. Genotype is the inherited genetic material of an an individual. Phenotype is the observable expression of the genotype, namely the body characteristics and behavior. The environment is an all-encompassing aspect of an individual and his / her surrounding aspects, unlike the genes.

These three elements are involved in five relationships that are fundamental to the development of every child: 

1:   The parents genetic contribution to the child's genotype.

Chromosomes are molecules of the DNA containing genetic information. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is made of molecules containing all biochemical instructions involved in the formation and functioning of an organism. These instructions are packaged in genes , sections of chromosomes that are the basic heredity unit of all living beings. People normally have 46 chromosomes, 23 pairs, in each cell nucleus. Except in the germ cells, these only contain 23 chromosomes.   

Every person has one pair of sex chromosomes. Sex chromosomes transmit the genetic information. A man has an X chromosome and a Y chromosome.  A woman possesses two X chromosomes. For this reason, always the father determines the sex of a child. When the man transmits a Y chromosome to the child, it becomes a boy (XY) and when the man passes an X chromosome to the child, it becomes a girl (XX).     

A child shows similarities on the general human level (the child has feet and arms) and on an individual level (the child shares similarities with family members). Different mechanisms ensure the genetic diversity between people. One is mutation. Mutation is a change in the components of the DNA. Another mechanism is crossing. Crossing over is a process where parts of DNA swap from one chromosome to another chromosome. Crossing over promotes the variability between individuals. 

Thousands of disorders have a genetic origin. These can be inherited in different ways:

Dominant-recessive pattern of inheritance: the disorder only occurs when an individual has two recessive alleles of the condition. If a dominant gene causes a disease, the disease always occurs. Often a gene is not responsible for a diesease, but triggers a whole process that leads to certain symptoms.

Polygenetic inheritance: many disorders arise from interactions between multiple inherited genes.

Sex-linked inheritance: some conditions are on the X chromosome, so men are more likely to have the disease because women have an extra X chromosome.

Chromosomal anomalies: if there are errors in the

How does perceptual development work?

There is a difference between perception and sensation. Sensation is the processing of basic information from the external world, through sensory receptors in the sensory organs and the brain. Perception is a process focusing on organizing and interpreting sensory information. 

How does visual development work?

In the last years,the visual capacity of babies was underestimated. Research shows that babies have a greater visual capacity than always believed.Research was done through preferential looking technique and habituation. The preferential looking technique is a method for research of the baby's visual attention, whereby babies are presented with two patterns or two objects at the same time and eventually the pattern/ object is preferred. Habituation is a method of researching the sensory and perceptual development. The baby is repeatedly presented a stimulus until it gets used to it and shows a reduced response. Then a new stimulus is presented. If the reaction of the baby suddenly increases, one can conclude that the baby is capable of differentiating between old and new stimuli.

By using the preferential viewing technique, researchers are able to assess various visual aspects of babies. Visual acuity is the degree of visual discrimination. Normally babies prefer strong visual contrasts, such as black and white. The preference arises through the low contrast sensitivity of babies. Contrast sensitivity is the ability to distinguish between light and dark areas in visual patterns. Babies have low contrast sensitivity because the cones in the eyes are not well developed yet. Cones are light-sensitive neurons, which are concentrated in the fovea of ​​the eye. The fovea is the central area of the eye. The cones of babies capture only 2% of the light entering the fovea, while adults absorb 65% of the light that enters the fovea. The brains of babies respond to a color change to another category, but not to a color change within a certain category.

Babies scan the environment for moving objects, this is called visual scanning. The objects/ people have to move slowly, otherwise babies are quickly distracted. They cannot follow rapid movements because their eye movement are quite jerky. 

Perceptual constancy is the perception of objects constant in size, shape, colors, etc., despite a change of the retinal image of the object. Babies are able to experience perceptual constancy.   

Another crucial perceptual skill is object segregation. Object segregation is the perception of boundaries between the objects. Through the movement of different objects together, babies can see if there is only object or multiple objects. As babies grow older, they use general knowledge of the world to distinguish objects.

Optical expansion occurs when an object comes closer and appears to be bigger and bigger.Babies are sensitive to this cue at an early stage. When this phenomenon is presented, the babies start to blink their eyes. Another phenomenon is binocular inequality: the difference between the retinal image of an object in one eye and the retinal image of an object in the other eye. Resulting in two different signals send to the brain. The closer we are to the objects we view, the greater the inequality in location between the two images of both eyes. The further the objects away, the more the

Concepts are general ideas or terms that can be used to group objects, situations, qualities, or abstractions, that let them become equal in a certain way.

How can the who and what be understandable?

How to divide objects into categories? 

Children use categorical hierarchy to distinguish between categories. The categories are classified into set-subset relation, such as animal-dog-poodle. Small children especially use perceptual categorization: grouping objects that are similar. It can already be seen in children from 3 to 4 months old. As children grow older, they also understand hierarchical and causal relationships between categories. The categorical hierarchies’ children are forming often contain three levels: the superordinate level (for example a plant), the subordinate level (for example an oak tree), and the basic level (for example, a tree). Children mainly learn the basic level first, after the parents help them to gain understanding of the higher levels. In an older age, children establish causal relationships between objects through explanations or the idea of cause and consequences between objects. This helps the child understand the categories and form more categories. 

How to understand others and ourselves?

The naïve psychology focuses on the level of intellect needed to understand other people and themselves. To understand human behavior, three concepts are used: desire, beliefs and actions. There are three remarkable features of these concepts: First, the concepts refer to invisible mental states. Second, the concepts are linked to a cause-effect relationship and third, these concepts develop early in life. 

At the end of the firs, and beginning of the second year of life, babies learn to understand the following four aspects: 

1. understanding other people's intentions,
2. self-awareness, a child understands that it is an individual,  
3. to focus joint attention on an object or situation 
4. intersubjectivity.

At a later age, children develop theory of mind (TOM). TOM is the understanding of how the mind works and how it affects behavior. It develops strongly between the third and fifth year of life. An important component of TOM is understanding relationships between desire and actions. Children develop this at the end of their first year of life. It is well developed when children are two years old. In their third year of life, children develop a certain understanding of the relationship between beliefs and actions. At the same time, the concept is limited. It can be seen through children’s false-belief problems. These are tasks that test whether a child understands that other people behave in accordance with their own beliefs, even though the child knows that these beliefs are incorrect. It shows if children understand that actions of other people are determined by their thoughts in their heads rather than by the objective truth about the situation. Most children have this understanding when they are about five years old.

Nativists believe in the so-called theory of mind module (TOMM). This

What are psychoanalytic theories?

Psychoanalytic theories have had the greatest impact on western cultures. These theories have had a major influence on the way of thinking about personality and social developments. This is mainly due to Sigmund Freud. Erik Erikson later accounted on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Both theories are based on biological ripening. According to Freud, the behavior is motivated by the need to satisfy basic drifts. The resulting instincts and motives usually arise unconsciously. According to Erikson, development is motivated by crises in the development related to age and biological maturation. The individual must successfully complete all crises in order to achieve healthy development. The theories of Freud and Erikson are stage theories.

How does Freud see the development?

Freud is the founder of the psychoanalytic theory. His theory about the development of children is also called the theory of psychosexual development. He thought that even very young children have a sexual nature that motivates their behavior and influences their relationships with other people. Children go through five phases of universal developments. According to Freud, psychic energy focuses on different erogenous zones. Psychic energy consists of the biological urges that feed the behavior, the thoughts and the feelings. The erogenous zones are areas of the body that are erotically sensitive, such as the mouth, the anus, and the genitals. According to Freud, every child encounters conflict with his erogenous zones. He states that their success or failure of this conflict, influences the development in their lives.

The psychic energy consists of the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the first and the most primitive of the three personality structures. The id is unconscious and is driven by the gratification principle, the goal of finding maximum satisfaction as quickly as possible. During the first year of life, the baby is in the first phase of psychosexual development, the oral stage, in which the primary source of satisfaction and pleasure comes from oral activities. Later in the first year of life develops the second personality structure, the ego. The ego is the rational, logical, problem-solving component of the personality. During the second year of life, the child gains more control over body processes such as urination and at that point the child enters the second phase: the anal stage, in which the primary source of satisfaction and pleasure comes from defacation. The third phase is the phallic stage, which is present from the age of 3 to 6 years. In the phallic stage sexual pleasure is focused on the genitals. This is how the superego develops, the third personality structure driven by the consciousness and internalization of moral standards. Internalization is the adoption the rules, beliefs, and standards of the parents for acceptable and unacceptable behavior as one's own.     

Boys and Girls experience the development of the superego in different ways. The boys experience the so-called Oedipus Complex. This is a term by Freud, which describes a period in which boys have a sexual desire for their mother and see their father

Children develop certain forms of attachment. Attachment is an emotional bond with a specific person, who remains constant over time. Often there it is spoken about attachment in the form of the relationship between child and caregiver, but attachment can also occur in adulthood.

Which attachment styles are there?

What is the attachment theory?

The attachment theory was devised by Bowlby. This theory states that children have a biological predisposition to attach themselves to the caregivers, in order to increase the chance of their own survival. Later, Ainsworth expanded and tested Bowlby's ideas. According to Freud, children's development is shaped by their early relationship with their mothers. Bowlby agreed, but changed the idea of ​​Freud's "needy, dependent infant" into a "competence - motivated child" that uses his / her caregiver as a secure base. This secure base is based on the idea that the presence of a trusted caregiver can provide a child with a sense of security and makes it possible for the child to explore the environment.

The attachment process has an innate basis, but its development and quality depend on the experiences of the child with the caregivers. According to Bowlby, the development of attachment takes place via the four phases:

• Pre-attachment takes place from birth to the age of 6 weeks. Here babies produce innate signals, such as crying. The baby is reassured by the comforting action of the caregiver.
• Attachment in the making takes place between the age of 6 weeks and 6-8 months. Babies react to familiar people, for example by smiling, laughing out loud, or babbling. They calm down more quickly and build up a sense of trust in the caregivers. 
• Clear -cut attachment takes place between the ages of 6-8 months and 1.5 years. In this phase babies actively seek contact with the caregiver. Babies greet the mother when she appears and could experience stress when she leaves: separation anxiety.
• Reciprocal relationships: take place from the age of 1.5/ 2 years. Children develop cognitive and language abilities to understand the feelings, goals and motives of their parents. This creates a mutual relationship in which the child plays an active role. In this phase, the separation anxiety becomes less.

The outcome of the phases is an emotional bond between child and caregiver(s). The child develops an internal working model of attachment. This is the mental representation the child has of himself, of the attachment figure and of relationships in general. This mental representation has developed through experiences with the caregiver(s). The internal working model guides the interactions of the child with other people, even when the child grows older. 

How is the attachment security measured?

Ainsworth investigated in both the USA and Uganda, the mother-child relationship during infants' explorations and separations

In the text below, Peers are people of about the same age and status who are not relatives.

Why and how to form friendships?

Relationships with peers contribute to the development of a child. Piaget stated that children are more open and spontaneous in expressing certain ideas and beliefs towards peers than towards their parents or other adults. Vygotsky stated that children learn new skills and develop their cognitive abilities through relationships with peers. A friend is a person with whom an individual has an intimate, mutual, positive relationship.   

How do children choose friends?

Children usually become friends with peers who are pleasant to deal with and who behave pro-socially towards others. Another determining factor is equality of interests and behavior. For young children, proximity is an important factor, this becomes less important with age. Most adolescents report that school is the most common setting in which they spend time with their close friends. Another important factor is gender, girls are mostly friends with girls and boys with boys. In addition, there is also a tendency for children to be friends with others from their own racial or ethnic group, although this influences on a lesser extent.

Cultural differences influence how children approach their peers to form relationships. In addition, cultural differences influence the roles of peers and families as sources of support and companionship. In some cultures, children rely much more on family than on peers for support. Cultures also differ in the number of hours that children spend with their peers. Finally, differences were found in how children from different cultures interact with their peers. There are also similarities in cultures, like the fact that aggression is more acceptable for boys than for girls.

How do early friendships look like?

Really young children already show preferences for certain children. If children are 3-4 years old, they can form and keep friendships. While the amount of cooperation and positive interactions between young friends is greater than between non-friends, the amount of conflict is also greater. This is probably due to the fact that they spend more time together.

How does friendship change over time?

As children grow older their friendships change in terms of intimacy. Children between 6 and 8 years, mostly define their friends in terms of who they play the most. From this age until adolescence, things like sociability, equality, acceptance and trust become more important. In adolescence, individuals focus more on a few close friends. These changes are probably a consequence of the ever-increasing ability to take the perspective of others and of changes in reasoning about friendship.

What is the role of technology?

Social technologies, such as social media, increasingly play a role in interactions between children and their peers.

Sex is the difference between genetic female (XX) and genetic male (XY). Gender is the social assignment or self-categorization as a woman or man (or neither). Gender-typed refers to behavior that is expected for a person's gender. Cross-gender typed refers to behavior that is expected for the different gender than the person has. Gender typing refers to the process of gender socialization.  

The theoretical approaches regarding gender development?

Which biological influences are there?

There are different theories that focus on biological influences on gender.

According to the evolutionary psychological theory, gender differences are created by the reproductive benefits and helped humans survive during the course of evolution. Boys often play physical games. This would have reproductive benefits for later, namely in finding friends, hunting and competitions between men. Girls like to maintain social relationships and care for other people. The reproductive benefits for later would be for taking care of a baby. 

The biosocial theory focuses more on the physical differences between man and woman, which both have social and behavioral consequences. For example, men are physically stronger and larger, while women have more nurturing capacities, such as breast milk for a baby.

Neuroscience focuses on how hormones, brain structure and brain functions are related to gender differences in development. The hormone androgen is more common in men and exists to a lesser extent in women. The hormone influences physical development and functioning from the prenatal period onward. Hormones can have organizing or activating influences on the nervous system. The organizing influences arise when certain sex hormones influence the brain differentiation and the organization during prenatal development and in puberty. An activating influence hdescribes the fluctuations in the level of the sex hormone influence the simultaneous activation of certain parts of the brain and corresponding behavioral reactions. Men and women show small differences in brain structure. However, this has no effect on the results of cognitive performance.

Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis that can be found in the DSM-5 referring to children who experience suffering, because they cannot identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Transgenders are individuals who do not identify with their gender at birth, they may prefer to identify with the opposite gender, with both sexes or with no gender. Cisgender refers to individuals who identify with the gender they have been assigned at birth. When women produce too much androgen during the prenatal period, this can lead to congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). This is a condition involving the formation of male or partly masculinized genitalia. Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is a condition during prenatal development in which androgen receptors do not function well in men, which hinders the formation of male external genitals. The child is then born with female external genitals.

Which cognitive influences are there?

 Self-socialization is the process during development where the cognitions of children lead to the perception

Why and how is child development studied? - BulletPoint 1

• Plato argued that self-control for children and discipline for parents are the purpose of good parenting and education. He also believed that knowledge is innate. Aristotle stressed the importance of the individual character of children. Hereby, the quality of parenting is important. Aristotle believed that knowledge is acquired through experiences. Locke argued that parents should raise their children with discipline.
• Nature is our biological heritage, the genes we receive from our parents, the innate aspects of a human being. Nurture is the environment, both physical and social, influencing our development, the acquired aspects of a human being. Nature and nurture interact. The genome (the complete set of hereditary information) influences behavior and experiences, but behavior and experiences also influence the genome. This discovery has given rise to the epigenetics, the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment. Evidence for the enduring epigenetic impact of early experiences and behaviors comes from research on methylation, a biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes. To conclude, both genes and environment are important in development.
• A continuous development is the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small steps, quantity is important. A discontinuous development is the idea that changes with age include sudden large steps, quality is important. According to the stage theories, development consists of four large steps which are discontinuous, and age related. One of the best-known stage theories is Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the development of thinking and reasoning. This theory holds that children go through four stages of cognitive growth, each characterized by distinct intellectual abilities and ways of understanding the world. However, many researchers have concluded that developmental changes are mostly gradual.
• In the development of effortful attention, brain activity, genes and learning experiences play a role. Effortful attention involves voluntary control of one's emotions and thoughts. Difficulty in exerting effortful attention is associated with different behavioral problems.
• The scientific method is an approach to test beliefs that involves choosing a question, formulating a hypothesis (testable predictions of the presence or absence of phenomena or relations), testing the hypothesis, and drawing a conclusion. Different measures exist to test hypotheses. These measures need to possess reliability, validity and relevance to the hypothesis. Reliability is the degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent. Interrater reliability is the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behavior. Test-retest reliability is the degree of similarity of a participant's performance on two or more occasions. Validity is the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure. Internal validity is the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing. External validity is the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research.

What does prenatal development look like? – BulletPoint 2

• Gametes

Exam Tickets

• Genotype and phenotype can be separated because in genotype the word 'gene' is present. Phenotype begins with the 'ph' = physical: external characteristics.
• A tip to keep crystallized and fluid intelligence apart: a crystal needs a long time to form, so crystallized intelligence is the form of intelligence that gradually gets higher and higher during life, because more and more knowledge is being collected. On the other hand, fluid intelligence has a peak during the 20th year of life, which you can remember when you are around your 20th life year in your most optimal physical state, in which (among other things) your sporting performances will be at its peak. In addition, fluid intelligence requires a certain degree of flexibility because it is about understanding relationships between concepts that are new. Flexibility also decreases with aging.
• Chapter 16 is one of the most important chapters from the entire book. Here the core principles from the book are treated once again; in addition, connections are made between all the different subjects. This chapter is therefore important to understand and know well.

• Three reasons why the development of children is studied: (1) to help parents learn how to deal with negative emotions of their children, (2) to develop a responsible policy and (3) to better understand the nature of people.
• A tip for separating and visualizing reliability and validity. Imagine yourself a dartboard, you want to get your darts in the bullseye. Imagine, you have ten arrows ('measurements') and you throw them all in the bull's eye: in the statistics your research would now be both valid (because you have thrown them all into the bullseye) and are reliable (all measurements sit at the same point). However, suppose that the measurements are all at the top left of the dartboard, your measurement is reliable (repetition provides the same result), but not valid (not in the rose).
• The development process of the fertilized egg consists of four processes, to be remembered with the letters M-Cm-Cd-A: M itose: cell division, this takes place from 12 hours after fertilization; Celmigration: the displacement of newly formed cells away from their original location; Celdifferentiation: all embryonic stem cells can develop in any type of cell, these cells will now specialize in structure and function; Apoptose: cell killing, here, for example, the membranes between fingers and toes are removed.
• REM and non-REM sleep can be distinguished by remembering that the letters REM represent Rapid Eye Movement, REM sleep is characterized by rapid eye movements and is thus an active sleep phase, while the non-REM sleep is not.
• Piagets theory consists of the following stages, which are to remember with S - PO - CO - FO: the phase sensorimotoric, preoperational phase, the concrete operational phase, and the formal operational phase.
• To summarize how the different theories, describe learning of the child: Piaget's theory sees a child