DURATION 100 hours (study at your own pace, on average taking 4-6 months part time)
COURSE AIM
Develop your knowledge and ability to explain how children’s cognition and personality develop, particularly in the formative years.
COURSE STRUCTURE
There are 12 lessons as follows:
Introduction to Child Psychology
Levels of development, nature or nurture, isolating hereditary characteristics,
Cause versus correlation, continuity versus discontinuity, cross sectional and
Longitudinal studies, Reliability of verbal reports
The Newborn Infant
The Interactionist Approach, Range of Reaction, Niche Picking, Temperament
Stimulus seeking, Emotional Disturbances During Pregnancy
States & Senses of the Infant
Sensory Discrimination, Infant States (sleep, Inactivity, Waking, Crying etc),
Why are Psychologists so concerned with defining and describing these infant states?,
Habituation, Crying, Soothing a Distressed Baby, Sound Discrimination, Smell
and Taste Discrimination, Visual Discrimination, Depth Perception, Oral Sensitivity
Learning
Habituation, Vicarious Learning, Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning,
Reinforcement, The Importance of Learning Control, etc
Emotions and Socialisation
Producing and Recognising Emotional Expression, Smiling, Biological Explanation,
Perceptual Recognition Explanation, The Mother-Child Attachment, Fraudian Approach
Bowlby's Approach, Social Learning Approach, Harlows Approach, The Role of
Cognition in Attachment Formation, Maternal Attachment, Fear, Social Learning,
Perceptual Recognition, Woman's Duel Role as Mothers and Workers, Is Day Care
a Developmental Hazard to Children
Cognitive Development
Developing the ability to reason.
Language Development
Is language learned, or are we genetically programmed with it, The Social Learning
Approach, The Hypothesis testing Approach, Under extending
Intelligence
Measuring Intelligence, Cultural Bias, IQ, Testing Intelligence as a tool.
Socialisation – Part A
Social Cognation -self awareness, -awareness of others as individuals in their own
Right, -the development of empathy, -taking turns, -having a point of view/perspective,
-ability to see something from another persons perspective. Friendships, Social Scripts
Scripts that Pretend Play
Morality
Moral development, Aggression & Altruism, Freuds Approach, Piagets Approach,
Kohlbergs Approach
Sexuality
Freud’s phases (oral phase, anal phase, phallic phase, latent phase, genital phase)
The Acquisition of Gender & Role Identity, Concept of psycho-social development
Socialisation – Part B
The Family Influence, Discipline, Siblings, Family Structures, School Influence, Peer Influence, Acceptance & Rejection, Imitation & Reinforcement.
WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE
Discuss what environmental and social aspects you think are required for the “ideal” environment for a developing child in your country.
Genetic and environmental factors operate together in influencing the child's personality development" Discuss the above statement.
Name and describe one personality characteristic which may be genetically determined. What evidence supports the possibility that it may be hereditary?
Genetic and environmental factors operate together in influencing the child's personality development"Discuss the above statement.
Name and describe one personality characteristic which may be genetically determined.
What evidence supports the possibility that it may be hereditary?
Name the kind of learning in which a stimulus which usually produces an unconditioned response is manipulated to produce a conditioned response. Give an example of this kind of learning.
Discuss exactly how you would use operant conditioning to encourage a child to socialise.
Use the perceptual recognition approach to explain smiling and fear in infants.
How are Freud’s, Harlow’s and Bowlby’s explanations of the formation of mother-child attachments different?
Which do you think is more credible and why?
Explain reflection-impulsivity, and its significance in cognitive development.
Explain the strengths and weakness of social learning theory in explaining language acquisition.
"Intelligence is overall genetically determined". Do you agree or disagree? Why?
