� Basically, we study human development in order to understand, explain, predict, and control behavior done by being familiar with theories and their concepts.
� Theory: A set of hypotheses or assumptions about behavior that consist of guesses and speculations that help to answer particular questions. They help organize ideas and limit what we search for.
� Informal and unscientific theories help us understand the behavior of those around us based on personal observation and experiences. This theory helps us make judgments and choices.
� Differences between our theories and formal scientific theories are that formal theories focus on the interactions between both the environment and the individual. These types of theories must be developed so that we have the ability to compare and contrast behavior across cultures and within cultures as well as draw conclusions about both similarities and differences in those cultures.
2. What is Bronfenbrenner's "ecology of human development?" List and discuss Bronfenbrenner's original four nested systems of the ecological environment. Describe the recent theoretical revisions in Bronfenbrenner's theory that focus on the chronosystem.
The ecology of human development in the accommodation between a growing individual and their changing environment immediately surround them, the relationship between these settings and the larger contexts that the settings are a part of.
Microsystem: The interactions between the child and his or her immediate environment such as family or school that results in behaviors such as dependence or interdependence, cooperation or competition. Physical environment also plays a role in this interaction.
Mesosystem This system basically recognizes that the particular Microsystems that a child participates in are interrelated. This system can be made up of one or more Microsystems. Emphasizes the need to focus of multiple influences as a factor of development.
Exosystem: social setting that effects the child but the child might not directly be a part of. These are more on an institutional level such as hospitals
Macrosystem: the most complex of the four systems. It consists of laws, customs, values, all of which play a large role in the child's particular culture. It focuses on consequences among the culture as well.
The most recent development in this theory is the chronosystem. It is the idea of time and how it simultaneously affects the environment and the person. This idea has increasing emphasis on time and timing as they relate to the environment as opposed to the person.
3. Compare Super and Harkness's developmental niche model with Bronfenbrenner's bio-ecological approach. What are the three components of the developmental niche model? What two anthropological concepts regarding culture do Super and Harkness believe to be critical to the understanding of behavior within context?
� The two ideas have many similarities. The emphasis in both theories is on the influence of the environment on the child. Bronfrenbrenner breaks down the environment into specific categories beginning form a narrow perspective of the environment to a wider perspective of all surroundings. Harkness and Super take into account the surrounding environment by they focus on the individual and how they change as the world changes around them. Their theory also takes into account how the "world" on person lives in will be perceived differently than another individual's perception of the same "world".
� Components of the developmental niche include; the physical and social settings or contexts of everyday life, the culturally determined customs of the child care and child rearing, and the psychology of the caretakers or characteristics of the child's parents.
� The two anthropological concepts regarding culture are the immediacy of culture and its integrating nature. These ideas place importance on culture as an outer layer that a child is the center of. The integrating nature of culture focuses on looking for structures that integrate experience and look for "their immediacy in everyday life."
4. List and discuss Piaget's four stages of cognitive development and explain how the major concepts, including scheme, assimilation, accommodation, and adaptation apply to cognitive changes in each stage.
1. Sensorimotor stage: this is when a child begins to understand the world through immediate action/sensation. Coordination of sensory abilities and motor skills are developed at this time. The child's scheme at this time is comprised of mental pictures such as mother, bottle, voice recognition. Assimilation takes place as the parent introduces new things to the child's world such as a pacifier and accommodation is when the child's world changes based on new ideas and information.
2. Preoperational period: Child develops language, use of symbols, and resides in egocentric thinking. The Scheme in this stage is much different than the previous. Their world is more defined and they are beginning to understand simple concepts. The idea of conservation integrates both accommodation and assimilation.
3. Concrete operations: The performance of tasks takes place. Rules of logic guide basic thinking, conservation is developed and children have the ability to interact with accommodation and assimilation. They can interprete what is around them and change aspects of behavior to work within that environment.
4. Formal operational: This stage centers on the time that an individual has the ability to think hypothetically and abstractly. They have the ability to think about more than one way to solve a problem or deal with an issue. In this stage assimilation and accommodation are confronted when the individual adapts thinking to meet the criteria and demands of the world around them, which continuously changes, and begins to formulate new ideas as a result of that change.
5. Compare and contrast Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories of human development and point out how key concepts discussed in each contribute to our understanding of cross-cultural human development.
The differences between Piaget and Vygotsky are huge in the overall look of development. Piaget primarily focused on the idea of the individual as a means for cognitive development that is directed and shaped by the surrounding environment. His theory was based on specific stages that each child passes through thus creating new schemes and continuing to accommodate to and assimilate with the world around them. Vygotsky on the other hand focused on the aspect of socialization and influences of culture as a means for development. He also proposed the idea of the ZPD which describes the level of accomplishment just above what a child can actually accomplish without help. His focus was on cross cultural research.