Child Development Reference - Vol 2

Social Issues Reference

Child Custody and Support - Historical Overview Of Custody Law, Factors In Determining The Child's Best Interest, The Number Of Children In Custody Allocations

Child custody refers to the legal and physical rights and responsibilities parents have with respect to their child. Legal child custody refers to the right to make all major decisions regarding the child's health, welfare, education, and religious training. Physical custody is the right to the daily care and control of the child. The parents' marital status in relation to each other…

1 minute read

Children With Special Health Care Needs

Children with special health care needs include those with chronic illnesses (i.e., asthma, sickle cell anemia, diabetes), physical disabilities (i.e., cerebral palsy, spina bifida), and developmental/emotional disabilities (i.e., autism, Down syndrome). As advances in health care have allowed medically fragile and/or disabled children to live longer, attention has focused on understanding their u…

1 minute read

Children'S Rights

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the clearest and most comprehensive expression of what the world community wants for its children. It arose in the 1970s as a reaction to the weakening global humanitarian response to children. The United Nations unanimously endorsed the convention on November 20, 1989 and it became international law in 1990. The UNCRC is an inter…

1 minute read

Chronic Illness

Chronic illnesses among children traditionally have been defined based on a specific diagnosis. More recently, chronic conditions are being defined along several dimensions: they have a biological, psychological, or cognitive basis; have lasted or are likely to last at least one year; and result in limitations of function, activities, or social roles, and/or dependence on medications, special diet…

1 minute read

Chronological Age

Chronological age refers to the period that has elapsed beginning with an individual's birth and extending to any given point in time. Chronological age is used in research and in test norm development as a measure to group individuals. Developmental research looks for age-related differences or behavior changes as a function of age. Using chronological age provides a means to roughly assur…

1 minute read

Circumcision

Circumcision in the United States refers to the removal of foreskin from the glans (head) of the penis. This is a surgical procedure, primarily performed in neonates. Developmentally, the foreskin becomes retractable by three years of age. Neonatal circumcision is safe, requiring only locally applied anesthesia. Commonly used devices are the Gomco and Mogen clamps or Plastibell. These methods invo…

1 minute read

Class Size

Many studies have linked smaller class sizes in schools to increased student achievement, yet this finding remains controversial. Other researchers have found no such link, or have noted small and largely meaningless effects. When increases in achievement are found, however, they tend to be centered on the early primary grades and students who are disabled or high-risk. In one example, Project ST…

1 minute read

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a basic behavioral process in which stimuli come to evoke responses: When an object or event (such as food) that already evokes a behavior (such as salivation) is associated with one that does not (such as a bell), the latter may evoke a reaction similar to that of the first object or event. When the stimuli are no longer associated, the conditioning weakens (called extin…

1 minute read

Cleft Lip/Cleft Palate

A cleft lip is a birth defect that occurs when the lip and the front part of the dental arch fail to form and fuse correctly. Cleft palate is the failure of the back part of the hard or soft palate to form. Approximately 1 in 800 newborns has a cleft lip or palate. Every day in the United States, fourteen babies are born with cleft lip (with or without cleft palate) and seven babies are born with …

1 minute read

Cliques

The term cliques refers to clusters of children and adolescents whose mutual friendships form a cohesive network. By middle childhood, clique boundaries can be defined by identifying groups of children who all reciprocally and mutually nominate one another as close friends. Cliques can play an important role in psychological adjustment. The presence of reciprocal friendships is associated with ad…

1 minute read

Cognitive Development - Overview Of Cognitive Development, Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development, Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

It does not take an expert to observe the many magnificent changes that take place in a human being from the time of birth through early childhood and beyond. Parents lovingly mark these changes in baby books and with photographs. Other relatives remark at the new abilities that babies seem to acquire daily. While parents may have just one or a few children to observe, developmental psychologists …

9 minute read

Cognitive Style - Leveling And Sharpening, Field-dependence And Field-independence, Reflectivity And Impulsivity

How can several people look at one common object and describe it correctly, yet in so many different ways? Why is it that people exhibit the same variability when experiencing identical events? Psychologists believe that individual biological and psychological differences affect the ways in which people perceive events, objects, sights, sounds, and feelings. Thus, when several people encounter an …

1 minute read

Cohort

A cohort refers to a group of people that were born at the same period of time. They are likely to share some common experiences such as social, cultural, and historical influences that are unique to them. Examples of well-known cohorts include "baby boomers" and "Generation Xers." Cohort effects arise when changes in performance are due circumstances specific to a part…

less than 1 minute read

Comorbidity

Comorbidity is a medical term derived from the root word "morbidity." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, morbidity refers to "the quality or condition of being diseased or ill; a pathological state or symptom; a morbid characteristic or idea" as well as "prevalence of disease; the extent or degree of prevalence of disease in a district." In refere…

less than 1 minute read

Computer Literacy

The term "computer literacy" refers to the ability to use the tools associated with a personal computer appropriate to one's age. Because technology is an ever- evolving field, definitions of computer literacy vary with time; what was considered literate in the 1980s became obsolete by the 1990s, and in the future expectations will change and expand even further. It is not use…

1 minute read

Computers - Possible Negative Effects Of Computer Use, Possible Positive Effects Of Computer Use, Developmentally Appropriate Uses Of Computers

Computers are ubiquitous. As computers have become less expensive they have been purchased by more and more families for their homes. Because of this, many children begin to use computers at an early age. Even if computers are not available in their home, children almost certainly will begin to come into contact with computers in school. Some adults are amazed by how readily young children use com…

3 minute read

Concrete Operational Thinking

Concrete operational thinking is the third stage in French psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Children typically reach this stage, which is characterized by logical reasoning about real situations without being influenced by changes in appearances, at the age of seven or eight. Whereas three-year-olds believe a ball of dough becomes larger if it is flattened, eight-…

1 minute read

Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder is a pattern of behavior in which individuals consistently disregard and violate the rights of others. The specific types of behaviors are varied and can include physical violence, repeated lying, damaging property, and stealing. Conduct disorder is believed to have roots in family interaction early in development, although its full expression may not occur until adolescence. For …

1 minute read

Conformity

Conformity is a change in beliefs or behaviors when youth yield to real or imagined social pressure. Conformity is affected by developmental level, situations, and persons involved. Young children tend to conform to their parents' rules and expectations. As children become older, they become more autonomous from their parents, and also become more peer-oriented. Conformance to parents in ne…

less than 1 minute read

Congenital Deformities

Congenital deformities include a broad range of physical abnormalities existing from birth, although some, such as scoliosis, may not manifest until later in life. The most common are craniofacial deformities, such as cleft lip or palate, and skeletal deformities, such as clubfoot or spina bifida. Certain chromosomal disorders such as Fragile X syndrome and Down syndrome also have associated physi…

1 minute read

Conservation

Conservation refers to an understanding that a quantity (i.e., liquid, number, mass) remains constant despite arbitrary transformations. In the classic Piagetian conservation of liquid task, children are presented with two identical containers holding equal amounts of liquid. Liquid from one of the containers changes in appearance by being poured into a taller, narrower container. The children a…

less than 1 minute read

Contraception

Contraception refers to the use of hormones, surgery, physical devices, chemicals, fertility awareness, or breast-feeding to prevent pregnancy. Contraceptive methods and the prevalence of use vary substantially around the world. Modern methods predominate in North America, led by female sterilization (34% of all use), oral contraceptive pills (21%), male sterilization (20%), and condoms (14%). Fem…

1 minute read

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning refers to a variety of instructional strategies in which students work in small, usually mixed-ability, groups and are expected to help one another learn academic material or complete projects together. There are many forms of cooperative learning that are often used in elementary schools. Students may simply be asked to work together, without any particular structure or goal.…

2 minute read

Co-Parenting

Co-parenting includes the ways parents support or undermine their partner's parenting and how parents manage their relationship in the presence of their children, whether in intact or divorced families. The study of co-parenting addresses the question of how interactions between family members affect children's development. Focus is on the mutual investment and engagement of parents …

1 minute read

Birthweight - Low Birthweight, High Birthweight

Birthweight is an important indicator of the approximate maturity of a newborn infant and the ability of that newborn infant to survive. The birthweight of an infant is dependent on the duration of the pregnancy and its rate of fetal growth. Infants who are delivered earlier than normal are expected to be of smaller birthweight than average. Additionally, infants who had slower or faster fetal gro…

2 minute read

Black English

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also referred to as Black English, African American English, and Ebonics, is a rule-governed variety of English spoken by some African Americans in the United States. Most linguists agree that the dialect has its roots in the Creole language developed as a result of contact between West Coast Africans and European traders. Creole, brought by slaves to No…

1 minute read

Blended Families

Although approximately 50 percent of marriages end in divorce in the United States, living in a family headed by a single parent is usually only a temporary situation for most parents and children. The majority of divorced men and women will eventually remarry. In fact, roughly one-third of divorced people will re-marry within the first year after their divorce. As a result of these multiple marri…

less than 1 minute read

John Bowlby (1907-1990)

John Bowlby was an English psychiatrist who developed attachment theory, one of the century's most influential theories of personality development and social relationships. Born in London, England, Bowl-by graduated from Cambridge University in 1928 and began his professional training at the British Psychoanalytic Institute as a child psychiatrist. He was trained in the neo-Freudian object-…

2 minute read

T. Berry Brazelton (1918-)

Born in Waco, Texas, T. Berry Brazelton is among the most prominent and trusted pediatricians of the twentieth century. Following his graduation from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1943, Brazelton trained in pediatrics, with five additional years of training in child psychiatry. After extensive study in the paradigm of pathological development, Brazelton complet…

2 minute read

Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale

T. Berry Brazelton, a pediatrician and researcher, published the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale (BNAS) in the early 1970s. The scale enables parents, health care professionals, and researchers to understand a newborn's language, as well as individual strengths and needs in depth. The BNAS assesses various behaviors of infants until two months of age and takes about thirty minutes to a…

1 minute read

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-)

Urie Bronfenbrenner was born in 1917 in Moscow. At the age of six he arrived in the United States with his family. His father, a physician and neuropathologist, worked at a state institution in New York. He can recall his father's concern with the overreliance on a single IQ testing to place children in institutions for the mentally retarded. Russian immigrant psychologists also visited his…

2 minute read

Jerome Bruner (1915-)

Jerome Bruner was born October 15, 1915 in New York, the youngest of four children in a "nominally observant" Jewish family. He was a leading voice in the cognitive revolution that overtook psychology in the 1960s, ending a half-century of domination by behaviorism. As a professor of psychology at Harvard and as Director, with George Miller, of the Center for Cognitive Studies, he wa…

3 minute read

Bullying

Bullying involves teasing, insulting, tormenting, intimidating, or being verbally or physically aggressive toward a victim. Bullying behavior may also be indirect, taking the form of rumors, social exclusion, nasty notes, and other insidious means. Bullying is typically repetitive in nature, with bullies targeting victims repeatedly. This behavior tends to be sustained over a long period of time&#…

1 minute read

James Cattell (1860-1944)

Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1860, J. McKeen Cattell was the fourth president of the American Psychological Association (1896) and the first psychologist elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1901. He was the founder of the related areas of differential psychology and psychometrics. Cattell was the son of the president of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. As a…

4 minute read

Child Abuse - Definitions Of Child Maltreatment, Incidence Of Child Maltreatment, Developmental Perspectives Of Child Maltreatment

The world in which many children live is punctuated by violent act after violent act. In many situations children become victims of this violence. Some children have been the direct targets of an act of violence, while other children have been indirectly affected through witnessing such acts; it is often difficult to distinguish between these two cases based on outward appearance alone. There are …

8 minute read