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of them wrong. If you are curious about those answers, you can check in the chapter they are in to see why each answer is either true or false. The purpose of these quizzes is not to make you feel bad about what you do or don’t know, but rather to point out that many ideas that we have about child development that sound like “common sense” don’t agree with what research has shown us to be the case. We hope your quiz results will help you remember to pay extra attention to those ideas that contradict your preconceived ideas.
Getting the Most From Your Textbook
We are sure you will want to get the most you can from your textbook. We have already told you why you will want to use the True/False Quiz that begins each chapter to identify important ideas that challenge your initial level of understanding, and the Journeys of Research to understand the evolution of scientific thinking on a given topic. Each chapter begins with a set of Learning Questions that relate to the major topics covered in the chapter. They can act as guideposts that will help focus your learning. When you complete each section of the chapter, you will find a set of review questions that will Check Your Understanding. Use the Knowledge Questions as an opportunity to make sure you have a good understanding of that topic before moving on to the next. Critical Thinking will help you be sure that you can use and apply the information, make inferences based on what you have learned, and integrate new ideas with old ones. When you have finished a chapter, you can review and test yourself on what you have learned by using the Chapter Summary, which repeats the Learning Questions from the beginning of the chapter and summarizes the most relevant information on each topic.
The online resources that accompany this text will also support your learning. The eFlashcards can improve your understanding of key terms and mobile-friendly practice quizzes will let you assess your mastery of the chapter material. The resources also include access to SAGE journal articles that have been selected to expand on concepts from each chapter.
Because we all learn best when we can relate new ideas to our own experiences, we also provide a variety of Active Learning features. Some of these activities are designed to help you feel or think the way a child feels or thinks, or reflect on your own experiences while you were growing up. Others allow you to carry out simple experiments or observations with children and adolescents to see for yourself examples of the behaviors we are describing. In the Interactive eBook for this text, you will find videos for many of the Active Learning features that involve children. These videos can help you prepare for doing the activity yourself with a child, or they will let you see how the activity is done if you aren’t planning to do it yourself. On the Student Companion Website, you will find some activities that will test your understanding of material in the chapter and some that will help you learn how to find the kind of information you will need when you are working with children.
All of these activities are designed to help you become engaged with the material so that you can relate it to your own life and gain new insight into various aspects of development. We hope that all these opportunities help you develop a deeper understanding of the material so that your new knowledge will stay with you far beyond the end of the course you are taking and will influence how you understand and interact with children and adolescents in the future.
Check Your Understanding
Knowledge Questions
1 How does the peer review process assure readers that scientific information is valid and reliable?
2 What does it mean to be a critical thinker?
3 What is perceptual bias and why do we need to guard against it?
Critical Thinking
Which of the features of this textbook do you think will be most helpful to you? Explain why you think these features will be a good fit with your learning style or study habits.
Conclusion
We hope this chapter has made you eager to learn more about child development. Now that you have been introduced to some of the basic concepts in the field of child development, you are ready to explore these concepts more deeply. There are so many interesting and important topics in the pages that follow that it is difficult to pick just a few to highlight, but they include understanding what can be done to help ensure a healthy pregnancy for both mother and infant, developing educational practices that help children across a wide range of abilities to thrive in their classrooms, and learning about the exciting new findings from neuroscience that are helping us understand how the brain works. We look at what promotes healthy development, what threatens it, and the protective factors that can buffer those negative effects. We also discuss how all this unfolds in the increasingly diverse world in which children live.
Chapter Summary
The chapter summary at the end of each chapter is designed in a question/answer format so that you can use it to test yourself on what you have learned. While looking at each question, cover the answer and try to answer it yourself. Then see how the answer corresponds to your own understanding. Self-testing is a very effective way to study and learn.
1.1 Who needs to have a good understanding of child development and why?
With an understanding of child development, parents and family members are better able to understand their children’s needs and abilities at each stage of development, which helps them respond appropriately and provide the amount and type of stimulation that supports their children’s growth and development. Professionals in a variety of careers draw on child development knowledge in their work. Lawmakers and program developers responsible for social policy must understand how policies will affect children and their families. Citizens who are knowledgeable about child development can advocate and vote for policies that promote positive child development.
1.2 What are the domains of child development and some recurring issues in the field?
Physical development consists of the biologically based changes that occur as children grow. Cognitive development consists of the changes that take place in children’s thinking and learning. Social-emotional development consists of the changes that occur in children’s understanding and expression of emotions as well as their ability to interact with other people. Issues in the study of development include debate about the relative contribution of nature and nurture to development, whether change is continuous (quantitative) or discontinuous (qualitative), and how much stability versus change occurs over time. In addition, different developmental pathways may result in the same outcome (equifinality), and the same developmental pathway may result in different outcomes (multifinality). Although we look to make general statements about development, we also consider the effect of individual differences. Developmental psychopathology sees psychological disorders as distortions of normal developmental pathways rather than as illnesses. The positive youth development movement looks for ways to help all children reach their fullest potential. Another debate examines whether children play an active role in their own development or are passive recipients of external influences.
1.3 What are the contexts for child development?
The contexts for development include a child’s family, as well as their schools, communities, and culture. Family is the primary context for development for most children, and a family’s socioeconomic status (SES) plays a significant role in the experiences a child will have. Characteristics of the school a child attends and the community in which the child lives affect every aspect of development. Although we see cultural differences in how parents raise their children, parenting in each culture prepares children to be successful in the context of