Child Development Courses
Theories of Development
Semester: Fall
“There’s nothing so practical as a good theory,” suggested Kurt Lewin almost 100 years ago. Since then, the competing theoretical models of Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Vygotsky, and others have shaped the field of developmental psychology and have been used by parents and educators to determine child-care practice and education. In this course, we will study the classic theories—psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and cognitive-developmental—as they were originally formulated and in light of subsequent critiques and revisions. We will also consider new directions in theorizing development, which respond to recent challenges from gender, cultural, and poststructuralist criticism. Questions we will consider include: Are there patterns in our emotional, thinking or social lives that can be seen as universal, or are these always culture-specific? Can life experiences be conceptualized in a series of stages? How else can we understand change over time? We will use theoretical perspectives as lenses through which to view different aspects of experience: the origins of wishes and desires, early parent-child attachments, intersubjectivity in the emergence of self, symbolic and imaginative thinking, and problem solving. For conference work, students will be encouraged to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or in another setting with children, as one goal of the course is to bridge theory and practice.
Seniors and graduate students only.
Psychology of Moral Development
Semester: Fall
For thousands of years, philosophers have struggled with the questions surrounding the issue of morality. Over the past hundred years, psychologists have joined the fray. While many theories exist, a unifying theme centers on the notion that childhood is the crucible in which morality is formed and forged. In this course, we will explore the major theories dealing with three aspects of the development of morality: moral thought, or reasoning (e.g., Piaget, Kohlberg); moral feelings (psychoanalytic approaches, including Freud); and moral actions, or behavior (behaviorism, social-learning theory). In addition, we will investigate the possible relations among these three aspects of moral development. Throughout the course, we will connect moral development theory to the results of research investigations into this crucial aspect of child development. Conference work may include direct experience with children or adolescents either in the form of detailed observations or direct interaction (interviews, etc.).
Personality Development
Semester: Fall
A century ago, Sigmund Freud postulated a complex theory of the development of the person. While some aspects of his theory have come into question, many of the basic principles of psychoanalytic theory have become part of our common culture and worldview. This course will center on reading and discussion of the work of key contributors to psychoanalytic developmental theory since Freud. We will trace the evolution of what Pine has called the “four psychologies of psychoanalysis”—drive, ego, object, and self-psychologies—and consider the issues they raise about children’s development into individuals with unique personalities within broad, shared developmental patterns in a given culture. Readings will include the work of Anna Freud, Erik Erikson, Margaret Mahler, Daniel Stern, Steven Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, and George Vaillant. Throughout the semester, we will return to such fundamental themes as the complex interaction of nature and nurture, the unanswered questions about the development of personal style, and the cultural dimensions of personality development. Fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or other appropriate setting is required, although conference projects may center on aspects of that experience or not, depending on the individual student’s interest.
Sophomores and above with previous background in psychology, preferably including some developmental psychology and/or work with children.
Art & Visual Perception
Semester: Fall
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.”
—John Berger
Psychologists have long been interested in measuring and explaining the phenomena of visual perception. In this course, we will study and reproduce some of the experimental investigations of seeing and the theoretical positions that they support. Our journey will begin with the myriad of visual illusions that have intrigued psychologists and physiologists since the late 19th century.We will engage in a hands-on exploration of these visual illusions and create our own versions of eye-and-brain tricking images. We will also identify their use in works of visual art from a range of periods. The next stop on our psychological travels will be the apparent motion effects that captured the attention of Gestalt psychologists. We will explore the connections between the distinctive theoretical approach of Gestalt psychology and the contemporaneous Bauhaus movement in art, design, and architecture. We will then move on to a consideration of the representation of visual space: In the company of contemporary psychologist Michael Morgan, we will ask how the three-dimensional world is represented in “the space between our ears.” In this section of the course, we will explore the artistic uses of three-dimensional stereoscopic and kinetic images. The spatial exploration section will give us the opportunity to study the artistic development and use of perspective in two-dimensional images. Throughout our visual journey, we will seek connections between perceptual phenomena and what is known about the brain processing of visual information. This is a course for people who enjoy reflecting on why we see things as we do. It should hold particular interest for students of film and the visual arts who are curious about scientific explanations of the phenomena that they explore in their art.
Theories of the Creative Process
Semester: Fall
The creative process is paradoxical. It involves freedom and spontaneity but also disciplinary expertise and hard work. In this class, we look at how various thinkers conceptualize the creative process—chiefly in the arts but in other domains, as well. We see how various psychological theorists describe the process, its source, its motivation, its roots in a particular domain or skill, its cultural context, and its developmental history in the life of the individual. Among the thinkers we consider are Freud, Jung, Arnheim, Franklin, and Gardner. Different theorists emphasize different aspects of the process. In particular, we see how some thinkers emphasize hard work and expert knowledge as essential features, while others emphasize the need for the psychic freedom to “let it happen” and speculate on what emerges when the creative person “lets go.” Still others identify cultural context or biological factors as critical. To concretize theoretical approaches, we look at how various ideas can contribute to understanding specific creative people and their work. In particular, we consider works written by or about Picasso, Woolf, Welty, and some contemporary artists and writers. Though creativity is most frequently explored in individuals, we also consider group improvisation in music and theatre. Some conference projects in the past have involved interviewing people engaged in creative work; others consisted of library studies centering on the life and work of a particular person. Some students chose to do fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center as part of a consideration of some aspect of creative activity in young children.
Sophomores and above. Background in college psychology or philosophy is required.
Pathways of Development: Psychopathology and Other Challenges to the Developmental Process
Semester: Spring
This course addresses the multiple factors that play a role in shaping a child’s development. Starting with a consideration of what the terms “normality” and “pathology” may refer to in our culture, we will read about and discuss a variety of situations that illustrate different interactions of inborn, environmental, and experiential influences on developing lives. For example, we will read theory and case material addressing congenital conditions such as deafness and life events such as acute trauma and abuse, as well as the range of less clear-cut circumstances and complex interactions of variables that have an impact on growth and adaptation. We will examine a number of the current conversations and controversies about assessment, diagnosis/labeling, early intervention, use of psychoactive medications, and treatment modalities. Students will be required to engage in fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or elsewhere and may choose to focus conference projects on aspects of that experience.
For students who have taken Personality Development or its equivalent, with permission of the instructor.
Cultural Psychology of Development
Semester: Spring
Cultural psychology is the study of the ways in which individual and culture, subject and object, person and world constitute each other. This course will explore how children and adolescents make meaning of their experiences in the contexts in which they live, assuming that, for all of us, development is an ongoing response to the cultural life around us and that culture is a dynamic process of engagement. We will consider topics such as: cultural practices in families; school and literacy; and formation of gendered, embodied, and racial identities. We will read a combination of psychological, anthropological, and literary texts. Questions to be explored include: How do we understand development in relation to sometimes conflicting cultural values and goals? What are the implications of this cultural perspective for addressing challenges of multicultural education in our country? What can be done to promote the wellbeing and success of those who Lisa Delpit calls “other people’s children,” who continue to be marginalized? Students will have the opportunity to do fieldwork in schools or community settings and to use conference work to bridge reading and practice.
Previous course in psychology or another social science required.
The Feeling Brain
Elizabeth Johnston, Leah Olson
Semester: Spring
The processing of emotion was an enduring concern for early biologists and psychologists. Charles Darwin devoted a monograph to the expression of emotion in men and animals and argued for an evolutionary understanding of emotions as a biological phenomenon. William James considered emotions a key topic in his investigations of the science of mental life. Despite this early interest, emotions were not a major focus in the development of modern cognitive neuroscience. Instead, efforts to understand mental life focused primarily on reason or cognition. Recently, this neglect of emotions has been redressed through the growth of the new interest area of “affective neuroscience.” This integration of psychological and biological approaches has been fueled by an increasing awareness of the function of emotions in mental life and by technological and experimental advances, such as brain imaging, which have allowed the development of sophisticated experimental approaches to the study of emotions. In this course, we will begin with the early history of the investigation of emotions in order to define our terms and then proceed quickly to the new experimental work being developed in both humans and animal models. Some of the questions to be entertained are: What brain systems regulate emotions? How do emotions modulate memories? How are different emotions processed by the brain? How do emotions and reason interact to shape decision-making?
Language Research Seminar
Semester: Spring
“The baby, assailed by eye, ear, nose, skin and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.”
—William James (1890)
The acquisition of our first language is “doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any of us is ever required to perform” (Bloomfield). Yet, this feat was essentially accomplished by the time we were three years old, and we likely have no memory of it. Furthermore, human language fundamentally influences human ecology, culture, and evolution. Thus, many contemporary researchers in the interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics argue that our language abilities are a large part of what makes us uniquely human. Are we in fact the only species with true language? And how would we begin to answer this question? In this course, we will attempt to answer this and other key questions in the broad field of language development through our discussions of both current and contemporary research and theory and the development of new research in this field. Current “hot” research topics include whether bilingual children have better control over what they pay attention to than monolingual children (attention and language); whether language influences thought; whether language acquisition is biologically programmed; and why children learn language better from an adult in person than from the same adult on television. Over the course of the semester, you will have the opportunity to design an independent research project that investigates one of these key questions or another question of interest to you in the broad area of language development. In doing this, you will learn how to outline the rationale for a research project, develop an effective research methodology, collect data, analyze the data, interpret your results, and communicate your findings in a persuasive, yet objective, manner. This course thus serves as an introduction to research methods, with a specific focus on research methods in psycholinguistics, through your own research. Topics will include experimental research design, case studies, observational techniques, survey development, and hypothesis testing. To help you design and implement your own research, we will discuss your conference research projects in class throughout the semester; you will obtain feedback from your colleagues on your questions, methods, analyses of the data, and interpretation of the results. This project could include fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or in another setting with children.
Previous course work in psychology or permission of the instructor is required.
Children’s Friendships
Semester: Spring
Making friends, losing friends, keeping friends. Through the use of psychological and literary texts, we will explore the important functions of friendship for children and adolescents. During this century, psychologists have assumed that adults serve as the major social influence on a child’s developing sense of self and personality, that perhaps only toward adolescence would children’s social relations with peers come to play an important role in their lives. We now know better. In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase in the study of friendships and peer relations throughout childhood, even in toddlerhood. The important psychological benefits of having friends are increasingly recognized. So, too, are the potential problems of its obverse: children who are truly without friends are at greater risk for later social-emotional difficulties. We will explore the writings of major theorists such as Sullivan, Youniss, Selman, and Rubin; read and discuss the recent studies that have observed “friendship in the making”; and examine what friendship means to children and adolescents in their own words. In addition, fieldwork at the Early Childhood Center or elsewhere will be encouraged so that students can have firsthand knowledge of children’s social relations.
Prior course in psychology required.