Major Developmental Issues

Unit One: The First Year of Life

• Infant reflexes; Social development during the first year of life including the social smile and onset of fear of strangers.

Unit Two: The Formation of Attachments

• Imprinting; Attachment (Bowlby) including cross-cultural studies; Harlow and surrogate mothers; Relevance of animal studies in child development.

Unit Three: Consequences of Breakdowns in Attachments

• Maternal deprivation; Implications of theories of attachment and maternal deprivation when placing children with surrogates.

Unit Four: The Home, Family and School

• Group vs family care and studies of effects of maternal employment and father absent families; Importance of peers and siblings.

Unit Five: Basic Principles of Research Methods

• Nature and purpose of research, what is an experiment, supporting and refuting hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, control of variables, standardised instructions and procedures, methods of sampling, design of investigations.

Unit Six: The Development of Visual Perception

• Introduction to the nature/nurture debate on visual perception; Fantz - form perception; Gibson and Walk - depth perception; how the physiology of the human visual system helps us judge depth and distance; Bower - size constancy; animal experiments on early sensory deprivation.

Unit Seven: The Development of Language and Communication

• Development of non-verbal communication in humans, gestures etc; comparisons with non-human primates; outline of language development in humans; including naturalistic observational in humans; including naturalistic observational studies and criticisms of these; Innate and reinforcement theories.

Unit Eight: Intelligence and Intelligence Testing

• Definitions of intelligence; mental age and IQ; Tests of intelligence; Advantages and disadvantages of IQ testing.

Unit Nine: Nature/Nurture Debate in the Study of Intelligence

• Twins studies; stability of IQ; Are early experiences decisive for later development?

Unit Ten: Data Collection and Interpretation

• Tables and histograms, correlation and scattergrams; Mean; Range; Drawing conclusions from data.

The Child as an Individual

Unit Eleven: How Children Think

• Piaget's theory of cognitive development; including studies of egocentrism and criticisms of his work.

Unit Twelve: Learning Theory - How Behaviour is Acquired

• Learning and conditioning - classical conditioning and operant conditioning; including explanations of extinction, discrimination and generalisation; positive and negative reinforcement; Social Learning Theory and criticisms.

Unit Thirteen: Freud's Psychodynamic Theory - An Alternative Approach

• Personality structure, 5 stage theory, criticisms.

Unit Fourteen: Moral Development

• Definition in psychological terms; investigation of moral behaviour, moral feelings and moral judgement.

Unit Fifteen: The Development of Gender Roles

• Sex-typing; Gender identity; Biological, social and cultural theories.

Unit Sixteen: Aggression in Children

• Biological basis of aggression; Psychological theory and aggression; Aggression as a learned response;
  Imitation of aggression; viewing violence; Punishment for aggression; sex differences in aggression.

Unit Seventeen: Methods Used in Child Development Research

• Observational, Survey, Correlational, Experimental - advantages and disadvantages.

Unit Eighteen: Play

• The importance of play to learning;
  Piaget's theory of play; forms of play;
  Relevance of psychological theories to pre-school education;Play and learning in nursery schools; Play therapy.

Unit Nineteen: Learning in School

• Programmed learning and its relationship to learning theory - advantages and disadvantages; Discovery learning and its effectiveness.

Unit Twenty: Behaviour Modification

• Explanation and examples; Relationship to learning theory; Points systems, Advantages and disadvantages

Definition of Counselling

• Counselling
• Introduction
• Clarification
• Thoughts
• Feelings
• Decision-making
• Coping
• Disturbing
• Deal with feelings positively
• Opportunity to explore living more resourcefully
• Helps client find own answers
• Take charge of their lives
• Make necessary changes
• Self-discovery
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Personal experience between two people
• Commitment
• Time
• Effort
• Conditioned response
• Patter of behaviour
• Result of external demands
• Established by approval of presenting people
• A block
• Unrecognised action/course of behaviour
• Prevents pursuit of desired action
• Prevents recognition of clients feelings
• Reflecting
• Repetition to client of a thought or feeling he voiced
• Client recognises true feelings
• Indicates acceptance by counsellor
• Supervisor
• Counselling colleague
• Assess and evaluate own work with a client
• Resolves feelings and difficulties aroused
• Active listening skills
• 90% of session
• Acquired skill
• Hard work
• Non-judgemental
• Attentive
• Caring
• Patience
• Concentration
• Powers of recall
• Content
• Expression
• Energy
• Focus attention to verbal expressions
• Confronting inconsistencies
• Specific questioning
• Concrete statements
• Interest
• Sharing
• Prepares for empathic response
• Gather information
• Related to problem
• Future goals
• Clues
• Emotional state
• Spiritual functioning
• Asses energy levels
• Tone of voice
• Low energy level
• Flat monotonous tone
• High energy level
• Excited
• Euphoric
• Themes are heard and registered
• Recurring themes surface
• Listening with inner ear
• Unspoken matters
• Recurring patterns
• Honest
• Responding in a manner which reflects your feelings
• Gracious
• Congruent
• Interviewing skills
• Initial interview is critical
• Extreme care
• Establish bonds between client and counsellor
• Create structure
• Clarifying
• Paraphrasing
• Guiding
• Use of all senses
• Evaluate and lead the process
• Maintain eye contact
• Avoid distracting behaviour
• Bouncing knees
• Tapping fingers
• Tasks
• Empathy
• Emotional state
• Situation
• Gather information
• Create a mirror
• Information on other supportive facilities
• Motivational books
• Ego surrogate
• Information on adverse effects
• Mind
• Body
• Positive thinking
• Caring with confrontation
• Provide hope

 The Counselling Relationship

• Empathy
• Malignancy
• Over-dependency
• Unresolved transference or sexual relationships
• Frightened
• Incompetent
• Poor training
• Professional distance
• Acceptance facilitates change
• Skilful reflective listening
• Ambivalence is normal
• Discrepancy between present behaviour and goals motivates change
• Client should present arguments for change
• Counterproductive
• Defending breeds defensiveness
• Resistance - a signal to change strategies
• Labelling is unnecessary
• Allow elaboration in response
• Reflect back
• Frequently and accurately
• Non-mechanical manner
• Supportive statements
• Understanding appreciation
• Link information
• Reinforce
• Help client hear self-motivational statements

 The Development Cycle

• Maturity levels and growth patterns
• Reading difficulties
• Discuss
• Bullying
• ‘Double-periods’
• Ready for the schoolroom
• General intelligence
• Adaptability
• Well-rounded action system
• Blood vessels
• Heart
• Lungs
• Gastrointestinal tract
• Genitourinary organs
• Sphincters
• Mucous
• Sweat glands
• Ductless glands of internal secretion
• Skin
• Mucous membranes
• Joint surfaces
• Tendons
• Highly specialised organs of sense
• Muscular system
• Memory
• Speech
• Imagery
• Symbolism
• Volition
• Nerves and nerve tracts
• Woven/Interwoven
• Feltwork of branching fibres
• Creating new patterns while it grows.
• Ocular focus
• Arm approach
• Manual grasp
• Finger grasp
• Release

Parent, Child, Teacher Relationships

• Language arts
• Five year old is well balanced
• Sciences
• Personal-social participation
• Considerateness
• Humour
• Philosophy of growth

 The Complexities of Growth

• Organisms
• Tensional behaviours
• Temper tantrums
• Intrinsic - self phase
• Social - reference phase
• Reciprocal self - and - social phase

Introduction – Psychological Development

• Instinct
• Two basic energies determine behaviour:
• Drive
• Biological need for
• Concept of drive

Conflict and Stress

• Conflict
• Areas of abnormality
• Deviation from statistical norms
• Deviation from social norms
• Maladaptive behaviour
• Efficient perceptions of reality
• Self-knowledge
• Exercise voluntary control over behaviour
• Self-esteem and acceptance
• Ability to form affectionate relationships
• Productivity

Behaviour Therapies

• Systematic desensitisation
• Self-regulation
• Inhibitory personality
• Placebo effect
• ‘Hello-goodbye’ effect

Grief and Bereavement

• Bereavement counselling
• Facing conflicts
• Stress-specific reactions
• Typically normal
• Chronic
• Inhibited
• Delayed
• Non-specific and mixed reactions
• Typically normal grief

Exploring Grief and Letting Go

• Pang or Wave
• Other symptoms
• Symptoms of grief
• Causes
• Other experiences
• Bereavement on the male client
• Four phases:
• Two additional ‘recovery phases’
• The Person Centred Approach to counselling the male client involves:
• Feelings
• Result

Working With Children

• Psychiatric research
• Handling apprehension
• Behavioural changes
• Physical symptoms
• Bereavement reactions
• Rights of the bereaved

What is Co-dependency?

• Co-dependents
• ‘The Family of Origin’
• Confining relationship

Transformation

• Two levels of acceptance
• Intimacy
• Four dimensions of intimacy:
• Elements of recovery
• Behavioural
• Action
• Cognitive
• Reconstruction
• Natural planes of existence
• Dysfunctional families have combinations of:
• Co-dependents and ‘Emotional Expression’
• Cognitive reconstruction
• Affirmations
• Spiritual awareness

Using Newly-Found Skills

• Inventory of positive aspects
• The old and usual: Your client can choose to:
• The new and fulfilling: Your client can choose to:
• Communication
• Privacy
• Compromise
• Rigidity – transformed to - Flexibility
• Silence – transformed to - Expression
• Denial – transformed to - Acceptance
• Isolation – transformed to – Intimacy

Dysfunctional Families Explained

• Dysfunction within the family unit
• Stage 1
• Stage 2
• Stage 3
• Stage 4
• Stage 5
• Stage 6
• Stage 7
• Every dysfunctional family follows the rules
• Flexibility
• Expression
• Acceptance
• Intimacy

Recovery – The Therapeutic Process

• Resists attendance
• Reason to be present
• Initial interview without key-member
• Compassionate observer self

Moving on – Emotional Intimacy

• Four dimensions of intimacy
• Emotional
• Physical
• Mental
• Spiritual
• Verbalisation

Psychological Study of Education

• Learning
• Respondent behaviour
• Direct response to a stimulus
• Operant conditioning of autonomic responses
• To control
• Punishment

Memory

• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Emotional factors in forgetting
• Improving long-term memory
• Successful retrieval
• Organisation
• Context

The Use of Language

• Producing sentences
• Understanding sentences
• Knowledge children acquire
• Operating principles
• Principles
• Language confusion
• Sources
• Solution
• Memory
• Environment
• Detrimental aspects
• Reading readiness
• A child should have

Child Bullying and Child Abuse

• Bullying

Setting Up a Practice

• Setting up a practice
• Assessing a business opportunity
• Step 1: Critical success factors
• Step 2: Checking Viability
• Step 3: Financial Viability

The Development Cycle

• The Development Cycle
• Puberty
• School
• We judge too much by the superficial evidence of ‘success’ or ‘failure’
• Development does not advance in a straight line
• Developmental trends and fluctuations are primarily the expressions of the ancient process of evolution
• The age of five
• The age of six
• The age of seven
• The age of eight
• The age of nine
• Age of ten
• Adolescence
• Appraisal
• External pressures are modulated to
• Then reared through guidance based on sympathetic understanding

The Growing Mind

• The psychology of the child, which includes all his behaviour, is inseparably bound up with his nervous system, and indeed with his entire organism
• We cannot separate ‘the mind’ from the total child
• The child is, and should be seen as a unit - the nervous system makes him so
• Nervous system consists of multi-billions of neurons which connect every sensitive and every moving part of the whole organism
• Gradients of growth
• Prehensile - the taking hold and grasping of objects
• Gradient of Prehensile Behaviour:
• Basic mechanism of all psychological development
• Each new pattern grows out of, and yet retains a connection with, the old pattern
• Gradient begins with the simple pattern of looking and with increasing maturity one refinement follows another in lawful sequence
• All school skills have a similar pre-history of growth, they are always subject to the principle of developmental readiness
• Reading Behaviour
• Purpose of growth gradients
• Acquisitive Behaviour
• Maturation and acculturation will prove to hold in all fields of behaviour
• Primary growth gradients hold the key to the wisest methods of guidance and education
• Gradients are not applied to ascertain a mental age, or to measure the child in an arbitrary way
• Growth gradients tell us something about the psychological differences between boys and girls
• Absolutism leads to authoritarianism and this in turn leads to blindness

Parent, Child, Teacher Relationships

• As a child matures he gradually makes distinctions and learns to distinguish between what is animate and what is inanimate
• Parent and child relationships of family life are of determining importance in the early patterning of personality
• Parent/child relationships are based on heredity, or kinship
• Teacher/child relationships are based on authority conferred by the educational system
• Psychological reinforcement
• The teacher observes the child as a member of a social group and this brings to light characteristics that the home cannot reveal
• Three common components of enlightened parent/child and teacher/child relationships
• Considerateness
• Sense of humour
• Philosophy of growth
• Adjustment
• Classroom behaviour
• Three culture areas
• Language Arts – 5 years old
• Sciences – 5 years old
• Personal-social participation – 5 years old

The Growing Child

• Patterning of behaviour begins
• Physiological functions
• Appears unsteady, unstable and his thresholds of reaction are low and inconstant
• Breathing and body temperature can often be perceived to be irregular
• Satisfactions, needs, interests and drives are determined by status of his entire organism
• Acquisition of speech involves a recombination of feeding and breathing behaviour patterns
• Cerebra-spinal nervous system
• Growth sequences
• Structuralisation of Behaviour
• The corpus of behaviour
• Neuro-muscular system
• Eye-hand-body coordination
• Tonic-neck-reflex
• Temperament types which are associated with three body types
• Viscerotoni
• Somatotonic
• Cerebrotonic

The Complexity of Growth

• Child’s organism consists of a collection of organ systems
• Incidence of accidents is determined by three sets of interacting factors
• Site of injury may be affected by the child’s body build and motor characteristics
• Exposure to risk is largely determined by their immature traits and lack of parental foresight
• Parents and teachers are inclined to place too much reliance on admonition and explanation
• If a child is unduly afraid, he or she cannot be duly cautious - that is prudent and wary
• Organism of the child rarely remains in a smooth equilibrium for any extended period
• Even in the absence of accidents and illness the child is subject to tensions which express themselves outwardly in different forms of tensional activity
• Temper tantrums
• Tensional behaviour is at a relatively low ebb at five years
• Tensions involve
• Self-preservation - the first law of life
• Self-expansion – the second law of life
• Tempers are displayed
• Whatever his mode of expression, he behaves as he does because he has organised his personal-social reactions in a given manner
• Anger and aggression
• We must look to the period from five to ten years of age for the developmental beginnings of possibly long-term, problematic behaviour and in this area the psychology of childhood anger takes on impressive import

Ethical Sense

• Adults
• Dispositions and potentialities which undergo progressive organisation
• Three phases fundamental dynamic
• Self-inhibition and Social disapproval
• Approbation and disapprobation
• Self-assertive conduct
• The mind
• Primitive shamefacedness
• Disgrace gesture
• Undesirable behaviour
• Obedience
• Ethical development between years from five to ten is clearly traced in expanding concepts of Good and Bad
• The 6th year
• The 7th year
• The 8th and 9th year
• The 10th year
• Emotional expression arises from a complex state of tensions