Discussion Questions

  1. Discuss three careers in which knowledge of child development is important.  For each career, discuss what type of knowledge you believe would be important to know.
     
  2. Think about the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains of development.  How do you think each of these have influenced your life? Give at least two examples of each domain during each of the following stages of your life: infancy, toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence.
     
  3. Provide an example of how nature has influenced your life. How similar are you to your parents? What are some differences between you and your parents? Provide an example of how nature and nurture have worked together to influence your life.  What experiences have helped shape who you are today?
     
  4. Provide an example of continuous development in your life.  Provide an example of discontinuous development in your life.
     
  5. The textbook discusses three different patterns of stability or change in aggression.  Think about your experiences and the experiences of people you know.  Provide an example for each of the three patterns introduced in your textbook.
     
  6. Your textbook discusses individual differences in development.  Think about your childhood.  Describe a moment in which you and your siblings remember an event in different ways.  If you are an only child, can you think about an experience where you and a friend or friends remember an event in different ways?  Can you think of an example in which one of you was really upset and the other did not feel that the other should have such a strong reaction and vice versa?
     
  7. Discuss niche-picking.  Give an example of the types of environments you have chosen to explore in your life.
     
  8. In what ways did your family influence your development? Do you have siblings? What aspects of culture did your family pass along?  What about school? Did you go to a small school or a large school? How did individuals at school influence your life?
     
  9. Would you describe your family as being individualistic or collectivistic? Give an example to support your answer.
     
  10. Think about perceptual bias. Give an example in which you or a classmate from a previous class (or a character in a movie or on television) used perceptual bias.