Neuroscience, Attachment,& Sociocultural

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

• Studies the relationship between brain changes and developing the child’s processing and behavior patterns.
• What transformations in brain systems make it harder for adolescents and adults than for children to acquire a second language?
• Brain is highly plastic during infancy and early childhood

Attachment

• the positive emotional bond that develops between a child and a particular individual
• Konrad Lorenz (1966)
  • Imprinting—behavior that takes place during a critical period and involves attachment to the first moving object that is observed.
  • e.g. goslings whose eggs were raised in an incubator and viewed him immediately after hatching would follow his every movement.
• Harry Harlow’s study on attachment
  • Milk alone wasn’t sufficient to create attachment
  • The more responsive caregivers are to baby’s signals (cry, smile, cling, etc.), the more likely it is that the child will become securely attached.

Sociocultural Theories

• Vygotzky’s Sociocultural Theory—focuses on how culture is transmitted to the next generation.
• Social interaction—cooperative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society
  • Essential for success in a particular culture
  • Children in every culture develop unique strengths
    • Sales abilities with little or no schooling.

Ecological Systems theory

• Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment.
• Microsystem—child’s immediate surroundings
• Mesosystem—child’s immediate settings
  • School, neighborhood, child-care center
• Exosystem—social settings that affect but do not contain the child
  • Community, schools, extended family, etc.
• Macrosystem—consists of cultural values, laws, and resources
  • Affect support received at inner levels