Week 2 · Readings & resources

Week 2 — Readings & Resources

Child Development Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 2 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 54–69 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

① Stages as turning points: Erikson and the toddler who says "me do it"

Chapter 2, Section “Erikson's psychosocial stages: one crisis at a time” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Theories and Erikson's stages” · Remember: each stage is a turning point with approximate ages, never a deadline a child can miss.

Erikson's 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development Explained — Sprouts — a short animated walk through all eight stages; watch to about 2:40, through the first five, the ones this course covers, and stop before the adult stages and the closing sponsor message. Notice that its age brackets, such as two to four for autonomy, differ from the chapter's approximate periods, which is itself a reminder that stage ages are rough. One slip to catch: it calls the mother the key to infancy, where the course speaks of caregivers in many family forms. This builds on Week 1's periods of childhood, which were also conventions with fuzzy edges. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development — Simply Psychology — a longer reference page; read the first five stages and the critical evaluation, which questions the theory's age brackets and fixed order and names its cultural limits. Its brackets differ from the chapter's approximate periods (it gives 18 months to 3 years for autonomy, for example), so read them as one source's approximations, and skip the parenting tips. (reading, 10–15 min)
Emotional Development: 2 Year Olds — American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) — the pediatricians' family page on two-year-olds who want to explore and do things themselves, and on praising self-help tasks such as dressing or feeding; read it beside the chapter's record R4 and ask which theory each piece of advice leans on. Use it while working through the Week-2 module overview. (reading, 5–8 min)

② Learning from what follows and from what you watch

Chapter 2, Section “Social learning: children learn by watching” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Behaviorism and social learning” · Remember: reinforcement makes a behavior more likely, punishment less likely, and children also learn by watching before any reward.

How to Train a Brain: Crash Course Psychology #11 — CrashCourse — watch from about 4:20 to 9:35: behaviorism's focus on observable behavior, Watson's controversial fear-conditioning experiment with a young child, and Skinner's operant conditioning, where behavior followed by reinforcement increases and behavior followed by punishment decreases. The opening on classical conditioning and the later part on reinforcement schedules go beyond this week. It quotes a later book of Watson's; this course dates behaviorism's start to his 1913 paper. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
The Bobo Beatdown: Crash Course Psychology #12 — CrashCourse — the Bobo doll setup told as a story, why the result challenged a learning-only-by-consequences view, and modeling and imitation; the parts on cognitive maps and mirror neurons are extra, and the video itself calls mirror-neuron research still new. It credits the study to Bandura's lab; the published 1961 report is by Bandura, Ross, and Ross. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
Social Learning Theory: Bandura's Bobo Beatdown Experiments — Sprouts — a quick animated summary of the Bobo doll studies and their later variations, including what happened when the adult model was punished. Treat its comparisons between boys and girls as the video's own figures, which this course does not use, and note that it reports a public debate about violent films and games without settling it; the course treats the study as evidence for learning by watching, not proof about one show. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
Bandura and Bobo — Association for Psychological Science, Observer — a short piece from a scientific society's magazine on why the 1961 study mattered: it challenged the behaviorist view that rewards and punishments are needed for learning. It mentions the long public debate about television violence without drawing a causal conclusion. (reading, 3–5 min)

③ Timing: imprinting and sensitive periods

Chapter 2, Section “Ethology: imprinting and sensitive periods” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Ethology and timing” · Remember: a critical period is a fixed window, while a sensitive period is a time of special readiness after which learning is still possible.

Imprinting-Animal Behavior — MooMooMath and Science — a two-minute explainer on how newly hatched birds learn to follow a moving figure, mixing instinct with learning, and why it helps them stay close and recognize their own kind. The automatic captions garble the scientist's name; it is Konrad Lorenz. Treat its specific hours and year as the video's own figures. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
Sensitive Periods in Brain Development — Children's Minnesota — a children's hospital psychologist explains sensitive periods as times when the young brain is especially ready to be shaped by experience, using early language as the example and stressing live interaction with a caregiver. The study it describes is the speaker's own account, not a figure this course keys. Stop here before research designs; next week takes up how studies like that one are built. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Behaviorism — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — read section 1, What is Behaviorism?, for how the approach insists on studying observable behavior, and skim the parts on Watson and Skinner; skip the philosophy-of-mind sections. (reading, 10–15 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com