Ch. 10 Middle Childhood (5-12 yrs)

Question 1

Coregulation

Answer 1

When parents exercise general oversight while letting children take charge of moment by moment decision making – a form of age-related AUTONOMY (Freedom).

Question 2

Mastery-Oriented Attributions vs Learned Helplessness

Answer 2

Attributions are the term we use for the causes of behavior.

MASTERY-ORIENTED ATTRIBUTIONS are when we credit both successes AND failures to ABILITY.

Says that SUCCESS comes from EFFORT, and failure from a lack of effort. This means that the INDIVIDUAL is in CONTROL of their SUCCESS.

Mastery-Oriented Attributions = GOOD!

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS, however, is when the individual sees only failures as being a result of their ability, while successes are a matter of some external factor, like luck.

Learned Helplessness = BAD

Question 3

Peer Acceptance

Answer 3

Refers to how well liked a child is by his peers (agemates).

5 Categories of Peer Acceptance:

1) POPULAR CHILDREN – LIKED by ALL
* POPULAR PROSOCIAL CHILDREN – Well-liked and well-behaved.
* POPULAR ANTISOCIAL CHILDREN – Liked for their socially adept yet belligerent behavior (Ex: “tough” boys, athletes, those skilled at relational aggression to enhance their own status)
2) REJECTED CHILDREN – DISLIKED by ALL
* REJECTED AGGRESSIVE CHILDREN – show high rates of conflict and aggression.
* REJECTED WITHDRAWN CHILDREN – are overly passive and socially awkward – but surprisingly well-adjusted.
3) CONTROVERSIAL CHILDREN – LIKED by MANY, DISLIKED by MANY
4) NEGLECTED CHILDREN – IGNORED – Neither liked nor disliked.
5) AVERAGE CHILDREN – Each get a few votes for ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ but nothing special (about 1/3 of all students)

Question 4

Peer Groups

Answer 4

Group of same-age people who form a unique social structure within a larger society.

Question 5

Peer Victimization

Answer 5

Peer interaction in which certain children become frequent targets of verbal and physical attacks or other forms of abuse

• 20-40% of youths reported cyber-bullying.
• When there is a friend to turn to, bullying usually ends quickly

Question 6

Person Praise vs. Process Praise

Answer 6

PROCESS PRAISE focuses on BEHAVIOR and effort (Ex: “You figured it out!”)

• Teaches child that ABILITIES ARE DEVELOPED through effort = MASTERY ORIENTATION = GOOD!

PERSON PRAISE focuses on TRAITS (ex: “You’re so smart!”)

• Teaches child that abilities are FIXED = LEARNED HELPLESSNESS = BAD

Question 7

Self-care Children

Answer 7

Children who are without adult supervision for some period of time after school – tend to have negative impact on development.

• About 5 million 14-year-olds are in Self-care in the US.
• Self-care actually increases with higher socioeconomic status – perhaps because both parents are working or because they tend to live in nicer neighborhoods and feel safer leaving them alone.

Question 8

Social Comparisons

Answer 8

Comparing yourself to others

Question 9

Ideal Self vs. Real Self

Answer 9

In SOCIAL COMPARISONS, the child forms an IDEAL SELF and compares that to their REAL SELF.

If the difference between the two is big, then the child’s self-esteem will be lowered.

Question 10

Self-Esteem

Answer 10

How one values their worth.

• Preschoolers have very high self-esteem. The entry into middle childhood takes a more realistic look at self-esteem as they begin to focus on social comparisons.
• During childhood, appearance has the strongest affect on self esteem than any other factor

Question 11

Industry Vs Inferiority (Erikson)

Answer 11

This level is where experiences lead children to develop INDUSTRY, a sense of COMPETENCE at useful SKILLS and tasks.

The danger at this stage is INFERIORITY, pessimism of children who lack confidence in their ability to do things well.

Characterized by: realistic self-concept, pride in accomplishment, moral responsibility, and cooperative participation with agemates.

Question 12

Guilt vs. Pride

Answer 12

PRIDE motivates pursuing further challenges.

GUILT motivates fixing wrongdoing and pursuing self-improvement.

• PRIDE combines two types of joy, the joy in ACCOMPLISHMENT, and the joy of RECOGNITION for that accomplishment.

Question 13

Problem-Centered Coping vs. Emotion-Centered Coping

Answer 13

STRATEGIES for MANAGING EMOTIONS:

PROBLEM-CENTERED COPING – Sees the situation as CHANGEABLE, identifies the difficulty, and decides what to do about it

EMOTION-CENTERED COPING – Sees the situation as STATIC, with little that can be done about it. So emotions aimed at controlling distress are used.

Question 14

Emotional Self-Efficacy

Answer 14

A feeling of being in CONTROL OF your EMOTIONAL experience.

Question 15

Recursive thought

Answer 15

SIMULTANEOUSLY seeing the VIEWPOINTS of multiple people (ex. The person lying and the person being lied to).

Question 16

Racial and Ethnic Bias

Answer 16

Those who believe personality traits are FIXED, are MORE prejudiced

Those with OVERLY high self-esteem, are MORE prejudiced.

An environment where people are SORTED into groups fosters MORE Prejudice – even when the sorting is intended to be positive (to encourage diversity interaction or cultural appreciation). ALL of our society sorts people into groups always.

Question 17

Which factors affect gender Identity?

Answer 17

3 Main Factors:

1) GENDER TYPICALITY - Degree to which the child feels SIMILAR to others of the SAME gender
2) GENDER CONTENTEDNESS – Degree to which a child feels COMFORTABLE with his/her gender.
3) PRESSURE TO CONFORM TO GENDER ROLES – Degree to which child feels parents and peers DISAPPROVE of his/her gender traits.

Question 18

Marriage and Divorce

Answer 18

• BLENDED or RECONSTITUTED FAMILIES – families consisting of divorced parents along with newly added step parents and step siblings. Children in these situations fare better than those in divorced non-blended families, but worse than those in. Older children and girls have the toughest time.
• Only Children (meaning no siblings) do not differ from agemates with sibling in self-rated personality traits.
• Increased education is linked to marital stability, limited education is linked to divorce.
• US has one of the highest divorce rates (45%) among developed nations.
• 25% of all U.S. children live in divorced households.
• Children of divorced parents suffer development issues.
• Development for sons are better when the father has custody of the children
• When there is JOINT CUSTODY (divorced parents have equal say and impact on the children’s upbringing) children tend to fare better.
• Divorce rate for second marriages is higher than first marriages.

Question 19

Sexual and Physical Abuse Facts

Answer 19

• 61,000 cases in the US in 2015
• Linked to poverty, household instability
• Children forced to testify in court on these matters can be ‘led’ to false conclusions. However, when properly questioned (using open-ended questions), even 3-year olds have the capacity to recall recent events accurately.