Chapter 10 - Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood Flashcards
Erikson’s Theory: Initiative versus Guilt
in Erikson’s theory, the psychological conflict of early childhood
Want a child to have a healthy sense of initiative, and not be too guilt-ridden
Young children have a new sense of purposefulness and make strides in conscience development
Play as a means through which young children learn about themselves and their social world
Self-understanding
The development of language enables children to talk about their own subjective experiences
Self-concept
Self-esteem
Self-concept
the set of attributes, abilities, attitudes, and values that an individual believes defines who he or she is
Attachment to care giver is important (elaborative reminiscing leads to better autobiographical memory which helps sense of self-concept.)
Foundations of Self-Concept
Preschoolers tend to define themselves in concrete terms, based on physical attributes, abilities, and possessions
• They often understand the meaning of words such as “shy”, but tend not to apply trait labels to themselves
• They can identify their psychological traits in forced-choice paradigms
Self-esteem
Self-esteem - the judgments individuals make about their own worth and the feelings associated with those judgments
Among the most important aspects of self-development because they affect our emotional experiences, future behavior, and long term psychological adjustment.
By age 4, preschoolers already have several self-judgments for different domains
They have difficulty distinguishing between their actual and desired competence, though
The typical high self-esteem of preschoolers seems to be adaptive
• It helps them maintain a sense of initiative during a period of development in which many new skills must be mastered
Emotional competence
Emotional competence - emotional abilities such as
• Emotional understanding
• Emotional self-regulation
• Development of self-conscious emotions and empathy
Understanding Emotion
Being able to talk about feelings
Being able to respond appropriately to others’ emotional signals
cognitive
• Preschoolers refer to causes, consequences, and behavioural signs of emotion
• Preschoolers have some ability to predict future actions of a playmate based on emotional expression
• Preschoolers have difficulty in situations that provide conflicting cues to emotions
• They know that thinking and feeling are connected
social
• Parent who label emotions, explain them with warmth, use more emotional words, prompting of emotional thoughts, frequently agnonage child’s emotions
• Resolving disagreements where they discussed emotions, negotiated and compromised.
• Make believe play
• They may try to alter another’s emotion
Changes in the way preschoolers refer to causes, consequences, and behavioural signs of emotion
They become more accurate and complex in their judgments over time
By age 4 to 5, they correctly judge the causes of many basic emotions
Preschoolers tend to emphasize external factors over internal states in their explanation, but this balance changes with age
Why do preschoolers have difficulty in situations that provide conflicting cues to emotions
As with other tasks, we see centration
Over time, they get better at finding potential explanations to resolve conflicting cues
Parents can scaffold children’s emotional understanding by:
- By labelling emotions in conversations, and talking about their causes
- By acknowledging the preschooler’s emotions
- By talking about diverse emotions
- By talking about feelings and reaching compromises during family conflicts
- By promoting secure attachment, which is related to warmer and more elaborative parent-child narratives
- By encouraging make-believe play with siblings, which is related to increased understanding of emotions
Emotional self-regulation
Emotional self-regulation - the ability to control the expression of emotion
• Also, to some extent, the ability to control the level of an emotion
Increases as children learn strategies for regulation, including verbal strategies that become possible as their language skills develop
Effortful control, especially the ability to inhibit impulses and shift attention, is also very important in managing emotions
Learn from watching parents and verbal guidence
Effortful control in managing emotions
Effortful control, especially the ability to inhibit impulses and shift attention, is also very important in managing emotions
• 3-year-olds who can distract themselves when frustrated tend to be cooperative at school-age
• Effortful control at 3 predicts skill at portraying an emotion that isn’t felt, as well “masks”
Children who experience negative emotions intensely
- Have greater difficulty inhibiting their feelings and shifting attention away from disturbing events
- Are more likely to be anxious and fearful, or to respond with irritation to others’ distress
- Are more likely to react angrily or aggressively when frustrated
- Are more likely to get along poorly with teachers and peers
Self-Conscious Emotions
Self-conscious emotions emerge, and are linked to self-evaluation by age 3
At this age, though, children still depend on adults to indicate what situations merit different self-conscious emotions
More sensitivity to praise or blame and the possibility of such feedback.
Beginning in early childhood intense feelings of shame is associated with feelings of feelings personal inadequacy and maladjustment, withdrawal and depression as well as intense anger and aggression
Guilt when it is appropriate and not accompanied by shame is related to good adjustment. It helps children resist harmful impulses and motivates a child to repair damage
When parents judge a child’s worth based on performance of a task, we often see
- More intense self-conscious emotions
- More shame in failure situations
- More pride after success
When parents focus on effort and strategy, rather than the child’s worth, we see
- More moderate, healthy levels of pride and shame
* Greater persistence at difficult tasks
Among Western children, shame and guilt is associated with
Among Western children, shame is associated with
• Feelings of personal inadequacy
• Maladjustment—withdrawal, depression, and intense anger and aggression toward people who participated in the shame-evoking situation
Guilt is associated with good adjustment if
• It occurs in appropriate circumstances
• Isn’t accompanied by shame
Guilt may help children resist harmful impulses, and to repair damage when they have misbehaved
Prosocial, or altruistic behaviour
Prosocial, or altruistic behaviour - actions that benefit another person without any expected reward for the self
This can be encouraged or discouraged by empathy, depending on how the person experiences it
Preschoolers start to use more words to communicate empathic feelings – indicates more reflective level of empathy.
Empathy can lead to
- Sympathy - feelings of concern or sorrow for another’s plight
- Personal distress (aka self-oriented distress)
A child who is sociable, assertive, and good at regulating emotion is more likely to…
A child who is less skilled at regulating emotion is more likely to…
A child who is sociable, assertive, and good at regulating emotion is more likely to display sympathy and prosocial behaviour
• Helping, sharing, and comforting
A child who is less skilled at regulating emotion is more likely to react with personal distress and to be overwhelmed by these feelings
• Frowning, lip biting, increased heart rate, and a sharp increase in brain-wave activity in the right hemisphere
Three factors that help the development peer relations in early childhood
During early childhood, children tend to become
• More self-aware
• More effective at communicating
• Better at perspective-taking
Types of play
3 step
- Nonsocial activity - unoccupied, onlooker behaviour and solitary play
- Parallel play - a limited form of social participation in which a child plays near other children with similar materials but does not try to influence their behaviour
- Associative play - a form of true social interaction, in which children engage in separate activities but interact by exchanging toys and commenting on one another’s behaviour
And/or
Cooperative play - a type of social interaction in which children orient toward a common goal, such as acting out a make-believe theme or working on a project together
Later steps do not replace earlier ones.
With nonsocial activity in particular, the type of activity is important
Wandering, hovering near peers (without interacting), and functional play involving immature, repetitive motor action, can be cause for concern
• Many parents will then be overprotective and critical, rather than patiently encouraging their children to approach peers
Constructive activities like building, art, puzzles, or reading, are not signs of poor adjustment
Sociodramatic play
An advanced form of coopertave play
Becomes common over preschool years
Supports cognitive, emotional and social development
First Friendships
Preschoolers define friendships differently from older children
• They see a friend as someone you like and spend much time playing with, but don’t necessarily see it as something involving trust and permanence
They are somewhat similar to older children and adults in how they treat, and are affected by friends
• They give and receive more reinforcement with friends
• They play more cooperatively with friends
• They adjust to kindergarten more favourably if they have friends in their class
We see more cooperative participation in classroom activities and more self-directed completion of learning tasks when kindergartners make friends more easily and are accepted by their classmates
• Keep in mind, though, that this is correlational
Social problem solving
Generating and applying strategies that prevent or resolve disagreements, resulting in outcomes that are both acceptable to others and beneficial to the self.
Parental Influences on Early Peer Relations
Direct influences on peer relations
• Arranging informal peer play
• Offering guidance on how to act towards others
Indirect influences on peer relations
• Security of attachment
• Parent-child play
Induction
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Induction - a type of discipline in which an adult helps make the child aware of feelings by pointing out the effects of the child’s misbehaviour on others.
When warm, accepting parents use induction to reason with their children at levels their children can understand, we see greater moral maturity.
Works in 4 ways
- Gives children information about how to behave that they can use in the future
- Encourages empathy and sympathetic concern which motivates pro-social behavior
- Giving children reasons for changing their behavior encourages them to adopt moral standards because those standards make sense.
- May form a script of the negative emotional consequences of harming others
The child’s characteristics also have an impact on teaching empathy and prosocial behaviour
(The Psychoanalytic Perspective)
The child’s characteristics also have an impact
Twin studies suggest a modest genetic contribution to empathy and prosocial behaviour
Temperament
• Requests, suggestions, and explanations work best with anxious, fearful preschoolers
• With fearless, impulsive children, developing a secure attachment, and combining firm correction of misbehaviour with induction works best
teaching empathy and prosocial behaviour
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Induction - a type of discipline in which an adult helps make the child aware of feelings by pointing out the effects of the child’s misbehaviour on others.
Temperament (goodness of fit)
• Requests, suggestions, and explanations work best with anxious, fearful preschoolers
• With fearless, impulsive children, developing a secure attachment, and combining firm correction of misbehaviour with induction works best
Close parent child bond
Inducing empathy-based guilt by explaining to a child that he/she is causing someone else distress can often be helpful
In addition to stopping harmful actions, appropriate levels of guilt can motivate children to attempt to repair damage they’ve caused to others
Social Learning Theory
teaching empathy and prosocial behaviour
One of the best ways to foster prosocial behaviour in children is for adults to model it
Reinforcement for prosocial behaviour can be effective if it involves praise rather than tangible rewards
Most effective at fostering prosocial behaviour when the model
(Social Learning Theory)
- is someone who has been warm and responsive with the child
- is someone the child respects, often due to competence and power
- displays actions and words that coincide
Why harsh punishment tends to be ineffective, and in fact damaging
(Social Learning Theory)
- Physical punishment models aggression
- Harshly treated children tend to feel angry, resentful, and personally threatened, which promotes personal distress over sympathy
- Frequently-punished children learn to avoid the punishing adult, who no longer has opportunities to teach them prosocial behaviour
- Physical punishment is correlated with abuse, and can transfer from one generation to the next
alternatives to harsh and/or punishment
Social Learning Theory
There are alternatives to harsh and/or punishment
• Time out - a form of mild punishment in which children are removed from the immediate setting until they are ready to act appropriately
• Withdrawal of privileges, such as television time
• Other technique is to ignore a child’s bad behaviour (when possible), while rewarding incompatible good behaviour
When punishment is used, it’s most effective if
Social Learning Theory
- It’s used consistently
- The parent-child relationship is a warm one
- Explanation as to why a behaviour is wrong are provided
IF parents
THEN children
(Social Learning Theory)
It’s also useful if parents
• Build a mutually respectful bond with their children
• Let them know ahead of time how to act
• Praise mature behaviour
Then, we’re more likely to see children • Express empathy after transgressions • Behave responsibly • Play fairly in games • Consider others’ welfare
The Cognitive-Developmental Perspective
Contrary to Piaget
Although Piaget believed preschoolers judge acts more by the consequences than the intentions, this doesn’t seem to be the case
• As long as intentions are made very clear, they judge those with bad intentions more harshly than those with good intentions
Also contrary to Piaget’s model of moral development, preschoolers can distinguish among
• Moral imperatives – protects rights and welfare
• Social conventions – customs determined by social consensus
• Matters of personal choice – up to the individual
Tend to reason rigidly – making judgments based on salient features and consequences while neglecting other informatrion
Social experience also seems to have a great impact on developing empathy and pro-social behavior
- Disputes with siblings allow preschoolers to work out ideas about justice and fairness
- Watching adults handle rule violations and discuss moral issues provides information
- Having adults talk to them about fighting, honesty, and ownership, tell stories with moral implications, encourage prosocial behaviour, and gently stimulate the child to think about a situation can be helpful
aggression
2 purposes
- Proactive aggression
- Reactive aggression
Three types
- Physical (direct or indirect)
- Verbal (always direct)
- Relational (direct or indirect)
Proactive aggression
Or
Instrumental aggression
Carried out with a purpose in mind that extends beyond simply harming the victim.
Reactive aggression
Or
Hostile aggression
is primarily intended to cause harm.
Gender typing
Gender typing - any association of objects, activities, roles, or traits with one sex or the other in ways that conform to cultural stereotypes
Gender-Stereotyped Beliefs and Behaviours
As early as 18 months, children begin linking “masculine” items with males
“feminine” items take a little longer, though this is culturally dependent
Before they can even label their own sex consistently
Preschoolers associate toys, articles of clothing, tools, household items, games, occupations, colours, and behaviours with either girls or boys
Age 2 can use gender labeling words correctly
Preschoolers’ gender stereotypes can be quite rigid
• They may believe that a boy “can’t” wear barrettes in his hair
• They often display beliefs that gender-typed behaviours, objects, etc. are what makes a person either male or female
Gender identity
an image of oneself as relatively masculine or feminine in characteristics
Gender identity is a good predictor of psychological adjustment
• “Masculine” and androgynous people tend to have higher self-esteem than “feminine” people
Androgyny
the gender identity held by individuals who score high on both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine personality characteristics
How does gender identity emerge?
According to social learning theory, gender-typed behaviours precede self-perceptions
Cognitive-developmental theory claims self-perceptions come first
Parental conversations that lead to gender ideas
- Mothers to daughters: supportive statements, encourage participation in household tasks, direct play activities, provide help, refer to emotion
Refer to gender when unnecessary.
Gender constancy
Gender constancy - the understanding that sex is biologically based, remaining the same over time even if clothing, hairstyle, and play activities change This develops gradually • First we see gender labelling • Then gender stability • Then gender consistency
Cognitive immaturity not social inexperience is responceble for preschoolers difficulty with the constancy of sex.
Emergence of gender identity according to social learning theory
- Behavior comes before self-perception
- First acquire gender-typed responses through modeling and reinforcement
- Later organize theses behaviors into gender linked ideas about themselves.
Emergence of gender identity according to cognitive-development
Self-perception comes before gender linked behavior
Forms gender constancy (appearance-reality problem) (3 steps)
Gender schema theory
Gender schema theory - an information-processing approach to gender typing that explains how environmental pressures and children’s cognitions work together to shape gender-role development
• Children see gender-stereotyped references and behaviours in others
• They begin organizing their experiences in gender schemas, or categories based on gender
• As soon as they can label their own gender, their self-perceptions become gender-typed
• They begin paying selective attention to activities, toys, etc. that they believe to be pertinent for their gender
• Gender-schematic child (behavior result of ideas of gender)
• Gender-aschematic child (behavior rarely based on ideas about gender)
• Gender-salience filter (what fits within a gender identity)
The effects of gender schemas can be so strong that
- Children will choose to play with toys labelled as for their sex, even if the toys labelled as for the other sex are more attractive
- Children will often assume their own preferences (e.g., food preferences) apply to their entire gender
- Children often distort memories of seeing “gender-inconsistent” behaviour in others
Adults can reduce stereotyping by
- Limiting traditional gender roles in their own behaviour
- Providing nontraditional alternatives for children
- Ensuring that children spend time in mixed-gender play activities in the classroom, and in both adult-structured and unstructured activities
- Avoiding language that conveys gender stereotypes
- Keeping children from media presentations that convey gender stereotypes
- Parents and teachers can then help by pointing out exceptions
- Arranging for children to see adults in nontraditional careers, for instance
Child-rearing styles
Child-rearing styles - combinations of parenting behaviours that occur over a wide range of situations, creating an enduring child-rearing climate
The three major features that are consistently considered important are
• Acceptance and involvement
• Control
• Autonomy granting
What Makes Authoritative Child Rearing Effective?
Recall that this is correlational
• Maybe the children’s good behaviour is the root of the positive child-rearing style, rather than vice versa
• But longitudinal research suggests that it is largely the parents’ behaviour influencing child outcomes
• Consider what’s going on in authoritative child rearing
Consider what’s going on in authoritative child rearing
- Parents are modelling caring concern, and usually confident, self-controlled behaviour
- Rules are established in a way that appears fair and reasonable, not arbitrary
- Parents match demands and autonomy granting to children’s abilities, and foster high self-esteem by showing they believe their children to be competent
- Acceptance, involvement, and rational control are known to be a powerful source of resilience
Maltreatment includes
Physical abuse (20%) Sexual abuse (10%) Neglect (60%) Emotional abuse (10%)
Pernts comit 80% of abuse
Mothers engage in more neglect
Fathers engage in more sexual abuse
Physical and emotional abuse is equaly common among mothers and fathers
Infants and preschoolers are at higher risk for neglect
School age are high risk for the other three
Consequences of maltreatment
Impair the development of emotional self-regulation, empathy, sympathy, self-concept, social skills, and academic motivation.
Overtime they show serious adjustment problems including depression, aggressive behavior, peer difficulties, substance abuse, delinquency and violent crime. Central nervous system damage blunts children’s normal physiological response to stress.
Hostile cycles
Preventing child maltreatment
Aim prevention and families, communities, and society as a whole.
- Teaching parents
- Teaching high schoolers
- Improving economic conditions
- Family social services
- Easing parental stress through social supports
- A trusted relationship with other adults reduce social isolation
- Home visitation
- Cognitive training to revaluate negative appraisals of their children
Otitis media
- Ear infection
- Can cause delayed language development in children 6m to 3y
- Risk Factors: Crowded living conditions, child care, cigarette smoke, other pollutants
- Prevented: frequent screening, control in child care settings, verbaly stimulating adult/child interactions, vaccines
autism
Deficits is 3 core areas of functioning: 1. limited ability to engage in nonverbal social behaviors (eye gaze, facial expression, gestures, imitation, and give and take.), 2. delayed and stereotyped language (words that echo what others said to get what he wanted and not to exchange ideas), 3. less make believe play.
Narrow and intense interests
Larger than average brains
Abnormal amygdala growth
Reduced activity in the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in emotional and social responsiveness.
Deficient theory of mind “mindblind” And/or Impaired executive processing And/or A style of information processing that prefers to prosses the parts of a stimuli rather then coherent wholes
