chapter 8. Flashcards
The self and self understanding
Increased awareness reflects young children’s expanding psychological sophistication.
Self-understanding: the representation of self, the substance and content of self-conceptions.
Protective Optimism
Young children believe they are strong, smart, attractive and able to achieve any goals.
Confidence in self helps young children to persist.
Children’s self-descriptions: Tend to be unrealistically positive—a self- protective feature— and tend to confuse ability and effort.
Young children’s understanding of others
A better basic understanding of emotions in early childhood enables children to develop a more advanced understanding of others’ perspectives.
Children start perceiving others in terms of psychological traits.
They also begin to develop an understanding of joint commitments.
3 years: collaborative interactions
increasingly involve obligations to a partner.
Erikson’s 3: stage of developement
Initiative versus guilt
Erikson’s third psychosocial crisis
Children undertake new skills and activities and feel guilty when they do not succeed at them.
Erikson’s stage of initiative versus guilt is lead in by new cognitive skills (ex: ability to plan) which accentuates his/her wish to take the initiative (3-6)
* Major question: Am I good or bad?
Ability to organize activities around some goal; more assertiveness and aggressiveness.
They use emerging perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language skills to make things happen.
▪ Guilt: Self-blame that people experience when they do something wrong.
▪ Shame: People’s feeling that others blame them, disapprove of them, or are disappointed in them.
Harsh parental criticism may lead to guilt.
What aspects of emotional development emerge or increase
during early childhood?
The young child’s growing awareness
of self is linked to feeling an expanding range of emotions.
Emotional development allows them to try to make sense of other people’s emotional reactions and to control
their own.
In early childhood expressing emotions increase (pride, shame, embarrassment and guilt).
Increased tendency to be aware of the events leading to emotional reactions.
A capacity for genuine empathy
Same event can elicit different feelings in different people.
More than one emotion can be experienced in a particular situation.
Self regulation: Ability to suppress or conceal negative emotional reactions.
Use of self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings.
Age 5: most children show more ability to reflect on emotions and a growing awareness of the need to manage emotions according to social
standards.
What is the difference between emotion-coaching and emotion-dismissing parents?
A parenting style in helping children to regulate their emotions.
Emotion-coaching parents:
monitor their children’s emotions.
* View negative emotions as opportunities for teaching.
* Assist them in labeling emotions.
* Coach them in how to deal effectively with emotions.
Emotion-dismissing parents:
view their role as to deny, ignore, or change negative emotions. Linked to toddlers’ lower emotional competence.
How are emotions and emotion regulation connected to peer relationships?
Regulating emotions
Emotion regulation plays a key role in children’s ability to manage the demands and conflicts they face in interacting with others.
Emotions play a role in the success of a child’s peer relationships.
The ability to modulate emotions benefits children in their relationships with peers.
Moody and emotionally negative children are more likely to experience
rejection, whereas emotionally positive children are more popular.
Frequent expression of anger predicts lower social competence.
How does brain development connect to emotional development in early childhood?
Neurological advances in young children.
4-5:Growth of prefrontal cortex at about age, PLUS Myelination of the
limbic system
leads to
Improved behaviors and
abilities:
▪ Longer attention span
▪ Improved capacity for self-control
▪ Social awareness and self-concept become stronger
Expressing emotions- self consious emotions
Pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt are examples of self-conscious emotions.
During the early childhood years, pride and guilt become more common.
These are influenced by parents’ responses to children’s behavior— for example, “You should feel bad about biting your sister.”
What is the understanding of emotions linked to?
Children’s understanding of emotion is linked to an increase in prosocial behavior.
Regulating emotions
Is important for children’s ability to manage demands and conflicts in relationships.
Intrinsic motivation
Drive, or reason to pursue a goal
Come form the inside
▪ Comes from inside a person (ex: need to feel smart or competent)
▪ Seen when children invent imaginary friends
Imaginary friends
Make-believe friends who exist only in a child’s imagination.
Common from 3-7 yars.
They combat loneliness and aid emotional regulation.
(Example of intrinsic motivation)
Extrinsic motivation
Drive, or reason to pursue a goal.
Comes from te outside. Rewards!
▪ Arises from the need to have achievements rewarded from outside
(ex: by receiving material possessions or another person’s esteem)
What does moral development look like in early childhood?
Moral development: involves thoughts, feelings, and behavior regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their
interactions with other people.
Moral development also has to do with: Relational quality, parental discipline, Proactive strategies, conversational dialogue and child temperament.
How are emotions connected to moral development?
Feelings of anxiety and guilt are central to the account of moral
development provided by Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory.
Today, many developmentalists believe both positive feelings and negative feelings contribute to children’s moral development.
When these emotions are strongly experienced, they influence children to act in accord with standards of right and wrong.
Sympathy often motivates prosocial behavior.
How did Freud understand moral development in early childhood?
Children form the superego—the moral element of personality— in part to reduce anxiety and avoid punishment.
Superego: the ethical component of the personality and provides the moral standards by which the ego operates.
Although Freud’s ideas are not backed by research, emotions and guilt can motivate behavior. Other emotions also contribute.
How did Piaget describe moral development in early childhood?
Piaget suggested two distinct stages in thinking about morality:
1. Heteronomous morality
Moral feelings
Feelings of anxiety and guilt are central to the account of moral
development provided by Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory.
Piaget - Heteronomous morality
Froms at approximately 4-7 years:
justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people.
- The heteronomous thinker also believes in immanent justice: if a rule is broken, punishment will be meted out immediately.
Piaget - Autonomous morality
Older children become aware that rules and laws are created by people, and that when judging an action, one should consider the actor’s intentions as well as the consequences.
How does moral reasoning develop?
Socilization (peers and parents)
Moral reasoning advances through peer-to-peer vs. parent-child relationships.
Parent-child relations in which parents have the power and children do not are less likely to advance moral reasoning, because rules are handed down in an authoritarian manner.
The behavioral, social cognitive and moral behvaioral view on development of moral behvaior
According to the behavioral and social cognitive approaches, the processes of reinforcement, punishment, and imitation explain the development of moral behavior.
- In the moral behavior view, the situation also influences behavior.
Self-control
The ability to regulate thought, behaviour, and emotional reactions in a planful (vs impulsive) manner.
Developing self-control is an important foundation of moral action and behaviour.
(early self-soothing strategies
may lay the groundwork for self-control)
Infancy: learn about self-soothing through parents’ regulatory activities.
1 year: others impose demands (safety, education, prosocial
motivations)
2 years – internalized some controls; able of self-control away from parents.
3 years – devise ways to regulate their own behaviour; no longer as depend on adult models.
There are individual differences in self-control; the same child tends to show the same level of self-control in a variety of tasks.
- Ability to maintain self-control is relatively stable over development.
- Self-control during the preschool years predicts later behaviour, personality, and achievement.
Conscience development
An internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves integrating moral thought, moral feeling, and moral behavior.
What is the difference between sex and gender?
Sex differences: Biological differences between males and females, in organs, hormones, and body type.
▪ Biology determines whether an embryo is male or female.
What are instrumental and expressive traits?
Instrumental traits: personality characteristics that reflect active involvement with and influence over the environment and that are typically associated with men.
Expressive traits: personality characteristics that reflect emotional functioning and a focus on interpersonal relations and that are stereotypically associated with women.
How does children’s understanding of gender develop?
Gender identity, gender role, gender stereotypes.
During early childhood, sex patterns and preferences become important to children and apparent to adults.
Parents, by action and by example, influence gender development
Peer influences influence gender development.
Age 2: children apply gender labels.
Age 4: children are convinced that certain toys and roles are “best suited” for one sex or the other.
(stereotypes are obvious and
rigid between ages 3 and 6).
Age 3 or 4: children can assign occupation, toys, and activities to the stereotypic gender.
Age 5: children begin to associate certain personality traits with males or females.
Age 5-6: having figured out that gender is permanent, are searching for a rule about how boys and girls behave.
How hormones effect sex
Hormones play a key role in the development of sex differences.
Estrogens influence the development of female physical sex characteristics.
Androgens promote the development of male physical sex characteristics.
