Lecture 6 - Influence of Social Contexts on Development

Question 1

What are some key themes in this lecture?

Also apply to the whole course

Answer 1

1. Nature and Nurture
2. Socio-cultural context (to what extent are findings only relevant for certain cultures)
3. Individual differences (aside from means and averages)
4. Bi-directional effects (children as active agents and shape responses of adults as well)

Also good points for critical evaluation

Question 2

What is the overview of this lecture including the main model in this lecture

Answer 2

• Brief recap on developmental psychology as a field of study
• Child development in a social context - introducing a systems model

*Some examples

• Strengths and Limitations of the systems perspective

Question 3

What are learning outcomes

Answer 3

*Describe the Bioecological model of child development,
understanding what types of factors are on each layer and how
they might interact

*Apply the bioecological model to two examples of
child/environment interactions (supplement this with
additional reading)

• Think critically about the bioecological model- what are its
  strengths and limitations?

Question 4

What is this lecture focusing on - individual or the social?

Answer 4

Shift from looking at individual development to looking at the social context and real life mess in child development

Question 5

What is child development? How do you operationalise this?

Answer 5

Identify and explain the changes individuals go through across the life span

You might think about it about the accumulation of knowledge across the lifespan in core domains (emotion, cognition and behaviour). Then might describe changes and relationships in these constructs as well. ie how is someone’s ability to recognise emotion related to their cognition.

Question 6

Why did Russian scientist Bronfenbrenner drop a bombshell in this area

Answer 6

Bronfenbrenner in 1970s said was whilst all these innovative lab studies were great and taught us a lot about psychological processes, they ignored a lot of the wider context that surely contributes a lot to behaviour.

Question 7

What was his solution to this?

Answer 7

Solution? The Bioecological Model (1979)

• Views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships
• The environment is conceptualised as a series of nested structures
• System: Whole is greater than the sum of its component parts
• Complex set of relations exist between the developing person and the person’s developmental setting

At the centre is the child: they have own characteristics such as age, genes, temprament, Sex and gender, intelligence etc. ie. children become more active as they get older
“there is always an interplay between the psychological characteristics of the person and of a specific environment; the one cannot be defined without reference to the other” (Bronfenbrenner, 1989)

Temprament - a baby that smiles more might elicit more positive response than one that does not

Sex - female might elicit different response from others than a male

Question 8

What are the sections of the bioecological model?

Answer 8

1. Microsystem influences on the child: activities, roles and relationships child participants in directly in a setting. Bi-directional (child to parent and parent to child). The idea is the more positive influences you have the more positive child adjustment over time. But these are bidirectional effects.
2. The Mesosystem: this is the connections between the microsystem elements. Ie. parents and your doctors, your peers and your teachers. How well the relations are between the mesosystem has been hypothesised to impact the child development and child wellbeing.
3. The exosystem: these are indirect effects on the child. Like parents work hours, Day care arrangements, job loss, neighbourhoods, extended family, educational systems.
4. The Macrosystem: The wider society that the child lives in. Social class, sub culture,
   ideologies…They think even if you don’t test these directly keep these macrosystem things in mind when conducting the research as they still will be influencing the research.
5. The Chronosystem: the influence of time. Time influences the child. Whenever we think about child development we should always think about it within this temporal context but difficult as in order to do this the ideal would be to do longitudinal studies but this difficult to do with resources etc. What they are sort of saying is studying a child for half an hour in a lab does no give detailed enough insight into how they change over time.

Question 9

What is the child in this

Answer 9

They play an active not a passive role and they become more active as they get older. All the relationships are bi-directional in this model ie. child and parent and parent and child.

Question 10

What is the overall view of the bioecological model on child adjustment?

Answer 10

The more positive influences you have the then the better child adjustment over time

The more negative influences you have, the poorer the child adjustment over time

But all relationships bi directional, child is active so nothing is determined

Question 11

Tell me more detail / examples about microsystem influences on the child

Answer 11

Activities, role and relationships that the child participates directly in their immediate setting like:

their doctors, parents, teachers etc

Child plays active part

Could be negative: hostile parenting, peer rejection, or positive ones, like supportive parenting and effective teaching - then how this relates to adjustment

Question 12

Tell me more detail / examples about mesosystem influences on the child

Answer 12

The connections between the microsystem elements, such as parents and teachers, peers and teachers etc

They have relationships with one another as well and the quality of the relationships are really important and hypothesised to have a role in child’s adjustment

Example - parent says if kid is hit you hit back, school says do not do this. Creates tension between the parents and the teacher and potentailly impacts on stress for child and triadic stress between child, parent and school and difficulties for the child in terms of adjustment

Question 13

Tell me more detail / examples about exosystem influences on the child

Answer 13

Indirect effects on the child - situations the child is not directly involved in but may impact them indirectly, maybe as they impact the microsystem in some way, such as parents hours of work (which can impact parent stress), or wider educational systems, neighbourhood issues etc

What happens outside the home still influences what happens inside the home indirectly

Might think about different social experience for children in rural areas to inner city areas

Question 14

Tell me more detail / examples about macrosystem influences on the child

Answer 14

The wider society such as class, sub culture, social class that the child lives in. Normally more sociology.

Need to keep these things in mind when designing and interpreting research as they always influence the research indirectly and cannot necessarily generalise results to other cultures.

We cannot understand direct effects without acknoweldging these distil processes.

Question 15

Tell me more detail / examples about chronosystem influences on the child

Answer 15

The influence of time on child development. Society changes hugely over time. Ie technology and the influence this has had on child development and social media.

Can also think about how children themselves changes over time and when we think about child development where we can think about this temporal context. Hard to do - requires longitudinal research - lots of resources, attrition etc.

Studying a child 30 min in lab may not be sufficient to understand the complexities of how children really change over time.

Question 16

What is one applied example of the model: microsystem : parent and peers

Answer 16

Attachment to parents and relationship with peers

Secure attachment: positive expectations and interact readily with other children and expect relationships to be positive and rewarding (IWM) as fits the template you have with your caregivers

Foundations: empathy, give and take. Children will be pro social and rewarding

Facilitates social interaction.

Insecure attachment: if you come to expect rejection and hostility from parent you might expect this from peers and misinterpret cues as being more negative than they really are (hostile attribution bias). Potentially withdraw from social exchanges and expect rejection. Poorer peer relationships and interactions.

But not always X will cause Y. Child is active - has own temprament etc

Question 17

Studies on working models in adolesence

Answer 17

Longitudinal study of 78 people from infancy to mid 20s.

Tested at infants, at 16 and early 20s to see if attachment influenced their friendships and later their relationships.

Found a relationship between 1) secure attachment at 12 months and 2) social competence in school at 16, 3) secure friendships at 16 and later positive romantic 4) relationships in early adulthood and 5) less negative affect in conflict resolution

Just correlational study not pre determined and have to think about individual differences as well

Question 18

Second applied example of the bioecological model: family stress and social competence

Answer 18

About impact of economic stress and pressure and how the can perculate down to child adjustment

Stressed parent can create marital conflict, work stress etc and can pass on to the parenting role and can then impact child adjustment

Family stress and strain associated with children having more difficulties in peer relationships and lower social competence

Question 19

How families affect children - study

Answer 19

Studied mid-west farming crisis in America and whole communities were plunged into economic crisis

Longitudinal study. Studied nearly 380 adolescents 12-13 year olds over 3 years. Children and parents given questionnaires measures on things like mood, family conflict, child adjustment. Lots of measures of collecting data and collected data on the families economic status and their financial stress as well.

Did a regression analysis to see if economic stress predcited family conflict and child adjustment and how those factors predicted and interacted with eachother over time.

Results: an increase in economic pressure at time 1 led to an increase in parental depressed mood, and this increase in parental depressed mood led to increase marital conflict

Can see how the macrosystem is having an influence on the microsystem and meso system elements

Question 20

Limitations of the bioecological model (5)

Answer 20

• It potentially neglects the individual world of the child. Some of the model can feel a little bit predetermined - good as a general individual differences but not when looking at one specific individual
• There is a struggle to test this theory with traditional approaches within psychology. Longitudinal studies have tried to zone in on certain aspects of the model but the model is so large that you cannot do an experiment to test the whole model. Almost untestable. Important contextually when desiginng experiments but very hard to test.
• Imprecision about the relationships between how the relationships between the sub systems function and operate. How do we operationalise the relationship between parents and peers? How do you measure this relationship? and map the relationship in a study from start to finish? Almost untestable.
• What is the relevant strengths of the system components? Are parents more important than the macrosystem for example? And does this change over time when a teen etc?
• A lot of the focus is on wider social contexts on family, perhaps neglecting the ways in which families influence the outside world and how children influence family life (bi-directionality)

Question 21

How is the bioecological model helpful?

Answer 21

• Useful way in thinking about child development in a social context and cannot ask these questions in lab studies