SLO's ch. 8 Flashcards
Describe the major developmental challenges
that preschool-age children face
According to Erik Erikson, preschool-age children initially
are
in the autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage (18 months
to 3 years) in which they develop independence and mastery
over their physical and social worlds or feel shame,
self-doubt, and unhappiness. Later, in the initiative-versusguilt
stage (ages 3 to 6), preschool-age children face conflicts
between the desire to act independently and the guilt that
comes from the unintended consequences of their actions.
Explain how preschool-age children develop a
concept of themselves
Preschoolers’ self-concepts are formed partly from their
own perceptions and estimations of their characteristics,
partly from their parents’ behavior toward them, and partly
from cultural influences.
Explain how preschool-age children develop a
sense of racial identity and gender
Preschool-age children form racial attitudes largely in
response to their environment, including parents and other
influences. Gender differences emerge early and conform
to social stereotypes about what is appropriate and inappropriate
for each sex. The strong gender expectations held
by preschoolers are explained in different ways by different
theorists. Some point to genetic factors as evidence for
a biological explanation of gender expectations. Freud’s
psychoanalytic theories use a framework based on the subconscious.
Social learning theorists focus on environmental
influences, including parents, teachers, peers, and the
media, while cognitive theorists propose that children form
gender schemas, cognitive frameworks that organize information
that the children gather about gender.
Describe the sorts of social relationships that
preschool-age children engage in.
Preschool social relationships begin to encompass genuine
friendships, which involve trust and endure over time.
Explain how and why preschool-age children
play
Older preschoolers engage in more constructive play than
functional play. They also engage in more associative and cooperative play than younger preschoolers, who do more
parallel and onlooker playing
Summarize how thinking changes in the
preschool years
Preschoolers begin to understand how others think and
why they do the things they do. Children begin to grasp
the difference between reality and imagination and begin to
take part consciously in imaginative play
Describe ways in which family relationships
affect the development of preschool-age
children
Families change in nature and structure over the years, but
a strong and positive home environment is essential to children’s
healthy development
Describe the kinds of disciplinary styles
parents employ with preschool-age children
and what effects they have
Disciplinary styles differ both individually and culturally.
In the United States and other Western societies, parents’
styles tend to be mostly authoritarian, permissive,
uninvolved, and authoritative. The authoritative style is
regarded as the most effective. Children of authoritarian
and permissive parents may develop dependency, hostility,
and low self-control, while children of uninvolved
parents may feel unloved and emotionally detached. Children
of authoritative parents tend to be more independent,
friendly, self-assertive, and cooperative.
List the factors that contribute to child abuse
and neglect
Child abuse, which may be either physical or psychological,
occurs especially in stressful home environments.
Firmly held notions regarding family privacy and the
use of physical punishment in childrearing contribute to
the high rate of abuse in the United States. Moreover, the
cycle of violence hypothesis points to the likelihood that
persons who were abused as children may turn into abusers
as adults.
Define resilience, and describe how it can help
abused children
Children who have been abused often survive their backgrounds
by relying on the temperamental quality of
resilience.
Explain how preschool-age children develop a
moral sense
Piaget believed that preschool-age children are in the heteronomous
morality stage of moral development, characterized
by a belief in external, unchangeable rules of
conduct and sure, immediate punishment for all misdeeds.
In contrast, social learning approaches to morality emphasize
interactions between environment and behavior in
moral development, in which models of behavior play an
important role. Some developmentalists believe that moral
behavior is rooted in a child’s development of empathy.
Other emotions, including the negative emotions of anger
and shame, may also promote moral behavior
Describe how aggression develops in
preschool-age children
Aggression, which involves intentional harm to another
person, begins to emerge in the preschool years. As children
age and improve their language skills, acts of aggression
typically decline in frequency and duration. Some
ethologists, such as Konrad Lorenz, believe that aggression
is simply a biological fact of human life, a belief held also
by many sociobiologists, who focus on competition within
species to pass genes on to the next generation. Social learning
theorists focus on the role of the environment, including
the influence of models and social reinforcement as factors
influencing aggressive behavior. The cognitive approach
to aggression emphasizes the role of interpretations of the
behaviors of others in determining aggressive or nonaggressive
responses.
