Social and emotional development - forming relationships Flashcards
when do children start playing?
age two
types of play
- Sensorimotor play - exploring objects by dropping them or banging them
- Rough and tumble play
- pretend play
why do children engage in rough and tumble play?
for the benefits in physical development
helps establish a dominance hierarchy
not leading to aggression but in affiliation through further games
Pellegrini found that boys who play fight …
end to be popular and have a wider variety of strategies for solving social problems.
what is decentration?
pretend play usually starts with themselves and then starts to involve other people this is called decentration.
is pretend play social?
Haight and Miller (1993) made videos of 9 children playing at home between the ages of 12 and 48 months. 75% of the pretend play they observed was social.
do parents scaffold pretend play?
- The level and complexity of children’s play increased when mother joined-in and provided encouragement through explicit suggestions.
- When their children were 20 months old, mothers fostered physical and functional play. When their children were 28 months old, mothers facilitated symbolic play.
how do parents facilitate pretend play?
- Howes and Matheson (1992): Mothers might give teddy a bath and then hand the teddy to their child.
- By the time children are 3 or 4 they initiate pretend play more often and adapt less realistic objects (e.g., a block could be a cup).
what is the importance of pretend play?
In order to understand paintings, plays, films, and novels, we must look first at dolls, hobbyhorses, toy trucks, and teddy bears.
Create a shared fictional reality - based on goals
money - concepts are important in later life
can play enhance theory of mind? when Ps were given pretend play training or not?
Pretend play training significantly increased the frequency and complexity of group pretense.
Pretend play training significantly improved children’s performance on theory of mind tests.
how many children have imaginary friends?
between ¼ and ½ of children report having imaginary companions.
when are imaginary friends common?
between three and eight
Bigelow and La Gaipa (1980) asked children about their understanding of friendship.
6 to 8 years: common activities, living nearby
9 to 10 years: shared values, rules
11 to 12 years: self disclosure, shared interests
do infants show friendship?
Infants have preferences for particular peers, spending more time in the company of some individuals than others.
when do children form stable friendhships?
During the preschool period, children start to form stable patterns of friendship that endure over time.
These friendships are characterised by frequent positive interactions including talking, cooperating and positive affect during interaction.
do friends fall out as much as non friends?
friends might fall out as much as non friends but friends are better at resolving conflict and do this more quickly, more likely to be positive with friends after an argument than non friends.
are friends better at cooperating than non?
- Pairs of friends made more proposals about how to resolve these situations, spent more time negotiating shared arrangements and were more able to make compromises.
- Friendship pairs that were more stable across the school year also showed more sensitivity towards each other in their negotiations.
how to measure friendhsips in children?
sociometric status
what do sociometric status tell us?
How do children who fit into these different types behave in social interactions?
how do different 5 year old children try to join a game between peers?
Popular – waited and watched and then started to make group oriented statements
Neglected – waited and watched only
Rejected – made disruptive statements and interrupted their peers’ play
what did they find when they interview children at ten for their reciprocated/non friendships and then 13 years later?
Peer rejection predicted poorer job aspiration and performance and the extent of participants’ social activities. Positive = positive self esteem
Do children interpret the perpetrator more when they are black or white and if they went to a predominantly white school ?
if they were white and went to a white school more likely to think the perpetrator is black.
how can bullying be measured?
Teacher and parent report, self-report, direct observations, focus groups, peer nominations (ethical problem of people saying people who are bullied and they do not consent to the study)
how many chidlren bully how many are bullied?
% of children are estimated to bully others, 10% regularly experience it
why do children bully others?
Baldry and Farrington (2000): Bullying can be considered an early example of anti-social behaviour. School bullies are up to 4 times more likely to become chronic offenders.
CurtnerSmith et al. (2010): Bullying and anti-social behaviour more generally are both associated with family factors such as insecure attachment, harsh physical discipline from parents and parental maltreatment.
DSM definition of ASD
- Impairments in social interaction
- Impairments in communication
- Repetitive behaviours within a narrow set of interests
- Baron Cohen (2008): Prevalence of ASD: 1 in 100
SIGNS OF AUTISM IN INFANCY
- Early identification of autism can offer autistic children and their families access to the support they need.
- Anecdotally, autistic children tend to visually examine geometric repetition, such as the moving blade of a fan or the spinning of a car wheel.
Sally-Anne task
SALLY HIDES DOLL WHEN ANNE ISNT LOOKING WHERE WILL ANNE LOOK FOR THE DOLL AHHH STUDY
when do typical chillren pass sally anne task?
age 4 - suggesting ToM
do chidlren who pass the false belief task have higher functioning?
Autistic children who pass the false belief task do not have higher social functioning more generally than those children who fail (as rated by their teachers).
what does this theory suggest, Frith (1989): Autistic children have weak central coherence.?
This theory suggests that people with autism have a tendency to focus on details rather than the whole picture. This theory has been tested with visuo-spatial tasks. Autistic individuals tend to perform better than controls in the embedded figures test.
embedded figure task
there’s a big shape and children have to find the smaller shape inside
who does better on embdedd figure task and why?
They have to find the target (triangle) in the image. ASD children seem to do better because they are focusing on small parts of the image, not it as a whole.
social motivation theory of ASD
Chevallier et al. (2012): Autistic children have diminished social interest, this is at the heart of autism, they don’t seek out these interactions and don’t get practice and then get worse. .
Heterogeneity in Autism
The use of a single label ‘autism’ implies a homogenous group of people each sharing a specific deficit. But it’s actually diverse disorder.
