W7: THEORIES OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT Flashcards
What are Theories of Social Development?
How our learning and development occur through our relationships and our understanding with others.
Theories vary in:
- how active or passive the child is
- biological vs. environmental focus (nature vs. nurture)
What is Bowlby’s Theory?
Biologically focused theory based on evolutionary influences
Concerned about the adaptive behaviours that allow our species to survive.
DUCK: lots of these theories derive from the work of Lorenz = the concept of imprinting. Lorenz is a researcher who found out that ducks would imprint on the earliest forms of biological movement they saw. Ducks imprint on their mother duck. Imprinting captures the way of these biological impulses that would be adapted for a baby’s survival.
Main Idea: Attachment is an innate, biologically programmed behavior that promotes the survival of the infant.
- The primary function of attachment is to provide a secure base for exploration and a safe haven in times of distress.
- Caregiver responsiveness and sensitivity to a child’s needs play a crucial role in the formation of a secure attachment.
Contributions to Developmental Psychology:
- Highlighted the importance of early relationships in shaping later social and emotional development.
- Emphasized the role of innate biological factors in human behavior.
- Focused attention on the impact of early caregiving experiences on the development of internal working models of relationships.
What it Tells Us About Development:
- Development is influenced by the quality of early caregiver-child relationships.
- Secure attachments provide a foundation for positive social and emotional development.
- Early experiences shape individuals’ expectations and behaviors in future relationships.
What is Freud Erikson’s Theory
Biological change. Psychosexual development.
How children go through different stages of development in which they are fixated in one challenge that they have to overcome. E.g. children who had a hard time latching to their mothers breasts will create an oral fixation problem, so that later they might be addicted to smoking or other types of orally fixated behaviour.
Contributions: Introduced the concept of psychosexual development and emphasized the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping personality.
What it Tells Us About Development: Early experiences, particularly those related to sexuality and the resolution of conflicts at each stage, is impactful on the way you learn and behave as adults
Main Idea: Your early experiences matter for later experiences
What is Watson’s and Skinner’s Theory?
- learning (conditioning)
- behaviourist theories
- responds to Freud Erikson’s theory, as you couldn’t measure it
Behaviourist theories only measure children’s behaviour as an indication of their learning. Therefore, they can also predict how a child will behave
ABC’s of Behaviour:
Antecedent = happens before
Behaviour
Consequence
Watson Behavourist Theories: Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)
Focuses on observeable behaviours instead of internal events (can measure how children behave)
Classical Conditioning (Pavlov): learning that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired together (linked)
- bringing food to dogs = salivation
- pair the food with whistle = salivation, BEFORE conditioning, whistle doesn’t cause salivation
Conditioning pairs neutral stimulus (e.g., bell or whistle) with unconditioned stimulus (dog food), which causes unconditioned response (drooling = natural thing that would happen)
Unconditioned stimulus creates unconditioned response.
Pair unconditioned stimulus with conditioned stimulus (whistle) = conditioned response (drooling) alone –> take away the food and blow the whistle and you would still get the drooling.
Applying Pavlov to Children:
E.g., child who is happy to go to bed at night, not afraid of the dark → kid goes to bed no problem. A couple of nights in a week, when they go to bed, there is a big thunderstorm → loud, scary, lightning. After a spate of storms, the kid starts to cry in fear and be afraid of darkness → parents are like what happened?
Unconditioned Stimulus = thunderstorming (random, neutral thing that causes response)
Unconditioned Response = fear (caused by unconditioned stimulus)
Conditioned Stimulus = nighttime
Conditioned Response = fear of the dark
Children can start to associate things that previously did not have meaning to negative or positive things → they start to react differently when the thing happens on its own. Watson coined behaviourism → applied these Pavlovian principles to child behaviour
“You can take any child and raise them into whatever you want” – Watson.
Behaviourism (Watson): applied Pavlov’s principles to humans = little albert
Albert = little kid → created fear of rats and white fluffy things. Everytime they showed albert a rabbit or rat in different versions, they would pair it with a big gong/big noise. Everytime the rat came out, Albert started being afraid of the rat.
You can train kids to feel a certain way.
This knowledge can help for implications for treatment of phobias.
Treat phobias → go through the principles of conditioning in reverse.
You try to extinguish its conditioned response by presenting the feared stimulus in incremental doses to the person when they’re in a safe place where the safe person will support.
Overtime, you pair the stimulus that was creating the fear with a safe response.
Behaviorism by Watson is empiricism → we think only nature.
Genetic background doesn’t matter, it’s only the experiences that will shape you into the person you are
Skinner Behavourist Theories: Operant Conditioning
Based on Thorndike’s Law of Effect: behaviours followed by pleasant consequences will not be repeated, those followed by unpleasant (negative) consequences will not. Behaviours depend on C: the consequences
Positive (add stimulus) + Punishment = you’re adding an unpleasant stimulus to decrease a behaviour
E.g. “you’re grounded” or spanking
Negative (remove stimulus) + Punishment = removing a pleasant stimulus to decrease behaviour E.g “no more TV until you start behaving right”
EXAMPLE: You go to the grocery store with your child, Sally. You get to the checkout counter and Sally starts throwing a fit on the ground, saying “I want candy”. You as a parent are embarrassed, so you allow Sally to get the candy. Sally turns into an angel and the behaviour has stopped. Next time you’re at the grocery store, the repetitive cycle repeats. According to operant conditioning, what is happening?
Positive reinforcement. You’ve positively reinforced the behaviour.
Sally is going to maintain that behaviour cause you added candy.
Behavioural learning principles are at the root of many child rearing strategies.
What is Bandura’s Social Learning Theory?
5 Tenets of Bandura’s Social Learning Theory:
- Learning By Observation
You can learning simply by observing someone else’s behaviour.
Bobo Doll Experiment: The Bobo Doll Experiment, conducted by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1961, aimed to investigate the role of observational learning and imitation in aggression. In the study, 3 groups of children observed confederates behaving aggressively towards an inflatable Bobo doll, did nothing or played with other toys. The results suggested that children who witnessed the aggressive behavior were more likely to replicate it when given the opportunity to interact with the doll themselves. This experiment significantly contributed to our understanding of social learning theory, emphasizing the impact of observational learning on behavior and highlighting the importance of role models in shaping individual conduct.
Vicarious Reinforcement: repeat behaviours we see others rewarded for
E.g. answering questions in class
- Learning Does Not Equal Behaviour
Can learn something without enacting the behaviour
Data from Bobo Doll Experiment:
You start condition where there is no incentive
Kids tend to repeat the aggressive behaviours that they saw, whether or not the model had been reinforced or not → when experimenter had been rewarded or not.
When experimenter had been punished for their actions against the Bobo doll, kids were less likely to enact aggressive behaviours when the experimenter had been punished cause kids realize they weren’t supposed to do that to the doll.
- Role of Cognition in Learning
Cognitive functioning impacts learning process .
E.g. role of attention, encoding, memory, information retrieval, problem solving.
You’re going to replicate things that you’ve liked/paid more attention to more
Children imitate favourite cartoons more.
The “inner workings” of the mind mediate the relationship between environment and behaviour.
- Reciprocal Determinism: child and environment influence each other.
Does playing video games cause aggression in children?
- 68% of video games contain violence to some degree
- Aggressive children may be more likely to seek out violent video games; environment (game) then influences child
- Meta-analyses: playing aggressive video games is associated with aggressive behaviours/cognitions/affect
- Limitations: effect sizes are small, many moderators to this relationship, many definitions of aggression, ignites other important predictors
- Perceived Self-Efficacy
- Individuals beliefs about how effectively they can control their own behaviours, thoughts, and emotions to achieve a goal predicts their success
Behaviourist Theories: Applications
- Spanking
Positively Punishing → adding something to remove a behaviour.
True in all cultures, even when the use of physical discipline is normative.
Works momentarily but in effective in long-term
Can make a child more aggressive → theories of learning, you learn from other people. If your parent uses a form of aggression towards you to do something, that is a way to teach your child that. - Time Out (From Positive Reinforcement)
Attention can be a powerful reinforcer (even if attention is not positive).
Negative Punishment → you’re removing the attention, removing the stimulus to decrease the behaviour. - Reinforcement Schedules
HOW and WHEN reinforcement occurs shapes subsequent behaviour.
Reinforcers are most effective when delivered CONSISTENTLY + IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the behaviour.
This is why spanking is rarely effective → it’s not delivered consistently and immediately following the behaviour.
EXAMPLE: Timmy and Tommy put up a fight every time parents tell them that it’s time to go to bed. Timmy’s parents say: everynight you go to bed without a fuss, we’re gonna give you a sticker. So every night Timmy goes to bed, they give him a sticker. Tommy’s parents say the same thing, but sometimes they forget → they’re inconsistent
Timmy receives reinforcement consistently → Timmy’s gonna learn the behaviour faster
EXTINCTION: reinforcer is withheld, so target behaviour no longer occurs
Presenting a stimulus that has been conditioned over and over again without a negative consequence = association is going to weaken
E.g. if you have a phobia of spiders, and in therapy you are exposed to spiders over and over again with no negative consequence = that behaviour is going to weaken = extinction
Pairing between reinforcement and punishment and the behaviour is weakened if its not presented consistently
INTERMITTENT REINFORCEMENT: makes behaviours more resistance to extinction.
If I were to give you a gold star once in a while and you just reinforce the behaviour once in a while → behaviour would almost never extinguish
Peter Milner → had rats in a cage hooked up to opioids and deciduous things for their brain directly there when they pushed a bar → rats pushed the bar all day.
If you stop, the bar doesn’t do anything anymore → the rats will keep pushing it and they will soon realize they are not getting anything out of it = extinction.
Switch the opioids to food → if once in a while the bar press resulted in a food pellet, rats would keep pushing the bar as it could lead to the reward = intermittent reinforcement
Means that once in a while you’ll get something good.
Can explain the reason behind addiction or gambling.
What Are Social Cognition Theories?
How one sees the world will influence one’s behaviours in the social world. Breaking down social behaviours into their little components.
Self-Socialization: how children think about the world influences their social development → active child component (child is thinking about the world)
Crick & Dodge’s Social Information-Processing Theory
Focus on cognitive processes that inform social behaviours.
Breaks down social cognition into component parts.
Each stage can influence subsequent stages.
How you perceive and interpret a social situation can influence your social behaviour.
EXAMPLE: Bobby and Kate
Bobby comes from a family that is very warm and respond to him sensitivity and has a kind of knowledge about the world as being a safe place that is very nurturing.
Kate comes from a family where there tends to be a bit more aggression, less stable family, has a hard time getting along with siblings and peers
They are both in the hallway and their friend Billy runs by and doesn’t say anything even though Bobby and Kate both waved.
Stages of Pro-Social Information Processing Model
1st Start of Pro-Social Information Processing Model = social cue → encoding it
2nd Stage: Interpret Social Cues
Bobby: “I guess Billy didn’t see me, looked like he was in a hurry”
Kate: “What the hell, Billy didn’t wave back, he must hate me.”
3rd Stage: Formulate Social Goals
Bobby: “No worries, I’ll reconnect with Billy later in class”
Kate: “I’m gonna get back at Billy, can’t believe he did that to me.”
4th Stage: Generate Possible Problem-Solving Strengths
5th Stage: Evaluate Problem Efficiency of Strategies
Bobby: “Will I even reconnect with Billy after? Will I see him in class”
Kate: “How am I going to convey that I’m upset to Billy?”
Making decisions based on the internal models that we have
Deciding how we are going to achieve that goal. What behaviour is going to be used?
6th Stage: Enact Response
Bobby → happy, friends
Kate → grumpy
Socialization Processing Theory: taking the same interaction and breaking down how it can lead to two different behaviours and outcomes → individual differences in social behaviour and where they come from
What is Hostile Attribution Bias?
Tendency to misperceive neutral or ambiguous stimuli as hostile towards you.
EXAMPLE: 2 kids at a table drawing, one of them is knocking them with their elbow
Interpretation: chairs too close together, they’re using opposite hands, the child doesn’t have spatial awareness, trying to get attention
Hostile Attribution: child is trying to direct anger, child trying to sabotage.
More common in aggressive children, children with ODD/conduct disorder/ ADHD
Predicted by harsh parenting, adverse childhood experiences
Implications for Interventions: rather than punishing aggressive behaviour, focus on developing social-cognition skills (e.g. emotional recognition, conflict resolution) → instead of punishing the outcome, break down the components that went into this
Dweck’s Self-Attribution & Achievement Motivation Theory
How we think about our abilities impacts our motivation and behaviour (often applied to academic achievement).
Individual differences in how we think about our abilities + our goals.
Entity (“helpless” → helpless orientation towards abilities (e.g. I’m not good at math”) vs. Incremental (“mastery” → skills being in progress towards mastery, it’s about the journey not destination) orientation towards abilities
Learning (process of learning → I’m gaining skill and knowledge) vs. Performance (outcome → “I’m focused on getting an A, don’t care how I get it”) goal
Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
When successful, no major difference between these orientations (fixed vs. growth mindset)… differences emerge in the face of failure.
Performance Goals: sense of helplessness, avoidance of challenges, give up easily → you avoid challenges as you don’t want to don’t want to be faced with your own failure
Learning Goals: build resilience and try again. These successes build success in academics, and family relationships.
Implications for Education: teaching “growth mindset” to kids
Developmental Shifts in Goals
Young children often high on learning goals (inherent motivation to learn about the world around them)
Once start getting grades, can shift into external reinforcement of that behaviour
E.g. kids who are bookworms and really like to read, then someone says “we’ll give you money for each book you read” → takes the joy out of reading: its being reinforced over something you just like to do
Implications for Education/Parenting: praise the process rather than someone’s ability.
E.g. saying you’re so smart → associated with a fixed mindset, smartness is a feature of you
Saying “you’re working really hard at this” = forms of praise that will reinforce this growth mindset.
Brofenbrenner’s Bioecological Model
- Microsystem: child and their immediate environment
- Direct interactions (e.g., family, friends, home, school…)
- Microsystems have effects on child & vice versa
- A family environment will impact the child but the child’s behavior, temperament, personality, etc. will also influence their family - Mesosystem: interconnections between microsystems
- Relationships between microsystems (e.g. parent-teacher meetings)
- E.g. Kate’s parents go to the school teacher meetings, hear feedback about kids behaviour, take the feedback and work with the teacher on strategies to improve their child - Exosystem: institutions of society
- Things child does not directly engage in → broader societal institutions that have indirect effects on children
- E.g. parent’s workplace, family friends, community services
- Parent’s Workplace = child doesn’t go there but it will have an effect on the child through things like policies about flex hours, weather parents can leave early to pick up sick child, how stressed the parent is in the workplace → impacts family life and child
- Impacts the child through influence on the microsystems - Macrosystem: societal and cultural contexts
- Cultural values, customs, governmental laws and policies
- E.g governmental laws and policies on spanking and child abuse and child benefits → will influence child - Chronosystem: effects of time
- Changes and transitions in a person’s life (e.g. divorce of parents)
- Changes in socio historical contexts (e.g., advent of technologies)
- E.g. whether women were allowed to vote and have credit cards
- E.g. children’s interactions with social media vs. children who did not have that many years ago
Applying Brofenbrenner’s Model to Child Maltreatment
RISK:
Family Characteristics: lack of social support, substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence
Community Factors: chronic poverty, high crime rate, lack of safe housing, lack of informal support
Relates to exosystems → affects child indirectly
Societal Factors: social norms that support violence, rapid social change, systemic oppression
PROTECTIVE:
Family Factors: parent training programs, health care for families
Community Factors: safe and affordable housing, jobs opportunity for social supports
Societal Factors: laws banning corporal punishment, beneficial social and economic policies, economic prosperity
