week 14 - social and emotional development

Question 1

Describe the significant contributions of parent–child and peer relationships to the development of social skills and personality in childhood.

Answer 1

Parent child relationships - better relationship with parents = better development of social skills and personality
Peer relationships - sports teams = teamwork to achieve common goal, wanting to be as athletic or smart as peers to seem like everyone else and if this goal is not achieved then lack of interest to things such as school or sports will arise as well as lowered self-confidence

Question 2

Explain how achievements in social understanding occur in childhood. Moreover, do scientists believe that infants and young children are egocentric?

Answer 2

Social understanding grows significantly as children’s theory of mind develops.

Although developmental scientists used to believe that infants are egocentric—that is, focused on their own perceptions and experience—they now realise that the opposite is true. Infants are aware at an early stage that people have different mental states, and this motivates them to try to figure out what others are feeling, intending, wanting, and thinking, and how these mental states affect their behaviour.

Question 3

Explain what is “social and emotional competence“ and provide some examples of how it develops in childhood.

Answer 3

Social and personality development is built from the social, biological, and representational influences discussed above. These influences result in important developmental outcomes that matter to children, parents, and society: a young adult’s capacity to engage in socially constructive actions (helping, caring, sharing with others), to curb hostile or aggressive impulses, to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them. These are some of the developmental outcomes that denote social and emotional competence.

Question 4

Describe the association of temperament with personality development.

Answer 4

Temperament is a foundation for personality growth

Temperamental dispositions are affected, for example, by the support level of parental care. More generally, personality is shaped by the goodness of fit between the child’s temperamental qualities and characteristics of the environment. For example, an adventurous child whose parents regularly take her on weekend hiking and fishing trips would be a good “fit” to her lifestyle, supporting personality growth. Personality is the result, therefore, of the continuous interplay between biological disposition and experience, as is true for many other aspects of social and personality development.

Personality develops from temperament in other ways. As children mature biologically, temperamental characteristics emerge and change over time. A newborn is not capable of much self-control, but as brain-based capacities for self-control advance, temperamental changes in self-regulation become more apparent. For example, a newborn who cries frequently doesn’t necessarily have a grumpy personality; over time, with sufficient parental support and increased sense of security, the child might be less likely to cry.

Indeed, personality development begins with the biological foundations of temperament but becomes increasingly elaborated, extended, and refined over time. The newborn that parents gazed upon thus becomes an adult with a personality of depth and nuance.

Question 5

infant reactions from parents

Answer 5

Infants become securely attached when their parents respond sensitively to them, reinforcing the infants’ confidence that their parents will provide support when needed. Infants become insecurely attached when care is inconsistent or neglectful; these infants tend to respond avoidantly, resistantly, or in a disorganised manner

Question 6

authoritative

Answer 6

Authoritative - A parenting style characterised by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behaviour, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehaviour.

Question 7

conscience

Answer 7

Conscience - The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.

Question 8

effortful control

Answer 8

Effortful control - A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.

Question 9

family stress model

Answer 9

Family Stress Model - A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.

Question 10

gender schemas

Answer 10

Gender schemas - Organised beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.

Question 11

goodness of fit

Answer 11

Goodness of fit - The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.

Question 12

security of attachment

Answer 12

Security of attachment - An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.

Question 13

social referencing

Answer 13

Social referencing - The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.

Question 14

temperament

Answer 14

Temperament - Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.

Question 15

theory of mind

Answer 15

Theory of mind - Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behaviour.

Question 16

Understand the functions and meanings of emotion in three areas of life: the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social–cultural.

Answer 16

The first concerns the intrapersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play within each of us individually.

The second concerns the interpersonal functions of emotion, which refer to the role emotions play between individuals within a group.

The third concerns the social and cultural functions of emotion, which refer to the role that emotions play in the maintenance of social order within a society.

All in all, we will see that emotions inform us of who we are, what our relationships with others are like, and how to behave in social interactions. Emotions give meaning to events; without emotions, those events would be mere facts. Emotions help coordinate interpersonal relationships. And emotions play an important role in the cultural functioning of keeping human societies together.

Question 17

Give examples of the role and function of emotion in each of the three areas described.

Answer 17

Intrapersonal - Emotions help us to act quickly with minimal conscious awareness, Emotions prepare the body for immediate action, Emotions influence thoughts, Emotions motivate future behaviours

Interpersonal - Emotional Expressions Facilitate Specific Behaviours in Perceivers, Emotional Expressions Signal the Nature of Interpersonal Relationships, Emotional Expressions Provide Incentives for Desired

Social - hungry = goes to the store to buy food

Question 18

cultural display rules

Answer 18

Cultural display rules - These are rules that are learned early in life that specify the management and modification of emotional expressions according to social circumstances. Cultural display rules can work in a number of different ways. For example, they can require individuals to express emotions “as is” (i.e., as they feel them), to exaggerate their expressions to show more than what is actually felt, to tone down their expressions to show less than what is actually felt, to conceal their feelings by expressing something else, or to show nothing at all.

Question 19

interpersonal

Answer 19

Interpersonal - This refers to the relationship or interaction between two or more individuals in a group. Thus, the interpersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of one’s emotion on others, or to the relationship between oneself and others.

Question 20

intrapersonal

Answer 20

This refers to what occurs within oneself.

Thus, the intrapersonal functions of emotion refer to the effects of emotion to individuals that occur physically inside their bodies and psychologically inside their minds.

Question 21

social and cultural

Answer 21

Society refers to a system of relationships between individuals and groups of individuals

Culture refers to the meaning and information afforded to that system that is transmitted across generations.

Thus, the social and cultural functions of emotion refer to the effects that emotions have on the functioning and maintenance of societies and cultures.

Question 22

social referencing

Answer 22

Social referencing - This refers to the process whereby individuals look for information from others to clarify a situation, and then use that information to act. Thus, individuals will often use the emotional expressions of others as a source of information to make decisions about their own behaviour.

Question 23

Explain the way the attachment system works and its evolutionary significance.

Answer 23

Attachment is an emotional bond with another person. Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. He suggested that attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child’s chances of survival.
The evolutionary theory of attachment (e.gBowlby, Harlow, Lorenz) suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others, because this will help them to survive.

Question 24

Identify three commonly studied attachment patterns and what is known about the development of those patterns.

Answer 24

From the observational study, Ainsworth (1970) identified three attachment styles; secure (type B), insecure-avoidant (type A) and insecure-ambivalent/resistant (type C).
Secure = being able to hold strong relationships, loving parents
Insecure-avoidant = Adults with an avoidant-dismissive insecure attachment style are the opposite of those who are ambivalent or anxious-preoccupied. Instead of craving intimacy, they’re so wary of closeness they try to avoid emotional connection with others. They’d rather not rely on others, or have others rely on them.
Insecure-ambivalent/resistant = Children who have a resistant (ambivalent) attachment pattern are thought to maintain proximity to their caregiver by ‘up-regulating’ their attachment behaviour: when they are separated from a caregiver, they may become very distressed and may be angry, and resist contact when the caregiver returns, and not quickly …

Question 25

Describe what is known about the consequences of secure versus insecure attachment in adult relationships.

Answer 25

Insecure attachment itself may contribute to anxiety, but insecurely attached children also are more likely to have difficulties regulating emotions and interacting competently with peers, which may further contribute to anxiety.
Empathetic and able to set appropriate boundaries, people with secure attachment tend to feel safe, stable, and more satisfied in their close relationships. While they don’t fear being on their own, they usually thrive in close, meaningful relationships.

Question 26

attachment behavioural system

Answer 26

Attachment behavioural system - A motivational system selected over the course of evolution to maintain proximity between a young child and his or her primary attachment figure.

Question 27

attachment behaviours

Answer 27

Attachment behaviours - Behaviours and signals that attract the attention of a primary attachment figure and function to prevent separation from that individual or to reestablish proximity to that individual (e.g., crying, clinging).

Question 28

attachment figure

Answer 28

Attachment figure - Someone who functions as the primary safe haven and secure base for an individual. In childhood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a parent. In adulthood, an individual’s attachment figure is often a romantic partner.

Question 29

attachment patterns

Answer 29

Attachment patterns - (also called “attachment styles” or “attachment orientations”) Individual differences in how securely (vs. insecurely) people think, feel, and behave in attachment relationships.

Question 30

strange situation

Answer 30

Strange situation - A laboratory task that involves briefly separating and reuniting infants and their primary caregivers as a way of studying individual differences in attachment behaviour.