Child Development (9,10,12,13)
Social Preference
"likes" and "dislikes"
3 common forms of aggression in young children
(1) Instrumental aggression (2) Bullying or hostile aggression (3) Relational aggression
As children develop during preschool, their attachment to their parents changes for 2 reasons:
(1) advances in language ability enable children and parents to communicate at greater distances (2) Internal Working Models
Parents influence development of social competence with 2 major challenges
(1) establishing a secure attachment relationship in infancy and early childhood (2) developing a positive approach to socialization and discipline of their children
Concrete Operational Thought 4 Significant Advances:
(1) reversibility (2) less influenced by how things seem and more capable of inferring how they really are (3) able to decenter (4) decline in egocentrism
Social Status Subgroups
-- Popular: children who are clearly more liked than disliked -- Rejected: clearly more disliked than liked -- Neglected: neither liked or disliked -- Controversial: simultaneously liked by some and disliked by others -- Average: do not fall neatly into any of these subgroups
Why are young children deficient in information-processing?
1) older children are more likely than younger children to use strategies 2) older children are better able than younger children to conceptualize their own cognitive processes (Metacognition)
3 Stage Developmental Progression of sorting:
1: (5 and younger) no overall plan for sorting, but produced pictures made with objects 2: (6-8) sorted in more organized way 3: (late childhood-adolescence) understood the rule of class inclusion
Biological Theory of Aggression
Freud - destructive impulses are instinctive in humans: biologically built into the individual from birth, highly pleasurable, and virtually irresistible -- phallic stage: children's destructive impulses are directed toward the same-sex parent -- sublimate
Dominance Hierarchy
a systematic ordering of power relationships from the most to the least powerful member in primates -- minimizes aggression because each person knows their spot -- can occur as early as 2 years old
Gender Identity
ability to classify oneself and others by sex (appears at 3)
Quantitative Reasoning
ability to estimate the amount of things and changes in the amounts of things in terms of number
Deception
ability to generate false beliefs in other individuals -- see emerging theory of mind when we examine children's use of deception
Symbolic Function (preoperational)
ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events -- develops at end of 2nd year (early childhood)
How Children Learn Gender Roles (Gender Schema Theory)
accounts for gender-typing by combining the concept of an active role for the child (cognitive-development theory) and the concept of environmental influence(social learning theory)
Distinguishing appearance and reality
adults generally sense that appearances do not always reflect reality: people don't mean what they say, intend what they do, or feel emotions that are equal to their facial expressions
Conflict
any situation in which children find themselves opposing one another -- center on 2 issues: control of objects and social influence
Authoritarian Parents
assert great power over their children, setting strict limits and standards on children's behavior -- no room for negotiation or compromise -- more likely to be peer-rejected
Goal-Corrected Partnership
attachment is based more on emotional closeness rather than physical closeness
Conservation (during concrete operational)
begin to show consistent conservation of matter, number, length
Prosocial Behavior
behavior that shows concern for the welfare of others --includes: helping, caring, sharing, rescuing, protecting -- at 2 years old, begin to try to reduce others' suffering
Gender Segregation
behaviors observed within and between segregated same-sex groups: rough behavior with boys and verbal and polite behavior with girls
How Children Learn Gender Roles (Social Learning Theory)
believe children observe how same-sex peers and adults behave, imitate what they see, and are reinforced or punished
Freud's View of Moral Development
believed children develop moral concern late in preschool years as by-product of resolution of the Oedipus complex and Electra complex -- believed children do not engage in moral reasoning (morality in unconscious in the superego)
5-to-7 shift (Piaget)
between ages 5 and 7, children go through a gradual period of transition from illogical and unsystematic reasoning of the preoperational period to the more logical and systematic reasoning of middle childhood
Social pretend play or Socio-dramatic play (preoperational)
by 3 - children act out roles and themes associated with stories, tv shows, etc. -- requires children learn to negotiate about roles and actions -- increases through preoperational, declines at 6
Mildred Parton
came up with series of categories that represent a degree of social participation (unoccupied behavior, onlooker behaviors, solitary play, parallel play, associative play, cooperative play)
sublimate
channel aggression into socially acceptable forms of expression (pounding clay or hammering pegs)
Reactive Aggression
child is provoked by the behavior of an instigator and the child responds defensively or in retaliation to the provocation
Cooperative Play
child plays with other children in an organized manner, with roles differentiated to accomplish some goal
Egocentrism (limitation of preoperational thought)
child's inability to conceptualize the perspective of other individuals -- Three Mountain Problem: children under 8 identified their own view as that of the doll (egocentrism); reevaluated by others and found evidence as early as 3
Observational theory (social learning theory of aggression)
children acquire aggressive responses by observing the aggressive behavior and produce aggressive responses without reinforcement
Sequencing and Socialization of Pretend Episodes (pretend skill)
children coordinate such acts into sequences of increasing length and complexity through the preschool years ex) hair combing expands into hair washing, putting on makeup, combing hair, and dressing
Deferred Imitation (preoperational)
children observe the behavior of a model and imitate that behavior when the model is no longer present
Substituting Objects (pretend skill)
children often substitute one object for another in pretend play
Symbolic (pretend) play (preoperational)
children pretend that an object is something other than what it is ex) toddler transforms a doll into a "real" person
monologue
children simply talk to themselves, seemingly oblivious to anyone around them
Attachment theory proposes that....
children's social development depends on the quality of their relationships with their parents ex) secure attachment to the mother during the infant-toddler period is associated with child's development of social skills
Parents manage children's relationships by.....
choice of neighborhood, planning children's social contacts, and monitoring and supervising of children's play
Mindreading
cognitive process by which we attribute desires and beliefs to other individuals in order to explain and predict their behavior -- first occurs early in preschool years
Gender Schema
cognitive structure with which the child searches for gender-related information from the environment (ex) boy checking out new classroom: if boys are primarily reading, he will assimilate the books to the gender schema
Gender Constancy
concept that gender does not change regardless of how one behaves or what clothes one wears
Display rules
conventions for appropriate displays of emotions in particular situations (cannot always express what they feel) ex) crying in room is appropriate but crying at movie is not
collective monologue
conversation-like turn-taking between egocentric speakers, with little or no transfer of meaning
3 forms of symbolic function
deferred imitation, pretend play, and mental images
Induction
derive general principles from particular examples ex) boy observes that his teachers have favored girls in each of his classes so he INDUCES that girls are teacher's pets
inuitive
describes children's reasoning during 5-to-7 shift -- implies noticeable improvement over preoperational thought, but with lingering lapses in logic
Preconcepts (preoperational)
disorganized, illogical representations of the child's experiences -- provide a less than adequate representation of children's experiences
Friendship
enduring close, mutual relationship between 2 individuals, expressed by a tendency to spend a disproportionate amount of play time together
Authoritative Parents
have expectations for their children's behavior, firmly enforce rules and standards, but allow children some say in the development of rules -- parents and children communicate openly -- children are MORE socially competent
In general, from 6 to 10...
improved memory, classification, and quantitative reasoning
Sociometric procedure
individual children are asked to nominate 3 children they most like to play with and 3 that they least like to play with
Piaget believed preoperational children are INCAPABLE of thinking _________ or _______. Instead they think by __________.
inductively or deductively; transduction
Grammatical morphemes
inflections such as -ing, -ed, and -s which modify nouns, verbs, and adjectives
Mental images (preoperational)
internal representations of external objects or events
egocentric speech
language that fails to consider the viewpoint of the listener
Internal Working Models
mental representations of the attachment relationship allow children to feel secure as they explore farther and farther from the attachment figure -- result = goal-corrected partnership
preschoolers are ______ aggressive than children at any other stage of development
more
Those who pretend are....
more socially skilled, more popular, and emphatic than children who pretend less
Concrete operation
new form of cognitive ability that enables the child to adapt to his or her environment with systematic logic (age 7 or 8)
Conservation
notion that certain attributes of objects and events may remain unchanged, despite transformations or changes in other attributes ex) which shaped glass has more liquid -- preschoolers struggle with this
5 Counting Principles
one-to-one principle: one distinctive number name must be assigned to each item in the array -- stable order principle: number names must be assigned in a stable, repeatable order -- cardinal principle: final number in a counting sequence gives the total number of items in the array -- abstraction principle: virtually anything can be counted -- order-irrelevance principle: the order in which objects are counted is irrelevant
over-regularize
over-generalize
coercion theory (social learning theory of aggression)
patterson; aggressive children's interactions with peers or with parents tend to escalate into chains of aversive events
How Children Learn Gender Roles (Cognitive-Developmental Perspective)
portrays children as active agents in the learning of gender roles
Centration (preoperational)
preschool-age children tend to focus their attention on minute and inconsequential aspects of their experience ex) 3 year old only remembers babysitter's bright earrings
Masking
process by which children alter the overt expression of emotions to conform to display rules -- "poker face"
Aggression
purposeful efforts to inflict pain or injury on another child
Remembering
quantity of information available as input is overwhelming to preschoolers -- limited memory capacity
Transduction (preoperational)
reasoning within the unsystematic collections of images that constitute their preconcepts
Proactive Aggression
refers to a child's unprovoked, voluntary efforts to cause harm to a selected victim
Relational aggression
refers to behavior that is designed to inflict harm by undermining of damaging relations with peers ex) excluding another child or threatening to sever an existing relationship
Instrumental aggression
refers to object-oriented struggles between children over possession, territory, and privilege -- peaks at 2
Bullying or hostile aggression
refers to person-oriented acts aimed at forcefully gaining social control over another child
Classification Hierarchy (concrete operational)
refers to the fact that any given object can be classified in a series of increasingly inclusive levels
Classification
refers to the tendency to group objects on the basis of particular sets of characteristics
Shifting Context (pretend skill)
require support from the play setting to initiate and sustain their pretense (2 and 3 year old) ex) more likely to pretend eat in a kitchen
private speech
speech with no apparent communicative purpose
Rule of Class Inclusion (concrete operational)
states that any class of objects must be smaller than the inclusive class in which it is contained ex) there are more animals than dogs
Grammar
system of rules that structures how to combine words into meaningful sequences
Social Competence
the ability to establish and maintain satisfying social interaction and relationships with peers and adults
Gender Roles
the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that a particular culture considers appropriate for males and females -- Men: strong, competent, independent, aggressive -- Women: nurturer, emotional, dependent, unassertive, and compliant
Unoccupied behavior
the child is not involved in play and does not interact with other children or teachers
Onlooker behavior
the child observes the play of other children with interest but makes no effort to become involved
Parallel Play
the child plays beside other children with toys that are similar to those used by those children. No social contact or effort to play
Solitary play
the child plays independently with toys that are unlike those played with by other children. -- no social contact or interest of other children
Associative Play
the child plays with other children, sharing materials and conversing, but there is no consistent theme to play
Irreversibility (limitation of preoperational thought)
the notion that preschoolers cannot mentally reverse their transductive sequences of thought -- explains why preschoolers have a way of taking things apart, but not able to find their way back
inner speech
thinking in words and sentences
Self-regulate
to control the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to conform to the requirements of challenging situations
Neglectful Parents
uninvolved in their children's lives and consider parenting a burden
Deduction
use general principles to PREDICT particular outcomes ex) same child could use his general principle to deduce that when he enters his next grade, his teacher will likely favor girls
Theory of Mind
used to explain and predict human behavior
Emotional Reactivity
variations in threshold for specific emotions and the intensity and duration of emotional reactions
Indulgent-permissive Parents
very accepting of their children's impulses, avoid setting rules, and assert very little authority over their children's behavior
How Children Learn Gender Roles (Psychoanalytic Perspective)
when children overcome phallic stage, they unconsciously defend themselves against anxiety through identification (incorporating characteristics of same-sex parent and the opposite-sex into the personality as an ego ideal)
reinforcement trap
when mother issues a command (clean your room), child responds with aggressive behavior, and mother giving into it -- reinforces 2 behaviors (aggression and submissive giving-in)
Substituting Other Agents for Onself (pretend skill)
when pretense first appears early in the second year, toddlers are the agents of their own act of pretense ex) children use dolls as active agents, pretending that dolls initiate and sustain their own behavior
1:1 correspondence
young preoperational children show no understanding of 1:1 correspondence, responding only to the physical appearance of the rows
Conservation of number
Piaget: not reached until concrete operations (7-8 years old) Modern: preschool children can conserve number if the task is simple enough)