Life Span Development by John Santrock 13th Edition Chapter 8

Forming an understanding that people don't always give accurate reports of their beliefs

- Researchers have found that even 4-year-olds under- stand that people may make statements that aren't true to obtain what they want or to avoid trouble - Another recent study found that at 3 years of age, children mistrusted people who made a single error, but it wasn't until 4 years of age that, when deciding whom to trust, children took into account the relative frequency of errors informants made

Heteronomous Morality

From about 4 to 7 years of age. The first stage of moral development in Piaget's theory. Children think of justice and rules as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people.

Transition between morality stages

From 7 to 10 years of age, children are in a transition showing some features of the first stage of moral reasoning and some stages of the second stage, autonomous morality.

Autonomous Morality

From about 10+, children show the second stage of morality. They become aware that rules and laws are created by people, and in judging an action they consider the actor's intentions as well as the consequences.

Piaget's two stages of morality for children

heteronomous morality, autonomas morality

Emotion Dismissing Parents

view their role as to deny, ignore, or change negative emotions

Two approaches parents can take to deal with their children's emotions

-Emotion - Coaching -Emotion - Dismissing

Gender role

A set of expectations that prescribes how females or males should think, act, and feel.

Understanding Joint Commitments

A recent study revealed that 3-year-olds, but not 2-year-olds, recognized when an adult is committed and when they themselves are committed to joint activity that involves obligation to a partner.

Neglectful Parenting

A style in which the parent is very uninvolved in the child's life. Children whose parents are neglectful develop the sense that other aspects of the parents' lives are more important than they are. These children tend to be socially incompetent. Many have poor self-control and don't handle independence well

Psychoanalytic theory of gender

A theory deriving from Freud's view that the preschool child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent, by approximately 5 or 6 years of age renounces this attraction because of anxious feelings, and subsequently identifies with the same- sex parent, unconsciously adopting the same-sex parent's characteristics, the process is known as Oedipus (for boys) or Electra (for girls) complex

Social cognitive theory of gender

A theory that emphasizes that children's gender development occurs through the observation and imitation of gender behavior and through the rewards and punishments children experience for gender- appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.

Social role theory

A theory that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women.

Gender typing

Acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.

games

Activities engaged in for pleasure that include rules and often competition with one or more individuals.

Conscience

An internal regulation of standards of right and wrong that involves an integration of moral thought, feeling, and behavior.

Sensorimotor play

Behavior engaged in by infants to derive pleasure from exercising their existing sensorimotor schemas.

Understanding Emotions (2 and 4 yr olds)

Children considerably increase the number of terms they use to describe emotions. During this time, they are also learning about the causes and consequences of feelings.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Children must be able to refer to themselves and be aware of themselves as distinct from others. Pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt are examples of these emotions. These categorized emotions do not appear to develop until self-awareness appears around 18 months of age.

Understandning Emotions (4 to 5 yr olds)

Children show an increased ability to reflect on emotions. They also begin to understand that the same event can elicit different feelings in different people. Moreover, they show a growing awareness that they need to manage their emotions to meet social standards.

What feelings are central to the account of Moral Development? (According to Freud)

Feelings of anxiety and guilt are central, provided by Freud's psychoanalytic theory

The main difference in the two emotion based approaches?

Emotion coaching parents interact with their children in a less rejecting manner, use more scaffolding and praise, and are more nurturant than are emotion-dismissing parents. Children of emotion coaching parents are better at soothing themselves when they get upset, more effective in regulating their negative affect, focus their attention better, and have fewer behavior problems than the children of emotion-dismissing parents.

Initiative versus Guilt

Erikson's psychosocial stage associated with early childhood. By now, children have become convinced that they are persons of their own; during early childhood, they begin to discover what kind of person they will become.

A young child's theory of mind?

Includes understanding that other people have emotions and desires.

Moral Development

Involves the development of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people

Understanding Emotions (5 yr old)

Most children can accurately determine emotions that are produced by challenging circumstances and describe strategies they might call on to cope with everyday stress.

constructive play

Play that combines sensorimotor and repetitive activity with symbolic representation of ideas. Constructive play occurs when children engage in self-regulated creation or construction of a product or a solution

Practice play

Play that involves repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned or when physical or mental mastery and coordination of skills are required for games or sports.

Social play

Play that involves social interactions with peers.

Self-Understanding

The child's cognitive representation of self, the substance and content of the child's self-conceptions.

Immanent Justice

The concept that if a rule is broken punishment will be meted out immediately

Gender Identity

The sense of being male or female, which most children acquire by the time they are 3 years old.

Gender schema theory

The theory that gender- typing emerges as children develop gender schemas of their culture's gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior.

What characterizes children's Self Understanding?

They are unrealistically positive and optimistic in self description. Children mainly describe themselves in terms of concrete, observable features and action tendencies, at about 4 to 5 years of age, as they hear others use psychological trait and emotion terms, they begin to include these in their own self-descriptions.

Why are young children so optimistic in their self descriptions?

They don't yet distinguish between their desired competence and their actual competence, tend to confuse ability and effort (thinking that differences in ability can be changed as easily as can differences in effort), don't engage in spontaneous social comparison of their abilities with those of others, and tend to compare their present abilities with what they could do at an earlier age.

Extensive theory of mind research and the recent research on young children's social understanding show that...

Young children are not as egocentric as Piaget envisioned. The current research on social awareness in infancy and early childhood is so dissonant with Piaget's egocentrism concept.

Indulgent Parenting

a style in which parents are highly involved with their children but place few demands or controls on them. Such parents let their children do what they want. The result is that the children never learn to control their own behavior and always expect to get their way

Authoritative Parenting

encourages children to be independent but still places limits and controls on their actions. Extensive verbal give-and-take is allowed, and parents are warm and nurturant toward the child. An authoritative parent might put his arm around the child in a comforting way and say, "You know you should not have done that. Let's talk about how you can handle the situation better next time." Authoritative parents show pleasure and support in response to children's constructive behavior. They also expect mature, independent, and age-appropriate behavior by children.

Emotion Coaching Parents

monitor their children's emotions, view their children's negative emotions as opportunities for teaching, assist them in labeling emotions, and coach them in how to deal effectively with emotions

pretense/symbolic play

play in which the child transforms the physical environment into a symbol

acculturation

refers to cultural changes that occur when one culture comes in contact with another

Empathy

responding to another person's feelings with an emotion that echoes the other's feelings (contributes to moral development)

Authoritarian Parenting

restrictive, punitive style in which parents exhort the child to follow their directions and respect their work and effort

Perspective taking

the ability to discern another's inner psychological states

Superego

the moral element of personality