Chapter 11 Textbook notes

Preschoolers with ASD

-preschool intervention program will need to target both language forms and functions

By the end of the second year a child's vocabulary consists of how many words?

50

By the end of the second year, a childs brain is what percent of its adult size?

75%

Between 3 and 4, uses ______ - ______ words expressively.

900-1,000

Recursive thought

A form of perspective taking that requires the ability to view a situation from at least two perspectives - that is, to reason simultaneously about what two or more people are thinking.

enduring self (p. 451)

A view of the self as persisting over time. Distinguished from categorical self, remembered self, and inner self.

By the end of the second year, language becomes a powerful tool in self-development. Because it permits children to represent and express the self more clearly, it greatly enhances self-awareness. Between 18 and 30 months, children construct a CATEGORICAL SELF as they classify themselves and others on the basis of perceptually distinct attributes and behaviors——age ("baby," "boy," or "man"), gender ("boy" or "girl") and physical characteristics (" big," ("strong") They also start to refer to the self's goodness and badness ("I good girl." "Tommy mean!" and competencies ("Did it!" "I can't")

Adult-child conversations about the past lead to an autobiographical memory. This life-story narrative grants the child a REMEMBERED SELF——a more coherent portrait than is offered by the isolated, episodic memories of the first few years. By participating in personal storytelling, children come to view the self as a unique, continuously existing individual embedded in a world of others. As early as age 2, parents use these discussions to impart rules, standards, and evaluative information about the child, as when they say, "You added the milk when we made mashed potatoes. That's a very important job!" These narratives are a major means through which caregivers imbue the young child's sense of self with cultural values. As they talk about personally significant events and as their cognitive skills advance, preschoolers gradually develop an ENDURING SELF—-a view of themselves as persisting over time. Not until age 4 are children certain that a video image of themselves replayed a few minutes after it was filmed is still "me." Similarly, when researchers asked 3- to 5-year-olds to imagine a future event (walking next to a waterfall) and to envision a future personal state by choosing from three items (a raincoat, money, a blanket) the one they would need to bring with them, performance——along with future-state justifications (" I'm gonna get wet")——increases sharply between ages 3 and 4.

Children and adolescents whose parents are warm and accepting, provide reasonable expectations for mature behavior, and engage in positive problem solving (resolve conflicts by collaborating with the child on a solution) feel especially good about themselves. Warm, positive parenting lets young people know that they are accepted as competent and worthwhile. And firm but appropriate expectations, backed up with explanations, help them make sensible choices and evaluate themselves against reasonable standards. Controlling parents——-those who too often help or make decisions for their child——communicate a sense of inadequacy to children. Having parents who are repeatedly disapproving and insulting is also linked to low self-esteem. Children subjected to such parenting need constant reassurance, and many rely heavily on peers to affirm their self-worth——a risk factor for adjustment difficulties, including aggression, antisocial behavior, and delinquency. In contrast, overly tolerant, indulgent parenting is linked to unrealistically high self-esteem, which also undermines development. These children——whom researchers label NARCISSISTIC because they combine an inflated sense of superiority with obsessive worry about what others think of them—-are vulnerable to temporary, sharp drops in self-esteem when their overblown self-images are challenged. They tend to lash out at peers who express disapproval and display adjustment problems, including meanness and aggression.

American cultural values have increasingly emphasized a focus on the self that may lead parents to indulge children and boost their self-esteem too much. The self-esteem of U.S. youths rose sharply from the 1970s to the 1990s——a period in which much popular parenting literature advised promoting children's self-esteem. Yet compared with previous generations, U.S. youths are achieving less well and displaying more antisocial behavior and other adjustment problems. Research confirms that children do not benefit from compliments ("You're terrific") that have no basis in real attainment. Rather, the best way to foster a positive, secure self-image is to encourage children to strive for worthwhile goals. Over time, a bidirectional relationship emerges: Achievement fosters self-esteem, which contributes to further effort and gains in performance. What can adults do to promote, and to avoid undermining, this mutually supportive relationship between motivation and self-esteem? Some answers come from research on the precise content of adults' messages to children in achievement situations.

Attributions are our common, everyday explanations for the causes of behavior——our answers to the question "Why did I or another person do that?" We group the causes of our own and others' behavior into two broad categories: external, environmental causes and internal, psychological causes. Then we further divide psychological causes into two types: ABILITY and EFFORT. In assigning a cause, we use certain rules: If a behavior occurs for many people but only in a single situation (for example, the whole class gets A's on Mrs. Apple's French test), we conclude that it is externally caused (the test was easy). In contrast, if an individual displays a behavior in many situations (Sally always gets A's on French tests), we judge the behavior to be internally caused——by ability, effort, or both (Sally is smart and works hard). In Chapter 8, we showed that although intelligence predicts school achievement, the relationship is far from perfect. Individual differences in ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION—-the tendency to persist at challenging tasks—-are just as important. Today, researchers regard achievement-related attributions as the main reason some children display initiative when faced with obstacles to success, whereas others give up easily

Around age 3, children begin making attributions about their successes and failures. These attributions affect their EXPECTANCIES OF SUCCESS, which influence their willingness to try hard in the future. Many studies show that preschoolers are "learning optimists" who rate their own ability very high, often underestimate task difficulty, and hold positive expectancies of success. When asked to react to a situation in which one person does worse on a task than another, young children indicate that the lower-scoring person can still succeed if she keeps on trying. Cognitively, preschoolers cannot yet distinguish the precise causes of their successes and failures. Instead, they view all good things as going together: A person who tries hard is also a smart person who is going to succeed. Nevertheless, by age 3, some children give up easily when faced with a challenge, expressing shame and despondency after failing. These nonpersisters have a history of parental criticism of their worth and performance and of excessive control——frequent parental commands and intrusive attempts to take over when the child attempts a challenging task. In contrast, their enthusiastic, highly motivated agemates have parents who patiently support the child's initiative ("Why don't you try the next one on your own?") while offering information about how to succeed. Furthermore, when preschool nonpersisters use dolls to act out an adult's reaction to failure, they anticipate disapproval——-saying, for example, "He's punished because he can't do the puzzle." "He worked hard but just couldn't finish. He wants to try again" Preschoolers readily internalize adult evaluations. Whereas persisters view themselves as "good," nonpersisters see themselves as "bad" Already, nonpersisters seem to base their self-esteem entirely on others' judgments, not on inner standards. Consequently, they show early signs of maladaptive achievement behaviors that become more common during middle childhood.

Infancy is a rich formative period for development of both physical and social understanding. In Chapter 6, you learned that infants develop an appreciation of the permanence of objects. And in Chapter 10, we saw that over the first year, infants recognize and respond appropriately to others' emotions and distinguish familiar from unfamiliar people. That both objects and people achieve an independent, stable existence for infants implies that knowledge of the self as a separate, permanent entity is also emerging. Self-development begins with the dawning of self-awareness in infancy and gradually evolves into a rich, multifaceted, organized view of the self's characteristics and capacities during childhood and adolescence.

As early as the first few months of life, infants smile and return friendly behaviors to their reflection in a mirror. When do they realize that the baby smiling back at them is the self?

Categorical self (18-30 months)

As they classify themselves and others on the basis of perceptually distinct attributes and behaviors age, gender, and physical characteristics.

From middle childhood to adolescence, individual differences in self-esteem become increasingly stable. And positive relationships among self-esteem, valuing of various activities, and success at those activities emerge and strengthen with age. For example, academic self-esteem is a powerful predictor of young people's judgments of the importance and usefulness of school subjects, willingness to exert effort, achievement, and eventual career choice. Children and adolescents with high social self-esteem are consistently better-liked by their peers. And as we saw in Chapter 5, sense of athletic competence is positively associated with investment in and performance at sports. Furthermore, across age, sex, SES, and ethnic groups, individuals with mostly favorable self-esteem profiles tend to be well-adjusted, sociable, and conscientious. In contrast, low self-esteem factors are more strongly related to adjustment. Adolescents who feel highly dissatisfied with parental relationships often are aggressive and antisocial. Those with poor academic self-esteem tend to be anxious and unfocused. And those who view their peer relationships negatively are likely to be anxious and depressed. And although virtually all teenagers become increasingly concerned about others' opinions, those who are overly dependent on social approval place their self-esteem continually "on the line." As a result, they report frequent self-esteem shifts——on average, about once a week. Let's take a closer look at factors that affect self-esteem——-both its level and its stability.

As with self-concept, cultural forces profoundly affect self-esteem. An especially strong emphasis on social comparison in school may underlie the finding that despite their higher academic achievement, Chinese and Japanese children score lower than U.S. children in self-esteem——a difference that widens with age. In Asian classrooms, competition is tough, and achievement pressure is high. At the same time, because their culture values modesty and social harmony, Asian children rely less on social comparisons to promote their own self-esteem. Rather, they tend to be reserved about judging themselves positively but generous in their praise of others. Gender-stereotyped expectations also affect self-esteem. In one study, the more 5- to 8-year-old girls talked with friends about the way people look, watched TV shows focusing on physical appearance, and perceived their friends as valuing thinness, the greater their dissatisfaction with their physical self and the lower their overall self-esteem a year later. By adolescence, girls feel less confident than boys about their physical appearance and athletic abilities. With respect to academic self-esteem, boys, again, are somewhat advantaged: Whereas girls score higher in language arts self-esteem, boys have higher math, science, and physical/athletic self-esteem—-even when children of equal skill levels are compared. At the same time, girls exceed boys in self-esteem dimensions of close friendship and social acceptance. Although only a slight difference exists between boys and girls in overall self-esteem, a widely held assumption is that boys' overall sense of self-worth is much higher than girls' Girls may think less well of themselves because they internalize this negative cultural message. Compared with their Caucasian agemates, African-American children tend to have slightly higher self-esteem, perhaps because of warm extended families and a stronger sense of ethnic pride. Finally, children and adolescents who attend schools or live in neighborhoods where their SES and ethnic groups are well-represented feel a stronger sense of belonging and have fewer self-esteem problems.

Over the first year of life, infants build an implicit appreciation of people as animate beings whose behavior is governed by intentions, desires, and feelings. This sets the stage for the verbalized mental understanding that blossom in early childhood. In Chapter 10, we saw that 3-month-olds smile more at people than at objects and become upset when a person poses a still face and fails to communicate. By 6 months, when infants see people talk, they expect the talk to be directed at other people, not at inanimate objects. At the end of the first year, babies view people as intentional beings who can share and influence one another's mental states, a milestone that opens the door to new forms of communication——-joint attention, social referencing, preverbal gestures, and language. These early milestones serve as the foundation for later mental understandings. In longitudinal research, 10-months-olds' ability to discern others' intentions predicted theory-of-mind competence at age 4

At the end of the second and continuing over the third year, children display a clearer grasp of people's emotions and desires, evident in their increasing mental-state vocabulary, capacity to empathize, and realization that people often differ from one another and from themselves in likes, dislikes, wants, needs, and wishes ("Mommy likes green beans. Daddy doesn't. He likes carrots. I like carrots, too!") Still appreciating the distinction between others' desires and one's own develops gradually. Whereas 18-month-olds can take into account differences in food preferences using another's emotional expression, 2- and 3-year-olds continue to have difficulty with more challenging tasks——such as selecting a gift for someone based on that person's desires. As children gain experience in observing what others like and dislike, their performance improves. These findings confirm that toddlers and young preschoolers comprehend mental states that can be readily inferred from their own and others' actions. But their understanding is limited to a simplistic DESIRE THEORY OF MIND: They think that people always act in ways consistent with their desires and do not realize that less obvious, more interpretive mental states, such as beliefs, also affect behavior.

Because of the preschooler's egocentric thought, the best approach for effective communication is through: A. speech. C. drawing. D. actions.

B. play. *Play is the child's way to understand and adjust to situations.

Using a clinical interviewing procedure devised by James Marcia (1980) or briefer questionnaire measures, researchers evaluate progress in identity development on two key criteria derived from Erickson's theory: EXPLORATION and COMMITMENT. Their various combinations yield four IDENTITY STATUSES: IDENTITY ACHIEVEMENT, commitment to values, beliefs, and goals following a period of exploration; IDENTITY MORATORIUM, exploration without having reached commitment; IDENTITY FORECLOSURE, commitment in the absence of exploration; and IDENTITY DIFFUSION, an apathetic state characterized by lack of both exploration and commitment. Identity development follows many paths. Some young people remain in one status, whereas others experience many status transitions. And the pattern often varies across IDENTITY DOMAINS, such as sexual orientation, vocation, and religious, political, and other worldviews. Many young people change from "lower" statuses (foreclosure or diffusion) to "higher" statuses (moratorium or achievement) between their mid-teens and mid-twenties, but about as many remain stable, and some move in the reverse direction. The number of domains explored and the intensity with which they are examined vary widely. Almost all young people grapple with work, close relationships, and family. Others add political, religious, community, and leisure-time commitments, some of which are more central to their identity than others.

Because attending college provides opportunities to explore educational and career options as well as lifestyles, college students make more identity progress, increasingly engaging in focused, in-depth consideration and reconsideration of potential commitments. After college, young people often sample various life experiences through travel or short-term volunteer jobs in such programs as the U.S. Peace Corps. Those who go to work immediately after high school graduation often settle on a self-definition earlier. But if they encounter obstacles to realizing their occupational goals because of lack of training or vocational choices, they are at risk for long-term identity foreclosure or diffusion. At one time, researchers thought that adolescent girls postponed establishing an identity, focusing instead on Erickson's next stage, intimacy development. Some girls do show more sophisticated reasoning in intimacy-related domains, such as sexuality and family versus career priorities. Otherwise, adolescents of both sexes typically make progress on identity concerns before experiencing genuine intimacy in relationships.

So far, we have focused on how the general structure and content of self-concept change with age. Another component of self-concept is SELF-ESTEEM, the judgments we make about our own worth and the feelings associated with those judgments. High self-esteem implies a realistic evaluation of the self's characteristics and competencies, coupled with an attitude of self-acceptance and self-respect. Self-esteem ranks among the most important aspects of self-development because evaluations of our own competencies affect emotional experiences, future behavior, and long-term psychological adjustment. As soon as a categorical self with features that can be judged positively or negatively is in place, children become self-evaluative beings. Around age 2, they call a parent's attention to an achievement, such as completing a puzzle, by pointing and saying something like "Look, Mom!" In addition, 2-year-olds are likely to smile when they succeed at a task an adult set for them and to look away or frown when they fail. Self-esteem originates early, and its structure becomes increasingly elaborate with age. Think about your own self-esteem. Besides a global appraisal of your worth as a person, do you have an array of separate self-judgments concerning how well you perform at different activities. Researchers have studied the multifaceted nature of self-esteem by applying FACTOR ANALYSIS to children's ratings of the extent to which statements like these are true: "I am good at homework." "I'm usually the one chosen for games." Most kids like me." By age 4, preschoolers have several self-judgments——for example, about learning things in school, making friends, getting along with parents, and feeling physically attractive. Compared with that of older children, however, their understanding is limited The structure of self-esteem depends on evaluative information available to children and their ability to process that information. Around age 6 to 7, children in diverse Western cultures have formed at least FOUR broad self-evaluations: academic competence, social competence, physical/ athletic competence, and physical appearance. Within these are more refined categories that become increasingly distinct with age. Furthermore, the capacity to view the self in terms of stable dispositions enables school-age children to combine their separate self-evaluations into a general psychological image of themselves——an overall sense of self-esteem. Consequently, self-esteem takes on the hierarchical structure shown in Figure 11.5 on page 462

Children attach greater importance to certain self-judgments, giving them more weight in the total picture. Although individual differences exist, during childhood and adolescence perceived physical appearance correlated more strongly with global self-esteem than any other self-esteem factor. Emphasis on appearance——in the media, among peers, and in society——has major implications for overall satisfaction with the self. The arrival of adolescence adds several new dimensions of self-esteem—-close friendship, romantic appeal, and job competence——that reflect important concerns of this period. Furthermore, adolescents become more discriminating in the people to whom they look for validation of their self-esteem. Some rely more on parents, others more on teachers, and still others more on peers——differences that reflect the extent to which teenagers believe that people in each context are interested in and respect them as individuals.

Learned helplessness

Children attribute their failures, not their successes, to ability. When they succeed, they are likely to conclude that external events, such as luck, are responsible. A condition that occurs after a period of negative consequences where the person begins to believe they have no control.

Children's understanding of other people——the inferences they make about their attributions, both as individuals and as members of particular social groups—-has much in common with their developing understanding of themselves. As we will see, these facets of social cognition also become increasingly differentiated and well organized with age. Person perception refers to the way we size up the qualities of people with whom we are familiar. Researchers study person perception by asking children to describe people they know, using methods similar to those that focus on children's self-concepts. For example, the researcher might ask, "Can you tell me what kind of person_________is?" Like their self-descriptions, young children's descriptions of others focus on concrete activities, behaviors, and commonly experienced emotions and attitudes. As noted in our discussion of self-concept, older preschoolers have begun to notice consistencies in the actions and internal states of people they know. Around age 8, they mention personality traits. At first, these references are closely tied to behavior and consist of implied dispositions: "He's always fighting with people" or "She steals and lies" Later, children mention traits directly, but they use vague, stereotyped language, such as "good," "nice," or "acts smart." Gradually, sharper trait descriptions appear——-"honest," "trustworthy," "generous," "polite," "selfish"——-and children become more convinced of the stability of such dispositions. During adolescence, as abstract thinking becomes better established, inferences about others' personalities are drawn together into organized character sketches. As a result, between ages 14 and 16, teenagers present rich accounts of people they know that integrate physical traits, typical behaviors, and inner dispositions.

Children's person perception, like that of adults, is strongly influenced by social-group membership. As we will see, at an early age, children begin to acquire stereotypes about social groups, and those stereotypes can easily overwhelm their capacity to size up people as individuals. As with their categorical self, young children classify people into social groups on the basis of perceptually distinct attributes, such as age, gender, and race. Children's understanding of gender has been so extensively investigated that we will address it in detail in Chapter 13. Here we focus on a rapidly growing literature on children's developing conceptions of race and ethnicity. Most 3- and 4-year-olds have formed basic concepts of race and ethnicity, in that they can apply the labels "black" and "white" to pictures, dolls, and people. Although indicators of social class——education and occupational prestige——are not accessible to young children, they can distinguish rich from poor on the basis of physical characteristics, such as clothing, residence, and possessions. By the early school years, children absorb prevailing societal attitudes, associating power and privilege with white people and poverty and inferior status with people of color. They do not necessarily acquire these views directly from parents or friends. In one study, although white school-age children assumed that parents' and friends' racial attitudes would resemble their own, no similarities in attitudes emerged. Perhaps white parents are reluctant to discuss their racial and ethnic views with children, and friends also say little. Given limited or ambiguous information, children seem to fill in the gaps with information they encounter in their environments and then infer others' attitudes on the basis of their own. Consistent with this idea, research indicates that children pick up much information about group status from messages in their surroundings. These include (1) social contexts that present a world sorted into groups, such as racial and ethnic segregation in schools and communities; and (2) experiences involving explicit labeling of groups, even when the group distinctions presented are neutral rather than stereotypic. In one experiment, 7- to 12-year-olds attending a summer school program were randomly assigned to social groups, denoted by colored T-shirts (yellow or blue) that the children wore. The researchers hung posters in the classroom that depicted unfamiliar yellow-group members as having higher status———for example, as having won more athletic and spelling competitions. When teachers recognized the social groups by using them as the basis for seating arrangements, task assignments, and bulletin-board displays, children in the high-status group evaluated their own group more favorably than the other group, and children in the low-status group viewed their own group less favorably. But when teachers ignored the social groupings, no prejudice emerged. These findings indicate that children do not necessarily form stereotypes even when some basis for them exists——-in this instance, information on wall posters. But when an authority figure validates a status hierarchy by labeling, sorting, or treating groups differently, children do form biased attitudes.

What experiences contribute to gains in self-awareness? During the first year, as infants act on the environment, they probably notice effects that help them sort out self, other people, and objects. For example, batting a mobile and seeing it swing in a pattern different from the infant's own actions informs the baby about the relation between self and physical world. Smiling and vocalizing at a caregiver who smiles and vocalizes back help clarify the relation between self and social world. And watching the movements of one's own hands and feet provides still another kind of feedback——one under much more direct control than the movements of other people or objects. The contrast between these experiences helps infants sense that they are separate from external reality. Researchers do not yet know exactly how toddlers acquire the various aspects of explicit self-awareness. But sensitive caregiving seems to play a role. Compared to their insecurely attached agemates, securely attached toddlers display more complex self-related actions during play, such as making a doll labeled as the self take a drink or kiss a teddy bear. They also show greater knowledge of their own and their parents' physical features——for example, in labeling of body parts. And 18- month-olds who often establish joint attention with their caregivers are advanced in mirror self-recognition. Joint attention offers toddlers many opportunities to compare their own and others' reactions to objects and events, which may enhance toddlers' awareness of their own physical uniqueness.

Cultural variations exist in early self-development. Urban German and Greek toddlers attain mirror self-recognition earlier than toddlers of the Nso people of Cameroon, a collectivist rural farming society that highly values social harmony and responsibility to others. Compared to their German and Greek counterparts, Nanso mothers engage in less face-to-face communication and object stimulation and more body contact and physical stimulation of their babies. German and Greek practices reflect a distal parenting style common in cultures that value independence; the Nao practices a proximal parenting style typical in cultures that value interdependence. In line with these differences, Nso proximal parenting is associated with later attainment of self-recognition but earlier emergence of toddlers' compliance with adult requests.

identity development also depends on schools and communities that offer rich and varied opportunities for exploration. Supportive experiences include classrooms that promote high-level thinking, teachers and counselors who encourage low-SES and ethnic minority students to go to college, extracurricular and community activities that offer teenagers responsible roles consistent with their interests and talents, and vocational training that immerses adolescents in the real world of adult work.

Culture strongly influences an aspect of mature identity not captured by the identity-status approach: constructing a sense of self-continuity despite major personal changes. In one study, researchers asked Native Canadian and cultural-majority 12- to 20-year-olds to describe themselves in the past and in the present and then to justify why they were the same continuous person. Both groups gave increasingly complex responses with age, but their strategies differed. Most cultural-majority adolescents used an individualistic approach: They described an ENDURING PERSONAL ESSENCE, a core self that remained the same despite change. In contrast, Native Canadian youths took an interdependent approach that emphasized a CONSTANTLY TRANSFORMING SELF, resulting from new roles and relationships. They typically contructed a COHERENT NARRATIVE in which they linked together various time slices of their life with a thread explaining how they had changed in meaningful ways. Finally, societal forces are also responsible for the special challenges faced by gay, lesbian, and bisexual youths and by ethnic minority adolescents in forming a secure identity.

Adolescents' well-organized self-descriptions and differentiated sense of self-esteem provide the cognitive foundation for forming an IDENTITY, first recognized by psychoanalyst Erik Erickson (1950, 1968) as a major personality achievement and a crucial step toward becoming a productive, content adult. Constructing an identity involves defining who you are, what you value, and the directions you choose to pursue in life. One expert described it as an explicit theory of oneself as a rational agent——one who acts on the basis of reason, takes responsibility for those actions, and can explain them. This search for what is true and real about the self drives many choices——vocation, interpersonal relationships, community involvement, ethnic-group membership, and expression of one's sexual orientation, as well as moral, political, religious ideals

Erickson believed that successful psychosocial outcomes of infancy and childhood pave the way toward a coherent, positive identity. Although the seeds of identity formation are planted early, not until late adolescence and emerging adulthood do young people become absorbed in this task. According to Erikson, in complex societies teenagers experiences an IDENTITY CRISIS—-a temporary period of distress as they experiment with alternatives before settling on values and goals. They go through a process of inner soul-searching, sifting through characteristics that defined the self in childhood and combining them with emerging traits, capacities, and commitments. Then they mold these into a solid inner core that provides a sense of sameness as they move through different roles in daily life. Once formed, identity continues to be refined throughout life as people reevaluate earlier commitments and choices. Current theorists agree with Erikson that questioning of values, plans, and priorities is necessary for a mature identity, but they no longer describe this process as a "crisis." In fact, Erikson himself did not believe that adolescents' inner struggle need be severe to arrive at a clear, unified identity. For most young people, identity development is not traumatic or disturbing but, rather, a process of EXPLORATION followed by COMMITMENT. As young people try out life possibilities, they gather important information about themselves and their environment and gradually move toward making enduring decisions. In the process, they forge an organized self-structure. Erikson described the negative outcome of adolescence as IDENTITY CONFUSION. If young people's earlier conflicts were resolved negatively or if society limits their choices to one's that do not match their abilities and desires, they may appear shallow, directionless, and unprepared for the psychological challenges of adulthood. In the following sections, we will see that young people go about the task of defining the self in ways that closely match Erickson's description.

What accounts for the different attributions of mastery-oriented and learned-helpless children? As with preschoolers, adult communication plays a key role. When parents hold an entity view of ability, their children's self-evaluations and school grades conform more closely to parental ability judgments than do those of children whose parents deny that ability is fixed. Parents who believe that little can be done to improve ability may ignore information that is inconsistent with their perceptions, giving their child little opportunity to counteract a negative parental evaluation. Indeed, children with a learned-helpless style often have parents who believe that their child is not very capable and must work much harder than others to succeed. When the child fails, the adult might say, "You can't do that, can you? It's OK if you quit" After the child succeeds, the parent might offer feedback evaluating the child's traits ("You're so smart"). Trait statements——even when positive——encourage children to adopt an entity view of ability, leading them to question their competence in the face of setbacks and to retreat from challenge. Teachers' messages also affect children's attributions. Teachers who attribute children's failures to effort, who are caring and helpful, and who emphasize learning goals tend to have mastery-oriented students. In a study of 1,600 third to eighth graders, students who viewed their teachers as providing positive, supportive learning conditions worked harder and participated more in class——-factors that predicted high achievement, which sustained children's belief in the value of effort. In contrast, students with unsupportive teachers regarded their performance as externally controlled (by their teachers or by luck). This attitude predicted withdrawal from learning activities and declining achievement—-outcomes that led children to doubt their ability. For some children, performance is especially likely to be undermined by adult feedback. Despite their higher achievement, girls more often than boys attribute poor performance to lack of ability. Girls tend to receive messages from teachers and parents that their ability is at fault when they do not do well, and negative stereotypes (for example, that girls are weak at math) reduce their interest and effort. And low-SES, ethnic-minority children often receive less favorable feedback from teachers, especially when assigned to homogeneous groups of poorly achieving students in school——-conditions that result in a drop in academic self-esteem and achievement.

Finally, cultural values affect the likelihood that children will develop learned helplessness. Asian parents and teachers are more likely than their American counterparts to hold an incremental view of ability and to view trying hard as a moral responsibility——messages they transmit to children. Furthermore, because of the high value their culture places on self-improvement, Asians attend more to failure than to success because failure indicates self-esteem. Observations of U.S. and Chinese mothers' responses to their fourth- and fifth-graders' puzzle solutions revealed that the U.S. mothers offered more praise after success, whereas the Chinese mothers more often pointed out the child's inadequate performance. And regardless of success or failure, Chinese mothers made more task-relevant statements aimed at ensuring that children exerted sufficient effort to do well ("You concentrated on it"; "You only got 6 out of 12"). When children continued with the task after mothers left the room, the Chinese children showed greater gains in performance.

As a result of improved reasoning skills and frequent evaluative feedback, school-age children gradually become able to distinguish ability, effort, and external factors in explaining their performance. Those who are high in achievement motivation make MASTERY-ORIENTED ATTRIBUTIONS, crediting their successes to ability—-a characteristic they can improve through trying hard and can count on when faced with new challenges. This INCREMENTAL VIEW OF ABILITY——that it can increase through effort——influences the way mastery-oriented children interpret negative events. They attribute failure to factors that can be changed or controlled, such as insufficient effort or a difficult task. Whether these children succeed or fail, they take an industrious, persistent approach to learning. In contrast, children who develop LEARNED HELPLESSNESS attribute their failures, not their successes, to ability. When they succeed, they are likely to conclude that external events, such as luck, are responsible. Unlike their mastery-oriented counterparts, they hold an ENTITY VIEW OF ABILITY——that it cannot be improved by trying hard. When a task is difficult, these children experience an anxious loss of control. They give up without really trying. Children's attributions affect their goals. Mastery-oriented children focus on LEARNING GOALS——seeking information on how best to increase their ability through effort

Hence, their performance increases over time. In contrast, learned-helpless children focus on PERFOMANCE GOALS——obtaining positive and avoiding negative evaluations of their fragile sense of ability. Over time, learned-helpless children's ability no longer predicts how well they do. In one study, the more fourth to sixth graders held self-critical attributions, the lower they rated their competence, the less they knew about effective study strategies, the more they avoided challenge, and the poorer their academic performance. These outcomes strengthened their entity view of ability. Because learned-helpless children fail to connect effort with success, they do not develop the metacognitive and self-regulatory skills necessary for high achievement. Lack of effective learning strategies, reduced persistence, low performance, and a sense of loss of control sustain one another in a vicious cycle. In adolescence, young people attain a fully differentiated understanding of the relationship between ability and effort. They realize that people who vary in ability can achieve the same outcome with different degrees of effort. When adolescents view their own ability as fixed and low, they conclude that mastering a challenging task in not worth the cost——extremely high effort. To protect themselves from painful feelings of failure, these learned-helpless young people select less demanding courses and careers. Learned helplessness prevents children from realizing their potential.

What factors account for these revisions in self-concept? Cognitive development certainly affects the changing STRUCTURE of the self. School-age children, as we saw in Chapter 6, can better coordinate several aspects of a situation in reasoning about their physical world. Similarly, in the social realm, they combine typical experiences and behaviors into stable psychological dispositions, blend positive and negative characteristics, and compare their own characteristics with those of many peers. And formal operational thought transforms the adolescent's vision of the self into a complex, well-organized, internally consistent picture. The changing CONTENT of the self is a product of both cognitive capacities and feedback from others. Sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934) describes the self as a GENERALIZED OTHER——a blend of what we imagine important people in our lives think of us. He proposed that a psychological self emerges when children adopt a view of the self that resembles others' attitudes toward the child. Mead's ideas indicate that perspective-taking skills—-in particular, an improved ability to infer what other people are thinking——are crucial for developing a self-concept based on personality traits. During middle childhood and adolescence, young people become better at "reading" messages they receive from others. And as school-age children internalize others' expectations, they form an IDEAL SELF that they use to evaluate their real self. As we will see shortly, a large discrepancy between the two can greatly undermine self-esteem, leading to sadness, hopelessness, and depression. Parental support contributes vitally to the clarity and optimism of children's self-concepts. In one study, the richness of mothers' emotional communication in narratives about the past——-evaluations of positive events and explanations of children's negative feelings and their resolution ("Talking about your teacher moving away helped you feel better")——-predicted greater consistency in 5- and 6-year-olds' reports of their personal characteristics. And school-age children with a history of elaborative parent-child conversations construct more positive, detailed personal narratives and thus have more complex, favorable, and coherent self-images.

In middle childhood, children also look to more people beyond the family for information about themselves as they enter a wider range of settings in school and community. And self-descriptions now include frequent references to social groups: "I'm a Boy Scout, a paper boy, and a Prairie City soccer player," remarked one 10-year-old. Gradually, as children move into adolescence, their sources of self-definition become more selective. Although parents and teachers remain influential, self-concept becomes increasingly vested in feedback from close friends. Keep in mind, however, that the content of self-concept varies from culture to culture. In earlier chapters, we noted that Asian parents stress harmonious interdependence, Western parents separateness and self-assertion. These contrasting values are apparent in school-age children's self-concepts. When asked to recall personally significant past experiences (their last birthday, a time their parent scolded them), U.S. children have longer accounts including more personal preferences, skills, and opinions. Chinese children, in contrast, more often referred to social interactions and to others. Similarly, in their self-descriptions, U.S. children listed more personal attributes ("I'm smart," "I like hockey"), Chinese children more attributes involving group membership and relationships ("I belong to the Lee family," "I'm in second grade," "I like to help my mom wash dishes") Finally, although school-age children from diverse cultures view themselves as more knowledgeable about their own inner attributes than significant adults, Japanese children attribute considerably greater knowledge to parents and teachers than American children do. Perhaps because of their more interdependent self, Japanese children are more likely to assume that people share common understandings and that, therefore, their inner states are more transparent to others. In sum, in characterizing themselves, children from individualistic cultures seek to be more egoistic and competitive, those from collectivist cultures more concerned with connections to others—-a finding that underscores the powerful impact of the social environment on self-concept

Over the first year of life, bilingual children:

Maintain their ability to hear phonemic contrasts in both of their languages while losing their ability to hear phonemic contrasts beyond those languages.

in-group favoritism emerges first; children simply prefer their own group, generalizing from self to similar others. And the ease with which a trivial group label supplied by an adult can induce in-group favoritism is striking. In one study, Caucasian-American 5-year-olds were told that they were members of a group based on T-shirt color, but this time, no information was provided about group status, and the children never met any group members. Still they displayed vigorous in-group favoritism. When shown photos of unfamiliar agemates wearing either an in-group or an out-group shirt, the children claimed to like members of their own group better, gave them more resources, expected more generous behavior from them, and engaged in biased recall of individuals' behavior that favored the in-group. Out-group prejudice requires a more challenging social comparison between in-group and out-group. But it does not take long for white children to acquire negative attitudes toward ethnic minority out-groups, especially when such attitudes are encouraged by circumstances in their environments. When white Canadian 4- to 7-year-olds living in a white community and attending nearly all-white schools sorted positive and negative adjectives into boxes labeled as belonging to a white child and a black child, out-group prejudice emerged at age 5. Unfortunately, many ethnic minority children show a reverse pattern: out-group favoritism, in which they assign positive characteristics to the privileged ethnic majority and negative characteristics to their own group. In one study, researchers asked African-American 5- to 7-year-olds to recall information in stories either consistent or inconsistent with stereotypes of blacks. The children recalled more stereotypic traits, especially if they agreed with negative cultural views of African Americans or rated their own skin tone as lighter and, therefore, may have identified themselves with the white majority. In a similar investigation, Native Canadian second to fourth graders recalled more positive attributes about white Canadians and more negative attributes about Native Canadians. A societal context that devalues people of color makes minority children vulnerable to internalizing those beliefs. But recall that with age, children pay more attention to inner traits. The capacity to classify the social world in multiple ways enables school-age children to understand that people can be both "the same" and "different"——-those who look different need not think, feel, or act differently. Consequently, voicing of negative attitudes toward minorities declines. After age 7 to 8, both majority and minority children express in-group favoritism, and white children's prejudice against our-group members often weakens. Most school-age children and adolescents are also quick to verbalize that it is wrong to exclude others from peer-group and learning activities on the basis of skin color——discrimination they evaluate as unfair. Yet even in children and adolescents who are aware of the injustice of discrimination, prejudice can operate subtly, unintentionally, and without awareness——as it does in many white adults. Consider a study in which white second and fourth graders were asked to divide fairly among three child artists—-two white and one black—-money that had been earned from selling the children's art. In each version of the task, one artist was labeled as "productive" (making more art works), one as "the oldest," and one as "poor and needing money for lunch." By age 8 to 9, most children recognize that special consideration is appropriate for children who perform exceptionally or are at a disadvantage. But racial stereotypes interferes with fourth graders' even-handed application of these principles. They gave more money to a productive black artist (who countered the racial stereotype of "low achiever") than to a productive white artist and less money to a needy black artist (who conformed to the racial stereotype of "poor") than to a needy white artist. Findings like these raise the question of whether the decline in overt racial bias during middle childhood is a true decrease or whether it reflects older children's growing awareness of widely held standards that deem prejudice to be inappropriate——or (more likely) both. Around age 10, most children have internalized social norms and become increasingly concerned that their attitudes and behaviors are seen as consistent with them. Simultaneously, white children start to avoid talking about race to appear unbiased, just as many adults do. In a matching game in which willingness to label photos of people by race aided performance, 10- and 11-year-olds were so reluctant to mention race that they performed more poorly than 8- and 9-year-olds, who freely used racial descriptors. At least to some degree, then, older school-age children's desire to present themselves in a socially acceptable light may contribute to reduced expressions of out-group prejudice.

Nevertheless, the extent to which children hold racial and ethnic biases varies, depending on the following personal and situational factors: A fixed view of personality traits. Children who believe that people's personality traits are fixed rather than changeable often judge others as either "good" or "bad." Ignoring motives and circumstances, they readily form extreme impressions on the basis of limited information. For example, they might infer that "a new child at school who tells a lie to try to get other kids to like her" is a simply bad kid. Overly high self-esteem. Children (and adults) with very high self-esteem are more likely to hold racial and ethnic prejudices. These narcissistic individuals seem to belittle disadvantaged individuals or groups to justify and protect their own extremely favorable, yet insecure, self-evaluations. Furthermore, children of diverse backgrounds who say their own ethnicity makes them feel especially "good"——-and thus perhaps socially superior——-are more likely to display in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice. A social world in which people are sorted into groups. The more adults highlight group distinctions and the less interracial contact that is available in families, schools, and communities, the more likely white children and adolescents will express in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice. For example, white children with little other-group contact are highly vulnerable to expressions of subtle prejudice, such as interpreting an African-American agemates in an ambiguous situation as engaged in bad behavior (cheating, stealing, or otherwise harming others)

Children, including those who are good friends, sometimes come into conflict. With age, they apply their insights about themselves and others to an understanding of how to resolve situations in which their goals and the goals of agemates are at odds. Even preschoolers seem to handle most quarrels constructively; only rarely do their disagreements result in hostile encounters. Overall, conflicts are not very frequent when compared with children's friendly cooperative interactions. At your next opportunity, observe young children's play, noting their disputes over objects ("That's mine!" "I had it first!"), entry into and control over play activities ("I'm on your team, Jerry." "No, you're not!"), and disagreements over facts, ideas, and beliefs ("I'm taller than he is." "No, you aren't!"). Children take these matters quite seriously. From the preschool to the school years, conflicts shift from material concerns to psychological and social issues. In Chapter 6, we noted that resolution of conflict, rather than conflict per se, promotes development. Social conflicts provide repeated occasions for SOCIAL PROBLEM SOLVING——generating and applying strategies that prevent or resolve disagreements, resulting in outcomes that are both acceptable to others and beneficial to the self. To engage in social problem solving, children must bring together diverse social understandings.

Nicki Crick and Kenneth Dodge (1994) organize the steps of social problem solving into the circular model shown in Figure 11.10. Notice how this flowchart takes an INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH, clarifying exactly what a child must do to grapple with and solve a social problem. It enables identification of processing deficits, so intervention can be tailored to meet individual needs. Social problem solving profoundly affects peer relations. Children who get along well with agemates interpret social cues accurately, formulate goals (being helpful to peers) that enhance relationships, and have a repertoire of effective problem-solving strategies—-for example, politely asking to play and requesting an explanation when they do not understand a peer's behavior. In contrast, children with peer difficulties often hold biased social expectations. Consequently, they attend selectively to social cues (such as hostile acts) and misinterpret others' behavior (view an unintentional jostle as hostile). Their social goals (satisfying an impulse, getting even with or avoiding a peer) often lead to strategies that damage relationships. They might barge into a play group without asking, use threats and physical force, or forcefully hover around peers' activities. Children improve greatly in social problem solving over the preschool and early school years, largely as a result of gains in perspective-taking capacity—-in particular, recursive thought. Instead of grabbing, hitting, or insisting that another child obey, 5- to 7-year-olds tend to rely on friendly persuasion and compromise, to think of alternative strategies when an initial one does not work, and to resolve disagreements without adult intervention. Sometimes they suggest creating new, mutual goals, reflecting awareness that how they solve current problems will influence the future of the relationship. By kindergarten, the accuracy and effectiveness of each component of social problem solving are related to socially competent behavior

At birth, infants sense that they are physically distinct from their surroundings. For example, newborns display a stronger footing reflex in response to external stimulation (an adult's finger touching their cheek) than to self-stimulation (their own hand contacting their cheek) Newborns' remarkable capacity for INTERMODAL PERCEPTION supports the beginnings of self-awareness. As they feel their own touch, feel and watch their limbs move, and feel and hear themselves cry, babies experience intermodal matches that differentiate their own body from surrounding bodies and objects

Over the first few months, infants distinguish their own visual image from other stimuli, but their self-awareness is limited——-expressed only in perception and action. When shown two side-by-side video images of their kicking legs, one from their own perspective (camera behind baby) and one from an observer's perspective (camera in front of the baby), 3-month-olds looked longer at the observer's view. In another video-image comparison, they looked longer at a reversal of their leg positions than at a normal view. By 4 months, infants look and smile more at video images of others than at video images of themselves, indicating that they view another person (as opposed to the self) as a potential social partner. This discrimination of one's own limb and facial movements from those of others in real-time video presentations reflects an IMPLICIT sense of self-world differentiation. It serves as the foundation for explicit self-awareness: an objective understanding that the self is a unique object in a world of objects, which includes representations of one's own physical features and body dimensions.

As children develop an appreciation of their inner mental world, they think more intently about themselves. During early childhood, knowledge, and evaluation of the self's characteristics expands. Children begin to construct a SELF-CONCEPT, the set of attributes, abilities, attitudes, and values that an individual believes defines who he or she is. Ask a 3- to 5-year-old to tell you about himself, and you are likely to hear something like this: I'm Tommy. I'm 4 years old. I can wash my hair all by myself. I have a new Tinkertoy set, and I made this big, big tower." Preschoolers' self-concepts largely consist of observable characteristics such as their name, physical appearance, possessions, and everyday behaviors. By age 3 1/2, children also describe themselves in terms of typical emotions and attitudes ("I'm happy when I play with my friends"; "I don't like scary TV programs;" "I usually do what Mommy says"), suggesting a beginning understanding of their unique psychological characteristics. And by age 5, children's degree of agreement with a battery of such statements coincides with maternal reports of their personality traits, indicating that older preschoolers have a sense of their own timidity, agreeableness, and positive or negative affect. As further support for this emerging grasp of personality, when given a trait label ("shy," "mean"), 4-year-olds inter appropriate motives and feelings. For example, they know that a shy person doesn't like to be with unfamiliar people. But preschoolers do not yet say, "I'm helpful" or "I'm shy." Direct references to personality traits must wait for greater cognitive maturity."

Over time, children organize their observations of typical behaviors and internal states into general dispositions. A major change occurs between ages 8 and 11, as the following self-description by an 11-year-old illustrates: My name is A. I'm a human being. I'm a girl. I'm a truthful person.I'm not pretty. I do so-so in my studies. I'm a very good cellist. I'm a very good pianist. I'm a little bit tall for my age. I like several boys. I like several girls. I'm old-fashioned. I play tennis. I am a very good swimmer. I try to be helpful. I'm always ready to be friends with anybody. Mostly I'm good, but I lose my temper. I'm not well liked by some girls and boys. I don't know if I'm liked by boys or not. Instead of specific behaviors, this child emphasizes competencies: "a very good cellist," "so-so in my studies" She also describes her personality, mentioning both positive and negative traits: "truthful" but "short-tempered." Older school-age children are far less likely than younger children to describe themselves in extreme, all-or-none ways. These evaluative self-descriptions result from school-age children's frequent SOCIAL COMPARISONS——judgments of their own appearance, abilities, and behavior in relation to those of others. Whereas 4- to 6-year-olds can compare their own performance to that of a single peer, older children can compare multiple individuals, including themselves. Consequently, they conclude that they are "very good" at some things, "so-so" at others, and "not good" at still others. In early adolescence, the self differentiates further. Teenagers mention a wider array of traits, which vary with social context—-for example, self with mother, father, close friends, and romantic partner, and as student, athlete, and employee. As one young teenager commented: I'm an extrovert with my friends: I'm talkative, pretty rowdy, and funny..... With my parents, I'm more likely to be depressed. I feel sad as well as mad and also hopeless about ever pleasing them........ At school, I'm pretty intelligent. I know that because I'm smart when it comes to how I do in classes. I'm curious about learning new things, and I'm also creative when it comes to solving problems.......I can be a real introvert around people I don't know well....... I worry a lot about what others my age who are not my closest friends must think of me, probably that I'm a total dork. Notice, also, that young adolescents unify separate traits ("smart" and "curious") into more abstract descriptors ("intelligent"). But these generalizations about the self are not interconnected and are often contradictory. For example, 12- to 14-year-olds might mention opposing traits——-"intelligent" and "clueless," "extrovert" and "introvert." These disparities result from expansion of the adolescent's social world, which creates pressure to display different selves in different relationships. As adolescents' awareness of these inconsistencies grows, they frequently agonize over "which is the real me" From middle to late adolescence, cognitive changes enable teenagers to combine their traits into an organized system. Their use of qualifiers ("I have a fairly quick temper," "I'm not thoroughly honest") reveals their increased acceptance of situational variations in psychological qualities. Older adolescents also add integrating principles, which make sense of formerly troublesome contradictions. "I'm very adaptable," said one young person. "When I'm around my friends, who think that what I say is important, I'm talkative, but around my family I'm quiet because they're never interested enough to really listen to me. Compared with school-age children, teenagers place more emphasis on social virtues, such as being friendly, considerate, kind, and cooperative—-traits that reflect adolescents' increasing concern with being viewed positively by others. Among older adolescents, personal and moral values also emerge as key themes. Here is how one 17-year-old described herself: I'm a pretty conscientious person...... Eventually I want to go to law school, so developing good study habits and getting top grades are both essential.......I'd like to be an ethical person who treats other people fairly.....I don't always live up to that standard; that is sometimes I do something that doesn't feel ethica. When that happens, I get a little depressed because I don't like myself as a person. But I tell myself that it's natural to make mistakes, so I don't really question the fact that deep down inside, the real me is a moral person. This well-integrated account differs from the fragmented, listlike self-descriptions typical of children. As adolescents revise their views of themselves to include enduring beliefs and plans, they move toward the kind of unity of self that is central to identity development.

Intervening with children who have weak social problem-solving skills can enhance development in several ways. Besides improving peer relations, effective social problem solving gives children a sense of mastery in the face of stressful life events. It reduces the risk of adjustment difficulties in children from low-SES and troubled families. In one intervention——-the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum for preschool children——-teachers provide children with weekly lessons in the ingredients of social problem solving. Using stories, puppet characters, discussion, and role-play demonstrations, they teach such skills as detecting others' thoughts and feelings, planning sequences of action, generating effective strategies, and anticipating probable outcomes. In evaluations of PATHS, preschoolers who had completed 30 lessons in their Head Start classrooms scored higher than no-intervention controls in accurately "reading" others' thoughts and emotions, selecting competent solutions to social conflicts, and cooperating and communicating verbally with peers. Generating and evaluating strategies, however, are only part of the social problem-solving process. In a comprehensive year-long intervention called Making Choices, third graders diverse in SES received multiple lessons on each social problem-solving component depicted in Figure 11. 10 as a supplement to their routine health curriculum. And those in a Making Choices-Plus condition received the intervention plus teacher and family enhancements: Teachers were given guidance in positive classroom discipline and in implementing activities aimed at strengthening emotion regulation, and parents received newsletters offering suggestions for follow-up exercises at home. Regardless of SES, intervention children——compared with children in regular health classes——gained in teacher-rated social competence and declined in aggression over the school year, with reduced aggression still evident at a six-month follow up. Children in the Making Choices——Plus condition performed especially well on story-based assessments of knowledge of the various social problem-solving steps.

Practice in enacting responses may strengthen intervention outcomes. Sometimes children know how to solve a social problem effectively but do not apply their knowledge. And children who have repeatedly enacted maladaptive responses may need to rehearse alternatives to overcome their habitual behaviors and to spark more adaptive social information processing. On a final note, programs aimed at augmenting perspective taking and social problem solving are not the only approaches to helping children with social difficulties. Because their parents often model poor social skills and use ineffective child-rearing practices, intensive family intervention may be necessary——a topic we will return to several times in later chapters.

Preschoolers' capacity to use both beliefs and desires to predict people's behavior becomes a powerful tool for reflecting on thoughts and emotions and a good predictor of social skills. False belief understanding is linked to gains in young children's capacity to discuss thoughts and feelings in conversations with friends. And it predicts quality of sociodramatic play——specifically, the capacity to engage in joint planning, to negotiate pretend roles, and to imagine verbally, without the support of real objects. It is also associated with early reading ability, probably because it helps children comprehend story narratives. To follow a story line, children generally must link plot actions with characters' motives and beliefs. Once children grasp the relation between beliefs and behavior, they apply their understanding to a wider range of situations. For example, children who pass false-belief tasks have more accurate eyewitness memories. They realize that one person can present misinformation to another, which can affect the second individual's beliefs. Consequently, in reporting observed events, such children are more likely to resist attempts to mislead them. School-age children's capacity for recursive thought leads to further, dramatic gains in social skills. They now understand that conflicts often arise because of multiple yet legitimate interpretations of the same reality. Consequently, they often call on their recursive capacity to clear up misunderstandings.: "I thought you would think I was just kidding when I said that." They also rely on it to decide when to disguise their real thoughts and feelings: "He'll think I'm jealous if I tell him I don't like his new video game, so I'll act like I do." As these findings illustrate, theory-of-mind development from early to middle childhood strengthens children's appreciation of the relation between their own and others' beliefs and promotes their reasoned attempts to change others' beliefs. As a result, it contributes to many social competencies. How do children develop a theory of mind beginning at such a young age? Research suggests that language, executive function, make-believe play, and social experiences all contribute. The prefrontal cortex seems to play a crucial role in theory-of-mind development. ERP Brain-wave recordings obtained while 4- to 6-year-olds reasoned about others' beliefs revealed that children who pass false-belief tasks (as opposed to those who fail) display a pattern of activity in the left prefrontal cortex similar to that of adults engaged in the same tasks. This left-prefrontal ERP pattern typically appears when adults reason verbally about mental concepts. Understanding the mind requires the ability to reflect on thoughts, which language makes possible. Many studies indicate that language ability strongly predicts preschoolers' grasp of false belief. Children who spontaneously use, or are trained to use, complex sentences with mental-state words are especially likely to pass false-belief tasks. The Quechua village people of the Peruvian highlands refer to mental states such as "think" and " believe" indirectly, because their language lacks mental-state terms. Quechua children have difficulty with false-belief tasks for years after children in industrialized nations have mastered them. In contrast, Chinese languages have verb markers than can label the word "believe" as decidedly false. When adults use those markers within false-belief tasks, Chinese preschoolers perform better. Several aspects of preschoolers' executive function—-ability to inhibit inappropriate responses, think flexibly, and plan—-predict current performance on false-belief tasks as well as improvements over time. Like language, these cognitive skills enhance children's capacity to reflect on their experiences and mental states. Gains in inhibition, considered in Chapter 7, predict false-belief understanding particularly strongly, perhaps because false-belief tasks require suppression of an irrelevant response—-the tendency to assume that others' knowledge and beliefs are the same as one's own. In longitudinal research, mothers of securely attached babies were more likely to comment appropriately on their infants' mental states: "Do you remember Grandma?" "You really like that swing." These mothers continued to describe their children, when they reached preschool age, in terms of mental characteristics: "She's got a mind of her own!" "This maternal "mind-mindedness" was positively associated with early mental-state attainments, such as understanding that others may have desires discrepant from one's own, as well as later performance on false-belief and other theory-of-mind tasks. Parental commentary about mental states——initially, "desire" talk ("want," "like," "wish") and, later, more advanced "think," "believe," "know" remarks—-exposes infants and young children to concepts and language that help them think about their own and others' mental lives. Some researchers suggest that children's reflections on inner states are among the representations that make up their internal working models of close relationships. This mental-state knowledge emerges earlier—-and seems to be more objective and richer—-among securely attached children, whose parents frequently refer to desires, intentions, beliefs, and emotions. Earlier we noted that theory of mind fosters children's sociodramatic play. But make-believe also offers a rich context for thinking about the mind. As children act out roles, they imagine and express the thoughts and emotions of the character's they portray and their implications. These experiences may increase children's awareness that belief influences behavior. In support of this idea, preschoolers who engage in extensive fantasy role play or who have imaginary companions—-and this, are deeply absorbed in creating make-believe characters—-are advanced in understanding of false belief and other aspects of the mind.

Preschoolers with siblings who are also children (but not infants)—-and especially those with older siblings or with two or more siblings—-tend to be more aware of false belief. Children with older siblings close in age, and those with more siblings, are exposed to—-and participate in——more family talk about thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. Similarly, preschool friends who often engage in mental-state talk are advanced in false-belief and other mental-state understandings. Style of adult-child interaction also contributes. Rich conversations between parents and 2-year-olds——especially, discourse with many explanations of people's actions and with well-connected exchanges in which each speaker's remark is related to the other's previous remark—-predict subsequent mastery of false belief. And at age 4, elaborative, well-connected parent-child conversations continue to be associated with children's theory-of-mind progress. References to mental states occur especially often in well-connected dialogue, which may provoke deeper insights than other forms of talk. In line with Vygotsky's theory, these interactive experiences offer children opportunities to talk about inner states, receive feedback, observe different viewpoints, and become increasingly aware of their own and others' mental activities. Core knowledge theorists believe that to profit from the social experiences just described, children must be biologically prepared to develop a theory of mind. They claim that children with AUTISM, for whom mastery of false belief is either greatly related or absent, are deficient in the brain mechanism that enables humans to detect mental states.

According to identity theorists, individuals who move away from foreclosure and diffusion toward moratorium and achievement build a well-structured identity that integrates various domains. As a result, they experience a gratifying sense of personal continuity, competence, and social connection——of being the same person across time and contexts and of becoming a capable, respected, member of the adult community. A wealth of research supports the conclusion that identity achievement and moratorium are psychologically healthy routes to a mature self-definition, whereas long-term foreclosure and diffusion are maladaptive. Although adolescents in moratorium are often anxious about the challenges they face, they resemble identity-achieved individuals in using an ACTIVE, INFORMATION-GATHERING COGNITIVE STYLE to make personal decisions and solve problems: They seek out relevant information, evaluate it carefully, and critically reflect on and revise their views. Young people who are identity-achieved or exploring have higher self-esteem, are more open to alternative ideas and values, feel more in control of their own lives, are more likely to view school and work as feasible avenues for realizing their aspirations, and are more advanced in moral reasoning. When asked for a "turning point" narrative (an account of a past event that they view as important in understanding themselves), identity-achieved individuals tell stories containing more sophisticated personal insights and portraying negative life events as followed by good outcomes——personal renewal, improvement, and enlightenment. Adolescents stuck in either foreclosure or diffusion are passive in the face of identity concerns and have adjustment difficulties. Foreclosed individuals display a DOGMATIC, INFLEXIBLE COGNITIVE STYLE, internalizing the values and beliefs of parents and others without deliberate evaluation and resisting information that threatens their position. Most fear rejection by people on whom they depend for affection and self-esteem. A few foreclosed teenagers who are alienated from their families and society may join cults or other extremist groups, uncritically adopting a way of life that is different from their past. Long-term diffused teenagers are the least mature in identity development. They typically use a DIFFUSE-AVOIDANT COGNITIVE STYLE in which they avoid dealing with personal decisions and problems and, instead, allow current situational pressures to dictate their reactions. Taking an "I don't care" attitude, they entrust themselves to luck or fate, tend to go along with the crowd, and are focused on short-term personal pleasure. As a result, they often experience time management and academic difficulties and, of all young people, are the most likely to commit antisocial acts and to use and abuse drugs. Often at the heart of their apathy and impulsiveness is a sense of hopelessness about the future that puts many at risk for serious depression and suicide. Adolescent identity formation begins a lifelong, dynamic process in which a change in either the individual or the context opens up the possibility of reformulating identity. A wide variety of factors influence identity development. Identity status, as we have just seen, is both cause and consequence of personality characteristics. Adolescents who are conformist and obedient and who assume that absolute truth is always attainable tend to be foreclosed, whereas those who are self-indulgent and doubt they will ever feel certain about anything are more often identity-diffused. Young people who are curious and open-minded and who appreciate that they can use rational criteria to choose among alternatives are more likely to be in a state of moratorium or identity achievement. This flexible, self-reflective approach helps them greatly in pursuing educational, vocational, and other life goals.

Teenagers' identity development is enhance when their families serve as a "secure base" from which they can confidently move out into the wider world. In families of diverse ethnicities, adolescents who feel attached to their parents and say they provide effective guidance, but who also feel free to voice their own opinions, tend to be in a state of moratorium or identity achievement. Foreclosed teenagers usually have close bonds with parents but lack opportunities for healthy separation. And diffused young people report the lowest levels of parental support and warm, open communication. Recall that parents who engage in positive problem solving—-who resolve conflicts by seeking their child's input and collaborating on a solution——foster high self-esteem. Notice, also, how this approach promotes the balance between family relatedness and autonomy that supports identity development. Interaction with diverse peers through school and community activities encourages adolescents to explore values and role possibilities. And close friends, like parents, can act as a secure base, providing emotional support, assistance, and models of identity development. In one study, 15-year-olds with warm, trusting peer ties were more involved in exploring relationship issues——for example, thinking about what they valued in a life partner. In another study, college students' attachment to friends predicted progress in choosing a career.

Remembered self

The child's life-story narrative, or autobiographical memory, constructed from conversations with adults about the past.

Because preschoolers have trouble distinguishing between their desired and their actual competence, they usually rate their own ability as extremely high and underestimate task difficulty. In early childhood, high self-esteem is adaptive, contributing greatly to preschoolers' initiative during a period in which they must master many new skills. Self-esteem declines over the first few years of elementary school as children evaluate themselves in various areas. This decline occurs as children receive more competence-related feedback, as their performances are increasingly judged in relation to those of others, and as they become cognitively capable of social comparison.

To protect their self-esteem, most children eventually balance social comparisons with personal achievement goals. Perhaps for this reason, the drop in self-esteem in the early school years is seldom harmful. Then, from fourth grade on, self-esteem rises and remains high for the majority of young people, who feel especially good about their peer relationships and athletic capabilities. The main exception is a decline in self-worth for some adolescents after transition to middle and high school. Entry into a new school, accompanied by new teacher and peer expectations, may temporarily interfere with the ability to make realistic judgments about behavior and performance. In Chapter 15, we will examine these school transition effects. For most young people, however, becoming an adolescent leads to feelings of pride and self-confidence.

over first year.

Ventricle muscle mass increases

Between ages 3 and 4, children increasingly refer to their own and others' thoughts and beliefs. And from age 4 on, they exhibit a BELIEF-DESIRE THEORY OF MIND, a more advanced view in which both beliefs and desires determine actions, and they understand the relationship between these inner states. Turn back to the beginning of this chapter, and notice how 4-year-old Ellen deliberately tries to alter her mother's belief about the motive behind her pretending, in hopes of warring off any desire on her mother's part to punish her. From early to middle childhood, efforts to alter others' beliefs increase, suggesting that children more firmly realize the power of belief to influence action. Dramatic evidence for preschoolers' belief-desire reasoning comes from games that test whether they realize that false beliefs——one's that do not represent reality accurately——can guide people's behavior. Show a child two small closed boxes, one a familiar Band-Aid box and the other a plain, unmarked box. Then say, "Pick the box you think has the Band-Aids in it." Children usually pick the marked container. Next, open the boxes and show the child that, contrary to her own belief, the marked one is empty and the unmarked one contains the Band-Aids. Finally, introduce the child to a hand puppet and explain, "Here's Pam. She has a cut, see? Where do you think she'll look for Band-Aids? Why would she look in there? Before you looked inside, did you think that the plain box contained Band-Aids? Why? Only a handful of 3-year-olds can explain Pam's——-and their own——false beliefs, but many 4-year-olds can. Some researchers claim that the procedures just described, which require verbal explanations, grossly underestimate younger children's ability to attribute false beliefs to others. Relying on the violation-of expectation method (which depends on looking behavior), these investigators assert that children comprehend others' false beliefs by age 15 months. But like other violation-of-expectation evidence, this conclusion is controversial. In another study relying on active behavior (helping), most 18-month-olds——after witnessing an object moved from one box to another while an adult was not looking——-helped the adult, when he tried to open the original box, locate the object in the new box. Still, much more evidence is needed to confirm that toddlers implicitly grasp mental states as complex as false belief. Indeed their performance may be based on a far simpler rule: lack of perceptual access leads to not knowing——that a person who hasn't seen the contents of a particular container can't know what's in it and, therefore, will be mistaken. Among children of diverse cultural and SES backgrounds, false-belief understanding strengthens gradually after age 3 1/2, becoming more secure between ages 4 and 6. Mastery of false belief signals a change in representation——the ability to view beliefs as interpretations, not just reflections, of reality. Does this remind you of school-age children's more active view of the mind, discussed in Chapter 7? Belief-desire reasoning may mark the beginnings of this overall change.

With the realization that people can increase their knowledge by making MENTAL INFERENCES, school-age children extend false-belief understanding further. In several studies, researchers told children complex stories involving one character's belief about a second character's belief. Then the children answered questions about what the first character thought the second character would do. By age 6 to 7, children were aware that people form beliefs about other people's beliefs and that these second-order beliefs can also be wrong! Appreciation of second-order false belief enables children to pinpoint the reasons that another person arrives at a certain belief. Notice how it requires the ability to view a situation from at least two perspectives—-that is, to reason simultaneously about what two or more people are thinking, a form of perspective taking called RECURSIVE THOUGHT. We think recursively when we make such statements as, "Lisa believes that Jason believes the letter is under his pillow, but that's not what Jason really believes; he knows the letter is in the desk." On other complex tasks requiring recursive their thought, performance also improves over middle childhood. Consider a study addressing children's appreciation of the role of people's PREEXISTING BELIEFS in interpreting a new, ambiguous situation. School-age children listened to a story in which Cathy and Sarah see their classmate, Joan, holding a doll in front of a donation box full of toys for poor children. Cathy likes Joan. Sarah, however, dislikes Joan, believing she's a troublemaker. Children were asked how Cathy and Sarah might interpret Joan's behavior. Would they, for example, appreciate that Cathy would likely think Joan was donating the doll out of kindness, whereas Sarah would probably think she was stealing the doll? Results revealed that not until age 7 to 8 could children clearly explain how people's prior beliefs might affect their viewpoints. Around this age, children also grasp that two people are likely to interpret the same event——such as an ambiguous fragment removed from a larger drawing they have never seen——-differently, no matter what beliefs or other biases they bring to the situation. They recognize that the same reality can be construed in many ways. In sum, compared to younger children, school-age children have a far more sophisticated view of the mind: They regard it as an active interpreter of experience

Generalized other

a blend of what we imagine important people in our lives think of us

By age 6 to 7, intelligence test scores are good predictors of later

academic achievement

Identity diffusion

an apathetic state characterized by lack of both exploration and commitment

Scale errors

attempting to do things that their body size makes impossible

During the second year of life, toddlers begin to take some personal responsibility for feeding, dressing, and bathing themselves in an attempt to establish what Erikson calls a sense of:

autonomy

From early to middle childhood, emotional understanding advances because children ______.

become able to understand not only their own emotions, but the emotions of others

From middle childhood on, individual differences in self-esteem

become increasingly stable.

Because attending college involves the ability to make immediate sacrifices for later rewards, it is sometimes thought of as a very long exercise in

capacity to delay gratification

Identity foreclosure

commitment in the absence of exploration

identity achievement

commitment to values, beliefs, and goals following a period of exploration

Preschoolers with disorganized attachment will display ...

contradictory behavior

Mastery-oriented attributions

crediting their successes to ability-a characteristic they can improve through trying hard and can count on when facing new challenges. And they attribute failure to factors that can be changed or controlled, such as insufficient effort or a very difficult task

Mastery of false belief signals a change in representation-the ability to view beliefs as a) scale errors b) desires existing in a person's inner states c) mental inferences d) interpretations, not just reflections, of reality

d) interpretations, not just reflections, of reality

False-belief understanding is linked to gains in young children's capacity to

discuss thoughts and feelings in conversations with friends.

Mental inferences

enables knowledge of false belief to expand

Attribution retraining

encourages learned-helpless children to believe that they can overcome failure by exerting more effort

Attributions are

explanations for the causes of behavior——our answers to the question "Why did I or another person do that?"

identity moratorium

exploration without having reached commitment

over the first year of life the perceptual capacities are modified by..?

exposure to a particular language, or languages

Preschoolers can hold only two or three chunks of information in short-term memory, 5-year-olds can hold four, and 7-year-olds can hold _____.

five

According to identity theorists, individuals who move away from identity __________ toward identity __________ build a well-structured identity that integrates various domains.

foreclosure, diffusion, moratorium, achievement

By age 6 to 7, children in diverse Western cultures have formed at least __________ broad self-evaluations.

four

Social problem solving

generating and applying strategies that prevent or resolve disagreements, resulting in outcomes that are both acceptable to others and beneficial to the self

In attribution retraining, children who have developed learned helplessness are

given tasks difficult enough that they will experience some failure, followed by repeated feedback that helps them revise their attributions

Social cognition

how children come to understand their multifaceted social world

Around age 2, self-recognition

identification of the self as a physically unique being——is well under way. Children point to themselves in photos and refer to themselves by name. In fact, mirror self-recognition predicts other milestones that reflect representation of the self, including use of personal pronouns ("me," "my," "mine") and emergence of make-believe play. Soon children identify themselves in images with less detail and fidelity than mirrors. Around age 2 1/2, most reach for a sticker surreptitiously places on top of their heads when shown themselves in a live video, and around age 3, most recognize their own shadow.

Acculturative stress is lowest for people who choose _______ as their method of entering the majority culture.

integration

As children develop into moral autonomists:

intentions become more important than consequences.

Research confirms that an effective way to reduce prejudice—in children and adults alike—is through

intergroup contact, in which racially and ethnically different individuals have equal status, work toward common goals, and become personally acquainted, and in which authority figures (such as parents and teachers) expect them to engage in such interaction. Children assigned to cooperative learning groups with peers of diverse backgrounds show low levels of prejudice in their expressions of likability and in their behavior. For example, they form more cross-race friendships. Sharing of thoughts and feelings with close cross-race friends, in turn, reduces even subtle, unintentional prejudices, which are highly resistant to change. But the positive effects of cooperative learning seem not to generalize to out-group members who are not part of these learning teams. Long-term contact and collaboration among neighborhood, school, and community groups may be the best way to reduce prejudice. Consistent with this view, white 5- and 6-year-olds attending an ethnically mixed school relied on their everyday experiences to construct generally positive out-group attitudes. Classrooms that expose children to broad ethnic diversity, teach them to understand and value those differences, directly address the damage caused by prejudice and discrimination, emphasize moral values of justice and fairness, and encourage perspective taking and empathy both prevent children from forming negative biases and reduce already acquired biases. In addition, inducing children to view others' traits as malleable is helpful. The more school-age children and adolescents believe that people can change their personalities, the more they report liking, wanting to spend time with, and perceiving themselves as similar to members of disadvantaged out-groups. Furthermore, young people who believe in the malleability of human attributes spend more time volunteering to help the needy—-for example, by serving meals to the homeless or reading to poverty-stricken preschoolers. Volunteering may, in turn, promote a malleable view of others by inducing young people to imagine themselves in the place of the underprivileged and thus helping them appreciate the social conditions that lead to disadvantage. Regrettably, despite the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering schools to desegregate, school integration in the United States——which increased steadily until the late 1980s——has receded dramatically as courts terminated their desegregation orders and returned this authority to states and cities. Most U.S. white, black, and Hispanic students now attend schools where the majority of their fellow students are of their own race. White students are the most isolated group——typically in schools that are 80 percent white. And when African-American and Hispanic students attend mixed-race schools, they usually do so with other minorities. Consequently, today's U.S. schools seldom offer exposure to the diversity necessary for countering negative racial and ethnic biases but, instead, largely perpetuate prejudices. Ideals and policies promoting interethnic contact and respect yield far more extensive school integration in Canada. Still, in both nations, 30 to 40 percent of Native children (Native American and Native Canadian) live on reservation lands, where they attend segregated schools. Many studies indicate that attending integrated classrooms leads to higher achievement, educational attainment, and occupational aspirations among ethnic minority students——-especially when integration begins in the early grades. School integration also greatly increases the likelihood that young people will lead integrated lives as adults. Environments in which students of diverse ethnicities learn together offer a common, inclusive social identity that reduces intergroup bias. Furthermore, integrated schools provide many opportunities to grapple with multiple perspectives, which challenge students to think about their social world in more complex ways. As we saw earlier in this chapter, school-age children's developing capacity to take the perspective of others——-especially, their ability to engage in recursive thought—-contributes greatly to interpersonal understanding and positive social behavior.

Social comparisons

judgments of their own appearance, abilities, and behavior in relation to those of others

Attribution retraining generally focuses on changing a. low-ability attributions b. high-effort attributions c. high-ability attributions d. task difficulty attributions e. luck attributions

low-ability attributions

Because preschoolers' cognitive limitations lead them to assume that cultural practices determine gender, Sandra Bem suggests that parents and teachers

make a concerted effort to delay young children's learning of gender-stereotyped messages

Two-year-olds are most likely to engage in a type of play called ____.

parallel

Inner self

private thoughts and imaginings

acculturative stress

psychological distress resulting from conflict between the minority and the host culture

As children develop a better self understanding in middle childhood, they begin to view themselves less in terms of physical attributes and more in terms of their _______

psychological traits

By 4 months, infants can distinguish between

purposeful and accidental actions

Appreciation of second-order false belief requires __________, a form of perspective taking that involves the ability to reason simultaneously about what two or more people are thinking.

recursive thought

Person perception

refers to the way we size up the qualities of people with whom we are familiar

As self-awareness strengthens, preschoolers begin to develop a

self-concept

During the second year of life, a child's growth rate

slows considerably

Young preschoolers are typically in the stage of

telegraphic speech

Incremental view of ability

that it can increase through effort- influences the way mastery-oriented children interpret negative events. They attribute failure to factors that can be changed or controlled, such as insufficient effort or a difficult task

Perspective taking

the capacity to imagine what other people may be thinking and feeling and to distinguish those viewpoints from one's own.

Self-esteem

the judgments we make about our own worth and the feelings associated with those judgments

Self-concept

the set of attributes, abilities, attitudes, and values that an individual believes defines who he or she is

Achievement motivation

the tendency to persist at challenging tasks

Preschoolers can succeed at tests of conservation when

the test is presented in a simple, nonverbal, and gamelike way

Entity view of ability

the view that ability is a fixed characteristic that cannot be improved through effort; associated with learned helplessness

Young preschoolers' unbridled optimistic views of themselves are held, in part, because

they have not yet started to compare themselves and their performance against others

desire theory of mind

they think that people always act in ways consistent with their desires and do not realize that less obvious, more interpretive mental states, such as beliefs, also affect behavior

By 6 months of age, babies can categorize on the basis of

two correlated features.

Because preschoolers have difficulty distinguishing between their desired and their actual competence, they

usually rate their own ability as extremely high.

Attribution research shows that

well-intended messages from adults sometimes undermine childrens competence.

Studies in diverse Western nations confirm that by age 5 or 6, __________ children generally evaluate their own racial group favorably and other racial groups less favorably or negatively———biases that also characterize many adults.

white

As children develop, how does their writing improve?

world knowledge, organize writing, master mechanics, skilled revising